What Are CMOs Thinking?

“How the heck can we…”

eMarketer, March 17, 2009 — There are a lot of tough jobs in the current downturn, but high on the list must be chief marketing officer (CMO). A CMO’s job is to keep products moving—even in an economy where practically nothing is moving.

To find out how top marketing officers around the country are dealing with adverse economic conditions, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA) conducted the “CMO Survey” in February, a poll of nearly 600 US marketing executives.

How Reckitt Routed Rivals†

Thanks to Contrarian Strategy, It Outperforms L'Oreal, Unilever, P&G

Advertising Age, November 17, 2008 — The most successful major package-goods company of the past five years in sales and profit growth probably isn't the one you'd think — even if you thought very hard. Unheralded Reckitt Benckiser has been beating the likes of its more glamorous European neighbor L'Oreal, its seemingly more creative Anglo-Dutch big brother Unilever and industry powerhouse Procter & Gamble Co. on the top and bottom lines of late.

Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World

New York Times, November 3, 2008 — Shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president during the taping of “Meet the Press” on NBC. Within minutes, the video was on the Web.But the clip was not rushed onto YouTube; it was MSNBC.com, the network’s sister entity online, that showed the video hours before television viewers on the West Coast could watch the interview for themselves.

Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks.

How to Build Brands in Digital Age†

Book Excerpt: As Marketers Deal With Fragmentation, the Idea Should Drive the Media, Not the Other Way Around

Advertising Age, October 20, 2008 — We are absolutely awash in news and information.... This wash of messages is due, in good part, to the increase in channels of communication, mostly in digital communication. The internet and all manner of things digital have made it almost impossible to escape what's going on in the world, for better or for worse. This has created a host of challenges and opportunities for CMOs and everyone else responsible for the care and feeding of brands. How do you cut through the clutter? How do you take advantage of digital tools and tactics to learn more about consumers and deliver better, more-relevant brand experiences?

This article, an excerpt from a book called "BrandDigital," is about the way marketers built brands in the pre-digital world compared with the... continue reading