I had the privilege of attending the 2^nd annual Procter & Gamble (P&G) Signal P&G event in Cincinnati yesterday, May 30, 2013. The event was created to inspire P&G marketers to accelerate digital, social, and mobile marketing innovation while not losing focus on core brand building fundamentals. Marc Pritchard, P&G CMO, stated several times that “understanding our consumers is core to anything we do in digital.” 

The event MC was John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media, who did an excellent job keeping the speakers moving and on point. Stan Joosten, innovation manager, global eBusiness, of P&G played a pivotal role in managing the overall event under Marc Pritchard’s sponsorship and leadership. There were nearly 500 P&G and outside guest attendees as well as many more via webcast.

It was a packed day with 20 speakers and excellent insights. Here are but a few quotes and insights from the day.

Marc Pritchard started the day off with key themes:

• “Speed is absolutely essential to winning brand building at speed of digital.”
• Main Signal P&G themes for P&G marketers to soak in included: “speed, teamwork, and innovation based on P&G-proven business models, with brands being most important.”
• “P&G must innovate by being productively paranoid.” Pritchard based this mantra on the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

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?

I only just recently started watching Mad Men — a shock to many of my marketing peers and to regular folks who now think I’ve been living under a rock for the past five-plus years. I’ll save my thoughts on the show for another time, but what strikes me at least once during each episode is how much everything (tactics) and nothing (strategy) have changed. Similar fundamental challenges weigh on Sterling Cooper’s clients’ minds and on our CMO clients’ minds today: How do we connect with our consumers in a way that differentiates us from the competition? While Don Draper was limited to print and TV, thanks to digital platforms and tools, today’s CMOs have an almost-infinite number of options with which to build relationships with consumers.

2013 is the year that digital takes on a much more significant role in marketing and business strategies at business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations, and CMOs will be responsible for shepherding the change. 2013 is the year that CMOs will leverage digital tools to drive innovation of new compelling brand experiences — not as add-ons or enhancements but as integral elements of the brand’s messages, actions, and products that will differentiate your offering.

B2C CMOs, your 2013 resolutions should be to:

• Embrace digital disruption. Digital disruption has remarkable strength. It's able to bulldoze traditional sources of competitive advantage faster, with greater power, at less cost than any force that came before it — and no business is immune. CMOs must make a strategic commitment to innovation and stop thinking about digital as another media channel. Digital is everywhere and should elevate marketing and business priorities for consumer benefit.