-: Obviously we're in a time of tremendous uncertainty.
Economic forces are at work.
The ideas about where we are going to be
in terms of working from home,
ways in which we collaborate with each other internally,
and the way we communicate with our customers
is changing rapidly.
It's hard to make predictions right now.
Some of the most important conversations, though,
that I'm having with CMOs is,
how can you have a productive conversation with CFOs
about what investments can we make
that will pay off in two to three years
from a branding and media investment
that will create the right associations
of your future customers with your brand?
And that requires really rethinking,
what are the needs that your products and services
can actually solve for your customers?
And, where, right now, can we actually show strength
relative to competitors, or relative to other substitutes?
Where are we currently getting positive brand associations?
And, how do we double-down on those investments?
And, how do we measure the impact of those investments?
And so some of the work we've been doing recently,
and a lot of the interests
that we've had recently with marketers is,
how can we have a long-term ROI perspective
on our investments in marketing and media?
And, how do we measure them, you know, leveraging new ideas
in neuroscience and behavioral economics,
that help us provide some math to what used to be an art?
Because there's certainly a lot of understanding
that long-term investments in brand are important.
We've seen that over the course of decades.
But right now, in December, let's say,
when you're trying to make numbers for the end of the year,
how do I actually articulate to a CFO
that if I take out a dollar right now in brand investments,
that I may then require $2 of investments next year?
That's the kind of math and the kind of certainty
we need to be able to bring into the C-suite
that didn't exist before.