Uyen Nguyen

The role of the CMO is evolving as quickly as the marketing landscape. No longer just the branding arm of the business – CMOs must now be the organization’s eyes and the ears. They must be the stewards of customer experience. And increasingly, a driver of company-wide transformation. The creativity required to thrive under these conditions starkly separates leaders from laggards and has dramatically elevated the power – and profile – of effective CMOs. In this report, Forbes, Sprinklr, and LinkedIn survey the shifting fault lines of today’s marketing terrain and return with an incisive understanding of what it takes to be the Chief Marketing Officer of tomorrow.

Most New Yorkers recognize Penn Station as a subterranean place of stress and misery. But once upon a time, it was an industrial marvel serving 100 million people annually; the prized diamond of young Gotham. Just 50 years after its stately arrival, however, Penn Station was demolished – removed piece by piece as the industry it represented came toppling down. In its heyday, the railroad industry was unwavering. Pennsylvania Railroad’s budget trumped every other company in the United States. It employed 250,000 workers. And for 100 consecutive years, it paid dividends to investors – a record that still stands. So how did an industry once referred to as “a focal point in the epochs of man’s life” come to such a disappointing end?

The world spent $563 billion on advertising this year. By contrast, we spent $9 billion on customer care. That means brands spend 98% of their time and resources trying to find customers, and only 2% actually taking care of their customers. In a world where customers are connected, empowered, and in control, brands need to rethink what’s important.

Even for those who remember 1980, it’s easy to forget how daring the vision was. At a time when computers were impenetrable calculators inside science labs, or colorful contraptions from science fiction, there was Bill Gates. At 25 years old, he set out to redefine what was possible – prophesying that there would be “a computer on every desk and in every home.” Forty years later, that audacious idea is now a ubiquitous part of life. Microsoft established the vision, then made it our reality. With that, a novel problem manifests. What does a company do once it has fulfilled its purpose? Ctrl+Shift+F5 – in other words: a force refresh.

Royal Dutch Shell, quite literally, fuels the world. What started out in 1907 as an antique store selling – you guessed it – shells, has become No. 5 on the Fortune 500, No. 20 on the Forbes 2000, and one of the most valuable brands in the world. In recent years, Shell has become something else: a pioneer in digital transformation. The company just pulled off a previously unimaginable feat in engineering – employees in Calgary, Canada used virtual mapping to drill a well 6,200 miles away in Vaca Muerta, Argentina. And 7,500 miles away, in another corner of the world, employees at Shell corporate headquarters are working to pull off another feat: demonstrating that a large global organization can still deliver personalized customer experiences, at scale.

At 440 federalized airports across the United States, 44,000 TSA security officers will screen 2 million passengers. They will do that again tomorrow. That’s 730 million passenger screenings annually, and all it takes is one missed needle in the haystack for the consequences to be catastrophic. The TSA is a national security agency, like the CIA or the Department of Defense – with uniforms, procedures, and solemn responsibilities. But unlike any other national security agency, the TSA also bears the overlapping burden of providing customer service. A duality difficult to bridge even under the best of circumstances. And if national security and commercial air travel share one defining trait, it is that they are rarely conducted under the best of circumstances. Fairly or otherwise, public relations difficulties landed on the TSA from nearly day one. Those travails are well known. What is less well known is how the TSA, one social media engagement at a time, is changing the conversation.