MARKETING CAREERS

Is this the age of the Great Chief Marketing Officer Extinction?

By our News Team | 2022

Three ways that the CMOs of the world can avoid becoming extinct in the rapidly evolving marketing environment.

In late May, the marketing industry publication, Ad Age, reported how massive change in the role of the marketing department in big businesses – accompanied by high turnover of senior marketing staff – is seeing some companies hiring CMOs on a short-term basis only. 

It called them “CMOs for hire” filling “gigs that are short by design”. Which begs the question as to whether the traditional Chief Marketing Officer role is a thing of the past? Unilever, for example, has already done away with the job title (see our website post of 5 May 2022). 

Marketing careers

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Now Kirsten Allegri Williams, CMO at Optimizely, a leading digital experience platform in the US, has written a column suggesting how the CMO can, as a species, avoid becoming extinct in the new age of marketing. She makes three key recommendations:

         1. Understand the digital experience imperative

CEOs are tasking CMOs with spearheading the digital revolution, but many CMOs are still stuck back in the Triassic period, utilising decades-old technology and gut-based decision making. Without access to actionable insights, CMOs struggle to implement the experiential changes that create more customer-driven growth.

        2. Build an infinite optimisation journey

A comprehensive digital experience meets customer needs at speed. CMOs must unlock their teams’ potential with the tools to experiment across the digital customer journey, from content to page layouts to brand experiences. And alongside marketing, developers can accomplish more than ever before, and unleash their creativity, when the creation-to-optimisation silos are broken down. CMOs must partner within the organisation to create a new customer journey.

          3. Embrace higher pressure to realise higher purpose

Gone are the days of an online presence as a static focal point for publishing content. This is the age of the dynamic digital business engine that incorporates the feedback of sales, marketing, product, partnership, development, customer experience, UX/UI and HR. In order to survive the mass evolutionary event of CMO extinction, CMOs must treat the website as the most sophisticated business application their company has to offer.

“The core of optimisation is creativity, and great CMOs have always adapted to the higher purpose of unlocking business potential,” Williams says.

Read the full article here. 

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