The chief marketing officers of Unilever, IBM, Visa and Adobe chaired the first CMO round table at the Cannes Lions Festival, where they and more than 60 other CMOs and leading marketers discussed early findings of the Marketing2020 study.
Cannes was the first in a series of round tables planned around the world. Each examines the role and creation of purposeful brands, the structure, role and capabilities of marketing, how to analyze big data in marketing, the role of the CMO, and collaboration with agencies.
Key findings
- Seventy-three percent of marketers believe brands with a societal purpose drive business growth.
- Fifty-eight percent work closely with their CEO to establish the company’s strategic growth agenda, a 20 percent increase on 2006.
- Ninety percent expect the size of global marketing departments to stay the same or increase over the next five years, and 65 percent of senior marketers at senior vice president level and above expect marketing and communications departments to merge in that period.
- Only 20 percent of marketers feel their teams receive adequate training, even though increased training correlates with increased business growth.
- The study also found that marketing leaders of organizations outgrowing their competition tend to be closer to consumers and focus more on developing people than their peers do.
What else the early results showed
Technology developments are reported to be driving massive change in the way marketers develop value propositions and connect with consumers, and data mining and analytics are the capabilities marketers most want to develop over the next five years.
The role of brands is expected to increase significantly despite increasing consumer information and global transparency, and creative and agency partners are expected to play a more important role in marketing organizations.
Who was behind the study
Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA, called the study and the group that gathered at Cannes a burgeoning breakthrough in the industry, and described it as the most ambitious research and leadership initiative the ANA had ever taken part in.
Marc de Swaan Arons, founder of EffectiveBrands and head of Marketing2020, said global marketing leaders are looking for guidance on how to structure their organizations.
In the three months before the release, 350 CEOs, CMOs, CMO peers and agency leaders and several thousand marketers contributed. The study is a joint initiative by EffectiveBrands, the ANA, the WFA, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, Adobe and MetrixLab, and on completion was expected to be the largest qualitative and quantitative study of marketing leaders and organizations yet conducted.
Scope and limitations
These are early findings released while the study was still running, discussed at the first of a planned series of round tables rather than published as final results.
Source
This page summarises Early Marketing2020 Study Results Foster Discussion Among Global Chief Marketing Officers at Cannes, by Association of National Advertisers (ANA), EffectiveBrands, June 24, 2013.