Confessions of a CMO with Mark Ritson

(upbeat music) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, last year I got together my good friends at Worldwide Partners, a collection of 95 independent agencies across 50 countries to commission a brand new piece of research called Confessions of a CMO. We want to find out what do CMOs really think when they're not on camera. Now, this research had got so much great insight in it. And we thought, how could we explore some of the insights and learnings from it? And there is no one on this planet better to have a conversation about this with than the one and only Mark Ritzon, who we all know is the most opinionated marketing professor on the planet. So I thought, wouldn't it be fun to talk to Mark about what we discovered about CMOs and what they're not prepared to say in public? This episode was so much fun. You're gonna love it, here it is. Mark, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Here I am, John, how are you? I'm good, mate, I'm very good. This is quite an exciting discussion we're about to have. I'm intrigued by this. I know, me too, mate. I tell you what it was. So this almost goes back to why I set the podcast up. So when I, in the dim and distant past, when I used to be an actual CMO, I couldn't say anything in public, right? 'Cause I was media-trained within an inch of my life. I had to stick to the party line. No matter what question I got asked, I'd bridge to the party line, that kind of thing. You were a good boy back then, you know? I used to be, yes, exactly. And the reason I called this Uncensored CMO is I want to have proper conversations about what's really happening in marketing, right? But you've told the story about Cannes before. I have. I have, yes, since then. People were aware of that. Were you drunk when they interviewed you that day? I must have been. How come you were so uncensored in that moment, do you remember? Well, it was the only thing I had to do a week. So I basically, I was unemployed at the time. Were you stopped being a CMO? I stopped being a CMO. So I was completely unemployed. You got fired, didn't you? That was the thing. Second time that year. So I was on my second firing. So this is true. This point. You've been fired twice. You were drunk and at Cannes. That's right. On the beach. Basically, I'm on the beach and I've done the one thing that week was some panel. I think I was doing a panel with Sir John Hagerty or something like that. And then afterwards, this journalist comes up to me from CNBC and says, oh, can I interview you about what you think about Cannes? And I made one comment, which was, there's one person not in Cannes, the customer. And basically, I went on a ramp for about four minutes about why we celebrate each other's work and we're not celebrating what works in the real world. And that became the thing they covered. And he stops the camera, he looks around. He goes, you sir, are the first uncents of CMO I've met all week. I thought there it is. There's no idea. There's no idea. There's little moments. It is, isn't it? Serendipity, like chance, like right place, right time. And then it all comes together. But the guys at Worldwide Partners approached me last year and they said, well, you obviously have some great conversations on the podcast with CMOs. But what if you could ask them anonymously? Because the conversations you have before you start recording and after recording, they're probably the hottest takes, right? That's right. So they came up with this idea called Confessions of a CMO. What would CMOs say under the cloak of a non-immunist? A non-immunist kind of say that word. What's the cloak of what? A cloak of what? A cloak of what? That's what you used to say. Exactly. But what if they could say things anonymously about how they really felt and the challenges they face and they weren't quoted? And it is, we both know this. It's very, very different. The minute you're having a beer, particularly with very big CMOs, the difference in their opinions is striking, right? Striking. Exactly. So the idea was, how do you get all those opinions out there, you know, with that, with that nickname? So it's a great idea. So Confessions of a CMO is born. And I thought it'd be great to kind of pick on some of those confessions and get your reaction to them. But before we do that, I thought one of the debates that always happens in marketing is, is the CMO roll dead? Is the CMO 10 you're getting shorter? Here we go. You know what I mean, it's the same whole thing. Every year we have the same debate. I actually thought I'd get some data. Very good. Which I'll run past you. And by the way, thank God you've done this because it echoes through the world of marketing. It's the reason we don't spend enough on brand management. It's the reason why marketing isn't doing well. It comes about, oh, the CMO 10 you're in. So I'm genuinely fascinated by what you're about to say. So here we go. And I'm breaking it down into decades, right? So pre-2000s, so this is literally when I was a boy, the average tenure was actually quite short, three years. Yeah, now I have to say here, remember the average marketer has one testicle, right? And what I mean by that is, average is really high, the presence of diversity, yeah? So in that average figure, are some very good CMOs doing eight, nine years, silver, salar sort of style tenures. And there's a whole bunch of plankers that get in and everyone goes, hang on a minute, we've made a terrible mistake. So we have to point out that, you know, that as a very, very phenomenal distribution is my $20. Now, we then get some good news. So in the early 2000s, the tenure increases to 3.5 years. So starting to, starting to get some momentum, which is great, until, guess what happens in 2009. The financial crisis, financial crisis, it's globally and it drops to 2.9 years. Now, so obviously it's a reaction, therefore, to global cost-cutting economies going down. And one of the first roles that gets cut, the CMO, right? But you would argue that I probably was across the board, we saw that cutting back. So it isn't a marketing phenomenon. And it's a company's a-- It's a company's reaction, right? And this theme continues, right? So what happens in the 2010s, then the tenure grows to 3.7 years. So it actually gets longer. Which, by