MODULE 5: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

INDEX

1. Fit: Roles in Digital Marketing (Pag 3)

 Interview with a Digital Marketing Coach

 Entry-level and Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

 Building a Marketing Team

2. Strategy: Digital Leadership Lessons from COVID (Pag 6)

 Potbelly Case Study

 The Role of Risk and Failure

 Buy-in

3. Digital Project Management (Pag 11)

 Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

 Your (Digital) Leadership Style

 Pivots and Course Corrections

4. Ethics: Bias and Diversity (Pag 18)

 Interview with Amy Johnson

 Diverse Teams

5. Future-proofing: Technology That Helps Us Lead - Emerging Tech and Trends (Pag 21)

Learning Objectives: (1) Deduce the relationship between internal communication and
leadership and digital marketing effectiveness; (2) Discover their digital leadership style; (3)
Plan to navigate the balance between the fast pace of digital marketing and the ethical
considerations of effective digital leadership.

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INTRODUCTION: Leadership is the act of influencing and inspiring others to be their best in
service of a goal. Regardless of the role you play or your title in an organization, honing your
leadership skills will help you succeed. In this module, we'll uncover what it looks like and what it
takes, to be a forward-thinking, ethical, and effective digital marketing leader so you can do your
best work, and ensure that those around you can do the same.

We already study principles, strategies and tools of digital marketing, but in this module, we will
focus on a critical behind the scenes component: Leadership in the digital realm. As we have
already discussed, this field is one that requires many talents, where teams are diverse and
dynamic, where new jobs and skills are created as the field evolves. In this setting, a leader
needs to be able to stay nimble, humble and create an environment that brings out the best in
their team, because that is the only way to carry out a vision that takes full advantage of
resource and opportunities, and creates value for the organization.

Beyond this, we will also explore the role of leadership in the success or failure of a company´s
strategy, and in the ability to change course when needed. In order to do this, a leader should
be able to learn from failing, take smart risks, and know how to get others to believe in and get
behind their ideas.

If your stakeholders buy into your strategy, your project is much more likely to succeed. So, we
will discuss the importance of communication to achieve this.

Finally, we will explore some of the intricacies of digital project management and discuss the
importance of staying on top of new trends and innovations that could have important
implications for your work.

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 1. FIT: ROLES IN DIGITAL MARKETING

1. Interview with a Digital Marketing Coach

Not everyone is trained in marketing, and not every executive is going to feel comfortable in the
digital world. But digital marketing is a critical function of businesses today, and that function
requires leadership.

The need to understand the leadership role was so great that digital marketing coach Shaily
Hakimian built this service into an entire consulting business (her website).

“I am the bridge between a social media marketer and the business owner who hired them to be
a part of their team. I am the person that can help translate the tools of the web, things that are
very complicated and cumbersome to someone who is not a tech genius. Someone who doesn't
actually understand kind of how social media plays into their business goals. This is oftentimes
business owners who hear that social media is a very, very big deal and they should get on it,
but they don't actually know how to do that. And they just hire someone in hopes that it will
work. But oftentimes, a social media manager isn't administrator, someone who's there to do
tasks that they are assigned to do. But if the person who hires them doesn't understand what
tasks are going to be fruitful for their business, everyone ends up losing and that just makes the
industry bad. And it makes the fruitfulness of this amazing medium more complicated. So I
created Shaily, or I'm Shaily Hakimian, and I created Your Social Media Sherpa.com to help
these business owners get clarity and accountability to their own marketing”.

What quality guarantees success in Digital Marketing?

The one quality is human connection and understanding the power of relationships. A lot of
times there's plenty of tools, like you can get ads, SEO and all that stuff. There's a lot of
technical knowledge and get you a lot of bang for your buck. But the one thing I say, is most
people that I serve, they're not going to figure that out. They're not going to do it themselves.
But the one thing I say is that if you can understand your relationship with humans and
individuals, you can get more and almost guarantee your success, right? If every single person
that sees your post, if every single person that sees your content feels cared about as an
individual, you can guarantee success if you keep those people in mind. So that's one of the
things that I work on. I work on the things that I know can be impactful. I don't touch the the
details of the ads. But there's plenty of people who are awesome at that. But if you do know who
you're talking to, and you can really speak to them and what they need and you can really
cultivate that community that will always always win for the kinds of people that I serve, and it'll
always help you guide what decisions you need to make for the marketing

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2. Entry-level and Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

As you’re just getting started in the world of digital marketing, look out for these roles: 7 of the
Best Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs – Skillcrush (ANNEX 1)

What happens when you need to fill one of these roles?

