Big data rewrites the CMO’s role

If you believe the surveys, the pressure to improve the return on the money invested in campaigns has combined with an explosion of data to squeeze creativity from the role of chief marketing officer and turn it into ‘chief data and marketing officer’.

“The success of my role is far more about analytics and technology than it is about hanging out with my ad agency, coming up with great creative campaigns. We must increase campaign ROI.”

That comment, from a marketer in the airline industry, was made to IBM during its research of chief marketers and their attitudes to data. Its statistics reveal that 71 per cent feel ill equipped to deal with data coming at them from all directions.

Caroline Taylor, vice-president of marketing and communications for IBM in the UK, was involved in some of the interviews for the survey and isn’t shocked that most CMOs struggle with data.

“I wasn’t surprised by what people were saying, or the findings, because it resonated with me. But the ability to manage data, optimise it and use it intelligently is critical. In some industries, I can see it being used to enable a business to lean more heavily on marketing.”

This view is echoed by Nilan Peiris, chief technology and marketing officer at Holiday Extras, who sees an emerging role for the ‘performance marketer’, someone able to use data for growth (see Case Study, below).

The challenge for senior marketers, therefore, is how to mine the data without drowning in it, and then to use the insight to get close to the customer without “spooking” them.

BT Global Services (BTGS) has taken what vice-president for marketing Neil Blakesley calls “a funnel approach” to aggregate data from a variety of sources. The process starts at the macro level – the size of the market and what is addressable in that – and ends at the very personal level – the propensity of individuals in a company to buy from BT, what power they have and what BT knows about them.

Blakesley explains: “We’ve looked up into the cloud at all the data and [decided] what, in reality, are the bits we need to know in order to benefit our clients. The only way we can serve our customers better is to know them better.”

So, what’s the reaction of customers when they realise BTGS knows so much about them? “At first, they’re shocked,” says Blakesley. “Then they’re impressed. And then, when we show them the data we have about their organisation, they can’t help but self-correct it.”

As a result, BTGS gets further insight on “who to make friends with”. The system is all about helping the sales team focus on the customer needs.

As Blakesley puts it: “We decided to spend our marketing dollars on the customer rather than the billboard. For companies that are selling to very large organisations, the more you know about your customer, the better.”

But what about the man on the street? The rise of direct-to-consumer business models and the opportunities to monitor, track and communicate via social media has seen more and more brands collect more consumer data across their markets, products and channels.

This, inevitably, has raised concerns over privacy. According to a study by McCann Worldgroup, consumers are more worried about the erosion of personal privacy than terrorism or climate change.

Alison Lancaster, chief marketing officer at Kiddicare, says: “With the data coming from social media now, it’s like running 24/7 focus groups.

“It can be spooky for a customer if you use too much of the knowledge you have to over-personalise. The goal is to get close, but not too close. As a CMO, you have to be incredibly mindful and respectful in terms of how you mine the data and how you use it.”

Lancaster says CMOs don’t need to understand all the technology behind the data, but they do need to understand its value to their business. “A roadmap is essential,” she adds.

“You want to get towards a single view of the customer, but if you are asking for data, you need to know what you are going to do with it and how you’ll use it to serve the customer. Otherwise you can be paralysed by too much of it.”

‘Analysis paralysis’ is a common concern among CMOs. Martin Moll, head of marketing at Honda UK, says: “It’s all very well to have all your data in one place, but you need to do something with it. We have hundreds of millions of rows of data going back to 1998. But because there hasn’t been a structured approach to insight until recently, in many ways we’re starting from scratch.”

He adds that Honda is developing a roadmap to help it focus on one-to-one relationships, part of its five-year marketing plan. This starts with a data mining and insight exercise, but will then move on to gap analysis and “an understanding of what systems, processes and additional data sources we need to put our vision in place”.

“The key focus for us is having a purpose in mind. Without that, you fall into the trap of continuing to amass data without actually using the asset in any meaningful way,” he says.

So is this “journey” through big data really creating chief data marketing officers? Daniel Dunleavy, a customer analytics specialist at Deloitte, says it is wrong to think that the modern CMO is led by creative, given that those in data-rich organisations like telecommunications and retail banking are being joined on the data bandwagon by those with a less direct-to-customer model.

“To meet the demands of an increasingly informed and fickle consumer, perhaps a ‘chief customer officer’ representing marketing, sales, and service is the answer rather than a chief data and marketing officer,” he says.

Many chief marketers see data as a means of backing up gut instinct on the big decisions. “There are still plenty of CMOs using a gut feeling or experience to come to a conclusion on the right thing to do,” says IBM’s Taylor. “But most of us will look at the data to confirm this is the way to go. We are measured on return on investment, so we can’t afford to make mistakes.”

Javier Diez-Aguirre, Ricoh’s director of corporate communications and most senior EMEA marketer at the company, says: “The question shouldn’t be about how you manage big data, but how you are continuing to encourage imagination versus data.

“It’s about ensuring that you know where analysis paralysis ends and action starts, or we will never be able to embrace this new era of customer-lead innovation.”