In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, host Kerry Curran and special guest Namita Tiwari, visionary marketing leader, delve into "Leveraging Technology for Modern Marketing: AI, Analytics, and the Echoverse." Together, they'll explore the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in today's digital landscape, uncovering how CMOs can leverage technology to align marketing strategies with business goals, drive revenue, and foster growth. They will discuss the concept of the Echoverse, the convergence of marketing and technology, and how AI and analytics are reshaping the marketing game. This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice for modernizing your marketing efforts and understanding the impact of technology on your strategy.

Podcast transcript
 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.822)

Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your extraordinary background and experience.

Namita  Tiwari (00:10.637)

Hi everyone, this is Namita Tiwari. I'm a visionary marketing leader with 21 years of experience across global technology companies. I'm based out of India. I'm a dead speaker. I'm also an influencer, passionate about women empowerment and global good. I have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn and it's good to be here today.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:35.876)

Yes, thank you. Thank you for joining us. So you and I had had a lot of conversations around the changing role of the CMO and some of the recent research and articles that we've both read across Harvard Business Review, Gartner, McKinsey. So what are you seeing from the perspective of the changing role of the Chief Marketing Officer?

Namita  Tiwari (01:01.804)

There's a huge shift in the expectation. The role of the CMO also varies from which industry, what industry you're looking at. It also varies from, you know, which stage the company is, you know, if it's a startup, what is the nature of the company? Is it a B2B company, B2C company? In the world of technology, CMOs, I believe, have not been as empowered, have not got, you know, a great seat at the table.

But on the same hand, if you are in a B2C company or a consumer brand, CMOs are far more empowered. However, I see a shift in the way CMOs are expected to take charge. There are three ways I look at this. One is how smart a CMO is accepting technology, change in technology and leveraging technology. So marketing is kind of converging with technology. there is a strong convergence between the role of a CMO, CIO, CTO. 

And on the other hand, there's a huge expectation and a very relevant expectation where the C -suite does not expect CMO to only kind of take care of branding, advertising or positioning, which are very important factors. But they're also looking at, you know, CMOs to how they empower, you know, the organization with lead generation or revenue generation or pipeline building. So there's a, you know, we are seeing already CMOs are reporting to chief growth officers. Are CMOs becoming chief growth officers? I think in about, you know, six months to one year, they will, they may be CGOs, right? 

They're expected so there's a huge shift from technology anger, there's a huge shift from expectation of how much revenue generation is marketing doing, now. Eventually, how much difference does it make to the revenue growth of the company. So these two changes are definitely there. Apart from that, you know, Chief Strategy Officer, you know, how having marketing at the core of your company's strategy, like we saw one of the articles perhaps, you spoke about how important it is and how much difference it can make to, I think it was McKinsey's study, how much difference it can make to the growth of the company if marketing is at the core. I think it was assured that 5 % growth is assured that these companies put marketing at the core, both B2B and B2C. So I think these three ways are how we are seeing this shift.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:52.954)

Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you. that the McKinsey research really resonated with me as well. Because the marketing aspect to your point is no longer just branding and brand awareness, but at the same time, that brand strategy serves as the foundation of, should be the foundation of the company's North Star, right? And so to your point, the McKinsey research stated the companies with marketing at the core of their growth strategy tend to outperform their competition. 

It doesn't necessarily mean that marketing is driving your strategy, but it's so much more than just anything that's vanity-based for the company. What are your company differentiators? How are you standing out across your competitive set?

You know, and how is that part of your company culture and the goals that your employees are living and breathing on a regular basis. So kind of the North Star of the organization. And so much to your point comes from that marketing strategy tied to the growth aspect. I love what you're saying about the chief growth officer role. That's near and dear to my heart. Yeah. So talk a bit more about that.

Namita Tiwari (05:17.412)

Yeah, growth officer. Yeah, so it's definitely, you know, like the company, Wipro, where the CMO reports into the chief growth officer. And there are many other companies, you know, I believe Salesforce and many other companies. So what is this? This is a roadmap of a CMO role. I mean, in many ways. I also want to kind of mention a few points like you spoke about keeping marketing at the core of the company's strategy.

There were reasons called out and I won't talk about it because they're very, very mature. I see examples of those everywhere. So the marketing objectives are not called out clearly between the CEO and the CMO. And the second thing is the owner of the customer voice. Like there are some companies like Salesforce who have a customer, chief customer officer. Otherwise, customer's voice is kind …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:59.61)

Right, right.

