Here is an excellent post from Peter Blackshaw over the ClickZNetwork.

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629851

Peter poses the Ten Big Questions Every CMO Must Ask. 

I would add one more …

How are we measuring the relevance of our brand?

I have found that CMOs by default focus way too much on eyeballs and not enough on conversations.  I don’t necessarily blame them, as CPM and it’s derivatives have been the metric of choice for so many years.  That said, nothing says “relevance” like people talking about you. If a CMO can’t measure conversations, then it will be difficult to answer many of Peter’s questions related to “customer advocacy”.

Here is excellent article/interview in Ad Age with Liz Cahill, VP of Marketing for Lee Jeans.

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=126925

It appears that both she and her company “get it”. It will be interesting to see if embracing social networking and a WOM cultural will create brand turn-around story.

One curiosity … I looked for Liz on Twitter and Facebook and couldn’t find her. Access to company executives is a critical step in creating a 1:1, people-driven brand.

As has been discussed far and wide, the average tenure of a CMO is somewhere around 21 months.  Rarely is it the incompetence of the CMO.  Most of them are bright, accomplished people. In most cases, it is because the CMO was set up to fail with unreasonable revenue expectations or asked to market a bad product.   What is interesting is that this trend doesn’t seem vary much with great companies v. poorly run companies or good products v. bad products.  It appears that the modern CMO may be the most transitional executive position.  Why is this?

• Effective CMOs are typically big idea people.  They tend to be strategic marketers not tactical marketers.   Rare is the person who can excel at both the big idea and in the minutia of the execution.  As such, the execution of the tactics is handled by Brand Managers, Marketing Managers, etc. - in essence, the “assembly line supervisors” of the marketing system. 
• Speaking of “system”, the execution of marketing is a commodity.  Once the idea is created and the execution system is in place, it is natural to drive costs out of the system.  In short, it is cheaper to pay several tactical people than to pay one CMO. 
• If the big idea and strategic marketing are successful, what does a CMO do?  After the launch, most of the details will be handled by managers.  Unless the company has other initiatives, there are really only a couple of places to go - out or up; either leave the company or get promoted to CEO.  The latter is actually occurring more frequently. 
• CMOs typically get one shot to be right.  If they are brought in and their strategic marketing/branding plan doesn’t work, they are typically shown the door.  It is a bit like being a football coach at a big time college - win now or die.  There is not a lot of patience to build a brand internally by focusing on quality control, creating employee evangelists, opening up the marketing to allow customers to participate, etc.  Most Boards and CEOs want results NOW.  Unfortunately, sometimes greatness takes time.

The biggest issue that creates the “temp” feeling of the CMO role is that the marketing rules have changed.  When done properly, modern marketing is about creating a large enough customer base to reach word-of-mouth critical mass.  This means an initial outlay of external marketing dollars, but only to reach the point where your customers become your primary marketing driver.  At this point, almost all marketing should turn inward.  As such, the CMO must evolve to a role of something more like “Chief Branding Officer” or “Chief Experience Officer” (CXO?) - someone who obsesses about the customer experience, customer feedback, product quality, etc.  Unfortunately, in most corporate hierarchies, these are Department Head-type roles, not executives. 

In light of all this, it is no coincidence that the CMOs with the longest tenure, that have overcome the “temp” curse, are in innovative, forward-thinking organizations.   In fact, they may not even be called “CMOs”.  It is likely that they started with a strategic marketing role, but because of their own flexibility and the innovative culture of their organizations they have continued to evolve their role to provide value to the over-all brand.  This follows the “Good to Great” philosophy of the “right people on the bus, in the right seats”.  Who says they can’t change seats?

The act of marketing is a commodity.  You can get design, media placement, PR, web design, etc. anywhere.  And the quality across the board is quite high.

Everything thing that reaches commodity state requires a “system” to manage the commodity.  The System drives the costs out by being more efficient and more disciplined in the execution of marketing.  By its nature, a system has metrics and measureables - both in how the marketing was executed and the results it produced. 