the way, if you looked at 10 years of CFO, it's not that different now. It's quite similar. And then, of course, what happens in 2019? COVID hits. And so the tenure drops to 3.3. And since then, this is the interesting thing. Since then, it's up to 4.3. -Wow. -It's actually now the highest it's been. So I think there's two points there, right? So again, if you put my average point in-- OK, average is 4.4 years. But if we take the sort of the lower tier out that are a bad choice and they get rid of quickly, about a year, which are really pulling the average down, we're up to 6, 7 years, which is as long as you would want for any senior management role. So I think you've effectively destroyed the myth that these short CMO tenures are causing any kind of problem. So they don't exist for the most part, right? And I think the point, I think you've made before as well, is we always make the assumption like me they get fired. But actually, they sometimes get promoted. There are other outcomes available. Yeah, I mean, when you put it side by side with CFOs, it ain't that different. And I wish we could stop talking about it. So let's get into confession of CMO. So in the report, what they did quite neatly, after listening to all the CMOs talk honestly about the pressure they face, what they said, the CMO role is not dead, it's just changing. It changes with the environment, it changes with the challenges that face today. And so what they came up, there's this lovely construct of changing the M in CMO, so the first one they came up with, chief mutiny officer, which I love that, I love that as a kind of phrase. So this is one of the themes that come out of these-- So what they say, what they're saying in the report is the CMO has to wear many hats. One of the hats he has to wear is mutiny. So a couple of quotes here that I quite enjoyed. My job isn't to steady the ship. My job is to stir us out of stagnation. Very good job, that was good. I shake the machine to create disorder, so ideas emerge. I force change before the company makes itself irrelevant. All great quotes, right? They've obviously got some good CMOs. They have, yes. And this kind of reminds me of-- I think one of my favorite quotes of yours that you made, I think on the first podcast that we got together, which is, your primary job is to represent the customer where decisions get made. Yeah. And organizations get very stayed and very internal. The customer in most people's customer, in most big organizations, is inside the company. And it's super dangerous, right? I mean, it's a point that really bears repeating, right? If you understand marketing properly, it isn't advertising. That's a tiny slice of it. Our prime directive is to represent the consumer, the person that pays for everything inside the company, because nobody else is thinking about it. Literally not thinking about it. And most marketers aren't either thinking about their ads, right? So during COVID, the job wasn't to produce amazing ads. It was to, in the boardroom, get everyone to realize this is what's happening in the consumers world right now, bringing that voice in. So for me, this mutiny point is brilliant, because we're the ones that bring in that change and that perspective. And I tell you, I've seen this happen, I would say, dozens of times. Companies will sit looking at a sales line over quarters or years and imputing all of this stuff about what's going on. And it's like, dude, it's just, literally, it's just a single line of revenue, right? It doesn't tell you anything. You need to bring the consumer in and to the mutiny point. That's a very volatile thing to do. But the volatility is real. You know what I mean? It's not that the company wants stability. It's that that stability is false stability. We make our money from the market. Whatever the market is doing, we have to bring that in and to one of those quotes that shake it up a bit. - I mean, the other kind of mutiny I found as well is the time frame in which you want to create change. I remember doing a job, very early in my career, I created this unit of, we called them seed brands. I took all the innovation, and I managed them as a separate business unit, 'cause what I realized is that the way we manage big brands on kind of monthly cycles of promotion, we'd launch a new brand in one month and the next month be something else. So I actually created a structure that looked over three to five years and kept focus on those brands rather than just launch and leave. We kind of launched and nurtured and grew. And it reminded me of that amazing Karl Meller and Len Notish quote over like, if brands are built in the years, why they're managing quarters. And I think some of the mutiny that actually CMOs have to do is actually looking ahead to where the organization's going and also make decisions based on the long-term. - No, I like that point. And the other element of this, when you get back to the mutiny thing, it's just that the company doesn't want change, but if the consumer's signaling it, you ever look at a conversation with an ops guy, the last thing they want is any form of change. You know what, we literally want to keep everything the same. And the market moves and shifts around and evolves, right? And competitors make them change as well. So I think that mutiny point and disturbing the stability is a super important thing. And it's only going to come from a good CMO. The CFO isn't going to shake the ship. Do you know what I mean, that's not what they do. Maybe the CEO in some cases, but the CMO's job is to say, "Hey, we're moving, you know, we're moving." - Well, there's a lovely nuance here that brings about too many of you actually, because people assume that mutiny is chaos, but actually it's not. Mutiny is planned, right? And I think the best thing that teams and CMO can do is come armed with the evidence to kind of create that change. - Super important point. And that's a really important point because people think mutiny, they think chaos, destruction. - It's not true. - It's not true at all. - Well, and look, there's a key point, and we do talk about a lot in the NBA, that marketers use data to build their strategy. Great. But there's a second role for data, which is rhetorical, which is this is how I convince and influence. This is how I show everyone