Chief Marketing Officers: The Key to Winning with New Products? Listen to the Customer

News provided by

CMG Partners

Feb 12, 2015, 13:50 ET


Durham, NC (PRWEB) February 12, 2015 -- Continuous customer insights are vital to winning in today’s ever-evolving market. After seven years of tracking the chief marketing officer (CMO) role through qualitative research, this year’s CMO’s Agenda—The Customer: Your #1 Resource to Innovation—showcases innovative methods for involving customers throughout the new product development process; methods that create growth in today’s market.

The CMO’s Agenda™, a study released today by CMG Partners, features insights and experiences from a range of product and marketing leaders along with experts in innovation at leading brands. Interview participants represent companies and institutions including: Codec Consulting, Cyveillance, Informatica, K2M, OVO Innovation, Samsung, Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting, University of North Carolina - Kenan-Flagler Business School and Wiremold, a LeGrand Company.

“CMOs and product leaders are increasingly faced with better informed and more demanding customers,” Mark Chinn, partner at CMG Partners explained. “Those leaders who engage their customers for new product insights and innovation—and who act on those insights—have the competitive advantage in today’s market.”

The CMO’s Agenda examines how marketers are adjusting the traditional new product development framework to focus on the customer and be more agile in their approach to the market. The Agenda outlines a number of innovative methods and best practices for establishing and managing a continual conversation with customers as valuable contributors to commercialization:

  • Modernizing a Traditional Marketing Model – Product developers and marketers typically touch on four critical areas of investigation for new product development: market, customer, capabilities and competition, a model CMG Partners refers to as the M&3Cs. Of these four elements, the customer is emerging as the central and most fruitful area of focus for the CMO, enabled by social media and big data.
  • Applying an Agile Lens – Rather than holding to an internally driven notion of a product to develop, CMOs should take an agile stance and face innovation with an open mind, curious to explore customers’ interests and how that desire fits with market dynamics, competition and their company’s capabilities.
  • Six Methods to Institutionalize Customer Input – To win in an increasingly informed and competitive marketplace, lead marketers and product executives are adopting new ways to assess market needs through continuous conversations with customers. The research reveals six creative approaches used by CMOs to understand customer needs and motivations.

About CMG Partners
CMG Partners (CMG) is a marketing consultancy that has helped its clients earn more than $1 billion in new revenue through results-driven strategies. CMG’s 50 consultants work with FORTUNE 500 corporations and emerging companies to execute across the entire growth curve to find new opportunities, build brand strategies, generate and capture demand, increase customer value, and drive greater performance.

Andea Messinger, CMG Partners, http://www.cmgpartners.com/, +1 (919) 688-1803 Ext: 134, [email protected]