Tenets of a new era of marketing: What are Asia’s CMOs focusing on?

Nearly 83% of global CEOs view marketing as a major driver of growth. According to a 2019 survey by McKinsey, this is a drastic change that was starting to emerge even before the pandemic as the function moved away from its close association with “advertising” or “branding.”

Fast forward to 2022, further exacerbated by the pandemic, today the real value of the CMO lies in driving the organisation towards a shared vision – one which is in line with the changes felt by the wider community, said marketers attending a recent roundtable hosted by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, in partnership with CNN, titled “The New Marketing Tenets - Embracing the future with context, purpose and creativity.”

According to Singtel’s VP of group strategic communications and brand, Lian Pek, tactical marketing has become a smaller part of the equation. Today’s marketing teams need to speak to a company’s purpose and project that.   

“Of course, businesses won’t exist if they don’t serve a commercial need, but they can no longer afford to do that exclusively. Ever since the pandemic, the whole mindset around the world has shifted. As corporate leaders and citizens, companies have had to be far more proactive in taking care of not just their customers but also their employees and communities in face of the global health and economic crisis. Doing good and doing well, blending purpose with profit is more essential now,” Lian said.  

She added that one clear distinction that has emerged post-pandemic, is that consumers want to actively associate with brands that they feel understood the challenges they went through. As such, from the brand marketing point of view, Lian and her team believe it is so much more important to communicate what Singtel stands for as a company – its purpose and values.   

“More and more, consumers want to know whether our values resonate with theirs. This will determine whether they’ll embrace us as a brand for the long haul,” she added. 

Watch here for the event highlights and interviews.

Communicating in a purposeful manner

But simply having a purpose alone isn’t going to help a brand stand out. Storytelling is key to getting your message across to your consumers, shared CNN’s Rob Bradley, senior vice-president of international digital strategy and head of advertising sales for Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Commenting on which mediums work best not just to reach audiences, but also translate a brand’s story, Bradley said that today over 75% of CNN International’s campaigns are cross-platform given consumers are no longer confined to a single channel or medium. 

He reiterated however, that the real challenge for marketers arises in the ability to cut through the clutter. “There are a lot of marketers who are able to make some amazing content themselves, but actually getting it to cut through at a constant pace is really hard. The marketers’ job has become increasingly hard given the myriad of platforms they have to work with and the number of different ways of telling a story,” Bradley added.

What CNN sees time and again when it comes to its clients’ success stories however, is that those who are able to marry storytelling with outcome and insight derived from data, often come out on top.  This had also led to the 42-year-old company reimagining its own offering to not just offer news, but also data, research, creative agency services, programmatic services, and media buying services.

“At CNN if you look at what we stand for, you will see that all our teams including those in sales, are very clear that our purpose is to provide essential information to the world from using information that helps inform and people to make decisions […] Even as we work with our clients, we are always looking for data to ensure the causes we are working to promote isn’t just the flavour of the month but has a longevity to it,” he added.

Listening to your employees

While the COVID-19 pandemic threw much of the world into chaos, one brand that really found its voice within the community was Temasek. Temasek’s director of public affairs, Lena Goh shared that amid the pandemic, Temasek together with Temasek Foundation, really took on a wider role within the community by supplying masks, sanitisers, oximeters, and many other equipment needed during the difficult period.   

Goh added that the choice to play an active role in the community came about as many of its employees felt the need to step up as a corporation.  “We felt this is where we needed to be, and be authentic to our purpose,” she said.  

“During the height of the COVID-19 period, we actually went beyond our day jobs of investment to really care for the community by partnering with organisations such as the World Food Programme, and our portfolio companies such as Singapore Airlines, to send essential supplies all over the world,” she added. The initiatives resonated with the wider community it serves and also helped Temasek gain greater brand awareness.  

However Goh added that the company didn’t charge forward with the initiatives with the objective of uplifting its brand, rather it listened to its wider community and its staff in what was needed during this difficult time. “We felt the need to step up and do our part for the community because it gave us essentially the social license to operate. Only when the community thrives, can we do well. It wasn’t just about making money from investments, but rather about us contributing back to help the community. And that to us was priceless,” she shared.  

Listening to its staff and community has also been a key way forward for global bank BNP Paribas, which has been actively looking to tackle challenges around sustainability. According to a 2020 study by Unily, 65% of respondents said they were more likely to work for a company with a strong environmental policy, and around 57% of employees said they need more information on their company’s environmental goals.  

Speaking on the trend, Michelle Cockrill, Asia Pacific head of marketing and communications for Securities Services, at BNP Paribas said that many global financial institutions are now taking climate crisis extremely seriously and BNP Paribas is committed to do better in the space.  The bank has been carbon neutral since 2017 and is a member of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

From a marketing perspective, Cockrill said every small step counts in the right direction. “Internally, we have a defined purpose, and our employees live and breathe that purpose. As a marketing team, we look at all our marketing efforts through a sustainability lens, whether it’s off-setting the carbon footprint for our events, our commitment to ban single-use plastics, or something simple like reducing the file sizes of our marketing emails to reduce our carbon footprint,” she said. 

“We’ve created that environment where people can be innovative and come up with blue sky ideas.” 

Ensuring innovation doesn’t stop

Not surprisingly, during the pandemic, many companies cut their innovation budgets. According to another McKinsey report, many companies were focused on largely maintaining business continuity, and as such, investments in innovation suffered.

However, for brands such as DBS, investments in areas such as martech actually increased in the past few years. Explaining the reasoning further, Saurabh Singhal, group head of marketing, corporate, SME and transaction banking at DBS, said: “We realised that all the investment that we have made over the years on digital actually came to fruition in the last few years.

“Customers who were previously hesitant on going digital, had to embrace technology led solutions when the pandemic struck. DBS has been ready for this shift for years.”  

Singhal and the team at DBS are ardent believers that innovation needs to be an ongoing investment because it helps any company prepare for the unknown. “It is not when a crisis hits that you start innovating, In fact, that’s when your innovation pays off,” he said. 

Adding to the point Mohit Gupta, head of marketing and social at Corporate Bank, Deutsche Bank, APAC, shared that while many companies might link innovation to budgets, it is more to do with having the right mindset.

“Yes, budgets are important to create the right marketing, but the vision needs to be there first within the marketing team,” he said.

He added that innovation doesn’t have to always constitute a big spend, but rather tweaks that can be made at lower cost which can result in higher efficiency for a team or a company.

“So rather than think money first, companies must think of doing more with less.”

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