That doesn't diminish in any way the significance of the CMO role
and, in fact, it demands that the role be carefully defined. In
order to encourage innovation for both ongoing core businesses and
for big breakthroughs, it may seem rational for CEOs to carve up
the world into evolutionary and revolutionary innovation --
evolutionary being step change under the CMO's aegis and
revolutionary being disruptive change managed by another top
executive with a different skill set.
But strictly dividing up responsibilities in this way is often
unfeasible. What CMO wants to be boxed into the world of
incremental brand extensions, particularly when that often
cannibalizes the portfolio he or she oversees?
Staying focused
So the CEO has another important responsibility: ensuring that the
CMO, while being able to bring big ideas to the table, is not
distracted from the primary innovation tasks related to the
marketing of ongoing businesses. There are no hard and fast rules
about how and where to draw any lines. It's a complex assessment
requiring insight on the part of the CEO: knowing how to leverage a
CMO's skill set and when to reassign time-consuming exploration of
any revolutionary ideas for longer-term growth.
Meanwhile, the CMO has a full plate as the sole owner of innovation
across a number of marketing areas, such as media, corporatewide
marketing initiatives, new agency service models and
marketing-centric brand innovation.
With the explosion in the ways marketers must communicate today,
who better than the CMO to be the champion of media innovation?
Procter & Gamble, for example, has been open to -- and has, in
fact, encouraged -- all sorts of experimentation. In just one
fairly recent example of its continued innovation in social
networking, P&G was an early participant in the U.K.'s online
interactive drama series "Kate Modern." Sponsoring brands included
Gillette, Pantene and Tampax.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Laurence
Knight is president-founder of Fletcher-Knight, a
marketing-innovation consultancy that specializes in translating
consumer insights into winning brand ideas and growth
strategies.
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P&G Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel was quoted as saying
the initiative was "an experiment to see what will happen" and thus
provides continued evidence that his oversight and support of the
innovation initiatives helps set priorities, avoids learning-curve
duplication and helps to spread best practices companywide.
Well-placed to set innovation priorities in media and to spearhead
media initiatives, CMOs have the enterprise's broadest perspective
of agency performance in new initiatives as well as the most
balanced perspective on portfoliowide interests. Thus, CMOs need
wide latitude to create central innovations fund for media. A
central fund gives a CMO real clout to strategically support the
CEO's growth objectives by injecting media innovation momentum at
critical times. Brands can pitch media-innovation ideas to the CMO
to apply for funds to share 50% of the costs of their projects.
This not only ensures that ideas are real and relevant to the
portfolio but that new, riskier initiatives are not duplicated.
The CMO is also the marketing champion who is best able to
translate cross-brand or corporate-brand insights into new
marketing innovation. Thus, another critical responsibility of the
CMO is to oversee any corporatewide or portfoliowide marketing
initiative. Whether selecting a corporatewide spokesperson,
initiating co-branded programs across the portfolio or exploring
corporatewide sponsorships, CMOs need the autonomy and funding to
be able to investigate and research such initiatives across all
brands.
Innovation sieve
Because innovation is about much more than products and services
these days, open innovation is forcing companies to constantly
reassess and innovate with new agency service models. Even
organizations aspiring to reach global agency simplicity are
accepting that being flexible and nimble will make them better
innovators. However, with the increasingly porous boundaries of
open innovation networks, there is a need to manage new
relationships carefully and across the business; otherwise the
organization is increasingly at risk of becoming an innovation
sieve. Once again, the CMO is the best resource to constructively
interpret different agency service models, analyze their success
and then delicately but clearly align initiatives with the CEO's
growth objectives.
Brand innovation today often involves much more than technical
breakthroughs. Innovation in positioning, messages and media can
mean the difference between success and failure for a new brand. To
get a new brand right requires consistency and continuous effort;
it requires a holistic approach to defining the integrated core
target, brand positioning and activation opportunity. And, again,
it's the CMO who is most qualified to manage these functions.
Wrigley's Orbit sugar-free gum became one of the five best-selling
brands in the U.S. not because of any technical breakthroughs but
because of its fantastic positioning and strong "clean mouth"
message.
Successfully carrying out these roles sets up the CMO as an
organization's innovation standard-bearer even though he or she has
been freed of the primary responsibility of revolutionary
innovation. Aligned with the CEO around a shared vision, the CMO
serves the purpose of a highly visible and constant reminder of the
importance of innovation to all functions.
As Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said, "Never before in history
has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a
time." The challenge is to manage innovation so that such a promise
can be fulfilled.
