CIO Press Release

Research Conducted by CIO Highlights CIO/CMO Relationship Gaps and Misconceptions to Be Addressed at CIO/CMO Agenda Event

FRAMINGHAM, MA–(Marketwired – Apr 30, 2013) - CIO‘s 2013 CIO/CMO Partnership survey digs into the CIO/CMO relationship from how these executives view each other, to future IT spending. Overall, the results stress that CIOs and CMOs must work together now to ensure investments for automating marketing align with enterprise architecture for maximum business results. The growing need for collaboration and alignment between the CIO and CMO for technology solution adoption — highlighted in the survey — has sparked the launch of the CIO/CMO Agenda event, produced by CIO in partnership with The CMO Club.

CIO and CMO Perceptions
The majority of CIOs and CMOs (82% and 77% respectively) describe their relationship with the other as excellent/good and 40% of CIOs and 27% of CMOs believe that the relationship will continue to improve over the next year. One reason for this positive view of the relationship is that respondents most often characterized each other as a consultant or strategic player in technology decisions. However, 14% of CMOs see CIOs as a road block and an additional 19% view CIOs as a risk assessor. One-quarter of CIOs view CMOs as a rogue player (view chart). Adoption of cloud solutions without IT’s approval was also highlighted in IDG Enterprise’s CITE research, including employee use of consumer services (41%) and file sharing tools (31%). To benefit the enterprise, CIOs and CMOs believe that collaboration, agility, innovation, customer insight and influence with the CEO are key to developing a closer relationship, which is necessary for results.

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Content Marketing Inst.

The term content marketing has been gaining a lot of attention over the last few years, and rightfully so. Content is a lifeline in today’s social ecosystem, so its rise in popularity makes perfect sense. But content marketing holds little benefit if it isn’t supported with a strong content strategy that enables a brand to tell a very consistent story across the media landscape.

Your content strategy should help draw parallels between what’s important to customers and what your brand stands for; it enables marketing teams to create more relevant content based on what your brand is comfortable talking about (and what it’s not comfortable talking about). And it provides opportunities for your employees, partners, and customer service reps to be a part of your story, too.

If you are ready to upgrade your content strategy — or create one from scratch — here are 3 considerations that will help keep your business in line with current content marketing best practices.

1. Move past the content marketing mainstream

Content marketing is more than just fodder for SEO; it’s more than tweeting out a cool photo in real-time during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and it’s so much more than an infographic that blesses your site with a multitude of back-links. Content must be emotional, tell a story, and aim to impact consumers’ behavior, attitudes, or perception of your brand. And, while search is certainly important, your brand story encompasses much more than what you write on your blog or website.

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Marketers spent more than $40 billion on custom media in 2011. B2B marketers are allocating one-third of their budgets to content marketing, and more than half plan to increase content marketing spending in 2013. However, as many IT marketers are discovering, content marketing is a complex practice that requires insights not just into what type of content to develop and deliver, but when and how to deliver these assets to ensure maximum engagement.

This whitepaper will provide you with:

• A better understanding of the role content consumption plays in the purchase process for major technology products and services.
• Important insights on creating distinctive and high impact content marketing campaigns that create high levels of engagement with IT decision-makers, driving awareness, trust, and, most importantly, sales.
• Tips on delivering the right content—in context—to make your brand message stand out in an increasingly crowded landscape.

Download the white paper now

MediaPost 

Social may have established itself as a brand-building requirement, but — as some marketers have learned the hard way — it can’t replace other channels yet. “Brand-building strategy and social strategy are inextricably intertwined,” according to Forrester analyst Tracy Stokes. Yet, “social efforts do not represent a stand-alone solution and need the scale and consistency of paid and owned media.”

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MediaPost 

Nielsen has inked a deal to buttress its Online Campaign Ratings (OCR), days after AOL said it would use the data as a first-of-its-kind carrot to attract more video advertising. Under the arrangement, Nielsen will meld data from AdSafe Media on whether a particular ad ran in a “safe” environment into the OCR system.

Nielsen executive Chris Louie said the integration offers OCR upgrades in terms of both “verification” and “viewability.” Advertisers can gain insight into whether an ad ran in a “brand-safe environment,” with OCR tracking the percent of ads running on sites deemed within an advertiser’s safety guidelines. The data can further yield information on the devices ads are viewed on and specifics about the content genre, such as news, entertainment, etc.

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eMarketer 

Many marketers have moved past a direct-response-centric model for online display advertising, recognizing that despite low clickthrough rates, banner ads also have a branding effect. And research suggests that adding rich media or video to those banner ads can improve both types of response—increasing the likelihood users will click the ads as well as boosting the lingering brand awareness that results from viewing.

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eMarketer

Marketers buying print or TV ads are often stuck with the same creative for the entire campaign lifecycle, even if periodic brand-health metrics show low favorability toward the campaign or poor ad recall.

But online, marketers increasingly look to swap out creative based on performance—and may even run hundreds of creative iterations that can be tailored to unique audiences through dynamic creative optimization.

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MediaPost 

Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.

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Inc

When it comes to branding, the larger danger is spending too much, rather than spending too little.

It’s a myth that having lots of brands and plenty of branding is good for business. After a certain point, both brands and branding cease to be useful–and, in fact, can be positively toxic. To understand why, though, it’s first necessary to differentiate between “brand” and “branding.”   You’ll see why in a minute.

Social media understanding seems to be splintering if last week’s Conference Board seminar on “Branding in the Social Media World” is anything to go by. Let’s face it – social media is such an enormous ‘bucket’ that it’s difficult to know what level to pitch it, and this seminar had everything from absolute beginners to accomplished players in its audience. I’m wondering if conference organizers need to start pitching their events in ‘levels’ that are more specifically defined for would-be delegates.

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