Josh Steimle on the modern CMO

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.