CMO Success Hinges on the Company’s Marketing Culture

Written By Ted Grigg

Marketing success is a corporate venture rather than a solo role carried by the CMO. The CEO, CFO, the board and every employee in the organization exist to make the company a successful selling machine.

Lately I’ve read reports that celebrate the fact that CMO tenures are increasing to a little better than two years (as if 28 months was something to brag about). The question is why?

DMCG Results

One report suggests that the CMOs are “increasing their alignment with their C-suite peers,“ hence the increase in tenure. That is balderdash!

The more likely scenario: the economy is improving and CMOs are getting a reprieve.

I think external factors and the companies themselves affect CMO tenures more than the CMOs.

This leads me to the conclusion that CMOs must strive to ally themselves with great marketing companies if they want to improve their tenures well beyond where it is now. What do I mean by that?

Great marketing companies‘ cultures support the hypothesis that marketing success is a corporate venture rather than a solo role carried by the CMO. Only then is true CMO success achievable.

The Apples of the world are rare. It is clear that every one in the organization is there to serve the customer from CEO, Tim Cook all the way down the line. And their sales results and customer service ratings clearly reflect this as one of Apple’s prime missions.

As a marketer, I long for more opportunities to associate myself with such forward looking enterprises. And truly successful CMOS go to great lengths to find them and work for them.

The CEO and all company leaders in such organizations understand what Peter Drucker said long ago: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."

The bottom line: no CMO can succeed in his mission until it becomes everybody’s mission in the company he works for.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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