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Episode: The Modern CMO

Author: Think with Google / Gimlet Creative
Duration: 00:22:11

Episode Shownotes

It’s not easy being CMO, especially today. The Chief Marketer consistently has the shortest tenure on the C-Suite and navigates an ever increasing list of responsibilities as new technology develops. But CMOs have a unique opportunity precisely because of where they stand between customers and the corporation. They can help

lead the C-Suite towards a common set of goals that impact growth and the bottom line. In this episode, CMOs from Levis Strauss & Company, Hilton, and Foot Locker share what it means to be a “modern CMO”, and how to elevate the role as a true business leader. We’ll also hear findings from a study by Google and Deloitte that explores how Fortune 1000 corporate board members perceive CMOs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_04
Do you believe your company needs to attract new customers in order to grow? Do you believe your company needs to get better and more efficient?

00:00:11 Speaker_04
And finally, do you believe that your company needs to find new ways to stretch every dollar to drive more efficiency?

00:00:22 Speaker_01
Welcome to the Think with Google podcast. I'm Tess Vigeland with Gimlet Creative.

00:00:27 Speaker_04
If your answer is yes to any one of those three things, you inherently believe in marketing because those are the superpowers of marketers.

00:00:35 Speaker_01
Today, we're going all the way to the top. That's right, the C-suite, a place that can feel tense or even downright hostile for the chief marketer. For example, CMOs consistently have the shortest tenure of all C-level executives.

00:00:53 Speaker_01
Meanwhile, the chief marketing officer's role has been dropped from some companies and replaced with chief growth officer or chief digital officer. In this episode, we're going to find out why that is and what to do about it.

00:01:06 Speaker_01
We'll hear new information from Google and Deloitte on how Fortune 1000 board members view the CMO. Plus three top CMOs will define what it means to be a modern chief marketing officer, no matter the obstacle.

00:01:22 Speaker_01
On that note, if any of the recordings you hear sound a little different, it's because they were done at home due to COVID-19 restrictions. We'll touch on that a bit later.

00:01:32 Speaker_01
So in order to understand what CMOs are up against today, let's go back to how it used to be.

00:01:39 Speaker_05
It used to be back in the day, and especially in apparel companies, that the CMO just sort of took orders, you know, from the business leaders to go make the ads.

00:01:50 Speaker_01
Meet Jennifer Say, CMO for all global brands at Levi Strauss & Company. She's been with Levi's for over 20 years and a CMO for nearly seven. But she first got her start in the marketing scene doing agency work in the mid-90s.

00:02:07 Speaker_05
I remember going to work at the agency and it was still sort of like dressy, like I had like little suits that I would wear, which seemed so funny.

00:02:15 Speaker_01
These days, Jennifer wears Levi's to work. And while office fashion has changed, so too has the speed at which she and her marketers need to get things done. For instance, imagine getting an ad approved this way.

00:02:29 Speaker_05
I did a lot of like varying videotapes back and forth to Southern California. I mean, you couldn't send things digitally for them to watch.

00:02:37 Speaker_05
So if you needed them to watch an ad and you needed to get there fast, I would literally like fly down to Southern California, deliver a tape and leave the same day.

00:02:47 Speaker_01
Or imagine launching a campaign and then that's kind of it.

00:02:52 Speaker_05
You know, back in the 90s, you made a couple TV ads, you hit play and they ran for the year and you sort of hope for the best. And then you started working on the next year.

00:03:01 Speaker_05
I don't remember thinking it was calm, but it was certainly less demanding, I think.

00:03:13 Speaker_01
Part of the reason things felt simpler is that marketers just didn't have the tools they have today.

00:03:18 Speaker_04
I can't imagine doing the job I need to do where I have to develop messages, strategies, creative, all based on what will resonate most with consumers without the ability to get real-time feedback.

00:03:32 Speaker_01
That's Kellen Kenney, CMO of Hilton.

00:03:34 Speaker_04
I mean, that gives me a pit in my stomach.

