The war on brand, the death of hyper-targeting and why marketers need to market to finance or see budgets slashed – B2B Institute, NAB and Mindshare on key trends for 2023 and beyond

Personalisation is possibly “the worst idea we have come across in digital marketing,” per B2B Institute’s John Lombardo – even Amazon can’t do it properly. “Find the biggest things that matter to the biggest group of buyers – that's the real commercial opportunity,” per Lombardo. He thinks 1:1 personalisation ultimately leads to a surveillance state. The downturn-induced swing back to performance over brand is another big mistake. “It’s survival, I get it … But you can't just keep on adding up the short-terms and expect some sort of long-term strategy.” Former performance purist, Maria Grivas, now CEO at Mindshare, thinks performance marketers are much maligned – and are targeting longer-term growth as well as immediate gains. The problem is that CFOs demand demonstrable growth metrics. That means marketing to finance, per Lombardo, should be the “most urgent” CMO 2023 agenda item, “otherwise we get our budgets cut”. Elly Bloom, Executive Marketing, Business & Private Banking at NAB, is doing just that, using market mix modelling (MMM) to demonstrate which investments are generating returns in hard business terms – and where to spend next. “It’s been invaluable”, says Bloom. Lombardo doubts econometric models can accurately prove where marketing is moving the needle – but thinks even demonstrating attempted due diligence to CFOs via MMM serves its purpose.

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