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May 31, 2006
The debate over which type of word-of-mouth is more damaging continues
First a refresher - the Keller Fay group came out with a study that found that 92% of word of mouth (wom) happens offline and that positive wom outnumbers negative wom 6 to 1. I argued that online negative word of mouth might have a more devastating effect on buying decisions because the buyer is in a more active buying mode when searching for information than when being the recipient of positive wom at a cocktail reception.
Pete Blackshaw wrote a great piece commenting on the same study and concluding that "incidental" word of mouth - which is mostly negative and online - might indeed have a bigger impact on buying decisions than positive offline "intimate" word of mouth. Walter Carl from Northeastern university responds with a call for more research. Interestingly enough, he also lists the primary motivations for people to spread negative WOM - altruism, anxiety-reduction, advice-seeking, and vengeance.
All in all I wonder if the studies take into account that online negative word of mouth repeats itself - so while I may only have left one bad review of Mercedes online, the fact that 5,000 people read it , and that search engines keep sending 20-40 people a day to read it, is the same as if I would have told the story 5,000 times, and still tell it 20-40 times a day.
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing online marketing cgm]
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Consumer generated content (CGC) for an 11 year old boy...
Wonder what an 11 year old gets his kicks out these days? At my house it is currently a Crazy Frog remix on Google Video, or better yet, a crazy frog remix a la Halo.
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing cgm tweens]
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links for 2006-05-31
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California rules that the shield laws apply to bloggers as well as traditional media
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May 30, 2006
[self promotion] # 11 on list of top marketing blogs - 6 weeks in a row!
This blog has now been on the top 25 list of marketing blogs maintained by the Viral Garden for 6 weeks in a row (standing at #11 for the last two weeks). The list is based on traffic as gathered from Alexa.
Thank you all!
Posted by francois at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Another interesting conversation leading up to the innovative marketing conference
If you have not heard the transcript of the Skypecast conversation we had with Pete Blackshaw and Max Kalehoff from Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Chris Tolles from Topix on the threats and opportunities of online marketing in the context of consumer generated content - make sure to go to the Corante/Columbia University 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference's home page and download the MP3 file of the conversation from the sidebar.
While there, also make sure you check on the latest list of speakers. It is packed with awesome people who have shaped the field of marketing and are likely to shape the future of marketing.
If you have not signed up yet - make sure you do so - we still have some spots left!
[Technorati Tags: skypecast larry weber imc marketing corante]
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May 26, 2006
Mood brightener anyone?
Here is a product that addresses a real "unmet need" in the marketplace!
(from Adbusters)
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing spoof advertising cgm]
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May 25, 2006
Participated on another cool podcast - For Immediate Release
David Rogers, the composer and Associate Director for the Center on Global Brand Leadership at the Columbia Business School, and I were interviewed by Shel Holtz and guest co-host Dan York this morning for their For Immediate Release podcast. It was an interesting discussion on how we are trying to start the conversation leading up to the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference through Skypecasts and how we are also attempting to have the conversation continue after the event.
[Tags: skypecast for immediate release marketing innovation conference imc marketing corante]
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Let employees search the web for personal reasons!
A new CNN study finds that people would rather give up their morning coffee than the ability to surf the web at work (via Gartner's high performance workplace)
Letting people do personal stuff at work most likely increases their productivity! Sure, the study says that they spend a little over 3 hours on personal stuff - but whoever still measures productivity in terms of hours is solidly grounded in the Industrial revolution age and doomed for extinction...
[Tags: workplace organizational behavior work]
Posted by francois at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 24, 2006
Join us for a lively Skypecast @ 4pm EST tomorrow!
What are the risks and opportunities of marketing your brand in the context of consumer generated content - think Xanga, Myspace, Topix, or Google News & Yahoo! News.
As you may know by now, and in the weeks leading up to the Innovative Marketing Conference - June 8-9 in NYC - we will be hosting a series of provocative Skypecasts in which we will chat with conference participants as well as allow our audience to shape the conversation at the physical event. In this Skypecast we will sit down with Chris Tolles, Pete Blackshaw & Max Kalehoff for a discussion on the pros and cons of online marketing in the context of consumer generated content. (more info at: skype.corante.com)
[Tags: skypecast craig newmark bernd schmitt marketing corante]
Posted by francois at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Spoof advertising - what do you do when this happens to your brand?
