Alison Simpson, CEO of CMA, welcomes Luxy Thuraisingam, Vice President, Global SMB & Partner Marketing at Cisco, to discuss the CMO's growing influence and gaining credibility in the C-Suite.

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Welcome to CME Connect Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs.

Alison:

The role of the CMO has evolved vastly, dramatically and continues to both expand and at times contract. So while some CMO's have a mandate covering everything from product development, customer experience, data analytics and insights to marketing communications and PNL responsibilities, others are more singularly focused on marketing communications.

00:00:43:21 - 00:01:11:16

Alison:

Marketing professionals worked really hard to earn a seat at the C-suite table to take accountability for driving business results and for ownership of the four Ps and an end to end consumer experience. Today's aspiring marketers and future CMO's really want to learn how to gain credibility with the right stakeholders. They want to learn that from marketing pros for excelling at it, which is why I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined today by Luxy Thuraisingam, who's vice president, Global SMB and partner marketing for Cisco.

00:01:12:02 - 00:01:31:04

Alison:

Luxy, thanks so much for joining us on CMA Connect today.

Luxy:

Oh, Alison, it's such a privilege to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Alison:

Now, it's not really that long ago where the scope of the CMO in many organizations was quite narrow. So building on my opening remarks, I'd really love to hear your observations on how the roles expanded and where the CMO now has influence.

00:01:31:19 - 00:01:59:19

Luxy:

Firstly, this is such a meaty topic and I can't wait for us to unpack it. And you're right, it wasn't that long ago, right, that CMO's were mostly actually brought in to drive and execute on brand and communication strategy. And today, in an, actually an interesting study that was published by Boathouse, what I love is CEOs, CEOs actually believe that the main role of the CMO is to grow the business.

00:02:00:06 - 00:02:25:02

Luxy:

But in fact, 86% of CEOs believe that that CMO can influence the C-suite. So to your point, the scope has increased. But here's why. Right? Because and you know this, CMO's need to be fierce advocates of the voice of the customer. We and their influencing strategic and long term decisions, everything from product design to go to market to innovation, across the organization, by the way.

00:02:25:15 - 00:02:53:15

Luxy:

Oh, and by the way, they also need to be able to connect marketing performance with organizational performance, including profit and loss. They have to drive diversity in thinking across the organization and so that the mission and everything the organization does is representative of the global population. And that's just the tip of the iceberg because in addition to all of this, so many CMO's are also accountable to co-owning revenue with the profiliation of eCommerce routes, especially in B.C. at companies.

00:02:53:16 - 00:03:15:18

Luxy:

So yeah, you're right, it's increased a little bit, the scope.

Alison:

Just a little bit. So the evolution of marketing organizations is another really rich territory for discussion and clearly has an impact on CMOs marketing teams and the talent that we need today. So based on your own journey, I'd love you to share how you feel about how marketing organizations are different today than they were say, even five years ago.

00:03:15:19 - 00:03:39:03

Alison:

And what new skills are you looking for?

Luxy:

I always bring the marketing profession back to the customer and the reality is our customer's habits are completely different from ten, five, I mean, even two years ago, right? Our customer habits have changed and evolved. And so when you think about marketing being in the forefront of meeting the customer where they are, then absolutely.

00:03:39:03 - 00:03:58:22

Luxy:

You know, absolutely. What was great today is not going to be great tomorrow. And that actually means that marketers and the makeup of a marketing organization has to evolve. And a study by LinkedIn said 50% of the marketing jobs that are being posted are in the digital and media space. Now, to be honest, that's probably not that surprising.

00:03:59:00 - 00:04:25:14

Luxy:

But in addition to that, and to the point on my own experience, my own teams, marketing teams now also include analysts, data scientists, martech gurus, working hand-in-hand with creative directors and copywriters. And so really, again, if we bring it back to the customer in order to forge these new paths to the customer and deliver the business impacts, our organizations are looking for us to do,

00:04:26:04 - 00:04:56:12

Luxy:

Marketing teams, in my opinion, are made up of scientists and storytellers.

