by Thomas Barta | Apr 24, 2017 | Interviews
In this Forbes interview, Dan Ramsey, Consumer Marketing Director of BT, shares insights on successful CMO leadership: Being at the Heart of the Business: Ramsey emphasizes the opportunity for marketing leaders to make a significant impact and contribution to the...
by Thomas Barta | Apr 10, 2017 | Interviews
In this interview with Paul Gottsegen, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer of Mindtree and former top marketer at Infosys, HP, and Dell, several key insights on successful CMO leadership emerge: Leadership in Marketing: Paul Gottsegen finds the greatest...
by Thomas Barta | Mar 17, 2017 | Interviews
In this interview with Claire Cronin, CMO of Virgin Atlantic, several insights into successful CMO leadership are highlighted: Connecting to a Higher Purpose: Claire emphasizes that marketing leaders play a crucial role in connecting everyone in the organization to a...
by Thomas Barta | Mar 15, 2017 | Marketing Leadership
Marketers have a reputation for being overwhelmed and always late, but it does not have to be that way (from my Marketing Week column). It was one of those baffling days. I was giving a closing keynote speech at a conference, but the event ran late and my...
by Thomas Barta | Feb 24, 2017 | Interviews
In this interview with Syl Saller, Diageo’s Global CMO, we discussed several insights into successful CMO leadership—from her remarkable career: Marketing as a Growth Engine: Marketing at Diageo is perceived as a growth engine that focuses on understanding...
by Thomas Barta | Feb 17, 2017 | Marketing Leadership
What’s the best tool for recruiting the wrong people? A long competency list. If you want too much, you may simply not spot the best marketing leaders. Cut to the chase and ask yourself a simple question: “What distinctive skills do we need?” (from my cmo.com...
by Thomas Barta | Feb 3, 2017 | Interviews
In this interview with Rashmy Chatterjee, IBM’s North American CMO, several key insights into successful CMO leadership are highlighted: Marketing’s Role in Transformation: Marketing at IBM is seen as a transformational function that leads in repositioning...
by Thomas Barta | Jan 24, 2017 | Marketing Leadership
Great marketing communication is jargon-free so the customer message makes it through loud and clear. So why do so many marketers believe using marketing jargon inside their company is okay? It’s not. It’s a career killer (from my Marketing...
by Thomas Barta | Dec 30, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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...
by Thomas Barta | Nov 25, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
Shaping a company’s customer experience (CX) is, perhaps, the biggest leadership challenge of a business. Yet the leaders in charge of this crucial endeavour rarely receive targeted leadership training. It’s time to change this (from my cmo.com column). Recently I...
by Thomas Barta | Nov 6, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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. The condition required? Trust! Trust doesn’t happen automatically....
by Thomas Barta | Oct 29, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
You are a finance leader. You love numbers. You know what’s going on inside the company’s P&L. In a complex world, your CEO relies on you. Hand over heart: What do you think of marketers? Many CFOs think that marketers talk bollocks, don’t understand the company,...
by Thomas Barta | Oct 29, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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. But proving...
by Thomas Barta | Oct 7, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
“You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, couldn’t be truer for marketing leaders. Think about it: you want to change the customer experience that large numbers of people in your company create each day — most of...
by Thomas Barta | Sep 3, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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...
by Thomas Barta | Sep 2, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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 knowledge. A good way to gain these insights is to step out...
by Thomas Barta | Sep 1, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
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 (from my cmo.com column). At times, even the most high-profile CMOs had to make the...
by Thomas Barta | Aug 13, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
Diversity was back in the news when agency Saatchi & Saatchi recently sacked chairman Kevin Roberts for saying (among other things) that the gender diversity debate in advertising is over. His widely reported remarks have turned into a PR disaster...
by Thomas Barta | Jul 14, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
Customer leaders have to make things happen for customers. One way of doing that is by building consensus with colleagues. But, sometimes, leader’s life is about ensuring a decision, which has been taken, gets executed (from my cmo.com column). Not long ago I...
by Thomas Barta | Jun 23, 2016 | Marketing Leadership
Until recently, top CMOs were a rare sight at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. That’s changing. This year’s festival brought the “who’s who” of marketing leadership to Cannes in a quest to celebrate creative excellence. I had the opportunity to...
