Until now, the most CMOs (chief marketing officers) had to worry about—besides getting respect in the C Suite—was achieving some degree of longevity in what has become a revolving-door position.
Now, the CMO position itself is under siege, according to a recent article in Ad Age titled, “Why More Brands Are Ditching The CMO Position.” (See link below).
Again, the disruptive influence of the digital revolution is at play. Consultant Evan Sharp is quoted as saying “there’s a ‘growing groundswell’ to move away from the CMO moniker to reflect the new ways companies reaching customers, including with data-driven personalized communications. Even his firm is rebranding its CMO practice as ‘customer activation and growth.’”
It’s an article anyone in the marcomm community should read.
https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/why-more-brands-are-ditching-cmo-position/2183166
—LC
What are we doing here?
I have seen many (many) fads and trends in the business of advertising since I
had my first agency job in Detroit in 1962.
Comes now ‘customer activation and growth’.
‘Branding’ (whatever it was) is now passe? CMO’s are now on the streets, waiting for another band wagon to jump on? We have been through ‘positioning’ and then tried to sell clients that (brand) ‘awareness’ was enough and then after the MBA’s ruined a lot of good agencies with their prattle and counting and quantifying everything but money, along comes ‘branding’ which goes through embarrassing iterations, dozens of books trying to explain and
define the nonsense promise underlying it and then comes the Internet and opens the doors to social media and another round of meaningless terms like ‘engagement’ and ‘customer centric’ and
metrics and analytics are tossed around as if offering anything finite.
My impatience is showing.
Back in the good old days (?) when I was hired as a junior copywriter (read chauffeur, gopher,
production manager, media director and agency bartender) our clients were local banks and
small retailers, even a guy with the local license for Veg-O-Matic and 200 single point automobile dealers.
They all wanted one thing and our focus was 100% directed at that: generating traffic they could convert to a sale.
Advertising has something to do with sales?
By the mid 19709’s, agencies were promising clients ‘increases in awareness’ like that
has anything to do with sales. Those MBA’s hired by clients and agencies alike talked
endless nonsense, conducting research, holding focus groups and ‘pre-testing’ advertising
(awareness) and wise clients began to ask for more.
Some had the temerity to hold agencies responsible for that sales curve. Imagine.
An automobile dealer gave me the lesson of my life when I saw him frown at my
repeated messages about ‘marketing and advertising’ . At the next meeting I asked,
before anything, ‘How are sales?”
The question changed everything and I began to ask that question at every client meeting,
every time. When a client had a weekend sale, I would gulp and place a call first thing
Monday morning to ask, “How was traffic this weekend…how are sales?”
I seldom heard (especially from auto dealer clients) that sales were good but a client
once confided that the weekend ad schedule sold some cars.
So the client’s goal became mine: sell 120 cars per month. We measured units and
not awareness or ‘brand promise’.
Talk sales with your clients.
it will make you a better person.
And a better advertising practitioner.
End of Rant.
Bill Hoke
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