American Marketing Association conference Mplanet 2006 had a session by Peter Kim of Forrester Research on Reinventing the marketing organization and he has some great points which I think is the way to go for CMOs:
Peter’s key points were that customers should be the reason for re-structuring. He highlighted research which shows most companies restructure their marketing function to comply with organizational changes. Peter contended that this approach was short-sighted and often, when functions are confined to insular structures, they communicate ineffectively and they make it more difficult when coordinating an integrated marketing campaign.
He basically said showed to us, research which displayed the new skill set which marketers require for success:
1. Strategic Thinking
2. Relationship Building and Networking
3. Business Acumen
4. Quantitative Analysis
5. Process Creation and Management and;
6. Managing Financial Assets.
Finishing up, Peter described some of the opportunities for Customer Centric Marketing Organizations (CCMO):
- We should describe our target market in a persona (ie. Jill is a 34 year old woman who likes dogs and spends her time reading books).
- We should market towards particular lifestyles.
- We should cultivate a culture in which everyone is a marketer and, if possible, appoint the CEO as the prime example of what the company should deliver.
Thanks Robert