CMO in a Box A prior article, “CEO in a Box,” produced the largest number of positive responses we have ever received. Therefore, in a continuation of the topic, we look at the Chief Marketing Officer. What does the CMO of a multi-channel direct marketing organization do every day? Here is a CMOs benchmark protocol that provides a start to answering that question. While many other responsibilities and functions exist for the contemporary CMO, if just these few, essential, foundation basics were covered we would have an industry filled with leadership and marketing rainmakers. Here, then, is my protocol for evaluating a CMO ‘out of the box.’ First: Product, Markets, Circulation, Online Channel, Creative, or Finance? And the answer is... Circulation In the traditional catalog past, it was simple to define a senior marketing executive: catalog and circulation expertise, whatever that meant. Today, it is a hard decision to come up with the primary skill that a CMO possesses, so get ready for direct marketing heresy and some radical thinking that quite possibly will challenge your bedrock beliefs about marketing and marketing executives. Marketers and merchants are very different people. Somewhere over the past five years or so, the divergence of marketing and product has occurred. Traditionally, marketers have always had product responsibility, but that has changed. Product is increasingly less a marketing responsibility and more a merchandising responsibility. Catalog and multi-channel direct marketers have begun to import true merchandisers from the retail world, and the results are positive. The merchandisers have become their own senior executive discipline and product is their bailiwick. So, henceforth I will reserve the primary product responsibility for the Chief Merchandising Officer in my pantheon of multi-channel gods. Perhaps the lead article in the next edition will be “Chief Merchant in a Box.” The Chief Marketing Officer’s primary responsibility, in this new multi-channel milieu of direct marketing, is circulation. However, before going any further, understand that the term ‘circulation’ has an entirely new definition from that of our traditional cataloging antecedents. Circulation is no longer about lists only. The new definition of circulation defines the role of the CMO and is, I believe, as follows: The primary responsibility of the Chief Marketing Officer is the profitable management of new customer acquisition and existing customer retention and reactivation in all channels via all media. In short, the Chief Marketing Officer has responsibility for applying multiple types of circulation to attract and keep customers, and those circulation types and media include:
Of course, this list of media and circulation types is not complete and it will be out-of-date within several hours, but suffice it to say the CMOs role has extended well past pure list work. What is even more daunting is the recognition that, in the last five years, many of these are entirely new media and all of them have multiple sub-disciplines. As an example, print advertising has the sub-specialties of magazine, newspaper, one-offs, freestanding inserts, and ride-alongs. In its completeness, and with all of the sub-disciplines delineated, the ultimate multi-channel direct marketing circulation and media amalgam is huge and has become a diverse and complex specialty demanding much broader experience and a far-wider knowledge of marketing applications than simply those pertaining to traditional lists. If, indeed, the CMOs of today are spending most of their time finding, keeping and reactivating customers profitably, they are, by necessity, seeking the Higher Ground of channel intelligence and utility from their closest Trusted Advisors. Inherent in that relationship is the expanding mutual definition of circulation as outlined above. In 2005, the circulation plan is a many-layered thing, and the interconnectedness and complexity of the media and the contact strategy are producing plans that are truly elegant in their innovation and structure, almost architectural in nature. The point: Smart CMOs are working ever closer with smart Circulation Professionals. The importance, value and contribution made by your Broker have increased five-fold in the last five years. When the channels expanded almost exponentially with the advent of e-commerce, the role of the CMO contracted from ‘Jack-of-All-Trades,’ as it had always been, to that of the corporate channel and media czar. The reality, however, is that the CMO role had to contract and the responsibility for product had to devolve because there is simply too much to be done in the channel and media realms in order to profitably find and keep customers. In effect, the CMO role has become pure. Previous | Next |
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