The Wharton School of Business and International Business Machine Corp. have joined to launch a new executive education program. The program has been designed to help chief marketing officers navigate the explosion of data available and will be focused on big data and analytics for marketing executives.
Forty-eight CMOs, chief customer officers and others in related leadership roles will be selected to participate in the new program, called “The CMO Advantage: Evolving Beyond the Digital Revolution.” Faculty members from The Wharton School’s marketing will teach the two-week course. The course will address the impact of big data, analytics and new technologies on customer engagement. The program will take place in June and applications for the course will open on Oct. 20.
The program recognizes that the rise of digital technologies and mobile devices has made it easier than ever for brands to collect information about their consumers, but it has also put pressure on marketing executives to know how to make use of all that data and that while creativity is still critical for marketers to break through to a consumer, brands have been investing heavily in data and analytics capabilities to serve consumers more targeted and personalized ads.
A study recently conducted by IBM found that nearly all of the more than 500 CMOs polled said that advanced analytics would play a significant role in helping them reach their goals. However, 82% of respondents said their companies are under prepared to handle the explosion of data that’s now available.
IBM executives and Wharton faculty jointly designed the curriculum for the CMO Advantage program. The program will include case studies of different data-driven social, mobile and digital marketing scenarios and simulations of problems a CMO may face. Another key focus of the course, which Wharton and IBM plan to expand to other countries, will be the growing role of the CMO in the C-suite.