Ouch - I bet you that Absolute is not too pleased with these (from Adbusters via Coolz0r)...
Caption on this one says "Nearly 50% of automobile fatalities are linked to alcohol. 10% of North Americans are alcoholics. A teenager sees 100,000 alcohol ads before reaching the legal drinking age."
Caption on this one is " "Drink provokes the desire but takes away the performance" -William Shakespeare"
And it's not just Absolute...here is another good one from Adbusters
There are some good examples of consumer generated content...
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing spoof advertising cgm]
Posted by francois at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Meeting people's unmet needs through product design...
Tom Guariello over at the Truetalk blog has a funny post on the recent hype surrounding customer listening and meeting their "unmet" needs through design, and how many people, in this case the SVP of Innovation at Pepsico (or her flacks) misuse all this rich terminology - based on a originall rant by Niti Bhan at Perspective.
[Tags: customer needs unmet needs design ]
Posted by francois at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
New study finds no link between ad performance and magazine reader time
A new study by Starch Communications research found that there is no connection between ad effectiveness and reader "engagement" with magazines - i.e., the frequency with which they read the magazine, the total time they spend with the magazine, how much of an issue they finish, etc. (via adage).
This is so counter-intuitive that at first it seems almost impossible. After all, with high engagement comes a whole lot more impressions. That being said, maybe this proves the point that advertising only works on those people who are susceptible to that particular brand message at that particular point in time - either because they have an active need or because some other channel triggered their attention to the brand first.
[Tags: advertising attention engagement ]
Posted by francois at 6:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 23, 2006
Cheap advertising - or an expensive peep show?
"One million Swarovski crystals were needed in all to cover our breath-taking model with these sparkling little stones, thus creating an erotic overall-artwork.
With each purchased stone you uncover the artwork a little bit more and you help to overcome frontiers and make the earth sparkle!"
So goes the copy on the Million Crystal Body web site - and it goes on with "This way, we create a world-spanning community of people who appreciate high-quality aesthetics."
One Euro gets you one stone removed from the model's body. 50 Euro gets you a banner ad on the site.
Cheap advertising or a really expensive peep show? You can be the judge...
(via MIT Advertising Lab)
[Tags: advertising advertising gimmick sex sells ]
Posted by francois at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
More on online vs. offline word of mouth - incidental vs. intimate WOM?
Pete Blackshaw - who also was a panelist at Beyond Blogging 2006 last Friday and got to listen to the same keynote address by Ed Keller which promted my last post - has a different alternative to differentiate between the offline word of mouth and the online word of mouth.
In his post he introduces the "2I Framework" - "Intimate" word of mouth, which happens between people who are familiar with one another, and "incidental" word of mouth, which which has no basis in an existing (or trusted) relationship and which is what happens to the vast majority of web based word of mouth. He too argues that the impact of online, search-based word of mouth may go far beyond the power of offline word of mouth, especially when it consists of negative word of mouth. And when negative comments are online - it does not matter whether they came from an "influential" or an "average Joe!"
Again, I do believe that the fundamental question is to understand what stage of the buying cycle the buyer is in when searching for information online or when looking for recommendations offline. If he or she is in the early stages of the buying cycle while surfing for information online - trying to narrow down the list of potential choices to two or three - then online negative word of mouth would have a dramatic impact on that buying decision, no matter how much offline WOM is happening about a given product. Of course, given the recent Yahoo!/OMD study "the role of online research on offline purchases" results, the answer to that question is not that easy if indeed the shape of the traditional purchase "funnel" changes into a "tumbler!"
Pete brings up another good point - that with the increased amount of artificial WOM happening offline, the "trust" part of the equation with friends and family may erode - resulting in people becoming disproportionally influenced by other consumers.
Hey, it's the "theory of weak links" for WOM!
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing online marketing cgm]
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links for 2006-05-23
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It's fun to be in the Top 25 Marketing Blogs for 5 weeks in a row!
