In the Mad Men era of marketing, appealing to the customer’s emotional drivers was the standard – the “go-to” play.
Appeals to the heart won the wallet. Take a more recent example, from a category with a very emotional appeal: the Budweiser Clydesdale horse campaign.
Aside from the skills and drive to champion the value of big data in an organization, every CMO could use a few resources to help harness the power of that data.
However, from traditional Excel spreadsheets and CRM systems to more robust tools like interactive dashboards and Tableau visualizations, the inherent desire for simple answers meets with a blizzard of analytical tools, each with ambiguous value.
The growth agenda: It’s a term frequently used among large firms, especially down mahogany row.
The concise phrase suggests that a company has a commonly agreed plan to achieve its performance goals for a set period.
But in reality we know this “plan” is quite often dynamic and not nearly aligned enough with all constituents, and yet we are expected to produce results on it.
While it’s certainly dependent on the organization, its industry, and its culture, chief marketing officers — once sought after exclusively as masters of the creative — are increasingly being forced to fit into equally analytical roles as a result of the data revolution.
Blending traditional creative aspects of marketing with analytics is unprecedented, and for some, perhaps even unwelcome.
But Mike Linton, CMO at Farmers Insurance, disagrees: “I think this argument of whether a CMO’s role is art or science is flawed.”
As the data revolution impacts more of corporate America, one of the most important questions facing the data-maturing organization is “Who owns the data?”
Not surprisingly, the answer is “it depends.”
Personal experience leads me to believe there are at least four suitable potential models, each with its own pros and cons.
The facts show that data analysis should be an easy sell.