cmo

The majority of the world's top marketing executives recognize the shift in marketing norms but are not well-prepared to deal with it, a new study reveals.

Even among the most successful enterprises, half of all CMOs feel insufficiently prepared to provide hard numbers in regards to return on marketing investment, according to IBM's study, which surveyed more than 1,700 chief marketing officers from 64 countries and 19 industries.

Despite a wealth of tools available to track social media and public relations, the IBM study found that only 26 percent of CMOs are tracking blogs, 42 percent are … Read more

If there was any lingering hope that T-Mobile USA would start offering the iPhone soon, the carrier's marketing chief just killed it.

T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman posted a letter to customers on the company's blog yesterday, saying that while he would love to carry the iPhone, the company is currently focusing on "the best that Android has to offer." Translation: T-Mobile is definitely not getting the iPhone in the near future.

T-Mobile now stands as the only national carrier left out of the iPhone game, with all indications pointing to Sprint Nextel joining AT&T and Verizon Wireless as an Apple partner. That's a significant disadvantage for the company, which is already struggling to return to growth and stem customer defection.

"We've heard from many customers who love their T-Mobile service but are disappointed that we don't carry the iPhone," he said in his letter. "To these customers, first, thank you for your business."

He did note that more than 1 million T-Mobile customers use an unlocked iPhone on its network. The GSM version of the iPhone--which is what AT&T uses--can be moved on to T-Mobile's network but can only access the slower 2G network. Brodman reiterated his interest in a "no compromise" iPhone experience on its network. … Read more

For Wired UK’s “Work Smarter” issue (just released), I had the pleasure to speak with John Winsor, co-founder and CEO of Victors & Spoils (V&S), the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles. You can find a shortened article in the Wired UK magazine. Here’s the interview in full length.

Q: V&S launched a few months ago. How is it going so far? How many clients do you have, and can you share some of the work that you are doing?

It's going really well. We're working with a … Read more

When I had dinner with my former boss and mentor in Paris a few months ago (formerly vice president of marketing at a US-based enterprise software company, now CEO of a French enterprise software company), he shared a dirty little secret with me: "Forget about marketing," he told me, "it doesn't really matter. I spend 80 percent of my time on HR, finance, operations, and sales. Branding, marketing communications, PR - not my priorities." A few weeks later I came across a working paper called "Getting Marketing Back in the Boardroom," and seeing … Read more

The Putting People First blog by Experientia has pointed me toward the excellent essay "The Long Wow" by Adaptive Path's Brandon Schauer. Schauer outlines a vision of creating lasting customer loyalty and brand value that runs counter to the fixation on quick wins and instant gratification, which many companies, under the pressure of shorter product life cycles and CMO tenures, seem to pursue these days. He defines "The Long Wow" as "a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again."

This goes far beyond adding new features … Read more