Insights From the CMO Club Summit

Last week I had the privilege of attending the CMO Club Innovation Summit in St Pete Beach, Florida. I've been attending these summits for over 5 years, and each time I meet amazing new senior Marketing leaders and hear something in the content and discussions that I can't wait to take back to my own role and responsibilities. The more I can truly engage, the more I find that I get out of the event. Let me just say that these are unlike any other event or tradeshow that I attend, for 3 key reasons - (1) there's no selling, no booths, no vendors, and therefore there are minimal "networking" breaks, no "tradeshow floor", and no meetings conflicting with the content, which is just a refreshing break, (2) there's no powerpoint decks - the sessions are either keynote facilitated panels or facilitated smaller-group breakout sessions on topics gleaned from us, the members, and (3) we always have special surprise guests that come in and talk about some aspect of how they partner with business, their own leadership or life learnings, or some kind of challenge they've overcome. As a bonus, we have a unique CMO Club Cares session at each Summit - the team brings in 10 local non-profits that have challenges that could use Marketing expertise, everyone picks one, and we spend 45 minutes to an hour brainstorming with the non-profit ideas to help them solve their challenges - it's always amazing to hear the ideas that a small team of experts can come up with in such a short time that can have a meaningful impact.

My key insights from this year after reflecting on the event for a few days are:

1.The CMO role is the most ambiguous role in the C-Suite, and it behooves us as marketing leaders to be sure we've aligned with our boss on expectations, focus on the business strategy and outcomes that we can uniquely deliver, and ensure that we're learning from others outside of our own company and bringing the latest and greatest to our companies.

2.Marketing, in partnership with sales and customer care, plays a critical role in creating loyal customers that will become influencers and advocates - from the brand story, to the appropriate targeting, to enabling personalized messages, to ensuring that the experience delights at each touchpoint. We must prioritize this in addition to acquiring new customers.

3.Brilliant storytelling is not just for high-budget BtoC brands; it might even be more important for BtoB brands with small marketing budgets. Business audiences are people too, and keeping it simple, bringing out the emotion, and having clear and compelling branding are no less critical for our business brethren than for consumers.

Thanks to Pete Krainik, the entire CMO Club Staff, my fellow presenters, and all of the CMO Club members for a terrific summit - I look forward as always to the next one.