What Keeps Marketers Up at Night?
Marketing in 2024 is so all-encompassing that CMOs have to wear many different hats, juggling experience, values, advertising, media, creative, growth and more. Add in macro-economic challenges, polarised social environments and AI and there are multiple rapidly-developing situations to keep tabs on. So amidst all that, what are the challenges and opportunities keeping marketers the busiest right now?
At a panel during Cannes Lions on the LBB Beach on Thursday June 20th, CMOs of three major brands revealed some of their secrets. On the panel was Pete Jeavons, group brand & consumer marketing director, BT; Susan Irving, chief marketing officer, Kruger Products; Najoh Tita-Reid, chief brand & experience officer, Mars Petcare.
“We're definitely in a world where change is just everything being thrown at us lately,” said Susan. “Whether it's covid, supply chain issues, inflation, war, cultural situations. You really have to think about if your brand has the right to play, and if it doesn't, and what role it can play in the situation.”
Susan revealed that Kruger's mission is to 'make everyday life more comfortable', a sensible aim when your product - toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissues - are in pretty much every single home in Canada, where it operates. “You've got to really balance the situation going on in the world,” she added. “Do you have the right to play? I'm sure we've seen in the past couple of years where there have been brands that decided to take advantage of a cultural moment, and consumers will call you on it if you do not have the right to play.”
“Trying to pick moments and things that we can have a point of view on the world to show that we're more than just about the products and services that we've got is really important,” added Pete. “The way we do that is through the partnerships that we've got with the Home Nations FA. We do a lot with those opportunities around women's football, para football and grassroots football. We've done some really successful campaigns where we've managed to get the balance right and we've managed to talk about pretty punchy topics like hate and misogyny and a number of other really, really important topics. We've had a voice as a brand, which I think has done an amazing job of raising awareness of the issues that are out there for the groups and the communities who experience it. But also at the same time, we've got the balance right, so it's had a massively positive impact from a brand point of view for us as well.”
The conversation moved onto production - the importance of quality but also scale in terms of brands needing masses of content in 2024. “It's a constant tension that we have with our procurement and finance teams,” said Pete. “Because there's a question of, can you pay for cheaper creative and production? Yeah, of course you can. And someone will always tell you that they can do it cheaper and better. But from a creativity point of view and also from a production point of view, that quality is so important because I think that maintaining that quality and being able to have those arguments with friends in finance and procurement about why we can't go cheaper is important.”
Najoh echoed Pete’s thoughts but was also keen to stress that something like production in reality takes up a relatively small amount of time of a CMO’s thoughts. That said, the changes in the production ecosystem were leading her to rethink how Mars Petcare brands might approach production. “When we need to focus on production, we are very focused on production and everybody knows it,” she said. “But on a year to year basis on all the things that we have going on, it's not like it's 50% of our time. The process of production is evolving, and changing compared to how I grew up in production happening in a very linear way with a certain number of people in a very concentrated kind of tunnel is no longer the case. So I'm now refocusing production because I know I can do it more effectively, maybe at a different quality. I know I have to do it far quicker than I've ever done before. I know people expect me to produce things the same day, which would have been laughable just a few years ago, and if not in the same hour, as something's coming on. So, how we do production, the process of production, and then yes, absolutely, the percentage that production costs within my overall budget, are the things that you might see a global CMO focus on.”
In terms of the other things that might consume the thoughts of a CMO, Susan mentioned the common misconception that marketers ‘work in advertising’. “We're actually a business person,” said Susan. “We are running a P&L. We are ensuring that we're moving and selling our products and building brands at the same time. There's everything that goes on internally, making sure that we've got the supply chain, making sure that we have the right products at the right place at the right time. But more importantly, it's ensuring that we have engaged humans in terms of consumers buying our brands but engaged humans in terms of everyone who's working on our brands.”
When it comes to the humans working on her brands, Susan revealed that one thing that keeps her up at night is a potential lack of brilliant minds coming into marketing and advertising. “Back in the day,” she said, “marketing and advertising was where people wanted to be. Right now looking at this next generation, we need to figure out how we get those brilliant minds on our business and those brilliant minds coming to work for us. That's one thing that really keeps me up at night. As an industry, we need to work together to ensure that we get these new graduating students coming into our industry.”
Najoh agreed, citing a study that Mars Petcare recently did in collaboration with Ipsos. “I am equally as concerned about two thirds of gen z just believe that advertisers are selling them more stuff that they don't need,” said Najoh. “There's a belief that we're losing trust, there's a belief that we're no longer really focused on driving real consumer value. Our industry is more at risk than it's ever been before. Especially if you look at any of the statistics from gen z. It's something that keeps me up at night as well because if we don't become value additive in what we're doing, then they do have the ability more than they've ever had before to cancel us or not share their data, which is the data that we need to be able to stay engaged. They have much more power than I think consumers ever had before. I love that, but we have to earn the right to be in their life, we have to earn the right to get their attention more than we've ever done.”
Things that keep people up at night aren’t all doom and gloom however - excitement can lead to many a sleepless night too. So, the panellists were asked about the parts of the industry that are so positive they might incur a small bout of insomnia. “There are so many great opportunities,” said Susan. “How are we going to really leverage the consumer as our compass, but really leveraging creativity to continue showing that marketers are the growth engine of the organisation. That's what keeps me up at night. What's that next big thing?”
“It's the growth element of it,” added Pete. “From my perspective, the journey we're on from a brand point of view and how that is driving transformational change in the organisation beyond just making an advert, it has fundamentally driven brand changes, and is driving business and organisational change, which I think is really exciting. You're not at the end of a process where you're where you're responding to a brief, you are the start point for all of the catalysts for all the change. That's a really exciting place to be.”
“When I first started my career, the right place, right message, right time to add value instantly was a dream,” said Najoh. “So what is so exciting to me right now is the intersectionality between technology, data, and insights to unlock real creative creativity. All the things that you dream about - what we can use to see data, how people feel, their emotions, what they're doing, when they're doing it, where they're doing it. We can do all that right now and get that insight, hand that to our creative teams who are geniuses, and what they can unlock is phenomenal. Being able to relate and connect with them when and where it's most relevant - all of those things that we dreamt about, we can now do. We need to do it responsibly. We need to do it ethically. But if we do it, I think we have the opportunity to add real value in a way that consumers will invite us and be open to our messages.”
