“CMOs are often the shortest-tenured leaders”: Lions COO, ET BrandEquity

Paul Coxhill, London-based Lions Chief Operating Officer and President of Lions Insight, has spent 12 years at Ascential, an events, information and advisory platform. At his LIONS, where the platform describes itself as “the home of creativity,” Mr. Coxhill's role has seen him marketing some of his community's most important brands (Cannes Lions, WARC, Contagious, Money 20/20, and Acuity is responsible for his pricing.In an exclusive chat with trademark value, Cox Hill shared some insights from a ringside perspective on the global marketing industry. Edited excerpt:

Ascential sold its digital commerce arm Flywheel to Omnicom and its product design arm WGSN to (Wind UK Bidco 3) for $1.7 billion in October 2023. Why did he decide to offload these two departments?

The sale of Flywheel and WGSN early in the first quarter of this year completed the implementation of Ascential's announced 2023 strategic review. Ascential is currently focused on event-driven business with two of his world-leading event brands, Cannes Lions and Money20/. 20 — We help our customers lead and achieve growth.

What does your continued engagement with the marketing community tell you about the opportunities and challenges of 2024?

Unfortunately, CMOs are often the leaders with the shortest tenure compared to other leaders. A CEO and his CFO don't necessarily think that the CMO speaks the same commercial or business language. At their best, CMOs are the leaders of their organizations. They learn what customers are thinking and bring that proposition to market across content, product, commercial, and other functions. They are the energizers of the entire organization.The opportunity for marketers is to connect what they do to [the organisation’s] Growth indicators.

Investors consider an organization's brand value to be the true indicator of growth. This allows companies to charge premium prices, which are derived from heavy marketing investments. For example, Mr. Raja (Rajamanar, Mastercard CMO) said he has invested his headcount in financial analysts for the marketing team for the 2023 Cannes Lions. This helps ensure that your marketing efforts are reliably linked to your business' commercial objectives.

Getting the language and metrics right is key to seeing marketing as an investment rather than a cost.

How should I deal with this?

than see this [marketing spends] We talk about building “future demand” as a “brand investment” that turns off CFOs and CEOs. This means that customers who didn't know about your brand will engage with it in the future. This paraphrase is for long-term investors and is also associated with growth.

What do marketers and advertisers come to your platform for?

With the increased focus on sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), everything marketing does around these needs to be tied to the brand promise and the organization as a whole. Otherwise, brands can be accused of greenwashing or doing something just to convey something that isn't true of the brand as a whole.

According to WARC (Marketing Effectiveness Platform), sustainability is consistently in the top three searched terms globally. It is important to be aware of the market you are serving. So I think the connection between DEI, sustainability, and corporate growth agendas is the biggest opportunity for marketers. The other thing, of course, is AI, which is emerging these days.

Where are marketers on AI?

We're all just starting to figure out what that means. What are the positives, where are the threats and where are the opportunities? It's still early days. AI was a hot topic of discussion at last year's Cannes Lions. It was also a topic mentioned in more winning entries than in previous years. Also examples include challenging ideas using AI, lower-budget productions given the opportunity to scale using AI, and how brands are responding quickly to current issues. I've seen a few. There is a huge debate about what AI will do in the creative world.

I would like to quote Josey (Paul, Chairman & CCO, BBDO India) who said that EI (emotional intelligence) is as important as AI. AI can democratize knowledge, but it still cannot generate the creative, empathetic, and emotional spark that only humans can bring.

What does the future hold for creativity in marketing today?

Creativity is more important than ever. Especially when technologies like AI make some knowledge more ubiquitous. Assuming people have access to resources to facilitate their reach, creativity is what makes the difference. In the pandemic, we have seen how marketing has driven consumer behavior change. It had a positive impact commercially. But it was also about saving lives. What made the difference was the creativity behind those messages.

Cannes Lions is considered the most important celebration of creativity for brands. How can festivals continue to evolve as a platform as trends in technology, creativity, and marketing change?

It's mainly about listening to the community. The community is happy to provide feedback by pointing out if there are opportunities to do things differently or better. Therefore, continued engagement with the community is important. As we aim to be an industry leader, we must continue to evolve our products and provide a socially relevant and representative platform.