 "CIO And CMO: Friends Or Frenemies?")
Exploring the challenge for today’s CMO in dealing with the self-educated buyer – the smart, resourceful, and socially connected consumer who does his or her own research before ever entering the formal channels of a vendor’s marketing and selling apparatus, IDC will announce CMO predictions for the coming year, in their upcoming web conference “Chief Marketing Officer Predictions: Today’s CMO Becomes Master of Data.”
“To be successful, today’s CMO has to become a Master of Data,” said Richard Vancil, Vice President, Executive Advisory Group, IDC. “The ability to do so is not just a “bet the marketing department” issue, it’s a “bet the company” issue. And for those who do not believe that, just look at the number of companies and industries already transformed by the internet. And then multiply that rate of change by 5 times or more – and you are looking at the near future.”
As a “preview” to the full list of CMO Predictions, IDC predicts the following trends will have an impact on the CMO role in the coming year:
- Prediction #1: The C-Suite (CEO, CFO, and COO) will demand that the CMO produce both a strategy and a plan for how market-driven data will significantly contribute to corporate objectives.
IDC believes that these are going to be candid and difficult conversations between CEO and CMO. In many situations, the CEO may determine that his current marketing organisation is just not up to the task.
- Prediction #2: The CMO and the CIO begin 2013 as functional peers. They begin 2014 as either friends, or frenemies!
The CMO and CIO are going to have to work together, especially for IT areas that no longer sit as an island within marketing. And because those marketing IT areas now have a lot of cross-functional dependencies with other operating units – such as with Sales, Finance, and Service – there is going to be increased CMO and CIO dialog.