The growing responsibilities of a CMO

I was privileged to be selected as a CMO to Watch by the CMO Alliance, the home of marketing innovators, alongside another 12 successful startup and scaleup CMOs.

I felt honoured and grateful when I read their justification for my selection as an honouree, having payed close attention to Superscript and how we have supported business growth through our marketing, and following a subsequent interview... Marketing business insurance, a category known for customers' lack of interest and apathy, is indeed a challenge!

"Mai is one of those CMOs that refuses to be held back by labels. For her, there’s no such thing as a CMO that’s all about B2C, B2B, start-ups, or what have you. There’s just being a great leader, and producing great marketing.?It’s a philosophy that’s worked wonders at Superscript, as she’s taken the relatively dry subject of business insurance and built an exciting, engaging brand, one that’s willing to dive into spaces that are unusual for B2B brands, from dynamic out-of-home advertising, to sponsoring and hosting eSports tournaments.?With a host of industry awards, fantastic growth, and some killer partnerships as evidence of Mai’s success in 2021, we’re excited to see what she does in 2022!"

So, as a marketing leader and mentor 'to watch', I was invited to share my perspective on key topics and on my focus for the coming year, to hopefully inform aspiring CMOs.

Q: Is there anything you’re working on for this year that you’d want to share with the CMO Alliance community?

Superscript is scaling rapidly from a customers, revenue and people perspective - half of our people joined in the last nine months. In 2022, we’ll be embarking on our Series B funding round, and we expect our pace of growth to accelerate even further off the back; so a key focus of mine will be to scale our team while optimising collaboration and efficiencies, and while building on and enhancing our culture as the team grows.?

From a product perspective, we have some exciting innovation in the pipeline - which will need well-crafted positioning and marketing - and embedded insurance integrations to activate.

And of course, we are readying ourselves for the phasing out of third-party cookies, so we’ll continue to build out our data and tech stack to better leverage our first-party data for prospecting and lead nurturing, and to provide our customers an enhanced experience.

Q: What do you see as the most important responsibility for CMOs in 2022??

Championing the customer throughout the organisation, and leveraging insight to influence customer-centric innovation and to improve experience, will continue to be a major drive for CMOs, in times where customer trust is more important than ever.

Internally, one thing that I see emerging as the most important responsibility for CMOs in a ‘post’ pandemic world of remote or hybrid working, is to inspire the entire organisation with a cohesive culture that connects, empowers and motivates people, emulated by their brand. Building on this is certainly one of my priorities for 2022.?

At Superscript, our people are our best advocates; they feel a huge sense of pride in our brand and business, and I am determined to continue to build upon this into next year as our teams scale across locations (with a growing Rotterdam office), and within a distributed workforce environment.

Q: Do you have any advice for people aspiring to the CMO role, or for current CMOs looking to build up their skills and status??

1. Actively get out of your comfort zone, continuously learn new skills. I don’t think I would have got to where I am now if it wasn’t for the fact I made career decisions that took me out of my comfort zone. Of course, you can stay in the same line of work for a very long time, get better at what you do and climb the career ladder this way; and in this case, I think that stretching yourself and getting out of your comfort zone, will help you grow into seniority quicker. What’s worked for me though has been broadening my horizon by pursuing a non linear career path: marketing to different audiences, for different kinds of business models, and picking up new skills along the way. I’ve grown into a better all-round marketer as a result.
2. Understand how your marketing impacts revenue and be able to demonstrate this, building a strong, trusted relationship with your Finance Director/Chief Financial Officer. Build a commercial mindset.
3. Focus on what truly matters. As you get more and more senior, your remit broadens, and it’s easy to try to do everything. You need to have the courage to say no to anything that distracts you from where you can have the greatest impact on business results. Also, be prepared to delegate, but stay grounded and in touch with the day to day, to make a genuine difference at all levels and across departments.

Q: Is there anyone you like to thank for their support in helping you become a CMO to watch??

Superscript’s co-founders have been wonderful to work for and with. They are open-minded and trust their leaders to do the right thing.?

They trusted me to grow the marketing team with the right skill sets and structure to achieve our scaling goals. They supported me with the rebrand from Digital Risks to Superscript. And when you think about it, it’s admirable and commendable of founders to trust someone completely new to their business to rename ‘their baby’, and do the right job.

Big thanks to Cameron Shearer and Ben Rose.

This Q&A was first published by the CMO Alliance as part of their CMOs to Watch in 2022 announcement. The full report, including advice and tips from another 12 CMOs, can be downloaded here.