By Bob Van Rossum

Great article in AdAge on how a CMO can benefit from having a Chief Marketing Technologist.  I agree with the author that now is the time to invest is such a role, it is actually the perfect use for an Interim Marketing Executive.  This allows the CMO the opportunity to utilize an outsider’s expertise to further develop the role for the maximum long-term organizational benefit.

Interim Marketing Executives are a growing trend allowing CMO’s the opportunity to navigate the changing landscape without the expense of a consulting firm.

By Bob Van Rossum

A recent article on www.cnn.com, entitled “Say goodbye to full-time jobs with benefits“, discusses the trend we are seeing towards an interim workplace.  Employers are looking to simply get work done, not necessarily add to headcount.  The article does a good job of describing the trend and why it exists.  Ultimately it understates how high up the corporate ladder this change is taking place and for how long the change will occur.

The fastest growing part of our business is our interim marketing executives.  Not necessarily the Chief Marketing Officer, but every position reporting to the CMO is now open for a discussion on whether it needs to be a permanent headcount or whether the needs of the corporation are better served by an interim professional.

Historically our contract staffing business has been more tactical (junior level) professionals and our executive search group handled placing marketing executives directly into corporations.  Currently our contract staffing business is experiencing growth, but it is at the senior strategic level where we are seeing the biggest shift.  Now for every two senior searches we engage in, one is for an interim marketing executive.  

This shift is significant and logical.  The world is changing quickly and as a CMO, the talent you need today might not be the talent you need a year from now.  Are you sure you want to invest in full-time headcount when the world around you dictates their skills might be less relevant to you in a year?  Do you really need an expensive marketing consultant when an interim marketing professional with strategy and implementation experience is available to you?  

The shifts in the marketplace regarding an increased pace of change and continued pressure on costs are here to stay, which means this trend is here to stay as well, long after unemployment dips back below 5%.

Thanks Elaine.

From the article in BrandWeek:

Marketers, then, may be worried, but Van Rossum said this new talent force is in no way a permanent replacement for or danger to the full-time CMO. 

“What we’re seeing is the CMOs themselves are looking for interim marketing execs to come in and fill in gaps in their current team,” he said.

By Bob Van Rossum

A recent BusinessWeek article discusses “The Disposable Worker”.  It does a great job describing the challenges facing today’s workforce.   But for the biggest brands, it shows a growing and necessary trend.  How do I compete on a global scale deploying talent on an as needed basis, increasing my flexibility and decreasing my cost?  Ultimately how does this trend impact how marketing is done inside the enterprise?

Marketing departments are required to provide ever increasing ROI with fewer resources and less budget.  This is difficult to do when you have a large headcount filled with too many generalists.  The marketplace is changing so rapidly it is impossible to keep the perfect balance of skills on your team.  CMO’s are increasingly turning to interim marketing executives to; build an analytics function, launch a new product / brand or handle merger integration. 

Reality is your headcount is lower than it has been in years leaving your team overworked.  Your internal team does not have the skills or bandwidth to handle a large influx of work and move from execution to strategy.  Outsourcing to an agency or consulting firm is too expensive and your results are limited by the talent they have on their team / bench.  Alternatively for significantly less money, you can have an interim executive who has direct industry experience working by your side on a daily basis. 

In the end you get much more than just a recommendation you would receive from a consulting process.  You get a recommendation from someone who knows what it is like to live in an enterprise like yours, so the recommendation is one that can be implemented and then they stay around for as much of the actual implementation as you see fit.

By Bob Van Rossum 

The CMO role is changing more rapidly than any other “C” suite position.  CMO’s and the COO’s or CEO’s who manage them are scrambling to keep up.  While CMO’s used to be able to get away with understanding brand and advertising, this is no longer enough.  Any CMO with this selective toolbox is only going to provide a very limiting solution to their employer.  Hiring a CMO with this limited view of marketing is one of the reasons the average CMO tenure is 18 months.

Today’s CMO needs to understand how the business works.  This seems obvious, but too often marketing is relegated to the “make things pretty department”.  Only a CMO who understands the business deserves a seat at the big table.  If you are savvy enough to drive corporate strategy then you have the insight necessary to be a great CMO.

Analytics will drive your decisions.  Historically the most persuasive person on the marketing team was the one who was able to get ideas started and implemented.  Today, it all starts with customer data and dispassionate analysis.  We are seeing a trend of top analytics executives being promoted to CMO.  I expect the pace of that trend to accelerate. 

The CMO job is getting more difficult by the day.  New pressures include the evolving media landscape, economic uncertainty and responsibility for corporate strategy.  Continually we are in a period where more is expected with less. 

In addition to all the traditional responsibilities (branding, direct marketing, market research, etc.) we place on the CMO’s plate.  In order to keep their jobs, CMO’s need:

• Innovation – Both in products and how they market them. 
• Revenue Growth – Sales team is execution, marketing owns the sales strategy.
• Alignment – Cross-functional, global, executive team all need to be aligned with customer.
• Accountability – Both in investment and a focus on constant improvement
• Strategy – Top level CMO’s are driving corporate strategy, marketing strategy and sales strategy using customer centric data.

The result is when done correctly, the CMO is the second most powerful role in the organization.  In the future we will commonly see CMO’s promoted to CEO.

Researchers Also Develop Framework for Classifying Variances in Marketing Leadership Positions Across Companies and Industries Based on Scientific Analysis of Job Descriptions

Atlanta (PRWEB) November 18, 2009 — New research appears to indicate that, despite the volatility that sometimes surrounds the position, the role of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is being created with increasing frequency among publicly-held companies. This finding is the result of two studies conducted by Rajdeep Grewal, Professor of Marketing and Dean’s Faculty Fellow at the Pennsylvania State University, and Rui Wang, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Peking University, Beijing, China. The results are published in the current volume of The Chief Marketing Officer Journal (www.ChiefMarketingOfficer.com).

The purpose of the research effort was to answer several questions about the role of heads of marketing, such as: Are all CMOs created equal?; Are there any systematic differences in the job descriptions of CMOs versus those of a vice president (VP) of marketing in firms without the CMO position?; What are the ramifications of any such differences in the role and expectations of CMOs and VPs of marketing for firms and the heads of marketing?; Is the “Chief Marketing Officer” title just glorified nomenclature for the VP Marketing?

Read more: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/11/prweb3218374.htm

By Bob Van Rossum 

We are seeing many companies invest in senior level strategists in areas of innovation, brand, e-commerce, etc.   This makes perfect sense as both large and small organizations need to compete in the current economic climate but do not want to add to full-time headcount.  Bringing in a marketing consultant for 6 months allows you to move your company forward but not permanently increase overhead.

So if you find yourself in the position of needing some top notch talent to consult on your marketing needs, what should you be looking for?  Interestingly, not a consultant, you need a marketing practitioner. 

Marketing has changed so much in the past 5 years and the velocity of that change is increasing.  It is moving so fast, a lot of marketers (not just consultants) find themselves in a place where their skills are irrelevant.  Ultimately, since 2005 the big changes have happened inside corporate marketing departments, not at consulting firms.  Therefore, you do not want to hire a consultant who has not seen any of these changes first hand.  What you need is someone who has successfully moved the needle from inside a corporate structure.  They will readily understand where your company is, what challenges you face and how best to overcome them.  You want someone from outside your organization to bring in innovation and to take your company to a place it cannot go with the current team.  Face facts: you cannot possibly be assured of success if you choose and individual or firm who has failed to execute something in the past 5 years or longer.  So where are we drawing the line?  Ultimately somewhere in 2005, if you are looking at bringing in an individual or firm, study their bios carefully.  If they have done nothing but consulting since 2005 or longer, they are no longer relevant as an expert marketer.  They have been removed from the corporation at a time when you cannot possibly appreciate all the change from the outside. 

Fortunately this is good news, with consultants come oversized mark-ups, bring in an interim marketing executive to improve results while reducing cost.

By Bob Van Rossum 

In Part One we discussed from a basic perspective why it is so difficult for a CMO to drive success.  Now we need to go farther into the challenges all CMO’s and those who hire them face.  Some suggest that the average CMO tenure is closer to 24 or 28 months, in reality they are measuring too small a universe of companies.  CMO tenure is a problem that only gets worse as company size decreases.  Smaller organizations need marketing now more than ever, however they tend to have less of an ability to measure the ROI their marketing programs bring.  As a result they tend to jump from one program to the next with no strategic marketing plan.    

The CMO Dilemma:  CMO’s face a common dilemma, do you focus on long-term innovation and maybe miss short-term goals or do you focus on the next ninety days and ultimately get passed by more aggressive competition?  One thing is for sure, organizations with the best financial results have CMO’s who have been around a while and have a real seat at the table in the C-Suite. 

How to recruit a new CMO:  The biggest challenge in finding a new CMO is not all CMO jobs are similar.  Unlike the CIO or CFO role, the CMO job actually can have more differences than similarities.  We have identified 5 distinctly different CMO gigs, which means depending on who you hire if you are not aware of what type of marketing organization your company has your chance of success is 20%.  Ultimately, not only do you need to identify what type of marketing organization you have, you need to recognize what kind of talent you have reporting to your CMO. The functional expertise of your existing marketing team will also change the type of expertise you need the CMO to have.  Bringing in a new CMO is a huge opportunity, not just to bring in better talent, but to re-define what marketing needs to do for your company.  Last thing in the world you want to do is bring in a new CMO and ask them to continue with the status quo that led to last person to leave in the first place.  