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May 22, 2006
More and more "edgy" ads released by agency/company
After a version of the Volkswagen Passat ad was released a few weeks ago on YouTube where one of the characters with ego problems says "because mine is only yeah big" instead of the official version where he says "because I am overcompensating for my shortcomings," here comes another example of a vendor/ad agency planting a seemingly unapproved ad version online. This time the Durango ad, banned for TV, has two guys in a bathroom arguing about "Mine's bigger, no, mine is" (and 7 inches makes a difference - via Adrants).
While these are fun to watch, it can be dangerous for companies to release what could be construed as consumer generated ads. Although there is of course a major difference between the two, take the Sony PSP graffiti as an example of one such campaign that backfired.
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing online marketing cgm]
Posted by francois at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Most word-of-mouth buzz is positive and travels offline - but don't get rid of your online WOM efforts just yet!
New research from the Keller Fay Group has found that the average American mentions specific brands 56 times during approximately 100 conversations in a week's time (via advertising age).
Other findings from the research include:
- Positive mentions outnumber negative mentions 6 to 1
- 92% of brand conversations are happening offline, of which 20% happens over phone
- Only 9% of conversations are "mostly negative"
- People are more likely to pass along good mentions than bad ones - so good news travels faster than bad news!
- 41% of conversations mention advertising
- 72% of opinions about brands are shared by family members and personal friends, 13% are shared by co-workers and 7% are shared by a professional or expert on the topic
- The Internet (12%), television (7%) and newspapers (5%) are the top three media channels most frequently referenced in brand-related buzz
- Email, instant message and online chat rooms/blogs comprise 6% of word of mouth
It would have been interesting to see how this data correlates with people's buying stage. While the study shows that most brand related buzz happens offline, people may be in a more advanced buying stage when looking for brand related information using a search engine than when seeing friends and family at a reception or dinner.
When I asked Ed Keller (CEO of the Keller Fay Group and author of "The Influentials") that question at a recent conference, he said that the study did not look at the correlation between online research and face-to-face brand messaging. While the research shows that 92% of brand related buzz happens offline, it could be that the effect of online word of mouth is disproportionately more impactful on buying decisions. The "buzzer" may be in an advanced buying stage when he or she is talking up a brand offline - but the recipient of the brand message may not be as receptive as if he or she were actively looking for brand related information online.
On that very topic, Yahoo! and OMD released a study last week that shows that 62% of buyers use a combination of online and offline sources to gather information before they buy.
It would also have been interesting to see what kind of brands people talk up in different situations. If it is true that most people identify or talk "through" their brands, then the brands they talk up with friends and family would likely be different than the brands they talk up during company gatherings. In fact, people's need to identify or talk through their brands could explain why so much word of mouth happens offline!
The good news is that offline "positive news travels faster than bad news." We should not forget, however, that online "negative news stays there forever," and that the impact of a bad customer review can have long lasting effects on brand purchases (according to the same Yahoo!/OMD study, 25% of people have posted online product reviews). Take my recent bout with Mercedes - which after much deliberation I decided to blog (also here, here, and here). When I wrote the posts, thousands of readers came to view those posts. But now, almost two months later, search engines are still sending over 20 people a day to read those posts - that is 140 people a week! And every now and then, someone will share their horror stories with that same brand in the comment section, or they will comment on how they would never buy a Mercedes Benz again - or in one case, an independent garage owner who had been servicing Mercedes for 20 years shares his story of how he is switching brands because of poor product quality and horrible customer service. So over time, what started out as an individual product rant has become a collection of (mostly disgruntled) customer reviews - nevertheless, something of a real useful service to potential buyers.
So while 92% of word of mouth may travel offline - don't stop your online word-of-mouth activities just yet - at least not until we understand the true impact on buying behavior!
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing online marketing ed keller]
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links for 2006-05-22
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hilarious site by condom maker Durex with "dickorations"
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Answers to an email interview by the folks at Beyond Blogging 2006
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customer service really should be part of the marketing department!
Posted by delicious at 4:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 21, 2006
Commercializing relationships?
