TryThis
.Blog

Authentic leadership is a powerful idea. But if you believe authentic means ‘just being yourself’, you may end up in a mess.

The label ‘digital’ makes marketers throw all leadership rules overboard (from my Marketing Week column). I love technology. When new tech stuff comes out, I immediately fall victim to the...

Marketing is only one piece of the customer experience puzzle. To create a truly remarkable experience, other departments must also be heavily involved.

For marketers to overcome strong beliefs inside the company, showing facts may not be enough. Your better bet is to ask a powerful question: “How, exactly?”

Coca-Cola’s ditching of its chief marketing officer role for a chief growth officer is a clear warning to CMOs: stand for growth, or lose it all.

Marketers have a reputation for being overwhelmed and always late, but it does not have to be that way.

The average chief marketing officer in large U.S. firms leaves after just 4.1 years, while the CEO stays around for eight. It is not good for business.

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?”

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every CMO agrees: skills are central for marketing teams’ business impact and internal standing. But when it comes to building those skills, the marketing department is too often undermanaged and underfunded. It’s time for CMOs to catch up.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,...

Why are CFOs so powerful? They have crucial and credible financial data every CEO wants to see. Competing with a CFO’s credibility can be hard if your own data is forward looking—or if your work’s impact is hard to measure. Don’t try to compete—change the game. Open the books!

Marketers often ask: “Do I have what it takes to step up and shape my company’s customer agenda?” But when good marketers hold back, companies may struggle to grow and customers are worse off. That’s when it’s time to add more fuel into marketer’s tank: confidence.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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. Marketers face three crises: trust, control and skills. Leadership is the way through all of 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.

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.

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.