Generation “Why-Not” – Do you really understand a currently empowered cardholder?

Have you noticed how many “Baby-Boomers” are beginning to retire?  Well, not so slowly but surely they are. Coming into the work force, right on their heels, are members of Gen Y who are expecting to step into those very jobs the Boomers are leaving behind.  If you tell them they can’t have those big jobs right away, they’ll most likely ask, “Why-Not?” (therefore, Generation Why-Not).  If you tell them they have to work their way up the corporate ladder, you’ll probably hear them ask, “Why Should I?”

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CMOs And The Bottom Line

A new Stuart Spencer study of senior-level marketing executives has confirmed what many in business already know: the CMOs number one priority is influencing the bottom line (Ad Age story here). The complete results of the survey will be released today at the CMO Summit in Florida.

According to the study, other critical innate or learned qualities necessary for today’s CMOs include:

• Being a risk taker
• Willingness to make tough decisions
• Good problem-solving ability
• A strategic, customer-centric orientation to marketing
• Digital focus
• Multichannel and cross-industry experience

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CMO 2.0

The fact that the average tenure of a big-company CMO continues to hover around a measly two years is well documented in repeated Spencer Stuart studies. It has been suggested that part of the reason for this rapid turnover is the tremendous pressure now exerted on CMOs to quickly demonstrate tangible, high-return results for their marketing expenditures and efforts. While I think that pressure is real and causative to the CMO revolving door, I think there is a deeper reason behind the volatility of this position. Namely, there are a lot of CMO 1.0 executives in what has rapidly become a CMO 2.0 world.

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Tough Questions for CMOs

MarketingProfs asks, Are you ready for 2013? BusinessWeek asks, Will you have your job in 2013?

The two links above are strongly related. According to the MarketingProfs post by Paul Barsch, two factors loom large over the next five years for chief marketers: 1) the accelerating growth of information technology, and 2) the proliferation of data (it doubles every three years). Unless CMOs learn to partner with the IT department, and harness all that data into usable insight and cost-effective, revenue-producing marketing campaigns, their tenure will be short lived. That is the subject of the Business Week article. It reports the average longevity of the CMO position is now only 26 months. Lofty management expectations for quick results from the CMO position are partially to blame. Another major factor is the learning curve challenges faced by CMOs when it comes to understanding and utilizing the new media choices. As the Business Week article states:

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Organizations Use RSS to Tackle Employee Information Overload

The term information overload inevitably surfaces when employees talk about the deluge of printed materials, e-mail, voice mail and other technology-based messaging they face at work every day.

It’s refreshing to hear about companies that attempt to manage employee messaging – and RSS has great potential in this area. PC World highlights several companies that are using RSS to attack employee information overload. 

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