In a recent meeting with a CMO, Tom Edwards heard his client think out loud about the same concerns around talent and risk that he says is happening nearly everywhere.
“They were thinking two or three years ahead of their strategic plan, and they were asking themselves, ‘Should we hire our own data scientists.’ And we said, ‘No, you should come to us,’” said Edwards, chief digital officer of consulting firm Epsilon.
Edwards made the remark during his firm’s annual Growth Forum, which took place about two weeks ago and live streamed from Texas.
“If you think about the amount of solutions out there and available for a CMO to wade through, having someone who can help them make smart investments and smart decisions is incredibly important,” Edwards said.
Though much of what Edwards discussed might already be familiar to most CMOs – the challenge of managing numerous agencies, dealing with consumers who now want more control over the marketing messages they receive – the most intriguing part comes near the end when he talks about the demands of “everywhere commerce” and the forms it can take.
“We’ve seen it happening where you can use an emoji to place an order, but there is complexity in the back end in how we manage that process in terms of the attribution and the connection,” he said.
An even bigger trend, he said, is coming out of Asian markets where social media services are focusing much more on social messaging features. This includes Facebook with its Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, of course, but also Kik and many other players.
“Their core driver of commerce is going to be driven through messaging,” Edwards said. “It’s no longer about broadcasting or the personification of content, it’s how am I going to enable that conversation in a relevant way?”
A recording of the session is available below, and reaction from the audience can be found on Twitter via #CMOChallenges.