the evidence, yeah? And you find a lot of marketers are great at generating data and using it to build their approach, but they don't realize when you bring it to an argument, it's like having the ace of spades in your deck, because it's not like, here's my point of view, you know, the CFO disagrees, it's like, "Won't." Here's what our market is telling us. It doesn't matter what you are, I think, here's the data. And not enough market has used data to support the mutiny. - Exactly. And to our very first point about the customer in the room, like, you can argue with me, all you want, but you can't argue with the customer, right? The customer is the one point of view that no one can argue with and should you not ever know. - And if your data is properly collected, which is important, right, that's to be representative, then you've got the evidence to convince anyone. - Exactly. Now, I've got a little pet theory that I roll out every now and then about the real four P's of the CMO. I was joking about the fact that, I mean, if that you said this to me once, the CMO is rarely the best marketer in the team. - And they'll admit that. They'll admit that straight away, right? - It's true, isn't it? And obviously, the four P's of the CMO are kind of people planning politics and persuasion. You have to create the conditions for great marketing to happen, and that involves kind of picking the right people, it involves having the right plan, it involves persuading the organisation what to do, but it also requires navigating organisation on politics more than anything else. I put it a different way. I say there's a lot more C than M in CMO, right? - Yes, definitely. And that comes nicely onto the second point, which is now in the report, it's called Chief Missing Officer, which I think is to describe the fact that actually, the CMO's influence can sometimes go through an organisation unnoticed on the radar, yeah, in a way. But I think, although this word may not be popular, but I think it's about manipulation in the positive sense. - I like that. Oh, you could have Chief Machiavellian off it. - Yeah, even better. - But it all means the same thing. - It does. - The political dimension of getting the consumer and marketing agenda through the company, so we can, I mean, this plays out most commonly with what I call the question, which is asked of me wherever I go at every event. Like, I'll do a talk tonight. This question will definitely come up, right? And the question is always paraphrasing it. I get it. I know we need to invest more money on brand building. How do I get the bozos in my leadership team to get it? And the answer is, the CMO here, the Chief Manipulation Officer, how do I get the rest of the organisation to get it through the dark arts of politics and Machiavellian and Manipulation? - It is. Now there's some amazing quotes here. I'll read a few of these out because I enjoyed this one. They channel influence under the cover of alignment. - Very nice. - First of all, it was very good. - Very nice. "Foxing priorities, move through, disguise as somebody else's strategy." - Again, I've got a specific, I used to have a mate. It was the Chief Branding Officer at Deutsche Bank. And he would say, I don't even use the B word of brand 'cause it turns people off. I just work out what their language is and that's what brand will be. If I'm having a meeting with the HR team, it's their HR agenda. I'm just, you know, I'm basically just changing the words. - It's perfect. - You just reverse, exactly reverse into the language and thinking of a strategy of who you're presenting to. I only succeeded if everyone else believed the idea was theirs. - That's a huge one. I gotta tell you, my favorite example of this is I used to work for Michael Burke, who was the CEO of Louis Vuitton, but prior when I worked for him was the CEO of Fending. And I used to do a lot of training for LvMH. And he'd been at one of my training courses. About three years later, I'm in Rome and he's basically shouting at me, telling me something that I taught him three years earlier in the Art of Luxury Branding course. And I always said my MBA students, what do you think I did? Did I say, actually Michael, I think you'll find I taught you that. Or did I go, you're blowing my mind with this information, right? I think it's a key point that the only way you're gonna get these kind of people, particularly senior people, to do what you want, is for them to think it's what they want. - 100%. - And you have to suck up your own ego on this one. You just have to let go of all that frustration, don't you? - Look, the way I describe it to junior executives is there's two games of chess. There's the game on the top of the table that no one's smart is playing and then there's a game underneath that everyone's playing. So lose the game on the top of the table, right? The one underneath is the key one, right? Be convinced by someone of their arguments that's really your argument to do what you want them to do, right? And this is a skill I have to tell you. I see it in many French managers, the Irish are fantastic at it. The British tend to be useless at it. - They are, you know? - I discovered the Japanese. - Ah, are masters at this. The meeting, I learned this, the meeting is never. - No, no, no, no, no, no. - The meeting is a pure performance. - That's right. - You get the call afterwards. - Yes, exactly. I learned this too late afterwards. - Well, I have a Japanese sister-in-law and I can tell you, yeah, you want to see how to manage relationships. Just study someone who's smart in Japanese. Oh, I see what you're up to here, you know? - Exactly. I like these couple of quotes as well. The more fingerprints on an idea, the safer it is. And in nature, what is less identifiable is harder to attack. - Oh, it's good, isn't it? Good stuff, isn't it? - Oh. - Now, I learned this on Lukaze. This is the first of my two firings in the year. Just to go back to the scene of the crime. But we're reformulated because of sugar tax. And I remember as an exec team, we all literally voted an exec team together to make the change. Literally holding hands. We're gonna do this together. - It's the right team to do right side of history. You can imagine the kind of, you know, bravado. The moment it went south. Like the moment, I mean, it