The best of The CMO Show 2024
It’s that time of year in marketing where B2C marketers ramp up, B2B marketers ramp down, and for us at The CMO Show, it's our chance to look back.
In our final episode for 2024, host Mark Jones sits down to reflect on a year of interviews with some of the nation’s best marketing leaders.
Mark runs through the five recurring themes that emerged throughout all of the conversations on this year’s episodes of The CMO Show. Dive right in to explore the best of 2024.
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Credits
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The CMO Show Production Team
Producer - Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones
Well, it's that time of year in marketing when B2C marketers ramp up and B2B marketers ramp down. In fact, there's a good chance these B2B marketers have already clocked off, but I hope that's not you. It's summertime and it's holiday season and a time to take a break. But hang on a moment, this is our best of the CMO Show special edition for 2024. Don't go anywhere.
Mark Jones
Hello friends, thanks for joining me. I'm your host, Mark Jones, and it's great to have you with me again for this our final episode of the year. This time of year, of course, it's all about traditions and we are no exception. This is our best of, the last one for the year is always a best of for us, and it means I sift through a full year's worth of amazing interviews with some of the best CMOs and marketing leaders out there.
But this year, of course, I've done something a little bit different. Everyone's talking about AI, and so for my part, I've really enjoyed getting stuck into the various AI systems that are out there. I'm using them all, but in this case, I've been playing around with Google's Notebook, LM, and if you've not played around with it, I encourage you to have a go. I've uploaded 20 transcripts, all of this year's episodes in PDF to this large language model, and used it to interrogate the conversations. And of course, like a good journalist, I've been back through all the transcripts and checked the quotes myself, and I've got to say it's not too bad. So what we've done is identify five recurring and evolving themes that emerge throughout the conversations on the CMO show this year.
And I'll list them all for you in just a moment and we'll get stuck into my reflections and we'll hear from some of the different people who featured this year. But first up, I just wanted to give a few shout-outs. a big thank you to everyone who's joined me on the show this year, all of our amazing guests. Thank you for your generosity and for sharing your stories. Also, a shout-out to our production team, Kate Elks, Pam Obeid, Ed Cheng, and Daniel Marr. You guys are the best. And thanks to our friends and partners at Adobe who've supported the show this year.
Okay, let's get on with it.
[STING]
Here are our five big themes on the CMO show for 2024, and of course they echo the broader trends in marketing that we're seeing both here in Australia and around the world.
Number one, personalization at scale. My shortcut for thinking about personalization is one-to-one marketing, which has been something of a nirvana for marketers for the longest time. Interestingly, in 2024, the conversation shifted and marketers are now developing strategies to scale personalization and really take advantage of AI. And we'll hear more about that in just a second.
Number two, data and analytics. And again, this is not a new idea when we think about the old days of big data and cloud computing, but the idea that garbage in equals garbage out from a data perspective is really gaining some proper resonance in the C-suite. And we now expect so much from our marketing automation and analytics systems. So if the data's no good, it's hard to deliver results.
Number three, the rise and rise and rise of AI. And you might be thinking why this topic isn't number one. Well, firstly, this ranking is based on the amount of time spent on each topic across the whole year and the comparative emphasis across these topics throughout the conversation. So yes, AI is important and I also think it's quickly becoming a normal part of the marketing conversation.
Number four, creativity and innovation. This topic is your reminder that creativity and storytelling are uniquely human skills and they're still very much at top of the mind and they're still very much top of mind in marketing. We've spoken numerous times with creative people who can think laterally and connect the dots in unique ways. And of course, there's a simple reason why.Creative thinking creates lasting value for brands. I was thinking you could put a little swoosh through these things like swoosh number five. Oh, yeah.
Last but not least, customer experience or CX. It was interesting, I saw a slide at a conference recently and it summarised our whole marketing universe under these two letters, CX, and it's not a bad idea when you think about what separates the marketing discipline from other activities across the C-suite. So finance, HR, technology, operations for example. But as we'll discuss in a moment, there's always a bit more to marketing than just a simple headline or a short acronym.
