X-Marketing: Existential Challenges + Exponential Opportunities = Extraordinary Impact

September 8, 2022 at Santiago, Chile (Live and Online)

Download a summary of Peter Fisk’s X-Marketing keynote.

“Every market is shaken up, with new challenges and disruptive innovation, new agendas for customers and business. Marketers are the sense makers, the business innovator and growth drivers. The pioneers of your future business.”

How do you see the future? Peter Fisk explores the post-pandemic world, the new opportunities emerging as every market is shaken up, and what it takes to reimagine the future and embrace the waves of change.

Peter takes you on a journey that rides the 5 seismic megatrends reshaping every market over the next 10 years, and what this means for business and its leaders in driving future strategies, innovation and growth.

He explores some of the world’s most innovative companies right now – from Tan Le’s Emotiv neurotech to Mikael Bjergso’s world-leading craft beer, Haier’s future vision for the home and DBS’s invisible bank, Jio’s super apps of India and Orsted’s green transformation.

And how to do it. Future back and outside in. With purpose, disruption and courage. Jump on your surfboard and get ready for an incredible ride!

Why marketing leaders need to be the future shapers, business innovators and growth drivers

Marketers have a deep understanding of markets, how the future is emerging, what the customers of today and tomorrow are demanding, how competitors are evolving, the best new ideas around the world, and therefore what it will take to drive future innovation and growth. Yet only 11% of CEOs come from a marketing-related background, far behind those who were CFOs or COOs. Finance and operations matter, but they don’t move the organisation forwards.

Too many marketers get caught up in the tactics – perfecting the creative execution of advertising, debating the intricacies of price changes, ensuring that their search engine positioning is optimised, a slave to quarterly revenues, or maybe even the sales team. The driver for ever great data analytics, the use of precision marketing tools, the desire for real time engagement, has dragged – or enticed – marketing leaders into this short-term. Yes, it matters, but it’s not everything.

Marketers should be stepping up to drive strategy, innovation, and change across the organisation. If not them, then who?

One of the most profound moments of my own marketing career was when working with Coca Cola, their CMO had a last-minute idea to rebrand his global marketing plan as the global growth plan. Suddenly everyone in the executive team wanted to see it, read it, be part of it. Suddenly it became a conversation not about reducing the marketing budget, but how to find more budget to fund additional growth. Marketers are the growth drivers, and actually create over 3x more economic value than any other function in the business (based on a research project I did with Philip Kotler’s input and a team of economists). And marketers have some indispensable tools – brands, customers, innovation – to achieve this growth.

The problem is that too many marketers live in an echo chamber.

Some examples. Too many marketers talk about marketing as “their industry”. It’s not. They are instead professionals contributing towards their business in its own industry – banking, retail or whatever. This tribal motivation can bond us as a professional community, and focus us on functional deliverables, but it diverts us from the real contribution marketers can make to organisations, and their close allegiance and integration with cross-functional colleagues. The exception are the leaders and their teams who have repositioned themselves more holistically as Customer Director, Chief Growth Officer, and the like.

Secondly. Too many marketers have a far too cosy relationship with their creative agencies. It’s like they outsource their creativity to the agency, who still largely take a myopic view (of course, there are many types of agencies, but the ad agencies still tend to dominate relationships despite the diminishing share of spend on traditional media). Ad agencies themselves describe their world as “adland”, a mythical place of long lunches and artistic platitudes (witness the headlines in Campaign). This symbiotic relationship, indulgence in each other, is what holds too many marketers and their businesses back. Creative agencies should be stepping up to contribute more, to make sense of a changing world, to challenge and stretch our collective imaginations.

Too many marketers don’t step up to think strategically, to become the future shapers, the innovation drivers, the change makers. Too many marketers are still obsessed with communications, at the expense of other aspects of marketing – not just product and service development, but channels and pricing can have a huge impact too, perhaps even greater than the most beautifully crafted ad campaign.

Instead marketers should be the visionaries behind how the future can be shaped, how markets will evolve, anticipating and driving change rather than just responding. They should be searching the world for new growth opportunities, for new consumer insights, for more innovative ideas. They should be the architects of new business models, and indeed, new market models. New ways for markets to work, new ways to unlock brands as the most valuable assets, new ways to achieve success. They should be the driving force of business futures, the catalysts and sage to the business leader, the instigator and enabler of change.

So here’s my manifesto for marketers:

Growth Drivers

  • Marketers exist to drive the growth of a business. Yet few marketers have the confidence, or maybe capability, to define and drive the holistic innovation and growth strategies of their organisations
  • The pandemic drove the biggest shift in consumer behaviour in our lifetime, yet few marketers really transformed their marketing in response, fewer still led a company-wide response to support or seize the opportunities it opened up.

Change Makers

  • Change is driven by markets, yet marketers are rarely the change drivers, reimagining corporate strategies, business models and strategic priorities.
  • Customer-centricity is obvious. Yet marketers persist in obsessing about defining purpose, brands, activities and results around old product-centric thinking.

