by Thomas Barta | Mar 24, 2020 | Marketing Leadership
When the world suddenly stops for 90 days, could you use this time well? Business life is a rat race. So many meetings, presentations, emails. Breakfast to go. Working lunch. Late dinner. It’s crazy. Then, all of a sudden, things grind to a halt. The meetings get...
by Thomas Barta | Mar 13, 2020 | Marketing Leadership
Could this be your moment? It all started in 2020. The world was just beginning to grapple with a pandemic. Shops and schools had to close. Events were cancelled. Firms asked people to work from home. Global travel ground to a halt. People had to completely change the...
by Thomas Barta | Jan 23, 2020 | Interviews
Why Katharyn White wants to redefine the collective impact as marketers. What makes a successful CMO? In this series, I explore the practical secrets of marketing leadership: what works and what doesn’t. This time I spoke with Katharyn White, Senior Vice President and...
by Thomas Barta | Oct 16, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Fran Crippen loved the water. The US long-distance swimmer had beaten his competition many times. 7 medals in 6 years—one gold, four silver, two bronze. Olympic games in reach. Expectations were high for the Fujairah Marathon Swimming World Cup. Fran promised to call...
by Thomas Barta | Oct 8, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
A few days ago, The Marketing Society asked me to share with their senior marketers the insights from the largest ever study on marketer success. Seats were arranged in a circle, so I could see everyone’s eyes as I walked onto the stage. The room was packed. Before we...
by Thomas Barta | Sep 2, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Making it to the next level can be exciting. More responsibility, more options, more pay. But how to get promoted? Perhaps your firm has a fixed promotion schedule, and it’s either “up” or “out.” Perhaps your boss likes you and pushes you up the ladder. Or perhaps...
by Thomas Barta | Aug 6, 2019 | Interviews
For my Forbes CMO leadership column I sat down with Mika Yamamoto, who left her mark at firms like Amazon, Microsoft and Adobe, to talk about what matters for marketing leadership success. Here’s a summary (you can read the full piece on Forbes): Thomas Barta:...
by Thomas Barta | Aug 2, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
When the numbers don’t add up, business dreams evaporate, change movements stall, projects die. Perhaps people love your idea. Perhaps no one asks if the numbers work out. But sooner or later, someone will. Ideally, that someone is you. ...
by Thomas Barta | Jul 19, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Last weekend, my partner and I took a bicycle tour to a small village near our home, called Adendorf. Each year, it hosts an iconic garden exhibition – a sales show with plenty of champagne and canapés. After a few glasses, we passed a large exhibition of roofed...
by Thomas Barta | Jul 8, 2019 | CMO Central
For the sixth year in a row, I’ll work with The Marketing Academy, McKinsey, and Wisdom to help 40 blue chip marketers on the way to CEO. This year – for the first time – we’ll run a U.S.-based program in addition to the successful European...
by Thomas Barta | Jun 25, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
As a marketer, people are paying you for the firm’s most important job (next to innovation): finding customers – at the lowest possible cost. Finding customers is an art and a craft. The art is your work’s beauty: the creative, the intuitive. The truth is, marketing...
by Thomas Barta | Jun 7, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
I love the Airbus A380. It’s an engineering masterpiece. The world’s largest airplane. Quiet. Spacious. Loved by passengers. Yet the A380 demonstrates what happens to businesses and careers when ‘cool’ trumps ‘relevant’. The A380 promised a solution to a pressing...
by Thomas Barta | May 28, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Who’s the most powerful person in a firm? The CEO? No. The CFO? No. The head of sales? No. It’s the customer. When a customer complains, the CEO sits up. When a customer wants to leave, the head of sales gets on the case. In a firm, the customer’s voice trumps all...
by Thomas Barta | May 23, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
“You can help us build a love brand. I want to hire you,” the CEO said. Nina was thrilled. Her last years in consumer goods had been tough. Tight margins. Aggressive competitors. A firm, in which everyone was a marketer. This telecoms CEO promised something very...
by Thomas Barta | May 16, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Who wants to be a middle manager? Not many people. It’s nice to be the trainee – young and cool; it’s nice to be the CEO – with all the power. But the rest? Stuck in the sandwich’s middle. No longer cool. Not really powerful. If middle managers were brands, they’d be...
by Thomas Barta | May 3, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Everyone in the boardroom turned to me in anger. I spent much of my former career doing two jobs: leading large brands and running major marketing transformation programmes. I loved both. And in both, when it came to success, my head was on the table. In marketing, I...
by Thomas Barta | Apr 25, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
We love the familiar, the recognisable, the known. And when it comes to picking a team member, many people are looking for a clone. Men recruit men. Creatives recruit creatives. Number crunchers recruit number crunchers. It’s easier to relate. It’s kind of natural....
by Thomas Barta | Apr 17, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Do you thrive in a matrix organisation? In a matrix, everybody is in charge–and nobody has all the power. The person who can tell sales what to do, doesn’t exist. The person who can tell product development to make amazing things, isn’t on that list. The...
by Thomas Barta | Apr 11, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
Trust in politicians has evaporated. Consumer trust in brands is at an all-time low. And too many executives don’t trust their bosses. What’s the problem? Perhaps it’s professionalism? Brexit, for example, is a tough (and stupid) challenge – but the politicians in...
by Thomas Barta | Apr 5, 2019 | Marketing Leadership
The internet is great. If you know something and you want to write a blog that 100,000 people read, you can. If you want to do a podcast that 100,000 people hear, you can. The internet is also great for people who don’t know much, but are good in front of a camera and...
