A bit more on CMO turnover
The business week article that Ralph mentioned in the previous post also noted a “fatal” flaw in the role of marketing in most companies. If you read the article (can’t find it on the BW website to link to, sorry), you’ll notice that the apparent definition of marketing (which is vague in all cases, as Ralph noted in his post) is limited to the “back-end” of marketing. That is, the so-called promotion and sales support aspects.
If marketing is not also responsible for strategy, product/service offering identification, market targeting, etc., then the job of promoting poorly selected and defined products and services is bound to end up as a “scape goat” position. Until and unless marketing is viewed as a true business process that is tasked with the alignment of the company’s capabilities with customer needs, wants, and demands, the CMO will have a short tenure … or position elimination.
Mitch
