Video Transcript

I want to talk about why it’s important to have a vocal, enthusiastic and accountable owner for marketing at the leadership table in any organization that takes marketing seriously. This has happened to me twice in the last three weeks where I’ve been consulting with a founder or a leader of an organization, and we’ve asked them the question who is responsible for marketing at the top table?

Both of these organizations don’t have a CMO, they don’t have a VP of marketing, they have a director or lower title of marketing in their business. One of them is about a $25 million business. One of them is a $700 million business. But both of them are making the decision now to mature marketing in their operation, and they’re working through all of the decisions that have to be made for that to be true.

What they’re finding is that the person who marketing reports up to at the ownership table, whether that’s the COO or the VP of another division, doesn’t really have enthusiasm. They don’t have a lot of energy for marketing. They care about efficiency. They care about efficacy of the work. But when it comes to who is responsible, who cares the most? Who is the champion for marketing or for brand strategy or for any of those other things at that top table in their leadership meetings that there is no voice for that.

And so what happens is the marketing becomes an object that you look at or that you think about or you talk about in third person — marketing isn’t working. This thing didn’t do what we expected it to and there’s no energy or no one reaching for accountability. I want to take that. I want to own that. I want this to succeed because I care about it, because I believe it will work for the organization. And CEO is sort of scanning the room, hoping that somebody is going to jump on the grenade, which is what that really is in that situation, rather than pick up the ball and run with it, which is what we would really hope for them in that organization.

The decision that they have to make is they have to appoint somebody at that table who will be a champion, who will care about it, who will love it, who will celebrate its successes and own its failures so that it can mature into the kind of operation that they want it to be. And all of the other marketing decisions, all of the campaigns they’re going to run, all of the ads they’re going to put out in the world. All of the brand decisions that they’re going to make.

All of that’s going to roll downhill from this one individual, and whether or not they’re a true believer in the function of marketing and their ability to represent it among the leadership group. It doesn’t have to be a marketer, It doesn’t have to be a CMO We’ve seen it work really well with a CRO or a head of sales. We’ve seen it work well with a VP of HR. We’ve seen it work with a CEO. There are different people who can own the function, but whoever they are, the three criteria that we have for them, vocal, enthusiastic, and accountable.

Without that, it’s never going to work the way you want it to.