Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

A Tale of Two CMO’s: A Study in Contrasts

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As someone that’s spent the last 16 years of his life doing some form of advertising or marketing, I’ve been thinking a lot about what an exciting, yet anxious time this must be for most chief marketing officers (CMOs). To that end, there are still a number of CMOs and marketers that have chosen to ignore or hide from recent trends like social media and its ability to help brands — big and small — retain, engage and ultimately grow their current customer base.

While there is nothing to say that the strategies and tools that marketers have used for decades can’t still be effective, there are also a number of new tools that could greatly benefit their efforts. To help illustrate this point, I’ve decided to create a five part blog series titled, A Tale of Two CMO’s. The series will juxtapose the approaches of two marketing leaders with different backgrounds and viewpoints by asking them to answer questions — some that I will ask, others that I hope the readers of this blog will contribute. Each post will focus on a different marketing goal such as:

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action
post script: I’ve updated items 2-4 based on my colleague, Joe Jaffe’s, AIDA version of the marketing funnel in his new book, Flip the Funnel.
To help bring the series to life, I’ve fleshed out the personas for Mr. “old school” CMO and Ms. “I’m okay with change” CMO. My goal is to post a new installment every week for the next five weeks — in a perfect world, this will be every Wednesday morning — but please know that I live in a far from perfect world.
Meet Our Two CMOs

Who: James Hossenpfeifer, CMO of a large consumer package goods company

Age: 61
Education: BA from Notre Dame, MBA from University of Michigan
Likes: Single malt scotch, World War II movies, Frank Sinatra and weekends at the country house
Favorite publications: The Financial Times, AdAge, Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal
Tools of choice: Direct mail, inserts, primetime television ads, print ads, the occasional outdoor ad to mix things up and recently, takeover ads on some of the larger networks like Yahoo.
Experience: During his first 12 years, James worked as an account exec on Madison Avenue for two well-known ad agencies. Feeling stuck in his career, he took two years off for B-school and then jumped to the client side at age 36. Since then, he’s held senior level marketing positions at three Fortune500 companies, the latest being the title of chief marketing officer at his current company (current tenure, 14 years).

Who: Tessa Brown

Age: 34
Education: BA from Columbia, MBA from Emory University.
Likes: Malbecs, spending time with her husband and two daughters, Coldplay and tv shows, Grey’s Anatomy and Madmen
Favorite publications: AdAge, Adweek, MarketingSherpa, the Wall Street Journal and marketing/PR blogs by people like Brian Solis and Seth Godin.
Tools of choice: e-mail, select television and online advertising, event sponsorship, corporate blog and most recently a little Twitter and a lot of Facebook Fanpage
Experience: started off as a marketing manager at a fast-growing startup where she quickly rose to the rank of VP of marketing. Following the birth of her second child, she left the startup world for B-School at Emory University in Atlanta. Tessa took a plum job as SVP of marketing at a Fortune1000 services company. A year ago Tessa was promoted to chief marketing officer — a title she’s still working on getting comfortable with.
So now you know are two CMO’s. And yes, I am playing a little bit of the stereotype card here with the old/young thing but I figured that that would be part of the fun.

To make this more exciting, I’d love to field questions in the comments section of this blog that I’d be willing to “ask” each of the CMO’s prior to upcoming posts. For example, I’ll have both CMO’s answer the question, “if you had to cut your marketing budget by 25% next year, how would this impact the amount that you spend on generating brand awareness.”

POST SCRIPT (1/8/11): I’ve added links to the other posts in the series below. Enjoy!

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