Namita  Tiwari (06:12.579)

… distributed between sales leader and marketing leader and the CEO and everyone. And everyone is talking to the customer, which means no one is listening to the customer. And I think the third point also was about combining the goals of objectives of marketing and business together, having one customer voice, chief customer officer is a very good example that came up when I kind of read that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:23.118)

Right. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Namita  Tiwari (06:43.414)

Integration of channels, also we see that that's an important aspect. You have everything woven together, but if you think you mess up somewhere around those areas. And one more important point was, I spoke about technologies, but there is an important concept of echoverse coming up in marketing, especially marketing technology. With AI, we have so many tools coming up, so much of data is stored, analyzed, protected and used in many manners. So I think there's a lot of focus on new age marketing channels, how to leverage them. 

Echoverse was one of them, for sure. There were two, three features that were mentioned, like how the voice is distributed and are the channels actually effective? There is omni channel communication, both ways. Every channel is communicating, the customer is communicating, the distributor is communicating, the producer is communicating. So there are many aspects to how technology has changed the marketing game, especially around channels. And dilution of voice or changing voice. There are many reasons how this game of marketing is changing because of technology.

And it all boils down, now, it all kind of, while we may think that this is what's happening here, eventually it goes up to the leadership, right? And it goes up, the numbers don't show up or you don't get what you want. So I think these things are important for the C suite and the CMO to kind of look at and leverage well, analyze, organize.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:35.524)

Right.

And I think to your point too, is that that's where the article or the research points out is the disconnect is that, especially in the Harvard Business Review article referencing the research where they talk about when they ask the CMO, the CEO is marketing part of your growth strategy, a very high percentage said no, because to your point, they're not understanding the value or the connection. And that is especially pertinent when it comes to the technology used to measure the market, whether it's your media strategy, your media buying, but also your brand sentiment and the other aspects that you're using to build that connection with your customers so that you can drive sales. I love your concept of Echoverse. Can you kind of talk a bit more about kind of what how you're defining that and what that's included, or what's included in that, because I think that's a really important movie.

Namita  Tiwari (09:35.071)

Yeah, predominantly when we say ECHOverse, what is included is how the various AI tools, analytical tools, social media listening tools, what kind of environment they are creating. That's what it basically means. And there are various aspects to it. One aspect is that communication is omnidirectional. I mean, everyone is communicating.

So what do we do? If you are having a brand which is a brand that is a consumer driven brand and you have online presence, you have offline presence, so how is the information that any GNI tool or analysis tool can give you? What does it do for you? Are you leveraging it well? For example, we talk about social media. So GNI also kind of, there are many automated tools release tweets, there are many automated tools to receive consumer feedback. What do do with it later? Are you doing enough? Is it organized enough? So what happens is we spoke about technology changing the game. Every month there is something new. But how do we... And I am also one of those marketers who would experiment with tools. And I've been in a setup where I hands -on worked on tools.

So it's a good thing, but what's more important is, especially for the CMOs, that you are placing them well in your ecosystem, in your marketing ecosystem? What are you doing with it? And the second part, it's the first challenge, it's the first challenge clear to you, Terry. The second part is what the voices are going to evolve. If your customer knows that this is the extent of feedback, you're going to accept it, then the feedback will evolve.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:16.667)

Yes.

Namita  Tiwari (11:28.35)

And over a period of time, you are likely to gain trust with the customer. So if you use this environment well, you're likely to gain the trust of the consumer, you're likely to improve your product well. You're also likely to know your consumer better. And once you understand their other upcoming needs, that can build a roadmap for your brand to do what more can you do? If you're a clothes brand, can you do shoes as well? Something like that. You know what I'm trying to say? So I think these are a few things that this concept …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:52.72)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Namita  Tiwari (11:58.013)

… has come up, predominantly it talks about the change of channels, how it's more numerous, do we even know how many touch points a consumer has with our brand? We don't know, to be honest. And it goes, a tool comes, we experiment, we get the data, it's great. But at some level, especially at the leadership, it has to kind of make sense and it has to be leveraged.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:10.148)

Right, right.

Namita  Tiwari (12:26.808)

Really well. I think that's what Echoverse talks about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:30.628)

Yeah, definitely. And it's such a key component.

I know we talked about modern marketing and that goes back to the article saying that the CEOs need to learn more about modern marketing. And I think the concept of Echoverse and everything, what you were just saying that goes into it really kind of encompasses what needs to be top of mind and considered as marketing becomes more integrated with AI tools. talk a bit more about, we talked about the metrics and making sure you're measuring and aligning the metrics with business outcomes. Like what are you seeing from your perspective or what does the C-suite need to keep in mind?

Namita  Tiwari (13:13.335)

So I'll tell you, when we talk about measuring sales and marketing, in sales it's typically a sales force tool which captures what stage it is and we all know about it. Especially in the world of technology, it's perhaps the same tool in most companies. But coming to marketing, and why I spoke about sales is because the world of technology where I have done marketing, the metrics of marketing were pulled from the sales tool.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:37.68)

Yeah.

Namita  Tiwari (13:42.074)

You know what I'm trying to say? coming to the marketing set of tools, marketing, think, while there are some 360 degree view of customer analysis that we get and tools around that, for example, in the world of banking, there is Pinnacle, which kind of gives you interesting data points on what your customer does. But those are, again, tools that integrate with the operations of the company.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:43.196)

Right, right.

Namita  Tiwari (14:11.034)

Pure Play marketing tools, if you talk about, which gives you a complete 360 degree view of all the aspects of marketing, which means that social media marketing, your webpage, webpage metrics, your social, your SEO data, everything. I don't think there are tools that give you holistic marketing, you know, landscape. So for SEO, we have a different tool. For social media, we have a social studio. For content curation, we have BuzzSumo. You know, so I think … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:31.014)

Yeah.

Namita  Tiwari (14:39.245)

… holistic picture is kind of missing, at least from the idea that I have. It would be good to have that tool, but I believe that it's always in an industry like mine, where I know that the pipeline of marketing stands in the Salesforce sales area metrics. And I'm being very candid here. I would, while metrics and mapping is important, and of course, there to justify the spend and also it can be looked at to where we are getting the maximum ROI, what kind of activities we should do. But overall, think with every tool, there'll be something else that comes, hey, this is how you can measure it. I think and a target for every quarter, this is the kind of pipeline growth we will give you, brand impact and business impact.

Freeze in on how you will measure the brand impact and freeze in how you will measure the business impact. And I think that's how we play the game and we win the game. I hope you agree with what I'm trying to say.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:45.892)

Yeah.

Yes, no, I definitely do. And I think that's where, you know, to the points that you've made is that AI will help us all get smarter with the impact and effectiveness of our different marketing activities and campaigns. And I know that AI and marketing technology are a big part of your passion and your TED Talks. You share a bit like very high level overview of your key points and kind of what has resonated in your TED.

Namita  Tiwari (16:18.935)

Well, I have spoken about Gen .AI and in Gen.AI I'm a passionate storyteller, especially when it comes to my TED Talks. So I spoke about Gen.AI and how it's the genie that the marketeers have been dreaming of. I correlated it with the Aladdin and the Genie story and I spoke about the three wishes, customer centricity, creativity and cognitive productivity.

I think it was well woven storytelling. I also spoke about the limitations of Gen .AI, deep fakes, hallucinations. And I've given a few more TED Talks. So there's also one more aspect of sustainability which I think we have not discussed. So one of my talks was on sustainability. And it spoke about how sustainability is everyone's responsibility. 

And we spoke about sustainability marketing needs to be applied across product, know, product, people, planet. I think it's an interesting one. And I did storytelling again with the Midas touch story for that talk. I also spoke about a few years, like maybe two years back on Metaverse marketing in Metaverse when it was there and I had done Alice in Wonderland to Alice in Metaverse. I spoke about emotion, experience and engagement.

So I try to, when I'm speaking publicly, passion is of course marketing and technology, but the objective is to inspire youth and as many people as I can, young marketeers, young professionals. So I always try to be even storytelling to make it more interesting for them and I simplify it. So I simplify with examples.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:08.292)

I love that. And what is your website where listeners can find access to all of your TED Talks?

Namita Tiwari (18:14.607)

Sure, think Namita Tiwari is my website. I would also invite all the viewers to follow me on LinkedIn. Namita Tiwari on LinkedIn and Instagram is namitatiwari22.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:32.454)

Excellent. Well, and so any last recommendations for the executive team that needs to understand more about modern marketing and the potential power of the CMO?

Namita  Tiwari (18:43.931)

I think, you know, CMOs are getting empowered. The game is changing. I would certainly talk about, you know, three things, you know, like the leadership style also needs to evolve as per the expectation. If your role is evolving, you are, if you are, you know, the C -suite around you is evolving, your leadership style needs to evolve. Adapting a technology, applying technology, accepting technology.

You know, just be a good listener to your customer. That's important. Have a voice that owns the customer. Don't let it be a distributed kind of responsibility which no one is really taking charge of. I think these three things are important takeaways.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:40.656)

Well, thank you. You know, Namita and I met at the Forbes Communication Council. So we'll just give a shout out to that organization as well. But thank you so much for your time today. And I really enjoyed our conversation and we'll make sure to include the links out to your website and LinkedIn. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Namita  Tiwari (19:49.327)

Yes, yes.

Namita  Tiwari (20:05.431)

It was good to be on this podcast, Revenue Boost.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:10.426)

Yes, thank you very much. All right.

Namita  Tiwari (20:12.571)

Yeah, bye.