Biggest Marketing Challenges Today: What do CMOs Have to Say?
Marketers are turning to creativity infused with technology to tackle the perfect storm of unique challenges faced by them: from climate change to economic turmoil to geopolitical instability and polarisation.
How do marketers navigate through this constant upheaval?
To understand this existential question, our Dentsu Creative CMO Report 2023 surveyed 700 CMOs across the globe to understand their biggest concerns and areas of focus, and the answer remained surprisingly simple - the customers always take precedence.
What are the top marketing challenges for CMOs in 2023? Let’s dig in.
Winning the Audience
Owning the customer relationship remains the number one priority. Marketers grapple with their concerns to own customer relationships in a world where third parties hold many cards with 30% of respondents choosing this as their primary concern.
Amidst economic, societal, and existential challenges marketers face, the customer is king – now, and in the future. Marketers thinking about channels, platforms, and technology to enhance their brand, inform how critical it is to build direct relationships with audiences. As we move towards a cookieless future, first-party data is more vital than ever.
Tellingly, the second and third concerns revolve around engaging audiences too, from responding to changing consumer behaviour (28%) to keeping up with technologies like AI (28%) proving that the customer comes first, second, and even third in priority.
What does this mean for brands and businesses?
Innovation cannot be ignored. Leveraging different platforms to connect with audiences is no longer nice to have but essential. In a world where every brand craves audience attention, define your audience value proposition by asking what unique offering we share with them for their time and data. Lastly, design for networks and not individuals. To reach younger generations that is raised on social commerce and micro-influencers, brands must engage networks are social accelerators - that's where the true power lies.
Tech-set…go!
Today, catering to virtual worlds demands a new approach to brand building. CMOs firmly believe in leveraging technology and creativity to shape brand-building experiences, however, 28% of them believe keeping up with technologies is their top hurdle.
CMOs believed the key ingredients in creating brand-building experiences were in line with ‘technology that enhances the creative idea’ (48%) and ‘innovative new interfaces such as gaming, virtual worlds, gesture, and touch’ (48%). Closely following were ‘Delightful interactions enhanced by technology such as AR and Image Recognition’ (45%) and ‘A powerful organising idea that shapes the Experience Vision’ (43%).
70% of respondents see modern marketing as increasingly complex, which is less than last year (73%). This rises to 84% in Italy but drops to 59% in India.
Today, CMOs are embracing new interfaces from voice to gesture, AR to AI. Generative AI leads the choice for brands that are infusing technology to enable ideas.
What does this mean for brands and businesses?
Modern technology blurs the lines between content and commerce, real and virtual, to allow craft and innovation to come together. Modern brands must connect belief, behaviour, brand values, and CX principles in a single integrated system to create an optimised new brand identity. We must design for moments that matter and create experiences in an online space that are as distinct and ownable as concept stores or signature packaging in the offline world. ‘Building brand whilst selling more products’ was the most selected primary marketing objective for marketers in 2023 (25%).
Unity in Diversity
The fourth challenge for marketers remains how their brands can share similarities and celebrate differences whilst representing more diverse audiences (28%). Adding to their woes, Gen Z is also keeping marketers up at night, with 23% of respondents worried about how to market to this demographic, rising to 32% in Italy.
Despite their concerns, marketers remain convinced that advertising can be a force for good when it comes to their brands in funding diverse voices and creating new platforms. 81% agree that brands can use their budgets to amplify independent and diverse voices, while 88% agree that creative advertising has the power to change society for the better.
What does this mean for brands and businesses?
77% of marketers agree that while consumer behaviour has undergone rapid changes in the last five years, the agency model is yet to respond. In a world of new opportunities and anxiety, AI playing frenemy, brands crave a direct relationship with their audience, and CMOs today pivot their focus on diversifying their content and brand perception.
At Dentsu Creative, we connect diverse skills and specialisms to reimagine new possibilities, as the future belongs to those who invent it.
Purpose Gets Real
In a volatile world, CMOs agree that there is no longer a disconnect between what is good for society and what is good for business. 69% of CMOs agree that we are so focused on purpose, that we have forgotten how to sell. This doesn’t mean the purpose must end, but it cannot be treated as a side project anymore – rather pivot towards purpose as a core driver of sustainable business growth.
66% of respondents believe that if we don’t sell today, the business won’t have a future. Australia has the highest percentage of respondents actively disagreeing with this statement (39%). 81% of CMOs agree that their business will undergo a fundamental pivot in response to climate change while 78% state that every brand should possess an ethical purpose or a socially conscious mission. This thinking is even more pronounced in the United States, where an overwhelming 94% of marketers share this perspective.
What does this mean for brands and businesses?
Sustainability can no longer be side-lined. Whilst we are confronted with alarming headlines on climate change, marketers are backed with massive platforms and creative freedom to inspire action and make change possible. Our dentsu Good methodology urges brands to think about symbolic actions to signal change and become a beacon of rallying change.
Conclusion
Despite hurdles, we see 86% of marketers feeling excited about the future of advertising, and this rises to a massive 94% in China, with no respondents there disagreeing with the statement. Whilst we may have different products, services, work environments and challenges, as CMOs we are often faced with similar business decisions. This year’s Dentsu Creative CMO Report shows a level of soul searching and reappraisal, but also a sense of empowerment that was not seen in previous years. Garner insights from CMOs across the globe – full report here.
