CMOs from top brands and agen­cies gath­ered recent­ly to talk about what they do, how their skill set has evolved, where mar­ket­ing is shift­ing, and why they are excit­ed about the future.

Here are 10 take­aways from the CMOs of Dentsu Aegis, Bloomberg, Face­book, and AOL on mar­ket­ing, data and ana­lyt­ics, art and sci­ence, in-house agen­cies, and more from Adver­tis­ing Week.

1. A CMO Is The Brand’s Top Storyteller/Advocate

Don­na Wiederkehr, CMO of the Amer­i­c­as at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny Dentsu Aegis Net­work, said the CMO role hasn’t changed wild­ly and her job remains act­ing as the chief sto­ry­teller, which includes com­mu­ni­cat­ing the agency’s ambi­tions, as well as inspir­ing oth­ers.

2. There’s Never Been A Better Time To Be A CMO

Accord­ing to Face­book CMO Gary Brig­gs, it’s the best time ever to be a CMO.

“You have the abil­i­ty to go to the CFO and the CEO and have account­abil­i­ty for what you’re doing,” he said.

Fur­ther, Brig­gs said in many ways, mar­ket­ing is return­ing to its roots in terms of find­ing key insights about what con­sumers care about and con­nect­ing sto­ries to what mat­ters to them, which also makes this a great time to be a CMO.

3. The Balance Between Art & Science Is In Flux

Brig­gs agreed sto­ry­telling is a key com­po­nent to the CMO role, but not­ed one evo­lu­tion is that there’s “a lot more math.”

Wiederkehr added that mar­ket­ing roles were at one point all art, but it’s now more of a mix of art and sci­ence, which com­pli­cates the CMO role, but also presents oppor­tu­ni­ty.

“It’s just that we have bet­ter access to bet­ter data to fuel bet­ter cre­ativ­i­ty,” she added.

4. CMOs Are Still Figuring Out The Right Mix

AOL CMO Allie Kline not­ed if mar­keters aren’t using data as a means to an end, things can quick­ly get cloudy.

“For so long, the non-data side was the one weight­ed down heav­i­est, but we’re start­ing to see that even out,” Kline said. “But it feels like we’re over-index­ing and there is a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to move where data, math and sci­ence become one very sol­id under­pin­ning to unleash a pool of cre­ativ­i­ty.”

Anna Fiel­er, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at online media net­work Pop­sug­ar, agreed even cre­ative types can ben­e­fit from infus­ing data and insights to cre­ate more effec­tive con­tent.

“Data and algo­rithms can help [CMOs] do their jobs bet­ter, but the deci­sion about how to get bet­ter is a CMO’s job and can’t be out­sourced to sci­ence,” she added.

For her part, Bloomberg CMO Deirdre Bigley also called for bal­ance.

“We get caught in the con­ver­sa­tion about data, data, data, which is wild­ly impor­tant, but we can’t lose the bal­ance of cre­ativ­i­ty,” Bigley said. “When you mar­ry tech­nol­o­gy with cre­ative and put them all togeth­er in a group, mag­i­cal things can hap­pen. They are think­ing with dif­fer­ent parts of their brains.”

5. A CMO’s Humanity Is Still Vital

Brig­gs, how­ev­er, said we might under­es­ti­mate how much data mat­ters. He sees a longer trend in which there will be much more sci­ence in mar­ket­ing, while also con­ced­ing, “You can’t take an algo­rithm to lunch.”

6. CMOs Need Tech Skills

In addi­tion to math, tech-savvi­ness is anoth­er require­ment of today’s CMO, Fiel­er said.

“At the enter­prise lev­el, we’re expect­ed to be well-versed on big data and even at the con­sumer lev­el, we bare­ly got Snapchat and now we’re expect­ed to mas­ter Periscope,” Fiel­er said. “The bar is so much high­er and the job is so much more intel­lec­tu­al­ly rig­or­ous.”

7. CMOs Be Comfortable With A Lack Of Control

Accord­ing to Kline, CMOs have to expect the unex­pect­ed.

“I think an impor­tant point about con­trol is that this is the first time in his­to­ry where con­sumers have com­plete­ly tak­en con­trol of media away from brands,” Kline said. “If you think back to soap operas being invent­ed by CPG brands as car­ri­er pigeons for adver­tis­ing, we’ve had the notion of mar­ket­ing under­writ­ing con­tent cre­ation for so long. And with the vast major­i­ty of the world’s pop­u­la­tion with a machine in their pock­et, every­thing they want to inter­act with is hap­pen­ing on a device.

“We’ve gone from a con­tained envi­ron­ment where mar­keters have full con­trol to now nar­rowed down to a small screen where they can share and say what they want,” Kline added. “The notion of flex­i­bil­i­ty inside a mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tion and deeply under­stand­ing data and nim­bly react­ing is not option­al.”

8. A CMO’s Performance Is Very Public

Fiel­er agrees mar­keters have less con­trol as they can no longer sim­ply adhere to brand guide­lines, but rather have to orches­trate and con­trol sto­ries told by mil­lions of cus­tomers.

“Now your score­card is pub­lic of your per­for­mance as CMO,” she added.

9. In-House Agencies Are A Great Asset For CMOs

Accord­ing to Brig­gs, Face­book cre­at­ed an in-house agency because it need­ed speed and also because the plat­form con­stant­ly intro­duces new apps and fea­tures and wants its agency to be tight with prod­uct man­agers.

Fur­ther, Fiel­er not­ed most brands aren’t pub­lish­ers or con­tent mar­keters, so they are able to ben­e­fit from col­lec­tive learn­ing when they work with an in-house agency.

In-house agen­cies can also help bet­ter exe­cute native cam­paigns and, Fiel­er said, this exe­cu­tion of native with the help of in-house con­tent stu­dios will be increas­ing­ly impor­tant as inter­rup­tive mar­ket­ing is los­ing its effec­tive­ness.

Fur­ther­more, the mar­ket over­all is still try­ing to fig­ure out what native con­tent actu­al­ly is/means.

“There’s this evolv­ing con­cept of brand jour­nal­ism and how to tell sto­ries about brands,” Kline said. “Native is the catch-all, but we haven’t nailed what it is as a cat­e­go­ry.”

10. CMOs Are Optimistic About The Future

For her part, Fiel­er said she is most excit­ed to see devel­op­ments from future gen­er­a­tions, like Gen­er­a­tion Z.

“They’re kind of born with two brains,” she said. “It’s excit­ing to see what they’ll do.”

Fur­ther, Kline said live con­tent is going to be huge and rea­son­able reac­tion times from mar­keters are only get­ting short­er.

“We’re see­ing live social and live pro­gram­ming and all these dif­fer­ent ver­sions, which rein­forces the notion that there’s no wait­ing and every­thing has to be able to react in some­what real time,” she said. “Watch­ing live events, I feel like they want it right there and then, which is anoth­er big wave.”

What take­away res­onates with you most? Why?