Will Your Next CMO have The Right Stuff?
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READER’S NOTE: This is Part 3 of a series of guest blogs that examine the new skills that corporate communications executive 2.0 will need to thrive.
Part 1 by Lou Hoffman, A Mass Comms Curriculum Alone Short-Sheets Tomorrow’s PR Pro.
Part 2 by Dan Green, The 4 Skills Needed To Thrive.
Guest Blog
Mark Schaefer is an educator, managing director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and author of the marketing thought-leadership blog {grow}. He is also a new friend. Now, I’m a marketing geek. I have loved marketing since junior high school…sad, I know. Mark would never call himself that. However, he is, and he’s really smart. When one of us is intrigued by some new development that affects marketing we’ll call or email the other to ask, “What do you think about….?” I’m grateful that social media has connected me with a number of others passionate about social media marketing, too. It really cuts down on that talking to my imaginary friend thing….
This time I got to put Mark on the spot. I asked what advice he would give to a CEO who needed to hire a CMO to lead the company into the new digital and social marketing frontier. He took the challenge with great élan. Here is his answer.
–Steve Farnsworth
The Marketing rEvolution Is At Your Front Door: What Are The Critical Skills Your Next CMO Must Have?
By Mark Schaefer, @markwschaefer
My teacher and mentor Peter Drucker used to say that the only functions in a corporation are marketing and innovation – everything else is overhead. My friends in manufacturing will argue this endlessly but I think the point is that marketing is often a company’s most essential function. Choosing somebody to lead that team might be a CEO’s most important – and perilous – decision.
By the time somebody is in line to be considered for a Chief Marketing Officer position, they should have amply demonstrated the key traits that make a successful marketing executive:
- Experience that can be described in terms of financial results
- Demonstrated ability to lead and nurture a team
- Strategic orientation
- Passionate customer advocacy
- Superb communication skills
But what are the special qualities of a CMO in this era of real-time, two-way, global social marketing? What are the qualities that don’t show up in a resume that are critically important to the “New CMO?”
Keen analytical sense.
Sure, screening creative new ads is sexy but the heart of marketing is data and research. The best CMOs can help a company use data to distill the customer signal from the market noise. CMOs should be expert in marketing research methodologies and statistical analysis techniques.
A long runway.This is a term Jack Welch used to describe managerial candidates with potential to move beyond their current position. Hiring a CMO is one of the most important investments to the future of your company. If you’re not hiring somebody who could potentially replace you as CEO, why settle? Find somebody who can relate to finance, production, HR … every part of the organization and become a true leader and advocate across the enterprise.
Learning orientation.
The rate of change in the marketing landscape is in hyper-drive. At a C-level position, you can’t be an expert in all the latest technologies and ideas, but you have to be able to keep up enough to ask the right questions. Another key skill is knowing HOW to learn in this environment.
A need for speed.
One of the biggest changes to how we market today is the need to create an organization that can be reactive and fast. While there will always be a place for traditional research and long-term planning, the real-time nature of the web provides an unprecedented opportunity to detect and react to subtle shifts in opinion, customer needs, competitor activities and new product and service opportunities. Creating a corporate culture of rapid response is one of the greatest challenges facing CMOs today.
Well that’s my take on it. What did I miss? What does it take to be a CMO in the Age of the Social Web?
Mark Schaefer is an educator and managing director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. His daily blog, {grow}, contains insights on practical marketing solutions: http://www.businessesGROW.com/blog.
Sharing is Caring
If this post was helpful to you, share it with your colleagues. It’s a great way of saying thanks, and it lets others know that you’re a little extra cool.
Jennifer
November 24, 2009
Steve – Will introduce you to my father who has a book on the topic – Spanning Silos by David Aaker that discusses the organization barriers to great marketing by product, country, and functional silos and how CMO teams have dealt with that successfully. Also, there is a book – The Shift by Scott Davis that shows how a new breed of empowered CMOs need to become the catalyst for growth and transformation in their companies.
Email me directly and i’ll introduce you to him so he can contribute to your blog. Best, j
Lee Odden
November 24, 2009
Someone that epitomizes critical skills for CMOs in 2010 is Barry Judge from Best Buy:
http://www.barryjudge.com
http://twitter.com/bestbuycmo
Joe Bob Hester
November 24, 2009
Enjoyed the post. ‘Keen analytical sense’ and ‘long runway’ don’t seem that new; they’ve always been important, but learning orientation & need for speed have become absolutely critical in today’s environment. [Learning orientation & speed are really the ability to adapt (quickly).]
