Marketer Mantra

What are the marketing trends that will define 2022 for Africa? We asked some of the top CMOs – all women from a cross-section of industries – for their sterling views.

- By Chanel Retief

The corner office is not just the prized preserve of the CEO. A new band of C-suite executives has emerged in the last two years of the pandemic with growing significance as any big company’s core arsenal to entrench ‘the new normal’. CIOs, CTOs and CMOs are the new rock stars changing the lexicon of business.

Marketing trends especially have seen drastic shifts over the last two years to find new ways to pandemic-proof businesses. According to Forbes, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) were tasked with much more than navigating their own companies out of the Covid-19 crisis. In these turbulent times, now more than ever, businesses are relying more on marketers and their new ways of retaining and increasing customers.

And what’s more heartening?

Women are front-runners in this area. In Forbes’ 2021 list of World’s Most Influential CMOs, the honorees included 28 women and 22 men. In Africa, we did our own compilation of female CMOs shifting the narrative and asked them about their success and strategies for 2022.

ALISON BADENHORST, Chief Marketing Officer, Rand Merchant Bank

The CMO at Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), Alison Badenhorst, always knew she was a creative soul with a yen for marketing, even while at university.

From Deutsche Bank in London to Standard Bank in South Africa and now RMB, one of South Africa’s biggest banks, Badenhorst says that though she started in sales, her intention was always to go into marketing.