Tomorrow's marketing today

Through a tweet (Twitter message) this morning from one person I follow, I came to a new report from the Economist, and sponsored by Google, about the changing role of the global marketing executive (CMO). Here's their summary of the report.

• Balancing global brand awareness with local market relevance. Centralising global marketing functions such as advertising development and production can create economies of scale and save money, but they must be guided by the needs of the local market and customer insights. At the same time, budgets must be freed up so that regional directors can make appropriate decisions based on market demands.
• Integrating marketing with other forms of corporate communications. Both the interactive nature of Web 2.0 technologies and the transparency of corporate messages among different constituencies—such as customers, investors, media, regulatory bodies and employees (past, present and future)—demand the integration of various forms of marketing and communications. Businesses can no longer segment audiences and messages as if audiences don’t talk to each other.
• Adopting new media. In particular, there should be a specific budget for experimentation with the newest Web 2.0 technologies. To remain competitive, companies must engage customers and fully exploit the interactive nature of digital media to create a stronger affinity with their brands among consumers and other stakeholders. The CMO should have the foresight to anticipate how different constituencies will respond to different events, messages and channels, and should be able to deal with the proliferation of new-media tools and expanded audiences.
• Developing new skills, capabilities—and partnerships. CMOs must not only position their companies, but help define them. To do so, they need to understand the fundamental business model, brand, culture, policies and values of the organisation. Equally important in terms of adapting to the evolution of new media are partnerships with vendors whose expertise can be used to get new initiatives to market faster—and more effectively—than a company would on its own.
• Championing innovation. The need for greater accountability for marketing expenditure is pushing global companies towards digital marketing campaigns with higher returns than traditional media. The interactive nature of the latest digital-media vehicles provides the opportunity to develop deeper insights into customer dynamics and allows the CMO to become the corporate champion of customer insight.

I think all of this is spot on. In particular, as a new media junkie, I see tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as a key component of any successful marketing efforts. Remember, the youthful users of new media today will be our 'seasoned' C-level executive customers tomorrow, and we'd better adapt our methods to their preferred way of consuming information. Better to be ahead of the curve than behind it.

The degree to which corporations adopt social media (internally, too, like our wiki) is a good shorthand method of showing how much they champion innovation, since social media and Web 2.0 tools in general drive innovation like nothing else -- if they're used and used well. In short, they let companies fish where the fish are, and they let all of us worker smarter (more strategically) rather than just harder. As Rupert Murdoch recently said in a lecture, the future is always bright for those who can leverage technology in business better than the other guys.