[STING]
All right, let's talk through each of these topics in a bit more detail and hear from some of these amazing guests who've joined us this year. Theme number one, personalization at scale. The headline here is that personalization at scale is no longer a futuristic concept and it's very much becoming a reality. Marketers using data and technology to tailor experiences and using it in a way where we get this careful dance between customization and brand consistency, or at least keep experimenting.
I heard from Jodie Sangster earlier in the year and she's a future skills mentor at RMIT University and well known in marketing. And here's what she said. "My fear is we're going to start just churning out marketing. We've got to produce marketing that is brilliant for the customer. So we've got to use that data, use that technology, and use the big marketing ideas and put those three together to come up with something that makes the customer go, 'Wow,' not, "Oh my God, there's something more to wade through.'" This idea of volume, of course is an underlying thing that is inherent in the idea of personalization. So she's really making this point of making sure we get quality and strong ideas.
Over at Adobe, I interviewed Emily McReynolds, who is Head of Global AI Strategy and she picked up on this idea when she was talking about the company's annual digital trends report and here's what she said. "We've been talking about personalization for a number of years, so what's new this time? Well, this time it's the speed that you can do this personalization with generative AI." So in short, some of the complexities associated with personalization are being addressed with gen AI and that will drive the speed of personalization strategies and it's a really interesting thing to observe in the year ahead.
And then finally, as with all things, there's a bit of a caution. Melissa Shannon from Standard Chartered said, she's working on a couple of problems in this space. They're using ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly. She said, "CMOs need to realise the efficiency and speed promised by gen AI on one hand and then on the other deliver productivity and cost savings." So there's a real tension there around the speed and the productivity. And at the same time, just to add in another little twist is the call to stay ethical and responsible in how we use these to communicate and market with our customers.
And the example she used was a 35-year-old woman in Hong Kong who's just had a baby. And she made this comment that this woman needs to see relevant messages like home renovations or maybe baby clothes and food, not irrelevant advertising that's related to retirees, for example.
So there we go. A quick summary of where we're at with Personalization.
[SWOOSH]
Theme number two is the importance of data and analytics. And again, not a new idea, but the sophistication of data analysis and its integration into decision-making for marketers is accelerating. We, of course, can't separate gen AI from this conversation either, but it's clear that for marketers, the years-long drive to move beyond vanity metrics and really dig into what drives business growth has gathered pace in 2024.
Early episodes in the year focused on understanding customer needs and measuring campaign effectiveness. And the one that stands out for me is Professor Rachel Kennedy from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. And she spoke about the importance of moving away from assumptions and the marketing theory that many of us take for granted. Her message, of course, is all about the role of data and using evidence in decision-making. "That's one thing I would love to see more of in marketing so that we get out of our heads, but just make sure that we drive evidence-based behaviours." "You embed evidence-based practises into a business rather than just relying on people to make the right decisions." So that's an embedding of the right knowledge into systems. And the example she used is templates for briefing for advertising or media work and the metrics so that you have evidence-based templates and evidence- based briefings.
Her view is that many of the metrics in marketing are intermediate and rubbish metrics, and so we really got to work hard to get the right decisions made on the right data, Of course, there's lots of decisions that are made through experience, but also intuition and outdated assumptions on what's working for your organisation. It's a really great reminder that we need these repeatable systems that embed the notion of this single variant, which is how are customers behaving this week, for example? Or what's the biggest change that they've been through in the last year? Not unlike what we're doing on this show. And then just a couple more examples on this because it's a really important topic when we start thinking about data and analytics. I interviewed Jon Stona, vice president of Global Marketing at Airwallex, here’s his quote: "The fact is information is dynamic and constant. And as a marketing organisation, you need to build a process, especially with your broader commercial teams to feed in that insight on a regular basis." For me, I think this really exemplifies how data analysis can reveal market-specific needs and opportunities.
