General Mills' chief brand and disruptive growth officer Doug Martin discusses how C-suite partnerships are the key to brand longevity. Martin was interviewed at the Cannes Lions 2024 International Festival of Creativity by Business Insider.
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00:00The value a CMO delivers today is delivered very differently than in the past.
00:09I think the narrative that there's less value in a CMO is false. I think there is a very real
00:16narrative that the value a CMO delivers today is delivered very differently than in the past.
00:22And so one example that's obvious but critical is, I think five years ago you probably could
00:29have been a great CMO and you know just bumped into the CTO in the lunchroom and said hi.
00:35And today there's really no way that you can do this job without having a close partnership with
00:41your CTO because there's almost nothing that we deliver directly to a consumer without it
00:45going through that technical infrastructure. And so for me it's understanding that
00:52it's not all about you it's through partnership and it's through internal partnership and
00:55cross-functional partnership. And also realizing that I think the CMO is the person who is most
01:01well positioned in the organization to say, I'm going to own the deepest understanding of
01:07who our consumers are, what our brands are supposed to mean, and how we can connect those
01:13two things so that we are building brands that mean something to consumers. And then obviously
01:18all that's going to go through a technical infrastructure. But I do think that without
01:22that basis there's really a future in which we're just throwing a lot of our TVs out at
01:28a lot of people and a lot of personalized communications and not long-term building
01:32the value of our brands in the way that we need to to be successful in the future.