00:03:39 Speaker_01
It's pretty obvious that new technology has created a lot of opportunities for marketers.

00:03:44 Speaker_01
The internet led to online ads, then came smartphones and mobile advertising, followed by big data, which led to data strategy, then changes with programmatic media buying and dynamic creative. And as for the role of the CMO, it's a new frontier too.

00:04:02 Speaker_00
There hasn't been a moment to pause and reflect at what actually is the definition of a CMO today.

00:04:09 Speaker_01
That was Justin DeGraff, Global Head of Research and Insights for Ads Marketing at Google.

00:04:15 Speaker_00
Without that moment to reflect, the role has changed so dramatically that it doesn't create an environment where it's as clear.

00:04:24 Speaker_00
And anytime you have a role that has a lot of changes over a period of time, you lose a chance to keep grounding in relativity.

00:04:33 Speaker_01
Justin says that 50 years ago, marketers were responsible for two things, creative and media planning. So what's on a CMO's plate today?

00:04:42 Speaker_00
Well, how long do we have? Because I think we're going to need a bigger podcast.

00:04:46 Speaker_04
Trading, brand, marketing strategy, measurement, execution. Media investment, delivering ROI on that.

00:04:53 Speaker_03
Demand creation, franchise sustainability. What our stores look like.

00:04:58 Speaker_04
Customer satisfaction.

00:05:00 Speaker_03
Internal alignment.

00:05:01 Speaker_04
Team member engagement.

00:05:02 Speaker_03
Internal culture.

00:05:03 Speaker_00
Creative for media planning, for taking risks, for representing the voice of the customer, for the voice of the organization. That they're meant to create magic, or they should be both the art and the science.

00:05:17 Speaker_01
That long list means that other senior executives and even CMOs themselves can find it tough to define exactly what their role is or is supposed to be today.

00:05:29 Speaker_00
This is a classic case. If you were to ask 10 people, you'll get 20 answers. And almost all of those answers are going to be right in some way. And that's a, that's a tricky spot to be in.

00:05:40 Speaker_00
The challenge is that it becomes hard for them to have focus and for their organization to deliver against those expectations.

00:05:47 Speaker_01
And these aren't just anecdotes. A 2012 survey by the Fornes Group found that 80% of CEOs do not trust or are not impressed with marketers. But 90% of the same CEOs said they did value and trust the work of CIOs and CFOs.

00:06:07 Speaker_00
Look, CMOs know they're in a tough spot. The tenure of a CMO is the shortest in the C-suite.

00:06:14 Speaker_01
And think about this. Deloitte's 2018 board practices report found that only 26 percent of corporate board meetings regularly include the chief marketing officer.

00:06:27 Speaker_01
So it's not surprising that the year before that, the Harvard Business Review revealed that three quarters of the CMOs they had surveyed didn't believe they were able to maximize their impact on the business.

00:06:40 Speaker_04
Marketing, in a way, is like religion.

00:06:44 Speaker_01
Here's Hilton's Kellan Kenney again.

00:06:46 Speaker_04
People either believe in it or they don't. I've been inside organizations that don't value and believe in marketing as a strategic lever.

00:06:56 Speaker_01
But that negative attitude in some companies toward the role of marketing, it not only dooms marketing teams, but can hurt growth.

00:07:05 Speaker_04
If you don't invest in building world-class teams, the output you get is subpar. When the output is subpar, you think marketing doesn't work. If you think marketing doesn't work, then you don't invest in building strong teams.

00:07:17 Speaker_04
And it's really this very negative doom loop that you can never get yourself out of.

00:07:24 Speaker_01
But it's not all doom and gloom. Even though the average CMO tenure is only 42 months, that's still nearly double what it was in 2006.

00:07:33 Speaker_01
Some companies do see the value of their marketing teams, and there are chief marketers succeeding in elevating the role. Here's Jennifer again from Levi Strauss.

00:07:44 Speaker_05
Now I really think the best brand with the most loyal fans, the CMO has a seat at the table saying, who are we and what do we stand for and what are all the ways that can come to life.

00:07:57 Speaker_01
Stick around after the break to find out how marketers can step it up as business leaders and stand shoulder to shoulder with the executive team in answering to their bosses, the corporate board.

00:08:17 Speaker_02
You're listening to the Think with Google podcast, brought to you by Google. At Think with Google, it's their mission to make marketers more knowledgeable by providing research, insights, and perspectives that change the way marketers do business.

00:08:31 Speaker_02
In this episode, we're talking about what it means to be a modern CMO and how marketers can step it up as business leaders. To explore this further, Google teamed up with Deloitte to interview over 30 high-profile board members about the CMO role.

00:08:45 Speaker_02
You can check out their findings at thinkwithgoogle.com slash CMO. Again, that's thinkwithgoogle.com slash CMO.

00:08:57 Speaker_01
Welcome back. Before the break, we talked about some of the key issues chief marketers face today, ranging from short tenures to CEOs who don't trust them. Now we're going to hear how three top CMOs are tackling these challenges head on.

00:09:15 Speaker_01
Jennifer Say, the CMO at Levi Strauss and Company, says that if CMOs feel like they're being treated as an afterthought, they need to take responsibility for changing that.

00:09:26 Speaker_05
Act like a business leader. Don't just talk about the ad. Make it your business to understand the business. make it your business to demonstrate that what you do drives a positive ROI.

00:09:37 Speaker_05
I think all too often marketers sort of stay too much in their lane when they need to demonstrate that they understand the levers that drive the business. I think the onus is on us to be seen differently.

00:09:50 Speaker_01
And sometimes being seen differently involves completely reimagining the role of marketing in a business.

00:09:57 Speaker_03
I tell everybody that I am a CMO who hates marketing at this point in my life. I love a great idea. I love a great product. And I love a great story.

00:10:10 Speaker_03
But you have got to be thinking about how the idea and product connects, because more than ever, the product is the marketing.

00:10:17 Speaker_01
Meet Jed Berger, the CMO of Foot Locker Inc. North America. He's been in marketing for almost 15 years and has seen a lot of changes. One thing Jed's certain of is that today's marketers have to be involved in product development.

00:10:33 Speaker_03
The modern day CMO has to be a business partner of the organization. It cannot be a creative partner. It cannot be an afterthought in the organization. It has to think product first.

00:10:45 Speaker_01
Jed says the old way of doing things was for a company to have one team design a product and then they'd hand it off to the marketers. But he says it's a huge missed opportunity when marketers are not involved from the very beginning.

00:10:59 Speaker_01
For example, Jed's team was part of developing a new shoe collection concept called Off-Season. A cross-functional product marketing team at Foot Locker worked with Nike and three NBA players, Devin Booker, Jason Tatum, and De'Aaron Fox.

00:11:14 Speaker_01
The basketball stars each picked a different Nike shoe and were part of the new designs from day one.

00:11:21 Speaker_03
We wanted to take players' stories and tell them, not in on-court performance shoes, but in the lifestyle shoe that they loved. And they worked with a designer to build their personal story into the shoe.

00:11:36 Speaker_01
Jason Tatum's shoe, for example, is a Nike Air Max 97. It has red and black stripes along the top and black-on-white line drawings above the sole.

00:11:46 Speaker_01
There are meaningful words and images from Jason's life represented on the shoe, like his son's nickname, a basketball hoop, and the iconic Gateway Arch from his hometown of St. Louis. But this initiative wasn't just a clever idea or gimmick.

00:12:03 Speaker_01
Thinking about the stories of the product before even creating it defined the successful launch of the shoes.

00:12:11 Speaker_03
By the time that we actually produced the content to go along with that, the story had already took a life of its own to the consumer because the players were so excited by it that six weeks out, they started wearing it into the tunnel on the way into the game.

