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Michael Radigan is vice president of interactive advertising at Javelin. Radigan’s team represent strong players that understand strategy, IA, creative and enterprise-level interactive solutions.

A long-time veteran of the online space, Radigan has worked on successful and award-winning campaigns for many Fortune 50 clients. Currently, he and his teams work with AT&T, ING, Mitsubishi and others to build smart user-centric solutions, regardless of the channel.

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Meeting Wars: The CMO’s Pain

Written on
Jun 15, 2009 
Author
Michael Radigan  |
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Meeting Wars: The CMO’s Pain

marketing5_small.jpgADOTAS — Every time you’re in a meeting with a CMO, don’t you get the impression they’re in a slow burn of pain, especially in big meetings with all of their channel and marketing experts present?

Why? Because the CMO’s teams are constantly battling each other for attention (and budget).

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. But human nature seems to dictate that we go through the meeting wars stage before we finally do what’s in the greater good. Meanwhile, the poor CMO is toast.

Before we look at a way out (yes, there’s a way out), let’s imagine a very real scenario. The CMO just learned she has got to cut her budget by 20 percent without sacrificing sales.

So she calls her trusted advisers — employees, vendors and consultants — into a conference room to hash out what to do. Almost instantly, the posturing begins. The Agency of Record (a brand agency, don’t you know) is first up with a 98-page PowerPoint that proves beyond their lack of reasonable doubt that, surprise, mass advertising must be saved at all costs.

Then it descends into a free-for-all of self-justification. The social media guy gives six reasons in ALL CAPS why social networking is the most important communication tool since the invention of movable type. The director in charge of bus wrappers pleads the overwhelming value of branding via mass transit. And finally the consultant stands up and recommends that a solution be found (through an in-depth analysis by the consultant, of course).

What’s the CMO to do? If she’s been around as much as a year, she’s starting to approach the average tenure of CMOs. She’s feeling at the end of her rope while we behave like schoolkids arguing over the rules of a game we just made up.

A Painkiller for the CMO

So I want to call my fellow marketers to put our heads together to formulate a painkiller for the CMO. I propose two ingredients: the customer’s perspective and a way to measure exactly what activity delivers the most sales and what doesn’t.

The customer, most likely, doesn’t care if you cut the TV budget or wrap another dozen buses in your brand. But believe me, they care about how you can save them time and money, and whether you bother to communicate with them in the style and channel of their choosing. Consumers’ eyes are everywhere these days, from social media to highway billboards to kiosks in the mall.

So where should we be to get their attention? Only where it helps make sales — which means where customers notice you and respond.

How do we know which channels and activities get the most action out of customers? That’s exactly what we should be working on together. The way we build a comparable metric to answer this question will help solve everything.

There is, and will continue to be, lots of discussion about how to (and even if you can) accurately measure the sales results of marketing, especially for channels outside direct response. I can’t defend or even argue that because I’m not an analytics guy. But I’ve been repeatedly assured by my friends and colleagues who are masters of statistics and decision support that a comparable metric is not only possible, it’s proven. Ignoring this guarantees that our favorite CMOs remain in agony.

Creative Fun Moving the Metric

What interests me most is how a comparable metric changes the behavior of those of us who advise CMOs.

Budget allocation meetings quickly become quieter and less antagonistic. Once channel advocates understand the new rules, the meetings change from skirmishes to brainstorming sessions: “What if we test this program?” “What if we combine these three media channels and test a campaign?”

Suddenly, everyone is focused on the bottom line, rather than on preserving their departmental budget allocation. It’s no longer the loudest advocate who wins, it’s the one who can come up with the best ideas, the best scenarios, the one who has the most creative fun moving the metric.

When that happens, the slow-burning pain of the CMO will stop and she will start smiling. And believe me, those of us who depend on CMOs for our livelihood will burn less and smile more too.

– Express your opinion, comment below.





Reader Comments.

Demand stronger creative from Mass, and give them the freedom to do so- and good things will happen. Spend less money on ‘branding’ stuff.

Posted by James | 1:22 pm on June 11, 2009.

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