was like within seconds of it going south, it's a marketing problem. - Yeah. - I'm like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you remember we had that meeting? We're all kind of hugging and like, going as the right thing for our future and our children and generations to come. And then we have a marketing problem. And John's gonna fix it. - It's so typical. I mean, and our remit, if you notice, when things are going well, the marketing remit is tiny. But when the shit hits the fan, we're pretty much responsible for everything. - It's very bad. - Success as many fathers and failures and orphans, as they say. Another lovely little comment that came out of this section as well, which I know is close to your heart, 'cause you talked about it in Cannes. Consistency over time is what will keep the brand alive. Which is an interesting quote, actually. But we know from the data that actually that's surprisingly true. - No, the data supports it. And I think there's a couple of elements that I love. So yeah, first of all, not changing too quickly, 'cause the market, you know, we wanna change, as we said, but not changing with the sake of change. There's also a bigger one, which is over time, the paradox of branding is you have to change tactics to say consistent to your brand. And you only see it, in my experience with a brand that's 30, 40 years, I was in Switzerland this week with a brand that I won't name. That's just about a turn 40. And it is around that time with humans and brands, where if you've done the same thing, weirdly you start to become slightly contradictory to your own position, because what sexy and cool and, you know, sporty meant 25, 30 years ago is now often the inverse opposite. Bread used to be healthy. And now it's like the last thing anyone wants to do is eat bread, you know what I mean? So I think there's that consistency point where over the paradox of time and brands is that to stay consistent, you do have to change eventually what you do. I love watching that play out with brands of a certain age. I love Dove actually. Dove have done that really well. You know, they were groundbreaking 20 years ago with real beauty, but how they deliver it today with they are completely different, totally different, but actually on still on the money, to a beautiful example. Really good example. Okay, the next profile is the chief mood officer. Moved. Yes, so basically balancing facts and feelings. Now two quotes here that sound a little bit contradictory, but kind of played two points here. Sometimes the room doesn't need more numbers. It needs to believe. And you only earn permission for the magic when you've done the maths. Yeah, I like it. I mean, we talk a lot about this when it comes to talking to consumers, right? We know about the power of emotion with consumers. All we're saying here is the same logic of persuasion and impact works internally as well, that if we don't make the rest of the executive feel, they're probably not going to be interested either, right? I think that's a powerful point. And we get this with B2B, actually, because one criticism often gets us some of this. Oh, that's great for B2C brands, John, but obviously in B2B, that was completely different. It's completely different. We are completely rationally in B2B when we make decisions, don't we? It's like, well, actually the wiring of our human brains hasn't changed in many millions of years. I come down hard on it now. Well, many MBA, every B2B guy is going to say to me, oh yeah, but these examples are from B2C. B2B is different. I'm like, listen, first of all, it's not. Second, the minute you go, B2C is like that. But B2B is different. I go, just look what you've done. You've just put everything in B2C together as if it's the same. We're selling insurance, cars, ice cream, sex toys, banjos, you know what I mean? They're all different and so is B2B. We can look across the similarities. So yeah, I think, and what we've seen from the data is exactly your point that in B2B emotion is a gigantic, I mean, we rationalize it later, right? You don't get a chief technology officer saying, "I bought it because it felt like the right choice. "I'll make up some bullshit reasons to rationalize the choice." But yeah, the mood is the internal mood, I think, is key. Yeah, it is very, very key. This is one of my favorite quotes actually, entire report here. Marketing is the lightning rod for every irrational thing a company does. Everyone has a view on the logo. Yeah, no, everyone's a marketer, right? No one's a CFO, right? Even the CFO doesn't really want to get involved in it. But everyone's got a marketing point of view. And I tell you how I see this, especially in Australia, there's a real tragedy where you get a really good marketing team that have built a good strategy in a good set of tactics. And they have one of those Boso CEOs that thinks he's an expert and it always is he. And he comes down and says, "Well, I don't want that. "I saw this yesterday, I want that." And what's sad about it is really crap marketing teams don't care, they go, "Okay, yeah, we'll do that." Those really good marketing teams that have a Boso CEO are the ones that realize it's stupid and realize it won't work. But I'm kind of forced to do it, you know what I mean? So that lightning rod thing here, absolutely. Everyone thinks they're a marketing genius. And it plays out some of the biggest stories from last year. I mean, look at Jaguar, the Sydney, Sweden, American, Eagle, backlash, even Cracker Barrel when they changed the logo. Like, President Trump gets involved in that one. I mean, it's like. Everyone feels like they have a problem. Everyone's got a stake in the marketing. And the marketing, you know, the CMO has to respond to that or not as the case may be, right? So I think we talked about it before, but there's always been, I think, a response required. But I think we're seeing more and more smart brands going the right responses. Let's just let the storm pass, you know. It may be that it may be the wisest cause. Right, the next one is chief meaning officer. Yeah. Now, this interesting one, because it made. There's a role. Because marketing is so broad, it covers so many disciplines. There's a role for marketing to align the organization around why it exists and its purpose. And then