The Evolution Of The CMO Role Podcast
This week on Marketing Unfiltered newsletter my co-creator Harry and I went on the mic and dissected the CMO role, tackled the hot debate around the CMO title (CGO vs CCO vs CBO vs…)
If listening isn’t your thing and don’t want to send your AI assistant to list out the takeaways:
Key Takeaways
Evolution Not Revolution
The CMO title has evolved significantly over the years and will continue to - evolve with it
Modern CMOs face challenges due to the explosion of channels and increasing complexity of organic marketing
Kill The Channels Before They Kill You
We have to own the channels we are on and make the sensible decision to kill the ones we won’t be on - there is more with less and then there’s spreading yourself too thinly
CMOs have to understand what the team are doing, why they are doing it, where they are doing it and some of the how - too far removed will likely mean you might be too. Not having the confidence here will mean you are going to be judged by peers before they look at performance
Leaders Have To Lead
Stating the obvious isn’t enough: Brand marketing takes longer to show results compared to performance marketing, we all know the focus is on performance but to be removed from the Brand CMO being replaced by the Performance CMO and then replaced by Brand CMO cycle you have to learn into both and lead, stop asking for permission
Performance & Brand aren’t ever going away so work out how you communicate this, how you leverage Brand as a performance channel and stop asking if its ok - lead the department and the business - asking permission is not what C-Suite executive do
Being More Than A Department Lead
Communication and relationships with other C-suite executives are crucial for success - start investing your time strategically
In CMO coaching, it is critical to help shape IQ, EQ and PQ
Every company has unique needs that influence the CMO's role - the CMO has to own this and their influence
Continuous education is essential for CMOs to influence decision-making especially at C-Suite level.
Confidence in your marketing plans is vital for gaining support from leadership - you have to educate as you go, not just at budget level.
AI & Marketing
AI is becoming an integral part of marketing strategies - so it’s time to get onboard, learn the tools and adapt the tools to your needs and problems needing solving.
Bring your team and internal experts into the conversations and coach those around them
Mastering The Role
CMOs must learn to navigate the complexities of org design - not just hiring for skill gaps and for the next 6 months but how it all works together for 18-24 months and why hiring and firing plan is critical.
Aspiring CMOs should focus on evolving their skills and understanding the business.
I have two great conversations with Carl Hendy on SEO and the future of SEO with AI and Chris Hutchings on the future of content and creating real content marketing. Subscribe below for these conversations to land in your inbox
The True Evolution Of The CMO Role Transcript
With Danny Denhard & Harry Lang
[00:00:00]
Danny Denhard: Hey everyone. Today we're gonna have a good little chat. Harry and I are co-partners, I suppose, on Marketing Unfiltered. We decided today to jump into why the CMO role is at, where it's at at the moment, and there's a lot of discussion around the CMO title and what it does. So, Harry, do you wanna give like a really quick introduction to and yeah.
Then we'll dive into some questions.
Harry Lang: Yeah, sure. Now some of you might know me for those who don't. I'm Harry Lang. I've been floating around marketing roles, both in agency and laterally, sort of marketing director, CMO VP for the last 25 years. 17 years of it was spent in online gaming and gambling. And now I run brand architects as a consultancy.
Danny Denhard: Been there, seen it, done it, basically
Harry Lang: just old mate.
Danny Denhard: Right. So let's start with the, the most obvious question we should probably answer is, the CMA title is like a hot topic. Should we talk around how we sort of got to today and why, why there's such a hotly debated subject.
Harry Lang: Yeah, yeah. No. So I was, I was thinking about this this morning and sort of [00:01:00] doing the history lessons and without getting too boring about it, in the old days, marketing director was the top job.
You know, you a marketing director and above you as a CEO or an MD being on the size of the business. But then, you know, with the emergence of the big global corporates, you know, you got marketing director for X and Y brand. You got loads of sub, you got loads of geos. Got loads of different formative companies coming under one umbrella and marketing directors didn't cut it because he had loads of them.
So you needed to find a way to have someone who was responsible for all the marketing directors. And my belief is that that's, that's where the CMO came from. It had a C-Suite title, which would've appeased many egos back in the day. 'cause it feels nice and chunky. You sit alongside CFOs, all the big cheeses, CEOs.
That's all well and good. And that would've been fine because marketing director or VP of marketing in the States then reporting to A CMO and you can have lots of the former and you can have one of the latter. And crucially, it was a singular role. You were the [00:02:00] vinyl port of call for all things marketing across however many business units you had.
That's great. And then we strayed, we started to stray. And this is. Is why did that straying into Chief Revenue Officer? Chief Customer Officer, chief Brand Officer. Chief Market Officer was one I heard the other day maybe want to vomit. What happened with that and what was wrong with the CMO title as being the king of marketing reporting to the CEO?
Because to my opinion, that would've done the job. And no, let's get your take, Danny. You know, why did that stop doing the job and why do we get this mess that we're in now?
Danny Denhard: That for me, there's three areas, and one area is the CMO title and role became quite big and quite grand and very broad. And we're in this point where there's too many channels.
And my belief is what happened, say 10 years ago was there was a [00:03:00] splintering of what the CMO did or didn't do, and the more channels that got. You know, popped on. We've got further and further away from 1980s, 1990s, two thousands, CMO, and what a lot of people did was they tried to change the title or encompass or incorporate.
