Owning the Customer: An Imperative for Marketing Change

When contending with a rapidly changing marketplace, focus is key. Four imperatives are on the minds of today’s chief marketing officers: 

• Making every dollar count 
• Incorporating digital media seamlessly into the marketing portfolio 
• Cutting through the proliferation of marketing messages
• Leveraging customer analytics and insights 

Tune into the latest episode of Deloitte Insights to learn more about these marketing imperatives.

Speakers

Christine Cutten, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Jennifer MacMillan, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Transcript 

Sean O’Grady: Hello and welcome to Insights. Today, we are talking about imperatives for marketing changes and how chief marketing officers can adapt to sweeping changes in the marketplace. Joining us on the desk at New York to discuss this topic are two guests, and the first is Christine Cutten, she is a principal; and the second is Jennifer MacMillan, she is a senior manager; and both of these ladies are working within the Marketing Transformation practice of Deloitte Consulting. Ladies, first and foremost, thank you both very much for joining us today. Jennifer, I would like to begin with you, and I want to understand what are these new marketing imperatives and changes?

Jennifer MacMillan: Well, we recently asked a lot of CMOs, what’s going on in the marketplace that is affecting their decision making? And a few key items really rose to the top. First, budget constraints; as we all know every dollar counts, so it is important to make sure that every dollar you spend in marketing is getting maximum return. Secondly, marketing organizations are trying to determine what’s the best most effective way to seamlessly and effortlessly incorporate digital media and online marketing into the marketing portfolio? And finally, as we all know, it is getting really hard to make our voice heard out there with the proliferation of messaging. So, it is important to make sure that you get maximum share of mind, which means maximum share of wallet.

Sean: Now, how do you see organizations adapting to these new imperatives?

Christine: Right, we have developed an end-to-end marketing fusion model, which actually takes into account many of these changes and has really seem to resonate with many of the marketing organizations and CMOs across industries. So, what in that model is included is really four levels of marketing capabilities that really need to tie end to end and be integrated into a full component of how do you execute on marketing. Those four layers include strategic planning and financial management as the top layer, the second layer is around creative production and management and understanding and leveraging those digital assets, the third layer is around customer engagement and how you actually drive and deliver marketing messages to the right people, and then the fourth layer is really around measuring and tracking all of that marketing information that you are doing measuring feedback and result and tying that back into the model.

Sean: Now, why are they layered in that order?

Christine: Well, you start with the overall strategic plan and what your portfolio of choices should be and how you actually align them and then it cascades once you know where your choices are in terms of marketing efforts, then you drive into the creative messaging and then you actually go execute and target to the customers and measure those results. So, those are the four layers.

Sean: So, as an organization starts to think about changing their strategy, what are your best practices or recommendations for them?

Christine: So, what we are seeing is really marketing organizations start at different places based on what their burning platforms are. So, depending on the industry and the company, the burning platforms change, for instance, in the big brands with large global budgets, one of the areas that they need to target is around that strategic and financial layer because that is really how they will decide what the priorities are of how to place their bets?

Jennifer: That’s right Christine. And actually in consumer products, what we find is they are really trying to master how you go after multichannel and make sure that you present one voice to the customer regardless of where they find you. Also, everyone is trying to manage social media right now. So, we find that listening posts are a great way for a company to determine what their strategy should be and therefore the key activities they should be going after in that particular area.

Sean: Okay, let’s me just pause there, what is a listening post?

Jennifer: Listening post is a technology that a company can use to help them listen to what consumers are saying out in the social marketplace. So, you can understand trends and emotions and commentary from your consumers.

Christine: It pulls from blogs, it will pull from a whole bunch of different areas to really incorporate what people are saying and getting trending information on what your brand means or how your products are doing and that sort of thing.

Sean: Well, is there anything else you want to add?

Christine: Yes, and the other thing that is important that we are seeing a lot of companies wrestle with is the idea of the customer analytics and insights. So translating that data and the proliferation of data from social and listening platforms and all the other data that they are actually from all these emerging technologies and bring that back into the marketing organizations to better insights in how you go to market?

Sean: One last question I have for the two of you. You used the word “wrestle” and that tells me that companies are having maybe a problem getting their hands around this. Why do you think that is?

Christine: Well, what we are seeing is there has been a proliferation of channels, there has been a proliferation of data, and there has been a proliferation of new technologies, all of which could very well enhance and create a competitive advantage for CMOs and for the marketing organization to deliver real value to their organizations, and so part of “wresting” is figuring out where to place which bets in terms of which innovations are really meaningful to them.

Sean: It is over to you, Jennifer. Where do you think organizations should be placing their bets?

Jennifer: The most important thing marketing organizations need to figure out right now is how to reach those targeted consumers, and consumer insights and marketing analytics are going to help them answer that question.

Sean: Alright, so if you can measure, you can make it better. Ladies, thank you for much for joining us. Okay, we have been talking imperatives for marketing change with Christine Cutten and Jennifer MacMillan, both leaders from Deloitte’s Marketing Transformation group. If you would like to learn more information about Christine, Jennifer, or today’s topic, you can find that information at  www.deloitte.com/insights/us. For all the good folks here at Insights, I am Sean O’Grady, we will see you next time.

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