As brand stewards, value creators and communicators, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are uniquely positioned to shape consumer perceptions and drive behavioural change to deliver sustainable growth and impact.

Despite this reality, the Sustainable Marketing 2030 report indicates that a significant proportion of marketers are still in the early stages of their sustainability journeys and lack the sustainability knowledge to drive growth for a sustainable future.

The opportunity to drive change globally is immense, as Marketing brings crucial storytelling and stakeholder value creation capabilities and has both the influence and authority to better develop and activate sustainability strategies compared to sustainability and other functions in isolation.

The United Nations Global Compact, in collaboration with the Institute for Real Growth (IRG), is convening an esteemed group of CMOs to advise on the challenges, opportunities, and needs of global marketing leaders as part of the first-ever CMO Think Lab. This group will design a roadmap that will inform future programming, empowering CMOs with the knowledge and tools needed to drive sustainable growth and positive impact.

The CMO Impact Think Lab is by invitation only. It offers a small group of leading organizations a collaborative space to actively contribute to the development of thought leadership content through interactive workshops, consultations, calls, webinars and other activities.

The resulting programme will ultimately serve the marketing industry and CMOs all around the world. The deliverables will be shared at the global, regional and local levels to help drive impact on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Through rigorous evaluation and iteration, the CMO Think Lab will commit to continuing to scale up learnings, incubating time-bound future programmes to increase engagement with CMOs across all sectors and regions.

Key objectives:

• Shape and define the role of CMOs in helping deliver their organization’s sustainability agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Design a roadmap to empower marketing leaders to drive sustainable business growth and positive impact.
• Identify CMO opportunities and best case examples
• Scale-up learnings and deliverables and incubate time-bound future programmes to help increase engagement with CMOs across sectors and regions.

In collaboration with: