As reported in Adweek, CMO tenure is down:
the global nature of today’s economy and the speed at which
it moves has left many CEOs with unrealistic expectations, said Ian Beavis,
vice president of marketing for Kia Motors America. Many chief executives, he
said, are looking for a "magic bullet" to solve their bottom-line
problems. "Marketing is a complex combination of art and science that
requires ruthless pursuit of strategy and tremendous flexibility of execution
depending on market conditions," he said. "There are a lot more CEOs
from a financial background who don’t know that."
One of those “market conditions” is culture. As Grant McCracken and I talked about,
marketers will have to get better at reading culture’s Matrix-like code in
order to get a better sense of what’s coming at them across the landscape and what the landscape might look like when they launch
their campaigns. Yes, they’ve got
sophisticated marketing dashboards at their disposal. But these dashboards only give them a sense of what they can
control and influence. A captain
can only guide the ship, he/she has no control over the waters on which they
sail. Therefore, an ability to
understand what’s traveling through the medium of culture will become a
competitive advantage. Perhaps this tool would do something like this.
