Watch on-demand: Transforming the relationship between CMOs and CIOs
Marketing Week and Econsultancy, in partnership with Salesforce, ask top marketers how they align their brand vision with data and technology to achieve tangible results for their customers and their business.
In our data-driven world, the relationship between marketing and technology teams is increasingly pivotal to business success.
In this video webinar, top marketers from Virgin Holidays, Salesforce and RBS Group debate the practical actions brands can take to enable CMOs and CIOs to work more closely together.
“These two functions are [now] married together with a common goal from a business perspective,” notes Salesforce’s CMO for EMEA, Eileen O’Mara.
The panel discussion demonstrates how an effective CMO and CIO relationship enables those functions to drive real change for the business yet also acknowledges the obstacles in the way. Saul Lopes, head of CRM and loyalty at Virgin Holidays UK, observes the stark differences between technology and marketing skillsets: “You have the visionary marketers, the high-risk-takers over here, and then you have this team over here that just sees zeros and ones.”
He also explains how the holiday brand has mitigated potential conflict between the two functions through a careful focus on communicating changes internally and involvement of all stakeholder groups within the business.
Before aligning visions and creating joint goals and strategies, the CMO and CIO need to address any disconnect in how they communicate. “Personally, I think brand is everything but I have dropped the ‘B’ word and I just talk about reputation,” says RBS Group’s CMO David Wheldon.
He also underlines the importance of countering the typically inward focus of the technology teams and keeping a relentless focus on the customer: “They don’t necessarily bring the outside in and one of my key jobs is to do that…to worry about the marketplace, the people within it, and that’s how we try and make it work.”
In this video webinar, you’ll also find out:
- How to communicate effectively between marketing and technology teams
- How to ensure the focus is always on the customer
- The need to embed the human story within new technology launches
- Brand examples of the CMO and CIO relationship driving change within the business
- Future predictions on the role of the CMO and CIO