Who’s in charge of “Marketing”?

August 12th, 2006

The confusion of what marketing is, should be, or should do is never going to stop. We’ll need a new word. Seth Godin wrote about “The myth of the CMO” (Chief Marketing Officer) on his blog, the myth being the fact that they are in charge of marketing.

I feel sorry for Judy Verses. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer of
Verizon, a brand that is justifiably reviled by millions of people.

Is Verizon disdained, mistrusted and avoided because Judy’s not doing a great job? Of course not. She’s doing a great job.

The reason we hate Verizon is they act like a monopoly, have ridiculous policies, a lousy call center, a bad attitude, plenty of outbound phone spam and crazy pricing.

We hate Verizon because of all the things Judy doesn’t get to influence or control.

The myth of the CMO is the C part. They don’t get to be the chief of the stuff that is really what marketing is all about today. CAO, maybe (Chief Advertising Officer) but not CMO.

He is right of course. The real issue is probably that “marketing” the way it should be covers the entire organisation, from the frontdesk to the person who sends out the invoices, to the engineer in product development. Now who is in charge of those people? The CEO. Is he or she a marketer? Sometimes, but not very often.

The best change marketers with the ambition to influence real outcomes has is to become the “trusted advisor” to the whole team on anything to do with customers.

If old style “advertising” is going to be replaced by an increased focus on word of mouth, driven by customer experience than this paradigm will have to shift. There’s no option.