The CMO Show

More Tesla than Mad Men? What does it take to be a successful CMO today? Josh Steimle reckons it's the ability to have an eye on the prize, a nose in the numbers and an imagination that knows no bounds.

During his first 12 months in the role, Spotify CMO Seth Farbman came up with the brilliant idea to produce and promote night-time playlists. His inspiration? Millions of user data points which pointed to an opportunity for Spotify to reap the rewards of a large niche audience.

It's this marriage of innovation, creativity and data which award-winning author Josh Steimle says sets successful CMOs squarely ahead of the pack. And he should know – for his book, Chief Marketing Officers at Work, Steimle interviewed 30 such CMOs.

Steimle quickly came to discover that Farbman's accomplishments are actually reminiscent of a larger shift, prompting CMOs to cultivate on three things – quick returns, multi-faceted skills transcending discrete departments, and data-driven models for success.

"This idea of the marketer being more like Don Draper from Mad Men or somebody who throws the dart at the wall and says 'oh we'll do this today,' and they're just coming up with creative ideas in some backroom – That's not the marketer at all that I found," he says.

"Now the CMO is responsible to go into the boardroom and say for every three dollars and 53 cents that we spend we get a new customer."

Listen along to discover why there's a revolving door of CMOs "topping out" after short stints, and how to avoid doing the same. That plus plenty of marketing insights from the likes of GE, PayPal, Target, Spotify, and the Harvard Business School.

Imagine if complex every day choices could be simplified with the help of technology. This is what modern marketing is all about, says Kit Macgillivray, Chief Product Officer at Brook.ai.

Managing something as common as diabetes means taking frequent assessments on a series of micro interactions throughout your day, to make an informed decision - everything from how well you slept to how many steps you took in a day.

Combining CX (customer experience) and UX (user experience) design principles, Macgillivray created Brook.ai - a platform that's working to solve the growing need of chronic disease and pain management. In other words, "an interactive fitbit on steroids".

This kind of innovation is the very crux of CX, Macgillivray says. It's about using today's interactive technology to create human-centred design, but it's a point many marketers are missing.

"A lot of people are just jumping on the bandwagon. A lot of people are just buying journey maps. They're not buying an outcome, they're buying an experience map."

Tune in as Kit joins Mark and JV to discover why Chief Product Officers have a better understanding of customer experience than the average CEO, how an incentivised culture will improve CX, and why the best brands approach the customer journey as a beast in need of continual upkeep.

How do you win share of wallet when you're up against more than 50,000 competitors? Floyd Larsen, CEO at Cure Cancer Australia, knows a thing or two about that… A core marketing message should be a simple idea. In the words of Simon Sinek, it's the WHY, but as CEO of Cure Cancer Australia (CCA), Floyd Larsen knows it's also the hardest part to define. After starting her career as a successful software engineer for Microsoft, Larsen has now spent a decade in the not-for-profit (NFP) sector as the leader of Australia's oldest cancer-focused initiative. With more than 80 per cent of Australians having made a donation to charity in FY2016, it's a sector that shows much promise for those who can cut through the noise, says Larsen. It's simplicity, she says, which is key to achieving that. "The fastest growing area in fundraising is online, growing 19% year on year. Importantly, 13% of those donations are done on a mobile phone," Larsen says. "It's what I call the bus stop test. There aren't many things these days that you can't do at a bus stop on your mobile phone. We're really looking to make it easy for people to make donations, even at the bus stop." In an industry cluttered with noise, CCA's latest campaign features Australia's Paul Hogan driving home a simple message: "Come on Australia, let's cure cancer". Tune in to find out more on distilling your core message, how Larsen's four pillar strategy could benefit you and why every marketer could use a bit of Hogan magic.

Why can't we all be Nike? What is the true value of customer data? And how can personal transformation impact marketing?

These are the sorts of questions that digital marketing futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson has dedicated his career to answering. Working alongside brands like Apple, SAP, and Johnson & Johnson, he recognises that the digital and analogue worlds are increasingly aligning, making way for what he calls the 'digilogue'.

In this episode of The CMO Show, Sorman-Nilsson joins host JV Douglas to discuss how mapping seamless customer journeys will become a tug-of-war between the speed of digital and the experience of human connection.

The key, he says, is asking the right questions now to anticipate the equilibrium for your brand later.

"What companies need to really strategically think about is: What should be digital touch points? What should be analogue touch points? And don't just consider that from a cost perspective, but from what will really entice and engage the consumer's digital minds and their analogue hearts at the same time."

Tune in to find out why the one thing that customers are craving now, more than ever, is human experience. That plus how to nail marketing with chutzpah (and zombies).

"Crackin' spot. Fire up the barbie."

Whether it's Lee Lin Chin launching a covert operation to rescue Aussie ex-pats from a lamb-less lunch, Lambassador Sam Kekovich's scorching rebukes of "unaustralianism", or Adam Gilchrist suggesting a game of cricket in Australia's sprawling backyard, the annual Australia Day Lamb ad has become something of a tradition. And the latest instalment is no exception – it's chock full of cultural sizzle and dripping with political satire.

In this episode of The CMO Show, Meat and Livestock Australia's group marketing manager, Andrew Howie, lifts the curtain to give the lowdown on Australia's most anticipated marketing campaign in the lead up to Australia Day.

