The Magic Marketing Mirror and the CMO dilemma

I believe that marketing is the best mirror of the hyper-dynamic world we are living in.

And the Chief Marketing Officer has to look in that mirror and ask himself: Am I making the right decisions for the?customers today?

Did you know that the CMO Position is the most volatile C-Level Position in the companies today? With an average of 4.1 years (compared to CEO’s that have an average of 8 years) it’s a real ejector seat combined with impossible missions and unrecognized achievements.???

As an Entrepreneur in the marketing field, I gathered and summarized the difficulties and insights of it into my new article.

Let's start with some facts & numbers:?

• 31 of the top 50 are women; 19 are men.
• 80% of CEOs do not trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs?(Fournaise Marketing Group )
• 74% of CEOs claim that they believe their jobs do not allow them to maximize their impact on the business (Fournaise Marketing Group )??
• The biggest concern of CMOs (46%) is the efficiency in marketing (Forbes Insights )
• 53% of CMOs indicate that increasing revenue is their primary mandate!
• 76% of executives agree that organizations need to dramatically reengineer the experiences that bring technology and people together in a more humancentric manner. (Accenture Technology Vision 2020 )

Am I making the right decisions for the?customers today?

This question may appear simple, yet it is the most challenging question faced by CMOs and their companies today.?The last word of the question, today, means much.?This question has become more important because of this word.?Nowadays, customers and buyers are different from the past.

This powerful question, if answered with accuracy and in-depth understanding, can make a profound difference. So profound, it will change the fortunes of the organization.

The question, if answered correctly, will accelerate a company’s ability to transform and be relevant in the new digital age.?Answered incorrectly, it can put the company behind competitors and start a decline.??

Today’s CMOs are some of the most multidimensional, strategically savvy, creative, innovative and, yes, challenged executives in the C-suite.?In uniquely owning the voice of the customer, they are architecting customer experience, digital transformation and industry innovation—even as they navigate the increasing complexities and expectations of their role.

CMO influence is defined as the impact a chief marketer's actions and words have on his or her internal organization's motivation and performance; corporate brand perception; broader marketing and advertising trends; cultural and societal discourse; and, ultimately, corporate financial performance, including stock price.

Behind greatest brands, there were always great marketing people, who leveraged our attention-span and loyalty to the next level.

Keith Weed, Marc Pritchard, Antonio Lucio, Ann Lewnes, Leslie Berland were just some great unrecognized people who leveraged the Brands and CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.??

The CMO position will always play a big, important role, leading the company’s efforts to boost revenues and profits and it seems like the kind of opportunity any ambitious executive would love to have and fill out!

To the surprise of many, the role is limited mostly to marketing communications, including advertising and social media. The missing responsibility for (and limited influence over) product launches, pricing, and store openings is the bitter aftertaste that reality and the poorly designed job brings with it.

A 2012 global survey by the Fournaise Marketing Group highlights the tensions between them: The results reveal that 80% of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs (In comparison, just 10% of the same CEOs feel that way about their CFOs and CIOs).?

CMOs also sense a serious problem. In our own surveys, 74% of them say they believe their jobs don’t allow them to maximize their impact on the business.

With poorly designed jobs, aligned with non-realistic responsibilities, high expectations, and performance measures, it sets a CMO up to fail.

Greg Welch, Senior Partner @Spencer Stuart agrees: “While these are exciting times given the influence of digital across organizations, our CMO community is under tremendous stress”, he said.?“Facing sky-high expectations from their CEOs and organizations, and not to mention empowered customers, even the very best marketing leaders are having trouble keeping the troops calm.”

Nobody knows digital headaches better than a company’s Chief Marketing Officer. If you want to feel the pulse of business in today’s busy world, just ask a CMO to summarize the situation.

Visibility, Positioning, Brand Awareness, Loyalty, Findability, User Engagements through the variety of endless channels and platforms combined with more than limited budgets gives the CMOs a thrill to endless loops of strategies wretched with impossible timelines to match.

Such a masterpiece is only to be achieved with the help of the right partners, which doesn’t make it any easier by the FOBO (fear of better options) generated from the endless ocean of Agencies and self-called experts.

There are a lot more channels than there used to be. And although there are software solutions to help you manage it all, it’s still difficult because channels vary per device (Neil Patel, serial entrepreneur).

So what should C-Suite leaders do about this? First, understand that in this hyper-dynamic world with the accelerated digitalization process throughout COVID-19, the business and the user behavior will never be the same again. Ensure marketing has a seat at the stakeholder’s table with an equal voice to enrich and shape the roadmap towards the future.

And what should CMOs do about this? Learn to speak the language and balance the parties internal and external in the company.

• Analyze the data (segmentation is key)
• Identify the challenges (intern and extern)
• Qualify the solutions (have a pragmatic approach)
• Develop the roadmap (what brought us here, doesn't mean that will bring us to the next level!) What's missing? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? How have you broken that problem down? What alternatives have you evaluated? What hypotheses are you testing? How will you measure success? What are the assumptions behind your estimates?
• Approach marketing like a customer would do, and customers will listen to you.
• Find the right partners who will go with you the extra mile
• Roll out the Strategy and execute! Just do it!
• Improvise, adapt, overcome
• Repeat the process :)

I hope that you can reflect, identify and enjoy my thoughts on this matter. Peace :)