#CMO #ChiefMarketingOfficer

What are CMOs thinking about, looking at, and trying to improve? What role do digital processes have? Are there parallels with the transformation of the CIO function in any way?

On episode #712 of CXOTalk, we hear from Norman de Greve, Chief Marketing Officer at CVS Health, together with Suzanne Kounkel, Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte.

Suzanne and Norm answer all these questions to explain how they measure success and why it's important to collaborate with other disciplines in the organization.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role has evolved dramatically since the late ’90s, when marketers were focused on closing business deals with customers. While the fundamentals have remained constant over the years — for example, customer-facing teams need to connect marketing efforts back to sales goals –the way CMOs execute their jobs is fundamentally different from when they started out decades ago. Marketing has become data-driven and, as a result, CMOs now play larger roles in key corporate functions such as HR, finance, and IT.

The conversation covers these topics:
-- What is a Chief Marketing Officer?
-- How to plan and allocate marketing investments?
-- Customer experience and the CMO
-- What is a purpose-driven business?
-- CMO and marketing executives as change agents

We explore the CMO role with two prominent marketing leaders: Suzanne Kounkel, Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte, and Norman de Greve, the Chief Marketing Officer for CVS Health.

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Read the complete transcript:
https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/what-...

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From the video:

What is a Chief Marketing Officer?
Michael Krigsman: Suzanne, the CMO role has been changing. Pieces of it have been almost kind overlapping with the chief information officer, and we have chief digital officers. Really, today in 2021, how do you define the scope of the CMO role?

Suzanne Kounkel: The modern CMO basically has four facets to their job. The first is certainly a growth driver, and that's changed pretty dramatically over a period of time. we've talked a lot about that with the CMO set of responsibilities, but that is absolutely 1000% true today.

We definitely think that a part of the CMO role is as an innovation catalyst and specifically about digital. Norm talked about how dramatically technology is changing all of our businesses. It certainly has changed the face of what we do as marketers.

Obviously, brand storyteller, bringing creative to light, and being the face of the organization (both internally and externally) is a big part of the CMO role. Last, but not least, is the capability filter, making sure that we're doing the things that we can do with the CFO watching to get the highest return on the investments we make in marketing.

Michael Krigsman: Norm, I'm sure that you have some thoughts as well on the scope of the role today.

Norman de Greve: I probably anchor a little bit more on the first one, which is to create customer-driven growth, though I think every element you said there is exactly right.

Most companies go through (in my view) a few different stages. You start by finding an unmet need in the marketplace. You create a product or service to meet it. It's quite an entrepreneurial sort of idea.

Then they go to the next stage of, let's say they have these customer relationships. What else can they sell to them? Now you've got kind of a marketing mindset, an innovation mindset there as well.

Then many companies are really in this third stage, which is, how do you drive operational profits out of a company that you've built and the relationships that you have?

If I look at that curve, in each stage marketing plays a really important role. Certainly, at the beginning, that is what marketing does. We find an unmet need in the marketplace and we help create a product or service to meet it. In the second stage, we're really helping to figure out what else could we do to help those customers.

Really importantly, in these big companies that are focused on operational efficiencies with an analytic mindset – very important. Lots of value in this area – the marketer's job is to make sure that the company is also creating these products and services to meet unmet needs in the marketplace so that it can drive the next iteration of growth.

Suzanne, I liked the way you said it because I think that's a bit of customer-driven growth, a bit of innovation, and a bit of capability as well. You had one other one in there. I forgot it, but I like them all. I thought that was right.