Other, other business lines or other areas to, to roll into. So the CCO the chief customer officer was the one that came out for a while, was where you really were. You owned the customer service, the customer support. It was really what the CMO started to do a while ago, but it was more emphasis on that.
The CGO, the most obvious one. We, in the UK our interpretation is very different to what it is elsewhere. So growth was folded into it, which is what for me, when I've been A CGO, it's product and marketing together. And so when we've had a look at and changing all the different variations, it just depends on the company size, what the company [00:04:00] narrative wants to be.
How they wanna attach how they wanna attach a message or internal message and an external message to, to that. So there's a lot of bias in there and there's a lot of evolution as opposed to revolution. But my hot take on the CMO title pretty much is, it's all environmental. It's everything that's around you within the business.
That all takes into , consideration what it is or isn't. And you'll know from applying for roles recently and having a look in the market, the CMO role is either super broad or very narrow now. So it is just this constant, constant change.
Harry Lang: We talked about it a couple of weeks ago around specifically chief growth and chief revenue officer and how the inclusion of sales under that mandate is.
You know, sales was never under a CMO remit. You know, you're responsible for all things marketing and at the point of sale, you know you hand over whether it's brand at the top of the funnel or direct response and performance coming down, and [00:05:00] then you hand over to sales. And sales are responsible for basically that, getting people over the line part, which again, leans much more heavily into B2B and SaaS than they ever did in B2C and B2C.
That conversion funnel, the CRO element. And then retention and CRM afterwards. That was all marketing remits and customer facing things. Marketing was responsible for you bring sales into it, and then chief growth and chief rev revenue officer. And that exploded within B2B and underneath B2B SaaS, which.
Seems to be obsessed as an industry with reinventing buzzwords and, and things for various reasons. And then that mess, you know, where does that line end? Because then you start creeping over towards operations and as you said, products get, gets pulled into that. I'm the chief product officers. You know, for me, product was very distinct and a hugely defined set of skills.
Quite a few of them. Very technical indeed, not under the REIT or the skill base of most c. By overgrowing and overreaching into some [00:06:00] of those areas and making this role under C-R-O-C-G-O, all encompassing, who is that person? Do they even exist? Have they ever existed? And my guess would be in startups.
Yep. Everyone wears all the hats. 'cause you haven't got enough people or money to do, to do a proper hiring job. You don't need to at that stage. But in latter stage companies, Jesus, you know, you need specialists, you need people who've got the 10 years plus of experience of doing products in that particular vertical.
You marketing's got enough channels going, which we're expected to be pretty much, you know, working great at, especially in a large international organization. How the hell are you meant to be good at products and a sales expert have the time and capacity to run a sales organization, which you. That's a hell of a lot of work both days and nights to even come close to hitting targets.
And that sort of made this cross that these, these titles have come to bear. It's impossible. No one can do all of that. And yet we've got the titles and kind of, it's, it's a meeting of [00:07:00] ego and aspiration meets the impossible wall of no one human can do all these things successfully. And the ego is, I want bigger titles.
I want more responsibility. I want more money. Give me more share options. 'cause I'm a bigger piece. You know, I'm, I'm second only to the CEO. So I'm a hero in my own mind, in my peers minds. And then I don't deliver because I can't deliver across all of that. 'cause no one in the, in the world ever could. And that for me is kind of one of the crux points of all of this is we've made this, I think I've called about assisted suicide in marketing in, in the past, in one of our newsletters.
Yeah. We, we've made a lot of this off our own backs as an industry. And actually there is this need just to look at reality, like who can do what, who's required to do what, and there's no one fixed answer, which again, brings confusion to the people who make decisions to the CEOs and the boards out there.
Every company is different with different needs, every single one. And then marketing is an imperfect science anyway, so every day is different. So you smash all that together and you've got a billion [00:08:00] potential outcomes and you've gotta pick one. You've gotta pick, pick one and be right. Well, that's rarely if ever gonna happen.
So I think that's, that's the mess we're kind of in.
Danny Denhard: One way that in a previous conversation that I had with Chris, and we talked around content and marketing content and how that's evolved is we're in this loop now or this circular sort of movement where when you're at a larger firm, you have someone who say is like brand first, you know?
Typically an older school marketer who was brand heavy and that was their background. And then we moved to this more performance style, CMO, who came in and, and concentrated more on performance marketing. And then what happened was I. The brand got delegated or was almost sort of relegated underneath. So then you have to make a change to bring in another brand or a brand focused CMO.
And then again, it changes to performance and [00:09:00] often what we're seeing is. If this is happening over and over and over again, you've got such short and short windows to have A. impact. B, have internal or external impact, you're really gonna struggle with people at the C-suite to, to really buy into that role.
And I, having spoken to a number of different companies and through coaching and consulting recently, there are sometimes I'm bought in to work out what they actually need. And very often it is someone who truly understands brand. Who has a, a true vision around what performance really means for that business.
But then they need the supplementary services of all the others. So as a CMO, now you've got this really tricky spot, whereas how do you prioritize effectively what skillset that you need to bring in nurture and develop round so often? It's okay.
Harry Lang: Yeah. Yeah. There's like a tology here though, because buyer's very definition brand takes longer.