designing the organization, as well, to deliver that. And this touches a well on the fact that I know you often point out, "Marketing is often seen as one of the four P's, not the whole four P's." And there's a role for us to influence the organization at scale and remind of its purpose. And more broadly, when we look at what brand positioning is meant to be, it's primarily meant to be, what do I want the consumer to think? But there is a role in good positioning, which we can overdo, about this is what we stand for. This is why we're here. These are our values, right? I mean, we talked about the work that was done with Starbucks a few months ago. And it's good work because it's very clear on this is the customer promise. But there's also four or five brand values for this is what we do. This is who we are. This is our meaning, right? And I think that without marketing, you don't get that. You sometimes get it from a strong founder organically to begin with. But at some point, with scale, marketing has to kind of articulate it and give the company its meaning. And I think that's a legitimate role. And the CMO's got to do it, you know what I mean? And it's a bit of a sad one because I work for Benefit Cosmetics for a very long period of time in San Francisco. And when the two twins, the founders, Jean and Jane Ford were running it, they provided the meaning because it was running through their bodies. It was fun and it was beauty. And you felt it coming out of them. At some point, they retire. At some point, they have 25,000 employees and 42 different offices. The CMO has to step up and go, "I've translated that." And this is the meaning of the company. And now we have to, in the nicer sense of the word, make it artificial. So I think chief meaning officer for me is right up there as one of the key ones. Providing that, you know, why do we do these things? Who are we as an organization as a team? Why do we exist? I think that is a CMO's job. There's an amazing book, actually, called The Founders Mentality, a couple of bank consultants that look to founder their company's performance versus management their ones. The founder ones outperformed dramatically and they kind of boil down to the reasons why. But one of them was an owner's mindset and a sense of insurgency as well. And being close to the customer, I don't know, broadly the kind of three things. And actually, when you no longer have the founder, I think the CMO needs to fill that void. Fill the gap very much. And the thing I've learned working with LVMH for many years, we're very strong founders. We'd often acquire the brand and they'd come inside or they'd be the son or daughter of the founder. It can be very dangerous to become too dependent on the founder because at some point they do die, right? Literally, they pass away. And if you look at some of the story of Christian Dior is a great one, Dior's death. I mean, he died 10 years after the brand was created. It sends it off into, you know, parexums of chaos for 30 years because the founder's everything. Yeah. It's the spirit of the company, it's the creation, it's the leadership, it's the symbolic face of the brand. You lose that overnight and the brand is in trouble. Whereas I think if a CMO can gradually artificially replace them with good thinking, it really serves the company well for the future. It does. A few little quotes that made me smile in this one. Half my job is saying out loud what everyone else is pretending not to be true. Again, it's at least some like proper big hair you see. Exactly. But it is, you know, part of your job is to burst, you know, burst the bubble or burst the myths that kind of exist. And I know that's what you do a lot. We've got, you know, bar and sharp to thank for making a specialism out of, you know, bursting those myths, which are very important, aren't they? Another one made me smile here, but by the way, I think everyone else has been guilty of this one. I bought a billboard on the CEO's journey home just so he can see where we're spending our money. Unfortunately, as you know, that's one of the oldest dirtiest tricks, right? Is the first question when you're working outdoor advertising is, "Where does your CEO live?" Is that just draw out the little root here? And they're like, "This brand's everywhere. "All of a sudden, right?" No, I think it's absolutely true. I remember working on Pepsi and it was, I think, run up to the London Olympics and Injury was flying in. And I remember my team were literally told the precise, you know, geographic location, every turn in the road, every little corner store. We're not joking, right? This is nice. People have realized this. Well, I tell people that, really, this actually happens. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, like buying billboards, dressing up stores, you know, giving bribes. Same with sponsorship, right? If we know there's a particular love of a CEO on a particular event, suddenly there's money going into it, you know? Exactly. Scientists speak in studies, marketing speaks in stories, we need to combine both. All like that. I mean, if you look at my concept of bothism, that's a beauty, right? Storytelling and statistics, together are more powerful than one or the other. Qualenquant, you know? But I think we're often, you know, when I work with McKinsey for a long time in the old days, and McKinsey would say there's violinists and there's chemists, we want to try and get both. And I think that's exactly what that quote speaks to is market has need a little bit of, but if we're too data-driven and scientific, we're not going to have that emotion that we talked about earlier. But at the same time, if it's all that storytelling, it turns very quickly into childish who are, you know? So that mix of the two, the theme around the data, presented well, I think is absolutely the core. A great CMO can take you through a story, but with the right data framework around it. Exactly. I'd AC, who's the CMO you live on, the podcaster, and she was a great answer. But her ability to summarize, very briefly and succinctly, what they're trying to achieve in the brand framework, was exceptional. But she's got, I know, 400 brands, 60 billion turno. There's a lot of marketers that all have to understand what they're there to do. And so the storytelling back with the data is absolutely right. Your job is to simplify. You're right, you're right. And I read a great half-a-business review article years ago called Leadership is Repetition. And basically, once you've got that story in the statistics, the key is just to keep saying it over and over and over again, because everyone has to hear it, and usually about 17 times. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so we've talked about, you know, the Cracing Muse and a set in the mood, delivering the meaning, you need to create the momentum. Yes, this is absolutely key. So Chief Momentum Officer. And I think there's a couple of insights, or three insights that came out of me, is number one, getting approval, number two, reframing risk, and number three, creating a bias fraction. What's the last one? Bias fraction. So basically getting everyone to, well, basically following through. So creating a strategy is one thing, but getting the organisation to do it. Deliver against it. I mean, we casually say, oh, we've locked the plan, therefore we assume it's going to happen, but actually creating the change in organisation can be pretty easy. Well, it comes out with AI, you know what I mean? This continual question at the moment, what role the marketers have. If AI can eventually produce really amazing brand plans, and I think it can eventually, they're still a role for a brand manager, because someone still has to execute the bloody thing, right? So I think the manager part of brand manager, the CMO role there is still crucial. I mean, there's a lovely quote from Mike Cesario, liquid death found, and he said, "I dears are worth zero dollars, "you know, unless you can execute them." And we've got to focus on the execution, haven't we? Because otherwise an average idea brilliantly executed will be a brilliant idea, average execution. Well, we've gone down this rally over about 40 years in strategy right, talking about is strategy about the plan and is about the execution, and there's no surprise, ultimately it's both, you know? But we do tend to focus more on the strategic development, and to your point, once the plan's locked down and presented and approved and funded, we tend to then, you know, slip up on the execution, in not being done. And also you get that horrible thing with a lot of marketers and a lot of CMOs where the agility, innovation, lack of attention and patience plays out, and they just start deviating almost immediately from the plan, right? So I like a 12 month marketing plan, because in that 12 months, not that much is gonna change. I still think there's room for tactical agility, or there's a new tool and there's a new opportunity. That's fine, but strategic agility for me is a contradiction in terms, on a 12 month plan, right? We said this would be our plan, we're gonna do it. I mean, you had that experience with the CMO, it's working with Sydney Swini, American Eagle, right? And he was hit by that enormous push to change it, and his reaction was, no, our strategy is clear, it fits our strategy, we'll stay with this execution, right? Yeah, they're the old phrase, everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face. It's exactly true, and you've got to take a few of those and stay with the plan. So I think that idea of a CMO that's determined and has that ability to go, you know, we're gonna stay focused on this. And also the other bit is, remember, when we get into the tactical execution, it can be very distracting. There's lots of bells and whistles and events and things going on, being able to step back and say, what was the plan, what was the strategy, does this tick the box, keep going with it? I think is the cool headed CMO that isn't getting, you know, distracted by all the ephemera that go on within the tactical world. And as we've talked about many, many times as well, sometimes it means doing the same thing over and over again and not changing it all the time, right? That's crucial, that's absolutely key part of it. Because your board, but no one else even gets the message yet, you know what I mean, I think it's absolutely essential that we just keep banging the same drum over, I mean, you've learned it with podcasting, right? You end up saying the same shit over and over and over again and still people don't register with it. Yeah, 100%. Right, let's jump into some of the quotes in this one then. So one quote here, we don't have a marketing problem, we have a change problem. I think it probably speaks what we just said, talks about actually, is that, you know, coming up with the marketing plan is one thing, but actually creating change in your conversation is another one. The next quote here, I need to make bold moves appear reasonable. Yeah, that's nice, that's nice. And that's a hell of a skill right. I mean, I've worked some pretty good CMOs who have this amazing ability to convince you that everything is fine and everything's working. And I'm never sure at the time, are you just saying that or do you really think that? And it really doesn't matter. It's the convincing bit that you want to be, you know, held by someone that appears to have, has it all under control. And I'm not sure how many CMOs have that capability. I've got a flip to this one, which is, we need to make safe decisions appear expensive or risky. Because if you think so, we did the extraordinary cost of dial that can a couple of years ago. And it was fascinating. The opportunity cost of it is huge. Exactly, so what I notice with most marketers is they'll spend the most amount of money on the safest things, and they'll spend the least amount of money on the apparently risky things. And when we measure them from a system on perspective, we always notice that the risky things are often ones that work, but we're scared, right? So we reduce the investment. The thing that everyone's aligned to has been through the process, got everyone signed up for. They tend to be the safest bets that don't typically-- But there's no guarantee that that will be the effective one. Exactly. It's perfect, right? Because when you think about it, what do we know works best? New stuff that the consumer's not expecting that doesn't look like competition. Yeah, it's a great observation. So next one is, everyone said it was obvious in hindsight, but when I said it at the time, it