Notes From the Pree Rao From Egon Zehnder, State Of Biz Interview

If you’ve had a moment to listen to my 1:1 State Of The Biz with Egon Zehnder’s Pree Rao, thank you for taking the time to listen, this wrap-up will be a good re-cap for you. Knowing how busy most of my friends are, I thought I would capture the high-hard-ones to Cliff Note and expand on some commentary. Pree makes some great points regarding marketing, leadership and searching for an executive role, whether on the brand, agency or wanting to make a cross-over move. It is a masterclass from him on the topic.

Thoughts on The Kellogg Marketing Leadership Summit

Annually, Egon Zehnder, McKinsey, Northwestern’s Kellogg and Jim Stengel host a “who’s who” of the marketing leadership world and discuss important, often vulnerable topics about trends in leadership, marketing and surrounding topics. I attended for the first time this year and was pleasantly surprised to feel the energy in the room be different than I expected; people were open, honest and candid about resilience and the radical shifts that are occurring in our society and how it bleeds over to managing ourselves as executives and teams within our organizations.

Pree’s Overview of Egon Zehnder

I asked Pree to talk a bit about EZ as I’ve been impressed with their approach, their go-to-market and how they think about leadership advisory and executive search. EZ is one of the big five global leadership advisory firms. And when you think about leadership advisory, he thinks about the people side versus the strategy side. EZ is the only firm that does not have its roots in North America, the firm started in Switzerland, and more interesting to me is that its founder started in the ad agency world at McCann. Egon felt that the current executive search model was not working for him, so he set out to change the model, a great story of a personal experience driving innovation. The firm employs former operators and marketers, including Pree, which I feel brings an empathetic, unique perspective to the search approach. And their model is unique in that they have one firm-wide profit and loss statement. This allows the firm to be unified and work together to service our client's needs with the same incentive structure so we can take a long-term view.

The Importance Of Relationship Building In Search

For both the clients executing searches and having a wide view of the candidate pool, relationship building, and maintenance is the heartbeat of a successful leadership and executive search advisory. While pitching does occur (same as in agency), trust plays a key role in getting the phone calls for new business or putting forth great candidates in a search. Executives who are candidates today could be clients tomorrow, it is a natural cycle. Treating people, the way you’d want to be treated is a good human sense and especially in the emotional nature of job hunting.

>?Pree Tip: Pree talked about how candidates can better their chances to be included in a search, reaching out without a relationship certainly can get you included, but the better approach is to be less transactional, build relationships over time, get to know each other so that when something does arise, you are considered as part of the pool.

Title Blurring of Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Growth Officer

Over the last decade, companies have been moving back and forth between the marketing role being more closely aligned with growth and replacing pure Chief Marketing Officers with Chief Growth Officers. Pree’s perspective is that its largely a semantic game, what matters is the content of the job and whether that's a Chief Growth Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, SVP of Marketing and Sales, or whatever you want to call it, the remit and content of the role is what matters. He believes the semantics are happening because these functions can cross disciplines and bring together the growth-oriented tasks of sales and marketing – unlike a singular role such as a CFO. In fact, there are nuances between B2B and B2C roles where in B2B, the role may require more channel development, distributors and other go-to-market that is different from a CPG CMO/CGO role where the consumer is at the center surrounded by retail/commerce channel development.

CMO’s becoming CEO’s

We discussed the trend of why or why not CMO’s are moving into the CEO seat where traditionally they were filled in F500 by CFO or COO’s. The theory is that having people in the CEO seat (and on the board) that represent the voice and trends of the consumer makes good business sense. Of course, a CEO must master the financial fundamentals of leading an enterprise and the complexities of working with a board/The Street. Examples include the CEO of McDonald’s Chris Kempczinski, coming from brand management roles through innovation and then into P&L leadership into the CEO role, or I mentioned Jeff Jones from agency to Target CMO, now CEO of H&R Block.

> Pree Tip: When operating as a CMO or CGO understand how the remit impacts top/bottom line and immerse into how supply chain, logistics, raw materials etc are impacted by the sales and marketing activities – this is starting to think and operate like a CEO, seeing the entire enterprise.

Keeping Up With Marketing Complexity

The world of marketing and branding continues to get more complex, with CMOs and marketers having to understand the building blocks of consumer-centricity and brand development and now learning about MarTech, Data, AI, Machine Learning etc. The make-up of the CMO’s team is shifting as the data and technology landscape shifts – this is starting to bring new types of marketing candidates to market, including people that have grown up in DTC is much more data and technology-focused than a brand marketer. This contrast of capabilities creates interesting candidate pools. We hear searches asking for a “DTC” marketer, code for performance marketing, data-driven personalization, and e-commerce. A DTC marketer understands “growth hacking” moving faster with iteration and A/B testing, for example – moving fast. That fast-paced, fail-fast culture may blind a traditional brand marketer.

> Pree Tip: No matter the core essence of the role, whether brand or performance leaning, the basic building blocks and fundamentals of marketing and brand development stay the same, especially understanding the buyer. As a marketer, you do not need to be an expert in all parts, but as any good form of leadership, understand it enough to know whom to bring in, whether on staff or agency partners.

Brand vs. Performance vs. Balanced Marketers – In Roles and Boards

I asked Pree about trends in what CEO’s and Boards seek from C-level marketers in the enterprise. And while he posits that it varies by industry, he is seeing a trend towards a balanced marketer who understands the importance of building an emotional connection with the brand and how to drive action to the buy button, retail store or channel purchase. He also feels it is still hard for marketers to find seats on publicly traded boards. I find this fascinating as the voice of the customer; the brand experience and new product innovation should be front and center for any board – maybe we will see a pendulum shift back here.

The Difference Between a Brand-Side Marketer and Agency-Side

We discussed the age-old debate of who’s a better marketer, the classically trained brand-side marketer or the person that grew up on the agency/consulting side. What are the differences, pros/cons and perceptions vs. realities? As someone that’s been on both sides, I have felt the differences firsthand. Pree (and my) POV is that the brand-side marketer thinks about their consumer, their brand, their internal logistics and effects their decisions have on the wider organization vs the agency-side marketer that are mostly thinking about how a creative or marketing idea will impact sales or growth. For those of us that like variety, being able to solve multiple marketing challenges across industries and brands sometime on the same day attracts a certain type of strategic consultant marketer.

>?Pree Tip: Think about having both experiences in your career to understand the angles and to be a well-rounded marketer. While the consumer/buyer will always be at the center, how the angles on that problem affect the answer can be interesting and different. It can help create empathy for your go-forward in either of the roles with the purpose of creating the best possible answer for the brand.

Be Honest In Interviews

I asked Pree about interview tips for C-level executives including disasters he may have seen along the way. His immediate response was to be honest, shape and tell stories about both the good and when things did not go well – what did you learn, how did you react or respond to course-adjust. The answer will come out eventually, do not be untruthful about anything in your career or current situation.

>?Pree Tip: Be always transparent and authentic.