By its very definition, performance can happen tomorrow. You know, you can [00:10:00] turn on the taps on PPC and paid social and see numbers and metrics getting hits. You know, you put $10 million into Google in a month. Things are gonna happen, but it's linear. It doesn't have incremental growth capability. You, you pay what the market tells you to pay per click and you convert what your capability is as a business or as a product, whether B two.
At least things happen immediately, the performance. Whereas a brand, you need to have CEO and A board who A, gets it and has seen it in action and understands the value, and B gives you the time to actually see it through. Now if you sort of think about five year cycle from the start of a sort brand refresh all the way through to bring something to fruition, so your maximum capacity as a brand no one gets five years anymore.
No one gets five years in a hot seat. So, you know, and that's for various reasons of which this is one. So you're effectively then inheriting from somebody else, which you may or may not agree with. Meanwhile, the world has moved [00:11:00] on com, competitors have moved on, the markets have moved on, legislation's moved on, and you are all then picking up the pieces and going, well, we're still gonna spend on brand, but then someone up top goes, well, no, you need to cut some money because we're not performing, you know, head counts.
And then the brand becomes the easier cut because you are all being held accountable. 'cause you can't be for a couple more years. So you think, well I just need to get some numbers up. So performance, it's pour into that bucket. There's lots, I believe lots of cycles like the one you said, but there's cycles in terms of how you are attributing strategically and tactically that can cut your ability to succeed on a proper level.
And how many CEOs out there are the ones who are brand performance? Truist, some very. Who started off, you know, understanding this equation and their brands thrived as a result because they, they always kept their foot in the gas. They were the ones driving it saying This is how we do it. And their marketing team was never in any doubt, 'cause it wasn't a marketing strategy, it was a [00:12:00] business strategy for the rest of us who sort of go cap in hand every year and say, right, you know, here's the budget I want.
I want 55% brand, I want 6% brand. This is why. And then we get challenged and then you do your usual silly dance when the CFO says, well, by the way, we need to get 35% greater performance out of all of this. And you go, well, shit, I've been in this job for a year and bonus time's coming up and I don't really wanna lose this job because I've got no mortgage bills to pay and whatever else.
Ah. It's just easy. It's just easy to go right color the brand. One I'll, I'll, I'll try and make the case for next year when I'm a bit more firmly embedded. My relationships are stronger, and then it never happens because the world moves on. You probably get fired for various reasons, including performance.
And the circle begins again. And these are the messes that I think a lot of our peers in the industry are finding themselves in. They know what a proper job looks like, but very rarely do they get to do a proper job. And, and, and again, the, their level of influence, their capability to influence [00:13:00] diminishes because they aren't able to be seen as the best of, of what they can be.
And that's, that's one of the most frustrating things for me is it's a really, really hard job to do well being a CMO or a senior marketing leader in any business, and yet it's in way harder straight away because of influence. And that's, that's maddening And sometimes you just wish you just studied accountancy and become a CFO and just lied about numbers and pretended to make up forecasts every few months.
I mean, that, that seems nice. They seem to stay in their job for ages. So,
Danny Denhard: but there's a few things that I think we should like go into a little while. I'd love to go into a little bit more, leaders lead, right? So if you are marketing, if you're the most senior marketing lead or leader, CMO, or another title, it's your job to know what's gonna be successful and what isn't.
So when you go forward and you are making these recommendations to the C-suite, they're not asking, they don't often, they're not asking your permission. [00:14:00] What they want you to do is come up and say, here's my plan and. If they're going into levels of detail into channels, there's probably a lower end of trust there.
So you need to step up on, on that. So that's, that's always a recommendation I make in coaching is you are not there to ask for permission. You are there to tell the company confidently what, what changes. And I think the subtle. Obviously the business world has, has changed slightly in the last, say, like, let's say six years.
But what you should be able to do is, is have a confidence or a confidence level, and I always say cautiously confident in what's gonna work, what isn't gonna work. And if you're going in and say, now here's a 60 40 split, we're gonna do brand. All you are doing is you're shoving red flags in people's faces and you're making them worry.
So I think actually what a lot of the takeaway for most people should be is like, don't go in and, and overbreak down, break down everything into min minutia detail, but have that confidence to say, here's what we're gonna do, here's where we're gonna spend in and predict some, and [00:15:00] predict with confidence,
Harry Lang: you know, in terms long term.
That upwards. Education is what's required because your way, your way in real life, don't, don't get me wrong, I I've been that guy, you know, I've done that version to try and squeeze things through and, you know, get, get the TV budget for the brand campaigns, et cetera. But long term, if we're gonna get outta this crux and get a seat at the proper table, you know, the, the senior C-suite where real decisions are actually made, don't we need to keep on educating as to why?
It needs to be that way. Why that is the optimum way of doing things? Or do you just think this is our responsibility just to get the good result through and get the right budget, the right things through? At any cost?
Danny Denhard: You should be educating all the time. As I said, as I have said in our SEO chat with Carl, I basically, your whole job is to educate, educate, educate.
Like all the time with your peers. So if you think about it in a, [00:16:00] most people in the senior titles probably heard of first team. So it's your C-suite generally, and then your whole job is to spend, you spend a lot of your time with the founder or CEO and then in, in leadership team meetings. So you should be educating all the time there.
