"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" (memo to marketers)
Incomparable Marketoonist teases organizations & offers crown to their marketers with affectionate wit and truths well told.
For over 20 years The Marketoonist Tom Fishburne has deployed his wit to remark on internet-era organizations and their marketers. He shines a light on behaviors we recognize as ridiculous and on people with whom we empathize.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines wit as the ability to use words [and art] cleverly and humorously to make a critical point. We smile along with Tom. At the same time, we wince as he confronts us with truths about how dazed and confused our career/function/discipline/profession has become in the last 20 years. Wit can be critical, and Tom is devastatingly so.
Shakespeare's Henry V knew the crown on his head meant great power but even greater expectations.
We smile in particular as Tom highlights the ever-widening scope of the CMO; the ever-growing demands on the role; the ever-greater expectations of a new holder of the position; the ever-expanding knowledge and experience a candidate is expected to bring; the ridiculous assumption that success in one industry transfers to another.
These truths explain the short tenure and revolving door of the role, unique in the C-Suite (but similar to an English king's). And the attempts to rename the role as Chief Growth, Brand, Customer, Commerce, Content, or Experience Officer, etc. (while this week the ANA fatuously calls for a Chief Media Officer).
Tom is spot on. As presently conceived, the scope is near-impossible. The expectations cannot be met in any short-term time horizon. As presently educated, trained, and qualified, Marketers cannot be well-equipped to stand with Finance and Engineering professionals.
Why then is he offering the crown of generative AI to Marketing? What truth is Tom telling us in his cartoon series on Marketing and the role of the CMO?
50 years ago, Peter Drucker?said “Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs." This is even more true today.
30 years ago, Regis McKenna put the same point more succinctly:” Marketing is Everything”. The best definition today is that Marketing is responsible for everything outside an enterprise’s physical walls and digital domains. ?
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It’s time to recognize that reality and equip marketers to meet those demands. Marketing can be transformed into a profession through investment in its institutions, talent, education, and training. As in Finance and Engineering, professional standards, postgraduate qualifications and formal certifications should be developed for the young Marketers who will be responsible for the future direction and prosperity of enterprises and their communities.
In Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Daniel Goleman cites a study of executives at 15 companies: “Just one cognitive ability distinguished star performers from average: pattern recognition, the big-picture thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from a welter of information around them and to think strategically far into the future.”
The welter of information around marketers today requires them to find patterns in up to 6 upstream disciplines: Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Technology, Law, and Power:
Gen AI is advanced statistical learning and modeling on a scale previously unimaginable. The Marketoonist offers the crown of Gen AI to marketers because it offers the potential to recognize patterns everywhere, beyond the data within a firm's walls and domains. Only when we connect to other disciplines and data sources will we deliver Goleman's 'big picture thinking'.
Stewart Pearson
Stewart believes in Consilience, the unity of knowledge across disciplines. He has lived, worked, and traveled globally in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He has settled in the Evergreen State and Seattle. After studying Statistics and Marxist Economics in the U.K. he had four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly and globally.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman, then the fastest-growing major agency in WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village in France where both of Stewart’s heroes had lived. Stewart is on?LinkedIn?and?Twitter, and at?[email protected].