EDWARD S. SUCHERMAN & ASSOCIATES LTD.

I am going to break some unwritten rules in this blog entry. First, my blog articles should be my own ideas.  This blog certainly defines my idea of a CMO and, in fact, this is what I was and who I am.  But the concept – and putting it all into focus – came from an article in BRANDWEEK Magazine, and it was written by Spyro Kourtis, CEO of the Seattle-based Hacker Group.  Second, my blog entries should be all about you, not about me.  But this one has most certainly turned out to be about myself and my company.  Please forgive.

Mr. Kourtis talks about the need for a new “renaissance” in the Chief Marketing Officer.  “The CMO of the future won’t devote himself solely to ROI any more than the pursuit of the classic Big Idea.  He’ll do both,” he writes.

I have always felt the same way.  I am a “creative” at heart – a writer who loves attention-grabbing, high- impact visuals and memorable commercials.  To me, Tony the Tiger, Where’s the Beef,  Think Small (Volkswagen), When it Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight, the Afflack Duck,The Ultimate Driving Machine, etc. are all indelibly inked into my mind.  Bill Burnbach, a man I never met, was the reason I went into advertising.   I was and am all about the marketing message.

I started out as a hot shot copywriter.  But I soon found out that creative ideas did not necessarily sell products – and selling was my ultimate goal, not writing clever headlines and copy blocks.  In the 1980’s and beyond, the era of the MBAs arrived, and ROI crushed creativity.  I saw some of the worst, most ineffective ads and commercials imaginable in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Simply, kids on computers, straight out of art schools, created ads – because it was cheaper than doing it right – that is, creating marketing plans and strategies and then putting a copywriter and an artist in the same room and having them brainstorm until great ideas emerged.  Marketing plans were all about numbers, not strategies.  Imagine how disgusted the executives were when they allocated X amount of dollars to sales and marketing and anticipated X+Y amount of sales revenues and Z amount of profit and nothing happened.  Those damned marketing people had destroyed their spreadsheets and projections!  They were astounded to discover that some vital objectives were not measureable.

On the other hand, wildly creative right brainers could not be allowed to spend freely and simply have fun with company budgets.  That would be dumb and dumber.

When I first got my MBA and then became a Marketing Director, I quickly learned that a good – meaning successful – CMO needs to be both right and left brained.  The companies I worked for needed to get attention, make an impact, produce quality leads, make sales, build a brand, AND do it within budget.  No payback, no success, no job.  As a top manager, I also witnessed that, if my marketing plans and execution did not create sales, a lot of other people, good, nice, hard-working people, also  lost their jobs.   Accountants became my best friends, because they helped me do my work better. 

Now, this may sound like heresy to marketers – financial types as best friends?  Yes, but not managerial MBAs who would cut marketing budgets if manufacturing or operations had problems.  I came to believe in top executives – usually heads of companies – who respected the function and the power of marketing, but also knew that business was all about making money. 

As a result, I have enjoyed major successes – many of them.  I feel even more strongly about the right and left brained CMO today.  “The CMO of the future is smarter than the old-school savant and the modern numbers geek,” writes Kourtis.  Bravo.

Kourtis says he can recognize such people.  “They’re both intuitive and competitive.  They like to be judged on merit, not on politics.  They are managers with high emotional intelligence quotients who grasp the implications of data when they see the numbers. They are opinionated, yet they know their personal preferences are as useful as a focus group of one.

“The CMO of the future will devote himself (or herself) solely to neither ROI nor The Big Idea, but cultivate an appreciation of both.”

Ed Sucherman

THE MARKETING MACHINE

www.edsucherman.com

http://www.edsucherman.com/edsblog/

 

Tags: Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Strategy, marketing message //