Then your team, your marketing management layer, or it's the, the teams underneath in that department, you should also be trying to coach them and manage them through this. And actually, if you're going in there and you're only doing it on the budget and you're only giving them the budget and the breakdown and, and tagging while it is, if there's no reference point and they're only referring back to the year, the prior year's budget, you are in a, you're in a weak position because they've only got light for like, you know, and even it is apples and oranges to compare.
But you are getting, you are not comparing to the right, the right level. There's a, there's another element like to this where when you're a CFO or you know, an [00:17:00] equivalent and FD, you are very often actually one of the ultimate decision makers, if not the ultimate decision maker. The famous example recently is where the Apple CFO told Tim Cook the apple, CEO, that they couldn't spend the money on, on ai.
So this is, this is like a big misunderstanding and this is where the relationships are really important to build up, not only with A CEO, not only with A CPO, and they're often your biggest sparring partners, but being deliberate with with the CFO and if the CFO is making those really deliberate Decisions for on your behalf. There's a, there is also another big problem. Your job as a C-suite executive is A, to be an executive and, and B, to be a department lead. So what you need to do is be the executive and be smart in iq, eq and pq. PQ for me is political intelligence. If you're not being really smart about how you talk around something, how you pitch it, how you get other people bought on, bought [00:18:00] into it.
Your tenure is gonna reduce month by month because you're not, you don't have that buy-in, you don't have that relationship. The other element is CMOs often reporting to COOs now or into another or CRO. So very often it is a different reporting line. If you're, if you have that, you're gonna have to spend a lot more time in a skip meeting to go into the CEO or the CFO and build those relationships.
And that's something many people don't do or don't feel like they have the opportunity to do it. But that's where I think one of my top tips is to, to build those relationships. Yeah. And ensure that people understand what, what you're doing while bringing your team on board. And if you don't understand a discipline.
Really get the team to be captains and champions and train you and do reverse mentorship. 'cause that's the only way you're gonna get other people in the business to buy into, into the channels and disciplines and have that confidence Because I've been in quite a few management meetings over my time and the [00:19:00] CMO gets flustered when people talk, ask for CAC numbers or talk about acquisition numbers when they're from a brand background.
Or how does it all fit together? They struggle to translate that to people in the room. So I do definitely feel like there is this like learning curve where CPOs and, and other C-suite execs have actually understood the executive side of it as opposed to the, you know, department lead side.
Harry Lang: Yeah. I've certainly been guilty of that myself in the past of sort of trying to hold, hold the cards in, you know, part of it is this is our business.
We understand it, you don't, part of it is time. You know, it's, it's where you invest your time and actually your point there about the investing in the education of the others is, is how you get influence. That should be a priority. Like grinding the teams, making sure everything's working. You know, there's so many things to do, and you think that doing the work itself is the priority.
That's what your team should be doing. That part of that C-suite, that executive level [00:20:00] role, that's your time. You know, making sure you take those weekly meetings with CFOs, C-O-C-P-O, you know, you're completely okay with them. But behind the scenes, before you get to that csuite leadership meeting, you know they're already on side.
They, they, they don't need to sidebar you with questions because you've already done it with them. They've already raised their concerns, not, not in front of the CEO. So, you're not gonna diminish things by having a sidebar question that's gonna derail your, your presentation or your, your KPI checks, whatever it is.
So I think that's the, the crucial piece. And then, you know, rely on your teams. The teams should be the ones doing the work. The teams should be tactically the fact they should be tactically more astute than you. They, they're doing a hundred percent of their time on channels. When was the last time? Like you or I did a hundred percent of PPC bidding years ago, decades ago.
So they are better at those tactical pieces and the execution pieces. That's. You just need to be aware of what they're doing, what's coming out at the other end, and then having that [00:21:00] capacity to puppeteer strategically and tactically with them and then you feed back into those other meetings. And I think essentially that's the bit where I've gone wrong in the past is, I dunno, part part of it is I just don't wanna have another needless meeting about something.
Genuinely, it's, it's a needless meeting because. Pushing forward, forward. It's not promoting the business, it's noting the brand. It's not focusing on channel activity. This gonna get us more customers or retain more customers. In my head, that's my job, and actually I'm not being open-minded enough to go, yeah, that's my job, but that should happen through my team.
That's, that's our job as a team. My job is making sure that our team isn't dismissed or held back because I haven't communicated well enough with my peers or, or with the CEO. There's a whole piece in there that we could probably talk for hours about those different relationships and how important it is for a, for a department as changeable as marketing is.
I said it before, it's every day, every [00:22:00] minute, every geo different. Tomorrow's different. Yesterday, you know, in today's been a mad one for whatever reason, the weather, no other department has that, has that, you know, inconsistency. So with all of that going haywire. If you wanna go and pick holes, if someone's an excuse to kick kick holes in marketing, they can find one any day of the year.
They can find 20 things that could be done significantly better. And then ask the question, well, why aren't you doing that? And I've, I've, I've had that in the leadership meetings and it drives you insane. You're like, you get the question. It's like, that's, that's a kick in the nuts question because it's hard to do that.
