Dive Brief:
- IBM has named Michelle Peluso as the company's first-ever Chief Marketing Officer. The tech giant has always had senior leaders for its marketing efforts, but until now had never designated anyone as CMO, Fortune reports.
- Peluso is the former CEO of flash-sale website Gilt, a partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, and previously served as global chief marketing and internet officer for Citigroup.
- According to Fortune, Peluso’s hiring is indicative of IBM’s interest in a more consumer-facing approach to its marketing, particularly with its Watson artificial intelligence technology, which is a key part of a major ad campaign introducing the brand and its technology to the general public.
Dive Insight:
IBM saw the need to bring a marketer into the C-suite for the first time in its 105-year history due to the “transformation of marketing—investing in digital skills, using data to deeply understand clients … and building consumer-grade experiences," the company said in a statement reported by Fortune.
The role of CMOs in organizations has changed radically in recent years, in some cases even supplanting CIOs or CTOs in importance in the board room. Because of the rapid expansion in marketing technology — such as marketing automation solutions, email automation and even powerful data tools like predictive analytics — CMOs are now making major IT purchasing decisions and in many cases, are becoming the main technology buyer in their companies.
“CMOs are absolutely purchasing more technology than ever before — in fact, the average marketer has 17 technologies in their stack,” Phil Hollrah, VP of product marketing at account-based marketing platform provider Demandbase, told Marketing Dive.
Several years ago, Gartner predicted that CMOs would outpace CIOs in technology spending by 2017 — and that might have actually already come to pass. As marketing becomes more data and technology-driven, IBM’s move to hire Peluso as its first CMO is just be another sign of the new times.
