At the 7th edition of the flagship CII Marketing Leadership Summit on the 5th of December, 2023, against the background of facilitating top-level exchanges between innovative marketing leaders and members of the industry, the CII Deloitte Report titled “Trailblazers of tomorrow: Unveiling the new CMO paradigm” was unveiled.
The CII Deloitte Report discusses what the future holds for CMOs and how they can position themselves as strategic differentiators in the boardroom. The paper seeks to unravel mind-set shifts and strategies that will empower CMOs to quickly adapt to the tectonic changes and also shape the future of their respective organisations. The report identifies six emerging themes which will be key for future-readiness of marketing organisations. It inspires strategic thought and action and contains sample surveys conducted amongst the larger business fraternity.
Kedar Lele, Executive Director, Customer Development, Unilever spoke of the tremendous productivity upping happening across industries in India: “As a business leader, AI evokes a lot of emotions in me. It excites me immensely as it has brought about incredible cost reduction and enables ease of business too. He added: “technology is a means to an end’ and once we know what to do and use right prompts, AI could be one of the efficient and effective ways to do better business and ensure enhanced customer centricity.
Bikram Bedi, Vice President & Country Managing Director, Google Cloud, India spoke about the ‘ability to multiply’, adding that the “customer’s journey is today quite complex and Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) then becomes all the more critical in today’s landscape.” While mentioning successful use cases, Bedi stressed the importance of ‘agility transformation’ and ‘humans in the loop’. Speaking about high propensity customers, he named Shikhar, an app that embodies the democratization of technology and made high end products accessible to consumers.
The CII Marketing Leadership Summit was a signature event which witnessed participants across industries developing effective responses to the tectonic shifts in Marketing. Evolving Marketing models that can perform in the new normal and ensure business continuity were presented. The delegates comprised CEOs, CMOs, CXOs, Department heads- Marketing and Sales, Strategy and Corporate Communications.