First, you must consider the type of content you are producing. Let’s take a look at an example
of a diagram called the content marketing village. The figure below represents the critical roles a
business may need to fill if their strategy entails new and on-going content creation that is done
in-house, is subscription-based, and presented across multiple channels. How might this village
look different if the business were heavily reliant on video or live-streaming events? What about
influencer and affiliate marketing? Or if the strategy relied on digital advertising? The roles you
create and hire for should reflect the needs and strategy of the business.

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3. Building a Marketing Team

It's important to focus on who you bring on board to execute your marketing strategy. Like so
much else in marketing, this all depends on your goals. You have limited resources - time and
money alike - and need to ensure that they are being used as efficiently as possible.
Determining the right roles, and finding the right people to fill them, is an important aspect of
digital leadership.

Prioritizing Job Openings

· How critical is the job to the company’s success?

· What happens if this job is not filled? What are the tangible consequences?

· Can these tasks be performed by anybody else in the organization? If so, what
sacrifices need to be made?

· How quickly can this job be filled?

· Do we have the capacity to correctly onboard this person?

· What are the “success criteria” after 90 days of employment?

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 2. STRATEGY: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM COVID

1. Potbelly Case Study

Moments of crisis, such as a global pandemic, are times that result in change. Due to the
extreme conditions a crisis can produce, we can either endure and persevere through it, or fail
to adapt and sink. In these difficult situations, businesses that survive have to be resilient and
rethink their strategy in order to meet the changing needs of their consumers. One such
example of adapting during the COVID pandemic is the American sandwich company, Potbelly.
Watch the following video to learn how this company, whose customer base prior to this time
was white collar office workers, found new strategies to reinvent itself in the face of the radical
changes brought on by this difficult time.

Digital Leadership lessons from COVID: Potbelly Case Study

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, individuals and businesses alike scrambled to adjust.
The ongoing impact has been huge and some companies have adapted more effectively than
others. The ones that did the best were those who empathized with their customers, tested new
approaches, and found ways to learn and adjust quickly in a volatile environment.

In instance: The case of one company that managed to navigate this new environment.
“Potbelly” is a sandwich company, whose customer base has a slightly higher income. They are
white collar workers in downtown offices who are looking for a break from work. This set them
apart from competitors, but also made it really difficult to shift when the pandemic hit and
everyone stayed home.

For Potbelly´s core audience, home was often in the suburbs, as 70% of their traffic consisted of
dine-in customers who went to a local Potbelly that was often housed inside a larger office
complex. With the onset of lockdowns, Potbelly´s sales dropped by 68%, which set them into
survival mode, initially leading them to close 100 locations. At first, the company decided to pull
back on its marketing efforts, but the crisis also spurred the need for reinvention, creativity and
innovation. The team launched several creative offerings to speak to their customers in the
moment.

For instance, Potbelly launched a campaign specifically speaking to parents. A few Potbelly
locations do have parking lots, and the company noticed that parents would often come out for a
sandwich and eat it in their car as a way to get a brief respite and get out of the house. Potbelly,
followed their customers lead and leaned into this practice, designing signs that dedicated
specific parking spaces for stressed out parents to get alone time.

Customer research also told them taht it was not just the human members of the family that
needed a break, but also their dogs! The team offered a special promotion throught their app, so
you could order in advance and get the option to add on a small dish of whipped cream for your
dog to enjoy. This drive orders through digital channels and encourage instagrammable
moments.

