Living the Startup Life

I have read two great blog entries about why CMO’s get fired: John Rindlaub and David Meerman Scott.

Now, I’ve only been a CMO for about a little over 6 months, but I’m really starting to understand what they are writing about. From my perspective (and it’s the perspective of a startup CMO) CMO’s can get too caught up in the overall strategy and never get down to executing what needs to be done. I have been working on a strategy for months now in order to develop a marketing strategy that will brand Future Delivery but at the same time now fully expose us because we are in semi-stealth mode and are currently in the product development stage. The strategy I developed is to separate FD marketing into 4 distinct areas: FD Edge, Thought Leadership, Wikivault, and Business Development.

I have gathered a marketing team that is responsible for each area of FD marketing; therefore, I am free to work ON the company rather than IN the company. And this is where I feel that most CMO’s fail because they get caught up in the overall strategy and feel that it is not their place to get involved with the nitty gritty areas of marketing. David Meerman Scott writes about the New Rules of Marketing and how one can use blogs, ebooks, podcasts, and web 2.0 sites to cost-effectively market your company and get people to write about you. I completely agree with his teachings and I believe most CMO’s do not want to constantly write blogs, conduct podcasts, or expose themselves to the public eye because they think in the old way. I want to be transparent; the other CMOs want to be opaque.

So I must completely agree with David. The Millennial generation is all about connectivity and transparency. If you do not understand the web 2.0 sites out there and use them to their full potential to brand your company, then you will most likely be fired as well.

Thanks David. Your teachings have truly changed the way I view marketing.