Forrester applauds GM, Goodby, and McCann for breaking ground to create a new genre of agency orchestration.

Last week's announcement of Chevrolet's new global creative agency Commonwealth, a joint venture between Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and IPG's McCann Erickson Worldwide, is further evidence that the complexity of managing a global brand demands marketers and agencies to work together in new ways.

Despite being created primarily out of financial necessity — to cut more than $2 billion in global marketing expenses — CMO Joel Ewanick and agency leaders at Goodby and McCann arrived at an innovative solution to improve the brand's global creative stewardship. Less-committed CMOs might've given up on the idea that they could get their two most important creative agencies, from different holding companies, to work together. And lesser agencies might have folded up the tent and retreated to greener pastures, before sharing brand strategy and creative duties. But they didn't. They stared a cold financial reality in the eye, apparently over a hot coffee at a shop named Commonwealth.

So what kind of music will Commonwealth be playing for Chevy?

What does it take for CMOs to transition the organization from the well-known to the unknown? At Forrester, we call it adaptive marketing. In previous research, we identified the five habits of adaptive marketers. But many CMOs ask whether the destination is worth the journey.

Another way of putting it: What’s the implication of doing things the way they’ve always been done?

That’s the question Forrester sought to understand when we fielded a study in collaboration with The CMO Club to understand how well CMOs have developed capabilities that enable them to nimbly adjust to changing consumer behavior and market conditions.

You can read more about the findings of the study in the CMO Strategy section of Advertising Age.

Here’s the top line:

• The vast majority of marketers are still struggling to adapt. Seventy-eight percent of marketing leaders are having difficulty with transforming their organization to embrace the habits of adaptive marketers.
• Marketers who embrace adaptive habits report higher performance. (See chart below.)

For one week every year, the South of France becomes the center of the advertising universe. Now in its 58^th year, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has slowly but surely transformed itself from an advertising awards show into an event that brings together the world’s leading minds on advertising, film, music, and technology to debate the future of advertising.

To the uninitiated, Cannes Lions is a seven-day festival that recognizes and showcases the most creative advertising from around the world in every medium: film, digital, radio, print, outdoor, design, promotions, and integrated campaigns. The entire week is packed with screenings of all of the work, more than 50 seminars, 20-plus workshops, and, of course, the award ceremonies. This year it attracted more than 9,000 registered attendees and garnered almost 29,000 competition entries.

Here are a few of my takeaways and highlights from the Cannes Lions Festival 2011:

My colleague, Emily Riley, and I joined forces at Forrester's Marketing Forum to talk about how marketers can prepare for the next digital decade. My message is this. The only way CMOs can effectively lead their organization in the digital era is to ADAPT by embracing a new mental model to overcome the bad habits of marketing. Emily's message is that the digital revolution isn't just a top-down mandate. It's a mission that the entire marketing organization has to embrace at its CORE so that all marketing is customized, optimized, responsive, and empowering.

Tomorrow's Brands Can't Succeed With Yesterday's Leadership

Let’s be clear. I’m not saying today’s marketing leaders need to be replaced. I’m saying your rules need to be replaced.

And the trick to learning new rules is to overcome your mental barriers.

Consider Roger Bannister. He was the first person to run a 4-minute mile. The previous world record of 4 minutes and 1 second had stood for nine years. So many runners had tried to break the 4-minute barrier that scientists actually believed it was beyond the limitations of what the human body was capable of. But in fact, it wasn’t a physical limitation at all. It was a mental barrier. Once Bannister did it, 16 other runners broke it in the following four years. Not necessarily new runners: Many were the same people Bannister had been competing against.

What happened to those runners is what’s happening to you as a marketing leader. You’re having trouble breaking through to the next plateau.

I recently talked to Elaine Wong at Forbes about the top priorities for CMOs in 2011.

In the past, the CMO’s to-do list hadn’t changed much from year to year. Bob Liodice, president of the ANA, indicates that the top three or four issues have been pretty consistent over the past several years: strengthening the brand, improving integrated marketing communications, aligning the organization around innovation, and improving marketing's accountability.

But 2010 was a different kind of year: the year that digital became mainstream. This surge, or tipping point if you will, of digitally-enabled business models and consumer lifestyles is changing how CMOs are approaching their to-do list in 2011. After talking to several leading marketers, Bob Liodice of the ANA, and Nancy Hill of the 4As, here's what I learned:

CMOs Begin Preparing For The Next Digital Decade

Fast-follower CMOs want to get a horse in the digital race in 2011. Some are playing catch-up, but they all display a sense of urgency to make their move to remain relevant in the next digital decade. Our prediction is that 2011 will mark a year when many CMOs will remember making significant moves to leverage disruptive technology and emerging media to gain a long-term competitive advantage. Specifically, we identified three macro trends where CMOs will: