Ad agencies are notoriously poor at applying their craft to their own brands, but martech companies don't have that problem. Marketo and Hubspot are masters of inbound marketing, in which brands draw potential customers to them with tactics such as content marketing and search optimization. Salesforce is really good at using Salesforce to sell itself. And Demandbase, a leader in...
While Gens Y & Z are famously prone to FOMO, my unscientific survey of hundreds of CMOs suggests many suffer from FOFB, "fear of falling behind." This fear manifests itself in positive ways like intense curiosity, networking with peers and continuous learning. On the flip side, it can also lead to embracing robotic technologies (i.e. bots, programmatic, AI, phone trees,...
If you ever have occasion to work or present at Amazon, you'd better leave your PowerPoint slides at home. According to a directive from Jeff Bezos, PowerPoint is now a thing of the past at Amazon. Why? Well, for the world's richest man, time really is money ($4 million an hour at last count!). And Bezos is convinced that meetings...
Leadership, whether you're the CEO, chief marketing officer or chief financial officer, can typically be boiled down to three fundamental tasks: Set the vision, build the team and allocate the resources. Arguably, all three are equally important, yet in this CMO-centric column, we've focused more on the first and third, closely examining the strategic and budgetary choices that modern marketers...
There are two brand videos below. Each is only a few minutes long. Both use emotion to tell a story. But I think you will find that one of the two clearly stands out as a better story - and consequently a better brand story overall - for that company. (Warning: Spoiler Alert) Of course, it's subjective but I'm guessing...
When Jonathan Beamer took over as CMO of Monster nine months ago, he found a brand that, despite "ten years of neglect" from both a product and marketing perspective, "was still one of the strongest in the job search category." He credits this residual strength to Monster's original insight, "that people desperately want fulfilling work," which remains as true today...
The other day, I was speaking with storytelling guru and "father of modern branding," David Aaker. One of the best ways to create a "signature story" for your brand, he said, is to magnify the problem that your product or service addresses. As David's advice was kicking around my cranium, I came across the story of cloud backup and data...
From the moment a new chief marketing officer starts a job, the expectations for improved marketing performance are outrageously high. The CEO is looking for simultaneous upticks in brand metrics and demand generation. The head of sales wants leads that almost close themselves. The HR chief is expecting instant improvements in Glassdoor ratings and an influx of highly qualified recruits....
About a month ago, a trusted advisor recommended that when we conduct online meetings—whether it's with internal staff, clients, partners or prospects—that the medium should include a video link so that everyone can see everyone else on the call. We tested this out and found that once everyone gets over their initial (and natural) hesitation of being on-camera, the net...
At the tail end of 2017, I participated in a CMO Roundtable. It was somewhat therapeutic knowing that all 19 of my fellow seasoned CMOs had a similar view of their jobs: "It's damn hard!" The good news is that to a person, everyone sitting around the table actually loved their jobs along with the challenges and rewards that came with it....