The document discusses the emergence and role of the chief customer officer (CCO) position in companies. It provides the following key points: 1) More companies are creating CCO positions to strengthen customer relationships and drive a customer-centric culture as consumers have more power and influence. 2) CCOs are responsible for developing customer strategies, segmenting and understanding customers, and improving acquisition, retention and advocacy. 3) The CCO role involves changing company culture and processes to prioritize customer experience and align the organization around customer needs. 4) While responsibilities vary, CCOs typically oversee marketing, branding, analytics and customer service functions to bring the customer perspective across the company.

1. INSIGHT 4
MARKETING CCO
Customers’ advocates
enter the boardroom
With consumers becoming a medium of brand promotion and influence,
the chief customer officer has become a necessity. By Matthew Carlton
As brands look to strengthen
their bonds with their consumer base, an increasing
number of boardrooms across
the globe have seen the arrival of a new position over the
past few years: the chief customer officer (CCO).
One CCO described their
role as being “to galvanise the
company to adopt a customercentric point of view, build
customer-centric capabilities
and convert them into desirable value propositions”. While
the precise responsibilities
and remit of a CCO may vary
from company to company —
not to mention the specific job
title and who the CCO reports
to — the execitove entrusted
with the role is the one principally accountable for customer relationships.
Those with a CCO role in
an operational capacity may
have marketing, sales, support and distribution channels reporting to them. Conversely, those acting in an
advisory or consulting function to other parts of the busi-
ness are likely to have smaller
teams and budgets.
The position is certainly in
vogue globally, particularly in
North America, though arguably it has not quite yet become de rigueur in Asia.
Ho w e v e r, t he r e a r e a
number of CCOs in the reg ion, i nclud i ng Ma r ya n
Broadbent, group CCO at
AIA. She attributes the emergence of the role to increased
competition and the rising
power of consumers.
“Consumers are more demanding, more connected
and more enabled,” she says.
“They are assessing brands
and what they stand for and
making active choices.”
It is a sentiment shared by
Jerry Smith, regional president, Asia-Pacific at OgilvyOne. “The emerging need to
focus again on customers has
a lot to do with how marketing developed in the digital
era,” he says. “It is really the
speed by which consumers
have adapted new technologies, especially smartphones
that has highlighted a gap
and a need for advertisers to
get much closer to their customers through engagement
strategies and channels.”
While a multifaceted role,
one common mandate is obviously the need to be an authority on a company’s customers. CCOs classify and
segment customers in order
to develop and own strategies
that create effective acquisition, retention and advocacy,
which ultimately leads to
longer and more profitable relationships through superior
engagement and customer
experience.
Manulife vice-president
and CCO Isabella Lau says
other aspects of the role include marketing, brand management, analytics, customer
relationship management
and customer services.
“The CCO’s role is to bring
the end-customer perspective
to everything the company
does and drive customer
strategies for delivering higher values to different target
customer segments and enhancing their experiences
with the company at different
touchpoints, ” she says.
This means that a core
function of a CCO — or a chief
client officer or chief experience officer, to give it their
other oft-used titles — is to
change internal culture and
processes so that the company can deliver the best results
for the customer and in turn
the business.
It is this change in culture
that can really benefit an organisation and its relationship with its consumer base,
says Christopher Brewer, who
just left his role as global head
of analytics and strategy at
SapientNitro.
“A savvy CCO can shift an
organisation to focus on
crafting experiences, instead
of campaigns and processes
which reside in silos. They
achieve this by developing a
cultural shift and structuring
leadership and talent around
problems framed through the
customer lens.”
CCOs... can be perfectly
Brewer believes that such
experiences will be appreciated by consumers, creating
strong bonds and equity they
will be willing to pay for.
Along with marketing responsibilities, an aspect of the
CCO’s role is to work closely
with marketing teams and
the chief marketing officer
(CMO) is essential. “We see
marketing as one of our CCO’s
key functions,” says Lau. “In
this way, we can bring the
customer’s perspective into
our marketing strategies.
More collaboration between
marketing and customer
service functions would mean
more understanding of the
customer and the market we
are operating in.”
BRAND AMBASSADOR Downey is the one for HTC
In an all out attempt to
revamp its image,
Taiwanese phonemaker HTC
has shelled out an
estimated US$12 million to
engage Robert Downey Jr as
its brand ambassador for
smartphone HTC One.
“Downey is definitely not
short of money, but he
wants to work with a brand
that, like the film roles he
18
campaign
Insight_04&5_0913.indd 18
SEPTEMBER 2013
picks, will bring about
meaningful changes in the
world,” HTC chief marketing
officer Ben Ho told a media
conference in Hong Kong
last month.
According to HTC, Downey
was picked to illustrate the
brand’s role as a changemaker and he has even
been working with WPP’s
agency team, 171
Worldwide, to shape the
creative direction of the
campaign he’ll be fronting.
Spanning digital, social,
PR and above-the-line
activities, the new campaign
carries the message that
HTC inspires innovation
by standing for ‘Anything
you want it to’.
