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Get Ready For The Chief Everything Officer

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credit: chiefmartec.com

The chief marketing officer manages public relations, marketing, advertising, and social media. It’s no secret that analytics and big data have pushed the CMO into the realm of tech, encroaching on the IT department.

Silos in organizations have IT squarely functioning on its own, reporting to the chief technology officer. When do marketing and technology collaborate? Probably in the conference room and perhaps at a few meetings.

A recent issue of Advertising Age on the future of marketing has raised this very issue – marketing and technology are converging at a fast pace but the squabbling is still alive and well in many firms and large organizations.

Other reports suggest the role of the chief marketing officer is fraught with little tenure – the average length of time in this position is about 18 months. Why is that?

I reckon a solid guess that social media and the outside-in communication style of consumers has pushed marketers into a frenzy to dissect and measure. As the IT department stood alongside watching the festivities, marketing took on big data and added it to its mix. Did it make it any easier for marketers to have all these stats flying around every day? No…social media ROI remains elusive.

The other thought is that CMOs are fighting for influence.  A recent study by Appinions, an opinion-based influence marketing platform, studied the level of influence by marketers in a highly popular paper with results published by Forbes. I imagine the chief marketer wants more influence over all of it, right? After all, the CIO or CTO has been relegated to a silo for so many years…but I feel a sea change brewing!

So, what’s going to happen in the corner office?

Is there anyone highly qualified to catch the curve balls in this new normal? Does anyone have the competency to manage all these departments converging in the C-suite? Methinks anyone in the CMO position today is working their arse off to stay smart and be ahead of the game.

Instead of all these chief whatever officers, I’m imagining the Chief Everything Officer…it sounds so much more, well, inclusive, doesn’t it?

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Analytics Make Social Marketing Complex

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I just read John Obrecht’s opinion column in BtoB April 9, 2012 on Thriving in the Age of Complexity. He shares how marketers’ bane is the complexity of social media marketing; trying to teach everyone and give them the tools to dive in while mastering the complexity of all the channels, not to mention the ROI of it all.

Indeed. And, he got me thinking; always dangerous.

There are all those lovely back-end numbers hidden from view that people call analytics. They comprise those data-driven reports that many   people salivate over. Analytics make Google rich, and they make me suspect. Are those numbers real or skewed? Did you really get that many people to your webinar? How many qualified sales leads downloaded that white paper off that new landing page you just developed and published?

How about if I go to Clicky and see that 10 people from Canada and 80 from The Netherlands (because I was writing about Dutch tulips) read a post I wrote and stayed on my page three minutes. What can I do with that information? Should I keep on writing about flower bulbs from Holland which is not my primary expertise or service offering to satisfy higher analytics? Or, should I come back to center and write about   which everyone seems to want to know more about (based on analytics reports I see on occasion).

I was talking this week to a colleague being asked to drum up numbers from a few years ago to justify the success of various marketing campaigns. Why? I’m thinking the people at the quarterly meeting don’t care much about what happened in the past; they’d likely prefer to know which marketing campaign is planned for the future with how many built-in touches and success metrics.

The need for proof points, data, numbers that say W00t! and other analyses that contribute to complex interpretation with nary a consensus makes me cringe.

My PR measurement peers will smack me around when I say that, so let me clarify. I like to prove my program worked; I love to have solid and measurable results that support my strategy and help me earn my keep. But, there are many unnecessary layers of analytics blanketing a creative campaign that most practitioners can’t deep dive into for lack of where to start and how to skin the cat.

Just read John Obrecht’s column. He references a bunch of marketers at Digital Edge Live, an industry show, who “are charged up about their work,” despite massive upheaval and the generation of “big data.”  Obrecht’s conclusion, though, calms nerves; “Despite all the complexity, this does indeed seem the best of times to be a marketer. It’s that simple.”

What do you think? When was the last time you used an analytics report or data to prove your campaign or support a new approach? Was it a one-off situation or do you frequently abide by analyses to win consensus? Is your company or website generating mass amounts of data you can’t begin to decipher?