Maybe it is because of the artistic nature of marketing people, but most don’t view themselves as commodities.  As such, there tends to be no system other than the dreaded marketing punch list. 

This leads to this process:

1. Determine the Idea (brand)
2. Build the System
3. Measure and adjust

This means being a purist about the original idea - to allow no brand gaps or variances from who you really are.  It also means being able to cast a cold eye on the System - to be willing to make changes to the process and the people to ensure that you are driving the cost out of marketing while maintaining the integrity of the brand.  

If CMOs want the same respect within their organizations as the CFOs receive, consider this - the above is exactly what the CFO does.  The “idea” is the business model, and the System is the financial model to achieve those goals.  And the best CFOs have a perfect balance of both. 

Here is a great post on whether or not CMO’s get respect for their strategic efforts.  My point has been that the lines are very blurred between marketing and planning.  This is the result of a very flat and transparent society, where the polity of the audience controls a brand.  This means a CMO, if capable, needs a seat at the strategy table.

CMOs Do They Get Respect? « The Collaborative Marketer

Here is a great essay on the plight of the modern CMO.  If QB is the toughest job in football, then CMO is the toughest job in business. 

The Chief Marketing Officer’s Dilemma

Most marketing decisions are made under duress.   A pending launch.  Entering a new market.  Or the greatest pressure, trying grow out of a slump. 

Any decisions made under duress are bound to create mistakes.  In the case of marketing, I think the biggest mistake is surrendering to tangibility.  In the pressure cooker, it is easy to fall back to The List of marketing tactics.  The tangibility of the list makes us feel like we are doing something; and it is something we can show The Boss.  But if you live by The List, you will die by The List.  Because The List makes what you are doing a commodity; it drops you below peer level.

Another mistake is to immediately go into blitz mode; to do some sort of promotion to create a bump in sales.  Unfortunately, this usually means discounting - which (unless you are Walmart) creates no long term adoption from your audience.

I don’t expect the pressure cooker of being a marketing executive to change.  But there are things we can do to manage the pressure:

1. Look inward - focus on your existing customers first.
2. Don’t over-think it - stay true to the original idea or core of the business.
3. Listen - to your customers, employees, yourself.
4. Focus on the customer experience.  It is the one branding activity that you have the most control over.

Final thought … you have to delegate.  Not necessarily to your employees, but your customers.  Essentially, turn your marketing over to them.  This starts by being transparent about where you are taking the company’s brand.  This allows you to work on the big picture stuff like your core, identity, and interaction.  This makes you more valuable to your company, while also recognizing that your customers are collectively way smarter than you.

CMOs and other top marketing executives are under more pressure than ever to produce results.  As such, I have developed a check-list of sorts to be used before you pull the trigger on that seven figure marketing campaign.

1. Is your message simple?
2. Did you stay true to your brand core?
3. Does your audience have a face and name?
4. How will you prove results?
5. Would you buy your product?
6. Are your promises true?
7. Are you employees excited?
8. Where are the gaps?
9. Will there be two-way communication with the audience?
10. Why should the audience care?

Depending on your industry and budget, you need to know at least 7 - 10 of the answers.  In a highly competitive environment, you better have all 10 nailed down.  Note that there was little to do with which tactics to implement or what agency to choose.  I am assuming that you have both of these figured out - and without knowing the answers to these questions, it really doesn’t matter.

Here is a great blog post from Marc Bresseel about the issues facing CMOs and their agencies. As I mentioned in my comment to Marc, this is almost at manifesto level! I highly recommend reading this and passing it around CMO and agency worlds.  It will clarify a lot of expectations on both sides.

David Meerman Scott is one of my favorite bloggers.  He recently wrote a great post on why CMOs get fired.  Read it here.

I’ll add a few of my own reasons … CMOs get fired because:

• They think Web 2.0 tools are new forms of advertising, so they spend on them with no real increase in results.
• They didn’t make the CFO happy with decent ROI on marketing dollars.
• They were forced to fill the gap between what a company wishes it was and what it really is.
• They didn’t get more involved in product development.
• They didn’t get more involved in defining the customer experience.

As David says, there are a lot more reasons!