Who would be a retail CMO?

In this blog:

• Competency Spectrum of a Retail CMO
• AI’s Role in Empowering CMO
• Navigating Market Dynamics with AI

As we prepare to launch our new whitepaper ‘The retail CMO’s guide to Using AI in 2024’ I got to thinking about the question; Who would be a retail CMO?

Think of the competencies needed to fulfil the role; market analyst, product specialist, economic forecaster, weather forecaster, mathematician, technology expert, predictor of customer behaviour, expert on market dynamics, part time magician, statistician, the list goes on and on. In all seriousness this is a pivotal role for all retailers and one that has many constituent parts.

So any help that the CMO can get is more than welcome; which is where AI comes in. I expect everyone is bored hearing about the massive impact that AI will have on all our lives, blah blah; so I won’t add to that debate here.

Our research shows that the retail CMO is positive about the use of AI in their businesses, but that the use of it could improve (75%). That’s not too surprising as we are at the early stage of adoption and the tools that use AI are just coming to market now. Tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney have hit the headlines and have significant adoption, but anyone that has used these tools knows that the quality of the output is highly dependent on the quality of the input; in other words the ‘prompt’.

Now consider an AI tool, Google Performance Max, that uses machine learning models to drive more conversions by optimising bids and placements in real time. PMax uses Smart Bidding to achieve these goals.

Google’s AI technology looks across many factors when optimising PMax campaigns, including; audiences, creatives, budget optimisation, bidding strategy, attribution, and the list goes on. In other words, to get the most benefit from PMax advertisers need to provide the best inputs for machine learning and AI technologies to work. Back to ‘prompts’.

The other complexity is that the market is changing minute by minute and for a bid strategy to be optimised it must be able to change alongside the market. So now we have two components that us humans are very bad at managing rapidly changing, multi-dimensional market conditions and complex prompting of AI technology across potentially thousands of products.

So we need AI to manage AI.This is why we built Upp., to provide at least some assistance to the CMO so that their focus can be more on driving the strategy of the business and not forever entangled in the weeds of PPC advertising.

You can download the full report here.