Marketing is the growth catalyst of the organization. Marketing's rightful place and CMO's rightful place is in the C-suite, shaping strategy, debating business challenges and finding solutions to drive growth.
Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with AdWeek and I'm thrilled to be coming to you from Davos, Switzerland. We are in the FQ Lounge and we have been hosting the Marketing Vanguard Inspiration Excursion here in Davos, convening CMOs for two days of insightful conversation, deep dives into the CMO role and how AI is transforming all of that. So I'm thrilled to be joined right now with Sumit Virmani. He's the CMO of Infosys. Sumit, welcome.
Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. And so great to be here. And I must say, welcome to Davos. I'm told this is the first time AdWeek is here. I'm so glad you are actually convening CMOs and giving them a platform.
Well, thank you so much for saying that because you by the way are no rookie. You are no stranger to Davos. You've been here how many years?
I believe 11. This is the 11th one if my memory serves me right. But definitely over a decade.
So listen, you have strong opinions about this. We were just talking about it. Why do you think it's so important for CMOs to be in Davos and why now?
Well, Jenny, we've talked about this before as well, but I've always believed that marketing is the growth catalyst of the organization. Marketing's rightful place and CMO's rightful place is in the C-suite, shaping strategy, debating business challenges and finding solutions to drive growth. Davos is a confluence of C-suite. It's a confluence of business leaders, world leaders and this is where debate around what's in the year ahead takes shape. Marketers should be very much a part of that because marketers are entrusted with building brands. They are entrusted with shaping growth and this is where they get to learn it all and influence it. So it's good to be at marketing-only platforms but it's great to be at a platform where the C-suite converges.
And let's talk about that. I mean, by marketing-only platform, Cannes absolutely is one of those and I think obviously, look, that used to be a celebration of creativity. It used to be only the agency community that would go. Obviously, that shifted probably 15 years ago when CMOs started to go to Cannes in droves. The difference though, and you've noted this, is Cannes is CMOs talking to CMOs. It's still very much a marketing-centric event. Granted, it's global, but it certainly pulls heavily from the US. It pulls heavily from sort of the go-to companies and industries and agencies that you would expect. Davos blows all that up. I mean, it's sort of this is where you actually, to your point, find yourself talking to people who are not like you. They're not CMOs. And so how does being in an environment where you are getting exposed to CEOs and to CFOs and to other world leaders, why is that so important and why do you think that's important for CMOs to get that exposure?
I think that's a great point to debate, Jenny. And I don't consider myself a Cannes pro. I've only been there twice, but it's a great platform. You learn a lot from some of the best campaigns out there in the world. You still continue to celebrate creativity and you get to learn from each other, learn from industries, but it's still a marketing bubble. It's still living within the community of marketers. And in real world, in real businesses, in real life, each of us as marketers, as CMOs, operate within the context of the business alongside other C-suite leaders. And if we truly have to influence strategic direction, if we truly have to influence company strategy via geopolitical changes, you need to be. Marketing is all about listening to the market and this is where you get an opportunity to do that. This is an opportunity for truly marketers to come and participate, learn from what's going to shape their CEO's priorities for the next year. What are the trends that are influencing cross-functional dimensions of your business? It's a fantastic opportunity to really break the bubble of marketing and learn from a divergence of voices that'll only make you smarter. And when you go back into your own environment and you're engaging with your fellow C-suite partners, you'll be a lot more informed. You'll have a lot more context and your marketing strategies, informed by this learning, will actually see a lot more acceptance and receptivity.
That's such a great point. I especially love what you're saying about the fact that if CMOs need to be relevant, if they need to be true growth drivers, you have to be 100% aligned with your CEO's agenda. You need to be able to see where they're spending their time, where their headspace is, what big macro forces they're grappling with, and what better environment than Davos. That said, not all CMOs get to come to Davos. I think what we tried to do, and part of the motivation in bringing the Marketing Vanguard program to Davos for the first time this year, quite frankly, was to create more access to a wider swath of CMOs. What advice would you give to CMOs who want to basically either advocate for themselves to come to Davos or find a true business case for coming who don't otherwise or wouldn't ordinarily have an opportunity to come or it wouldn't even be part of the CEO's agenda to have their CMO come with them?
Well, I think it's a journey, Jenny. And CEOs are just one critical stakeholder that CMOs have always aspired to work closely with and frankly they can't really survive without having a strong partnership with the CEO. But I won't stop at that. I would even say that we today live in a world of AI. AI clearly has been the narrative whether it's Cannes or whether it's Davos for the last couple of years and I believe that AI in some sense opens up an incredible opportunity for CMOs to widen the horizon, to look beyond their traditional marketing mold and say how can AI give me agency to widen my influence. And it's very feasible because today AI is giving CMOs access to analytics that was never possible in the era prior to AI. It's giving you a sense of deep partnership opportunities on data with your CIO and that should become integral because what you would like to do is have CMOs position themselves as the transformation partners, orchestrators of the enterprise strategy and that has to happen well before you make a pitch for coming to Davos. That should become integral to how you operate as a function. So I would say AI is unleashing a fantastic opportunity to bring creativity, data, analytics, tech together for marketers to become an integral contributor to strategy and growth. And once that happens, participation in platforms like this would be an automatic reality, not necessarily a business to be built.
I love that. So AI truly is, we are in an inflection point for CMOs. AI is driving that and it's a massive opportunity for those who get it right. And what I'm hearing you say is you won't have to sort of advocate for yourself or argue that you should be in environments like this as a CMO because it will just be obvious.
But an important point there is don't use AI to do what you do better. That's a given. It's not another technology to automate the marketing lifecycle. Yes, for sure it does that. But it gives you opportunity to contribute to product development. It gives you opportunities to elevate prototyping, reimagine experiences. So the point I'm making is it gives you permission to play in the entire business spectrum, not necessarily in the marketing spectrum and some of those opportunities will foster collaboration across the C-suite which you should proactively seek.
Like yes, all of that, a thousand percent. Mic drop moment, Sumit. So I mean, amazing, just because I track that so closely. Like I understand so deeply what you're saying and it is such an incredibly powerful moment. You know, honestly, I'm sure there's plenty of CMOs who think about that or listen to that and think, 'God, I can't handle one more thing on my plate. There's no way I could think about expanding my scope even further from where I'm at right now.' What do you say to those folks who might be...
