ANA/B2B Conference Highlights Changing Role of Marketing - BtoB Magazine

ANA/‘BtoB’ event focuses on changing role of marketing

Story posted: March 28, 2008 — 1:07 pm EDT

Santa Clara, Calif. — B2B marketers on Thursday discussed the changing role of marketing and strategies for dealing with challenging times at the Business-to-Business Marketing Conference, produced by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB.

“In today’s environment, we need to be in a mind-set of continuous marketing reinvention, to be ready to build sustainable relationships for tomorrow,” said Bob Liodice, president-CEO of ANA.

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The survey found that nearly half of B2B marketers are primarily responsible for strategy and business development today, compared with about one-quarter of B2B marketers that were primarily responsible for strategy and business development three years ago.

Also during the conference, marketers from such leading companies as GE, Siemens and Charles Schwab & Co. discussed how marketing has changed at their organizations.

“We were very siloed and had to look at ourselves differently,” said Tom Haas, CMO of Siemens Corp., who spoke on the company’s global reorganization.

—Kate Maddox