00:12:27 Speaker_03
They started posting about it socially. The product leaked to the sneaker community. By the time that we actually released the content about the story, everybody knew it already. We probably should have saved our money if we had known.

00:12:41 Speaker_01
Of course, initiating these kinds of projects requires credibility. If CMOs want a seat at the table, they need to prove that they understand the ins and outs of the business.

00:12:52 Speaker_01
And from the perspective of CEOs, this is an area where marketers often come up short.

00:12:59 Speaker_01
The Fornes study we mentioned earlier found that 75% of CEOs think marketers misunderstand or misuse real business terms like results, ROI, and performance, that marketers simply do not speak their language or even understand it.

00:13:15 Speaker_01
Here's Jennifer again.

00:13:17 Speaker_05
So a CEO doesn't want to hear about this really cool ad you're going to make. They want to understand what that's going to do for the business. And if it is really cool, great. And if that's a driver of the business, great. You need to explain that.

00:13:31 Speaker_05
But I think many of us aren't able to sort of talk in those terms and explain in a really disciplined way how this is the right thing for the business in the long term and the short term. And, you know, a CFO is talking their language.

00:13:47 Speaker_05
They're always talking about the business and the numbers. And CMOs have to be able to operate in that world.

00:13:56 Speaker_01
Kellan from Hilton agrees that it's on marketers to improve how they're communicating.

00:14:01 Speaker_04
Ironically, marketers are sometimes the worst at internally marketing what they do to their stakeholders. And I have to confess, I've been guilty of this.

00:14:12 Speaker_04
There are times where I'm so focused on telling the message to the team to get them rallied that I've missed an opportunity to really stick the landing on a campaign's performance with my peers.

00:14:25 Speaker_01
Kellen says that sometimes she thinks that she has communicated something in a clear and compelling way, but later people will come up to her and ask very basic questions.

00:14:35 Speaker_04
I held up the mirror to myself and I said, this is feedback for you, Kellen. You need to make sure that the way you're communicating is so simple and easy. These folks have so much going on in their day-to-day.

00:14:47 Speaker_04
Their job isn't to understand what I'm telling them. It's my job to make sure that I communicate in a way that's really compelling for them and that it's sticky, that they remember it.

00:15:00 Speaker_01
The strategies and industry changes we've been discussing are way bigger than just Kellen, Jennifer, and Jed's experiences. Think with Google wanted to deeply understand the challenges CMOs are facing and what they can do about it.

00:15:15 Speaker_01
So they partnered with Deloitte on a study that took them above even the C-suite to the corporate board.

00:15:22 Speaker_00
I've been a marketer for 15 years. And like anyone with a favorite team, you want your team to win. So my team is marketing.

00:15:30 Speaker_01
That's Justin DeGraff again. He's the global head of research and insights for ads marketing at Google. As part of the research, Justin's team interviewed more than 30 members of Fortune 1000 corporate boards about how they perceive CMOs.

00:15:45 Speaker_01
The board members were able to speak with unique candor because their identities would be kept anonymous. And you could say Justin's pretty excited about it.

00:15:56 Speaker_00
Well, this is going to be really nerdy because I've been a researcher for a long time, but I've never been more enthusiastic and happy and excited after doing a set of interviews in my whole career.

00:16:06 Speaker_00
And I've probably done thousands and thousands of interviews with different consumers or customers.

00:16:12 Speaker_01
This study is important because if higher-ups don't understand what a CMO is doing or how to measure their success, it's a problem.

00:16:21 Speaker_00
Look, if your boss or your boss's boss thinks that success is based on this, this thing over here, but you're working on that, something else over there, do you think you're going to be seen as doing a great job? Probably not.

00:16:37 Speaker_00
And so the same holds true for the CMO. If they're working on something that the board doesn't agree with, know about, or understand, the CMO's chances of winning or doing their job really well is pretty bad.

00:16:49 Speaker_00
It's not going to be a high likelihood of success.

