13 step recipe for CMO success Archives

Moths_around_a_light_bulb — Source: Dr John Brackenbury / Science Photo Library

Perhaps in a former life I was a moth. That might help explain why I am drawn repeatedly to the enlightening insights of a select eclipse of CMOs. [Just in case none of you are entomologists, it turns out that a group of moths is called an eclipse. Who knew?] Now as we fly by my uncertain metamorphosis and choice of metaphors, let’s shine the light on Judy Hackett, CMO of Dun & Bradstreet, the subject of three interviews, two shared panels and a chapter in my book (see page 99 Element Bb: B2B Content Marketing).

Judy, by the way, is a treat to chat with as she is always forthright, offering practical advice and real-world examples. This time our topic was leadership and the challenges presented when your company is acquired. What’s particularly interesting is how her team managed to stay agile while working within the potential confines of the larger organization. Not an easy feat which is among the reasons Judy received the Officers Award from The CMO Club late last year. And as I reconsider reincarnation, you all can move on to wisdom of someone far less flighty.

Drew: Looking back over the last 12-24 months, what initiative under your leadership really worked well? What were some of the challenges you had to overcome? What were the results?

What worked well: It was important for our newly acquired company to demonstrate rock solid performance the very first full quarter with Dun & Bradstreet. We focused heavily on the success of our sales teams which resulted in beating both our top and bottom line targets for our division. The sheer magnitude of what marketing and product accomplished in demonstrating value in our first quarter was impressive. We completed a full rebranding in less than 30 days. We developed and launched a new concierge service for Hoovers and initiated several new product relaunches in the very first quarter as a combined company. But, it was our financial performance we could all take the most pride in.

Challenges: The biggest challenge for any small, nimble company is to stay nimble when you are acquired by a larger organization. It’s really important to mentor your teams through that change-especially when it comes to avoiding certain large company trappings like meeting hell and PPT decks. Setting clear goals with a focus on revenue success helped the team to prioritize what was truly important. Our division’s first quarter performance with the new company was a result of that focused effort. Results speak volumes. People forget that declined meeting [when the results are good].

Drew: When advising members of your team on cross-departmental initiatives, what do you tell them to do and not do to ensure success?

Three things:

If you are going to pitch something, defend something or oppose something, make sure it has strong business rationale behind it.
Always have a plan B and be prepared to compromise.
Try to remember that marketing is in a position of serving the rest of the organization. Put on a service hat.

Drew: Did any of your marketing initiatives involve employee activation? If so, can you describe what you did and how it worked? How did you get employees to care?

We launched a new Hoovers concierge-type service for small businesses almost immediately after taking over the Hoovers business for Dun & Bradstreet. We wanted to make a sales impact quickly and in order to do so we had to build the service, train the teams and take it to market within two months. Since we had no team to run it, we pulled in resources from across the organization to step out of their current roles and take on new responsibilities through the test and fulfillment period. We got sales teams excited by creating a huge Formula One racing event and themed everything “off to the races.” We supported it with direct marketing efforts, the likes of which Hoovers had not seen in years. When the first sale was made, you could hear the celebration from Austin to Malibu.

Drew: Your company was recently acquired. Did that create some new leadership challenges and if so, how have you addressed these?

There’s more dealing with public company policies and procedures and even politics, which can be challenging, but when it comes to heading up marketing and product for emerging businesses, thankfully I still have autonomy to lead our teams as I have done historically and with that I’ve been able to maintain our culture which is critical to our success.

Drew: Looking ahead to 2016, what is the single biggest challenge that you’d like to overcome?

Through our division’s work building and launching a suite of new credit and marketing products and services in 2016, I hope our teams can help affect a positive shift in culture at Dun & Bradstreet–one that resembles a more agile approach to product launches and go-to-market. Understandably, this is a big goal in a company that is large, global and public.

If Truman Capote was right that “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor,” then you’re in for a feast as I contrast the typical shortcomings of your average CMO with the amazing success of Terri Funk Graham. As CMO of Jack in the Box, Graham cooked up the outrageously successful “Jack” campaign that began its 18-year run of driving sales and building loyalty. And like the recipes of many world-class chefs, Graham’s 13-step approach is easy-to-digest but hard-to-replicate. (By the way, if this article looks familiar its because you saw it first on FastCompany.com)

1. Wisk in the Risk
Having the courage to take a risk is table stakes for CMOs. In Graham’s case, Jack in the Box “needed to do something to revitalize the brand and make it relevant again” after enduring a food poisoning crisis. So in 1995, Graham helped initiate the Bringing Jack Back campaign, which launched with spokesperson Jack undergoing plastic surgery and taking merciless revenge on the board of directors. This initial risk born of necessity was a mere taste of the Graham’s on-going willingness to “put a lot more on the line.”

2. Have a Heart
Despite evidence that consumer preference is emotionally driven, many CMOs focus entirely on the rational side of their brand. In contrast, Graham credits the longevity of the Jack campaign to the fact that “we tapped into the emotional branding side that really gave it a personality that people could connect to.” Adds Graham, “We were unapologetic about using humor, since it wasn’t going to hurt the brand as long as we were true to who we were.”

