We pride ourselves, as agencies, on knowing the customer better than anyone. The ‘voice of the consumer’, the home of ‘customer-centric’ design, the experts in real insight into real people. Yet it seems we’re increasingly out of touch with what our own clients need and want.

Dentsu Creative’s annual survey of over 500 CMOs from across the globe delivers some stark and surprising insights into the current client-agency relationship, with significant implications for how smart agencies can evolve to help our clients navigate the turbulence we find ourselves in.

The stats make for stark reading: 85% of CMOs around the world believe that while consumer behaviour has changed, agencies have not kept pace; and 78% agree that the siloed agency model is no longer fit for purpose.

Today’s CMOs have complex roles, and they reject simplistic answers. The survey revealed that 73% agree that their role is more complicated than ever. As a result, they want simpler teams and simpler structures, but not simplistic solutions. In fact they reject old binaries: short term vs long term; brand vs performance; data vs creativity. That being said, 73% agree that their peers focus too much on short term versus long term outcomes, while 78% agree their contemporaries neglect brand and emotion at the expense of ‘performance’ marketing.

CMOs are asking for more nuanced responses, and are expecting agencies to see the whole board. It’s tempting to see creativity as a job for art directors, copywriters, designers or directors, but clients are thinking about creativity much more broadly.

Of the CMOs we spoke to, 82% want to see creative solutions across every aspect of their business – that means media, commerce and CXM – not just campaigns. They need a new approach to creativity because keeping creativity in narrow silos is failing to help them wrestle with new challenges or engage new generations. A majority of CMOs (82%) believe that traditional media is no longer as effective in engaging Gen Z, while 86% agree than engaging that generation means brands must entertain, not interrupt.

Today’s CMOs agree that in today’s connected world traditional scale is no longer the advantage it once was. Most (76%) simply want their agencies to connect the right talent around the right brief, regardless of silos or geographies. The number one factor they see as needed to deliver modern creativity is the ability to connect media and creative, data and technology, to create ‘moments that matter’, closely followed by the ability to seamlessly connect the brand story and the customer experience.

This desire to connect talent in smarter and more fluid ways also enables a more diverse and flexible approach to talent; CMOs regard diversity of talent as fundamental to delivering modern creativity that truly resonates in culture.

That ability to create culture is increasingly important to clients today. Of the CMOs we spoke to, 84% agree that modern creativity creates culture, it doesn’t just borrow culture. CMOs across the globe are investing in content marketing, entertainment and IP as never before, building their own audiences and creating their own properties.

An impressive 84% of respondents are implementing or have implemented entertainment platforms and IP as a strategy, investing in opportunities such as live streaming, social commerce, programming, and podcasting. Agencies have a powerful opportunity to connect their understanding of clients’ urgent brand and business problems with the ability to execute across a bold new creative toolkit.

Perhaps one reason CMOs reject artificial silos so strongly today is that the boundaries between the short term and the long term, the urgent and the important, are blurring as never before. As consumers struggle with the horrors of a cost of living crisis, companies wrestle with a cost of goods crisis brought on at least in part by the impact of extreme weather. It’s perhaps no surprise then that CMOs speak with one voice on the urgency of change: 85% agree that their business model will need to fundamentally pivot in response to climate change.

With such urgent challenges to wrestle with it is no surprise that clients are demanding an end to old silos and binaries and a new approach to creative problem-solving across their business. The agencies who listen hardest, who respond with flexibility, curiosity and generosity will be best placed to help them navigate uncertain futures.

Patricia McDonald is chief strategy director at Dentsu Creative; dentsucreative.com/news/cmo-survey; Top image: Shutterstock