#72 Gift + Curse of CMOs 2021 Innovation Agenda

Gartner just released its annual CMO spend survey which is full of interesting insights.

A subset of the survey is "The Role of Marketing in Digital Transformation and Innovation" which is the one I really dig.

Here are my 3 key takeaways:

1 - CMOs are being set-up to fail

I love seeing that '80% of CMOs report they are solely responsible for (42%) or play a leading role (38%) in their company's digital business transformation strategy'.

But given the top 3 'Digital business initiatives where marketing plays a key role' require significant cross-functional collaboration to be successful ('1: new digital experiences, 2: new sales or service channels + 3: new go-to-market-strategy'), the risk tolerance of the rest of the organization to take calculated risks aka Innovation is mission critical...'Only 22% of CMOs characterized their company's view on innovation investment as 'aggressive''.

2 - Gaps need to be closed

Top 2 Marketing Innovation Challenges - '91% struggle to measure the impact of innovation' + '83% say that innovation has not delivered to management expectations'. Top 2 Marketing Innovation Positives - '95% have a defined process for innovation management' + '95% have dedicated headcount for innovation initiatives'.

People, process + technology...the more things change, the more they stay the same.

3 - Good news, the Tech is all here

The maturity of ML, NLP + Computer Vision has enabled companies in the AI-First Sales + Marketing tech space to create outrageous value for CMOs, CROs and the rest of the C-suite that address the challenges / gaps above.

If you're a CMO, this is me pounding the table for you to embrace Conversational Intelligence, Coaching Software, Predictive Intelligence, Revenue Ops, Enterprise AI Platforms + Experience Data Management Platforms.

Get after it.

"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." - Theodore Levitt

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.“ - Wayne Gretzky

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