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Greater digital connectivity with customers seems to have delivered a career boon for CMOs, who are now much more likely to be regarded as drivers of revenue growth and profitability, and as directly responsible for the customer experience, according to a Capgemini global study. Furthermore, with the emergence of generative AI CMOs, especially in Australia, marketers are embracing the potential of this emerging technology to improve areas such as data analytics, personalisation and campaign creation. And they are already looking forward to the day when they can build brand and customer avatars as a central part of customer experience. But they are not blind to the challenges and risks, with the number who believe the benefits of generative AI outweigh its costs and risks dropping by almost a third compared to another study earlier last year.

Some bosses think the work-home-flexibility balance is “out of whack”, crunching productivity and profitability and allowing people to ‘take the piss’ – especially at agencies. Others insist those who put in the office hours and face time will get promoted faster and get paid more – particularly younger staff because “human economics” always prevail. Yet for every frustrated CEO, there’s a story of success and an advocate for a two-way model between employer and employee.  So how far should agencies and corporates return to an old Gen X way of working – often brutal hours and fostering presenteeism – versus building a new future of work? And if we are stuck in limbo, and are required to cope with a generation preferring screens over phones and physical contact, what gaps must we fill in capability building, productivity, efficiency, culture and profitability to actually make it sustainable? Agency leaders and consultants have some answers – and some genuine fears.

IAG’s appointment of ex-Meta exec Michelle Klein last May fired the starter pistol on a major overhaul as the insurer under NRMA CEO Julie Batch moved to consolidate marketing and customer functions. End-to-end is the mission and Klein’s embedding an Agile methodology and mindset honed during a decade in Silicon Valley in a bid to drive growth and retention under a single overarching metric: “Have we moved the needle on customer experience?”. She’s bidding to go hyper-local at scale with customer-led community campaigns over ads alone, and whereas IAG under its previous CMO was full-on upper funnel, Klein says the funnel has already collapsed. Next is a tech overhaul with AI likely incoming across digital customer channels. 

Google has insisted it will cull third party cookies before the end of this year but the UK’s competition regulator says that call isn’t Google’s to make. Unless it can solve serious concerns around the impact on competition, interoperability, self-preferencing and the very real risk of driving more money out of the open web and into walled gardens – like Google itself – it’s not happening. Now the IAB has piled in with 106 pages of complaints and stating Google’s bid to put much of the adtech world’s underpinnings into the browser is not viable. In the meantime, early analysis – the little that is available – of Google’s 30 million browser experiment, AKA the one per cent club, suggests a 30 per cent fall in CPMs. But Australian brands, publishers and the media supply chain will soon have bigger fish to fry.