Business Week this week has an article on how P&G has mobilized 600,000 moms to chat up its products. Under the umbrella of Vocalpoint, which will take on assignments for P&G as well as other clients, P&G has developed the largest army of word-of-mouth agents yet.
A key requirement to becoming part of the Vocalpoint team of "buzzers" is to have a large social network. Vocalpoint mothers generally speak to 25 to 30 other women during the day, while the average mom talks just to five. In return for spreading the word about new products to friends and family, they get product samples and a sense of empowerment by being given a voice back to the manufacturer for which they are pitching products.
The results? For certain products in special test markets, they found sales to be double that of markets without Vocalpoint!
One of the main potential detractors of the program is that P&G does not require its agents to disclose their affiliation with the marketer - leading some to believe that this could result in "the commercialization of human relations and the undercutting of social trust."
[Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing P&G vocalpoint]
Posted by francois at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Threats and opportunities of online marketing in the context of consumer generated content
Join us this coming Thursday at 4pm EST for a SKYPEcast discussion on the threats and opportunities of online marketing in the context of consumer generated content to your brand. We will be joined by three great people who will debate this issue prior to our upcoming Marketing Innovation conference in NYC on June 8-9. The participants for this week's discussion include Pete Blackshaw, CMO at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Max Kalehoff, VP of Marketing at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Chris Tolles, CMO at Topix.net.
If you cannot attend, we will be recording the event and posting the discussion replay on the event's home page!
[Tags: skypecast cgm consumer generated content imc online marketing corante]
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links for 2006-05-21
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Great article on how consumers are the medium and the message
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May 19, 2006
The new scarcities - should we care?
John Hagel thinks that the new scarcity in marketing is "attention" . Barry Diller thinks that the scarcity is talent. Joe Plummer from the Advertising Research Foundation thinks that the new scarcity is trust. When speaking with Doug Rushkoff, he says that scarcities are something made up by economists and that in the marketing value chain you do not have any scarcities...
What do you think? Should we care?
[Technorati Tags: scarcity wom marketing ]
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May 18, 2006
New research on word of mouth marketing
Boldmouth.com has recently released a research report on perceptions, practices & ethics in word of mouth marketing (pdf here).
Some interesting findings from the study include:
- 34.7% of study participants stated that they plan to use WOM marketing
- Nearly 64% of all survey respondents noted that WOM is either "very important" or "extremely important" to their overall marketing plans
- Interestingly enough, nearly 59% of respondents said that they had active WOM plans with an active WOM campaign in market
- Nearly 90% (89.9%) of all study participants noted that WOM was ethical
- 80% of organizations reach out to both customers and prospects
The numbers are probably a bit skewed in the positive direction, as a majority of early WOM efforts involve the the launch of a corporate blogging strategy - which fairly often does not result in any real word of mouth activity because of poor implementation.
Another interesting finding, reinforcing the need for companies to integrate their customer service into their overall brand communications strategy, is that 82.2% of respondent said that the "type of service that customers received" is what gets people talking, while 53.3% thought it was "satisfied customers." Contrast that to 35.6% who think that what gets people to talk is "advertising they've seen."
BzzAgents may have proven that you can "manage" the word of mouth channel for simple products - but can you really "manage it" for complex B2B products?
One thing is for sure - if your post-sale customer experience is not a good one, you will get a ton of negative word of mouth, and in this business, the mantra "any news is good news" clearly does not hold true.
[Technorati Tags: word of mouth wom viral marketing boldmouth]
Posted by francois at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 17, 2006
Sorry, you're from Massachusetts
If I heard that once, I heard it at least a dozen times last week. Can you guess where? No, not New Hampshire. How about Napa Valley, CA. I spent a fabulous week touring both the Napa and Sanoma valleys, sipping some mightly fine wines. I soon discovered that many wineries have a number of reserve bottlings that are available only at their tasting rooms, or through their wine clubs. From a marketing point of view the wine club is a great way to build a loyal community of repeat buyers. They offer limited bottlings of wines that are not available in local retail stores, sell them at a discount from the price charged in the winery retail store, and ship them direct to your home once a month. Sign me up!
