Marketing executives plan to invest 20% budget on innovation in 2025 – Report

Data from the recently released 2024 Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Report by Dentsu Creative, has indicated that the Chief Marketing Officers plan to invest over 20% of their budget on innovation over the next 12 months.

The global survey indicated that about 56% of the 950 CMOs surveyed identified innovation as a key driver of business transformation, while 79% of respondents agree that marketing is a key driver of business transformation, with 83% of CMOs agreeing that creative ideas can transform businesses and 81% seeing creativity as more important to their business than ever.

Subsequently, 79% of CMOs feel challenged to predict changing behaviours, and shape new products and propositions to serve them; bringing inside-out insight to the business is now identified as the most important role of marketing in many markets

The report also indicated that CMOs are more committed than ever to creativity; and that they now describe the need for a new kind of creativity, evolving from omnichannel to omnipresent, applied across every aspect of their wider business.

While CMOs are now committed to building brands in emerging spaces and platforms, data from the survey reveals their uncertainty about how to navigate and effectively tell stories in these new channels. Though 88 percent respondents agree that it is more important than ever for brands to be part of culture, 74 percent are unsure how best to connect brands to culture in meaningful and strategic ways.

“What we’re hearing from clients, and our survey confirms, is that they need and value creativity more than ever. But it’s a new kind of creativity; creativity that is business driven, making an impact across every aspect of their organisation from comms to commerce to sustainability.

“In parallel, we see new attitudes to AI emerging, where it’s not a threat to human creativity but a way of giving human creativity superpowers exponentially increasing the pace and possibilities of personalization, real time responsiveness, and relevance.” Abbey Klaassen, global brand president, Dentsu Creative, stated.

According to Klaassen, the annual study now in its fifth year, is conducted to provide insight into the hearts and minds of CMOs globally, and help benchmark their direction against peers, and support them in developing their creative, experience and innovation roadmaps.

“Brands and businesses are now in the era of sudden change. Changes we’ve anticipated for years are now accelerating dramatically and reaching critical tipping points accelerated by new behaviours, new technologies and new possibilities. We can’t reach new customers in old ways, or make new work with old tools,” Pats McDonald, Global CSO, Dentsu Creative stated.

According to McDonald, the challenge for brands will be to engage communities in thoughtful and collaborative ways that enable scale, relevance and authenticity. “Brands today will be built at the intersection of culture, commerce and community; in a world where stories are shoppable and stores are stories.”