What the New Breed of CMOs Know That You Don't

MaryLee Sachs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134761272
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

This book should be viewed as a primer for any new or aspiring CMO, C-suite peer to marketing, or marketer looking to 'up their game', and as such it provides a range of ideas, concepts, approaches and considerations from a wide range of CMOs who are driving significant transformation within their organizations. The chief marketing officer is arguably the least understood role in the C-suite by both the outside world and internal audiences. Job specifications differ widely - much more than for the chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), or chief talent officer. This book helps to define parameters for both B2C and B2B marketers and points to some game-changing strategies designed to lead change and deliver success. Following the success of her first book, The Changing MO of the CMO, MaryLee Sachs has drawn on her research and interviews with some of the most inventive new CMOs from companies in established and emerging markets. What the New Breed of CMOs Know that You Don't speaks to the future of marketing, the strategic value of the function and the role of the CMO.

1

The Changing Modus Operandi of the CMO

Job descriptions for a CMO role vary extremely widely. There are the traditional delineations—B2C and B2B roles, for example, can be very different. Industry sector and size of business also impact on the type of CMO role an organization adopts. Company history and culture, the CEO’s mindset and C-suite support also factor into the make-up of a CMO. Personalities and interests of the CMO, as well, impact how the CMO approaches the task at hand.

Maryam Banikarim, SVP and CMO of Gannett Corp, Inc., talks about the CMOs who are members of the Marketing 50, a private community for senior-most marketers from globally respected organizations: “All those CMOs have very, very different jobs from each other. No two CMO jobs are alike. And it’s increasingly a title that people just give out. It can just mean so many different things. And it’s a different job at different companies.”

According to Rob Malcolm, the CMO is “both the best of jobs and the worst of jobs at the same time.”

Ultimately, the senior-most marketer of an organization is responsible for facilitating growth, sales and marketing strategy. He or she must work toward objectives such as revenue generation, cost reduction and/or risk mitigation. CMOs are faced with a diverse and growing range of disciplines in which they are required to be knowledgeable. And beyond the challenges of leading their own team, the CMO is invariably reliant upon resources beyond their direct control. Consequently, more than any other senior executive, the CMO must influence peers in order to achieve their own goals. Clearly this necessity to lead peers compounds the complexity of challenges faced by the CMO.

The somewhat unpredictable impact of marketing efforts coupled with the need to drive profits often leads to a short tenure for many CMOs. Global executive search firm Spencer Stuart researches and publishes an annual report on CMO tenure.1 The good news is that the most recent study shows an all-time high of 43 months average, or roughly 3.5 years. However that’s woefully lower than the average tenure of a CEO or even a CFO.

Table 1.1 CMO Tenure

So what’s behind the increase? According to Tom Seclow, who leads the North American Marketing Officer Practice for Spencer Stuart, the CMO is enjoying somewhat of an evolution. “CMOs are getting a lot of things right and gaining credibility among other C-suite members including CEOs. They’ve always been in the position of being the advocate for the customer in the organization. Now, largely because of the Internet and their [CMOs’] ability to leverage data and information, they can bring that into the organization in a quantifiable and meaningful way. Their ability to quantifiably describe not just who, but why and how customers are buying products and services is core to the business.”

According to Seclow, there’s a new breed of CMOs. They have the technical qualities of course, but the CMO mandate now is so much broader. While they must have some technical understanding of all of the areas of marketing, they have specialists underneath them to execute programs, so the CMOs themselves have to be really good at leading the team and providing strategic direction, and they need to build credibility from their C-suite peers, particularly their CEO. In the past, it used to be that the CMO was the keeper of the brand and the creative guru—much more intuitive and not necessarily the type of person to be put in front of an industry analyst or financial analyst. Things have changed.

“And one of the phenomenons that we have seen,” Seclow continued, “is that there are more and more companies that look for marketing needs outside their industry. A common lament we hear is ‘Hey, we know our industry sector really well, but we don’t know the marketing function as well.’ So 40 percent of our top marketing officer placements last year were working in a different industry than the one we put them in.” He reasons that marketing is a more transportable skill set—to be able to connect with customers or consumers regardless of industry—that is the skill of identifying and communicating and relating to your customer is what’s core to a CMO’s success.

Balance is important too. According to by Lisa Arthur, CMO of Aprimo and contributor to the Forbes CMO Network, “Today’s CMOs are more accountable than they have been in the past. Marketing has always been part art. But, these days, it’s part science, too. Data-driven talent and big data analytics give CMOs the insights they need to truly propel the business forward. Many CMOs are also leveraging technology to automate much of the work, and as a result, they have become more focused on driving top line growth … and once that special sauce is found between a CMO and a chief information officer (CIO)/CFO, no CEO or BoD [board of directors] wants to start tinkering.” Put simply, “the answer is simple. CMO tenure is on the rise because CMOs are hitting their stride as change agents.”2 Of course there’s an exception to every rule, and one CMO interviewed recently joined his organization where he was the third CMO in 50 years. Jeff Jones joined Target in 2012, following the two previous CMOs who spent over 20 years each with the retailer. He is also the first person that was hired from the outside and put straight onto the executive group.

At its very core, the CMO is supposed to have responsibility for the “4 Ps of marketing”—promotion, pricing, products and services, and placement (distribution). In 2012, IBM built on its 2011 global CMO study “From Stretched to Strengthened,”3 which surveyed over 1,700 CMOs in 64 countries, with a State of Marketing Survey 2012.4 In that survey, IBM reported that “many high-performing organizations already recognize the fact that marketing can, and should, take a more active role in leading the customer experience.”