Alison:

It's a great way to say it. And in many ways, when I think about the super power of CMO of marketers, it really is being the voice of customers and understanding them in ways that their colleagues across the business truly can't. And using that information and knowledge to inform and help our colleagues across all areas of the business, build new products, redesign their approach in a way that really will the customer first and foremost.

00:04:56:23 - 00:05:15:18

Luxy:

Well said. Absolutely.

Alison:

Now, one of the topics you talked about and touched on was the importance of data. And it's also often the fuel for everything that we do. But how we need to be using data has really changed. So I'd love to hear some examples of how you're using data to demonstrate how marketing is driving results for Cisco.

00:05:16:02 - 00:05:39:04

Luxy:

The utilization of data is also not new, right? You and I have been in this industry, this practice for a very long time. But what it's to your point on, how has the utilization of data changed? And to me, it's no longer about just using data to drive strategy or build a dashboard or even optimizing our marketing and activations and spend.

00:05:39:22 - 00:06:04:13

Luxy:

That's just a given. Every organization should be doing that. To me, and what I'm seeing is it's about using data and insights that drive tangible and demonstrable business results. It's about using data to show the power of marketing when done right. And so I'll give you a case study that we actually showcased on Main page at a recent Global Cisco sales rally.

00:06:05:07 - 00:06:33:12

Luxy:

We celebrated that Cisco sales teams closed a multi, multimillion dollar deal with a significant global brand. And what I loved is in that moment of celebration, the marketing organization was celebrated with sales. And the reason we were celebrated is we were able to demonstrate that as our amazing sales leaders are doing what they're incredibly good at behind the scenes,

00:06:34:06 - 00:07:09:22

Luxy:

marketing actually had 24,000, 24,000 touchpoints with this organization, this brand. We had almost over a hundred employees of varying personas from C-suite to I.T, engaging with marketing content, web pages, data sheet downloads, design guides, coming to events, coming to webinars. So behind the scenes, marketing was the wing person to sales in closing this deal. It was no longer about marketing, getting a lead and then passing the lead to sales and then hoping it'll close.

00:07:09:22 - 00:07:34:21

Luxy:

Right? That's the old way of doing it. It was about us hand in hand with sales, 24,000 touch points while sales was doing their job. We were in it with them. And what I love is we have loads of key studies like this.

Alison:

That's such a terrific example. And in many ways sales and marketing have always needed to work so closely together and should absolutely see each other as as partners and colleagues.

00:07:34:21 - 00:07:53:05

Alison:

But there is more often than not a healthy tension instead of collaboration. So it sounds like you and your team are making good progress on that. When you shared that at the sales conference, I'd love to hear how the sales team reacted.

Luxy:

Well, they applauded. I mean, this is why it was so incredible. It was marketing was celebrated. Marketing was celebrated in that moment.

00:07:53:13 - 00:08:22:04

Luxy:

And like I said, that was just a proof point. And of course, we're doing this regionally, country wise, looking at all of our big accounts and saying, how can we be the wing person in helping close that deal? That to me is the testament. That's the win, right?

Alison:

So I touched on this a bit earlier. But when I think about the potential superpower for a marketer is and what can really differentiate us from our colleagues and provide tremendous value across every aspect of a business, for me, it really comes down to the critically important role that we have as the voice of customers.

00:08:22:21 - 00:08:39:17

Alison:

In my experiences, what I've known the customer better than my colleagues, that really built credibility and enabled me to help them succeed in their roles by really deepening their understanding of who we wanted to reach and how we could do it. Now, Luxy, I definitely know you have a lot of heart for this topic too, and the many ways to approach it.

00:08:39:23 - 00:09:04:01

Luxy:

So I'd welcome your perspective. Thanks, Alison. And yes, we have talked about this in the past as well. There's this article that I read. This is one particular sentence that just really, really stuck with me. And the sentence was - at the heart of marketing is the consumer. The most complex entity that exists on planet Earth? The most complex, Right.

