The American Marketing Association recently covered the changing role of the CMO in their post “The Evolution and Awakening of the Modern CMO”.
A few years ago, CMOs were almost left for dead. Now, they’re getting comfortable at the executive table and becoming the voice of the customer. CMOs have potential to have a transformative effect on the brand and now the CMO role is becoming ever-more quantitative and may once again become chief storyteller.
AMA writer Hal Conick sat down with Sarah McNabb, Gate 39 Media’s Chief Marketing Officer, to collect her perspective on what it takes to survive in the CMO role.
A few key observations
“You have to have the versatility of knowledge in multiple aspects of marketing: social media, content writing, management distribution, analytics, CRM, processes and marketing strategy overall,” McNabb says. “It’s super important that you have a grasp on how all those cogs fit into the bigger machine and how that machine works.”
To McNabb, the evolution of the CMO has meant a widening of scope. Work now goes beyond simply deciding where advertisements will be placed, something she deems an “archaic role that doesn’t exist anymore.” Now, the CMO must have broad knowledge and become an “ongoing Renaissance person who’s continually seeking to learn,” she says.
“In this agency, we are very fluid in terms of changing up, pivoting and adapting new processes,” McNabb says. “A lot of the financial companies out there, where you have departments who’ve been doing the same things over and over for years, those are the ones that are going to die out.”
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Read the FULL article by Hal Conick, American Marketing Association