Inspiration source customer headache

Chart from Accenture's CMO Insights Survey.How much bullshit is in my text. This is what GfM President Ulrich H. Moser asked himself when he prepared the welcome speech for the 24th GfM Trend Conference. As he explained to the conference guests in the Kongresshaus Zurich, he tested his speech with the Blablameter on the Internet.The CMO is deadDominique V. Turpin, Nestlé professor at IMD in Lausanne, opened his speech by saying that the CMO is dead. Marketing is the most misunderstood function in a company. It would be more understandable to talk about the Chief Customer Officer. For Turpin, customers' headaches are the best source of inspiration for marketers. His appeal is therefore: Spend a day in the life of your customer!The turbulenceWhere the Turbulence for CMOs, Accenture is trying to uncover. Two Managing Directors of the consulting firm, Rainer Balensiefer and Alexander Kettenbach, presented findings from these surveys. Not surprisingly, digital business is one of the big opportunities. Unfortunately, however, there is often a bottleneck within the company between the Chief Marketing and the Chief IT Officer.Pilot projects instead of project groupsIn order to get things moving, Dominique von Matt, Chairman of the Board of Jung von Matt / Limmat AG, advocated starting projects and learning from them instead of talking them up in project groups. Tobias Zehnder, Head of Innovation at the digital agency Webrepublic, made a similar point.Jürg Grünwald from Beiersdorf AG provided interesting insights into global Nivea brand management. Ralph Straus, Head of Strategy and Brand Management FIFA, shed light on branding and sponsoring in the context of the upcoming World Cup in Brazil.Death bravest SwissIn the afternoon, the audience was able to take off with the most death-defying Swiss: Bernese base jumper Remo Läng, who plunged into the depths in a wingsuit in Batman style. Professor Zheng Han from the CDHK Shanghai then explained business in emerging market China in almost stage-ready German. Conference moderator Daniela Lager provided a discussion intermezzo with Monique Bourquin, Vice President Finance, Unilever DACH. Finally, trend spotter and futurist Magnus Lindkvist challenged the audience to walk on their own paths to create something new and provoked them - based on a Youtube video - with the appeal: Be the lonely, sexy dancer.

Presentations and pictures from the meeting on www.gfm.chTweets about the meeting at: #gfm14