A CFO to CP, who's. Runway out to product development, probably easier to do to a COO 'cause then it's, you know, all encompassing and you can just go this bit over here isn't working. It's really easy to do to, to a marketer. And again, we're, we're low hanging fruit. It's easy to blame. I mean, that's something our products get onto as well, is when things aren't [00:23:00] going well, who'd you point the finger at?
And in the, the costly marketing department who isn't getting enough customers in, who's not keeping customers and making them spend even more this year than last, it's your fault. Which is true to an extent. That's that's what we're there to do. In many ways. It isn't entirely our responsibility to do all those things
Danny Denhard: A lot of marketing leaders where they struggle is they don't dunno where the, where the lines are blurred. So they don't know actually there isn't been formal conversation who owns what part. So in B2C businesses, generally it's marketing's job to get people into the product unless you PLG and that's a whole another discussion.
And then what happens is you land in there. You land on the site and then marketing have kind of had to stay, take the step back and, and said, oh, okay. It's now on product. And then actually product goes all the way through. And when they've done an order and then they send through the, the automated response, you know, the, [00:24:00] the receipt or the, the order update and then it gets handed back to marketing.
Harry Lang: Yeah. CR cm up and then it's
Danny Denhard: cm. Yeah. Or what have you. And very often that's just this informal blur that no one really understands and hasn't taken that time to understand where the the Passovers are. And that's something that I'm, I've experienced as in having to pull people aside and say, Hey, this is what actually happens.
Who's who is responsible? And that's something, again, that's part of leadership. One recommendation I make to people, especially in the senior levels, is understand who. Who owns what and when. Yeah. And then you can say, do we, there's three phases. There's ownership, there's co-ownership, and there's collaboration.
And if you don't have that clearly defined, people who don't understand who is to blame or who isn't to blame. So if you own it, you have to take full responsibility. If you co-own it, you have to, it's
Harry Lang: almost like, it's almost like doing a RACI for the entire business. You know, we normally use those things when we're doing.
Project management [00:25:00] planning and I, I lean into them so often. I mean, find 'em incredibly valuable, albeit normally overpopulated, but that's the nature of it, but RACI for the whole business. And then you, you literally can draw lines and go look. Those, those lines, they aren't brick walls. Those lines are constant communication.
They're constant collaboration. But when the customer passes that line. We literally hand them over to you. I think there was something interesting about this related to the revenue point I saw on someone's LinkedIn post the other day. You know, holding Chief Revenue Officer and marketing accountable for all revenue and the post who have made it said it's impossible if marketing or the CRO or the CMO isn't responsible for every part of it, every part of the process.
Because if you aren't responsible, control, responsible for face. Well, if it goes well, everyone, you know, everyone claims it, you know, success, success is a mother of several children or whatever that [00:26:00] that phrase is. But I thought that was an interesting point about if you don't have responsibility for every facet of something, you can't be held responsible for the positive or negative outcome of that thing.
And I think sometimes marketers are.
Sales is responsible for that. And by the way, the product, shit. And operationally, we, you know, weren't working last week 'cause people were striking whatever it might be, you know
Danny Denhard: that comes with confidence. That comes with knowing what you, again, what you own co-own and collaborate on.
It's, if the rest of the business understand that and then they're pointing towards marketing is, rather than saying, oh, it's not our fault, it's what's the plan? So. Again, another recommendation is one problem, two solutions. The problem is our preferred solution problem solve will be this. If not, if you don't like that, here's our backup recommendation.
So you lean 80, 80% into your recommendation, 20% into your [00:27:00] backup, and you say that this is the way we tackle it and therefore we need this support and these people to support us on this and very. In the moment it's very difficult, but again, any leader can say, Hey, I need go away and actually talk to the experts in my team.
To work this through or understand and diagnose if it's a big problem or it's an hourly problem or a daily problem. Because very often like you said, the weather, we've had really hot days and everyone's traffic tanks, everyone's acquisitions and sales tank, and very often what what then happens is.
There's someone who has to step up and say, this is what it was, this is why it was, this is either what we can do about it, or this is what we can't do about it. So for me, it's a case of you have to be really clear in communication. You have to understand and diagnose the problem, translate it enough so everyone understands it.
And I think that's what some marketers and marketing [00:28:00] leaders have have kind of lost a little bit to growth because growth in essence has an accountability for everything in it. So when someone is hired as a CGO, they're very, what most people want is a growth model pretty quickly, and then they want a formula so they can work out how it connects or if it doesn't, to be honest, that's where through some of coaching and actually through friends in the product world and having.
Lived and run product teams before they're now with ai, are now being held responsible for delivery dates. They're being held responsible, responsible for how much revenue impact is that gonna increase. So it's not, it's not solely a CMO issue now. It's definitely gonna be a CPO gonna be pulled into it.
The ROI question is being applied across most of the business. What you have is really confident in In your plan, super confident in your testing, and then, and be ruthless around what, what you touched and how you, how you influenced it. And obviously [00:29:00] some of the tracking's gonna be harder to do that, but for, for how the business and business needs have to sort of push the, the business forward and everyone's looking for growth, regardless of whether you say it or not, everyone is, you have to attach it to that and if you unaware part it.
You're gonna have to fight for it. So one recommendation would be to move forward if you're the marketing, you know, have the most senior marketing title, whether it's a C-suite one or not, you have to be super confident in saying, this is how we influenced it, this is how we're gonna influence it again in in the future.