And the other one is the ride-share company, DiDi and Tim Farmer who's over there. And this is of course a challenger brand up against Uber, and they need to think about insights because they, of course, have to increase their market share over time. This is what Tim had to say. "One of the things I want to seek to understand better is my experience is there's often a disconnect between actual behaviour and claimed behaviour. And so what we have endless reams of understanding how people are using our service. When, where, pickups, drop-offs, and all the data that you would expect to have within the service. What I think is really important is to understand that step before and after in terms of what's motivating the ride in general from a category perspective. And again, I'd imagine there's a pretty obvious answer to that, but we can validate that quite quickly if there's some brand health tracking." So there we go, data being used as always in marketing, but starting to think really critically about the quality of the data, how we can use it very intentionally and in a repeated way in our marketing strategies and our day-to-day practises.
[SWOOSH]
Theme number three, the rise and rise, and rise of AI. So let's talk about AI itself because of course it's through everything, but it deserves its own focus. The hype is real for me. I think the caution here is we need to maintain this optimism but really understand what we're doing. AI, of course, is transforming some key areas like content creation, our automation of systems and processes and the personalization aspect that we've just discussed.
But the key is to view AI as an enhancer of human capabilities and not a replacement. Look, it's almost a cliche by the way. You keep hearing this over and over again. We won't be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by someone using AI. I think if I had a dollar for every time I heard that this year, I'd be a very wealthy man. But for me, it's endlessly fascinating to track AI and how it's changing marketing.
I hope you are like me. I've subscribed to a whole bunch of newsletters in this space and my fair share of quite geeky AI channels in Instagram. And if I think about this year compared to last. We have an incredible shift away from just the fact that AI will revolutionise marketing to this more nuanced and thoughtful discussion about responsible use of AI, this concept of transparency and of course the human element that I touched on a moment ago.
Henry Ajder is a deep fake and AI expert from the UK, and he warned in my conversation that AI-generated content could erode trust and authenticity. As an advocate for the Content Authenticity Initiative, He urged us to prioritise transparency when using AI.
Here's what Henry had to say. "We are in a moment right now where awareness of AI-generated content and deep fakes is at an all-time high. The last couple of years have been pretty astonishing in terms of the adoption of the technology progress within... The last couple of years have been pretty astonishing in terms of the adoption of the technology and progress within technology itself in terms of the realism of the outputs and the accessibility of the tools for generating this stuff. But actually marketers and advertisers, some of the earliest adopters of this kind of gen AI content wave. When I reflect on my conversation with Henry, one of the big drivers and the reasons why transparency matters is the idea of synthetic content versus authentic content. Here's what Henry had to say. "What we think of authentic is no longer diametrically opposed to synthetic, but what we are also seeing is people increasingly being distrustful of everything they see and hear and becoming increasingly suspicious of the way that AI is shaping the content that they consume."
"So for CMOs, it's a really challenging time and an exciting time simultaneously. All of these new opportunities... All of these new tools are coming out and... All of these new tools are coming out and all these new possibilities, all these new opportunities. And so for CMOs, it's a really challenging time and an exciting time simultaneously. All of these new tools are coming out, all these new possibilities, all these new opportunities."
It's a really fascinating insight. Meanwhile, Seb Neylan at Up Bank – he's Head of Growth over there - thinks about AI in terms of competition. It's a great reminder for us because these guys are a challenger bank and they can't outspend their competitors. He sees AI as a tool for businesses like them to compete by being more creative and engaging with the communities. He says, "But if we can be different, if we can be interesting, if we can have an engaged and powerful community advocating for us, that's where we can build a moat." He's also thinking about how AI can solve the biggest problems first rather than great creative ideas that sound shiny but are not the biggest priorities for the business. It's a really good point. "I think it's important about understanding what the capabilities that things like machine learning and AI represent, and specifically thinking how could that be of best use to our customers and our business? For us, our first initiative there... For us, our first initiative there has been more in that scams and fraud prevention space."
