8 wild ways the CMO role evolved in 2023

1. Actually finding a use for AI

When the conversation on AI exploded, we caught up with Nestlé’s senior vice-president and global chief marketing and digital officer, Aude Gandon, on how she used AI to transform its digital advertising. She tasked tech company CreativeX to analyze all its creative assets, test effectiveness and create rules for Nestlé marketers to follow.

To get buy-in from Nestlé’s creative teams and its agencies, Gandon said it would cut down “wasted” time. “Before, someone would have had to do a roadshow and convince every creative agency they needed to move the logo and prove why it’s effective,” Gandon says. Through AI, creatives can get on with the creative part.

2. Maturing from paid social to brand marketing

Brand marketing has received a lot of attention this year as big-name brands built on digital moved away from a reliance on performance and paid social.

Brands like Pinterest, Airbnb and Asos were among them, as was Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims. Co-founder chief exec at Skims, Jens Grede, told The Drum in January: “If you look it from an ROI point of view, the cost of paid social has gone up so substantially over the past few years while the effectiveness is down trending- we don’t think the equation makes sense any more.”

Doubling down on brand marketing, Grede said out-of-home would now be getting the majority of Skims ad spend; he said the channel is more affordable and more effective than TV, and he says the brand’s aesthetic makes outdoor ads “really gratifying.”

3. Transforming ‘forgotten' brands with new data

TGI Friday’s CMO Rhiannon Scarlett was hired in 2022 to rescue the ailing restaurant chain through data essentially. With its YouGov popularity rating on the floor at just 36%, in contrast to a fame score of 92%, Scarlett had a big job on her hands.

First, she set about overhauling the restaurant’s loyalty app, making it easier to earn rewards and adding more items to claim and better personalization. The new loyalty scheme has improved sales penetration by 6%, from 9% in May 2022 to 15% a year later. She also relaunched TGI Friday’s website to integrate it with the loyalty scheme and thus “connect the digital journey” and have a single view of customer data.

4. Getting it 'right' on TikTok

TikTok continued to grow in 2023, and with that, many legacy brands decided to dip their toes in the water.

One brand that found success was the British pie business Pukka Pies - not one you’d immediately think of. With a 55+ audience and a media strategy focused on out-of-home around mid-tier football and trade marketing in fish and chip shops, Rachel Cranston, head of brand at Pukka Pies, had a tricky task on her hands when she forged her social strategy.

After a first attempt to go all in on Instagram, Cranston learned the hard way that the social platform has to suit the brand’s tone. “The thing with this type of brand is if we ever do anything not credible, or kind of anything that’s fake in any way, or superficial, people will tell us,” Cranston says. “Our mantra is real food, real people, and real lives, and what we’ve seen on TikTok is people who are not trying to be something they’re not.”

5. Shifting from product-based to cultural marketing

Marketers moving away from product-led messaging cropped up a lot this year. In July, Bose’s first chief marketer, Jim Mollica, revealed to The Drum how he changed Bose’s internal structure to prioritize music and culture messaging over being the best-engineered product.

“It’s not what the product does as much as it’s what it does for you and how it can transform your mood,” he says. “We are creating products for passionate music fans by passionate music fans; then it’s not about utility and functionality, it’s about emotion.”

6. Learning some math

The future of the CMO will be a key debate for The Drum in 2024. Booking.com’s chief marketing officer Arjan Dijk, set it out clearly and simply when he said it is: “numbers, numbers, numbers.”

The ex-Google marketer shepherded in Booking.com’s most creative recent work said: “People need to be good with numbers and cannot be thinking only in pictures.” If you are not good with numbers, “you need to only work as a brand VP or as a brand manager. You cannot work as a chief marketing officer,” he said.

7. Finding relevance with younger consumers

It’s an age-old problem (forgive the pun) for brands to attract and stay relevant to younger consumers when their customer group is aging with them. For the maker of Echo Falls and Hardy’s Accolade Wines, this category challenge requires its marketers to shake up the sector as a whole and boost their own business.

Accolade Wines marketing director Tom Smith told The Drum: “We’re not going to recruit new people to the category just by talking about vintages and chateaus that exist in France,” Smith says. His plans include major above-the-line investments, the launch of new wine brands, and the rollout of more sustainable boxed wine.

8. Making digital brands physical

In a post-pandemic world, people have gotten a bit fed up with only interacting with the brands they love via their e-commerce sites. Digital-only retailers are still playing catch up with some brands way ahead of others; Gymshark, for example, has been doing this well for the past two years. However, Asos is just at the beginning of its journey.

In November, the 23-year-old online retailer opened its first-ever pop-up shop to revitalize its brand. With a £30m pot to do on “cool marketing,” Senior customer director at Asos, Dan Elton, is taking inspiration from the luxury space that are “highly tactile, highly aesthetic, emotionally driven purchases.”