If only it was that easy. My first encounter with the curse of Mass. was at Domain Chandon. After sampling their delighful Blanc de Noirs, I asked where I might buy some. I was told I could buy it right there, or join their wine club and have it delivered to my home. So as I filled in those two deadly letters, MA, in the address line of the application form I was told, "I'm sorry, you're from Massachusetts, and we can't ship to your state." In fact, there are 25 other states like MA, and a number of ZIP codes within Florida that prohibit wine shipments direct to your home. For some background on why, and what you can do about it if you think this is really dumb, go here to a site dedicated to help "free the grapes."
As I said, the "I'm sorry, you're from MA" routine followed me everywhere I went. No exceptions. At one winery the person behind the counter said, "you must have a friend in New Hampshire, we can ship there with no problem." If you're not from New England, I should tell you that the motto of New Hampshire, prominently displayed on their licence plates is, "Live Free Or Die." Which seems to apply equally to people and grapes.
Posted by gabe at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Beyond blogging 2006
I am honored to have been invited to participate in the "Beyond Blogging 2006 - The Future of Communications" breakfast round table produced by Fleishman Hillard in DC this upcoming Friday morning. The organizers are really to be commended for how they are using the event blog as a way to initiate the conversation with potential attendees ahead of the actual event and for organizing some activities such as a webcast after the event for people who cannot not make it. So far they have over 600 registrations!
If you can, make sure to stop by - knowing many of the other participants it promises to be an interesting conversation!
[Technorati Tags: beyondblogging blogging communications marketing corante]
Posted by francois at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Brands and customer service
We had a pretty interesting conversation at the Syndicate conference in NYC yesterday - where the topic was syndication and communities and what happens when your content gets remixed or mutilated in those communities. The panelists included Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Bill Schreiner from AOL amd Jason Levitt from Yahoo. Josh at Hyku has a recording of the session on his blog (here for MP3).
A particularly interesting point was made by Pete Blackshaw when he said that brands should put their customer service at the center of their brand universe. Customer service is where people give you real feedback about their brand "experiences," and most often when things start going negative, as was the case when Jeff Jarvis started documenting his negative experiences with Dell on his blog - it starts off in the customer service department. In fact, Pete said, "the value of the customer service department may be 10 times as valuable as bean counters account for..."
This is something I could not agree with more, and in fact we have argued this point many times - going as far as recommending that customer service becomes an integral part of the marketing function. You cannot spend dollars on creating demand and making promises to prospective customers and then not deliver. The brand promise and the brand experience needs to be consistent across all customer touch-points - and one of the most crucial touch-points is your customer service department.
Another interesting point was made by someone in the audience - saying that the youth market has no interest in communicating with brands but that they communicate through brands. I am not sure that this is an exclusive youth market characteristic, as I think that most people could care less about the brand outside of how it makes them feel about themselves when using/wearing those brands.
[Tags: Syndicate brands communities remix]
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May 14, 2006
links for 2006-05-14
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VW Pasat advertising - an unauthorized version with virility used to create virality
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May 13, 2006
First Skypecast went flawelessly...
Our first in a series of Skypecasts leading up to our Marketing Innovation Summit in June went flawlessly yesterday. You can listen to the recording of David Rogers, Associate Director for the Center for Global Brand Leadership, interview experiential marketing expert Prof. Bern Schmitt by downloading the Skypecasts' MP3 recording..
Also of interest for the upcoming event is that we will be having a team of bloggers who will blog the event live on a Fast Company marketing BlogJam. Bloggers who will make up the team so far include:
- Shel Holtz from a shel of my former self
- Nevile Hobson from Nevon Chris Carfi from the Social Customer Manifesto
- Renee Hopkins Callahan from IdeaFlow and the Corante Innovation Hub
- Lois Kelly from Foghound (she will also be interviewing PR Guru Larry Weber for an upcoming Skypecast
- John Winsor from Under the Radar Giovanni Rodriguez from the good seed and Future Tense
- David Rogers from the Schmitt Blog
- Paul Gladen from the Chief Innovation Officer
- and Rob O'Regan, former editor in chief of CMO Magazine.
[Technorati Tags: skypecast larry weber imc marketing corante]
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May 11, 2006
Who needs a CMO anyway?
