Monthly Archives: September 2013

Are CIOs and CMOs interchangeable?

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“CIOs and CMOs should know enough about each other’s field of expertise to be interchangeable” according to Jim Davis, SAS’s global marketing chief in a recent CMO.com article.

I had to read that statement more than once.

After considering this concept further, I thought to myself why don’t we also add the CFO, COO and CEO into that prototype and include a couple of engineering PhD’s and legal counsel.  Now that is an executive persona.  Clone them into a board of “Mini-Me’s.”

Think of the synergy in that boardroom.  No hidden agendas, no bitter debates or personality conflicts.  The enterprise now has complete strategic alignment across operations, product development, IT, marketing and sales.  Dream team.

Don’t get me wrong; Mr. Davis makes many important points.   As a former CIO his emphasis on technology is no surprise.  To be clear, I agree with the majority of his opinions.  I just don’t’ agree that the CMO and CIO roles could be interchangeable.

In fact, it’s not that I completely reject the ideal of that concept.  It’s just not realistic. Culturally speaking, no one sits at more distant ends of the boardroom than the CIO and CMO, assuming of course that the CMO has a seat.  Their training, skills, experiences and often personalities are polar opposites.

Technology is a tool; it’s not the solution to marketing’s mission.  There is no debate about the unprecedented potential it represents as a production, delivery and measurement mechanism, but to confuse marketing with technology is naïve and doomed to failure. And B2B technology vendors are often the worst offenders.

Marketing has become distracted by technology and automation.

Marketing is ultimately about awareness, communication, persuasion, and audience experience. It begins with a compelling message and story that delivers unique differentiation that your audience cares about. To quote Leo Burnett, effective messaging “does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.”  It is human, empathetic, and most of all, memorable.

These basic building blocks do not come in a box.  The technology and the applications – they are tactical tools for delivery and measurement.  Ultimately success is measured in terms of customer acquisition and retention, not the size and quality of your database or email open rates.

As a technology marketing and content strategist, I agree with Mr. Davis’ philosophy at the tactical and execution level. Marketing does need a better understanding of what’s in the technology box, and how they can use it.  But do not become distracted by it.  Without simple, memorable, inviting messages, it will not achieve the objective.  Garbage in, garbage out, it’s just being distributed more efficiently.

The CMO and CIO are not interchangeable, but the evolution of digital technology does require that their roles and objectives be synchronized and complimentary. The digital age has also created at least one shared reality – it has forever changed the IT and marketing roles. The changes these executives have seen in the past 15 years are unprecedented, turning both their professional worlds upside down.

To succeed as business leaders in this new age, the CMO and CIO will need to transcend isolated and historic roles.  As digital interactions and devices continue to mature the two business groups will become inseparable in the customer experience conversation. Marketing and IT will represent a new business ecosystem that will ultimately be defined and measured by customer experience.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome additions to this conversation.

An open letter to marketing

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Marketing, you have become distracted; you’ve lost your focus. Somewhere along the way you lost site of your roots and abandoned your heritage.  You have forgotten that content is king, communication is personal and your audience has issues and needs other than your own.  They really don’t care about your goals; it is all about them.  Selfish, isn’t it?

You have been seduced by technology and automation.  It’s understandable, and it’s not entirely your fault. We all listen attentively to the promise of technology.  We wait anxiously for the next digital release and the new roadmap to success. So does your management team.

Marketing, your distracted relationship with technology and automation at the expense of message and story will not end well.  Laura Ramos eloquently captured this in a recent Forrester blog post:

“Once upon a time, there was a little marketer with a big problem. Her sales executives said, ‘We need more leads.’ So she bought a big new shiny marketing automation engine . . .  Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but I’m sure we all know the end of the story. The marketing engine didn’t live up to expectations because data and content didn’t come in the box”.

I’m waiting for the culmination day when I receive the marketing automation email that simply tells me to fill in the registration form.  No exchange offered, nothing of value for me, just the naked opportunity to give up my email, phone and address information and wait for the telemarketer to call.

Enchanting and powerful as technology is, it will remain a tool and not the solution.  To believe it has all the answers marketing requires is both naïve and doomed to failure.  But there is hope.  Every pendulum swings both ways and ultimately settles into a balanced state.

Marketing is ultimately about communication, persuasion, and audience experience and success is measured in terms of customer acquisition and retention.   It begins with a compelling message and content that delivers unique differentiation that your audience cares about. These basic building blocks do not come in a box; they are inherently human, emotional and memorable.  The technology and applications are important tools for the digital age, but they are the mechanics, devoid of vision and empathy.  Even the technology vendors realize this.

Marketing needs a better understanding of technology tools

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Jim Davis is the global marketing chief of technology vendor SAS.  Davis is also a former CIO.  In a recent CMO.com interview he makes a strong case for data-driven marketing and why marketing needs to “think more like a technologist.” He also suggests that IT needs to adopt a more strategic understanding of the business and collaborate more effectively across organizational teams to deliver solutions that align with the business objectives they support.

It is an interesting read and his fundamental message is that marketing needs a better understanding of what’s in the technology box, and how they can use it.  Davis believes that to succeed in the digital age, technology is such an important foundation to marketing success that ultimately the CMO and CIO roles should be interchangeable.  I don’t completely support that position but he makes some compelling points that highlight a dramatic evolution in the marketing landscape

Here are 10 important points from the interview with Jim Davis by Nadia Cameron:

  1. Marketing is increasingly quantifiable.  Analytics will deliver better customer understanding and program insights
  2. Data and analytics support the decision making process, they don’t replace it
  3. Digital channels and touch-points are everywhere and integration is essential to efficiency and consistency
  4. Vendors often lead marketing into the mistake of believing the analytics and automation system just needs to be switched on to achieve results
  5. IT often does not truly understand the needs and requirements of marketing CRM and automation systems
  6. CIOs need to understand what the technology can do for the organization and how it can interact with the customer
  7. One of the common CMO hurdles fully leveraging data, technology and expertise is their relationship with the CIO and IT
  8. Recognize the silos of information within the organization and integrate them
  9. The emerging marketing technologist and data scientist roles can help bridge the divide between IT, the data, and marketing
  10. The future of the marketing-technology relationship is real-time customer interaction, with context and personalized content

Marketing delivery and response has become much more quantifiable.  New tools, new channels and new tactics demand that we rethink our approach to execution.  In the never ending digital evolution, marketing and IT will become increasingly dependent upon one another.  But I have a very difficult time accepting that they will become interchangeable.

Marketing has become seduced by technology at the expense of its true mission – story and message.   We have become increasingly focused on automation, SEO, and Google rankings at the expense of creativity and content.  For marketing there has been no other choice, technology has added new overhead to the process without a matched increase in resources, many in fact working with less.

As a discipline, marketing has been forever altered by digital technologies, turned upside down in many ways.  Is it science?  Not in my view.  Delivery and analytics is heading in that direction and technology is a powerful tool-set, but let’s not forget about what we are delivering through those tools.

Lets not forget about story and message – it remains the true mission of marketing.