Marketers’ biggest concerns heading into 2024

Now that 2023 is in the rear view, marketers are prepping for the next 12 months. With the economy still uncertain and two wars underway, this year will likely bring many challenges for brands to navigate. At the same time, one of 2023’s biggest trends, AI, is expected to continue its skyrocketing growth, further complicating how chief marketing officers do their jobs and attract consumers. Here are the six biggest things marketers are wrestling with going into 2024. See our Year in Review stories here Economic uncertainty Like last year, economic uncertainty and higher prices are still weighing heavily on marketers’ minds. The holiday shopping season is a prime example of how worried CMOs remain in the face of financial pressures, including the two wars overseas, high gas prices, inflation and the return of student loan payments. While the National Retail Federation predicted as much as a 4% rise in holiday sales for 2023, the forecast was much less robust than 2022’s 5.4% holiday sales increase. To keep up, retailers flooded the market with promotional ads in November and December, and email marketing for the Black Friday holiday shopping weekend reached a fever pitch as brands screamed out deals-driven messaging. Revisit 2023’s holiday ad campaigns “There’s still a continued anxiety around the economy—are we going to fall into a recession, are we not? Interest rates are still at levels that are quite extraordinary when it comes to spending in particular,” said Alicia Tillman, chief marketing officer of Delta Air Lines, in late 2023. “Obviously a thread of any potential downfall of the economy always brings thoughts to mind around spend and prioritization,” she added, noting that the carrier is focused on experiences, such as its recent Window Seat pop-up shop at John F. Kennedy Airport, and enhancing its loyalty program to attract wallet-watching customers. AI’s rise Everyone can agree that AI dominated the marketing world last year with its skyrocketing pace of innovation and potential implications. A new report from Kantar on Marketing Trends 2024 found that 67% of marketers feel positively about the possibilities of generative AI. However, that leaves at least one-third feeling not so keen. Indeed, at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference in October, one marketer, speaking on condition of anonymity, compared AI’s rise to that of social media, which also saw early buzz but now has a plethora of brand safety issues. Whether worried or cautiously optimistic, CMOs are watching AI. Speaking about State Farm’s plans for 2024, Kristyn Cook, chief agency, sales and marketing officer for the insurer, mentioned the fast-growing technology. “We continue to move away from linear TV and lean into a digital approach, but I think that’s going to continue to be heightened, especially as we think about generative AI and what that means in terms of opportunities and risks for brand,” she said recently. “Many of us are looking at how does it make it additive and more efficient, but at the same time, there are risks at play and things to think about strategically.” Read more: The rise of ChatGPT The CEO-CMO disconnect CMOs continually strive to be on the same page as leadership in order to keep the marketing dollars flowing. However, a recent McKinsey survey suggests this relationship might be in jeopardy in the future due to a disconnect between marketers and their CEOs. When CMOs and CEOs were asked about their top marketing metrics, the two groups agreed only 50% of the time. A similar divide occurred regarding what each considered the primary role of marketing to be. According to Lisa Mann, managing director and chief marketing officer of Raines International, the CEO and CMO are often unaligned on KPIs—CEOs are thinking about top line and bottom line, but marketers are pushing things like awareness, impressions, purchase consideration and click-to-purchase, for example. “I consistently encourage people to think about tying to the P&L—making sure that the language of the CMO is closer to the language of the CEO,” she said, speaking at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference in November. To that end, CMOs recognize they need to “improve their financial literacy,” she said, noting that they should learn to speak about future cash flows and their origins in order to have a better relationship with leadership. Work-from-home and in-office balance After the pandemic upended traditional five-day weeks in the office, marketers and agencies alike have struggled to find a balance that benefits both employers and their staffers. That struggle is not expected to end any time soon, amid new employer mandates for in-office time and subsequent staffer pushback. LinkedIn data around the job market shows a reduction in remote jobs and an increase in hybrid home-office work as some employers try to adapt to demand, according to Melissa Furze, VP of customer science and B2B Institute at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, speaking at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference. Indeed, Kristen D’Arcy, chief marketing officer of lifestyle brand True Religion, described the pursuit for a solution in a post-pandemic world as ongoing and a discussion she is often having with her CMO colleagues. “A lot of what we talk about is how do you create the right kind of culture on your team, while also respecting your team’s need for more work-life balance,” she said. Organizing talent Even as marketers struggle to find the right recipe for working from home and from the office, they’re also having issues finding the right mix of employees. Many brands have taken more marketing work in-house, but challenges remain with how to best organize talent. At Keurig Dr Pepper, 60% of media buying is now done internally by the brand’s media-driven centers of excellence to improve speed and agility, CMO Andrew Springate recently told Ad Age. “We actually have agile teams that will look on a weekly basis into what’s going on in terms of how media is performing, how the consumers are responding, are we generating returns,” he said, speaking at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference. “We will go heavier on messages that are working and if messages aren’t working we will pull them off and we do that on a very rapid basis, which is very new for us as a company.” Graduate Hotels, a 33-unit hospitality chain, uses “creative pods” to improve a culture of collaboration and leverage different skill sets, according to CMO Michaella Solar-March. Yet even as marketers grapple with the in-house work mix, they’re also taking extra care with bringing on new employees. True Religion’s D’Arcy said one concern for her next year is recruitment. “Trying to get the right people in particular for us in a moment where we are—knock on wood—on a bit of a rocket ship, you want to make sure you preserve the things that worked before among the current team, but then as you add people, it’s the right mix of respect the old but if we continue to catapult this thing forward we need a careful balance.” Hear more: How True Religion is making a comeback Navigating a fraught geopolitical landscape After 2023’s share of brand fails—including Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, and Target’s reversal of selling Pride Month merchandise—it’s clear that many customer bases are polarized. In recent months, the challenges have grown even more complex for brands and brand leaders following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. CMOs are now walking a tightrope of trying to appeal to all customers and in 2024, they may need to improve their strategies. Jeremy S. Thompson, senior VP at Edelman Global Advisory, noted that today’s consumers do expect brands to speak out on core issues, but only with authenticity. “Especially in today’s environment, where any tweet or a TikTok for example, can go viral in either the best or the worst ways, one of the questions that we’re asking ourselves in 2023 and 2024—when we have a major presidential election—is should brands be speaking about core issues that might be political or cultural?” he said at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference. Thompson said that a recent survey found that 56% of people expect brands to be true to who they are. Yet most brands Edelman has surveyed “did not consider the political or geopolitical ramifications of the global environment before they made a decision, and then they suffered the consequences,” he added. See our Year in Review stories here

Marketers’ biggest concerns heading into 2024

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