Have you ever had those days when you felt like asking: "wanna have fries with that?"
In our eagerness to demonstrate that we bring value in the short term, we may overdo in zealousness to the detriment of our long term reputation. It doesn't help that in a quest to understand and measure the value of a chief marketing officer, academics tend to hang their hat on financial-performance metrics alone. How much do financial officers contribute as measured against the same standards?
Advertising Age highlights some of the old questions in a recent article about a study due for publication in January 2008:
Should a CMO be judged on tangible or intangible metrics? On solid stats such as sales, or on more amorphous concepts such as brand equity or even awareness?
I do not need to read to the bottom of the article to know what the problem is -- we are not included as much as CFOs are in management team conversations and decisions. I know that was the case in many of the companies I worked at.
I talk with venture capital (VC) people frequently so I know what the deal is: a person or team with technical expertise sets off to create a new product or service, gets a plan together, gets capital, begins research and production. Then eventually they feel ready for the marketplace and look to hire a marketing person. Will this team allow the marketer to help make and inform business decisions?
Does anyone really understand what it means to be a marketer? Do we? I don't know about you. I want to be a growth champion, someone who is close to the action for the sake of my and my company's customers and the long term health of the business. Join me in my debut at the MarketingProfs:Daily Fix and get the ball rolling on what being a marketer means to you.
Congratulations!
I even left a comment there, although of the slightly critical sort, to show my appreciation.
You know what I mean even if others probably won't :-)
PS: At least I didn't misspell ladder in this comment as well...
Posted by: Jan | July 10, 2007 at 04:52 PM
Thank you for the support, Jan. And for the good comment. My graphic was confusing, I realize. That is a smart crowd over there, they figured it out and even helped me make sense of what I was trying to show.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | July 10, 2007 at 05:14 PM
Congratulations!!!
Good to see you sharing your wisdom in a brand new venue.
MarketingProfs is fortunate to have you in on the team.
Keep creating,
Mike
Posted by: Michael Wagner | July 10, 2007 at 10:11 PM