For Michael Courtney, Coles’ chief customer and digital officer, clarity of purpose is greater than certainty of outcome when it comes to his sweeping remit and the supermarket’s transformation.
“Previously, the customer and digital functions sat separately. In the last couple of months, we’ve been coming together as one team,” he said during a CMO-on-CMO interview with Susan Coghill as part of B&T’s CMO Power List, presented by atn.
Read the full CMO Power List here!
“In that, there’s been uncertainty for the team. What will the structure look like? What will our role in that be? But the thing that has been more important for them is why we’re doing this. Giving clarity that we need to work across teams to be able to solve problems for our customers and meet them in moments that matter,” he told the Tourism Australia marketing head honcho.
“Giving them that clarity has been more important to them in the short term than having the certainty of what exactly it’s going to look like.”
During the interview, the pair would discuss everything from creative risk taking to their respective career histories.
“So many parts of the marketing function are overlapping,” added Coghill.
“We have this Venn diagram of our teams and they need to give each other space while still collaborating. People need to have a sense of ownership and clarity,” she said.
Yesterday, Suncorp’s Mim Haysom and Telstra’s Brent Smart appeared in the first CMO-on-CMO interview. And there are plenty more to come, don’t you worry.
