Introduction to the CMO State of the Union

Speaker 1: Three, two, one.

Vern Tremble: Welcome to Individuality Unleashed. I'm Vern Tremble and I'm joined again by Richard Jones. What's up, Rich? How are you doing today?

Richard Jones: Good, Vern, good. Looking forward to our chat.

Vern Tremble: Me too. I am so excited. We have a really special podcast episode for you today. Today, we are going to be talking about the CMO State of the Union, a new exclusive report produced by Wunderkind that we're delivering to you guys for the first time here at Wunderkind. Rich, we're really excited about this. We learned a lot from this research. Curious if you could just give us a really quick snapshot about what the CMO State of the Union is and what our listeners and viewers can expect.

Richard Jones: Yeah. Wunderkind surveyed over a hundred marketing leaders from top B2C brands to get their outlook on the current marketing landscape. Now we learned that the challenges we've all faced over the last several years have pushed marketers to ditch the status quo and go back to the drawing board, paving the way for perhaps a whole new golden age of marketing, which is why I'm wearing this rather fabulous inaudible.

Vern Tremble: It is absolutely fabulous and I cannot wait for... I've seen some sneak peaks. It is phenomenal, guys. We're really excited to show you this new content. And you know what? I also am curious to hear about your thoughts on the current state of marketing and why the CMO State of the Union is such a relevant piece of content right now. So to kick us off, can you talk about the current state at play and what recent changes we've seen in the market?

Richard Jones: Yeah. It is fair to say that the world has transformed beyond recognition over the past couple of years.

Vern Tremble: Yes.

Richard Jones: Marketers have been forced to throw out the playbooks and reassess their priorities. 94% of the CMOs that we surveyed looked at the last two years as a turning point. The COVID- 19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, and inflation have left marketing teams in the world scrambling to keep up with this near constant change in consumer behaviors, technology, and market economics. Economic challenges and the upcoming recession will certainly have an impact on marketing budgets and strategies going forward with marketers and consumers alike feeling the pinch. So it's pretty good time to get research. It's going to help you navigate some of those challenges.

Vern Tremble: Oh, yeah. Absolutely, Rich. Oh, my gosh, even just the tidbits that you just shared with us are so good. Again, with our podcast, we want to deliver valuable insights that are relevant right now to our audience and to marketers. The findings from this report that we've synthesized in this report and in this webinar are absolutely fantastic. We can't wait for you guys to check it out. But you mentioned budgets. I want to dive into that just a little bit. Specifically for online marketing budgets, our research highlighted that 71% of CMOs are planning to reduce their online marketing spend in the near future. What are your thoughts, Rich, on the best way to deal with this seemingly inevitable budget cuts?

Richard Jones: Marketers need to find new ways to maintain digital revenue, that's for sure, even if their online marketing spend has been reduced, and that's not easy. But if your budget has been cut, you can't afford to waste dollars on traffic that won't convert. Lower budgets combined with lack of attribution means CMOs will need to focus more on what matters and make sure they're not going after vanity metrics and ditch non- performing channels in favor of finding new ways to drive sustainable growth. Perhaps most importantly, we saw from the research, is that marketers need the knowledge and tools to turn their traffic and interactions they are driving online into a sustainable source of revenue, especially with the loss of third- party cookies looming around the corner. Now, most companies can only identify 5% of the traffic that they drive to their site with 95% not converting and not identified. With advertising costs increasing dramatically on platforms like Facebook and Google, the traffic that you do drive to your own channels has to convert much more efficiently, particularly in a recession. Fortunately, this is something that the webinar covers in detail.

Vern Tremble: That's phenomenal, Rich. Another thing that came through from the research and from the CMOs that you were chatting with was the resurgence of brand and creative. It truly is just this returning to this era, this golden age.

Richard Jones: Right.

Vern Tremble: What are your thoughts on that and how did it influence the making of this webinar?

Richard Jones: Yeah. It really is an interesting point here. With all this disruption in advertising and privacy and the associate tracking and attribution challenges that it's given marketers, it's definitely clear that CMOs are getting back to basics. There is much more focus on brand and creative storytelling and creative itself than perhaps in recent years. In fact, we made that a creative theme of the webinar itself with this kind of Mad Men- esque style where we were playing off the golden age of advertising and forward projecting that to a golden age of marketing hopefully. So the question really is whether all of this rebalancing and the level of art and science involved in marketing could be heralding a new golden age. We'll see.

Vern Tremble: That's phenomenal. So for those of you that are listening, I would advise you pause the podcast here and go and see the vlog, the video podcast rather, to check this out because we're going to show you a sneak peek of the CMO State of the Union where you can check out Rich in his phenomenal acting skills. I'd say he missed his calling. He looks great on camera, Clark Gable vibes going on. But check it out real quick, guys, and join us back on the other side.

Richard Jones: Are we returning to a new golden age of marketing where we rebalance the art and science involved? Wunderkind research shows the majority of CMOs look upon the last two years as a turning point. Access are exclusive, CMO State of the Union report to learn how marketers can succeed in this exciting new era.

Vern Tremble: Dude, that's dope. I've never seen a webinar like that before, Rich. I'm so excited that we get to bring this to our audience. Real quick, I want to plug that. You can sign up for the webinar today. It's going to take place October 26th, so you absolutely want to make sure that you get your place in line. But Rich, tell me about this experience. It was so cool to see you in this format. Tell me about it.

Richard Jones: Look, it was definitely a lot of fun to shoot, to recreate a bit of the Mad Men- esque kind of era, dress up, wear the hats and stuff. It was a lot of fun, but the reality is the webinar, it's not about that. It's about the quality of advice from the many amazing marketers that we had participate. Just to name a few, Amanda Bopp, VP of North America at Kate Spade, T. R. Wilhoit, VP of e- commerce at Case- Mate, and Sean Patel, VP of Growth of Marketing at JLo Beauty amongst a number of other fantastic, fantastic marketers. So ultimately, they are the star of the show. The advice that they give us all is the real value for tuning in, so make sure you do.

Vern Tremble: Oh, Rich, I couldn't have said it better myself. The quality of the brands and the thought leaders that participated in this webinar, I literally cannot stand how excited I am for our listeners and viewers to check out this webinar and be filled to the brim with the knowledge and the insight and the wisdom that these marketers have to offer them.

Richard Jones: And yeah, one thing, one thing, Vern, I would say that for anybody, if you sign up for the webinar, you're going to get a complimentary free report with all of the findings from the CMO State of the Union, so there's a double reason to make sure that you tune into the webinar.

Vern Tremble: That's so good. You will be entertained and educated. It's a double whammy. It's a perfect combination. Like I said again, guys, if you want more information about Wunderkind, please go to our website at wunderkind. co. That's wunderkind. co. We would love to be able to stay in contact with you. Check out more of our podcast episodes, download resources, white papers, check out our blog posts, and again, sign up for the webinar October 26th so you can get your front row seat to check out this world premiere. Again, my name is Vern Tremble. That's Individuality Unleashed.