And whether that's 15 touch points, that's just the nature of having two screens and constantly streaming, scrolling, subscribing, et cetera.
Harry Lang: I think, I think that be my take as well. I think there's whatever it takes. Visibility of the, what wise, housed with all of those peers. Like that's the whatever it takes, the actual, the actual results.
You know, that's what you do. You know, it's your day job with the team. That's your team's responsibility. [00:30:00] That should inherently happen, and they should be bugging holes when they see them, you know, well operated. A well-motivated team will do that. And then your role is to protect them and what they're doing and their opportunity to win.
By making the what and why and how front and center with all those other peers. And actually that you raise an interesting point there on the AI topic. I'm just waiting to see the first chief AI officer title being flung around because that's actually, it's probably gonna be beneficial, but it does happen for marketers because we're already expected to be pros in 500 new AI platforms that have sprung up in the last year.
And again, it's another impossible one. Like there's expectation that we will be, we will be one of the biggest users in any organization just 'cause of the number of channels we operate. You know, it's everything from creative to copy, to development, to app making, to agent creation, whatever else, music generation.
And it's great, you know, this is part of our future. I'm very excited for it, but [00:31:00] expecting an individual to be the most well-versed person in all of that, and know which of the good ones and the bad ones. Again, it's an impossible task. And there's gonna be this period, it's gonna go on for a long time of test and learn of, we we're trying this, we're using ai, I'm plugged into ai, I'm a modern marketer.
Don't fire me. I'm, I'm ahead of the curve on all this shit, but I'm still working out how it's, how it works and what to use and how much to pay to which platform. 'cause these are the best ones for us. And actually look forward to taking that part of responsibility and then taking the challenge to chief AI officer.
Technically attuned, you know, and say, look, here's the list of things that we think we can lean an AI for. And what we are looking for is effectively RFV work out what the best ones are to plug in. If we can duplicate ones we're already using between departments even better. But we can do some help.
'cause otherwise it's just yet, another thing to bang us over the head with is we aren't doing enough or we [00:32:00] fucked up. An AI platform that didn't work or had data problems or whatever it might be. And that's, there's an element of fear about that. I'm really excited about what AI's gonna bring to our industry, but there's an element of fear on longevity because I will not be the only one who gets unstuck.
I, I know this is gonna be a problem. It's, is not having the best of the best of the best at all times.
Danny Denhard: One part on the, the AI discussion that most people have sort of forgotten is when Slack came out or when Notion was introduced into businesses.
The C-Suite didn't invest the time in understanding the tools, and one of the recommendations I'm making often is getting in and spending time on tools. So block out the time in your calendar and learn the tools yourself. So yes, that you are super senior and you can't learn every tool, but what you do need to do do is learn the best tools and learn how to get the message out there or why it's better than others.[00:33:00]
And obviously other people in your team can take some of that responsibility, but get trained and understand the tool under the bonnet, under the bonnet at least, because otherwise you're gonna, you're really gonna struggle to. More money spent on another tool. And something that Google and Microsoft have been really smart at is incorporating their AI tools into, into your workflow.
You just haven't necessarily used it or know that yet. Yeah,
Harry Lang: yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Danny Denhard: So I do think there's, it's a huge opportunity. Google have already come out and said yesterday or today, we recorded on the 7th of May about their New Max tool, which they're gonna, it's all highly optimized now, and you can create video and.
Imagery and ad copy, et cetera in it. So the tools are already, they're already stepping forward in, in creating it to make our lives easier.
Harry Lang: So I just want someone to come up with absolute dominant best tools out there list. 'cause every time I've changed jobs or gone into a new interim client in the last 10 years, I literally, you know, there's a crossover about 20% like slack's in there.
Almost always. Apart [00:34:00] from that, you've got G Suite, which you may or may not use, so then you've got a different HR tool. Performance tracking and team management. You've got a different analytics tool, you've got different dashboards set up. You know, Looker comes up twice in a row and you're like, yay, I don't have to relearn how to create dashboards.
Other than that, the whole thing is a shit storm. And I just really want, I dunno, maybe I just want Google just to dominate and say we're building a tool for everything that is better than everyone else's and cheaper. And all these other ones can just, I dunno, be purchased or disappear because it just takes up so much time.
Danny Denhard: Unfortunately, with the monopoly problems at the moment and the, all the legal cases, I'm, I'm,
Harry Lang: I'm alright with monopolies. I mean, it's not as, they haven't got a monopoly already. So let's, let's stop pretending.
Danny Denhard: Exactly. Let's, let's do a quick fire and sort of, and go back and forth on, on some of, some questions just to help people out a little bit or, or give your hot take on it.
Do you think their fract, fractional CMOs have caused an issue with, of how marketing's been perceived within companies?
Harry Lang: [00:35:00] No, I think fractional is just another name for consultancy, to be honest. I mean, it's, it's a fits a niche and I've talked about this in various articles and probably the newsletter as well is we're really good at coming up with acronyms and coming up with things that make us sound clever and sound creative.
'cause we innovate with the new name for something and all that's doing is margining us, us further, you know, it's making us speak even more of a foreign language, which people don't like because. I'm all about simplicity, so I don't necessarily think it's caused that problem, but I think calling these things various names doesn't necessarily add anything at all.
It's just an another name for marketing consultancy.
