Describe in your own words the key duties and responsibilities of a CMO in today’s job market

Based on my readings in this week’s course literature and some searching on the Wall Street Journal, the key dutiesand responsibilitiesof a CMO is no longer as crystal clear as is may once have been. At its core, I have always envisioned a CMO being responsible for assisting in building a brand identity that represents the companies core values, while also promoting their product or service. Moreover, a CMO should also be responsible for guiding and directing the company’s marketing and advertising campaigns to ensure they fulling align with the CEO’sdirectives and future initiatives. Perhaps most importantly a CMO should also protect and disseminate information though marketing to ensure proprietary information is received at theright time for new enhancements to their products.

However, despite my preconceived notions of what a CMO actually does, I have only begun to explain what they truly do, according to Coca-Cola’s standards. The main reason I my initial notions were somewhat off, is simply because the amount of overlap a CMO can truly have in other echelons of business, such as growth, development, and actual marketing. According to Coca Cola CEO James Quincey ” marketing was becoming less neatly separated from other key activities” which meant that the CMO’sroles and responsibilities were far to broad for one C-suite executiveto truly handle (Ives,1).In fact Coca Cola did away with this role as well as many other companies and opted for joint efforts regarding customer interactions. However, the decision was later reversed, since simply having a growth officer didn’taccount for innovation and true marketing(Ives,1).

Select one successful CMO from a Fortune 500 company and explain what you found impressive about that person’s approach to the CMO role

Based on the article on “How to Become a CMO” I was able to get an idea of the better qualities a CMO should have, which helped me a CMO I could meaningfully be impressed by. The reason I say this is mainly because any company that is doing well in terms of sales could be attributed to their CMO and the rest of the team, so I felt like it would have been a cop out to only view those factors.

That being said, I chose to select JPMorganChase & Co.’s CMO Kristin Lemaku based on her approach to innovating both the company and their approach to marketing through the use of AI. Moreover, she embody numerous CMO traits such as being humble, open minded, growth obsessed, and technically adept (Saltis, 2).Through the use of AI Kristin was able to quickly visualize and make meaningful changes to their ad campaigns and their marketing strategy to reach more people more effectively, through both cosmetic and psychological processes. Moreover, she was somewhat bombarded in a sea of various AI vendors itching to get a chance with JPMorganand Chase, but was able to do enough research to select the right company in Persado(Ives, 2). In short, Kristin was able to improve the results of her works to justify the importance of a CMO and improve her company through her actions.

1.Nat Ives, December 2019,https://www.wsj.com/articles/coca-cola-resurrects-post-of-chief-marketing-officer-11576534433?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3

2. Sam Saltis, June 2020,https://www.coredna.com/blogs/how-to-become-a-cmo

3. Nat Ives, July 2019,https://www.wsj.com/articles/jpmorgan-chase-taps-ai-to-make-marketing-messages-more-powerful-11564482606?mod=searchresults&page=9&pos=13

2nd Response

Madidimalo Phoko RE: Week 3 DiscussionCOLLAPSE

Hi all

Please find below my contribution to this week’s DQ

Essential duties and responsibilities of a CMO

The CMO’s duties and responsibility are to promote and protect the organization’s brand, ensuring that it stays reputable and recognized by the customers by:-

• Positioning the brand in a market segment (target market whose worldview is represented by the brand story)
• Determine the company’s future aspirations and develop a marketing strategy for growth
• Manages and facilitates the marketing strategy execution

The CMO is also referred to in some companies as the Chief Growth Officer (SearchCIO, 2018). The CGO title indicates that he/she drives the organization’s growth by establishing a new market for existing products, or ensuring that new products enter the market, reaching the sales volume required for the ROI. In the current connection economy and the value we get from the internet, CMOs can use data and social media to monitor trends in worldviews through surveys, customer data, and responses to polls/ ratings. Thus more valuable information about the market and expectations is available for use to those CMOs that understand it.

CMO from a Fortune 500 company

My pick of CMO is Dean Avans (Former CMO of Hyundai). His marketing view is that it is done one Story at a time (Rooney, 2019). “Under his guidance, we’ve consistently produced some of the best and most memorable Super Bowl advertising and have modernized our digital marketing and lead generation activities.” Said Hyundai Spokesperson, when interviewed about Dean (Swant, 2019). Dean talks of appealing to people’s emotions in your storytelling and his use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies helped bring in more customers in favor of the brand. In a video attached to the article (Rooney, 2019) he said: “Car buyers used to visit 5 showrooms before buying a car, but now with the world connectivity it takes 1.5 visits before buying, Now the goal should be to get prospective car buyer in the showroom through advertising.” I like the way he understands the data and statistics for the car market and the change the internet has brought, and he basis his marketing on leveraging on those changes. However, when he turns to the customer, he uses emotions to elicit buy-in; as (Harris, 2015) says, people generally use emotions in making complicated decisions and would instead try to logically explain afterward.

References

Harris, M. D., 2015. When to Sell with Facts and Figures, and When to Appeal to Emotions.Harvard Business Review,Issue REPRINT H01U9Y.

Rooney, J., 2019.The World’s Most Influential CMOs 2019.[Online]Available at:https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferrooney/2019/06/20/the-worlds-most-influential-cmos-2019/#5aa672383d3c

[Accessed 22 07 2020].

SearchCIO, 2018.CMO (chief marketing officer).[Online]Available at:https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/CMO-chief-marketing-officer[Accessed 22 07 2020].

Swant, M., 2019.Hyundai CMO Dean Evans Steps Down.[Online]Available at:https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2019/10/18/hyundai-cmo-dean-evans-steps-down/#2582914b622a

[Accessed 22 07 2020].