The CMO is the new CEO

By Ann Nurock

27 Jun 2018

Motheo Matsau, chief sales and marketing officer at Ster-Kinekor © Motheo Matsau Facebook.

How important is it for Ster-Kinekor to have the partnership with Cannes Lions?
It's extremely important. Every year we come to Cannes and we discover new things and new reasons why we should be part of this. It's more important for the industry than for Ster-Kinekor to be honest. It helps us keep abreast with what's happening in the world and on trend. It also gives us quite a unique opportunity to plough back into the South African market.

How have you found Cannes this year?

It's been extremely hot outside – I don’t remember it ever being this hot, but a couple of things stood out for me:

Humanity came through a lot and so did brand purpose. There has been a general moral compass discussion for both leaders and corporates. Another thing that was quite interesting for me is that there were at least three or four talks about the importance of CMOs and how they will be the CEOs of the future.

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Not changing titles, but the work done by the CMO is apparently going to surpass or supersede the work done by the CEO because the CMO is the only conduit between the company and the customer. The more customer-centric the companies or brands become, the more clear they are in their purpose.

Gender-equality has been discussed for some time now and after listening to the UN Women’s talks on unstereotyping (www.unstereotypealliance.org), it is a beautiful way of saying: don’t put people into boxes based on age, gender, religion, etc. So, I believe Cannes is becoming more responsible.

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What have you thought of the work this year?
There's been some strong work. As you know, we are involved with the Young Lions campaign. We brought two young people here and even at that level, the quality of work that came out of these kids has been astonishing.

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I think creatively, I don’t know if we have advanced too much, but I can tell you that from a tech point of view and incorporating tech in the creative, that has grown in leaps and bounds. The world is changing so I think the work is becoming simpler and more impactful, which is what you really want.