CMOs Must Overcome Specialist's Bias

Once upon a time, a CMO could count on her agency for leadership. The firm was her "agency of record" and served in the role of "brand steward."

No longer. Today, the agency is merely one member in an orchestra of suppliers. It's no longer the conductor; it's not even the first chair.

Conductor-less, the CMO must make sense of a cacophony of instruments, most of which belong to martech firms beating the drum for their own solutions.

It's easy in this situation for CMOs to fall into the trap of specialist's bias.

Studies of medical practitioners show specialists over-treat patients with the therapy they specialize in. 

CMOs can fall victim to specialist's bias as readily as doctors.

The former digital marketer will glorify viral Tweets; the former ad man, four-color placements; the former sales exec, fancy collateral; the former video producer, lavish productions; the former researcher, elaborate studies; the former PR guy, puffy product mentions; and so on.

Without the touchstone once provided by the agency of record, agnosticism is no longer a phone call away.

"Look around," says John Ounpu in Brand Quarterly, "and it’s not hard to find brands doing too much with no gravitational center to hold it all together. Letting tactics overshadow strategy. Setting the marketing agenda based on vendor capabilities instead of customer needs. Creating a disjointed, fragmented customer experience with too many moving pieces."

Ounpu offers a way out: make marketing strategy another speciality. The strategist's specialty would be to align the moving pieces and watchdog the other specialists. 

"Strategy must be a practice, not an event," he says.

The strategist would look 'beyond channels and quarterly plans" into "how teams are structured, how priorities are determined, how agencies are selected, briefed and managed, how technology is assessed and invested in, and how performance is measured."

Sounds awesome. But I can't imagine it working.

Is the marketing strategist some kind of internal auditor? Can she poke her nose into every team and every supplier relationship? Can she dictate everyone's metics? And who, really, would take orders from the in-house "strategy cop," unless the cop also signed all the paychecks?

People and organizations aren't built like that. 

The leadership has to come from the CMO. And the CMO must find a way to overcome specialist's bias.

One smart way to do so is to read relentlessly.

The other is to attend marketing conferences.

Adventures in Autocorrect

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

— Raymond Chandler

In a previous life, I must have committed some atrocity. 

Autocorrect is my karmic curse.

Autocorrect constantly replaces my words.

Yes, I know I can customize it (or at least turn it off). 

But why am I required to do so in the first place? And why does it default to the linguistic ability of a moron?

The word moron, by the way, also has an atrocious past.

It was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry Goddard to designate someone with a learning disability. 

Goddard believed the learning disabled posed a threat to "American stock" and took steps to purge them from the gene pool.

He first convinced legislators in half the states to pass laws requiring their forced sterilization. Over 60,000 involuntary operations resulted.

He also dispatched assistants to Ellis Island, to look for morons trying to enter the country. When one was spotted, he was given an IQ test (developed by Goddard). The results weren't often favorable. Over 80% of immigrants tested were deported.

To his credit, late in life, Goddard disavowed his work.

Blarney

As a noun, blarney means nonsense intended to charm or persuade. In other words, affable BS.

As a verb, it means to employ nonsense to those ends. In other words, to BS someone.

The slang term is American, and over two centuries old. It got its meaning from two sources:

• The false claims by thousands of Irish Americans "to have kissed the Blarney Stone," when in fact they'd never set foot in County Cork.
  
  
• Lady Blarney, the smooth-talking liar who appears in Oliver Goldsmith's 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

A lot of blarney is harmless; what Jungians would call "extroverted thinking." Because he thinks out loud, the extroverted thinker spouts a ton of nonsense all day long. It feels good and means little.

But some blarney is ominous: it's meant to fool.

The term for that form of blarney is trumpery.

Trumpery is a Middle English word that refers to anything that's attractive, but of no real value. "Truthful hyperbole" fits the category.

Trumpery also denotes trickery, and derives from the French word tromper, to deceive. Today we call those tricky paintings meant to deceive trompe l'oeil.

Savor blarney, but beware of trumpery.

And, no blarney, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Which B2B Marketing Skills are Most in Demand in 2017?

SiriusDecisions asked 270 B2B CMOs to list the skills their departments lacked. Their top five responses were:

Strategy. CMOs need marketers who can translate corporate objectives into integrated, scalable marketing strategies.

Analytics. CMOs need marketers who can direct data scientists and socialize their findings internally.

Channel partner management and sales enablement. CMOs need marketers who can generate demand.

Social media. CMOs need marketers who can leverage social throughout the company.

Measurement. CMOs need marketers who can demonstrate ROI.

Where will CMOs find marketers with these skills?

• 81% will turn to outside suppliers
• 77% will hire and train staff members
• 96% will do both

Should a B2B Copywriter Have a Voice?

Tell the truth but make truth fascinating.

— David Ogilvy

Except for Theresa McCulla, B2B copywriters have the best job ever.

They spend their days making machine tools, office furniture and cloud services fascinating.

The best ones know that craft, as well as truth, can lure buyers into buying.

They delight in discovering phrases that makes convoluted concepts seem clear and parity products, powerful.

They wouldn’t do the job if they didn’t harbor a love for language's capacity to transform truth.

But should a B2B copywriter have a voice?

I'd argue: yes. Without a voice, though it might be factual, the writer's copy is flat. 

And, as David Ogilvy said, "you can't bore people into buying."

Others would argue voice is a distraction and should "disappear into the house style." Voice can in fact be a hindrance to a writer: in-house reviewers don't welcome it and clients won't pay for it.

I'd argue that's old-school. Just as it favors generosity and art, our connection economy favors voice.

In Bright Book of Life, critic Alfred Kazin describes the late John Updike's visibility in his voice:

Updike writes as if there were no greater pleasure than reconstituting the world by writing—writing is mind exercising itself, rejoicing in its gifts. Reading him one is always conscious of Updike the Gifted, Updike the Stylist, Updike the Concerned Roguish Novelist. Updike is always so much Updike that the omnipresence of Updike in all his writing finally seems not a hindrance but a trademark.

A B2B copywriter's voice isn't a hindrance

It's a trademark.