A New Newsletter about People Who Make Marketing Make Sense

Chief: Someone who leads people

Marketing: The activities a company undertakes to promote and sell products or services

People: Us non-robots... for now

In 2014, I created The Experience Firm help companies be better at marketing by doing the one thing we all know works best, earning word of mouth.

In 2023 (almost exactly nine years later), I created Team CMO to help companies be better at marketing by hiring the right marketing leader.

While my motivation hasn't changed, I've certainly learned a lot in the last nine years. Perhaps the most significant is the profound importance of putting the right people in charge.

My partners and I all came into Team CMO having done the job and having earned our beliefs about what does and does not work and why. However, even just a few episodes in, The CMO Show has afforded us incredible insights into the things nearly all CMOs seem to agree on and the key areas in which we differ. Among the former is that these three things are both critical and consistently challenging:

1. Setting and managing expectations at the leadership level
2. Providing your team with a mission that is clear and focused
3. Keeping abreast of the ever-evolving ways in which humans consume, process, and share information

This newsletter will focus primarily on these three things and people who are best at solving for them.

Unlike The CMO Show, which currently records only in Austin, is almost exclusively focused on current and former CMOs, and has a backlog of amazing guests, this newsletter will allow me to feature a wider variety of marketing leaders from all over the world. And, of course, it will allow me to promote more people.

Yes, some of the people featured here will go on to be guests on the show - in fact, pre-show introductions may become a regular thing - but not all will be right for the show or able to join us in the studio. So, I would love to connect with you, specifically for this newsletter, if you are any of the following:

• A CMO who is outside of Austin
• A preeminent marketing specialist/expert
• The creator of any process or product that makes marketing efforts easier or more effective

And that, my friends, is the Chief Marketing People Newsletter in a nutshell. But wait, there's more (couldn't resist). If you happen to be planning to be in town for SXSW, please consider joining us for the Chief Marketing People Party. As the kids say these days... it's gonna be lit.

Yes, you and I both know they don't really say that, but my market research (which consisted entirely of asking both my teenagers) was inconclusive.

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BANANA NOTE: After this introductory installment, I expect every article to feature and be focused on a specific individual who will be pictured at the top. Just this once, I'm using a picture I've used once before - of my good friend and true viral marketing expert - Alex Cequea, because it makes me laugh every time I look at it. I strongly encourage you to follow Alex, both for his remarkable marketing advice and to witness the progression of his latest great undertaking, Trippy the Traveling Ukulele, wherein he and Trippy attempt to play music with strangers in every country on Earth while raising money for Unicef.

Honestly, where does he come up with this stuff?