sounded crazy. So much truth in that, right? I mean, I experience it with columns, right? It does-- I've learned long ago that if I call something absolutely correctly, no one will remember me calling it. So there's no point, you know what I mean? And it's the same with a good CMO. They're going to be looked at as crazy. But the minute it plays out, not only is no one crediting the CMO, everyone else is taking the credit. Yeah. In retrospect, everyone's a genius. It was obvious, right? I knew straight away this was going to work out. Interesting one, interesting, different one here. So I applied a VC approach to every decision I made. So I created uncapped upside. And I combined it with capped downside. Very clever. And that's a-- I've not heard that before. No, you like that. Whoever they've spoken to, they've got some properly smart experience CMOs. The whole idea of VC in your business is one of the-- I think the strongest things-- the illumination that's almost immediate. You can hear all these arguments, for example, about why we need to keep these brands. You say, great, great, great. If we were working in private equity, and we came in and bought this business, what's the first thing you'd do? I'd kill all of us brands straight away. And like, well, there's no real reason that that wouldn't apply. And I think it's absolutely-- it's a brilliant switch you can click. And I think a good CMO that realizes you've always got to think that way. I think one of the best parts of my career-- I was in products for four years. And I love the purity of thinking that goes into it, right? We're buying the brand for these reasons. We're going to sell it on after a number of years. And we almost know when it's going. And who we're going to try and sell it to. And they came up with this idea. I'm just an utter genius. On day one of owning the business, they wrote the investment memorandum for the exit in the future. They wrote it on day one. And it was one page in its four boxes that said, what would have to be true in terms of the market? What would have to be true in terms of people? What would have to be true in terms of brand? What would have to be true in terms of production efficiency? And then what would have to be true in terms of finance? And you start, literally, with the end in mind. And said, we're going to sell it for this much. And then you get on the bit of paper-- there weren't many things, three or four, under each, right? Financial measures, people measures. And then you just work out your plan from there. And the clarity that brought. And often they'd pull it off. I mean, my private equity experiences was always the stunning, really changed the way I thought about my career. Every time we looked at a brand, when I worked for a couple of private equity funds, we were sniffing around brands we might buy. And I'd say to them, why do you want to buy this brand? And they're like, we don't. We want to buy in this category. And this is the only one for sale. And you're like, wow, wow. Why the category first approach? Because if the category is good, the brand will be fine. And we just don't think that way in marketing, right? We start with a brand. The reality is, if you had a choice, a number two, number three brand in a really fast-growing, very lucrative category, is always going to be the number one brand in a shitty declining category, right? So I think that changed often how I thought about brands. It was like, let's start with the ocean they're swimming in, rather than just the brand itself. I mean, what a lot of these points come back to it is back to our founders point is coming at it from an owner's mindset as well, which we rarely do in marketing. No, and we could do more of, I had an old CMO boss who used to say to me, if it was your money, would you spend it? Right. And again, it's one of those questions that instantly changes everything. If it was your money, would you put it in? Would you do this? And suddenly you feel this cold bucket of water and then clarity. So I think absolutely a spot on. I've done that in a few teams actually where we, I mean, I know it's popular financial concept of zero-based budgeting, but you start with nothing. So you literally start with nothing. Super liberating. You build up the business case from the bottom 'cause what I noticed is, it didn't matter what size of brand, but brand had 10 million pounds last year, they'd write a plan that has it up to 10.5 million pounds. Yeah, it was fun enough, is that. And the strategy and tactics would be broadly the same. I do the same, the Mini MBA, the exam, I deliberately don't give them a budget for their, they have to build a marketing plan for a fictional company. They know the company spent four million dollars the previous year, but I just leave it hanging there. And 90% of them go, okay, four million again. And I'm like, why? Start zero-based. And remember zero-based is how much am I gonna invest? And also what am I gonna invest it on? The allocation is also zero-based, right? And I think zero-based has a bad reputation because of that. I think it's a liberating, it doesn't, you know, more often than not, you end up asking for more money than the previous year. It's just marketers, I tell you, sometimes, because something sounds zero doesn't sound very good, right? It must be a negative thing, you know what I mean? If we'd have called it, you know, positive projection modeling. Oh, yeah, that's great, you know. That's a bad name, bad brand name. I think a lot of problems, we design the organization around the tactics, don't we? So we've got a department for social, a department for media, a department for creative, a department for me, you know. And basically, everyone's basically pitching to keep their jobs and keep their budgets alive. And as much as they had last year, they want again. Exactly, yeah. Rather than going, actually, what's the business problem we've got to solve and how can we solve them? I remember doing this on Liptonized T, actually, which is quite a beautifully simple example. Unilever had handed me the brand. It was being transferred from Unilever to Britvik. And they dumped this massive file on my desk with everything they had done is, you know, properly integrated campaign. Anyway, I love the campaign idea. It was basically, don't knock