Mike Johansson (@mikefixs on Twitter)
November 24, 2009
Great post on an important topic, but can I add the following characteristics of a great CMO?
- Shape Shifting: In other words someone who both reinvents themselves and their department as the world evolves in real time. Too many CMOs react to some quantum shift with a “Yes, but ….” This is deadly for any organization. Evolve or die has never been truer.
- Information Connector: Someone who sieves the vast amount of information that is now available to make important connections for the organization in general and the marketing efforts specifically. Information is the new gold that companies that know how to use it best will end up with more of the gold.
- Outward Looker: What sets the best CMOs apart from the pack in Social Media, for example, are those who understand that all messages now need to be two-way (meaning every message sent needs to have a an available channel for quick audience response). A CMO who is still wed to many or some messages being one-way is not living in the 21st Century.
Thanks for the stimulating post.
jeffbullas
November 24, 2009
I enjoyed this post. An additional skill or character element that I think is becoming essential with a CMO in this new age of marketing would be one of “courage” to be wiiling to “just ship it” and make some mistakes as I mentioned a recent post on my blog at jeffbullas.com “The 5 Do’s and 5 Don’ts of Social Media” http://bit.ly/1j9WQB
Cheers
Mark W Schaefer
November 24, 2009
Great commentary on the post, thanks everyone.
The only comment I really disagree with is Jeff’s. I disagreed with the original post and I disagree with this comment too. The funny part is, it is about the only thing I ever disagreed with him on and it has come up twice now! : )
I agree that it is Ok to make mistakes, as long as they’re not big ones and don’t EVER compromise a brand. But I HATE the “just ship it” mentality. To me that sets a bad example for the rest of the company. Do you really want to set a culture of “just ship it” throughout an organization? As a true leader do you want that behavior replicated down the line in thousands of little ways because you have acknowleded that it is OK to be less than excellent? Eventually your company will fall to pieces and customers won’t trust you.
I also think it’s disrespectful to customers to knowingly ship errors. I know the gist of your comment was to “just do it” and then work on continuous improvement but I guess I have been immersed in the teachings of Deming and the Toyota Production System too long to agree that it is Ok to promote a philosophy of “just ship it.”
Tim Penning, APR
November 25, 2009
CMOs should understand the distinction between PR and marketing, that PR is not a “marketing discipline” but a unique discipline in its own right, that PR is about relationships not just publicity, that ALL publics and not just consumers need to be considered, that metrics should not be only financial and short term but understand the value of measuring relationships/reputation/engagement and its affect on sales.
CMOs should recognize that PR people come from a communication background moreso than a business background, and that’s appropriate. PR people should understand business, but they bring something unique to the table in their deep knowledge of communication and its psycho/social implications.
In a nutshell, as the Cluetrain Manifesto and legions of social media books point out, “markets are conversations.” Also, markets are consumers, consumers are people, people have power. CMOs can’t “target”; they need to listen, engage, respond, converse. Consumers don’t just respond to companies, they respond to what other consumers say about companies.
That’s why CMOs need to understand PR.
Andrew Eklund
April 13, 2010
Excellent article. Good for the CMOs to know that there are also great digital agencies in the wings who are poised to help these emerging leaders. In fact, we’ve been waiting a while. ;)
Rohn Jay Miller
December 1, 2010
Great post, as others have said (It’s interesting to see several fellow MSP folks)
Ability to truly lead change management. 1. Get CEO and if needed, board sponsorship 2. Identify the best managers across the org and build bridges to show them how the change can/must succeed. 3. Build prototype successes (with skunk-works if necessary) 4. Build on natural inflection points–mgmt changes, market changes, competitive announcements. If the CMO is the new chief strategic agent in the company, then knowing how to change organizations is critical. My $.02.
Mike Volpe (@mvolpe)
December 4, 2012
Do you think that a CMO needs to demonstrate the ability to successfully use inbound / social / content tools? Would you hire a CMO who does not blog? What about a CMO with a lame Twitter account (not engaging and small number of followers)?
While how much “real work” the CMO does depends on the size of the organization (I have worked in a marketing team of 1 to a marketing team of 40), I think it is hard to really understand the intricacies of some of today’s platforms without rolling up your sleeves and using them.
http://tinyurl.com/359ighost20109
February 6, 2013
This is exactly the third blog, of urs I personally browsed.
Nevertheless I love this specific one, “The Marketing rEvolution Is Here:
What Are The Critical Skills Your Next CMO Must Have?
The @Steveology Blog” the very best. Regards -Stephania