Potbelly also repositioned its other offerings, with family packages and leaning into its loyalty
programs in an effor to keep existing customers and win back those they lost.
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Ultimately, Potbelly has brought their sales back up by at least 50% through these efforts. The
future is uncertain but thanks to empathy, creativity and work, its looking a lot brighter.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Get the inside scoop on Potbelly’s marketing efforts straight from
the mouth of the CMO, Brandon Rhoten, in this podcast from Clicks 2 Bricks, A podcast about
multi-location marketing. Here you can view a summary and read the key points of the episode,
and listen to the interview itself.

EP 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich Works CMO Brandon Rhoten.

2. The Role of Risk and Failure

As the saying goes, “no risk, no reward.” Risk is critical to success in digital marketing, but also
brings with it the chance of failure. We can learn to take smart risks while bringing a high
potential payoff for our organizations. We can also learn while making sure that when we do
inevitably fail, that we fail fast, fail forward, and learn along the way. “Take a risk and keep
testing, because what works today won’t work tomorrow, but what worked yesterday may work
again” (Amrita Sahasrabudhe - VP MARKETING, FASTMED UREGENT CARE).

View the highlighted companies below for examples of risk-taking:

Whole Foods: Whole Foods’ co-founders left their already-successful grocery store businesses
in the 1970s to invest in a market devoted to natural foods, when all-natural and organic foods
were taboo.

Pinterest: Pinterest failed to generate a critical mass after its launch in 2010, so the founder
and a few programmers ran the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011.

Charmin: Charmin decided to use toilet humor to engage its audience in 2014. It's continued to
enjoy marketing success by using comic relief when addressing an awkward topic.

We’ve already learned about the importance of risk-taking and learning from failure. But we
cannot simply try everything - resources are limited, and not every risk is worth taking. The key
is to take smart risks.

“To measure risk, I do a lot of research on subjects to make sure I have enough knowledge to
understand all of the risk factors. I also believe in my gut feeling sometimes. Risks are not all
bad and can be an opportunity for individuals and organizations to grow. They also force you to
reflect on your current status, assess your risk tolerance and build strength for the future”
(Vivian Zhang - FOUNDER, CTO, NYC DATA SCIENCE ACADEMY).

One way to take smart risks is to use the Pre-Mortem framework we introduced in a previous
module.

There is also a 2x2 matrix you can use to map out the risk and reward of certain choices, and
decide where to focus your efforts:

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I think the most important thing, obviously, is to start at the top and to get buy-in and to really
explain what you're doing, I never want to do something for just a stunt. We don't want to do
things that feel like they aren't authentic to the brand, all of the risks I've taken have been in
service to the brand. And so when you can sit with the CEO, and the executive team and
explain why this is important, and why what you're doing will cut through the clutter. That's I
really think the most important thing here is cutting through the clutter. That's what we need to
do with risky marketing. (Christy Raedeke - CMO OF CHARGUERS PPC).

3. Buy-in

Whether we’re talking about your overall digital marketing strategy or a small test, a major
component of success has little to do with the technology you use or the colors and fonts you
choose. It really consists of getting the people around you to know, like, and trust your plan—
this means getting buy-in.

Ensuring Alignment and Buy-In is Critical for Success

As you’re developing your marketing plan, you want to make sure that you identify the key
stakeholders inside and outside of the company or organization who will need to know,
understand, and trust what you’d like to do. Please know that the role of these stakeholders is
not just to sign off on whatever you have planned. Their position in the company and the insight
and experience they bring can help you improve your own work, and ensure that all elements of
your digital marketing strategy are aligned with the company as a whole.

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Three Types of Stakeholder Responses

As you share your digital marketing strategy with internal and external stakeholders, there are
typically three types of responses you may get.

● Partners use their knowledge, power, resources, and connections to ensure project
success. It is important to invest in these relationships.
● Resources share their knowledge and deliver on commitments: Make sure to keep these
people informed, and consider their interests. Can you turn them into partners?
● Roadblocks hinder a project’s success: Consider what kind of roadblock stands in your
way, how you might speak to this person’s interests to help them overcome their
resistance, and what you can learn from the pushback you’re presented with—is there
an element of truth in what they’re saying?

