Sasha Banks-Louie, Oracle BRANDVOICE contributor, wrote in Forbes about the top five priorities for CMOs in 2020. As chief marketing officers worldwide finalize their strategies for 2020, the force they say is influencing their marketing mix more than anything else has little to do with the traditional 4Ps of marketing. The foundation of product, promotion, price, and placement strategies is beginning to crack under pressure from customers who now value emotional connection and personal experiences more than product features and pricing incentives.

“We’ve been doing less traditional product marketing and are spending more time understanding what people are passionate about,” says Dino Bernacchi, chief marketing officer for Mazda North American Operations.

To help guide Bernacchi’s marketing priorities for 2020, his team spent the last 18 months studying what Mazda fans like to read, which sports they watch, and how they like to feel when they’re driving.

“The people who love us are wanderlusters who are passionate about learning, and passionate about doing. It’s totally aligned with the way we design, engineer, and manufacture cars—to provoke the feeling of being alive.”

 

-Dino Bernacchi, chief marketing officer for Mazda North American Operations

After learning that Mazda fans are also fans of college sports, cooking, and traveling, Bernacchi reallocated some ad budget to include ESPN.com, The Food Network, and National Geographic.

CMOs know that using data is essential to understanding customer’s emotional connections to their products and brands.

“Figuring out how to make personal and emotional connections with customers, while protecting their privacy is exactly what every CMO should be obsessed with.”

 

-Kurt Kratchman, group vice president of Oracle Data Cloud

Below are examples from four more CMOs, who share their 2020 priorities and how they plan to execute them.

Top Priorities for CMOs in 2020

Miami Dolphins’ Home Field Advantage

Keeping fans engaged, no matter what happens on the field, is one of Jeremy Walls’ top priorities for 2020. As the CMO of the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins, Walls’ strategy involves making the fan experience at Hard Rock Stadium convenient, personal, and memorable.

One big step was installing Wi-Fi throughout the entire six-level, 800,000-square-foot arena in 2017. Fans can now use their smartphones to enter the stadium, buy tickets and concessions throughout the venue, and access news, videos, and event schedules from a mobile app.

Not a Dolphins fan? No problem. Walls is also working to improve the experience for fans who come to Hard Rock Stadium to watch University of Miami football games, international soccer matches, concerts, the Miami Open tennis tournament, and more.

Like most teams, several years ago Walls’ marketing organization mainly relied on emails and phone calls to promote fan engagement, but today, they are personalizing the way they communicate to fans through text messages, videos, and soon through an intelligent chatbot based on 100 different fan journeys.

“Because of our unique position as a stadium, with access to so many different types of events and demographics, we believe we’ll have more data to customize our content and tailor our offers in ways that help make our fans feel special and want to stay engaged with us.”

 

-Jeremy Walls, CMO of the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins

Vodafone Calls on AI

As the first CMO of Vodafone Business, Vodafone’s B2B arm, Iris Meijer has done a lot in the year and a half since she’s joined the telecom giant. In the last five months alone, Meijer’s team launched a new business brand to showcase the division, introduced dozens of business services in 19 markets (increasing traffic to the Vodafone Business website by 48 percent), and reached more than 18 million people via earned media coverage.

With a growing customer base ranging from multinational companies to independent contractors, capturing the “voice of the customer” and crafting campaigns that echo those sentiments are both Meijer’s biggest challenges and top priorities for 2020.

“We’re sitting on a wealth of information that our customers have told us about their needs, but mining that data on its own doesn’t give us any insight or competitive advantage. To uncover signals of ‘purchase intent’ and align to customer needs, we need to differentiate between noise and relevant insights and we need to do it in a compliant way.”

 

-Iris Meijer, CMO of Vodafone Business

Using artificial intelligence, Meijer says her team can match a CIO’s stated strategy on her company’s new Internet of Things strategy, with what she’s purchased from Vodafone in the past, her budget and growth projections, and even her sentiment signals about Vodafone services versus competitors.

“We can use this insight to customize account-based marketing strategies, which help salespeople have relevant conversations with people who are actively looking to purchase our services. We’re not just consuming analytics, we’re defining how we connect with customers and align everything we do to what will fulfill their needs.”

 

-Iris Meijer, CMO of Vodafone Business

Mazda Europe Drives Customer Experience Architecture

Bernacchi’s counterpart in Europe, CMO Wojciech Halarewicz, says his #1 priority for 2020 is to build a customer experience architecture—a data management platform that lets it make the most of internal and third-party data, plus GDPR consent data. Having that, he believes, will transform the way Mazda Europe communicates with its customers—and change the way its customers engage with the brand.

“Instead of planning marketing activities based on traditional channels and targets, everything we do must start and finish with data and insights about an individual customer’s journey. Whether a lease is coming due or it’s time for an oil change, when we offer a renewal contract or send a service reminder in the exact moment when the customer needs it, our conversion rates more than double.”

 

-Wojciech Halarewicz, CMO of Mazda Europe

Mazda Europe’s marketing team currently depends on a customer relationship management system, data warehouse, and marketing automation system to capture data about customers and provide insight into how and when to communicate with them. Personalizing customer communications at scale has been a challenge for Halarewicz’s team.

“We’re now looking to pilot a data management platform (DMP) that can help us capture more data about our customers, and provide the kinds of experiences they want, in the moments of real need.”

 

-Wojciech Halarewicz, CMO of Mazda Europe

Halarewicz’ vision for a new customer experience architecture requires a tight integration between internally captured “martech” data, such as customer contacts, vehicle service histories, and GDPR consent data, and third-party “adtech” data, such as how certain Mazda customers go about researching new vehicles, which features they care about, and what they end up purchasing.

As brands are increasingly going direct to consumers, Oracle’s Kratchman thinks more companies will need this kind of architecture.

“DMPs provide a platform that puts massive amounts of consumer data into context so that marketers can develop stronger relationships with customers, and then tailor their communications for each of the important micro-moments along those customers’ journeys.”

 

-Wojciech Halarewicz, CMO of Mazda Europe

Aberdeen Turns Headwinds into Tailwinds

After a tumultuous merger between UK-based financial behemoths Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life, the newly formed Standard Life Aberdeen is taking a different approach to marketing its portfolio of investment offerings.

Instead of pitting its fee-based advisory services against the (increasingly popular) approach of ultralow-cost “do-it-yourself” index funds, CMO Andrew Kelly says one of his top priorities for 2020 is to connect with people who are actually looking for expert financial guidance.

“As governments and employers tighten their purse strings, defined benefit pensions are becoming a thing of the past, leaving people at risk of not having enough money to last through their retirement.”

 

-Andrew Kelly, CMO of Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life

Kelly’s mission to connect with the throngs of people coming into retirement didn’t jibe with the company’s old business model, which had focused more on large institutional investors rather than huge volumes of consumers.

“We simply don’t have enough advisers to support the kind of face-to-face relationships with the growing number of people who need our help.”

 

-Andrew Kelly, CMO of Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life

Today, Kelly’s team depends on marketing automation to understand who these people are, and then use that insight to invite them to a webinar, send them a white paper, or schedule an online consultation. As prospects are converted into customers, they are able to subscribe to the company’s online adviser-managed investment services.

“While age is the main data point that we use to connect with prospects when they’re approaching retirement, we’re also looking at how their wealth is distributed. Whether it’s tied up in their homes, pensions, or other investments, this knowledge helps us know which types of investments are right for them now, and those which will continue to provide the income they need over the long term.”

 

-Andrew Kelly, CMO of Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life