The series of ads will
feature a range of
possible HTC acronyms
including ‘Humongous
Tinfoil Catamaran’ and
‘Hipster Troll Carwash’. In its
TVC spot for the China
market, Downey uses
Chinese acronyms for HTC,
(yes, in Chinese).
Ho says the HTC
acronym is open to
interpretation. “It is pretty
bold, most brands won’t
CAMPAIGNASIA.COM
28/08/2013 4:50 PM

2. 5
Adam Morgan on Insight...
A story you can wear
under your sleeve
positioned in their companies to drive changes in the way customers experience the brand
However the CCO’s place
across company ecosystems is
not firmly fixed. Often a CCO
reports to the chief executive,
although many believe that
coming under a CMO’s leadership may be the more appropriate path.
“CMOs should own both
the ‘customer’ and the ‘brand’
as well as the functions that
enable this: data and technology,” says Smith. “This is because marketing will become
more customer-centric, focusing on engagement and
experiences that are delivered through omni-channel
strategies. If it doesn’t, consumers will vote with their
eyes, ears and feet and ignore
the advertisers.”
While not yet widely adopted by advertisers in Asia,
there appears to be a cluster of
CCOs working in the financial and business-to-business
sectors. With organisations in
these fields continuing to invest in database marketing
and CRM, they have a wealth
of customer data which a CCO
can mine to their advantage.
Broadbent believes the
need for financial brands to
better understand their client
base can partly explain the
concentration in finance and
B2B. “There is less natural focus on the customer beyond
the point of sale than with
other industries, so the need
to better understand is important,” she says.
Looking forward, Brewer
believes CCOs are likely to
play an even more critical role
in Asia compared with their
global counterparts and are
not just the latest boardroom
fad. “As spending and consumer attitudes shift, Asia is a
potentially bloodier battleground, where more is at
stake to win or lose, ” he says.
sSuch feelings are shared
by Smith, who believes that it
is inevitable that more CCOs
will be employed in Asia “as
organisations compete heatedly for the emerging middle
classes who are technologically savvy, and eager to consume.”
Perhaps 2014 will be the
year of the CCO in Asia.
allow consumers to come in
to interfere their brand. We
are not imposing our brand
on consumers; consumers
need to feel they want to be
part of the brand.”
HTC has even embraced
the less glittering moments
of Downey’s past, which
include run-ins with the law
and drugs. “As a brand, HTC
were in lots of trouble too.
We would rather not look at
his past, but look at his life
and career as an
inspiration,” says Ho. “We
don’t see ourselves as a
challenger’s brand to our
competitors, but a
challenger to the status quo
to the industry.”
Will HTC’s bid pay off?
While Daksha Desai,
director of branding agency
Flamingo Group Singapore,
is positive that the actor
“chimes with HTC
brilliantly”, others are less
certain. The head of a 4As
agency in Taiwan for
example says that the
campaign will likely create
some buzz but still doesn’t
show HTC’s ‘brand essence’.
CAMPAIGNASIA.COM
Insight_04&5_0913.indd 19
By Benjamin Li
In a client meeting last week on the West Coast of
America I realised every other male over the age
of 45 in the room was wearing a Nike Fuelband. I
had been given one last year, but never used it.
But this seemed like a gentle push between the
shoulder blades. So when I got off the plane home
I charged the Fuelband up and decided I would
give it six weeks to see if it was for me.
The benefit that has most struck me is not the
one I had been expecting. I had read a lot about
the ‘Quantified Self’, and while I can understand
that for many this is a useful way to keep
motivated and set goals, that is proving less
interesting to me personally. I know that many
like the Fuelband’s linking to a community, and
measuring progress against peers, but again this
leaves me relatively unmoved. I like the fact that
it lets me see the difference a walk vs a taxi
makes, but I could get this from a pedometer.
No, the benefit that I am most struck by is a
different kind entirely. ‘We are the stories we tell
about ourselves’ is a concept from psychology
that describes how we reinforce self-perceptions
in the narratives we tell about ourselves. If I have
a habit of saying ‘I am bad at presentations’, to
slightly over-simplify, then I increase my
tendency to present poorly: I will be more
nervous and apologetic, and too reliant on
the PowerPoint slides I use as a crutch.
Men don’t wear bracelets, by and large.
So seeing that electronic
sophistication on my usually naked
wrist tells me a story about myself
every time I see it — a story very
particular to my age and context:
That I have made a commitment to
fight the fifties. That I am serious
about it. That this commitment will
endure past the unfortunate incident
with the vodka luge at the party on
Saturday night. And by telling me that
story, it makes me more likely to put
on my running shoes tomorrow.
Five weeks to go. Let’s see if the
story sticks.
Adam Morgan, founding partner,
eatbigfish. Follow Adam on Twitter @
eatbigfish, www. eatbigfish.com
SEPTEMBER 2013
campaign
19
28/08/2013 4:50 PM