Tag Archives for Chief marketing officer

Differentiate or be commoditized

This is the second in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

True differentiation is increasingly hard with faster moving markets and better-educated shoppers. This means the task of constantly exploring whether your products and services stand out in the mind of the consumer is critical.

How will you differentiate for the long-term?

Forecasting the “death of the American Brand” as one CMO said, forces you to think about the private label explosion and house brand strength by the likes of Target and big chains. These house brands are successful because very little separates them from the old standards.

This trend is happening in everything from CPG to Computers to Insurance. Dell rode the wave as it commoditized the PC market, which now tries to find a sure footing again. Even service markets like insurance are seeing this trend as GEICO and Progressive lead the charge to commoditize auto insurance and drive down prices — even large cost-ridden competitors are following them in this practice.

In this tough economic market, for many the first reaction is to discount or attempt to push value and rationale messaging, but marketers need to understand the long-term impact. It is time to reassess the market and understand current strategic impacts to make decisions and trade-offs on how your company can differentiate in a unique way.

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What should CMOs be doing? Transformation!

This is the first in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

As one CMO I recently spoke with said, “We should define marketing as a verb rather than a noun. We need to be more proactive.”

Marketing should be a transformational change agent
Companies looking to grow are often in need of a new way to look at their business and a new vision to work toward. If your title is CMO, the job of creating this vision and pushing the organization to achieve it falls on you. More than any other function, CEO’s should look to marketing to lead the charge for change.

Why is marketing “right” for this?
Marketing is the most cross functional part of  many organizations due to the customer orientation that puts them in contact with engineering to customer service. Would you really want IT to lead your customer centricity effort?

Marketers by definition should be driving better insight, understanding and motivating desired behaviors inside and outside the enterprise. Marketing should be driving the organization to capture value.

Now might be the perfect time to ask yourself whether you’re shaking things up enough.

Mirror post at www.cmgpartners.com/blog/

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CMO research available on March 17, register now!

With colleagues at CMG Partners, I have been working on an exciting CMO Agenda research effort and are ready to release the finding to the public on March 17th. Register to receive the free detailed report.

About the research:

What is the “right” role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) and by extension, marketing, within an organization? Should marketing have a seat at the executive table? Should the CMO lead or follow in the pursuit of strategic initiatives? Do the answers to these questions vary depending on industry, company size and type, etc.? How has marketing changed over the last 10 years?  And what will the next 10 years bring?

In talking with more than 30 CMOs and lead marketers from mid-sized organizations to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries, we found commonalities in practice and differing perspectives on the role marketing can and should play within the organization. Some of the most innovative and cutting edge marketers we spoke with articulated the lead marketing position as a transformative role, working as both a team member and an agent of change within the c-suite.

Marketers openly spoke about their current priorities and critical challenges, and provided candid commentary on how they were approaching each.  One of the most thought provoking aspects of our research was a discussion on the evolution of marketing.  By capturing thoughts on the swinging pendulum between the art and science of marketing we were able to portray an interesting view on past and future practices.

Register to receive the free detailed report.

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