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Chief Marketing Officer, PwC US
Travel mishaps happen. I boarded my flight for Cannes Lions 2024, ready for meetings and panel discussions — and then the delays began, unfortunately resulting in a cancelled flight. On the bright side, several of those meetings turned into video chats, sessions were streamed and I had an extra week at home. After, I got some serious debriefing from friends and colleagues who were there.
I won’t deny that I missed being in the middle of the action this year. But I also feel that I have the main takeaways of this year’s gathering of many of world’s top marketing minds. Here are my top five.
GenAI is increasing your value
There was a bit of anxiety about GenAI at Cannes, but a lot more enthusiasm — which is what I feel. GenAI is helping marketers be more valuable than ever. For my team, it’s growing productivity approximately 20-30%, mostly by doing the tedious work nobody enjoys.
Documenting workflow? Creating derivative versions of new content? Proofreading for compliance and brand? GenAI can do this work — and we won’t miss it. GenAI’s Q&A capability also lets us do a lot more research and analysis. All that helps us grow capacity, make better decisions and spend more time on creative work.
In PwC’s latest Pulse Survey, 78% of the CMOs responding say they’ll use GenAI to make changes to their business model. So, there really is a rising consensus that GenAI isn’t replacing marketers. It’s making us more valuable.
Two tips can help you get GenAI right
My colleagues often heard at Cannes that it’s hard to get GenAI to transform marketing — at a reasonable cost. Speaking from experience, here are two tips that might help.
- The first: Don’t go it alone. GenAI “patterns” — things like document summarization, Q&A access to data analysis or creating new text or images — are scalable across other functions too. Join forces and you can split the costs and increase the value. Here at PwC, we have an AI factory that helps us achieve this scale.
- The second tip: Give your people time and incentives to find new ways for GenAI to make their lives easier — and their jobs more valuable. They’re the specialists in their roles, and you don’t need to be a data scientist to innovate with GenAI. Use a Responsible AI Toolkit to manage risks, review outputs, reduce bias and more. With the right skills, guardrails and incentives, anyone can innovate.
You have new customer experience powers
Today, you can deliver personalized experiences at scale and keep iterating them, based on data. That’s because tech can not only gather and crunch data, it can also help you respond. It’s challenging for humans to deliver personalized content at scale on their own, but with GenAI’s help generating first drafts, proofreading and more, they can.
To get the data you need, collaborate with other functions and even other companies. If needed, update your data platform to better use the new CX tech tools. And make sure your tech suite includes tools to measure the incremental value of experiences — with a focus on ROI and revenue. Those are the metrics that matter.
Trust can be your superpower
Data continues to become more valuable in today’s digital marketing landscape, making data privacy policies a top priority for both employees and consumers. In our 2024 Trust Survey, 89% of employees and 88% of consumers said that it’s important for companies to disclose these policies. Interestingly, this stands in stark contrast to the surprisingly low percentage of executives (32%) who said their companies disclose their data privacy policies.
Marketers often hold a crucial role in shaping a company’s policies related to privacy, including disclosures and the handling of customer data. Collaborate with data officers and CISOs to set up the right tech and guardrails that protect data, including transparent disclosures. And once you’ve done the work, talk about it. If you can tell a story of safeguarding privacy, it could differentiate your brand.
It’s time to take the lead
At Cannes Lions, everyone understood how important marketing is — but inside your company, you may not always have a prominent seat at the table for strategy. You have to step up. You’re your company’s expert on the customer. You should be working with the CEO and other top leaders to find new ways to drive loyalty and revenue growth.
To help your voice be heard, “rebrand” marketing as a high-tech, data driven operation. Thanks to data and AI, you can identify and forecast customer trends, deliver hyper-personalized experiences and constantly iterate. All that could add up to what everyone at Cannes is looking for — growth. Show your fellow leaders a path to growth and you won’t just have a seat at the table. You’ll have everyone’s rapt attention.
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