00:16:52 Speaker_01
The board members Justin's team interviewed shared a ton of tactical recommendations to help CMOs succeed. And not surprisingly, many of them mirrored what we've heard so far, such as to be an idea generator rather than executing someone else's.

00:17:09 Speaker_01
And make sure to use data to show how marketing impacts revenue and profit. Google also found that board members want CMOs to educate them on modern marketing strategies, lead C-suite collaboration, and be more aligned with their CEOs.

00:17:26 Speaker_01
Another important takeaway from the study is that the board also expects CMOs to build a modern team. Justin says one way to do this is to look further down inside an organization for talent and solutions.

00:17:39 Speaker_00
Good ideas come from anywhere, and that can often be from more junior folks in the organization.

00:17:45 Speaker_00
And so my advice would be to figure out ways to learn who's strong throughout the organization, all the way down to the most junior person, and figure out what role they could play at cracking some of the biggest challenges for the business.

00:17:58 Speaker_01
Justin says that diversity of thinking is critical to building a modern team.

00:18:04 Speaker_00
Younger folks, folks newer to marketing are going to come in with a different perspective. They participate in marketing in a totally different way. They have skills like coding skills and analytical skills that didn't exist 10 years ago.

00:18:17 Speaker_00
And so having CMOs who find a way to go down in the org structure to pull that talent up is a huge cheat to get the best out of your team.

00:18:31 Speaker_01
Ultimately, there are plenty of concrete steps CMOs can take to elevate their role, even as their job is constantly changing. Heck, sometimes even their titles are changing to things like Chief Growth Officer.

00:18:44 Speaker_01
While it might seem like this devalues marketing, new titles can help clarify marketing's role and how success is measured.

00:18:53 Speaker_04
As I look back, even on just two years ago, how much the marketing landscape has shifted, it's pretty incredible.

00:19:00 Speaker_04
The advent of voice search, the advent of AI and machine learning to actually craft your marketing message and serve up a display ad, the extent to which machine learning is being used to drive people's programmatic placements.

00:19:15 Speaker_01
Clearly, CMOs need to be able to reinvent themselves to stay ahead of market changes. But they also have to be able to adjust to unexpected and even unprecedented circumstances. This even came into play when we were making this episode.

00:19:31 Speaker_01
Like we said at the top, these interviews, and even I, might sound a little different than usual. That's because most of the recordings were made at home due to COVID-19 restrictions.

00:19:43 Speaker_01
So, before we end this episode, we want to share some words of advice from Hilton CMO Kellen Kenney.

00:19:51 Speaker_04
In times of crisis and in times of unanticipated turmoil, the two pieces of advice I give everyone is number one, true back to the purpose of your company.

00:20:02 Speaker_04
Make sure you are reflecting the mission, vision, and values of your company in everything you do because people are watching. And then the second thing I always say is make sure you are keeping your customer at the heart of every decision you make.

00:20:21 Speaker_04
And you also need to make sure as a leader that you're keeping your team informed, that you're keeping your team inspired, that you're leveraging your team to help navigate some of the ambiguity, and that you're using their creativity to solve problems.

00:20:35 Speaker_04
Because in times of turmoil, there's more problems than you've got people to solve. And so how do we make sure that we listen to every single member of our teams? Because good ideas can come from anywhere.

00:20:58 Speaker_01
Thank you for listening to the first season of the Think with Google podcast. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And if you like what you've heard, share with your friends and colleagues.

00:21:10 Speaker_01
The Think with Google podcast is brought to you by Google and Gimlet Creative. This episode was produced by Emily Shaw and Katie Shepard. Our lead producer this season was Carrie Anne Thomas. We're edited by Andrea Bruce.

00:21:23 Speaker_01
Gabby Bulgarelli is our fact checker. Bumi Hidaka mixed this episode. Katherine Anderson is our technical director. Our theme is by Marcus Thorne Begala, and additional music from Marmoset, Billy Libby, and So Wiley. Thanks for listening.