A recent McKinsey report surveying C-suite-level marketing and growth officers from CPG and retail companies revealed what the industry has known for some time: the purview of the CMO has expanded… yet again.

Traditional marketing functions—like content and creative, consumer insights and communications—are now joined by a slew of commerce-related responsibilities, including shopper insights, promotions, design, ecommerce, product innovation, pricing and genAI. Yet despite these new areas of focus, only 27% of marketing leaders feel as if their marketing organizations are equipped to handle the new duties.

We sat down with report author Biljana Cvetanovski, Partner at McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing & Sales practice, to discuss what surprised her most about the findings; how CMOs can achieve growth despite an expanding job description; how marketing leaders can improve KPI tracking; and critical differentiators shared by operationally mature organizations.

While many brands are leveraging first-party data to inform ad targeting strategies amid signal loss, scotch whisky brand Dewar’s is relying on social media—specifically Meta—to find new audiences. Read how the brand has built and segmented communities through social media and evolved its media mix.

Lastly, the holiday season is a critical time for small businesses, especially if you’re an entrepreneur in the retail or ecommerce sectors. Here are practical marketing strategies to overcome the hurdles of price sensitivity and limited resources.

Until next week,