Facebook CMO Antonio Lucio: ‘The marketer of the future must be a business person first’

Facebook’s chief marketing officer Antonio Lucio has offered his view on what the role of the marketer will become in a time when the position is evolving to meet various business needs, stating that they must be about the business but also be able to muti-task to achieve numerous business objectives.

Speaking to The Drum as part of its focus on the Marketer of the Future, Lucio offered his view that the needs of the role were industry dependent and that there was a ‘big divide’ marketing consumer goods and non-consumer goods.

He added that "marketers need to find a seat at the business table" and continued to state his belief that in the future, the fundamentals of marketing will continue to be the same; "which is that we are here to build brands that stand the test of time. We just have more opportunities than ever before. We have more data than ever before, and we have more channels than ever before which is an opportunity but also a significant challenge.

"The marketer of the future needs to be a business person first, needs to have the power of synthesis, needs to have the ability to leverage internal and external resources to create well-integrated ecosystems and needs to be able to stand for his or her results every day.”

This week, Facebook announced the latest in Lucio’s plans to build the brands owned by Facebook, with Instagram set to become ‘Instagram from Facebook’ and WhatsApp being named ‘WhatsApp from Facebook.’

Lucio has also spoken to The Drum about his plans for the individual brands and the separate strategies he has in mind for that. On their need to each provide value he said: “The value strategy is about making sure that each one of the apps has the space it requires to actually maintain its longevity in the long-term.”

He also discussed the challenges he faces as the chief marketing officer of Facebook, his views on how his bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg had handled the public criticism they had faced in recent years and the new for the company to rebuild trust in users.