How to Ensure Buy-In

Sometimes it takes the same kind of thoughtful, “customer-centric" approach to ensure buy-in
for your marketing strategy as it takes to develop the strategy itself. To make sure your key
stakeholders feel invested in your approach, you need to know your audience and share a
message that will resonate with them based on their needs and interests—not (just) yours. One
process for approaching
buy-in is illustrated
below.

1. Identify
Competent
Experienced
Good communicator

2. Assess
Partner resource or
roadblock?
Why?
What can change their
mind?

3. Develop
What value add is
important?
What language to use?

4. Communicate
Best way to
communicate
Best frequency

5. Measure
Is the stakeholder on track to becoming a partner?
Should tactics be adjusted?
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Key to Successful Project Planning is Stakeholder Buy-In
Pivots in your marketing strategy are necessary and inevitable, and it’s important to continue to
ensure stakeholder buy-in as your strategy evolves. Additionally, conditions may change for
your stakeholders that cause them to reconsider their investment in your approach. Consider
the steps below as the environment changes in order to keep your most important people
informed, involved, and invested.

1. Knowing priorities: Why it is important → Project priority/risk → True project value →

Identify all stakeholders
2. Learning about changes in priorities: Why it is important → Changes in project
priority/risk → New potential stakeholder → New expectations of delivered value
3. Understanding what changes mean for marketing plan: Why it is important → Changes
in resource requirements, cost, and timing
4. Communicating plan changes to stakeholders: Why it is important → Pivoting
messaging of value → Ask/release resources → Stakeholder expectation management

3. DIGITAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

1. Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

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Digital marketing projects can be massive undertakings that involve large teams of people with
different perspectives and skill sets. Aligning the people, technology, content, and resources
needed to bring your strategy to life requires thoughtful planning and coordination.

Digital leadership: Setting the vision, determining the strategy, and inspiring the team.
Leadership is a response to change.

Digital project management: Ensuring the elements of the strategy are executed on time, on
budget, and to the highest standards. Management is a response to complexity.

To effectively manage a digital marketing project, it is important to:

Define your project requirements

These are all the things that need to be done in order to consider the project completed.

● Assess Your Resources: What do you need in order to make this project happen?
Consider human resources, tools/technologies, budget, etc. Don’t skip doing something
because you don’t have the resources in-house—get creative!
● Work backwards from the end to schedule your project, breaking it down into milestones:
How often will you meet? With whom? What needs to be covered in those meetings?
How will you capture and share your learning and progress along the way? Consider
time off, holidays, other capacity issues. Assume the timeline will be pushed. Leave
room in the schedule for flexibility wherever possible. This is a good time in the project to
conduct a pre-mortem with your team as well.
● Break those milestones into tasks that can be assigned to specific team members: There
are a number of ways project tasks can be broken down. One popular method is to
develop a RACI chart in which roles are defined by the following four categories:
Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed (Khinda 2014).
● Execute the project!: You’re ready to put your plan into action! Celebrate your launch
and dive in.
● Monitor and control along the way: Keep track of how things are progressing and make
adjustments as needed. Be sure you consider personalities and buy-in—monitoring your
project is as much about relationships as it is about technical execution.
● Close, measure, and learn: Once the project is completed, gather your team and your
learnings and hold your post-mortem. Celebrate your wins, learn from your mistakes,
and keep the momentum going for the next project!

Internal Communications and Digital Body Language

Psychological safety

Even the best project management plans can fall apart if the team is having trouble
understanding one another or working together. That is where attention to digital body language
comes into play, according to Erica Dhawan, a leading expert on digital teamwork, digital
language is the cues and signals we send in our digital communication that make up the subtext
of our messages. Getting digital body language wrong can have a startling impact on your team
´s efficiency and effectiveness. Poor digital communication costs the average office worker four
hours per week. So, what do we do about it? As a leader, you need to add visible value, that is,
to show appreciation through our everyday actions, such as being mindful of other people´s
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time, publicly sharing positive feedback and using digital signals of respect. You also need to
communicate carefully. Digital marketing is very fast paced, so we should always make an extra
effort to reduce the risk of misunderstanding that could slow things down and cause confusion,
and work to keep our messaging clear and direct. Strive to create an environment of
psychological safety. Meeting a professional environment in which your team knows that they
wont be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.
Psychological safety is a relatively new term, but a very important one. A 2016 study by google,
found that psychological safety was the single most important factor in determining team
effectiveness. Being empathetic, and attentive to your digital body language is one way you can
show up for the people around you and help everyone feel trusted to do their best work.

