Mar­ket­ing is chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly every day. Con­sumers, data, and tech­nol­o­gy are dri­ving this change. As chief mar­ket­ing offi­cers embrace their chang­ing job descrip­tions and look toward a bold new future, here’s what CMOs from Frito-Lay, YP, and Nick­elodeon say are some of the biggest chal­lenges they face each day.

1. Managing Constant Consumer Conversations And Relationships

More and bet­ter data and tech­nol­o­gy also means the rela­tion­ships brands and their mar­ket­ing teams have broad­ly with con­sumers – as well as the ones CMOs have with them specif­i­cal­ly – is also chang­ing.

“I think the job descrip­tion is chang­ing from ‘mar­keter’ to ‘mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gist,’” said Ram Krish­nan, SVP and CMO of snack food brand Frito-Lay North Amer­i­ca, who spoke recent­ly at Ad Age’s Dig­i­tal Con­fer­ence.

Accord­ing to Alli­son Chec­chi, CMO of local mar­ket­ing prod­ucts com­pa­ny YP, CMOs are grow­ing increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed to con­sumers in part because they can have more direct con­ver­sa­tions with them.

“It used to be a hand­off from mar­ket­ing to sales,” she said. “Now it’s much more flu­id in all the ways we can talk to cus­tomers and engage them.”

2. Leading An Organization Where Everyone Owns The Customer Experience

These changes also mean all indi­vid­u­als with­in a giv­en orga­ni­za­tion own the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, which Chec­chi calls “an empow­er­ing and scary thing.”

In fact, Chec­chi said all employ­ees are brand ambas­sadors, which means a very large YP team dis­trib­uted across the coun­try inter­acts with cus­tomers each day.

“It’s about how to con­trol the con­ver­sa­tion, which is a scary propo­si­tion, but our cus­tomers con­trol the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence by what they say about us, par­tic­u­lar­ly out there in social, where every­one owns it,” Chec­chi said. “It’s real­ly imper­a­tive that some­one is think­ing about the end-to-end expe­ri­ence.”

That’s why, in part, YP has added a Chief Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Offi­cer, she said.

Krish­nan agrees every­one in an enter­prise owns the con­sumer expe­ri­ence now. He also echoes Checci’s ear­li­er com­ment, say­ing the Frito-Lay brand has 30,000 employ­ees on the “front lines,” inter­act­ing with both retail­ers and con­sumers every day.

“The biggest chal­lenge is how to teach them about the con­sumer expe­ri­ence,” Krish­nan said. “It’s a mind­set change that all of us are chief expe­ri­ence offi­cers.”

Krish­nan uses the exam­ple of the annu­al Lay’s Do Us a Fla­vor con­test, in which the Frito-Lay pota­to chip brand asks con­sumers to sub­mit new fla­vor ideas. One big con­sumer frus­tra­tion dur­ing the con­test is not being able to find a spe­cif­ic fla­vor, so Krish­nan said the brand has trained its front line about what to do.

“It’s not what you tell them, it’s how you tell them that is much more impor­tant,” Krish­nan said. “We get instant feed­back now and we can aggre­gate all of this con­ver­sa­tion and can send infor­ma­tion from Twit­ter about prod­ucts that are out of stock. That’s a closed loop we didn’t have in the past.”

3. Adapting Brand Messaging To Post-Millennial Consumers

For her part, Pam Kauf­man, CMO and pres­i­dent of con­sumer prod­ucts at children’s cable net­work Nick­elodeon, points to rapid­ly chang­ing media, and con­sumers that “want con­tent any­where they can get it.”

“[Chil­dren] are touch­ing every sin­gle screen and expect con­tent to come up, so we need to serve cus­tomers com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly,” she adds.

What’s more, Kauf­man said the post-Mil­len­ni­al audi­ence is vital to Nick­elodeon, but this “whole crop of new kids is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent con­sumer and we must under­stand them.” For exam­ple, Kauf­man said this post-Mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion loves their par­ents and so Nick­elodeon, which used to cre­ate con­tent “where par­ents used to be off to the side and kind of stu­pid,” must now focus on con­tent that shows “a very hap­py fam­i­ly and a fam­i­ly that is mak­ing deci­sions togeth­er.”

In oth­er words, she adds, “We ignored par­ents many years ago and now must include them and the fam­i­ly.”

4. Using Internal Resources To Their Full Potential

Frito-Lay spends quite a bit of time on inter­nal mar­ket­ing as a means of even­tu­al­ly help­ing its exter­nal mar­ket­ing efforts, in part because the brand has a mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional work­force, accord­ing to Krish­nan.

“They’re young and all dig­i­tal natives and it’s sad we don’t use those skills when they first come in, so we’re start­ing to build that and teach them how to be ambas­sadors of the brand,” Krish­nan said. “We use them as advo­cates, but they have to under­stand the nuances of what the brand stands for.”

In oth­er words, young employ­ees often have untapped skill sets that mar­keters can use to the brand’s advan­tage, but CMOs must help make sure those young employ­ees receive a prop­er edu­ca­tion when it comes to brand mes­sag­ing.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Kauf­man said she feels like an air traf­fic con­troller in her role as CMO as she must make sure her team has the resources to do their jobs so they can go out and reach con­sumers and com­mu­ni­cate prop­er­ly.

5. Focusing On The Right Consumers For A Given Brand

“I would rather have pas­sion­ate advo­cates than dis­en­gaged users,” Krish­nan said of Frito-Lay’s efforts to tar­get very spe­cif­ic cus­tomer groups.

When it comes to a brand like Dori­tos in par­tic­u­lar, Krish­nan said he and his team have to “make con­scious choic­es all the time to get deep­er engage­ment. We have to do pro­gram­ming that is real­ly tar­get­ed and speaks to them.”

And that means brand mes­sag­ing for Dori­tos is the result of a con­scious deci­sion not to talk to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Fur­ther, Krish­nan said tech­nol­o­gy is a uni­fy­ing fac­tor in mak­ing con­sumers more omni­cul­tur­al over­all.

“Some brands are glob­al brands, but it’s crazy how con­sumers are the same across the globe,” Krish­nan said. “The Dori­tos 19-year-old tar­get doesn’t change…I would have thought the tar­get in Turkey is very dif­fer­ent than the U.S., but con­sumers iden­ti­fy with who they are rather than what.”