I am waiting for my flight to San Francisco where I will be attending Aberdeen Research’s CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Summit for the next few days. I honestly am not sure what I will find there because the CMO is one of those rare creatures rarely observed in the wild. They are usually signing off on big deals here or being a press front person there. Maybe one of the reasons it’s so hard to spot these folks is simple fact that the average CMO tenure these days is slightly less than 2 years. In that time most big companies are still getting all the letterhead and business cards done and then they have to start the process all over again.
I am interested in learning exactly what some of these people encounter on a daily basis. As you probably know, I have never been a CMO and I suspect I never will be (unless of course I want to just give myself the title then WHAM! – instant CMO). Not having sat in their seat I suspect I have an over simplified vision of their jobs. My vision of glamour and glitz is likely more WSJ than reality. I see cushy boardrooms with lots of dark wood and big leather chairs and Cuban cigars by the bushel. I feel pretty confident it’s not like that.
I suspect it’s more hand wringing than anything else. The reality is that in the vast majority of cases the mountain that needed to be climbed to become a CMO at any decent sized company was steep and it took a while. As these people ascended the corporate ladder they did so in a time of what is now considered old media. Traditional media like print and TV have changed so dramatically and are looking more and more different every day because of the online space. As a result, there is a learning curve being experienced at the highest levels of the marketing food chain that has not been experienced in many generations.
Now a CMO who must report to even less informed CEO is at the mercy of new media types that may be half their age and have decades less experience. The convergence of these two types is tenuous at best.
As CMO’s are being required to be accountable for their marketing budgets (less eyeballs and more sales) their world is changing dramatically. There is a call to do things, in fact, that are still being figured out. How do you do a job when the rules change daily and the measurement tools are still being developed?
Maybe this is why I am not or may never be a CMO.