Danny Denhard: How about do you think that the CMO not being on a, on the board or traditionally not been on boards, do you see that as a problem for the CMO role in general?
Harry Lang: Yes. Because if they're on boards and there'd be a seat at the table at the highest level of decision making in the organization saying, stop it.
But what does that mean for the marketing or the [00:36:00] brand or the performance team or this part of our growth future without that seat at the table? And I've been in this problem before several times. Decision gets made and you go, well, hang a sec. Did anyone ask about this? And of course they didn't because they haven't got 25 years of experience in asking those very questions.
So, of course things can get missed, other things get prioritized. 'cause people are inherently selfish. All of us are, as human beings, we covered things. We look after our own. So in those board meetings, you look after your domain, 'cause it's your area of expertise. And if the marketing area of expertise isn't represented, then marketing balls will hit the floor and smash.
So, yes.
Danny Denhard: CMOs have struggled with org design and understanding how to build their organization for rather than just replacing skills to actually understand the next 18 months of of the role. Do you think there's been a problem or a disconnection there?
Harry Lang: I think that's, I think that's probably a sort of, you have to look [00:37:00] instance by instance on that one.
I'm sure there are marketers out there that are really good at org design who've created forest models. But again, those forest models do have a habit of getting shifted and changed, and the person who made them getting let go early, which will then allow that org model to change with the next pair of hands that gets ownership of it.
I think all design is a crucial part of any sort of team's function, but it does need to fit organically into the shape of the business as well, and that by definition means that's a collaboration. Even though your team can look one shape, you need to make sure that it fits simple stuff as well. I mean, how many exercises have you done when you've sat down with an HR director and gone The fucking job title hierarchy in this company is a joke.
We've got VPs managers heads of leads. And you've got executives down there on this pay grade and one's over there because you've inherited and you've given new job titles instead of pay increases 'cause you people are lazy and they do that. Those, those are problems. And I think the universal org design, [00:38:00] that should be the senior leadership team supported by the HR department, who should be the experts in all things new and trendy in, in functional or design in the modern age.
That should be a collaborative project. I don't think people treat things like that as projects. In the same way building a new website or building a new platform for your digital products or building a new car, you know, these are projects people take seriously. And ironically enough, building the engine and structure and foundations of your own business via org design probably isn't given as the same level of weight and priority, which is an error.
Danny Denhard: Do you think many of us have overindexed on specialists and not generalists?
Harry Lang: God. Good question. My, my gut instinct is no, because I think specialists moving up to become T-shaped marketers, it's quite a common path. You know, people start at one thing, become experts, and then as they get towards head of level and beyond, they learn what the other channels can do.
They've been sitting next to 'em for [00:39:00] so long, they've, they've become acclimatized to them, whereas generalists. They've never had that subject matter expertise, but arguably they have have started at a younger age having a span across all of them. I, I think the qualities of a great marketer don't come down to that binary choice.
I think the qualities are many, many other things instead.
Danny Denhard: I have a hypothesis that many specialists will come book will have to become generalists in this new ai, ai dominate. Well anyway,
Harry Lang: I mean, if, if you're an SEO you know, expert and you've done sort of seven years and you're really bloody good at it, it comes to maybe director level.
If you wanna get to head off, be responsible for performance marketing and SEO and content, you have to spread out and generalize. You have to be more expansive in your scope. So I think that's a, that's a, a given.
Danny Denhard: Cool. To wrap up, how have you got sort of three themes that you can, or free recommendations you can make, [00:40:00] so CMOs and those who wanna step up into becoming a CMO or a version of to future proof themselves for for the next couple of years?
Harry Lang: Well, I think the biggest one from our chat today is that investing the time and effort in communication with your senior leadership peers about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Don't hold cards close to your chest, be open, be pragmatic about those conversations. And that'll, that'll sort of save pain down the road.
I think that relationship with the CFO would be number two. They are the critical decision maker alongside the CEO, but the CEO may not have the time, may have the capacity. The CFO is the one who holds your purse strings ultimately, and like you said, can be the one that actually says the O eight are the biggest decisions.
Make sure that that relationship is bullet proof. Prove to them that you are a data monster. Even if you need support from your team members to become that data monster and be all over the numbers every single morning, that's gonna give the CMO that encouragement, that peace of [00:41:00] mind that you are always on it, and you can do the creative stuff.
You can do the crunchy, dirty, grimy number stuff too. That's vitally important and we'll only get more so, and then the third one is this AI future. I think for everyone, everyone in a marketing hat or any other hat to be honest. You know, beyond making images and LinkedIn posts with chat GBT, there's a realm of stuff.
I mean, I'm making, I'm not saying I'm making, I'm having a go at making trance music using sooner and then making videos for that on Leonardo's new four KI that gave video capability just for fun because I want to play with them, you know, playing with AI and then, you know, in the work environment.
Embedding it is part of our future, and those who are more fluent in what it can do and which platforms do it best in different guises, they're gonna be the more valuable ones who get the bigger jobs and last for longer. So I think that's now A, a must do.
Danny Denhard: I agree. My three or my three or four, [00:42:00] they're all sort of interconnected.
As you said. You have to learn how to become an executive. So not just a team head or, or department lead. I think you have to understand when to leverage IQ, EQ and PQ. Political intelligence. I think that you have to remember your positive impact on, on the company and on the numbers and prove, and you have to understand how to prove it.
