CMO's Fail Because The Rest of the CXO's Don't Respect the M

I just read this article in the December 10th edition of Business Week called "The Short Life of the Chief Marketing Officer" and it really fired me up; it fired me up so much that I'm writing a second post tonight.  Personally I think it was a hatchet job on the CMOs with tidbits like these:

• CMOs last 26 months on average in a job versus 44 months for CEOs (personally I think it is an apples and oranges comparison; CEOs are picked by the board and often the CMO is picked by the CEO)
• New media options are "bewildering"
• CMOs are second guessed and have people looking over their shoulders
• It is a fuzzy assignment (what isn't these days)
• On the heals of former Cingular CMO Marc Lefar talking about  how he needed to get his head around "a geeky marketing tool" called SEO (un-friggin-believable), he was quoted saying "the average 45 year-old chief marketing officer cannot possibly figure out what's cool"

It paints a horrifying picture of the state of CMOs; regrettably I can't find it online for you to read.  However, it neglected one important aspect of the CMO that I've seen make the strongest ones crack.  It is the micro-manager CEO/Chairman that thinks they understand marketing because they read a book, founded a company, or watched Donny Deutsch's The Big Idea (BTW - not a shot on Deutsch or the show which I enjoy).  Here are sure signs if your CEO/Chairman/Founder is a micro managing wanna be CMO:

• Demands that you run useless news paper ads especially in papers that are just good for their ego (ex - The Wall Street Journal)
• Believes marketing is brochure ware
• Won't let you hire a copy writer and insists you do it yourself
• Keeps laying off your staff and has some "wiz kid" in operations/execution write your ads
• Wants you to take creative direction from the head sales guy because he knows what they need in the field
• Insists on proof reading your ads and then offers to re-write your copy or change colors
• Wants to be part of the decision making process in picking your agency or said another way, wants to pick the agency but doesn't respect the process
• Forwards you SPAM solicitation emails about how to get high rankings in search
• Assuming they know something about search, writes your text ads or refuses to let you have landing pages
• Takes sales calls for websites, newspapers, and TV but neglects to include you in the discussion
• Goes around your back to your subordinates to make your life miserable

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  I'm not saying the CMO is perfect and lord knows if you don't understand SEO you probably shouldn't be a CMO any more.  I hate to write it, but if you are one of these TV and Newspaper first kind of CMO's then I hope you are marketing a product that skews way older or towards non-internet savvy customers.  Otherwise, your days in the CMO chair are over. 

The article makes it seem like blogs, social networking, YouTube are scary things, but how about just plain online advertising which is proven to deliver results through the years.  Why do you think Financial Services Companies pay like $8-$10 million per year for the Yahoo Quotes Results package?  If you aren't advertising online then you couldn't spell ROI if someone spotted you the "R" and the "O".

From what I've seen during my 18 years of marketing, CMOs and other Senior Marketing Execs fails because of

1. micro-managing CEO or founder
2. market forces which the CXO team failed to recognize and the CMO takes it on the chin
3. an over zealous sales exec who doesn't get his way
4. loses a beauty contest to peers or some up and coming manager
5. The CEO changes the direction of the firm
6. Doesn't know a thing about the internet (mentioned in the BW article)

Enough of this rant...PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Comments

[Nocat]

Nicely done, to hear it from a CMO view in a podcast over at Marketo about the top challenges faced by today's CMOs and the specific actions CMOs can take to build their power and respect in the organization. With world-class marketer Susanne Lyons,with 25 years experience including Chief Marketing Officer posts at Visa and Charles Schwab. It has some good ideas one can use. http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2008/05/building-power.html