Tag Archives: CMO

Fired

Why are CMOs being fired twice as fast as any other C-suiter? Why are major corporations like Old Navy, Taco Bell and Miller Lite letting their marketing executives go? A recent article by Jonathan Salem Baskin questions why there is so much turnover in the marketing C-suite.
Is marketing changing? Sure. Is the marketing landscape beginning to flatten with the use of social media? Possibly. Maybe it’s as Jonathan suggests, maybe they deserved to be fired.
Lack of Accountability
Serfwerks believes that in many companies marketing is the last function to reject all accountability. Is there a change coming? Could this be why companies are moving on without their top marketing executives? Are we finally seeing the day where there are no more bottomless marketing budgets used to explore “creative” ideas? Are CEOs finally requiring CMOs to measure their marketing ROI? We sure hope so.
The Case for Accountability
A recent study by CMG Partners and Chadwick Martin Bailey found the following:
– 75% of companies are highly interested in marketing measurement
– Less than 25% of companies are excelling at measuring & improving their marketing performance.
– 98% of those excelling at measuring and improving marketing performance say it is having a significant impact on their business.
– 55% of those excelling at measuring marketing performance are gaining market share.
If only 25% of companies are measuring their marketing performance it must be difficult to do. On the contrary. It’s rather simple. If you can look at past performance, define you key performance indicators and outline your sales cycle. You can measure your marketing with a 95% accuracy.
Are you measuring your marketing performance? Now is the time to do it. Don’t be the next marketing department casualty. Start being accountable today.

Marketing’s Role in the C-Suite

An Interesting Problem

Recently, we met with a client to discuss marketing strategy. This client has a long history of doing business in Utah and is one of the largest private companies in the state. However, when we met with them we met with a marketing committee composed of a public information director, graphic designer, corporate strategist, and the corporate pilot. No marketing director and no CMO.

Needless to say, this company has not devoted a lot of resources to strategic marketing. Just in case you missed it before- the corporate pilot is on the marketing committee. In the pilot’s defense, he is a perfectly intelligent person—he was just being allocated in an odd way.

After the meeting it became clear that this committee wanted to have a seat in the board room with the rest of the senior management team. Functions represented on this team were finance, operations, safety, and HR. All of these functions provide inputs that help the executive team make profitable decisions for the entire organization. Marketing was occasionally called upon to talk about the company website or the design of a tradeshow booth, but had no say in the strategic direction of the company’s marketing efforts. Why? It is because no one on the committee knew how to give the senior management team useful information or input. Continue reading