Marketing communications guru Larry Weber may have been one of the first to publicly question the need for a C-level executive in marketing when during his keynote address at the Syndicate Conference last year he said: "Whenever a business category gets messed up, we get a C title. Now marketing is so messed up, we've got CMOs."
Triggered by the recent Spencer Stuart survey, Marc Babej and Tim Pollack (disclosure: both acquaintances/friends and contributors to the Corante Marketing Hub ) tackled the question in dept in their most recent "Unsolicited Advice" column which gets published weekly on Forbes.com.
In their analysis they conclude that the reason that an average CMO's tenure is shorter than that of a CEO's is because their job is ill-defined, and they proceed by making a recommendation for what a CMO's job description should be - "responsible not only for marketing communications but also (sorry to be stepping on toes) for product development and sales."
More specifically, they believe that a CMO's responsibilities should include: ensuring the company's products and services are in tune with customer demand, directing new product development and ensuring the continuing appeal of existing offerings, marketing communications, achieving top-line growth objectives, and meeting corporate margin goals.
While they bring up some great points, some of them deserve some further discussion. First off, let's start with an area of responsibility that was omitted from the list but that arguably should be part of a CMO's responsibilities. A CMO should be responsible for all customer "touch points," and that should include customer service. You can work for years to build an awesome brand, only to squander it after a few months of poor customer service (and following that with poor communications makes the demise event faster - as witnessed by Dell, Kryptonite, Mercedes, etc.). The CMO needs to be held accountable, and have the responsibility, to ensure that the customer experience is consistent across all customer touch points.
This next point may just be a semantic difference, but from a company's products and services point of view, the focus should not be on meeting customer demand but on meeting customer needs - both explicit needs as well as latent needs. Finding the latter and building successful offerings to meet those is an especially tricky proposition, but one which if done properly, often results in disruptive, breakthrough, and market-creating product innovations. Customers will not tell you, nor could they, how you should build such products. You "invent" them first and then find ways turn the latent market needs into active active needs.
Having a CMO responsible for product development instead of product definition and product marketing may not be such a good idea either. The product definition process is a process that should be driven by the CMO's product management team in partnership with the technical/product development team. But once a product is defined, including cost targets and time-to-market targets, the product development process itself should be run by a dedicated and independent product development executive, not the CMO. In fact, having the CMO in charge of product development may result in more "me-too" products, not more competitively differentiated products. Another unintended consequence of having the CMO run the development show, especially true in high tech and if the CMO is also in charge of sales, may be an abundance of one-off product versions/special editions built specifically to satisfy end-of quarter requirements. Such situations eventually lead to costing a company millions of dollars in wasted upgrade and migration resources, not to speak about the fact that it can also severely limit a company's ability to innovate in the future.
While CMOs should be held accountable for achieving top-line growth objectives and corporate margin goals, hopefully that is an accountability that they share with the rest of the executive team.
[Tags: CMO cmo responsibilities cmo job HR]
Posted by francois at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 10, 2006
How to avoid burnout...
Laura Ricci - a fellow LinkedIn Blogger - has a great article on what causes burnout and how to avoid it.
It basically comes down to doing the same thing that will ensure ongoing creativity, imagination and ultimately innovation - make sure you take breaks, and make sure you talk to others about things that are not related to what you're currently working on!
[Tags: burnout creativity]
Posted by francois at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 9, 2006
CMOs get a lot of lip service in the executive suite
According to Advertising Age, a survey released by Spencer Stuart yesterday finds that CEOs are falling short in working with marketing.
While 85% of the 278 executives who were surveyed said that it was either "extremely critical" or "very critical" for CEOs to communicate with marketing, only slightly more than half found that happening in practice. In fact, only 18% said that CEOs were excellent at at that! The survey also found that CEOs are not very good at holding other executives accountable for ensuring that they partner with marketing.
Often times, it is the CMO who sets the direction for the company, and when that happens with little support from the CEO or the rest of the executive team, you get what's happening at many companies...they look rather rudderless.
[Tags: CMO spencer struart cmo survey HR]
Posted by francois at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack |