A recent study published by Dentsu took a deep look into the biggest concerns CMO’s are facing in today’s landscape. Topping the list included talent acquisition, supply chain issues, and the ever-changing marketing environment. The role of the CMO has become more vital to business metrics and innovation than ever before. They are seeing increased budgets and responsibility on delivering brand trust and business growth. Consumers want to be heard and navigating consumer sentiment in a very volatile few years continues to also be a struggle.
A few areas of importance for the CMO noted in the survey as it pertained to the media landscape included the following:
- Data Privacy Regulations
- Cookie deprecation and the effects of losing data in the attribution process will force marketers to re-evaluate their digital media strategy.
- Crowded and Complex technology landscape
- Consumers are dividing their time now more than ever among more media channels and connected devices. Ensuring successful and effective campaigns becomes harder in this fragmented space.
- Consumers distrust in media outlets
- Allowing for shared data between applications and sites is not something the consumer is just clicking yes for without reading through the fine print. Some consumers are pulling away all together from certain apps.
- Erosion of linear TV viewership
- Embracing the digital streaming age doesn’t seem to be the problem but keeping up with the measurement and attribution of the fragmented video space is the bigger issue and will continue to be.
- Inadequacy of existing measurement models
- More and more business results are primarily accountable to the CMO including growing customers, product innovation, and sales however marketing and media models don’t keep up with the consumer trends making it hard to track back on KPI’s.
Clients are looking to counteract some of these issues by taking more control of their content and data. Some organizations are working on alterative audience identifiers to protect consumer privacy. They are also looking to produce or sponsor original content. They are looking for longer term transformational strategies which makes sense considering the post pandemic stage we are now in. Speaking of post pandemic, we have seen the emergence of virtual events the past two years and CMO’s continue to see the importance of those in their future strategies.
How we go from now to next will certainly be an interesting story to watch unfold. The CMO of today is faced with several challenges both internal and external. It has been said for the past 10 years that data and content will drive the story and I tend to agree with that. I think taking more control of both should be a top priority for organizations. We know it is only going to get more complex and fragmented so you can’t sit on the sidelines and wait for it to pass.
The consumer is in charge, and we are just here to follow them to the “next”.
Written by Executive Vice President, Amy Ward.
