Fighting Harsh Corporate Realities
Unique Challenges and Opportunities for 2024
Welcome to the Savvy AI newsletter. Three to four times a month, I explore what the AI Era means for marketing and business. In this space, I also share excerpts from my forthcoming book on Marketing with AI. If you find the insights valuable, feel free to share the newsletter with others. And if it's not your cup of tea, I completely understand if you choose to unsubscribe.
In recent weeks, I've been interviewing scores of fellow marketers, customer experience professionals and technology leaders for my upcoming book. Through these discussions, several recurring themes have started to crystallize. These themes underscore the increasingly complex nature of the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) role, and suggest that the challenges faced show no signs of abating. Here are highlights and a few suggestions on how marketers and business leaders can approach 2024 differently with the advent of the AI Era.
The Quick-Fix Culture: Challenges for Today's CMOs
Era of Instant Decision-Making: The predominance of performance marketing, coupled with the accessibility of real-time metrics, has compressed marketing planning timelines from months to mere weeks and days in many industries. This transformation compels CMOs to be more reactionary, focusing on limiting the natural ups and downs of short-term demand generation rather than leading with longer-term strategy and creative thinking. If there’s a problem in the demand generation engine, marketers are expected to make instant changes to fix them with the expectation that those fixes will solve the problem immediately. Consequently, this shift has inadvertently led to a diminished perception of the CMO's role as its earlier strategic orientation has receded. It’s unhealthy for us marketers but just as much for the company as a whole.
Time-Frame Misalignment in the Executive Suite: This dynamic leads to tensions between the CMOs and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). CTOs typically operate in 1-3 year cycles, are increasingly focused on Gen AI and on dismantling data silos, creating data lakes, upgrading recommendation engines and testing large language models. Meanwhile, CMOs are continuously under pressure to deliver on daily and weekly targets and, as a result, are forced to depend on readily available but potentially less secure and less robust off-the-shelf technologies to help. The CTOs don’t appreciate those choices. This time-frame misalignment puts a strain on the partnership, even though it is a most needed relationship.
Commoditization of Performance Marketing: With AI, elements of performance marketing will get commoditized as will specific sub-functions in other parts of the organization. Tasks such as generating ad headlines and copy, creating audience targets, budget allocation, pacing, optimizing, and measurement will need fewer hands on keyboards. Consequently, marketers must begin to pivot towards being more insight, brand and customer relationship oriented to establish the intimate, personalized and loyal relationships that naturally strengthen a business. Nonetheless, ironically, advocating for this shift will continue to be challenging.
Losing Valuable Allies: Historically, agency leaders have served as a strategic advisors to CMOs. They’ve had our backs in the broader marketing ecosystem, pushed us towards the latest trends, identified people we should know and even counseled us on how to navigate C-Suite relationships and our own careers. As dependencies on agencies naturally lessons in the AI Era (with more work coming in-house), so too will be the ability for those agencies to provide that counselor role. That’ll hurt the marketing organization and the business more broadly as there will be fewer outside-in voices.
Business-First: A Blueprint for 2024 Leadership
All is not lost though. Here are some suggestions to help you navigate the unforgiving corporate realities of today’s business world.
Reorient around the Business. A defining moment in my career was when the then Visa CEO emphatically emphasized, at a marketing offsite, to my colleagues and me that we were business leaders first, and marketers second. This perspective has never seemed more crucial. Dedicate additional effort to fully understand the various levers of your business, particularly those that stimulate growth and contribute to the intricate investment trade-offs the CEO has to make each quarter. Subsequently, assess if your strategies are precisely aligned with those levers and ensure there's clear agreement across the C-Suite as you make decisions. Having a business first mindset alone can do a lot to set you up for success in 2024.
Make AI your favorite conversation topic: Admittedly, my perspective might be influenced by residing in Silicon Valley, but I've gained substantial insights about the challenges of AI in casual conversations at my children's soccer games. AI is impacting jobs across companies in America. Engaging in conversations with individuals outside your professional sphere can be as enlightening, if not more so, than with those within it. Inquire about other people’s views on the AI hype, what they’re discussing in their companies, and whether their jobs are changing. These interactions can offer valuable perspectives and even fresh tips to enhance your own journey into the AI Era.
Embrace the role of the Chief Experimenter Officer: Even if you have reservations having been burnt by NFTs and the Metaverse in recent years, jump headfirst into the AI Era. This is crucial, especially since your CEO, Board, and the Capital Markets are already engaged in it. As a leader, you possess the unique ability to sift through the hype and identify which business processes, activities, and strategies can truly benefit from what AI offers. Experiment with those strategies that’ll be most impactful. Seize this as a prime opportunity to not only enhance your personal value to the CEO and the Board but also to redefine your own role. As you embark on this journey, adopt the title of Chief Experimenter Officer (distinct from the Chief Executive Officer). In doing so, you'll set an inspiring precedent for the entire company.
Reconstitute the Kitchen Cabinet: Losing agency leaders as advisors presents an opportunity to create a new kitchen cabinet, one filled with futurists, marketers, technologists, financial planners, entrepreneurs and your own team members. They might look like a motley crew at first but I can promise they’ll benefit you even more in the long run. Moreover, it wouldn't be surprising to find that top-tier agency leaders are still eager to be part of this group, even if their billings have declined. What’s certain is that it is always important to have a kitchen cabinet. It’ll be needed in 2024 for sure.
Recent Savvy AI Articles
Elon Musk Criticizes Marketers (December 2023)
Research in the AI Era. Evolution or Extinction (November 2023)
Thriving Professionally in the AI Era (November 2023)
The Dual Horizon of AI's Promise and Peril (October 2023)
Forbes CMO Summit: Marketing Insights (October 2023)
What I’m reading
Generative AI’s Act 2 (Sequoia Capital)
Data shows AI job losses are rising, but numbers don’t tell the full story (CNBC)
Google’s best Gemini AI demo was faked (Techcrunch)
What OpenAI’s Superalignment team has been up to (MIT Technology Review)
Where I’m going and where I’ve been
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been meeting AI leaders, marketers and journalists in both New York and San Francisco for my book. I was most recently quoted in this WSJ article, “ Elon Musk’s F-Bombs Make Linda Yaccarino’s Job at X Even Harder. ” X’s recovery will be directly dependent on how it can strengthen its AI driven recommendation systems.
Here are some photographs from a few weeks ago when I addressed marketing, venture and startup leaders at a private event in Silicon Valley.
I’m slowing down now till early January where I’ll first travel to the Midwest for some meetings and then will quickly return to the West Coast for CES. Let me know if you’re attending. I can point you in the direction of some interesting events at CES!
I would welcome the opportunity to speak at your event. Email me to discuss further.
What I’m writing about this week
I'm in the process of writing my third book, centered on artificial intelligence in the realms of business and marketing. This week, I'm wrapping up chapters on Behavioral Segmentation and Lead Scoring within the AI context. It's a thrilling period, with numerous aspects of marketing poised for transformation as AI technologies become more prevalent. Stay tuned to this newsletter for further updates and insights from my forthcoming book.