Gloverboy

A rewired business: the rise of the digital CMO

I enjoyed this @HBR blog by @Gartner’s @jakesorofman. It looks at the rise of the Digital CMO and asks why digital spend is still outweighed by analogue.

The author draws parallels with the open source movement and the fact that things didn’t really go mainstream until the developers involved at grassroots became the next CTOs. However, while it’s possible that ‘digital marketing won’t go native until the natives occupy the executive suite,’ it’s likely that things will start to move more quickly because of how mainstream, compelling and measurable digital marketing has become.  

The Digital CMO will experiment aggressively, hire smart digital natives and empower them. They partner with great agencies ‘have the humility to admit what they don’t know, the courage to toss out the old playbook, and the confidence to allow digital metrics to illuminate the results.’ Sounds like a lot of fun.

The most interesting passages talk to the Digital CMO thinking beyond marketing and into technology. Last year, Gartner predicted that by 2017, the CMO’s technology budget will exceed the CIO’s. This is because the CMO will be expected to drive this digital transformation, which is deeply dependent on technology.

I wonder what this means for the traditional role of corporate communications and technology teams? Does communications become more niche? If it hasn’t already happened, content teams need to come together or at least work towards the same global campaigns and themes. The CIO and Digital CMO will have to more clearly define areas of responsibility between core platforms, product and marketing technologies.

Businesses as we know it are going to be rewired.

A new take on digital literacy

Last weekend the FT’s Robert Shrimsley wrote about Paris Brown and the Kent police force’s failed attempt at hiring a teenage liaison officer. It turns out she was a bit too representative of her age group. 

In the article he also concluded that there was ‘a second lesson from this fiasco, and it concerns social media. Most of us grew up in an era when our youthful stupidities could not be found online and our inane observations on life were restricted to a couple of mates…. Part of teenage life is learning what is and is not appropriate.’

We have been talking about digital literacy at work and what we can do to help disadvantaged groups gain access to coding camps. But before coding, there is surely a call for a more basic digital literacy.

For some this might mean the more fundamental knowledge and access to equipment needed to make coding relevant and applicable, but there may also be a call for building awareness around reputation, employability and what certain actions might mean to a future employer who can be particularly fussy in a tough economic climate.