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Why marketing jargon is a career killer
Why do so many marketers believe using marketing jargon inside their company is okay? It’s not. It’s a career killer.

Inspiration is a leader’s most powerful weapon
As a customer-focused leader, you are in the inspiration business. The biggest part of your role is to mobilize people in your company to make a great customer experience happen. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just issuing orders to those around you. Your best bet is to inspire them. But how?

Three leadership skills every customer experience leader needs to master
It’s funny, shaping a company’s customer experience (CX) is, perhaps, the biggest challenge of a business. Yet the leaders in charge of this crucial endeavour rarely receive targeted leadership training. It’s time to change this.

Trust and how to build it
In a marketing team, trust is the foundation for everything. No matter how good your team’s marketing skills are, they won’t make a dent in the market unless people give their best and take some risks.

Dear CFO: Trust your marketer!
Hand over heart: What do you think of marketers? Many CFOs think that marketers talk bollocks, don’t understand the company, and simply can’t be trusted. To be fair, they sometimes have a point. But most of their perceptions are wrong—there’s more common ground than they may think. In fact, marketing most likely determines the fortunes of your company.

Make your marketing team a revenue center
Marketing leaders must constantly show that marketing delivers financial returns. Why? If the organization knows your work delivers a return, the decision makers will give you the resources and support you need for your important marketing projects.

Marketing team-skills: Simplicity matters!
Think about it: you want to change the customer experience that large numbers of people in your company create each day — most of whom don’t work in marketing. The only way to succeed is to become a “leader of leaders.”
5 facts about marketing every CEO (and CMO) needs to know
Even decades after leadership thinker Peter Drucker said his famous sentence “the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation” there’s still a—surprisingly lively—debate as to whether marketing’s (and marketers’) role should be exalted. Here are five research-backed facts that prove all marketing skeptics wrong. Marketing and CMOs are crucial for company success! Full stop.

To thrive as a marketing leader, step out of your role
As a marketing leader, customer knowledge is key for your business success—but it won’t get you promoted. In my research, what mattered more for marketer’s career success, were product and market knowledege. A good way to gain these insights is to step out of your role.

Two ways to prove that marketing works
Many non-marketing leaders don’t fully understand why marketing is essential for the company. That’s why making the case for marketing to them may be more important than you think.

The real reason for marketing’s diversity problem
Too many leaders still believe diversity doesn’t matter for company performance—or they can’t improve top team diversity anyway. Publicly firing a chairman won’t change these beliefs. What’s needed are facts that no C-suite leader can ignore. Let’s make the case.

When leaders need a bulldozer
Leadership means sticking to decisions unless there’s a very good reason to change or stop. If you’re leading these meetings, stay calm, refer to the old plan, raise the issues, and suggest solutions. Successful CMOs are great consensus-builders. But at times, “renting a bulldozer” comes in handy.

Cannes 2016–Five takeaways for CMOs
There’s lots of encouraging news coming out of Cannes. While marketing still faces tactical challenges—social media, big data, ROI, to name just a few—the prevailing belief is that CMOs are back in the driver’s seat. They’re cutting through the clutter and refocusing their attention on what really matters: great work that drives the business.

How marketers can help the company change
Delighting customers is high on every CMO’s agenda. This often means building capabilities to serve customers faster, better, or in a more personalised manner. Technology isn’t the hardest part, however; what’s really tough is driving changes within a company. It’s...

Success comes from working with the best
People will forget the price, but they’ll never forget the quality, famous designer Jil Sander was once quoted. For marketers, her point couldn’t be more true (from my cmo.com column). Your ideal agency partners may be a six-hour flight away, and expensive. But...

Storytelling is a marketing leader’s most important skill
Marketing is only one piece of the customer experience puzzle. To create a truly remarkable experience, other departments must also be heavily involved. The challenge is that colleagues in these other departments don’t perhaps report directly to you. You must find ways to mobilize them, starting with sharing your vision through a powerful story.

Why bosses don’t listen to marketers
Daniel* is a marketer–and Daniel has a problem: he isn’t getting his boss’s attention. A regional marketing head of a large consumer electronics company, he often finds himself last on his boss’s agenda. Daniel isn’t alone. Millions of marketers struggle to get attention. Perhaps their work isn’t seen as critical for the company.

Can’t be in charge? Start a movement
Let’s face it: you’re not in charge of it all. Almost nobody is really in charge of it all. Your boss can disagree with you. Your colleagues can push their own agendas. Even your team members can push their will over yours. We are in the 21st century. The old...

Starting a movement
To start a movement, you as leader must take a risk, try something new, and show its effect. Then it’s all about finding your first followers.

Why leading marketing is hard
WHY LEADING MARKETING IS HARD. Marketers face three crises: trust, control and skills. Leadership is the way through all of them.

3 digital traps for marketers–and how to avoid them
“Who should lead our digital marketing transformation?” Many CEOs are looking for leaders to move the company’s marketing into the future. Too often, however, top marketers don’t make it onto the CEO shortlist because they’ve fallen into a digital CMO trap. It doesn’t have to be like this.

Great marketing teams love having a good fight
Consumers’ lives wouldn’t be the same without Diet Coke, the Swiffer, or Red Bull. CEOs would certainly miss telling the success stories behind how these brands were created and marketed. But the real key behind many successful products is innovation. And to truly innovate, marketing teams need constructive conflict.

Influential marketers tackle big issues
How to claim your marketing seat at the company’s top table? Many marketers work hard but struggle to cut through internally. Why? Because they don’t tackle issues that really matter for the CEO. Don’t let that happen to you.

Marketers: get out of the office!
How to find the time to get closer to your customers? Meeting customers is a great source of insight. Too busy? You may have more time than you think.

Why skilled marketers fail – and how to fix this
Seventy one percent of CMOs have strong top- and bottom-line impact, but over half are struggling in their careers. Better leadership skills would up the career prospects of many marketers. For our new book The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, Patrick Barwise and I...

Apply for the European CMO Fellowship 2015
Apply now: CMO Fellowship Programme 2014. The Marketing Academy, McKinsey & Company and actvance Leadership Advisors help CMOs become CEOs

Want to Inspire ? Show the fire in your eyes
Inspiring people starts with one person: yourself. If you have the spark of inspiration, you can inspire others. That’s the key.

Apply for the European CMO Fellowship 2013
CMO is a wonderful role. But some marketing leaders want to go to the very top. The Marketing Academy’s new Fellowship Programme is helping CMOs on their way to CEO.

The 4Ps of marketing leadership
Millions of marketers master the famous 4Ps of marketing: product, price, place and promotion. But if you’re a marketing executive, you won’t get very far without also tackling the 4Ps of marketing leadership: productivity, purpose, pull and power.

Are you a Jobs or a Wozniak?
There’s no doubt a company can survive the digital revolution intact without expertise–a la Steve Wozniak. At the same time, however, there is a need for marketing leaders to see the big picture and develop strong leadership skills–a la Steve Jobs. So how can marketing leaders gain more influence?