When I think about all of these conversations on the subject of AI, we really need to double down on this idea of being constant learners. We can't stand still in an environment like this, the tools that we have at hand are constantly evolving at speed, and we need to keep pace to keep delivering value for our brand.
[SWOOSH]
We're up to theme four. The need for creativity and innovation. Data informs us and we love data and we love strategy that's built on insights, but it doesn't replace creativity. We've heard this before, but it's really resonated in my conversations with marketing leaders this year against the AI backdrop.
Telling compelling stories and standing out from the competition and surprising your customers is really, really important and throughout the year, we saw a beautiful interplay between data-driven insights and creative execution. AI is all through that, as I said, but it is enhancing and not replacing human creativity.
I really love my conversation with Nina Drakalovic, head of marketing at BindiMaps, and she has a great example of this at play if we start thinking about some concrete examples. BindiMaps, if you're not familiar with them, they help people navigate indoor spaces. It's a bit like Google Maps, but for inside buildings and all sorts of large spaces where people gather. And we know about this at Impact Institute because our events team, as it happens, runs Australia's largest and longest running disability expo programme. And Bindimaps have supported our events and it's been really amazing to see first-hand how this software, this app helps people with disabilities navigate our exhibition areas.
"We help people have a really easy and stress-free experience," We help them find their way around indoors and we help break barriers for people with a disability, for employment, for social and community connection. So much exclusion happens when someone can't access a space, whether it's a hospital or a workplace, that's really actually what we're trying to do. it can be quite challenging because the accessibility space, there's a lot of people who don't have all the information. Before they even understand what they need in their space, they focus on educating them on the importance of having accessible initiatives, projects, and tools within their workplace or their building.""You're starting even before, if you think about the funnel or even before you're in there, we're having to educate them. We're talking about content, we're talking about videos and its events as well. Speaking to them around the value of investing in accessibility. We're showing clients that they can impact the world. They can change the world by having a service like ours.
The key thing that Nina emphasises was that accessibility is their key differentiator in the market and it's the social impact of that accessibility and how they create profit at the same time delivering on their purpose and really delivering this incredible value. And at the heartbeat of that is the storytelling that they use to communicate the value for people in these spaces. People with disability who need better accessibility and likewise, they need to be able to show clients how they're impacting the world.
Meanwhile, over at the Smith Family storytelling is a familiar story for Lisa Allen, head of fundraising. The Smith Family, of course, are famous here in Australia. They are using storytelling to communicate their understanding of poverty as a societal issue. "So there's this real shift in the way that we then took that into the way and we essentially use a couple of different narratives. And if I were to talk through our stories, one is that human potential. So when you see our ads in our advertising, it really talks to the fact that poverty can prevent some children from reaching their full potential. So what is it that we can be doing to remove those obstacles so they can get to participate fully?"
The other one is around shared goals. So again, just an appeal to our goals or our aspirations that I think generally we share as Australians in a society and essentially those things we talked about before about a fair go or just society and what does that mean to give someone and everyone a chance or an equal chance. I kind of mucked up her quote, but you might need to use it.
Now before we leave this topic, two more quick quotes. So many great ideas on the subject. And I liked what Maria Loyez at Australian Ethical, which is a superannuation firm here in Australia. She says, "When it comes to making money, you've got to stay on the front foot." And we're talking about how we can think about not just storytelling, but also innovation and customer-centric thinking is really important to them. Here’s what she said: "So we spend quite a bit of time and effort understanding what consumers are thinking about and how they're feeling. And that really drives innovation from the perspective of improving the customer experience, but also where we're thinking about product development and where we're headed next. Because we've got to keep pushing the boundaries here. We've got to be driving for more and more impact and understanding where that consumer demand is."
