In addition to critical leadership shortages in digital marketing teams, there are many forces and factors compounding chief marketer pressure and urgency to “improve every go-to-market move.” These include:

• Multiplying revenue demands on global marketing teams to position and launch new products more repeatedly, effectively and successfully (HBR: 30K launched annually, 95% fail).
• Strategic acumen from inside and outside the organization required to crystallize the value proposition, refine the messaging, and validate the market need and opportunity ahead of launch.
• Product development, sourcing and delivery systems to be better aligned and synchronized with automated demand chain marketing, smart pricing, in-store execution and point-of-sale placement.
• AI-powered profiling, targeting, and segmentation, as well as real-time feedback, to make products and services more relevant and desirable on a personal, social, cultural and ethical level in all geographies.
• New digitally driven creative campaigns now have to trigger and amplify word-of-mouth and spark social media buzz while also being appropriate across borders, genders and values.
• Influencer share-of-voice and third-party editorial has to accelerate interest, trial and trust; incentives and consumption ideas have to drive repeat purchase and use.
• Channels of distribution, business partners and sales organizations have to be primed, prepared and pointed towards qualified and predisposed customer opportunities.
• Customer experiences have to be consistent and satisfying across all channels of engagement to gain product purchase and adoption; eCommerce has to be frictionless and after-market support available on-demand.
• Creative strategies and marketing content now have to be versioned, modified, and translated for local markets and different requirements at velocity and scale; marketing supply chains have to be fine-tuned and managed more efficiently online through cloud platforms and automation

In its new marketing leader profile series, the CMO Council shines a light on this new tech savvy breed of Marketing Transformers. Our interviews with digital innovators, early adopters, change agents, and next practice visionaries will address:

• Where they are seeing the most value and benefits from marketing/advertising technology innovation and deployment in their organizations?
• Which key stakeholders and functional leaders need to be embraced in mapping and modeling marketing technology deployment from an operational, customer touch and brand protection perspective.
• What segments and sources of data are most valuable to unify, curate, sift and harvest for decision making, campaign/spend effectiveness and measurement.
• How to prioritize, map and focus their digital marketing transformation journeys to find new routes to revenue and customer value creation.
• Making a business case for marketing transformation spend and retaining ownership of key processes and functional areas.
• Evidencing the right measures and metrics to justify investments and resource allocations.