00:09:04:01 - 00:09:37:02

Luxy:

And so it's part of I mean, to be honest, it's one of the reasons I love my job, because it's hard and it's always changing. And to your point on the voice of the customer, absolutely right. Our job is ultimately to bring that voice of the customer into our organization so that we, the organization, is investing in the right product, the right service, the right offer, the right value prop, and even the right way to deliver the delivery of the product to our customer.

00:09:38:01 - 00:09:58:15

Luxy:

And by the way, we have to do all that and outcompete the competition. Right? And so I think that's also one of the reasons and again, we've we've also, even at the board level, asked and talked about the ever changing title of the CMO. And I know one of the titles that's either given or taken is the Chief Customer Officer right?

00:09:58:15 - 00:10:28:14

Luxy:

Because again, it is so incredibly important that we're bringing that voice. It is also why, if done right, which I fundamentally believe organizations are bringing the CMO and the marketing function to help lead organization transformation, because again, at the organization level, the heart of everything, a company, if they're doing it right, should be the customer. Again, let's remind ourselves, the customer, which also happens to be the most complex entity that's ever existed on planet Earth.

00:10:29:07 - 00:10:56:13

Alison:

That is absolutely part of the magic and frustration of the amazing jobs that we get to do now. Given the complexity, it's challenging to stay on top of and to understand the different segmentations and where your customer is evolving to and how you from a business marketing perspective, need to evolve to keep pace. Can you share some examples from either Cisco or your career of how you've successfully done that?

00:10:56:17 - 00:11:26:06

Luxy:

I think from a case, I'll talk about a couple of things. One, I am so very privileged to work for an amazing leader and my boss, Carrie Palin, who's also the CMO of Cisco, is constantly raising the bar for us. And Carrie has also instilled a culture that is focused on driving credibility with our business counterparts. And that credibility is based on data and performance and insights.

00:11:26:06 - 00:11:51:18

Luxy:

And so in order to keep up and keep pace and deliver, that actually means at every level of my organization globally, I need to make sure my teams are equipped. They're equipped not only to have access to data, but more importantly, because actually there's actually a lot of data out there. Right. But what they need to do is take the data and marry it and tell the right story and have the right impact conversation.

00:11:51:19 - 00:12:13:19

Luxy:

So in fact, recently we invested a significant amount of of our what we call development funds and we trained my entire global team on and took them to a course that was called took them virtually to a course called Data Storytelling. And it was an incredibly powerful, I think it was almost two days, and it was all about how do you take data?

00:12:14:03 - 00:12:32:18

Luxy:

But more importantly, how do you take the data and show impact and demonstrate impact? And that's an example how we're trying to keep pace, how we're trying to keep up with the raised bars right? And so I would say that's you know, that's one of the big areas is investing, investing in ourselves, investing our talent so that we can all raise the bar together.

00:12:33:11 - 00:13:04:24

Alison:

Luxy, you've actually got an enviable career, and you're just getting started in many ways. So I'd love to hear. What advice do you have for aspiring CMO's who want to follow in your footsteps?

Luxy:

Be passionate about learning. I mean, everything we just talked about, right Alison? It's all about evolving and growth mindset and just learning. And so I would just say, regardless of what ever level you're aspiring to become, be a passionate learner because it is an ever, ever changing practice.

00:13:05:13 - 00:13:27:05

Alison:

Now, I absolutely knew our time together was going to fly by, and it certainly lived up to that. Can I ask you to leave our listeners with one final thought?

Luxy:

I'm going to give you two. Number one, marketing drives business impact, and it's onto us to demonstrate that in everything we do. And number two, it is an incredibly exciting time to be a marketer.

00:13:27:09 - 00:13:45:08

Luxy:

I literally I do think I have one of the best jobs in the world.

Alison:

Well, we'll have to debate each other because I think I have one of the best jobs in the world, too, so.

Luxy:

Well, you get to work with marketers, right?

Alison:

Absolutely. Absolutely. We're both very fortunate. So Luxy, thanks so much for a really great conversation.

00:13:45:09 - 00:13:56:13

Alison:

I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I absolutely know that our listeners have learned a great deal from your experiences and your perspectives and your candour. So thank you.

Luxy:

Thank you, as always, for having me.

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