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Not long ago, a CMO said something to me that gave me pause: “We still need to rewrite the narrative.”
He wasn’t talking about a brand’s story or a social commentary or even our industry’s stance on an emerging issue. He meant the “CMO narrative.”
For as much ground as our field has gained in elevating the chief marketer to be a growth leader within organizations, there’s still a lot of work to do to change the way CMOs are perceived by their C-suites, boards, organizations and the broader business world. Chief marketers are business drivers and changemakers within their organizations, and the global CMO narrative needs to reflect that.
But correcting misperceptions that marketing is a cost center rather than an investment, that a CMO’s KPIs are vanity metrics and that our industry is all talk and no action takes time.
As part of that transformation, we are introducing Marketing Vanguard by Adweek, a platform expressly built to respond to the realities C-level marketing leaders—a unique and key component of the overall marketing community—experience every day.
But it’s an effort worth continuing. Especially now, in an era marked by exponential technological change and societal polarization, companies need the creativity, innovation, adaptability, empathy, relationship-building and storytelling capabilities that often only CMOs can bring.
Building on its legacy, Adweek is working to become even more of an indispensable resource for the overall marketing industry, providing the headlines that break news but also diving deeper to analyze trends, generate insights and deliver implementable strategies that marketers can put to use every day.
Why now
Despite marketers sometimes not being the best marketers of marketing, the CMOs we talk to every day are tired of being characterized as anything less than vital and imperative business leaders in the C-suite. They need the language, tools and connections to write a new narrative.
Through the Marketing Vanguard platform, we will go deeper in convening and creating content for that unique cohort of marketers—CMOs and those with equivalent titles who hold the marketing leadership mandate within any given company—to enable them to refine their narrative in business and continually redefine marketing practice and leadership, guide them in their current efforts, as well as support the next generation of marketing leaders.
“Vanguard,” literally defined, is “a group of people leading the way with new developments or ideas.” Marketing Vanguard by Adweek will connect the dots between marketing and business growth, and highlight and learn from the people who are, through their decisions and actions, rewriting the narrative around CMOs and the impact of advertising and marketing within and outside organizations. Importantly, Marketing Vanguard will also seek to empower chief marketers to drive the narrative forward at a time of such change—not just respond to it.
What we will offer
Marketing Vanguard will be many things at Adweek—particularly content for marketing decision-makers that will provide actionable, implementable strategies through case studies. It will include events, a new podcast interview series and the new Marketing Vanguard Awards.
With a pay-it-forward priority, and to advance the next generation of marketing talent, those who participate in Marketing Vanguard will have the ability to bring one to two rising stars on their teams to events and gatherings to provide them with exposure to valuable networking and learning opportunities.
It will align with Adweek’s mission of inspiring, connecting and guiding the global marketing community, placing emphasis on the core necessities required of all marketers and their peers to drive the practice forward: DEI, sustainability, talent strategy and next-generation education and support. More than that, it will be a singular entity for knowledge exchange, access creation and best practices sharing for participants and, importantly, teams and talent—all tied to and powered by Adweek’s rich base of news and trends coverage.
Inclusive of the complexity of the industry, it will involve CMOs as well as any C-level executive tasked with driving growth through marketing: chief brand officers, chief customer officers, chief growth officers, presidents and more. It will also include the unique and growing cohort of CEOs who have served as CMOs previously. Critically, it will be inclusive of both b-to-c and b-to-b companies from a variety of industries and companies large and small, as well as technology companies whose marketing leadership faces unique challenges and opportunities.
Marketing leaders want conversations—some private, some public—and access to experiences, opportunities, people and new ways of thinking that expose them to more and provide them with new sources of inspiration and innovation.
This week, under the Marketing Vanguard banner, Adweek gathered some of the world’s foremost CMOs during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for an inspiring luncheon at a private villa in Antibes. Our inaugural “Inspiration Excursion,” the luncheon was the first of many designed to bring marketing leaders out of their day-to-day to experience an environment rich with art, nature and science, to spur inspiration for creativity and innovation.
There is much more to come, especially as marketers confront the continued upheaval in the industry as well as new opportunities for growth and expansion of the CMO role. We are excited about how Marketing Vanguard fits into Adweek’s overall mission of inspiring, connecting and guiding the global marketing community.
