Chief Digital Officers Taking The Seat At The Table

I woke up this morning to a Facebook message from a good friend with a winky face to the article “Does Digital Finally Have a Seat at the Table?” from Business of Fashion. It’s extremely interesting to see how fashion and luxury goods companies that have previously been slow to adapt to the digital playing field have now been upping their game.  The Chief Executive of Prada once said that “It’s not that I am skeptical about digital, it’s just that I have many more important things to do”, with the focus of the business mainly placed on the luxury market’s growth in China. However, the slowing Chinese economy now places ecommerce and digital as one of the very few ways luxury companies can continue to grow. 

As opposed to digital being just a subset of marketing and ecommerce, fashion and luxury companies like LVMH who have designated a new role: Chief Digital Officer, show the new need and move to integrating digital into core business strategy as a department of its own. For someone like me who has been passionate about the potential of digital and analytics in fashion and beauty, it is beyond exciting to hear that many companies are finally recognizing the importance of digital to future growth. I find it intriguing that this article details two different types of CDOs, ambassadorial and transformative. Ambassadorial CDOs are those who are typically placed in a company to signal to shareholders that executives are serious about taking advantage of digital opportunities while transformative CDOs are those who have knowledge of both marketing and technology and an operational background. A transformative CDO sounds like my dream job articulated right before me. 

For these luxury fashion companies, it’s evident that inefficient data collection is a problem that permeates across the industry. Without having direct –to-consumer channels online, it’s difficult for many of these brands to collect data on their consumers’ online shopping behaviour and understand their evolution. For Westfield, addressing this problem meant hiring a chief data and analytics officer to integrate data with strategy and thinking and to create ways of better utilizing data to optimize customer and retailer experiences. 

It’s so amazing to see all these new opportunities opening up in the fashion industry for digital. I know the same is happening in the beauty industry and this gets me more excited to discover the career opportunities that lie ahead for me for being someone who studies both Information Technology and Marketing.