Podcast Transcript - Building Better CMOs
American Marketing Association CEO Bennie Johnson
Bennie and Greg talk about the lack of professional "gates" in marketing, bridging research and practice through executive–academic collaboration, and why marketing leaders often struggle with credibility in the boardroom.
BENNIE: I firmly believe the adjectives matter. It's not about just being a marketer. There's no gate to become a marketer. You can say you're a marketer. The adjectives matter. I'm a good marketer. I'm a dynamic marketer. I'm an effective marketer. It's those things that matter. Yeah. If you do these things, you market. That does not mean you are the hallmark of the profession.
GREG: Bennie Johnson, welcome to Building Better CMOs.
BENNIE: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, my friend.
GREG: Now, I don't know if everybody's really paid attention to the liner notes on their podcasts about who you and I are, but this is really interesting. This is a meeting of the minds of the heads of marketing trade associations because you run the American Marketing Association.
BENNIE: Yes. And it's a really great conversation to have when we think about the dynamism of an industry. I often tell people, you can't be an industry by yourself. It's us working together that builds it.
GREG: You did Better Business Bureau. So you've been around and you're based in Washington. So you're like trade association familiar, been a part of them. So you understand the dynamics and the importance of groups coming together and working together.
BENNIE: Definitely. The funny thing is, I grew up as a marketer. I grew up thinking about marketing. I grew up as a kid who loved marketing, later became a director and a CMO and got introduced about 15 years ago to, like you said, associations, had no idea they existed, was brought in to help with the marketing space and fell in love with the power of industry.
GREG: You were a marketing guy. You went to HR Certification Institute is what I think I'm seeing here. Was that the first nonprofit association you were part of, right?
BENNIE: First space, tied-in, partner. We were the education partner with SHRM — with the Society of Human Resource [Management].
GREG: Yeah, I know SHRM. Exactly. Oh, that's an incredibly successful certification program.
BENNIE: It is, yes. And we were tasked with really bringing contemporary HR to the level of a profession. At that time, you thought of HR in a variety of parts and pieces — job descriptions, recruiting, party planning — but not a contemporary profession. And so we built the knowledge around it, the apparatus to pull it in a truly global sense. I mean, it's grown from there.
GREG: How long has SHRM had certification, by the way? I'm just sort of curious. I don't know if I know.
BENNIE: Greater part of 50 years.
GREG: Oh, okay. Okay. So it'd been around there for a long time.
BENNIE: It's been around there.
GREG: But you came in to really build it. Yeah. Got it.
BENNIE: We built it and refined it. Well, we built it as a truly global certification. So it had been domestic for the lion's share of that. But as we think about our professions, we don't stop at the border. The knowledge doesn't stop at the border.
GREG: Totally.
BENNIE: And so that was the task to how do we elevate HR as a global profession and how do we educate businesses and business leaders about that? And that's so much a part of what we do in professional associations, right?
GREG: Yep.
BENNIE: Yep.
BENNIE: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, my friend.
GREG: Now, I don't know if everybody's really paid attention to the liner notes on their podcasts about who you and I are, but this is really interesting. This is a meeting of the minds of the heads of marketing trade associations because you run the American Marketing Association.
BENNIE: Yes. And it's a really great conversation to have when we think about the dynamism of an industry. I often tell people, you can't be an industry by yourself. It's us working together that builds it.
GREG: You did Better Business Bureau. So you've been around and you're based in Washington. So you're like trade association familiar, been a part of them. So you understand the dynamics and the importance of groups coming together and working together.
BENNIE: Definitely. The funny thing is, I grew up as a marketer. I grew up thinking about marketing. I grew up as a kid who loved marketing, later became a director and a CMO and got introduced about 15 years ago to, like you said, associations, had no idea they existed, was brought in to help with the marketing space and fell in love with the power of industry.
GREG: You were a marketing guy. You went to HR Certification Institute is what I think I'm seeing here. Was that the first nonprofit association you were part of, right?
BENNIE: First space, tied-in, partner. We were the education partner with SHRM — with the Society of Human Resource [Management].
GREG: Yeah, I know SHRM. Exactly. Oh, that's an incredibly successful certification program.
BENNIE: It is, yes. And we were tasked with really bringing contemporary HR to the level of a profession. At that time, you thought of HR in a variety of parts and pieces — job descriptions, recruiting, party planning — but not a contemporary profession. And so we built the knowledge around it, the apparatus to pull it in a truly global sense. I mean, it's grown from there.
GREG: How long has SHRM had certification, by the way? I'm just sort of curious. I don't know if I know.
BENNIE: Greater part of 50 years.
GREG: Oh, okay. Okay. So it'd been around there for a long time.
BENNIE: It's been around there.
GREG: But you came in to really build it. Yeah. Got it.
BENNIE: We built it and refined it. Well, we built it as a truly global certification. So it had been domestic for the lion's share of that. But as we think about our professions, we don't stop at the border. The knowledge doesn't stop at the border.
GREG: Totally.
