• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 19, 2017

Facebook and Deloitte Digital, announcing a new alliance, are releasing data from a study conducted about the digital maturity of the marketing industry to help companies accelerate change within their own organizations to fully evolve into digital businesses.

The study assessing the digital maturity of the marketing industry, says that, while digital has been a huge part of industry conversations for years, marketing organizations are not yet operating as digital businesses and are a long way from doing so.

The goal of the alliance is to rewire legacy business and marketing models to create long-term business value and will focus on four pillars: people, technology insights and experience innovation.

More information about the alliance, and key findings from the study, shows that digital has been a huge part of the industry conversation for a long time, but overall, marketing organizations are not yet operating as digital businesses.

There's a gap, says the report, between perceived digital maturity, and actual digital maturity (offerings, delivery methods, operations). These marketing organizations are "doing" digital, but they aren't "becoming" digital, and are quite a ways from the ultimate goal of “being” digital, concludes the Deloitte Digital and Facebook study.

The industry's training methods, company culture, current processes, ways of working and business structure don't lend themselves to becoming digital, claims the report. 87% of business leaders anticipate their businesses being disrupted by digital business models, but only 30% believe they have the leadership or skills to execute on a digital business model. (From Deloitte’s annual CMO Study)

The report argues that these organizations need to completely transform in order to be effective marketing organizations for a digital world. According to the report most marketers still have their teams divided between “digital” and "traditional," preventing them from thinking “mobile first,” where everyone must be “digital.” For marketers to build communications that are truly mobile first, they must build teams that are mobile first.

Patrick Harris, VP of Global Agency Development at Facebook, says “… people have made the shift to mobile… business (leaders) need to catch up with emerging technologies… create business growth… “

And Alicia Hatch, CMO of Deloitte Digital, concludes says “… C-suite executives are under intense pressure to create business growth in the digital age… but don’t have the right skills in place within the marketing function to create real business value… to succeed, traditional businesses… need to change the way their people think, work and collaborate…”