What are the tactics you can use as an individual to improve your digital body language?

First: you should know when to pick up the phone. “I am such a fan of the lost art of the phone
call and how it can solve problems that are wasting so much time in texts, email, chat tools,
slack tools, you name it”.

Second: After a team meeting, make it a priority to send a quick recap email summarizing the
key points, insights and confirming next steps within 30 minutes of a meeting. It is like a “new
virtual handshake”.

Third: Do not forget to put your phone on Do not disturb mode when you are in a face-to-face
meeting, so you are not looking down at your screen when someone is trying to make eye
contact with you. Focus on the human connection first.

Even the best project management plans can fall apart if the team is having trouble
understanding one another or working together. That’s where attention to digital body language
comes into play.

“Digital body language is the cues and signals we send in our digital communication that make
up the subtext of our messages”. (Erica Dhawan - FOUNDER AND CEO OF COTENTIAL).

Getting digital body language wrong can have a startling impact on your team’s efficiency and
effectiveness. Poor digital communication costs the average office worker four hours per week.

2. Your (Digital) Leadership Style

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 As a strategic, ethical digital marketer, you are a leader influencing the mindset and behaviors
of your team, your organization, your customers, and beyond. So regardless of where you sit in
your organization, or the specific role you hold, your leadership style will come into play.
Knowing what kind of leader you are—and the kind of leader you aspire to be—will help you
make better decisions and be a more effective colleague.

There are ten common leadership styles:

To determine which style is best for you, consider first which come naturally to you, and which
align best with your values.

You can also consider the following questions:

● Do you prefer making decisions alone, or as a collective?

● Are you focused on short or long-term goals?
● Are you motivated by empowerment or by the direction you take?
● What are the key features of a strong team dynamic?

3. Pivots and Course Corrections

What happens when you realize your digital marketing strategy is not working as well as you'd
hoped? Whether a campaign has only small glitches or is simply ineffective, every digital

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marketer will come up against this moment at some point. Every team, and every digital leader,
is going to have to deal with change because sometimes life throws a curveball.

In today’s dynamic environment, course correction is almost a guarantee

If you built a series of great KPIs to measure success, the need to course correct should not be
a surprise
It’s easier to correct small things than wait until the issue gets bigger and more disruptive
Transparency goes a long way to quickly building and maintaining trust; share changes with
your team early

Signs That You Need Course Correction

● You are not hitting your sales goals
● You are not hitting your profit goals
● You are losing customers/clients
● You have negative sentiment about your service/product
● Your marketing is not yielding necessary topline results
● Your marketing ROI is lower than projected

Most Common Organizational Causes

● Unclear goals
● Poor strategy and execution
● Poor communication
● Wrong resources
● Low employee morale
→
● Lack of buy-in
● Lack of resources
● Lack of follow-through

There are a number of possible issues that could be contributing to your digital strategy's poor
performance. Click through the following categories to learn about some of these issues. As you
look through each problem, remember that yellow means the element is slowed down by the
issue, red means it is halted, and gray means that it becomes null and void.

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 Poor Product Quality

Lack of innovation

Wrong Marketing Tactics

Wrong image

Wrong Target

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 Wrong Go-To-Market Strategy

When your marketing strategy goes off course, always look to internal issues first. You cannot
control the market, your customers, or other outside forces, but you can make change from
within; so, that's the place to start. Once you've examined what internal challenges may have
kept your strategy from reaching its full potential, then it's worth looking outward to other factors.

Identify external issues

When it becomes clear that it is not internal issues standing in the way of success, it is time to
turn your focus outward. At that point, here is a process to consider to help identify the issue
and set your plan back on course.

A feedback loop provides a methodology for taking issues that come from an external source
(your customer) and using this insight to measure, learn, and build from this data that helps us
continuously improve based on what we hear from the consumer (Rusche 2016). The figure
below illustrates this cyclical process.

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 ● Build robust dashboards
● Drive transparency in the organization
● Question status quo
● Pay attention to internal and external conditions equally
● Set up periodic reviews
● Correct early and often

CONSIDER: Remember, the only entity you can control in the marketplace is your own
company.

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 4. ETHICS: BIAS AND DIVERSITY

1. Interview with Amy Johnson

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we all carry around bias for, or against, certain kinds of
people. Those biases can affect how we make decisions, including who we target in our
marketing campaigns, who we hire, and much more. Working in marketing, as we've learned, is
fundamentally about centering people, so it's important for us to be aware of the assumptions
we carry around with us - whether we are aware of them or not - about the people we work with
and serve. Now, let’s listen to this interview with Amy Johnson, ED of Project Implicit, on how
we assess implicit bias:

“So the implicit association test or IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts
and evaluations or stereotypes. The main idea here is that making a response is easier when
closely related items share the same response key. So things that are more familiar, are more
automatic in terms of association, will have a shorter response time.

When you're taking an IAT, you're asked to sort words or pictures into categories that appear on
the left or right hand side of your computer screen, by pressing the E for the left or the eye for
the right keys as quickly as you can.

So let's say you're taking the race it in the first part of the it, you would be asked to sort photos
of white and black people into categories. So if the category Black was on the left, and a picture
of a black person appeared on the screen, you would press the E key, if a picture of a white
person appeared, you would press the I key.

In the second part of the IAT, you sort words relating to evaluation, so things like good and bad.
So if the category good was on the left to start, and a pleasant word, or good word appeared on
the screen, you would then press the E key. If an unpleasant or a bad word appeared on the
screen, you would press the I key.

In the third part of the IAT, the categories are combined, and you were asked to sort both
concept and evaluation words one at a time. So the categories on the left side would be black
and good. And the categories on the right hand side would be white and bad. It's worth noting
here that on our demonstration site, the order in which these blocks are presented varies across
participants, so that half of the participants who come to the site will see black good and white
bad paired first, and the other half will see black bad white good paired first.

In the fourth part of the IAT, the placement of the concept switches. So if the category Black
was previously on the left, now it appears on the right, the number of trials in this part of the IAT
is increased in order to minimize the effects of having taken the test already.

And then in the final part of the IAT the fifth part, the categories are combined in the opposite to
what they were before. So if the category on the left had previously been black, good, now it will
be black bad. So that IAT score is based on how long it takes a person on average, to sort the
words in the third part of the IAT, versus the fifth part of the IAT. We would say that someone
has an implicit preference or automatic association for black people relative to white people, if

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they are faster to categorize words when black people in good share response key and white
and bad share response key relative to the reverse pairing.

So when we're thinking about how folks should consider their results, or what they should do
with the results that they're shown, we know that the the IAT is an effective education tool for
raising awareness about implicit bias, but it shouldn't be and cannot be used for diagnostic or
selection purposes. So things like hiring, qualification, promotion, evaluation, we we strongly
suggest or strongly recommend that we don't use the it for those purposes. So for example,
using the IAT to choose jurors is not an intended use of the test. But it would be appropriate to
use the IAT to teach jurors about implicit bias.

It's also important to note that the IAT does not meet standards of measurement reliability for
diagnostic use. So think about it like a blood pressure reading or a blood pressure cuff. Your
reading might change from one doctor's visit to another depending on how stressed or how tired
you might be, or even how much coffee you had that morning. The IAT can also change from
one time to another depending on where you currently are, if you've taken the study recently,
your recent thoughts or experiences, or deliberate strategies you might use to influence test
results.

If you've taken an IAT and you have questions about your results, we have some information on
our site at implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs or FAQs, to read some frequently asked questions
about how they test and how it's scored. And I just wanted to say thank you all for your
participation. Projects Implicit couldn't do our work without participants like you being curious
about implicit bias and volunteering your time to take the tests. Thank you”

Taking an implicit bias test gives you a snapshot of yourself in the moment. Think of it like taking
your blood pressure. It may be higher one day, lower the next, but it gives you a sense of where
you are and what you can improve upon.