3. Don’t Cook by Committee
Though strong agency partners are often behind the initial big idea, it takes masterminds on both sides to keep the other potential cooks out of the proverbial kitchen over the long run. Graham credits Secret Weapon Creative Director Dick Sittig’s irreverent sense of humor for “rising to the challenge of keeping Jack relevant.” Graham held up her end of the bargain, proclaiming, “Approval by committee is the death of a campaign—you end up with mediocre work.”

4. A Tablespoon of Trust
No CMO can succeed without the trust of their CEO. Explains Graham, “Linda Lang [CEO of Jack in the Box] absolutely let me run with it [the Jack campaign] and she always backed it.” However, while Graham “had full support and permission to take risks,” her CEO expected her to “stand tall” if a crisis arose. This meant that Graham “would have to do all the explaining in the boardroom any time something went a little astray”—a reasonable quid pro quo for this kind of freedom.

5. Nothing Taste Better Than Sales
Some marketers make a distinction between brand-driving and sales-driving ads, only holding the latter accountable. Graham considers such an approach a luxury Jack in the Box can’t afford, since they are constantly outspent 10:1 by McDonalds. “Everything that we did we also did with the premise of generating sales and driving traffic,” explains Graham. “We didn’t do funny ads just for the sake of doing funny ads: our goal was always to drive traffic and that’s what we accomplished each and every time,” she adds.

6. Make the Menu
Like the world-class chef who goes to the market to hand pick her ingredients, a master CMO like Graham would not want to be handcuffed by a product controlled by others. So for the last five years, “Menu” reported to Graham because, as she puts it, “we were able to have the true insight as to what the product was delivering to the customer.” The added value of having Product report to Marketing is that “everybody is in sync and it is all tied to an overall strategy,” concludes Graham.

7. Spread the Word Inside
Sometimes the internal audience can be as important as the customer to the CMO, especially when a product problem needs to be addressed. For Graham, the problem turned out to be their signature taco, Jack’s best-selling product that had been “marginalized and optimized over time,” losing both taste and fans along the way. To fix this, Graham launched the “Respect the Taco” initiative, which renewed internal focus on product quality and gave it the sales driving “attention it deserved.”

8. Flavor It with Fresh
Most established brands walk the knife’s edge between being a reliable staple and yesterday’s leftovers. To combat this, Graham recognized early on that “in the quick-serve restaurant business, news is what drives traffic,” and, consequently, she used advertising to promote new products, line extensions and product bundles. The need for CMOs to deliver news via all their communications goes well beyond the QSR world. Graham remarks, “We all like to try new things—it’s human nature.”

9. Pander to Your Patrons
The relentless search for incremental sales can lead any adventurous CMO astray. In the pursuit of innovation, Graham cautions, “There comes a point when you’re starting to put products out there that are so far afield that your core customer starts to question your brand.” Graham cited Jack’s Southwest Bowl as a line extension that was too far off-track, while products like the Sour Dough Ultimate Cheeseburger “was more in the sweet spot and more aligned with the focus of our biggest fans.”

10. Stir the Pot
Typically, even the best campaigns lose steam over time. Aware that after 14 years, Jack’s time might be up, Graham put “the biggest brand equity that the company had on the line to see if people still cared:” In a Super Bowl spot, Jack got hit by a bus. And rather than a typical media schedule, the commercial ran just the one time at which point digital and social media took over. Customers responded famously: “[They] sent cards, teddy bears, flowers and everything you could imagine for Jack’s recovery,” gushes Graham.

11. Avoid Just Chasing the Course d’ Jour
When it comes to media selection, newish CMOs may be inclined to dismiss television as a dinosaur. Having witnessed the power of TV year after year, Graham knows better, warning, “The notion that traditional media is dead is quite false.” That said, Graham also evangelizes about the synergistic power of digital and social, two channels that gave Jack’s bus accident recovery a life of its own after the YouTube video went viral and hatched a campaign within a campaign.

12. Read the Tea Leaves
With the advent of so-called “Big Data,” no CMO can afford to rely entirely on his or her gut. And though Graham abhors copy testing as a means of selecting creative, her annual plan included “a number of studies (both quantitative and qualitative) that would give us indicators on how we were doing.” Not stopping here, Graham knew that since “the message was always tied around a product, it was pretty straightforward for us to tell that the campaign was driving those product sales.”

13. Another Cup of Chutzpah, Please
Inevitably, most CMOs will find themselves in a crisis but few will have the courage to diffuse the situation quite like Graham. After airing a TV spot that featured a hallucinating young man who ordered 30 tacos (an experience that resonated with Jack’s core target), Graham got wind that “protesters and media were planning to show up on the grass all around our corporate headquarters.” Her solution? “We became a water park in the afternoon and turned on the sprinklers,” dowsing the protest before it started. Now that’s chutzpah!

Final Note: After a 22-year run at Jack in the Box, Terri Funk Graham recently joined the Board of Directors at Hot Topic Inc., is working with The CMO Club as the Chairman of its President’s Circle and is consulting for HOM Sotheby’s Realty. Fellow CMOs can meet Terri in person at the upcoming CMO Club Summit in NYC and read my interview with her right here on TheDrewBlog. As always, if you like what you’re reading, feel free to subscribe and/or share it with friends.

Tag: 13 step recipe for CMO success

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