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!

1. 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.
2. Sam Decker: Soon-to-be former CMO of BazaarVoice, Sam shares his insights on social commerce and digital marketing.
3. Jim Davis: Jim is the CMO of SAS and shares his insights on business, analytics and technology.
4. John Dragoon: When John, CMO of Novell,  takes time to write a post, he really writes a thoughtful piece.
5. 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.

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

5 good CMO blogs. Why aren’t there more?

I had an encounter this week that reminded me the difference between policies and principles. The pre-owned car I bought a few months ago came with Sirius Radio and the subscription was still active when I left the lot. That was great until last week when it finally expired and I called to have it renewed. I was willing to pay to restart the service under my name and credit card, but I was informed that the company’s “policy” would not allow that until the previous subscriber terminated the service. I was instructed to call the previous owner to have him take care of the cancellation. Since I bought the car from a dealer, I had no way of knowing who that was, and the Sirius representative couldn’t tell me (based on company policies). Needless to say, I was baffled by the company’s response. Eventually Chris, a representative of the dealership, got involved. It was not the dealer’s standard policy to resolve issues like this, but its principle for outstanding customer service was the only justification Chris needed to go above and beyond the normal procedures.

In an effort to codify a company’s principles, expected behavior is defined as policies. Yet in the case of Sirius, all the training was on the policies, not on the underlying principles. And I would imagine Sirius’ recognition (or punishment) system is oriented around policy compliance. What it seems to have missed, and what the auto dealer got, was the “why” behind the policy.

Here are a few questions to consider at your company:

1. Do your customer-facing representative reply to customers by quoting your policies or by explaining the principles that guide your decisions?
2. Do your team members feel empowered by your principles or stifled by your policies?
3. Does your company respond to corporate incidences based on guiding principles or based on rigid policy?

What situations have you encountered recently where policies got in the way of principles? Conversely, where have you encountered someone doing the right thing despite gray areas in company policies?

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

Do you lead based on “policies” or on “principles?”

Have you ever been faced with a decision and you didn’t know where to turn for advice? Increasingly, I’m finding that I am one of millions who is turning to the wisdom of crowds for help. Wisdom of crowds is based on the concept that if two heads are better than one, millions of heads are better than two. By using the collective experiences of others, my odds of weeding out the bad experiences and selecting a good experience improve significantly. It beats throwing a dart or depending on blind luck.

SXSW, a major interactive, music and film conference, is using this approach in an innovative way. By using a panel picker application that asks the “crowd” to render an opinion on proposed presentation topics, the organizers are improving the chance that the panels ultimately selected for the conference will be appealing. To see how it works, click here and you can give my submission a thumbs up.

I find myself going to many different sites that either incorporate the wisdom of crowds into their functionality, or sites built specifically around this concept. Here are some of my favorites:

• Yelp.com: This gives good summaries of restaurants with ratings and comments. It includes a location-based service in the mobile version for finding places when I’m traveling. Other similar apps are Zagat.com and Around Me.
• TripAdvisor.com: I’ve used this site for planning where to stay in places I’ve never been to before. The reader comments and ratings are useful, especially when picking a vacation spot that won’t disappoint the family.
• Amazon.com: One of the pioneers in using purchase behavior to drive a recommendation engine. It suggests books that others have read who like the same books I do.
• Angie’s List: This site takes the mystery out of hiring a local service provider, whether it’s someone to fix your back or your back porch. Driven entirely by user reviews, the recommendations are candid and useful, and sure beat a random pick from the Yellow Pages (remember them?).

What are you favorite sites? Please add them to the the list above.

As a marketer, knowing that decisions to buy from you are increasingly being made based on opinions shared on these sites is critical. Refocusing your company to deliver a great customer experience consistently is a must. And developing the organizational capability to listen to, respond to and improve based on comments will be a core competency required for the 21st century.

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

A boomer CEO’s journey through social media, part 4: wisdom of crowds

Like almost everyone else using Twitter, I follow some celebrities. I find out more about who they are by reading about what they do every day, as shared via their tweets. It is interesting to me to know what it is like to be inside the locker room at the Masters, or what it is like recovering from a ride in the Tour de France, or what little things make a celebrity happy. Knowing where they eat, which bands they listen to or what it feels like to play to an exuberant crowd makes me feel like an insider.

But I also follow several marketing leaders and subject matter experts. And I really don’t care where they eat, which bands they like and how their big presentation made them feel. That’s not why I follow them. I want to learn from them professionally. I want their insights and lessons learned.

What is your Twitter personality? There isn’t a right one or a wrong one, but you have one. Is it the one you want? Is it consistent with why you tweet? Twitter is another medium to express your personal brand so give some thought to what you want your brand to stand for.

Here are some of my favorite marketing folks to follow:

• BrandDigital
• MarketingProfs
• Jennifer Aaker
• George Dearing
• Sam Decker

Who are your favorite people that you like to follow? Why?

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

Are you tweeting like a rock star?

According to published research, people form an opinion on whether they can trust someone in one-tenth of a second. Other researchers have found that visitors form an impression of the visual appeal of a website in one-twentieth of a second. So how long does it take for your customer to form an opinion of you? Evidently, less than a second.

How does this affect what you do as a marketer? It puts increasing importance on the impact of first impressions, regardless of the medium. Additional evidence shows that in an era of information overload the “intuitive” brain forms a bias for a decision that the “rational” brain then processes to validate. So initial impressions that connect with your target’s intuition should be planned and managed effectively.

Where are first impressions made? Map them so your organization understands where to focus. What are the first impressions being made? Audit them so you understand what impact you are having. What are the effects of your store fronts? Your online banners? Your website? Your field representatives? Your trade show booths?