Check your “pulse”: get a snapshot of your implicit biases on race, religion, or gender, by taking
an implicit association test: Take a Test

Implicit bias often plays out in who we end up hiring. Many marketing departments are run by
one kind of person, who then hire people who look, think, and believe like they do. The results
are clear. In the U.S., at least, there is a considerable lack of diversity in marketing departments.

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According to the Spencer Stuart CMO Tenure Study, released in April, 2021:
In 2020, almost half (47%) of all CMOs in our study were women, up from 43% in 2019 and
36% in 2018. Women represented more than half (52%) of the incoming class of CMOs in
2020, an increase from the previous year. Unfortunately, there was a slight drop in
racial/ethnic diversity among all CMOs: To 13% in 2020 from 14% in 2019. Among the
incoming CMOs in 2020, only 12% were racially or ethnically diverse—a steep drop from
19% in 2019. While more progress undoubtedly needs to be made, there has been some
positive movement in this space. Some CMOs with diverse backgrounds have been
promoted to other roles, such as Rick Gomez to EVP and chief food and beverage officer at
Target, with Cara Sylvester assuming the chief marketing position. Others, such as Citi
CMO Carla Zakhem-Hassan, were promoted internally. Additionally, advancements are
being made beyond the 100 companies in our study. For example, Deirdre Findlay was
named global CMO of Condé Nast and Dara Treseder joined Peloton as SVP and head of
global marketing and communications. (Welch 2021)

2. Diverse Teams

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But diverse teams have been proven to perform better. Diverse teams are better positioned to
unlock innovation that drives market growth. Diversity further enables nonlinear novel thinking
and adaptability that innovation requires. Moreover, those companies with the highest levels of
digital investment exhibited the strongest link between diversity and innovation revenue. Diverse
management teams were more innovative than less diverse teams, confirmed BCG after
surveying 1700 companies of varying sizes and differing country locations. BCG used the
indicator of innovation for the portion of revenue from products and services launched within the
last 3 years. Companies with above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue
from innovation (45% of total) than from companies with below average diversity (26%). This
19% innovation-related advantage translated into overall better financial performance. (Levine
2020)

Diverse teams may also perform better because they focus more on facts, and process those
facts more carefully, than more homogenous teams. (Rock and Grant 2016). The status quo is
holding too many organizations back. Our challenge as digital marketers and leaders who want
to deliver for our companies is to consider how we can build diverse, effective teams that
understand and speak to, the people we seek to serve. If you seek to enter diverse markets,
you must become the market you seek. (Del Johnson - PRINCIPAL, BACKSTAGE CAPITAL)

5. FUTURE-PROOFING: TECHNOLOGY THAT HELPS US LEAD

Emerging Tech and Trends

As a Digital Marketing leader it is important to stay on top of emerging trends and to understand
how technological advances could impact your profession. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality,
automation, the internet of things, and gamification are some of the technology that is getting
attention in the field and is expected to have an impact on the industry. Look at the definitions
below followed by a video to provide context on how exactly these emerging trends and
technology impact you as a digital marketer.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is described as the theory and development of computer systems
able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. For example: Alexa or Siri. Chat
Bots. Autocorrect. It is an opportunity to automate jobs and are already implementing AI based
approaches to refine target market, develop copy and content for campaigns,

Virtual Reality (VR): VR is an artificial environment created through software that simulates a
'real' environment and allows the user to navigate through this through sight and sound.

Augmented Reality (AR): AR is an artificial sensory components created through software that
enhances our experience of the 'real' environment.

Automation: Automation is defined as the concept of making a process or a system happen

automatically.

The Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT includes devices which are internet connected which use
information from the environment to make intelligent decisions. We can collect a lot of data,
regarding customer behavior.

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Gamification: Gamification is the use of techniques commonly associated with games in order
to encourage engagement. Gamified elements are seen on social media, like when you click on
a notification.

