This article prompted this thought …

Why is the CMO always the person stuck with bridging the gap between what a company wishes it was and what it really is? I can be really hard on CMOs, but playing Marriage Counselor between the customers and the brand can be a really tough gig. Maybe that’s why the average tenure is only 18 months.

This is why I believe you have to figure out what/who you really are before you market what you wish you were. More on that here …

I found this by way of Chris Hoskin’s “Raw Stylus” blog. It talks about the 6 Factors that make a marketing leader successful.

You need to read the entire article, but I wanted to point out #5 for emphasis.

5. Build influence across the company. The role of the CMO is evolving from “market communications” to corporate business strategy, putting the customer first in everything the firm does.

As we have been saying, because of the consumer revolution the lines are blurring between business strategy and marketing.

This is a must read from Forbes on the roles and responsibilities of a CMO. In fact, it would be the great starter content for a CMO job description. Go to the article here.

Too often it seems like the term CMO is just a title, not an actual role that is really the “Chief” of marketing. It seems like the operational executives (CEO, CFOs, COOs, etc) like the idea of a CMO, but are just not willing to provide the control that is necessary to actually do the job. Let’s put it this way, the CMO should be THE PERSON responsible for all things related to customer-facing. This would include the traditional role of advertising and branding, but also customer service, sales, and probably even product development. In addition, the CMO should have an active role in internal branding - recruiting, morale, etc.

As usual, Seth Godin says it better than me.

It is interesting to see how companies define the role of a CMO. Here is a description from a recent announcement from LexisNexis: “… effectively developing and communicating the value of all LexisNexis brands and product platforms as well as the transformation of the company into a total solutions provider.” There is obviously a lot of corporate-speak in there, but I do appreciate that they used the word the term “communicating”.