From CMO to CTO

Today’s Chief Marketing Officer has perhaps the most precarious job in business. Which is not surprising when you consider the many challenges they face. Chief among them is how the traditional tenets of marketing have become so uprooted by technology – and at a furious pace of change that only seems to accelerate.

Why are CMOs so at risk? For starters, everyone seems to have an opinion when it comes to marketing campaigns – which are by nature public – and CMOs are often first to get blamed when something, anything, at a company goes awry.

And it’s hard for marketers to push back, in part because it’s often difficult to prove ROI. Most of us have heard one of the enduring tales of 20th Century advertising, the client who said, "I know I am wasting half my advertising budget; I just don't know which half."

Marketing departments are also under-resourced and often quite dependent on outsourced work, creating an inefficient workflow that’s ill-suited to today's always-on marketing needs. In addition, marketing budgets are frequently seen as discretionary; they’re first on the chopping block when times get tough.

A big part of the problem is that, incredibly, two-thirds of marketing dollars are still spent in the slow, by-appointment, analog world – even while the most desirable consumers increasingly live in the digital, any-time-you-want it world. It reminds me of the early days of personal computing, when it was said that you couldn't get fired for buying IBM – until you were. For marketers hewing to old ways of doing business, consumers may as well be living on another planet.

And yet marketers have never borne more responsibility. Not only must they anticipate the ever changing demands of their customers, they're now also overseeing many of the key technology decisions being made by their companies. In fact, Gartner, the research firm, predicts that by 2017, Chief Marketing Officers will buy more technology than their companies’ Chief Information Officers.

While there are of course many tech-savvy marketers, the majority of CMOs with whom I with speak feel completely unprepared for this tectonic shift. I think it's fair to say that consumers and marketers are increasingly passing each other in the night.

Long gone are the days when technology was primarily the domain of a few high priests of code. Consumer technology is fast becoming THE technology of choice – for everything. The same tech you now hold in your hands will soon be running the entire world, from finance and business to education and government.

Consumer technology can and should be understood, and mastered, by everyone, not just IT departments. The leaders of tomorrow will be fluent in the language of technology – if they’re not, they certainly won't be the ones who are leading.

So what’s my advice to today’s marketers?

You won’t be surprised that it’s centered around the idea that tech shouldn’t just be understood but fully embraced, in all its forms.

To that end, here are my top three prescriptions for CMO job security:

1. Be in it:

There is no substitute for total immersion. Learn by doing. Find out who is behind emerging technologies and why they work the way they do. Be curious, read the tech blogs. Follow tech people on Twitter. Try out all the new devices, discover new apps, and ask what services and products colleagues and friends are using. Don't delegate the discovery of new technology to others. Attend product demos. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Position yourself as a tech expert within your organization – be a tech enthusiast.

2. Surround yourself with the right people:

Become allies with the IT leaders in your organization. Explain your technology goals and agree with your IT team on a strategy to support them. But also hire your own developers and techies. Consumer tech is characterized by rapid changes and quick turnarounds, so only by having developers at the ready will you be able to keep up with all the new changes that are happening. And if you're not with a marketing agency that is leaning into new technology and encouraging you to push the envelope, find one that is. There are plenty of great ad agencies that get it.

3. Experiment and track:

The beauty of technology is that everything is measurable – you can test anything. Develop an internal test bed, a framework by which new products be tried, and results measured and projected. Get in the game of doing quick mock-ups and modeling, and test and launch new features on any consumer-facing initiatives. Experiment, experiment, experiment – if you don’t, you're dead. We live in a world of Big Data. Everything you do generates a huge amount of information. Don’t be overwhelmed by it but instead decide how you're going to analyze and take advantage of it. With data, assessing ROI is now possible.

The bottom line is that CMOs need to look at their roles differently. Think of yourself as not just a Chief Marketing Officer but a CTO – a Consumer Technology Officer who’s fluent in the language of technology, someone who’s comfortable with technology, has a smart team, and knows how to use tech to prove ROI.

That is, the key to job security is to turn technology on its head – to take the biggest driver of the disruption that causes so many sleepless nights and make it into your most powerful weapon for career longevity.

Photo: Patrick Lux/Getty Images News