ORLANDO—In its ongoing efforts to transform marketing by taking back control and leading disruption, the Association of National Advertisers has committed to forming “what’s essentially an ANA marketing university,” says P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard.
“The CMO Growth Council was formed to focus on marketing taking back control and leading disruption because marketing is being disrupted completely but taking control to lead disruption to drive growth,” Pritchard says in this interview with Beet.TV at this week’s Masters of Marketing conference. “Because there’s not enough growth.”
Earlier this year, the ANA Masters Circle got together with 25 CMOs in Cannes and focused on five areas that are perceived to have the greatest opportunity to drive more growth. They are data and technology, customer centricity, brand experience and innovation, talent and capability, and society and sustainability.
“We spent the last couple of days with 200 CMO’s going through what the 25 CMO’s had come up with over the past few months and identified several areas that looked of great interest to us to really advance growth,” says Pritchard. “Data and technology is clearly one of the big ones, because mass marketing is being disrupted and everyone is reinventing media and reinventing advertising for that matter.”
As a result, CMO’s need to know about data management platforms, analytics capabilities, algorithms and related areas.
“What the CMO’s decided is that this is something we really have to just transform from an industry standpoint,” Pritchard explains. “And what we talked about was committing to creating what’s essentially an ANA marketing university that would bring all the best minds together through the ANA to be able to create the capability industrywide to transform our industry.”
He says that ANA CEO Bob Liodice made a big commitment “on the spot to make that happen.” Moreover, Pritchard asked whether CMO’s would be willing to serve as adjunct professors “and a bunch of hands went up.”
Another subject of great interest to the CMOs concerns customer centricity and brand experience and innovation so that brands can create relevant experiences across all consumer touchpoints. “Every single one of us was talking about how we’re using lean startup and lean innovation capabilities to be able to do fast cycle iterations in very small groups to be able to create ideas and get them out in the market much more quickly,” Pritchard says.
He is especially passionate about society and sustainability to be a force for good and a force for growth. “We invited everyone join #SeeHer, join the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, join Free The Bid so you can get equality behind the camera. And then we also introduced an idea of joining #Brands For Good,” one of whose efforts is to recognize brands that try to reduce plastic consumption.
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
