DENVER, Colo., June 3, 2024

Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo 2024: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the 2024 Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in Denver, Colorado. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 1, we are highlighting how brands can gain trust, how to drive growth by reducing collaboration drag and how to escape the martech 'prisoner's dilemma'.

How to Gain Trust in a World of Lies

Presented by Andrew Frank, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

Generative AI is compounding the torrent of disinformation corrupting today’s media environment. Establishing brand trust in such a world is hard, but there are concrete steps marketers can take to rise above the deception. In his session, Andrew Frank, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, discussed the importance of protecting content authenticity and detecting and responding rapidly to forgeries and attacks while enforcing brand safety.

Key Takeaways

“Gartner research shows that 56% of consumers don’t trust anyone to provide effective oversight of GenAI, indicating a growing climate of distrust.”
“The surge in deepfakes and AI-generated content is driving already high distrust in media and exposing companies and brands to new kinds of reputational risks and crises.”
“Marketers are responsible for AI’s impact on public-facing content, media, and trust issues associated with their brands. That inspires marketers to focus on Trust Operations (TrustOps), which Gartner defines as:
- Proactive, integrated approach to enhancing organizational trustworthiness, credibility, and transparency, while mitigating risks from misinformation and harmful associations.”

“CMOs should establish these practices and policies now, covering three core pillars:
- How to certify content so that its authenticity is verifiable and its source - either human or machine-generated - is transparently disclosed.
- How to enhance your listening program so that more threats to the integrity of content and brand are detected.
- How to engage quickly to address threats before they spread out-of-control.”

Breaking Through Dysfunctional Collaboration to Drive Growth

Presented by Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) are increasingly involved in complex initiatives that require high degrees of cross-functional collaboration. However, cross-functional collaboration is plagued with problems like conflicting priorities and dysfunctional group behavior. In her session, Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, discussed the drivers of collaboration drag and best practices to tackle the same.

Key Takeaways

“Gartner research finds that 84% of marketing leaders report high collaboration drag among leaders and employees.”
“Companies that report high collaboration drag are 37% less likely to achieve revenue and profit objectives.”
“Invest in your own people and processes, and your team will become much more capable of productive collaboration:
- Make talent development a priority.
- Improve marketing workflows and change management.”
“Reduce nice-to-have collaboration by prioritizing your team’s participation in areas where marketing can drive the greatest impact.”
“Marketers can improve collaboration by upskilling marketers on critical skills and optimizing internal workflows.”

How to Escape the Martech Prisoner’s Dilemma

Presented by Audrey Brosnan, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Many marketers are caught in a trap: to meet the coming era of AI-enabled marketing, they must transform past martech investments and multichannel strategies. In her session, Audrey Brosnan, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, provided marketing leaders with a new framework for grounding both marketing tech and multichannel strategies, helping CMOs escape the past and mitigate the high-stakes and interdependent decisions surrounding AI.

Key Takeaways

“Despite increasing spend, martech stacks are showing less utility, undermining the value that these investments provide.”
“Gartner research shows that 76% of marketing leaders agreed that their marketing organization is facing increasing pressure to cut marketing technology spend to deliver better ROI.”
“CMOs must either iterate, optimizing the existing roadmap, or transform, making a significant change in direction:
- Coordinate martech and multichannel strategy together in order to create a new playbook.
- Leverage GenAI use cases to identify scenarios and assess their transformative potential and risk.
- Audit martech and multichannel capabilities to better size the use case’s feasibility to your organization.”

It’s not too late to join the conference!

Watch this space for more updates throughout the day.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) delivers actionable, objective insight that drives smarter decisions and stronger performance on an organization’s mission-critical priorities. To learn more, visit gartner.com.