Candina WESTON

I have spent many years selecting agencies and working on innovation with them. There is a huge wide open opportunity to create an agency of the future that connects all the dots aligned to business and audience goals and not agency or traditional marketing goals, leading by example and leveraging data and AI to pave the way. Feedback from CMO peers is they are now dropping agencies that didn't know what to do with customer data... the bottom line is it's time to change the old ways.

I haven't come across many situations where a project involves a silo. As a core part of a role cross team collaboration (especially in marketing where there are so many touch points for a customer, and they should align together in a journey) is critical. The best marketing professionals will keep the whole customer experience in mind in order to be the best at their role. It should be a core and not a side consideration. Those with the most wholistic perspectives will be considered to be more strategic and will more likely be considered as leadership material.

I often see marketing is the first budget to be cut if cuts are needed, and digging into this it is often because business goals are not aligned with organization goals, sales and revenue goals. Often it is hard for marketing leaders to articulate value in efforts beyond brand and customer engagement metrics that don't align to sales. As a CMO it is critical these are aligned and a process is in place to ensure the value and how marketing drives sales is continually reviewed, if not marketing gets deprioritised. Data and technology are now at the point there is no excuse to align.

I was a director of strategy at Microsoft for many years and let change management at a global level for one of the large sales transformations. Creating a unified tone at the top at a leadership level is critical and ensuring as a leader you are leading by example and ensuring your managers are trained in change management principles leading by example is critical too. It is also helpful to align incentives around the outcomes of the change as well as the soft leadership skills required in the change management process through employee feedback.

At Microsoft during the 'big' company transformation period we introduced a culture of failing fast and being ok with that, leveraging the other points outlined in this article. Leadership on this has to come from the top and then be role modelled throughout the organization. It can't be only one person doing it or often this person will not be set up for success. As leaders it's a critical process to work together on implementing.

Great insights and summary points. I think what is missing is the fundamental ability to leverage data and insights to understand top priorities, and then where resources can be saved to be redeployed to priority growth areas. I have seen a lot of asking for more without looking at what can be taken away and redeployed, it stops companies from moving quickly or moving at all as resources are finite.