[June 23, 2016]

GumGum and Brand Innovators Study, Building the Marketing Organization of the Future, Reveals Majority of Marketers Believe Consumer and Data-Centricity, and a Digital-First Approach are the Defining Characteristics of Successful Organizations

GumGum, the leading computer vision platform for marketers, today released its latest study, Building the Marketing Organization of the Future, based on a survey fielded in February and March 2016 of 246 digital marketers from Fortune 500 brands. Only one in four marketers surveyed claimed to have a role in driving the overall strategic direction of their companies. The vast majority (62 percent) reported what can best be described as a more tactical focus, self-identifying as tactical practitioners (21 percent), the glue (14 percent), or jack-of-all-trades (23 percent).

"It's not news that the role of marketing in every organization is changing today, and fast. Yet when we tried to truly show how and why to our agency and brand partners, we realized there's a dearth of quantitative data around what's really happening inside the Fortune 500. With so many lofty proclamations about various technologies and P&L items being 'dead' or 'wastes' we wanted to look inside these mythical changes lying ahead for marketers and get to truths," said Ben Plomion, CMO, GumGum. "What we uncovered was extreme self-awareness on the part of modern marketers illustrated by an understanding of where their organizations were at on the innovation maturity curve, what that meant for their own responsibilities and headcounts, and what the future held in terms of investments and partnerships."

While the majority of marketers don't believe they drive their organization's strategic direction, many highlighted that something does not have to be owned by marketing to be influenced by it: 62 percent of marketers claimed that they were helping drive technology decisions throughout the enterprise. Notably, this POV is most prevalent among Innovative (91 percent) organizations.

What Makes a Great Marketing Organization
By a wide majority, survey respondents viewed consumer-centricity (85 percent), data-centricity (66 percent) and "digital first" (57 percent) as the defining characteristics of a great marketing organization.

Nearly half (42 percent) of marketers work for an organization "n flux." Although it is encouraging that such a large percentage of organizations are trying to evolve their focus to be more modern and effective, it is less encouraging to find so many organizations feel they are still in the midst of this process.

When asked to rank the impact of potential issues that will impact their decisions and staffing in the future, a very clear hierarchy emerged: Innovation initiatives (68 percent), analytics and measurement (65 percent), mobile initiatives (64 percent), and content marketing (64 percent) were viewed as having the greatest effect. Technology issues such as infrastructure investments (55 percent) and marketing automation (54 percent) formed a second tier of effect, whereas key marketing practices such as branding, paid media, and social media optimization were all predicted to have a more or less equal effect.

What's Working, What's Not
Many marketers have bemoaned the fact that as marketing's mission has grown, staffing has lagged behind more than a bit. However, GumGum's research indicates that most marketing organizations have managed to keep abreast of increasing remits in terms of their staff.

Overall, 41 percent of respondents have increased their staffing levels over the past two years, whereas only 19 percent have decreased. Not surprisingly, different types of organizations show different tendencies in staffing: self-described "Innovators" have increased staffing at an accelerated pace over the past two years, with 61 percent reporting additions during that time period. Self-described "In Flux" or "Stodgy" organizations, in contrast, are much more likely to have decreased or stayed the same with regard to staffing levels.

"Our role as CMOs, whether you're a B-to-C or B-to-B-facing organization, is to both tell great stories and to help paint the picture, both internally and externally," noted study participant Lizzie Francis, current Co-Founder at Hyst and former CMO of Gilt Group (News - Alert). "I don't think that critical facet of our role has changed at all in recent times. What has changed is controlling the content around the story and managing it tactically, functionally, and strategically."

When asked to anticipate the biggest roadblocks to optimal performance, respondents listed shifting corporate priorities (34 percent) and budget challenges (22 percent) as the top picks. Most marketers (87 percent) seem to be more or less comfortable with the unstable nature of the marketing landscape for the foreseeable future and do not view this as a significant roadblock to success. Approximately one in 10 of those surveyed cited organizational inertia as a key point for concern.

Digital, Agency, and Tech Investments in the Future
Of respondents, 79 percent see their digital budget increasing in 2017; one in five (19 percent) expects that increase to be significant. Additionally, 44 percent of marketers surveyed allocate at least 30 percent of their budget to digital; 18 percent allocate over 50 percent to digital. GumGum views this commitment to investing in digital as a proxy for receptivity toward building forward-looking organizations. Additionally, 33 percent of survey respondents stated that they see an expanded role for agencies and vendors over time with 31 percent commenting they were currently re-evaluating how they do, and do not, work with agencies and other vendors.

The majority of marketing organizations surveyed seem well placed to adapt to the evolving demands put on them by the enterprise. Additionally, today's findings seem to indicate that the vast majority of marketing organizations are well balanced between deeply knowledgeable, well-tenured managers and eager-to-learn tacticians.

One in two respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the notion that the industry is several years away from creating a truly optimal marketing organization.

Methodology
To help expose a detailed picture of this complex target audience, we conducted an extensive online survey for three weeks in February and March of 2016. A diverse group of 246 digital marketers at Fortune 500 brands completed the survey, which was supplemented by several in-depth, one-on-one conversations to help give color to the broad-based trends we saw in our quantitative data.

About GumGum
GumGum is a leading computer vision company with a mission to unlock the value of every online image for marketers. Its patented image-recognition technology delivers highly visible advertising campaigns to more than 400 million users as they view pictures and content across more than 2,000 premium publishers.

Founded in 2007, GumGum invented the in-image advertising category and is used by the majority of Fortune 100 companies. GumGum ads consistently achieve an 81% viewability rate and deliver 10 times better engagement than traditional display options, while still prioritizing high-quality inventory, brand safety, and user experience. The company also offers GumGum Visual Intelligence, a real-time visual listening platform that helps brands identify and activate online pictures relevant to them, as well as engage their top influencers on social media.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160623005093/en/

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