In an October 2012 webcast entitled “Why Leading Marketers Outperform” hosted by the IBM Center for Applied Insights, IBM built on its CMO insights with a survey of marketing professionals from around the world across more than 15 industries, cross-referencing financial performance. The results further strengthened the importance of owning the “4 Ps”: “leading marketers report greater effectiveness across all four of the classic marketing “Ps” … They are more likely to assume an all-encompassing role, ‘owning’ the customer experience across channels and/or business functions. These marketing organizations also make spending decisions differently, employing a more analytical and cooperative approach. Often, line-of-business peers are part of the process, providing valuable input on the marketing mix.”

Figure 1.1 Influence of Marketing Organizations

But just as the marketing function continues to change and morph, Stephen Liguori, executive director of global innovation and new models at General Electric, suggests that there are three new “Ps” that marketers need to address—principles, people and process—which altogether serve to deliver better business results.

Interestingly, Elisa Steele, CMO of Skype (see page 26) also refers to “3 Ps” but these are defined as:

1. “our programs—where they are, what we want them to be and how do we deliver them;

2. our process—how do we be more efficient and not repeat the types of tasks that can either be done in automation or in a pooled resource environment where everybody doesn’t have to keep figuring things out on their own; and

3. people—making an investment in our people, not only bringing in talent where we have critical gaps of talent but also taking a really more thoughtful approach around career development for the people in the team and who have passion and the desire to excel here.”

However it’s viewed, marketing is expanding its role in organizations and touching business aspects not traditionally included in the marketing suite such as customer service, technology platforms, internal communications and, the pièce de résistance, setting enterprise-wide strategy.

Clearly, the CMO role is becoming increasingly complex given these added responsibilities, but CMOs are well-placed to deliver given their central role in the organization, the fact that they integrate across so many disciplines, their access to analytics, and their understanding of the customer and/or consumer.

In its white paper “The Transformative CMO,”5 The Korn/Ferry Institute advocates that “the mandate for today’s CMO is nothing less than fundamental business transformation.” In this paper, Lauri Kien Kotcher, CMO of Godiva, is quoted: “Marketing is increasingly intertwined with all other functions in the company. CMOs need strong leadership skills to influence across the organization, cross-functionally, and geographically. We need to be able to adapt our plans based on rapid-fire feedback; this means moving together as an organization to drive results.”

Senior marketers have always leveraged their creative and analytic abilities, but the growing complexity of the business environment, the leap in customer centricity and consumer power, and the rapid pace of change is creating the need for a new breed of “super-hero” CMO.

In its Deloitte Review paper entitled “From Mad Man to Superwoman,”6 the authors say that, “If you ask industry observers to comment on the expectations versus the performance of CMOs today, there is a big delta. First, there is the notion of the ‘super CMO,’ which Ad Age has described as someone whose mission ‘isn’t just marketing, but strategy and overall growth’ of the company, or the CMO as a ‘super species’ defined by Media Post as someone who has ‘responsibility for functions including operations, finance and public policy.’ Slightly less aggressive, but still elevated, is the idea—from one of the top talent recruiting firms—of the CMO as ‘marketing’s CEO’.” Whatever the evolution of marketing is called, it’s clearly being elevated as a management function, and organizations are expecting more and more of their senior marketers.

Notes

1 Chief Marketing Officer Tenure Now at 43 Months. [Online, July 5, 2012]. Available at: http://www.spencerstuart.
com/about/media/72 [accessed: November 20, 2012].

2 Arthur, L. June 2012. CMOs Are Now Sticky…Here’s Why. Blog, Forbes CMO Network. [Online, June 21, 2012]. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2012/06/
21/cmos-are-now-sticky-heres-why [accessed: November 20, 2012].

3 From Stretched to Strengthened—Insights from the IBM Global CMO Study. Released October 14, 2011 [Online]. Available at: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cmo/
cmostudy2011/cmoregistration.html [accessed: November 11, 2012].

4 IBM Press Release. 2012. IBM Survey Reveals Marketers Face Tech Dilemma in Reaching the Connected Consumer. [Online, June 21, 2012]. Available at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/
us/en/pressrelease/38084.wss [accessed: November 27, 2012].

5 Fleit, C., Morel-Curran, B. 2012. The Transformative CMO: Three must-have competencies to meet the growing demands placed on marketing leaders. Korn/Ferry Institute Report. [Online, March 2012]. Available at: http://kornferryinstitute.com/reports-insights/
transformative-cmo-three-must-have-competencies-meet-growing-demands-placed [accessed: November 27, 2012].

6 Gandhi, S., Rodriguez, G., Banks, G. 2012. From Mad Man to Superwoman. Deloitte Review, Issue 11. [Online, 2012]. Available at: http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Insights/Browse
-by-Content-Type/deloitte-review/31fd9ffe54088310VgnVCM3000001c56f00aRCRD.htm [accessed: November 27, 2012].

2

The Chosen Ones

As a CMO or an aspiring CMO, how does one get the gig of a lifetime?—that role that is life-changing, career-progressing and/or passion-fulfilling?

While not exactly statistically valid, the marketers who were interviewed for this book split roughly 50 percent appointed from outside the organizations, and the other 50 percent represented a combination of being promoted from within or from consulting the organization or they were connected personally. It’s fair to say that as an organization looks to heighten the importance of marketing, the concept of appointing a “known quantity” to the senior-most role may be more appealing to some CEOs and boards. That said, there is the notion that “fresh blood” also is enticing when looking to adopt and promote significant change.

Onboarding

Once recruited or promoted, the onboarding experience for these mark...