BENNIE: And so that was the task to how do we elevate HR as a global profession and how do we educate businesses and business leaders about that? And that's so much a part of what we do in professional associations, right?
GREG: Yep.
BENNIE: Yep.
Inside the AMA's Big Tent
GREG: Explain the AMA to the listeners, just so they understand your role in the marketplace and some of what you guys do. Because I don't want to assume everybody knows.
BENNIE: The AMA is really ... We're one of those namesake associations that's been around for years that really help to shape and define the profession. The AMA brings people together from all parts of marketing. So my members exist in the 17-year-old who's first learning about marketing all the way to 94-year-old Phil Kotler who created the four Ps.
GREG: Yep, exactly. You guys do a lot in education, a lot in colleges, universities, I think, correct?
BENNIE: Yes. Colleges, universities, undergrad, grad, professors, PhDs.
GREG: Yes.
BENNIE: We also do a lot with our members, our creators. They're studio owners. They're in-house and CMOs. So we really get the vast space of marketing as this dynamic space. What I love about is at any given time our membership are the newly minted MBAs or the CMOs of major organizations or the entrepreneurial startup who's leading with marketing.
GREG: And whereas the MMA only play ... I'm really just sort of big enterprise marketers. In fact, I don't really have the capacity to really take on and really support, I think, smaller marketers. I mean, we wouldn't resist them, we're a nonprofit, we're here to help in whatever way we want. But I tend to work with big enterprise CMOs. You, on the other hand, work with them and small regional CMOs, correct?
BENNIE: Correct. Correct. I mean, we're really thinking about the larger continuum of marketing, and that's kind of the space ... AMA represents a true big tent approach to professional associations that it's kind of "AMA and." People are members of our organization and specialty spaces that make sense for them as well.
GREG: Yeah. And then I noticed too in your bylaws that you guys actually invite also academic practices, you're required to have academics involved, and that's probably born, I'm assuming, around the fact that you also do the Journal of Marketing, correct? I assume. I don't get more than that. Yeah.
BENNIE: We do. So it grew out of our early days. We were the birth of two professional associations.
GREG: Oh, was it? Okay.
BENNIE: A practitioner one and an academic one came together about 75 years ago. And so we have this really nice dynamism and balance between marketing as practice and marketing as academic pursuit. And so in that, we run six of the world's top business journals, the peer-reviewed Journal of Marketing being the largest, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Interactive Marketing. And one of the fastest-growing ones that we really love is our Journal of Marketing Public Policy. So all the cutting-edge issues that are dealing with sustainability, privacy, AI are being covered in these spaces. And these are peer-reviewed so you're talking about the top tier of marketing, academic, speaking, and writing, but that data and that knowledge creation influences all the other things that we have going on at AMA as well.
GREG: You guys are larger US though, right? Larger US or do you also extend internationally? I don't know if I know.
BENNIE: No. No. And my friend, we have a KFC moment. We are the American Marketing Association, but we really are at our heart, the AMA, 35% of our audience are outside of the US. And so many of our brands, so many of our academics, there are multiple brand spaces. We just did our doctoral consortium, and while you may have the lead PhD student from Penn State, you're thinking US, they're really from South Korea. If you have the leader space in there, we see that diversification. Same thing with the big brands that you're talking about. You're managing marketing teams all over the globe. And so we see our membership reflecting that.
GREG: Yeah. That's kind of crazy. You guys go all the way from the regional CMO all the way up to big-time global CMOs. Where are their challenges different, by the way? I don't know. How would you address that diversity?
BENNIE: Some of the challenges are the same. The scope is just different, the scale is just different, but the role of marketing, leading, defining, and growing the business are challenges that you have, whether you're a regional player or a global player. You're still asking and solving those same questions. Now, it's a different scale if you're at Coke or Pepsi versus the startup, but the problems and the impact of the problems and solution are the same. I think often what I see in the private conversations saying that quiet part out loud is that marketing leaders struggle with their place in the room. So if you're at a board meeting, board meetings pass everybody. And so the tensions at the smaller players, the mid-players and the larger players for that marketing leadership are often similar.
BENNIE: The AMA is really ... We're one of those namesake associations that's been around for years that really help to shape and define the profession. The AMA brings people together from all parts of marketing. So my members exist in the 17-year-old who's first learning about marketing all the way to 94-year-old Phil Kotler who created the four Ps.
GREG: Yep, exactly. You guys do a lot in education, a lot in colleges, universities, I think, correct?
BENNIE: Yes. Colleges, universities, undergrad, grad, professors, PhDs.
GREG: Yes.
BENNIE: We also do a lot with our members, our creators. They're studio owners. They're in-house and CMOs. So we really get the vast space of marketing as this dynamic space. What I love about is at any given time our membership are the newly minted MBAs or the CMOs of major organizations or the entrepreneurial startup who's leading with marketing.
