Top Marketers’ Questions Drive MSI Initiative
June 17, 2015
What are the burning issues for marketers today? Understanding the customer experience and marketing analytics top the list, according to the Fortune 500 marketers who are MSI member company Trustees.
Also critical, say these top marketers, are marketing ROI, organizing for excellence, leveraging digital/ social/mobile, driving customer value, and marketing integration—seven topics in all, outlined in MSI’s 2014-2016 research priorities.
On each of these topics, marketing executives seek evidence-based insights that will help them and their teams make better decisions on a daily basis. With that in mind, MSI is convening a day and a half conference, Frontiers of Marketing, where academic experts will review key learnings and frameworks that have emerged from research on marketers’ priority questions.
“This is MSI’s way of closing the loop on its research priorities,” says 2013-15 Executive Director Kevin Lane Keller. “Marketers have told us they need answers to these questions, and this conference is the place to get them answered.
“We are covering a lot of territory but in a very efficient way. Our speakers will focus on the work of greatest value and potential impact for marketers, making the link from research findings to applications for practice. We want attendees to come away with ideas and guidelines to improve their planning, measurement, and decision making.”
Bookending the conference are sessions on customer experience (co-led by 2015-17 Executive Director Kay Lemon) and fully integrated marketing programs (co-led by Keller). Also on the agenda: enduring customer value, leveraging digital/social/mobile, marketing analytics, marketing accountability, and organizing for marketing excellence.
As well as Keller and Lemon, conference speakers are academic luminaries who have grounded their research in the questions that matter most to marketers.
“Fundamentally, we want to help our members become better marketers and our member firms become better marketing organizations,” Keller says.