What is your first impression strategy? If you don’t have one, take some time to develop one. After all, you have less than a second to put your best foot forward.

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

How long does it take your customer to form an opinion?

This past weekend was one of the highlights of any golfer’s annual calendar: The Masters. This tournament is held every spring at the beautiful Augusta National Golf Club and features not just the best players in the world, but the best scenery. I was fortunate to experience this year’s event and see Phil Mickelson win his third green jacket.

As marketers there are three thing we could learn from The Masters.

1. Embrace tradition: CBS bills this event as “a tradition unlike any other” and with good reason. The winner is presented with a green jacket by last year’s champion. The scoreboards are low-tech signs. The caddies all wear white coveralls. The pimento cheese sandwiches cost a buck fifty. Everything is traditional, reassuring and totally unique. Coke tried to break with its tradition and launched New Coke. It learned its lesson and has not only accepted its traditional Coke brand but recognized that the shape of the bottle and the logo are traditions of which it should be a careful steward.

2. Embrace your champions: No other event I know of embraces its champions better than The Masters. It starts by including last year’s winner in the current year’s ceremonies. Past champions are invited to play in the tournament for the rest of their lives. Each year all the past winners gather for the Champions Dinner. Who are your past champions? Key channel partners? Most valued customers? Top employee ambassadors? How can you recognize them not just for one year but forever? How much good will would that create for your brand?

3. Protect your brand: The Masters organization could make more money in many ways. But it carefully limits itself and, in the process, makes the brand even more valuable. You can only buy logo-ed merchandise at the event. Attendance is limited. Other logo-ed products are highly restricted on the premises (I’ve had to take the wrapper off a bottle of water). But the impact is a highly cherished brand. While others “over-merchandise” their brands, The Masters protects and builds its. How can you make sure your brand experience is consistently outstanding before looking to expand it?

The Masters is not perfect. The all-male-member tradition of Augusta National has been attacked by women’s rights groups in the past, and the men who run it have been called stubborn. But despite this, millions of people around the world tune in to this annual rite of spring and long for the opportunity to participate in the experience first-hand. Isn’t that what you are trying to achieve with your brand?

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

3 things marketers can learn from The Masters

Here’s a nice little video from Harvard professor Youngme Moon to remind us of the many ways we can stifle the outcomes we are seeking. My favorite: #11, underestimating your customers. I see this too often with companies that don’t give consumers credit for being able to make informed decisions. By dumbing things down, innovative ideas can get left behind. Strive to inspire your customers with remarkable ideas and your team may actually develop remarkable ideas.

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

14 ways to stifle creativity

Here’s a short video that reminds us of the power of keeping things simple.

I believe it is important to distinguish simple from simplistic. Simple means “easy to understand,” which is imperative when aligning an organization behind a strategy. The video talks about a local newspaper whose strategy is “names, names, names,” which it found to be the key for making the paper a must read. In Dell’s rapid growth phase, the strategy was “better products and service for lower prices.” Both strategies are powerful and simple to understand.

Simplistic means “oversimplifying by ignoring the complexities.” It means dumbing things down, which can be problematic for developing and communicating strategies. Simplistic strategies are not distinctive. They lack compelling reasons for the target to make a purchase. “Cut costs to be competitive” is simplistic. GM and Chrysler tried this. Sure they needed to cut costs, but they still did not have a strategy for winning.

As you work on your strategy, strive for keeping it simple, but avoid being simplistic.

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

Strategy: Keep it simple (but not stupid)

If you couldn’t make it to Austin this week, here are some of the best summaries of what went on at the SXSW Interactive event.

1. The best of South by Southwest (SXSW) by Jon
2. 13 Observations From South by Southwest (SXSW) by Jay Baer
3. SxSWi 2010: The Good Stuff (so far) by Bill Johnston
4. At SXSWi, Twitter may finally have met its match by Daniel Terdiman
5. The Road to SXSW (Videos) by Ingrid Vanderveldt

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

Top summaries from SXSW Interactive

In an age of 140-character tweets, 50-slide PowerPoint presentations and multi-pivot tabled Excel spreadsheets, some of the most effective skills marketing leaders need will be analog. Yes, in a digital age it will be imperative that leaders  develop the analog companions to their digital proficiencies.

The first of these skills is story telling. Humans are wired to learn through stories. We connect with people by hearing their experiences and relating to them. We are inspired to overcome obstacles by reading tales of triumph from those who faced adversity but didn’t quit. We are moved to action by watching others do things that touch our hearts.

As a change agent for your company, telling great stories may further your cause faster than just telling people what to do. Share your personal experiences in a way that helps people relate to you and aids in their understanding the concepts you are trying to communicate.

As a marketer, sharing your brand through stories can also be compelling. When I’m asked by someone to “tell me about nFusion,” I have learned the best way to do that is by telling my story. The reasons behind our portfolio of services become more clear. My executive experiences and the issues I wrestled with become a shared experience with the questioner. The frustrations I dealt with are the same ones he or she is dealing with. Explaining our firm through a personal story helps establish our uniqueness and our relevancy.

Having your customers tell their stories is also very powerful. OnStar used to do this nicely. Farmers Insurance is doing it now. Your brand-as-hero message seems much more compelling when it is told by others to whom your audience can relate.

For a quick guide on good story telling, watch the short video above. The key elements apply not just to radio or television, but to your stories as well.

Who have you worked with who leads through stories?

This is a post from Marketing Has Changed by John Ellett. Subscribe to my feed.

Analog skills in a digital age, part 1: story telling