One of our competitors has published a whitepaper on The Successful CMO.  Ultimately the whitepaper leads companies down a path that will set the new CMO up to fail.  In part of the whitepaper, they outline a CMO’s range of responsibilities and the reality is no one has a career with enough breadth of experience for them to come close to checking all those boxes.   You get to be a senior marketer by being an expert in one area first and becoming a generalist later.  This means there are one or two things you do extremely well, a bunch of things you are good at and a few things you have never seen before.  Question is does your expertise as a marketer line up with the type of marketing organization you are walking into?  If not, even the brightest mind will fail as the CMO gig does not offer on-the-job training. 

Ultimately if you are inviting someone into the C-Suite, make it a big gig and hire someone who can exceed all expectations.  If you only want advertising and marketing communications, then an SVP of Marketing will suffice.  You will get passed by your competitors who truly understand the CMO is becoming more valuable everyday and the value they provide includes understanding consumer (or business) demand, product development, achieving top line growth and delivering on margin goals. 

www.marketproinc.com

By Bob Van Rossum

Now is a great time to give your company a Talent Advantage.  At a time when most companies are scared to make permanent headcount additions, you can hire an interim CMO on a full-time or part-time basis for less than you can imagine.  Need someone to set online marketing strategy, no problem.    Top companies are not running scared but using the opportunities available in the marketplace to strategically improve their marketing programs for years to come.

Outside experts bring valuable experience to your company.  Now is the time to move your company forward not sit idly and wait out the tough times.  It is time to utilize contractors / consultants to evolve your business. 

Top reasons to move your company forward with outside talent:
Many companies are finding that they get more bang for their buck by consulting with outside experts instead of hiring new staff people. Here’s the logic:

·    Executive Level Talent without a long-term commitment. Most companies avoid hiring the senior level talent they need due to the long-term overhead commitment.  Bring in an executive to set a new course and when they hand over the new plan you existing staff can execute.  If you are expecting your existing staff to get you any farther than they already have, you are likely expecting too much.

·    Ability to insert an entire team.  Many organizations have an area of their business that is behind the competition.  People on your team are already too busy to fix this, but you can easily insert an outside to completely revamp an area of your organization.  We have found many companies have failed to keep pace with web / online marketing.  Good news is help can be on the inside of your organization in about a week.   

·    Ability to scale up or down at will.  Having contractors on staff is much more like dating, as opposed to marrying a full-time employee.  If your needs change, so can the people you have working for you.   

·    Fresh Ideas.  The new team comes from a variety of experience and backgrounds. All companies suffer from group think and limitations based on what they see.  Outsiders avail you to an entirely new set of thoughts and ideas.  They will provide a unique perspective that will increase the productivity of your existing workforce.   

·    Peace of mind.  Would you like a chance to try before you buy? The risk of hiring someone into your organization is significant.  The reality is you can try before you buy at most any level of the organization.  Hiring an employee into your organization means you have made at least a short-term commitment.  If you hired your CMO or web designer on a contract / consulting basis and they are not a culture fit, making a change is fast and easy.   

The concept of outsourcing your CMO is new, while outsourcing your CFO or CIO is more common.  Ultimately outsourcing the CMO function makes more sense.  Companies with more than $ 1B in revenue must have a CMO, about half of smaller companies are better off with a strong VP and they bring in an interim CMO for 3 months a year to set strategy.  The quality of your marketing will increase and the cost saving is tremendous.  

By Bob Van Rossum

Epsilon recently surveyed CMO’s and realized they were having a hard time finding talent for today’s evolving world of marketing.

http://www.epsilon.com/modules/Press-Releases-012909-Profile-of-an-American-CMO/p83-l3

http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/nearly-40-of-cmos-unhappy-with-new-hire-talent-pool-7897/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

The results suggest that there is less talent or inadequate talent in the marketplace.

But nothing could be further from the truth. 

In any economy the best talent is hard to find, because businesses don’t lay off top performers. 

The problem leading brands have is:

1.      Lack of an employment brand

2.      Lack of talent reach or an inability to identify the top talent

3.      Lack of talent access or an inability to create interest from top talent in their company and / or opportunity.

Ultimately recruiting marketing talent is not like recruiting for finance or IT, the recruiter cannot use certifications to determine who is truly talented.  If a skilled recruiter who normally does not look for marketing talent calls a rockstar candidate on your behalf does not truly understand marketing you have zero chance of convincing an A player to come join your team.  Not only do they pass on joining today, they will remember the interaction the next time a marketing recruiter calls, making it more difficult in the future.  Unfortunately in most recruiting processes, not only is there a lack an understanding of marketing, they lack the time to proactively reach out to the top talent and do not understand where to find them.  Real problem for the CMO is convincing others in the organization that recruiting marketing talent is fundamentally different from recruiting other functions.  The talent is out there you just need to know where to find them and how to convince them making a move is in their best interest. 

www.marketproinc.com