• by Karl Greenberg , June 25, 2013

For the first time, the Cannes Lions included a CMO roundtable for top marketers to mull the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Marketing2020 study, based on a global survey of chief marketers, agencies and top market research firms. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) says the study, to be revealed in full at this fall's ANA Masters of Marketing summit in Phoenix, will be the largest-ever qualitative and quantitative review of marketing leaders and organizations. 

Among findings from the survey portion are that 20% more marketers versus seven years ago have helped CEOs establish their companies' growth agenda; 73% of marketers believe brands with a societal purpose drive business growth; ninety percent expect the size of global marketing departments to remain the same or increase over the next five years; 65% of senior marketers expect marketing and communications departments to merge in the next five years; and only 20% of marketers feel their teams receive adequate training, even though increased marketer training correlates with increased business growth.

Other findings: (no surprise here) technology is driving big changes in how marketers are developing value propositions and connecting with consumers; data mining and analytics are the capabilities marketers most want to develop over the next five years; the role of brands will increase significantly despite increasing consumer information and global transparency; marketing leaders beating the competition are closer to consumers and focus more on developing people in comparison to their peers; creative and agency partners will play a more important role in marketing organizations in the future.

The Cannes roundtable, which was chaired by the CMOs of Unilever, IBM, VISA and Adobe, and included 60 other CMOs and marketers, is the first of several global gatherings of top marketers to discuss the survey findings. The substance of the discussions will then find their way into the final study package, per Marc de Swaan Arons, chairman and founder of global marketing firm EffectiveBrands, which is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to culling and synthesizing the global roundtable conversations into recommendations. in addition to the marketing firm, the ANA, the WFA, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, Adobe and MetrixLab, have been involved in crafting the study.  

De Swaan Arons, who is also head of Marketing2020, tells Marketing Daily that the data components of the study include extensive surveys of top marketers and agency and research leaders, and a quantitative online survey in five global markets through July. "The first roundtables are about giving CMOs a flavor of what was discovered, and will tease out practical learnings, recommendations and frameworks that we can then apply," he says.

Three U.S. roundtables will be in Los Angeles (July 11), New York (July 17) and Chicago (July 30). The topics are around creating brands; structure, role and capabilities of marketing; big data analyses and how CMO's should participate in agency collaboration. De Swaan Arons says that including the U.S., there will be nine roundtables, including in Paris, London, Sao Paulo, and Brussels. "We want to provoke discussion among those participating and give them an opportunity to offer analysis and guidance."  

The ANA says that over the past three months, 350 CEOs, CMOs, CMO peers and agency leaders and several thousand marketers from around the world have contributed to the online survey for Marketing2020.