I wanted to share a few of the blogs written by CMOs that I follow and add some new ones I hadn’t seen before. What I discovered in researching new ones is that there are very few blogs written by CMOs! I was amazed and a bit disappointed by what I found. Here we are in a year when social media is all the rage and the executives who should be showing the way are absent. Sure, many of them support corporate blogs, but that’s different. And, yes, many CMOs are on Twitter (more on that in another post soon). But come on ladies and gentlemen. Step up!
You are the brand champions for your companies. The change agents for marketing. The ones who say you lead by example. So where are you? I searched Google for “CMO Blogs” and you weren’t to be found. In fact the Top 10 List of CMO Bloggers returned in the search was published in 2006.
So my hats off to these five CMOs for taking time to share their thoughts in more than 140 characters!
- Nigel Dessau: Hosted on the AMD blog site, Nigel shares his insights on the business in a personal way. But he also writes separate blog called The Three Minute Mentor, which contains quick, career-related advice and offers answers to common questions.
- Sam Decker: Soon-to-be former CMO of BazaarVoice, Sam shares his insights on social commerce and digital marketing.
- Jim Davis: Jim is the CMO of SAS and shares his insights on business, analytics and technology.
- John Dragoon: When John, CMO of Novell, takes time to write a post, he really writes a thoughtful piece.
- Randall Beard: As EVP of Nielsen, Randall shares his insights from his vantage point of seeing lots of media data.
I was going to include Barry Judge from BestBuy but he hasn’t posted in a year (moved to Twitter) and Jeffrey Haylett, but he left Kodak for his book and television future.
Who am I missing? There must be more CMO bloggers out there. Let me know who you follow. Also weigh in on why there aren’t more out there.
John Ellett is CEO of nFusion Group, LLC, a digitally-focused marketing agency based in Austin, TX. He has a passion for encouraging and supporting marketing leaders who have the courage to be change agents in their organizations.
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You should add Paul Dunay CMO of Avaya Services – I have been reading Buzz Marketing for Technology for 4 years – http://pauldunay.com – its great for B2B marketers!!
Michael Keller, the CBO at Dairy Queen has a nice audio blog here.
http://blog.dairyqueen.com/tag/michael-keller/
John,
Thanks for the mention…not sure why I understand the lack of blogging by CMOs…perhaps doubt on the business value…I appreciate your thoughtful comments and agree my personal blogging frequency could be both more regular and frequent. I’ll work on both given the positive encouragement….thanks!
John D
Good post. Yes, some CMOs are on Twitter. But too few, as Forbes noted earlier this year. http://bit.ly/734eHu
Hi John — Thanks for the blog call out. I agree with you that there is a real dearth of CMO bloggers, and I’m not sure why. The times certainly demand it. I’m of the opinion that Marketing is undergoing the largest transformation since the invention of TV advertising and brand management, and social media is just the start. On my blog, http://randallbeard.wordpress.com/, I try to focus on the big shifts underway across the broad continuum of marketing communications, and what this means for CMO’s and their Marketing organizations. Thanks again for mentioning me and including me in your blogroll. Randall
I’m a big fan of thoughtful posts and appreciate how tough it can be to post regularly. But congrats on the courage to step out there with you point of view.
Couldn’t agree more about the rate of change. But for curious marketing types, it is a wonderful time!
There are a couple of reasons CMO’s aren’t blogging as often. In speaking to several of them both on-line and off-line regarding the exact same question the answers range from “It just seemed like a speck of sand in a vacuum cleaner” to “Twitter’s much easier and serves as my micro blog” to “I can’t see the ROI” to “I don’t feel like educating my competition.”
Here’s the bigger issue I see however. You have a late 20 to early 30 year old with limited marketing, PR, or management experience that pitched their boss (the CMO) on all of the wiz-bang benefits of social media but couldn’t answer the question “So did we sell anything?”
I saw the same thing happen in the mid-90′s with the notion of having a corporate website. Their capabilities were over-hyped resulting in disappointing ROI.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the scale, reach, and acceptance of social media. Just not seeing a, pragmatic, business like approach to it my many agencies or companies. Feels like de-ja-vu!
John,
Thanks for mentioning my contributions. I agree with you that it is unfortunate that there are not more CMO’s participating in social media. It took me a while to embrace it, but glad I made the jump — and wish I had done it sooner. Jim
Maybe CMO’s have more important tasks to do like accounting for their advertising budgets.
Blogging you need to be creative, have imagination and need to have something interesting to say.
For spending money on marketign campaigns like ads or trade shows you just need to place money on different bets like in a casino.
CMO’s maybe gamblers instead of creative minds ?