Forrester Blogs › Marketing & Strategy › Chief Marketing Officers › Bert Dumars

Culture Is Key To Marketing Innovation Velocity

Posted by Bert Dumars on May 14, 2013

Today, we published my first Forrester Research report on marketing innovation, "Culture Is Key To Marketing Innovation Velocity" (client access required). This is the first report in a series I will be writing on marketing innovation culture, innovation labs, and partnering to accelerate marketing innovation velocity.

Marketing innovation in the age of digital disruption, perpetually connected customers, and the customer life cycle is hard and getting harder. What separates the marketers who are leading their organizations to accelerate marketing innovation velocity is the organizational culture they have created. This report discusses the four marketing innovation cultures including: risk-averse, pragmatist, experimenters, and customer-obsessed. We also align the cultures based on whether they are internally or externally oriented or highly focused or highly flexible. For example, a customer-obsessed culture is more flexible and externally oriented in how it innovates and markets to its customers.  Here is the marketing innovation cultures matrix:

 

  marketing innovation

The report also discusses four case studies including Nestlé, 7-Eleven, Skinnygirl Cocktails, and Chick-fil-A.

  • The Nestlé case study discusses how its Digital Acceleration Team lab is helping it change the culture of a 300,000-person organization.
Read more

Categories:

A Forrester Client Joins The Team

Posted by Bert Dumars on February 20, 2013

I am excited to announce that after more than two decades as an executive and leader in digital marketing, eCommerce, social media marketing, and business technology, I have joined Forrester as a Vice President, Principal Analyst serving CMOs. One of the main reasons I decided to join Forrester was that I had been a client for more than nine years and had great experiences using Forrester reports and analyst interactions to achieve my business goals and objectives at Newell Rubbermaid and US Department of the Treasury, IRS. My relationship with Forrester goes even further back, as I briefed Forrester on my Intel and Dell products and technologies back in the 1990s. Also, it turned out that I knew more people at Forrester than any other firm . . . so as the old saying goes, I liked and respected the company so much as a client that I decided to join.

Another reason I joined Forrester, and the most important one, is to help CMOs and senior marketing executives solve problems in marketing to today’s consumers. In a world of digital disruption, ultra-connected consumers, and an ever-evolving customer life cycle, the challenge and complexity of marketing to consumers has never been greater. I believe that to overcome these challenges, CMOs are going to have to accelerate their innovation efforts and become digital disruptors in their target markets to succeed.

With that in mind, here are some questions I will be working on as I research CMO-led marketing innovation:

  1. How do CMOs define marketing innovation, and what role are they playing in driving it?
  2. How do CMOs drive innovation in different organizational cultures, ranging from experimental to risk-averse?
  3. What models, processes, and frameworks are CMOs using to drive marketing innovation?
  4. What are CMOs budgeting for innovation now, and how much do they expect to grow their innovation budget in the future?
Read more

Categories:

Syndicate content