With a secret sauce that balances grit and giggles, challenges conservatism, and celebrates nationalism to create real cut-through, Andrew says it's bravery and honesty that keep MLA's campaigns fresh – and the audience coming back for more.

"The only way you can disrupt that or you can stop people from just doing the same stuff, is to make them feel a bit uncomfortable or do something that's out of the ordinary. That can be in the form of controversy or saying something that people don't normally say, or showing them something that they don't normally see."

Listen along to learn how collaboration can lead to the best amplification opportunities, and why you'll never lamb alone. That plus plenty of meaty ideas for you to sink your teeth into.

What does 2017 hold in store? How is content marketing changing? Why does it even matter any more? In the last episode of The CMO Show for 2016, Mark and JV sit down with bestselling author and content marketing legend, Andrew Davis, to discuss all things content marketing.

A firm believer in the power of content marketing to change the outlook of an entire product or category, rather than a single brand, Andrew reckons it's the way marketers target content that will matter most in the coming year.

"A lot of people think that, 'If we just do this slow slog of blog posts and email newsletters we'll eventually find our golden ticket'. When, in fact, I think if you're just smarter about the audience you're targeting and grow down the tree from the small branches that have highly passionate, high margin, potential audiences to go after, you eventually get to the trunk where everybody knows you."

The CEO of Monumental Shift, Andrew watches today's marketers trying to target every identified persona, spreading their budgets far and thin across each new channel. "In the online world we have this belief we should target everyone when, in fact, targeting everyone reaches no one. It's a terrible paradox," he says.

Tune in for an episode full of insight from the content marketing oracle himself. Listen along as Andrew shares stories of marketing hits and misses, and explains why less content leaves room for better quality. We're rounding out the year with a bang.

Did you know that for a marketer to plant the seed of an idea into one's brain, all they need to do is design a message that's easily consumed by the subconscious brain?

The way marketers craft their messages perplexes Tim Ash. Marketers continue to target the logical or left side of the brain – the part that's "literally asleep 95% of the time," he says. Does this mean we're all missing big-brain opportunities to influence our audiences?

In this episode of The CMO Show, we take a look under the hood of the human brain to explore the neurological side of marketing with Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners and cognitive scientist.

"Right now we're designing things that are too complicated and require us to use our conscious brains to process them," Tim says. "[It] takes a huge laborious effort to make those kind of rational decisions… The rational part of the brain doesn't even get woken up most of the time."

A strong believer in the role of conditioning to effect change in our selves, Tim also delves deep into the role of social inclusion and environment in shaping customer behaviour.

"There's no such thing as a permanent sense of self, and your environment, and the conditioning propaganda, whatever you want to call it, has a very strong influence on us. We think of ourselves as active agents and we decide what we do, we decide when we change our own beliefs, and in fact that's not even the case."

Tune in to discover why humans are the herdiest of animals, how to avoid confusing brands for products, and what negativity bias truly means for opportunistic marketers.

Australian companies are predicted to spend half their advertising budgets on digital by 2020 -- But are we all in danger of missing the point?

In the conclusion of this two-part CMO Show special Mark Ritson, Adjunct Professor at Melbourne Business School, argues that the marketing industry's obsession with digital metrics is driving it dangerously close to forgetting what matters most - audience.

"If you look at digital video, it is one of the most disgraceful acts of data misrepresentation and lazy journalism that we have ever seen in the history of commercial coverage, never mind marketing. It's a disgrace!"

Thankfully Ritson also says that not all is lost for today's marketers - we just need to get back to class for some 101 education. It's not about research, it's about market orientation he says.

"The reason you have to start with market orientation and not market research is [that] we all know brand managers that have got tonnes of research, but never pay any attention to it because they don't have market orientation."

Sit up straight with hosts Mark Jones and JV Douglas as Ritson breathes fire on industry-wide misperceptions, and gives a lesson in the fundamentals that all marketers should know.

Platform 'bells' and analytical 'whistles': Is digital just a box of turds and spiders?

With the digital overhaul facing marketers and business strategies today, do all the new platform 'bells' and analytical 'whistles' actually amount to anything?

When he looks out across the marketing industry, what Professor Mark Ritson sees is clients and agencies who have largely lost their business direction. The Melbourne Business School professor attributes a lack of industry training in the basics as feeding the perpetual gap between how marketers think consumers behave, and how they actually do.

"If [marketers] had been properly trained, the first thing they would have been trained on is market orientation, which means you are not the consumer," Ritson says. "What you do and think is highly, highly unrepresentative of your consumer, because you're being paid to market a product, ergo you don't see that product or service the way the consumers do."

In part one of our two-part series, CMO Show hosts Mark Jones and JV Douglas sit down with the oft-notorious Ritson to discuss why the industry today is a broken one.

Tune in for a contentious look at the role of automation, how media agencies will shape the future, and why digital is overrated.

Ambushed immediately after leaving the stage, this episode of The CMO Show takes place in the back halls of AANA's annual marketing conference RESET as JV Douglas track down this year's best speakers.

Spotlighting what to expect in 2017, JV discusses how to go viral with Unruly founder Sarah Wood, anticipating disruption with digital prophet David Shing, and penetrating consumer memory with Professor Karen Nelson-Field.

Firebrands. Academics. New-age prophets? Find out what they're all preaching to marketers today and in the future.