Jaganathan Chelliah
 Senior Director – Marketing, India & MEA, Western Digital

The evolving role of CMOs 
We are living in an ever-changing paradigm with companies evolving and becoming more resilient. As a result, corporate boardroom strategies are seeing a transformational shift. From a marketing standpoint, the shift in the last two years has been dramatic. New age CMOs are living in a consumer-first world trying to adopt a data-driven approach to create personalized experiences.

A CMO’s role has become far superior in the present day and age. We are no longer only brand advocates but also the custodians of customer experience. Customer Experience (CX) has never been so crucial. As businesses become digital-first, newer touchpoints emerge thus accenting the significance of an omnichannel customer experience strategy. As a result, CMOs are embracing a more intelligent strategy approach, which is data-driven, analytical, dynamic and adaptive. Lastly, the presence of “branding/brand names” has never been more vital. Many organisations have been sustained by the strength of a healthy, dynamic brand, and its impact has become obvious as customers have several options to choose from. Brand strategy is one of the areas CMOs are prioritizing to bring in-house, as the importance of this area continues to expand.

Contribution towards strategic business discussions
Increased CMO participation in C-suite has become inevitable because of their customer awareness and carefully curated insights of each stakeholder group. CMOs are now responsible for facilitating customer experience as well as financial and strategic obligations in the C-suite, so they bring a lot more to the table. They have become uniquely suited to support executives in addressing the complete range of stakeholder concerns, thanks to years of experience speaking on behalf of their brands. As a result, CMOs are now working on a more outward-facing strategy of connecting with its customers to diversify and meet company-wide goals in terms of growth, innovation, and analysis.
 As CMOs approach a new normal for organisations, CEOs must empower their CMOs to help the entire company produce value for its stakeholders rather than just advertising. This new aim for CMOs is to align a company’s operations with its marketing message in order to have a beneficial impact on society while also driving revenue.

Real-Time Marketing to Drive Sustainable Growth
No company has a one size fits all strategy; every company has a unique set of challenges and equally distinctive customized solutions. As we move to a digital-first world, real-time marketing will be the next way to go. In this model, marketers can use data-driven marketing to figure out what works and what does not, as well as how to tailor their campaigns to include the most effective approaches. As a result, the approach enables quicker decision-making and greater understanding of what customers desire. Through this model one can efficiently collect customer data and derive insights leading to proactive engagement with customers, creating tailored content and enhancing the ecommerce experience.

Several marketers find themselves stymied when adjusting to this dynamic marketing due to restricted capabilities, access, and talent. It is true that only a small percentage of marketers are data driven. However, a CMO with analytical capabilities is vital for a brand transformation and survival;  hence marketeers should reskill/upskill to adapt to the modern-day marketing role. In order to drive sustainable growth, CMOs must have a clear vision for their marketing strategy as well as a training framework to build an equally capable team. They must ensure that talent is prepared with a foundation of data and creative abilities, as well as cross-marketing teamwork.