If most of the C-suite is paid based on growth of the company—and the CMO is supposedly the executive most responsible for growth—then why aren’t they the most respected and powerful person in the company?
If growth is the focus, and it is, and marketing is the growth engine; this should not even be a debate.
And yet it appears that it is.
Why?
Because trust has always been fragile around marketing.
I know that’s uncomfortable, but I ask you to reflect for a moment.
I think it’s some of the best news I can share today.
If the lack of trust were purely someone else’s fault, or affected by external factors out of our control, then there would be very little we could do about it.
I am here today to suggest that it is something we can fix.
And to be clear, what I’m suggesting is as old as the human experience itself.
The philosophy of stoicism is much about focus on what you can control.
Buddhism teaches the same thing—stop trying to fix the outside world; work on yourself.
Psychology calls it an internal ‘locus of control’
The good news is, this is ours to fix
As the industry’s trade body for major CMOs, I feel it is my responsibility to develop assessments and theses of where we stand, as I have shared the last three years here at POSSIBLE.
Even if they might be uncomfortable viewpoints.
In year one, I said marketing is where the medical profession was in the mid-1800s—when people thought bloodletting was a good idea. For centuries, it sounded smart, but they were dead wrong.
Two years ago, I said we are “too busy to do better.” That we were buried in activity, drowning in deliverables, moving so fast we didn’t take enough time stop and ask: Is this the most powerful way to drive impact on the business?
By the way, being too busy is not a badge of honor. It is the most expensive form of standing still in business.
And last year, I argued that marketing is not yet a profession, meaning few marketers are educated or certified in marketing science the same way that architects and engineers are schooled in building science.