Business Innovators

  • Innovation is probably the most powerful word in business, yet few marketers seek to define and lead the innovation agenda and programs across organisations. Not just new products, business-wide innovation.
  • Most companies seek to be entrepreneurial. Their biggest disruption comes from entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs are marketers. Few marketers are entrepreneurial.

Value Creators

  • Marketing creates three times more economic value than their operational colleagues, yet few marketers can make this case, or lead the company’s dialogue with investors. Oh, and growth needs to be profitable and sustainble too.
  • Customers and brands are probably an organisation’s most valuable financial assets, yet few seek to articulate their value on balance sheets, or to fully exploit their latent potential.

Of course this is a development challenge too. I spend much of my time working on leadership development, and particularly on the T-Shaped development of functional experts as they step to become business leaders. At that point, typically when they enter the C-suite, they shift from the vertical (the focused, functional expert who has all the answers), to the horizontal (the open-mind business leader who asks all the questions). This is is a tough transition for many leaders to make, and is more about awareness and confidence as about capability or skill, but when they can let go of their vertical past, they can thrive.

Interview Q&A

In advance, here is a quick Q&A to get you thinking …

Today the world is going through a very complex situation: the new normal as a result of the pandemic, the war in Europe, inflation, unemployment, how do these factors affect the Marketing industry? What are the points of no return? And, conversely, what remains?

The “new normal” is a world of increasing complexity, change and multiple challenges. We need to let go of the old world which was relatively simple and predictable.

We live in a time of incredible change. Of course, some of this is challenging – economic inflation, political uncertainty, global fragmentation. But with challenge also comes opportunity. We will probably see more change in this decade, than over the last 250 years.

This is fueled by the relentless pace of new technology, and in particular the connections of digital platforms, bio tech and nanotech, IoT and robotics, and the data and AI which emerges from it.

But in reality, tech is just the enabler of more dramatic change – of convergent, disrupted marketplaces; of changing customer attitudes and priorities; of new attitudes towards work and the role of organisations in society; and of new opportunities to innovate and grow.

In the old world, size mattered. Big companies, the largest customer bases, the highest revenue, and market share. None of that matters today.

In the new world, markets are fragmented and discerning. It’s about focus, relevance and speed.

Mass-marketing doesn’t work. Customers are not average. Transactions are not enough. People trust people rather than brands. Purpose matters. Propositions are more personal.

What matters to marketers? Customers, brands and innovation. Business needs marketers more than ever to unlock these crucial assets and capabilities, in order to make sense of rapid change, to actively shape the future markets, to respond to new entrants and disruptors, and bring the organisation together strategically and operationally to drive profitable growth.

Look at my new analysis of Latin American “Gamechanger” brands, shaking up markets right now. I will be launching this at CAMP 2022. How do they brands win? They play by a new set of rules. They change the game. They embrace tech, but in smart, human, creative ways.

© Peter Fisk 2022

  • Read my profiles of all 12 Latin American Gamechangers
  • Read the full story of NotCo, using AI to transform the future of food
  • Read the full story of Juan Valdez Cafe, making Colombian coffee better
  • Read the full story of Mercado Libre, the Argentinian retail revolutionaries

What are the main challenges that Marketing specialists face today, taking into account the new consumer (omnichannel, digital, with social sensitivity, etc.) and the new market (more digital and technological, with more exhibition platforms)?

 Marketers need to be both strategic and operational.

In the past the strategic focus has largely been on brand building. In steady-state markets, this was relatively easy. Market structures, competitors and customers, channels and prices, value propositions and business models, changed little. Brands competed on being slightly better, or slightly cheaper. This is now all shaken up.

Business needs marketers to be the “strategic guides” through a world of relentless market-driven change. Every market is being shaken up – by changing economics, customer agendas, disruptive competitors, new business models. And much more.

Strategically, marketers need to be the “sense-makers” of fast-changing markets – to identify the new opportunities for business growth, both in existing and new markets – to explore and shape emerging markets to their advantage – to drive innovation across every aspect of business.

This is particularly driven by the convergence of traditional industry sectors – for example, telecom companies become media companies, retail companies also become finance companies, accounting firms become consulting firms.

At the same time entirely new “market spaces” emerge like home delivery companies (and in particular quick-commerce), or online gaming companies, or plant-based food companies. This is all in the power of marketers!

Or think about geography, demographics, segmentation. Why do we still largely organize our business and marketing by country. Is there not more in common between GenZ, or old people, or SMEs, across Latin America, rather having to address them separately within each country?

Operationally, marketers need to be the “data scientists” of technologically-enabled markets.

Each customer seeks, expects, a more personal experience. Particularly when they know you have some much data about them. They expect the same level of intelligence as they get from shopping at Amazon, or the same level or personal service they get from a local café.

