Jeff Saperstein

Chief Marketing Officers (CMO’s) are experiencing great uncertainty with constant disruptive change: 79% expect a high level of complexity over the next five years and 52% feel unprepared for this complexity. The major sources of these game-changers are Data explosion (77%), Social Media (68%), and Growth of Channel and Device Choices (65%).

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So CMO’s are navigating a very complex landscape. Their former certainty is being replaced by continuous experimentation with unpredictable results. Historically, resource allocation for CMO’s followed a “waterfall” process: allocate enough to broad-scale reach media such as TV advertising, then apportion the remainder to successively lower priority touch-points until the budget was fully allocated. Today’s resource allocation challenge is far less clear, and more “agile”. Budget must be continuously reallocated and redistributed among a new array of digital channels, with frequent review, re-assessment and revision.

ROI in the historical context was linked to marketing process and the broadly accepted “sales funnel” – reach translated into awareness, thence to consideration, purchase and loyalty. Each stage could be measured, and progress and efficiency could be tracked. In the new, “agile” world of spending and continuous reallocation, and numerous competing engagement models, ROI is a much more elusive concept.

Digital Agencies have emerged to meet the new demands for agility that can bridge the gap and identify opportunities to help Marketers succeed.

Rosetta (a subsidiary of Publicis), a major Platinum Sponsor of the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2014 Tampa, is one of the foremost full service agencies that have mastered delivery across technology platforms and connected devices. Both a Strategy (Insights) and Communications (Relevant Branded Interactions) company, Rosetta is a pioneer in transitioning Marketing best practices onto the Cloud with sophisticated Analytics and Social. Rosetta positions its client service process as: Identify, Engage, Activate and Build to drive measurable business impact.

Rosetta’s opportunity, and others who serve as digital marketing integrators to the CMO, is to substitute a clear direction to replace the uncertainty. How can CMO’s (or C Suite Executives who hire agencies such as Rosetta) use all the digital new tools together to deliver great customer experiences. The emotional value proposition is to give Clients a feeling of confidence as they navigate in the uncharted waters of Cloud, Analytics and Social.

I caught up with Gary Schechner, Sr. VP Marketing, Rosetta at the Tampa Conference for an extended interview on how he sees the new role of Marketing and challenges for the CMO. During a one and a half hour conversation we discovered that we knew some of the same people (the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) from Gary’s first job in the Donaldson Group Ad Agency in San Francisco. So Gary’s twenty-year perspective on the Marketing/Advertising business gives him a great view of the arc of change from before the Web emerged to begin the great disruption occurring in the marketing, advertising, and communications fields.

Here are Gary’s thoughts on the role of the CMO, the use of metrics, the challenge to monetize analytics, the approaches and methods to value customer sentiment, and the experience and attitudes new professionals should have if their want to enter the ever-evolving Marketing field:

How does the role of CMO change?

Historically, Marketing was a Brand Guardian. Today we play a mini-IT role as well, so analytics should be used on top of the marketing tools and levers we pull. Ideally, the CMO should have experience on both the Agency and Client side; he/she should know which tactics to take from the toolbox, and now use data to optimize marketing programs.

Marketers need to bring to bear a team (internally or externally) to understand what the data means (analytics). More importantly, they should have a seat at table with CTO and CEO and become more involved in bigger IT platforms for the company.

Social provides us with a new feedback mechanism. Social gives greater sense of “data exhaust” from the customer decision journey. Look at all the touch-points in the data map for new insights.

How well do you think new, better Metrics have been integrated into the CMO’s function?

There is a general lack of support for marketing analytics for CMO’s. As a simple example, one could draw from existing email addresses to tag each person through the entire purchase cycle. One of the biggest challenges is that the data exists in a number of places, so it is hard to establish best practices for the data available to you. Rosetta specializes in rules based engines: personalized engagement engines that scales it at a massive rate, enabling the ability to be constantly responsive to each individual.

So the CMO should understand the customer journey (individual, segmented, as well as aggregate): how does the experience of the customer become hindered by the enterprise? For example, why ask for the same customer information more than once across devices, channels, and products/services?

How do you Monetize Analytics?

There is value in aggregate analytics, and value of the data deal. Healthcare is a big vertical for Rosetta. Premier Health is one of our clients (like an Amazon for medical supplies). They pull together the clinical data for providers. There is huge value to what is working in aggregated data. Keep it as anonymous and yet personalized. There should be material benefit/ROI.

A Brand extension profit center could be the aggregated information that contributes to the bottom-line and also to the perceived value of the enterprise.

There is also great value in smart analysis of data: Marketers can get customer insights from the data.

Marketers should be asking the question of how do you shorten that path to purchase. Once they have the customer in dialog they should not need to remarket continually to that customer.

What are directions for Metrics on Sentiment and Value Creation?

I hope it does not go in a Yelp direction. We need better control. As a cross-industry benchmark that we can all reference, there is value in Net Promoter Scores. What will be interesting will depend on metrics by sales channels. Different levels of customer service expectations: Neiman Marcus or Amazon. Clearly, there is a different experience for a purchaser of the same item. .

How did you come to own my product? Manufacturers need to develop closer relationship and likelihood of new benchmarks.

Automotive companies are a good example of how sentiment and touch points work. Will be interested to see what emerges. The flood of data will be like nothing we have ever seen before. There is hope and promise no manufacturer will ever release a car that will not be successful; they just will not be able to survive the scrutiny of the social marketplace and the competitive advantage of auto manufacturers who become savvy in the personal customer insights that can be both personalized and aggregated.

Traditional branding now has to match the experience you are promising. Each enterprise is one swipe away from losing a customer forever. Customer engagement is now more a one on one relationship.

Letting peers themselves create solutions—through message boards— is useful; however, if there are problems and the manufacturer does not address them, then the loyalty is to the community and not to the manufacturer. Immediate acknowledgement of the complaint is important. If you miss out to be part of peer to peer (monitoring the forums) and being part of the conversation, then you have failed to use Social. How service was defined before and how it is defined now are really different with Analytics and Social.

What experience, skills, and qualities are you looking for from people to work in this field?

People who have curiosity to ask why and what if (causality). Strong analytics background is helpful; therefore, a well -seasoned investment banker could make the transition into marketing. Lastly, is the attitude for risk-taking: keep trying approaches and solutions to learn.   

[1] IBM “ From Stretched to Strengthened CMO Study”, 2011