Do you have to be under 45 to be a digitally-minded CMO?

As the new generation of digital natives – who have never known a time without a computer, the internet, or more recently, a smartphone – enters the workforce, it raises the question of whether or not chief marketing officers (CMOs) are able to stay ahead of the digitalisation game if they are above a certain age.

A digital communications expert says CMOs above the age of 45 simply won’t make the cut.

“The best analogy is if you were brought up tending to horses, and cars came in when you were in your twenties, you are just never going to have the innate understanding of that new world that people brought up in it will have,” he says.

“I have never seen evidence of someone over 45 who can understand the overall market.”

But he doesn’t think CMOs should give up their jobs if they are over 45. Instead, CMOs have to hone their management styles to let subordinates, who may be digital natives, take over in digital arenas where the CMO is less knowledgeable.

The first step is recognising that CMOs no longer need to know everything but rather, understanding the strengths of their staff.

“The real skill of a CMO becomes being able to pick and train people you can trust,” he says.

“Fundamentally, you have to move from directing people to helping your people get obstacles out of the way.

“The people who work for you are the ones directing you. They will give you a list of problems and your job as a leader is to go out and get those problems out of the way.”

But the accountability for mistakes still lies with the CMO.

“As a senior person, you will always get the blame. The responsibility lies with you.”

Adrian Toy, PUMA’s regional marketing director in the Asia Pacific, is under 40 and comes from a direct marketing background. He sees himself as a digital immigrant rather than a digital native.

Age is not a defining factor for Toy, who thinks a willingness and passion for learning and sticking to the core marketing principle of communicating a consistent message across multiple channels, matters more.

“A young person knows how to use digital platforms and media, but he or she doesn’t know how to market things using those platforms,” he says. “It’s just like how my son knows Snapchat, but it doesn’t mean he can use it to market something.

“Digital platforms are just a means to an end for a marketer. It’s about your ability to quickly learn the platforms and applying your knowledge of marketing to them.”

In response to the idea of allowing junior staff to reverse-mentor the CMO, he agrees that empowering your staff is a good idea because the CMO cannot possibly keep up with new digital platforms, which are proliferating and segmenting too quickly.

“The CMO’s role should be the one of fostering innovation and creativity, managing a portfolio and encouraging people to do it. A CMO doesn’t have to personally do everything that comes up,” Toy says.

Yet there is still value in junior staff members learning how to do marketing from an experienced CMO.

“In the last dot com wave, I was a young guy and I used to reverse-mentor the CEO of my company,” Toy says.

“I knew how to use everything on the internet – websites and search – but ultimately I learned a lot from him, such as the business application of those platforms and how to market things, which is a skill set that you don’t have when you’re young.”

The holistic view that keeps campaigns incorporating digital marketing consistently, for example, is something young people may lack.

He says: “Too often, digital people get carried away with doing things because they can, such as cool apps, which is why you see campaigns where things aren’t connected. For example, the online visuals may look different from what you see offline or in public relations channels and social media. That’s a marketing discipline that needs to be maintained.”

John Zeigler, chairman and CEO of DDB Group Asia Pacific, India and Japan, also says attitude trumps age for CMOs hoping to stay on top of digital marketing trends.

“Marketers behind successful brands should be able to look forward and never assume that what they did in the past will work tomorrow,” he says.

“The biggest challenge for agencies that position themselves at the cutting-edge of digital is how to not only keep up with technological developments, but also how to translate them quickly into strategies for clients. It’s about remaining agile and being able to respond.”

Like Toy, Zeigler maintains there are marketing fundamentals that continue to belong to the rule book in the face of fast-moving digital trends impacting agencies.

“It’s about the intersection of creativity, humanity and technology and making sure marketing solutions touch all three of these principles – a big idea that has a strong human message that’s relevant and timely,” Zeigler says.

Swift reaction to consumer and digital trends is also the answer to the question of age for Colin Light, digital consulting leader of PwC China and Hong Kong.

“Age doesn’t necessarily preclude you from taking part in the digital world. One of the most innovative guys in the world was Steve Jobs. In his fifties, he was still producing some of the world’s greatest digital services,” he says.

Reforming the internal structure of in-house marketing departments and marketing agencies can also be a game-changer, such as the rise of chief technology and chief digital officers.

“Both roles are designed to do the same thing: to enable the CMO to keep up with the pace of changing technology and more importantly, how that technology can give customers better experiences and marketing communications,” Light says.

Although traditionally, marketing and IT departments have very little to do with one another, Light says in the digital world, it is imperative the two work very closely together.

As the needs of each company vary, it is helpful to do a digital readiness assessment to look at the skills and capabilities across an organisation.

“Once you have this view, you can see where there are gaps – do you have the skills, but the structure needs to be improved? Do you have 90% of the skills, but you just need to incentivise people to work together? That’s when you can restructure your company to enable better collaboration,” Light says.

“In other cases, you might not have the right talent and the IT department is just focused on systems management. You may need to go and find specific talent.”

Another way of encouraging digital innovation is to set aside a budget for testing things out in emerging media where a different set of rules apply.

“If you use the traditional benchmark of ROI, you are never going to test anything innovative. You need the space where you can do R&D,” Toy says.

The biggest challenge for an older CMO, says Toy, is moving from the emphasis on emotionally powerful content in traditional marketing to the more data-driven and fact-based paradigm of digital marketing.

“Emotional content and data are two different extremes. In traditional marketing, you care about results, but not to the same extent. For example, a classic TV marketer would look for a cool and creative storyboard, that one big idea that will make a statement,” Toy says.

“But a digital marketer would look at data to assess which website is better, do an AB test on the platforms and choose the one that works better. The testing and learning philosophy is quite different.”

The digital communications expert agrees there is a fundamental shift in advertising and marketing towards analytics.

“The big explosion is analytics. Companies are collecting huge amounts of data about what people are doing, where they are going and their search results. It is an overwhelming amount of data and a lot of the time, they are trapped in internal structures of client companies, which have nothing to do with agencies.”

For example, in some companies, the CMO may rarely talk to the head of customer service, who may be located in another building or even another country. But for digital media to work, says the expert, they need to work together.

Marketing and advertising is also moving from awareness towards ROI.

“It’s performance marketing, where you can track people from an online ad to a website and the point of purchase,” says the digital communications expert.

He sees no purpose in investing in raising the awareness of an ever-expanding target audience.

“If you don’t need more than 2,000 people to be interested in your product, then there is no point in having an awareness campaign that targets 100,000 people,” he says.

“You need very clear objectives that are not about awareness or reach. Are you building a database of contacts? Are you getting people to go to events or buy products? What is the real objective of your campaign? If it’s awareness, then you are probably wasting your money. Awareness is not bad, in fact, it’s critical, but it’s not an objective.”

Toy disagrees, believing awareness can be a viable purpose for a campaign, but marketers need to be clear about why they need to raise awareness.

“You have to balance the art and science of marketing. You can sometimes get carried away with data, which often, when you dig deeper, can’t be applied directly all the time,” he says.

“Marketers are here to tell a story, not to measure the number of clicks. It’s just a measurement to indicate how you are doing.

“You have to get across your story and what you stand for as a brand, and a click will not tell you that. Because people are still new to understanding data, it’s possible to draw the wrong conclusions, such as by confusing correlation with causation.”