Unlocking the intelligent power of data is the key – to anticipate the needs of customers, to engage them individually, to resolve problems before they are even known. SEO is just a starting point.

The best companies now have huge data science labs, monitoring every post about a brand, every click by a customer. In retail, for example, GPS and iBeacons in a shop, mean that every customer experience is unique, every customer have personal incentives, pay different prices.

Given your experience working with big brands, what is the secret for “traditional” brands to become “current” brands without losing their essence and value?

 Traditional brands have almost all the advantages – heritage, experience, scale, data, talent, capital – yet they lack the mindset of fast, entrepreneurial youthful brands.  Start-ups have advantages too, most significantly less complexity, less process, less fear.

Companies like Nike, have shown that a 50 year company can be incredibly innovative – look at how they have shifted to being a primarily DTC business in a short period of time – have they have embrace social networks to build communities, to engage with new audiences and agendas, to constantly reinterpret value propositions and stay relevant.

The “secret” is simple, to stay focused on the customer, and the changing customer. Not just to meet their existing needs, but constantly explore new ideas, to innovate, to inspire them.

The best companies, traditional or new, interpret themselves not as product-centric but as customer-centric businesses. Of course, experts have being saying that for 40 years. Yet most companies still interpret customer-centric as “smiling faces” or “fast response”.

Instead, think about this. Do you define your brand around your business and product, or around the customer and application?  …. Think about it … Don’t define yourself by what you do – you’re a food company, a sportswear company – but by what you enable people to do.

Nike is a sports company, not a sportswear company. Harley Davidson is not about the technically-mediocre motorbike, but about the freedom of the rider. Danone is not a food company, but a healthy living company.

And then everything else follows too – don’t focus on the sales transaction, the point of sale, advertising the product functionality, the price relative to production cost – think about what the customer seeks to achieve, how you can support them over time, engaging them in learning to use it better, and the price relative to the value they gain.

This is not rocket science. But it is still a wake-up to many marketers.

More strategically, it’s also about exploring what more you can do – don’t limit your growth to just finding more customers for existing products, or more products for existing customers – think about how you can go further – using your assets, capabilities and imagination in new ways.

Take PingAn for example. The Shenzhen-based insurance company is one of the largest in the world. It has a digital platform serving almost one billion customers. For boring insurance. What more could it do? It looked at where the growth opportunities are, the unexploited markets, and how its assets could help. Today, after just 4 years, Ping An is also the world’s largest healthcare platform.

What is the balance point between new technologies (for example, artificial intelligence) and the human component (contact with a “real person”)?

 We are human. Real people. People trust people.

Technology is simply there to enable us to do better. AI, for example, helps us to anticipate and meet people’s needs better. Robotics helps us to improve the efficiency and accuracy of processes. Think of Kava robots in Amazon warehouses, or the Da Vinci robots which perform the majority of heart surgeries. Blockchain delivers solutions faster and cheaper.

We also need people to act in human ways – to interpret emotions, to engage with empathy, to build relationships, to share hopes and fears, purpose and passions.

If you are developing a new website, a new app, a new process for your business – think about this – how does it create a better experience – not just fast and efficiency, but more personal and human too. Similarly companies how seek “digital transformation” need to recognise that what they really need is “business transformation”, probably customer-centric, enabled by digital technology.

DBS is a great example of this. For the past 4 years, the Singapore business has been ranked the world’s most innovative bank. Their strategy is to “make banking invisible”.

They want people to “bank less, live more”. Their entire focus is on implementing better payment-related technologies into everyday life – shopping, entertaining, transporting, educating. They don’t want people to spend time coming to banks, or using separate apps for money, they want people to get on with life.

In line with the previous question and with a view to friction-free marketing, what do you consider to be the most appropriate customer journey for the short and medium term?

 The biggest opportunity today is to become a C2C company. Customers connected to customers. Sharing their passions, supporting each other. Co-creating, co-selling, co-enabling what they do.

This is the best form of friction-free marketing. Where there is no company getting in the way. Of course, there is a brand – but the brand is about the customers, and their shared passion – not the company. The brand is more like a facilitator, helping customers to do what they want better.

Glossier is a great C2C example, created by Emily Weiss, and now one of the world’s fastest growing beauty brands. It is about customers sharing their love of beauty – including new ideas for products, recommending their best friends, and then sharing in the everyday use of the products.

Rapha is another great example. The cycling brand, which started in London with its first “cycle club”, which is a store but with a café in the centre, a bike store and workshop, and showers. Of course the store is where you can buy Rapha cyclewear, but more importantly it is where you meet people like you, to share your passion for cycling, to watch a race over a coffee, to go for a ride after work. Go on the Rapha app, its full of people sharing their love of cycling, as well as the products.

Given your extensive experience around the world, what are the most common mistakes that companies make when managing their brands in the face of new challenges?

It’s time to let go – let go of what made you successful in the past – and to explore and embrace, a different, and exciting, new future.

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