Here’s my conclusion… Do embrace the analytics to an extent, but keep your distance. Too many numbers is like having too many cooks in the kitchen. I’m impressed with numbers, and I’m even more impressed with someone who can work them. We all know that a good analyst can make numbers work for just about anything, but, a one-time analysis that proved a campaign was successful last year doesn’t help me tomorrow.

This post today? Everyone can argue I’m dead wrong; there are so many others saying and publishing the opposite who live and die by analytics – SEM anyone?

 

 

 

Six Ways To Challenge Best Practice Plus Measurement

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Check out what Robert Rose, founder and chief troublemaker at Big Blue Moose (who helps marketers become storytellers), has to say in Chief Content Officer…I am so blown away because it’s making me think, think, think, and the below is merely a reaction to pages one and two of the article!

His headline had me at the top — “Why a hyper focus on measurement and incremental gains makes marketers average.” Really? That’s awesome.

If you know me, you’ll know I kick and scream all the way to analytics, and that includes measurement. Now, don’t tell Shonali, Rebecca Dennison or Neicole Crepeau I said that.

What Rose says is that everyone is striving for best practices and that’s about it.

Can I repeat that? Here’s what Rose said in Chief Content Officer, and it’s all appropriately attributed:

“Content marketers in particular seem to be in the grips of ROI monomania. …What we’re really looking for are best practices; they’re safe. Whenever we’re trying something new like content marketing, we become so focused on following best practices that we forget our real job is to be innovative.”

I love this insightful approach to best practice. When I worked in a hospital, each service line was oriented to best practice. Put the solution into action, perfect it, and then travel the country lauding its inner workings so others can emulate it.

Think about how that works — you get the recipe for a best practice, execute on it while following the formula, and call it a day. Infrequently, do people exceed or push the limits of the best practice because really all that’s required is to meet expectation.

WOAH.

In this day and age, when status quo has eroded, it’s imperative we always push the boundaries and exceed comfort levels to earn a level of excellence not previously attained. That’s the essence of what Rose is saying, “…we are saying that we’re satisfied with being average.”

Do you agree?

Rose offers a list of six tips that help you turn the status quo on its head, and I’m not going to recap them because they’re really good and I have to come up with my own. Basically, here is what I recommend to heed Rose’s counsel and buck the average:

>Stand on your head. What’s north is south, and what’s south is north. Change up the bird’s eye view and put on the rose-colored glasses.

>Delete all your followers; how’s that working for you @ChrisBrogan? When you make an extreme change with gusto, you’re bucking best practice and changing it up.

>Stop commenting on the same blogs day in and day out; in fact, stop commenting. What will happen? Will you have an epiphany that you really do like the social webs and can’t wait to get back? Or, will no one miss you at all, and you’ll burrow deep into depression and hibernate for winter? You’ll certainly learn about personal behavior if you do this exercise.

>Find a new hang out. There are groups and cliques and alliances and networks; doesn’t matter how they’re labeled. If yours is inactive and you’re bored to death, then switch on outta there and find some new energy! Align with those who boost you up and not with those who bring you down!

>Get zany creative during a campaign. I read somewhere a young ad agency account rep actually brought kitty litter and her cat to the pitch (they were pitching kitty litter). When her cat used the product, the client was turned off but the agency VP thought it quite clever.

>Go out on a limb and then break it. If you stick your neck out, and you’re really heading out on a limb, keep going until you push the boundaries a few times. Get comfortable and then do it all over again.

Measurement

Another final observation, and this one may have me going out on a limb…heh. is about measurement. I’m going to blame Chief Troublemaker Robert Rose for this ramble:

When peeps are so focused on proof of campaign smarts, they need tried-and-true deliverables with measurable tactics.

If a new tactic is incorporated into a best practice, can it be measured immediately? Won’t new metrics have to be established and proven over time? I’m asking…

So, maybe content marketing programs aren’t required to have direct ROI. With best practices and average innovation, measurement has a solid place to do its thing; when new concepts are added to the mix, measurement gets thrown a curve ball. Time is required to clock and tick and tally to incorporate innovative ideas into an even better best practice.

So…maybe, just maybe…measurement should be relegated to the sidecar for awhile? Just sayin’ and askin’ all at once…what say you?