Deloitte's global CMO Diana O'Brien: 'Embedded in our strategy is a tilt to Asia'

It has been two years since Deloitte launched its Future of Work Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Singapore. Supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board, the CoE aims to create solutions that anticipate market disruptions, address the skills mismatch challenge, and identify future job requirements. The CoE can be seen as an indicator of Deloitte’s interest in the Asian region and two years later, that dedication towards Asia has not waivered.

In an interview with Marketing, Diana O’Brien (pictured below), Deloitte’s global CMO said embedded in Deloitte’s strategy is a tilt to Asia. While Deloitte acknowledges that there is “so much opportunity” for clients in the region, O’Brien added that there are also opportunities for companies outside of Asia to invest in the region and Deloitte is thinking of ways to optimise that.

“We are deploying lots of resources, lots of investment dollars, thinking about ways in which we can bring more technology opportunity to Asia. It’s one of our most important pillars in our strategy going forward,” O’Brien said.

While O’Brien was unable to reveal the total value of the investment in Asia, she explained that most of the growth for Deloitte would come from helping companies invest in Asia and assisting companies already in the region to grow. This will be done by taking advantage of cognitive data analytics, AI, optimising their solutions through alliances and clarifying their overall strategy.

O’Brien was promoted to her current role in early 2018, leading a network of brand, communications, marketing and insights organisations to drive growth within Deloitte. She has been with Deloitte for about 24 years and was previously the US CMO.

Organisational icebergs

One of the challenges O’Brien has faced in her career is around “organisational icebergs”. “When I first started the role six odd years ago in marketing for the US team, I really had to address the silos and they are hard to move. Hence, the term ‘icebergs’. You need an approach that brings multiple disciplines together and sees the problem holistically,” she said.

O’Brien said it is important for marketers to speak the language of their peer groups such as finance, IT and supply chain. In addition to that, marketers will need to translate customer insights for the CFO, CIO and head of supply chain, for example, because they do not necessarily understand marketing.

“Learn to speak their language. Put it in terms of the bottom line. Put it in terms of technologies that are needed,” she said.

The next tip is to be data-driven. According to her, it is not enough to just have the creative mindset. Marketers should think about ideas in the context of data before embedding it into the strategy.

“I see a lot of strategies where the customer isn’t front and centre. An organisation may decided to do a lot of things, but if they haven’t embedded their customer in the centre of the strategy, they won’t be successful,” she said.

Skills needed for next generation CMOs

She added that the CMO’s role today is to be the voice of the customer. So if you embed that into the strategy, the CMO will have a seat at the table on a constant basis. Also, because the CMOs are expected to be responsive to the customer environment and understand the voice of the consumers, companies also turn to them for advice when looking to create awareness, interest, and brand preference among consumers and drive growth.

According to O’Brien, companies have begin to realise that the entire C-suite needs to work together in order to drive growth, and the CMO is a particular part of that. “But in the past, I think some CMOs didn’t see it as their job. They saw their job as messaging and brand only and not about driving business growth, but that change had to happen,” she said.

“I don’t think you will find a CMO today that wouldn’t say ‘I’m responsible for driving growth’. I think it’s a great thing and it’s great for the profession,” O’Brien added.

The role of the CMO is undoubtedly evolving. While they used to focus on merely moving the customer through the marketing funnel until they made a purchase, CMOs today are expected to be skilled in digital and customer experience, as the world shifts to an experience economy. Possessing hard skills such as data, analytics and cloud computing are advantageous for marketers and aspiring leaders today. However, one must also not forget the importance of soft skills such as diplomacy, as well as organisational, psychology, and relationship management, said Diana O’Brien, Deloitte’s global CMO.

O’Brien explained that in order to be resilient in today’s world, navigate the silos and engage with leaders who do not speak your language, one needs to have empathy, be able to put themselves in others’ shoes and understand the different contexts and perspectives.

“We don’t always talk about developing the softer skills. But I think deep understanding, the ability to collaborate, and having empathy, those are some of the things that will never go away. Those will always be incredibly important attributes,” she explained.

While it is important to be focused on data, O’Brien said that the human element is the special gift that all individuals can bring and it’s a valuable tool set for a marketer to achieve success.

According to her, marketers are currently building on these capabilities, which resulted in them being invited to the table. She added that the building of capabilities has always been important, especially now that technology is “a huge transformer” of the world, whether it is through AI, AR or VR.

“I think it’s particularly important to focus on capability building because without it, a large part of our workforce won’t be able to keep up with the changing technology and demands on how we work,” O’Brien explained. She added: