Every month in the Green Room we pose a question to our Rockstar CMOs that’s top of mind for us in the Rockstar CMO penthouse. Hanging out with rock stars backstage rarely gives anyone 2020 vision, but as we welcome a new decade, what do they think is the future for marketing?
The normal thing to do as an editor at this time of year is to ask for predictions, but we are at the start of a new decade, the future is here and 2020 seems worthy of more than mere predictions for the coming year. So, for this Green Room, I asked our Rock stars to look a little further.
Robert Rose
What’s the future of marketing?
Looking out at the future of marketing, I see the operative word becoming ‘belief’. Lost in all the talk of technology, data, algorithms and automation is the art of making people care. And this goes beyond the creative content we put in front of consumers – but also (and maybe even more importantly) extends to our bosses and our colleagues.
We are all becoming numb to the noise, the fake news, the lies, and the doublespeak. It’s no longer an active dislike of interruptive, persuasive content – it’s indifference. The future of marketing will be in rebalancing our ability to stir emotions, inspire and make people care more deeply.
Robert Rose is the Chief Strategy Advisor for the Content Marketing Institute, is the co-host of one of our favorite popular marketing podcasts This Old Marketing and founder and Founder, Chief Trouble Maker at The Content Advisory.
Kate Bradley Chernis
What’s the future of the consumer experience?
Annunciation. But maybe that’s the broadcaster in me!
Voice-to-text is so hot right now. And I personally use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the Professional version, designed for paraplegics – as in, completely hands-free. I use it because I have crippling tendinitis throughout my hands and arms.
Ironically, I literally still talk for a living! Technically, I have a ‘partial permanent disability’ – or so they say. The short of it is that I can’t touch a computer (or my phone) at all without intense pain. That said, I can occasionally use a stylus and manage it for a little while. I also wake up early every day and do an hour of special exercises that give me about 45 minutes of pain-free computering, allowing me to do demos and the like.
Which is a long way of saying… I know all about text-to-speech.
And I know how important annunciation is. For example, sometimes when I say ‘VCs’ my computer hears ‘faeces’ – GAHHHHHH!
In the end, it’s all about communication, whether in writing or in voice… Are you making yourself plain? That’s what matters. And it’s my belief that clarity is the onus of the communicator not the communicatee. So we all better keep those lips limber!
Kate Bradley Chernis is the Founder & CEO of Lately, which uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically transform blogs, videos and podcasts into dozens of amazing social posts.
Learn more from when we went backstage with Kate
Ted Rubin
What’s marketing’s future role in stimulating need?
I have a real problem with this question… “So, what is our future role in stimulating need?” I realize that a great deal of the marketing world focuses on “stimulating need” rather than fulling needs, solving problems, providing solutions, and making things easier.
For me, that is artificial and self-serving (YES, I realize for the most part marketing IS self-serving). It is not where I want to be and for me it sounds very “tRumpian.”
Maybe the current political climate has opened my eyes to truth in advertising (or ‘truth’ period), but like I say all the time about how I market Ted Rubin (and my businesses)… “I do not want to sell myself, I want to be bought.”
I have spoken a lot this past year about changing our marketing mindset from ‘targeting’ to ‘matchmaking’… and I believe this change in mindset will lead to a valuable and necessary change in approach for marketers.
It’s not that the idea of targeting is always a bad thing, even from the consumer’s perspective. It’s the mode of thinking that results, the culture we create, and the results we produce.
A match is a collaboration, rather than a one-sided, transaction-based relationship.
A match is something more lasting, even if it’s not permanent. If I’m matched with a service, brand, or marketing campaign that genuinely addresses my needs, then ideally that’s just the start of a longer relationship. I gain confidence that the brand is interested in me as more than a statistic, and the brand has a much easier path to learning more about me. It’s a collaboration, rather than a one-sided, transaction-based relationship.
So MY future of marketing in 2020 is to #FollowThePath I’ve been paving, continue to do everything I can to instill a new thought process, a more valuable mindset, in the marketing community, and to embrace the incredible value of the Rockstar CMO Community that Ian has built and nurtured. Always remember… a network give you reach, a community gives you power!
Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, influencer, keynote speaker, Photofy CMO/advisor… Speaker, Author, Provocateur Ted is our resident rock star. Read more about Ted.
Christine Bailey
What’s the future for marketing leadership?
There has never been a more exciting (or difficult) time to be in marketing. Marketers will continue to be responsible for customer acquisition, development and retention but understanding the audience and acting on insights, often in real-time, will be more critical than ever.
According to that famous book The Discipline of Market Leaders published by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in 1995, market leaders could excel at either operational excellence, product leadership or customer intimacy, but not all three.
Fast forward to today and this thinking is still really valid, although Keith Reynold Jennings has proposed a modern twist i.e. that market leaders can excel at cost-effectiveness, being cutting edge or customization … but not all three.
The strongest brands — the market leaders —excel at delivering on either cost, cutting edge or customization. They don’t try to master more than one at a time, because it’s too costly. And they evolve with their customers’ values.
Keith Reynold Jennings on the { grow } blog.
Marketing has a strong role to play in helping companies understand which of these three things customers value the most and shaping the mission statement and value proposition accordingly. Then it’s data and insights all the way – informing the brand strategy, identifying segments and personas, developing content and thought leadership, using insights for customer acquisition, development and retention.
Along the way, marketers will have to deal with the challenges of deep fakes, misinformation and trust issues, heightened privacy regulations, the evolution of social platforms and voice technology, new influencers and niche communities, AI and a plethora of new technologies. It will be more important than ever to be ethical, local and human because customers will care more about experiences than they do about products.
Buckle up. Rockstar CMOs are going to be busy….
Dr. Christine Bailey is CMO of Valitor, an international payment solutions company headquartered in Iceland. Forging a career in the tech sector, she’s led European marketing functions for Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems and was recently voted #1 woman in tech by B2B Marketing.
Learn more about Christine in backstage Q&A here.
Also in this issue:
What are your marketing resolutions?
On the topic of the future; Jasmine Martirossian shares her 3 resolutions for 2020 marketing success. Read them here.
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