Glossary
For your convenience, here is a list of the key terms presented in this module.

Chief Listening Officer: A chief listening officer supervises internal and external communications
to gain insight on consumer wants and needs, and build a strategy based on this information to
keep and gain back clients.

Data Scientist: A data scientist is responsible for translating data sets into valuable insight that
is then used to learn about consumers and their relationship to the brand.

Digital Marketing Specialist

A digital marketing specialist focuses on digital campaigns and messaging

SEO Analyst: A search engine optimization (SEO) analyst improves a brand's visibility through
strategies that help improve their search engine ranking

Social Media Manager: A social media manager is responsible for handling strategy and
maintenance of social networks to ensure consistency with the business' brand, and to address
consumer feedback.

UX Designer: A user experience (UX) designer, as the name itself indicates, is responsible for
optimizing a customer's experience. They do this through various forms of testing that
determine what is the most effective path forward for items such as landing pages, calls to
action, and so on.

Vlogger: Vloggers today are also commonly referred to as "influencers." In this role, their main
source of income is product sponsorship, reviews, and advertising through video content.

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 References and Resources
The content of this module was informed by the sources listed in the References section.
Please consult the Resources section for a complete list of required and recommended
materials as well as additional resources.

References
● AESC. "Communicating In the New Normal: Digital Body Language with Erica Dhawan."
AESC. Accessed March 14, 2022. URL.
● Association of National Advertisers (ANA). "US Marketing and Advertising Industry Still
Lacks Racial and Ethnic Diversity." Marketing Charts. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Dhawan, Erica, and Quester. 2021. The Digital Communication Crisis. Ebook. URL.
● Gray, Dave."Pre-Mortem." Gamestorming. Accessed October 7, 2022. URL.
● Indeed Editorial Team. "10 Common Leadership Styles (Plus How to Find Your Own)."
Indeed Career Guide. Updated December 8, 2021 URL.
● Khinda, Baz. "Quick Tips the RACI Matrix - Surely CARS Is Better?" Wellingtone. Updated
June 10, 2014.URL.
● Levine, Stuart. "Diversity Confirmed to Boost Innovation and Financial Results." Forbes.
Updated Jan 15, 2020. URL.
● Martin, Nicole, and OFFEO Team. "7 Digital Marketing Jobs That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago."
Offeo. Updated November 11, 2021. URL.
● NYC Data Science Academy. "About Us." nycdatascience.com. Accessed October 7, 2022.
URL.
● Project Implicit. "Take A Test." Implicit.Harvard.Edu. Updated 2011. URL.
● Raedeke, Christy. “Redefining risk - how to make bold moves as a CMO.” Interview by Will
Whitman. CMO Alliance, June 9, 2021. Spotify audio, 38:07. URL.
● Reed, Rob. "Ep 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich Works CMO Brandon Rhoten."
Clicks 2 Bricks, 2020. Podcast, Spotify audio, 49:24. URL.
● Rock, David, and Heidi Grant. "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter." Harvard Business
Review. Updated November 04, 2016.URL.
● Royse, Matt. "How To Take Smart and Calculated Risks [Infographic]." Knowledge
Enthusiast. Updated February 28, 2019. URL.
● Rusche, Bryan. "Customer Feedback Loop: Why It’S Critical". Business 2 Community.
Updated April 13, 2016. URL.
● Sahasrabudhe, Amrita. 2020. "Amrita Sahasrabudhe.". Amazing Marketer Quotes. Updated
2020. URL.
● Skillcrush. "7 Of the Best Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs” – Skillcrush (blog). Updated
2021. URL.
● Webb, John. "10 Principles of Successful Risk Taking." The Intrapreneur (blog). Published
September 20, 2011. URL.
● Welch, Greg. "CMO Tenure Study: Progress for Women, Less for Racial Diversity." Spencer
Stuart. Updated April 2021. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media: Reed, Rob. "Ep 19: Clicks 2 Bricks with Potbelly Sandwich
Works CMO Brandon Rhoten." Clicks 2 Bricks, 2020. Podcast, Spotify audio, 49:24. URL.
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