INTERVIEW Tim Stone - Polycom
“Its also about ‘looking digital’ as a company in terms of products, sales and marketing - however this cannot be
achieved without taking steps to ‘be digital’ as a business internally around your systems and processes. ”
Tim Stone, Independant Consultant
Demand Generation 2019
Over the past couple of
Ian Hunter talks to Tim Stone about what’s on the mind of Chief Marketing Officers – after all, as the former Head of
EMEA Marketing at Polycom who previously ran the collaboration marketing for Cisco EMEA, together with an ear
to the ground, he should know
months, Tim Stone has
met with some of Europe’s
leading marketeers,
Industry analysts and industry
gures through chairing of e
CMO Event, an ideas network
for leading business executives
that can assist organisations
to build lasting relationships
between selected educational
partners, innovative businesses
and respected professionals from
around the world.
Attendees at last November’s
CMO event included Bloomberg,
Avery Denison and Lego, so I
asked Tim for a snapshot of the
impact Digital Transformation is
having on businesses.
“One of the sessions I chaired
was on the topic of leveraging
digital strategies where you have
to remember that digital business
means many things to dierent
people. Most enterprises struggle
with understanding the overall
journey, where their organisation
is and what steps need to be
taken.
e key takeaways we wanted
to deliver were; the opportunities
and challenges of leveraging the
digital ecosystem in the enterprise,
how to measure business impacts
relevant to digital business and
identify business models that
reach customers eectively.”
AWAY FROM THE CONFERENCE
SESSIONS, WHAT WERE THE
HOT MARKETING TOPICS CHIEF
MARKETING OFFICERS ARE TALKING
ABOUT FOR 2019?
“ere’s such a lot happening
at the moment but it would be
useful to highlight six key areas
that are exercising CMOs today.
Digital disruption is
Accelerating and leading through
market transitions is key to
survive with marketing needing
to play a major role in sensing
transitions. Its also about ‘looking
digital’ as a company in terms of
products, sales and marketing -
however this cannot be achieved
without taking steps to ‘be digital’
as a business internally around
your systems and processes.
ere is now a shift from
ROMI to CX Metrics – Let me
explain; a greater emphasis will
be placed on metrics around
customer experience (CX) as
opposed to Return on Marketing
Investment. Many companies
do not have a single owner
for the end to end Customer
Experience which is a challenge. A
consequence of this is that many
new Martech companies are
springing up who can help with
things like engagement scoring.
Analytics – As Marketeers
we are overloaded with data and
often get wrapped around the axle
discussing it. We in marketing
and our business leaders need
actionable insights. Human
intelligence combined with
Articial Intelligence is required
to gain much more meaningful
insights. As a marketeer this
is essential to spend budgets
in the most eective way and
demonstrate to your sales
stakeholders the increasing spend
on digital!!
Articial Intelligence (AI)
however is THE current hot topic
with an explosion of companies
and startups entering the AI
space. AI will be a game changer
for many areas of business
marketing and use cases today
include customer behavior
analytics and social monitoring,
A/B testing, targeting, advert
writing, agent assistants and
staggeringly, chatbots are
predicted to power 85% of
customer service interactions by
2020 according to Gartner.
I CAN SEE THESE FOUR TOPICS
FIGHTING FOR PODIUM POSITIONS
BUT WHAT ARE THE NOTABLE
CHALLENGERS FOR 2019?
ere’s an increased use of
virtual reality in marketing with
enterprises considering how they
could embrace this technology to
improve the customer experience
in the product or service sales
cycle. An example would be,
for an event marketeer, having a
virtual tour of a prospective venue
dressed in their own theme and
branding prior to deciding on
your choice of venue and design.
e workplace – it’s amazing
how many companies are not
keen on exible working which
is at odds with many employee’s
preference and government
guidance. Some of the best
marketeers I have worked with
over the past 20 years are working
parents who rely on exible
working, why would you exclude
them from your talent pool?
So all in all 2019 looks at
exciting year for Marketing
with lots of new trends and
technologies to keep us busy.
EXPERIENCE headsets from SOS
01403 224450 www.soscommunications.co.uk
28 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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