People who know me, may go - Oh yeah here he strikes again. But it is actually a title of a book. But let me piggy back on the title. Because for a very interesting reason: the title is what several CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) think of their team right now. I am fortunate enough to be part of the CMO council - 3,500 CMOs from global enterprises. A recent meeting in Palo Alto revealed a surprising insight: "Either we get the patience from our CEOs to retrain the teams or we will need to fire a big part of our staff." One said.
The videos on YouTube about the screwy ad agencies come in like ants into an empty house right now. Like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_VtqtxCHY (You may not want to watch this video as it is VERY offensive)
"All our teams know is how to prepare the "Message", blast out emails, "penetrate" a market, size and slice target groups and what ever we taught them in the last 10 years."
Wow to hear that from a CMO of a $4B company. Interesting.
Another said with an ironic tone: "We are much more advanced - many have their social networks in LinkedIn, some have groups on Facebook - BUT - all they are doing is now spaming our customers full with stuff and ruin the last resport of hope."
"So what are you guys planning to do?" I asked. Well, some results will be discussed next week and I will communicate it.But already many CMOs are ready to take the consequences and realign their teams with whatever measure it takes.
And that gives us a reason for hope:
1) Many executives get it. They just don't know how to strike yet. The good news.
2) Resistence in change will cost even more jobs to allow companies to realign their organization and to meet customers needs.The bad news (for some).
@AxelS