So whether you have to spend a long time in it, you're gonna have to, because other department leads are now under the same sort of stress and and strain as we are, and they're also having their titles changed and chopped and changed constantly. Another area for me is when you're communicating hard, you have to learn how to communicate hard decisions.
And you have to be comfortable with making them. And very often marketing have had the easy or hard end, depends which way you look at it. I actually think now it's all about how you communicate and, and understand how to translate that because it ripples through the business. And marketing often is the largest department.
Now, [00:43:00] the, the first, the first or the biggest priority for anyone is learn actually your business and the business you're connected to understand how it makes and loses money And how you compliment, how you compliment it. And then the third thing for me is just constantly evolve. And if you learn how to evolve and where the space is going, you truly understand how to be successful.
And you can make some wrong decisions and take some wrong paths, but you have to know that you're on, on the right path and inspire those around you to to join you. And I think very often CMOs are the ones that struggle the most with this. So. For me, that's what I recommend. It's coming up over and over in my coaching.
So Harry, I think we're not, we haven't necessarily answered the the, the biggest problem for CMOs and No, which isn't a title, but I think what we have done is given people the executive look and appearing to the future with. With recommendations throughout. So I think we've done quite a good job.
Inbreaking down. Well, I have
Harry Lang: a [00:44:00] pro discussion and that's a good start, mate. And yeah, for the first Marketing Unfiltered podcast, I mean, there'll be, there'll be more, we'll probably come back to this topic.
Danny Denhard: Exactly. Thanks. Listen, everyone.
The CMO Role AI Summary
The CMO title is hotly debated due to its broadening scope and the emergence of roles like CGO and CCO. Historically, Marketing Director was the top role, but the CMO position arose in larger corporations to oversee multiple marketing directors. This singular role has since fragmented, causing confusion. The rise of numerous channels contributed to this splintering, with companies creating new titles to encompass different business lines. These changes often reflect a company's narrative and can lead to CMO roles being either very broad or very narrow.
The inclusion of sales under roles like Chief Growth Officer is a key point of contention, as sales traditionally fell outside the CMO's remit. This trend is particularly prevalent in B2B and SaaS industries, which seem prone to creating new buzzwords. Overreaching roles encompassing product and operations raise questions about the feasibility of one person possessing all the necessary expertise. While startups often require individuals to wear many hats, larger companies need specialists. The expansion of responsibilities in CRO and CGO roles can lead to individuals taking on more than they can realistically handle, driven by ego and aspiration for bigger titles and compensation. This can result in underperformance, contributing to what some call "assisted suicide in marketing." The lack of a fixed answer for marketing leadership structures adds to the confusion for CEOs and boards.
The cyclical nature of brand versus performance marketing also creates instability, with companies shifting focus and CMOs having short tenures, making it difficult to implement long-term strategies. Budget allocation between brand and performance often becomes a point of contention, with performance frequently prioritized due to immediate, measurable results, while brand building requires more time and commitment from leadership. Many CEOs lack a true understanding of the brand-performance equation. CMOs often face pressure to deliver short-term performance, leading to cuts in brand spending and a perpetuation of the cycle. This environment can hinder a CMO's ability to do their job effectively and diminishes their influence.
Senior marketing leaders should confidently present their plans to the C-suite, acting as experts rather than seeking permission. Educating the C-suite, peers, and teams on marketing strategies is crucial for gaining buy-in and influence. Building strong relationships, particularly with the CFO and other C-suite executives, is essential. CMOs must balance their role as department heads with their executive responsibilities, demonstrating political intelligence to gain support for their initiatives. Reverse mentorship can help CMOs understand different disciplines within their teams. Translating marketing metrics and their impact to non-marketing stakeholders is a key challenge.
A lack of clarity regarding ownership of different parts of the customer journey can create problems between marketing, product, and sales. Defining responsibilities through a framework similar to RACI for the entire business can help. Holding marketing accountable for all revenue is impossible if they don't have responsibility or control over every part of the process. CMOs should present solutions, not just problems, and be prepared with backup plans. Clear communication and the ability to diagnose and translate problems are essential skills. The growth function often demands accountability across various areas, and a similar expectation is now extending to roles like CPO. Marketing leaders need to be confident in demonstrating their impact on business growth.
Investing time in understanding new tools, including AI platforms, is crucial for marketing leaders. While the abundance of different marketing tools can be overwhelming, keeping abreast of key technologies is necessary.
Fractional CMOs are essentially consultants and haven't necessarily caused issues with the perception of marketing. However, the CMO's lack of representation on company boards is a problem, as it can lead to decisions being made without considering the marketing implications. Organizational design within marketing needs to be a collaborative effort, aligning with the overall business structure. The debate over specialists versus generalists is nuanced, but T-shaped marketers with deep expertise in one area and broader knowledge of others are valuable. AI may necessitate specialists becoming more generalist.
Recommendations for future-proofing the CMO role include: prioritizing communication with senior leadership, building a strong relationship with the CFO and being data-driven, and embracing and understanding AI. Additionally, learning to be an effective executive with strong IQ, EQ, and political intelligence, understanding the business's financial drivers, and continuously evolving are crucial for CMOs.