it till you try it. Because they worked out in the UK, right? We don't like iced tea, right? We drink iced tea hot, simple. And yet, when people try it, they love it, right? Simple, it's simple inside. So I remember saying to the brand manager, so how much do we spend on sampling? Oh, no, we didn't do sampling. No, we did bus wraps. Yeah, we did. I'm just like, what do you mean? So I can see the challenge. I drive it off into the distance, but I don't get to do that. We found out. I brought zero-based budgeting into a very large medical global company as part of their brand planning process. And I can always remember the first year going around and reviewing all the marketing brands around the world. And you'd be like, OK, so you've proposed, you know, you want $12 million for the therapy and you're going to deliver X amount. And then my CMO would say, and is that it? There's nothing else. No, no, that's it, that's what we want. Nobody used, that's the marketing budget, right? Oh, yeah, there's another 18 million that we want to spend on other, like, maintenance stuff. And he's like, no, no, no, no. This has to, if it's not in the plan, we're not doing it. And I was like, that's not fair. And it's like, no, no, we meant zero base, yeah? You want, that's what you're getting, if we approve this plan. All that other dodgy stuff that's happening that can't be attached to strategic objectives, that's what we're coming for, you know? Well, remember the thing my team often said to me when we did this, right? They go, what do we tell Tesco? Because they were used to going and Tesco going, we're going to spend five million pounds on TV out of it. And they literally tick every single box that was going. I said, well, maybe go to Tesco and go, we're going to give you the most effective campaign that you've ever seen in this category. And it's going to make your right a sale or jump by 25%. They'll love that. But no, I want to do that because it was like, no, no, we want to shine a new campaign. Yeah. Any surprises in this, actually. You talk to a lot of CMOs. No, I have to be for once, not very cynical. I'm very surprised they got such smart CMOs who really do know their stuff. And obviously it's anonymous, it's frustrating. We can't look at the list. They sound like the kind of CMOs you'd want to work for, which I think is my big surprise. How do we get the report then? Because it does. Confessions of a CMO.com. So yeah, but bought the URL. So go to that to download. Actually, just on your point there, I do know the name, obviously I'm not going to mention them, but I do know the names of the CMOs. They're all a list. UK brands. You can know what they're doing. Beening role a long time. Working on some pretty cool brands as well. We definitely got the quality of it. Look, and I think from a marketer's point of view, what's great is if our listeners want to grow up to be a CMO and most of them do, it's a lovely little checklist of, I think the thing I'd communicate about the CMOs I've worked for is we said it earlier, they're not the best marketers. They're not the smartest people in the room. They're quite happy to admit that. They have other skills. And sometimes the best marketers stay marketers. They don't become the CMO. These are the additional skills that make someone's CMO worthy. And for that reason, I think it's a fascinating report. And what struck me as well is that they each touch and the CMO has to do a lot and be a lot to a lot of different people. And actually, I kind of smiled a lot when I was reading through this. And I can see the best CMOs actually manage to blend a lot of these different skills. And they can adapt to different situations. And they can be meaning one minute, move the next minute and create mutiny the time after that. It's a combination of all these things, doesn't it? And also on the back of your initial research showing that we aren't struggling with tenure. What we're struggling with is the ability to play these different complex roles. And it's interesting, well, that old book about what got you here will not get you there. The skills that make you a promotable marketer aren't these skills. This is a different set of top-level skills. So I think you will, you will again get a sense of, for me, there's always a bit of tragedy when a great marketer gets promoted right up to the top because they're not going to do marketing anymore. They're going to do all this stuff, you know? And that's the cold hard shock that I think many people I speak to get. Is they up to head of marketing, maybe marketing director, you're in it, right? And you're enjoying it. You're doing it because you love it, right? You get a thrill from making a bit of innovation and doing a new campaign, whatever. And then you get this cold hard reality when you're CMO. A, you don't have a team, right? You no longer a bunch of marketers talk about marketing. You're suddenly talking to an ops person, a finance person, sales person, very lonely. And then suddenly you realize the agenda in the boardroom has absolutely no marketing in it at all. You're talking about kind of, you know, pay rises or, you know, strategy or bank loans or whatever else, you know? And I think that's the different conversation. That's the moment where a lot of these short tenured CMOs get found out and the board are literally asking themselves what, what, what have we done here? Who we are, is it? But then you see these other CMOs that emerge and it becomes their great moment, right? And they, again, back to my point, they're far more C than M. I know one woman I worked for in Australia who was a very average but, you know, very highly successful marketer, but then found her Metier as a brilliant CMO, right? And you could just see that it was, you know, my marketing, you know, Caterpillar has disappeared and I'm now the chief butterfly and I'm probably going to be a C.O. one day. And it was wonderful to see. Yeah, brilliant. Well, that's a beautiful place to end, mate. Thank you very much. What a good report. There it is. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button. Wherever you get your podcast if you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on X at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn. Well, I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.