And finally, but certainly not least, Alistair Todd, Head of Marketing at Single O, who was on the same episode as Maria had this great little idea that they co-developed called The Juggler, and it's a barista tap for milk. And the idea here when we think about innovation is that for cafes, there are so many milk bottles they need every day and it's creating all this waste. And they've changed things up to use a 10 litre bladder, which then plugs into this machine and it really cuts down on the amount of waste. "And so yeah, the company Six Simple Machines was born off the back of this Single O was the first test pilot cafe." And so where it all happened, all the prototypes happened there and it spawned what's now quite a novel innovation that's had a huge impact on sustainability and it saved about 60 million bottles, which is quite cool.
[SWOOSH]
Okay, last but not least, theme number five. And we're talking about the importance of customer experience or CX. And this has been the bedrock of marketing forever, but the ways in which we deliver exceptional CX are evolving rapidly. Our episodes this year emphasise the importance of being customer-centric, and of course AI, how it can be used to enhance CX through personalization and streamlined interactions. But as I said at the top, it's interesting to think about how significant an idea CX has become in high growth sectors. And I met some really interesting people at the iMedia future of Media Summit in New Zealand, and one of those guys was Alex Lawson. He's head of strategy and media at Market Media in the warehouse group in New Zealand. And he in turn introduced me to his friend Paul Brooks, who is general manager at Coles 360.
And these guys are working in a very fast-growing part of the marketing landscape, which I'm sure you've heard about, where retailers are starting to think like publishers, how can they roll out relevant advertising to customers and shoppers within their retail environments, in their physical and digital retail environments? So we're talking about TV screens in the supermarket and of course all of the opportunity to put advertising in their online and app environments. This is an interesting one for me because we're seeing the need to balance the goals of advertisers with this need also for seamless and enjoyable shopping experiences. We don't want to be assaulted with too many ads while we're shopping. And so balancing that need not being overly intrusive or irrelevant is a big part of the customer experience.
"We always say the primary objective of all the campaigns we're doing is to achieve the client's objective. And the secondary objective, which we say to all our guys is, 'You don't need to worry about this. We'll worry about it somewhere else,' is obviously the revenue goal that we have from our boards and our exec teams because I want them to do the work that's going to keep the clients coming back and achieving for everyone." "If you just focus on the revenue generation and the growth, you won't have a long-term sustainable business. So I think you need absolutely a hundred percent work with the customer..." And I'm not going to read the rest. That just goes all down where he says, take that quote from him. You've certainly seen in the US there are 21 retail media networks spun up last year.
So retail media, just to pick on that as a way of thinking about the future of this whole space, about how we're seeing CX grow is it's quite fun actually because clearly we've been in a really tough economic climate and that will continue through into 2025. But for me, it's a reminder that you can't take your eye off CX strategies regardless of the climate, good times and bad times. And Alex reminded us that we have to keep a laser focus on the customers. He said, "I hope that in 10 years time I'm still talking about double-digit growth for our business. And you can see this trajectory, but the biggest hurdle to that growth is being able to move at the right pace and ensuring that we maintain this absolute laser focus on the customer. Otherwise, it'll go backwards."
Meanwhile, Paul Brooks at Coles 360 said, " The rapid growth of the media sector is exciting, but it's important not to sacrifice customer experience in the pursuit of quick wins." And in fact, he spoke about the need for a long-term mindset to prioritise customer needs and make sure that we develop effective retail media strategies.
[SWOOSH]
So there you have it. A quick skip through an incredible year of interviews, some really great insights and five themes that demonstrate how marketing is this incredible dynamic, ever-changing field of practise and professional work that we all enjoy so much. As we think about next year in the age of data and AI, for me, it's a reminder to stay curious, as I said, and really think about what we can learn, how we can embrace new technologies in a responsible way and never lose sight of this human element that lies at the heart of marketing.
I'd love to know what you think, what are your top takeaways from the year? And of course, what are you looking forward to next year? As always, it's been fantastic to be your host, to share this journey with you. And on behalf of the team, thank you for joining us on the CMO Show in 2024. Enjoy the break and we'll see you again in 2025.