- Sean, Amaryllis, welcome.
Amaryllis, to you first.
How do you see the role of the CMO changing?
- That's a very good question.
Years back when recruiters would be calling
they would be asking are you a brand marketer?
Are you a performance marketer?
And I'm actually glad to see that the division
is not here anymore.
I think technology is providing the right toolkit
for all marketers to deliver exceptional growth results
for their companies.
So I'm very happy to see that the role
is becoming much more around knowing the customer,
but also delivering good results without that division.
- How have you seen the role evolve, Sean,
in your experience?
- Quite a bit.
I think that a few years ago maybe there was too much focus
on just branding and communications.
And what I like is that probably now,
people talk about
going back to performance and data analytics,
for me, it's like simplifying and going back into business.
Starting with what are the business objectives
that we need to deliver on?
Marketing is a tool.
And then taking a holistic point of view
that combines both data and creativity.
How do we deliver new initiatives
and new programs?
- What advice would you have for marketers
that are struggling to get buy-in from the top?
- For me, it's all about gaining credibility.
And you gain credibility by, first,
by talking the language of business,
not the language of marketing, something very basic.
But we've created too much jargon
over the last couple of decades.
And if we have to simplify.
And again, talk the language of the general manager,
the CEOs, the CFOs.
Second, show results.
Not only if we want to build for the long term,
we need to deliver on the short term.
So pick the low hanging fruit where you can show
that you have the rigor, the analytical rigor,
and to measure everything,
to deliver the results.
And that's going to unlock further investments
that allow you to keep going.
- What happens when you can get that alignment,
that collaboration right between CMOs, and CFOs,
and the whole C-suite?
- I think if you cannot get that,
it gets too dysfunctional.
And what happens is that marketing starts
getting away from the business and gets marginalized,
it doesn't become a key business driver.
So that's a big risk.
And we have to make sure
that we don't fall in the trap of
just moving away into our own world where we are happy
because we're doing campaigns or specific initiatives,
but where the rest of the business
is not seeing you and your team as a key player.
- Finally, to you both, what are some of the trends
you're excited about at the moment?
Amaryllis?
- Yeah, building on what Sean was just saying.
I think the obsession that we're actually seeing nowadays
for data, and measurement, and actually understanding
the impact of the activities.
I think it's one of the key discussions
we're having with most of our partners and clients.
But also, it would be weird not to mention AI
as kind of being one of the core trends
that has been discussed a lot.
What are the implications on creativity,
but overall kind of more broadly marketing?
- And for me, I think it's
this thing of bringing together creativity and data.
As not two separate functions,
but two functions
that have to complement each other.
And obviously that's a really big challenge
because that means that a lot,
the current marketers they need to re-skill themselves
to be able to manage both because what you've had is
two very different disciplines.
People growing on one discipline
and not knowing anything about the other one.
And now what you need is more
a DaVinci type of market
that you can bring both worlds together.
- Sean, Amaryllis, thank you so much.