Pete Krainik Dreams About CMO's

“CMO dreams are all about creativity... creativity is all about CMO dreams!” PW

Do you know Pete Krainik the founder of The CMO CLUB?

I know Pete from a distance and am lost in admiration for what he has built locally and globally... uniting country wide CMO's, all highly focused on the art of the possible to share, to learn to help their companies earn greater returns in the language of sales and marketing. I dedicate these thoughts to Pete and the members of The CMO CLUB.

To be clear, this is not an article to fawn or advertise Pete, The CMO Club or its impressive membership. He does not know I am writing this and we have never met physically, not even in phone conference. My thoughts within this article are my own. But, I see his postings in content and video, I have reviewed his web site. Pete's dream is formidable, alive and hyper-growing locally and globally. Here is the club's charter from their web site: 

"We are the world’s most innovative and engaged community of CMOs, committed to helping each other solve our biggest challenges in a behind closed doors, candid, and trust-worthy environment. Our Membership is 650+ CMOs strong and growing, representing B2B and B2C client-side brands with over $33B in collective annual marketing budgets and with over 40% of our Membership representing billion dollar brands. You can find us in 30 CMO Club Chapters across the globe. Our success, fueled by dynamic and innovative peer-to-peer problem-solving and inspirational and educational events, continues to raise the bar for CMOs around the world."

In my opinion, all Chief Marketing Officers are investment bankers who dream big. Marketing bankers who must build engaging and successful dreams for consumers, customers and team members primarily funded from below the line of the P&L. Not just dreams for dreams sake, but dreams to harbinger, to construct company growth, a formidable future, a profitable platform of market opportunities. The mission statement is simple: "market and sell dreams."

Of course brands do not make products. Rather products make, create or even break brands. If the products a brand creates for a market enlists consumer emotional capital, creates dreams in the art of the possible, stimulates boomerang purchasing habits, steers around competitors then the CMO's dream and triggers for success are already well in motion (think Apple, Starbucks, Bayer, FaceBook, etc). However, if the product is a dud, a non-starter in the language of competitive disadvantage, missing the mark of value, price, positioning and consumer advantage then the CMO's role is to prevent the largest museum of failed products in their target markets. In essence, the CMO's role becomes a defensive, bulwark posture as opposed to company quarterback on the offense.

Hence, the CMO must have a seat at the executive planning table, perhaps dominion over all product development to ensure the dignity of market knowledge is invested in the brands promise to create consumer dreams, emotional capital in the language of demand. This is the role of an investment banker we call the CMO. Today CMO truly stands for "Chief Metric Officer." Every metric of the entire company filters thru the CMO whose role is to ensure the most profitable gains in market growth and profitability.  

To ensure highly successful CMO leadership in the language of dreams I offer this formula:

CREATIVITY + RELEVANCY = WON

If the CMO's team is highly relevant but not creative to enlist emotional capital in the language of consumer dreams then their mission will fail. If a CMO and company team are highly creative but not relevant to their market and P&L mission they will fail. As products (physical products, content, services, etc) incepted, created and built are designed to make or take a market it is the CMO who has the answers thru market sensing, data lake collection and mining, thru instant focus groups, thru legacy reviews of past intentions, past results in investments. To be a team of "won" dreams must be created, must be relevant, must be engaging... must create profitable boomerang engagements.

As I so believe in practicing and exercising stimulating creativity, smart relevancy and emotional engagements over the weekend, in my Studio W, I created a music video titled "DREAMS" dedicated to Pete and The CMO Club.

As I like to say "the answers are out there." The CMO Club is jam packed with answers as well as questions and group sagacity in thought-mining reflections and so should all CMO's think and act in this manner. The answers are out there as they are not in our physical offices. The answers are found in our market places, in our creativity in congress with P&L relevancy, the answers are found thru the dignity of knowledge vacuumed from market dynamics and data... found with the creativity, relevancy and knowledge of a refulgent organization known as The CMO Club. 

Thank you Pete for building the dream for so many and inviting me on several occasions to join your urbane marketing club. Perhaps, someday, together. For now, dream on, dream on and continue to build our united marketing dreams for many years to come.

Peter Weedfald is the author of Green Reign Leadership a book which defines the path for success in sales, marketing and company governance.