GREG: And whereas the MMA only play ... I'm really just sort of big enterprise marketers. In fact, I don't really have the capacity to really take on and really support, I think, smaller marketers. I mean, we wouldn't resist them, we're a nonprofit, we're here to help in whatever way we want. But I tend to work with big enterprise CMOs. You, on the other hand, work with them and small regional CMOs, correct?
BENNIE: Correct. Correct. I mean, we're really thinking about the larger continuum of marketing, and that's kind of the space ... AMA represents a true big tent approach to professional associations that it's kind of "AMA and." People are members of our organization and specialty spaces that make sense for them as well.
GREG: Yeah. And then I noticed too in your bylaws that you guys actually invite also academic practices, you're required to have academics involved, and that's probably born, I'm assuming, around the fact that you also do the Journal of Marketing, correct? I assume. I don't get more than that. Yeah.
BENNIE: We do. So it grew out of our early days. We were the birth of two professional associations.
GREG: Oh, was it? Okay.
BENNIE: A practitioner one and an academic one came together about 75 years ago. And so we have this really nice dynamism and balance between marketing as practice and marketing as academic pursuit. And so in that, we run six of the world's top business journals, the peer-reviewed Journal of Marketing being the largest, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Interactive Marketing. And one of the fastest-growing ones that we really love is our Journal of Marketing Public Policy. So all the cutting-edge issues that are dealing with sustainability, privacy, AI are being covered in these spaces. And these are peer-reviewed so you're talking about the top tier of marketing, academic, speaking, and writing, but that data and that knowledge creation influences all the other things that we have going on at AMA as well.
GREG: You guys are larger US though, right? Larger US or do you also extend internationally? I don't know if I know.
BENNIE: No. No. And my friend, we have a KFC moment. We are the American Marketing Association, but we really are at our heart, the AMA, 35% of our audience are outside of the US. And so many of our brands, so many of our academics, there are multiple brand spaces. We just did our doctoral consortium, and while you may have the lead PhD student from Penn State, you're thinking US, they're really from South Korea. If you have the leader space in there, we see that diversification. Same thing with the big brands that you're talking about. You're managing marketing teams all over the globe. And so we see our membership reflecting that.
GREG: Yeah. That's kind of crazy. You guys go all the way from the regional CMO all the way up to big-time global CMOs. Where are their challenges different, by the way? I don't know. How would you address that diversity?
BENNIE: Some of the challenges are the same. The scope is just different, the scale is just different, but the role of marketing, leading, defining, and growing the business are challenges that you have, whether you're a regional player or a global player. You're still asking and solving those same questions. Now, it's a different scale if you're at Coke or Pepsi versus the startup, but the problems and the impact of the problems and solution are the same. I think often what I see in the private conversations saying that quiet part out loud is that marketing leaders struggle with their place in the room. So if you're at a board meeting, board meetings pass everybody. And so the tensions at the smaller players, the mid-players and the larger players for that marketing leadership are often similar.
Future Trends in Marketing
GREG: Hey, man, let me ask you this. So I know ... And listen, I've seen some of the work you guys are doing, and I am a member of the AMA, just to be clear there. I know you guys put out a report earlier this year around the five, what'd you call them? The five future trends or 2026 future trends and marketing report. So touch on a couple of things that really came out of that report and the work that you did. Maybe give some background to it so if people have some interest, [they can] go take a look at it.
BENNIE: Some background on it is I'm a big believer — being a CMO at heart — of insights driving our business and building and creating a space. And as a professional association, I feel like we have a stewardship responsibility and a strategic responsibility to pull together knowledge and insights to set the frame. And so one of the things we wanted to do was not just do a standard year ahead, what's around the corner report. We actually built something a little more complex. We put together a panel that we're working with and trained them as futurists.
GREG: Wait, like a panel of marketers, you mean, or a panel with —
BENNIE: A panel of marketers.
GREG: A panel of marketers. Okay. But then you had to train them then to go answer the question? I'm sorry, just touch on that.
BENNIE: Well, we trained them to do some work so that we actually had sessions to beat up the ideas of the future.
GREG: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
BENNIE: So this wasn't a unidirectional just answer the survey question. So we put together representative panels. So a lot of mixed methods in building this space out, but it gave us an opportunity to do exactly what we're talking about. So my panelists include big market-leading CMOs, smaller companies, large agencies, smaller agencies. So you get that diversity of industry, of space and perspective, but also then providing them with the tools to parse through what are the signals that we're seeing in your part of the world.
GREG: Yeah. What do the reports suggest? So give us some sample to the reader of that.
BENNIE: Some of the things that are suggested you're not going to be surprised to hear. The role of autonomous agents in AI coming up big. You expect that, you see it in more nuanced ways. Some of the things that were surprising was the resurgence of sustainability in the role of marketing space here.
GREG: Oh, really? Okay.
BENNIE: That's something that you thought there's a retreat happening, but we're actually seeing new ways in which marketing organizations are doubling down.
GREG: I mean, listen, you're in Washington. I thought sustainability was out of vogue now.
BENNIE: This is a future trend space in there. We got validated evidence that, while the language may have changed, the principles and the core and the direction of the business were still there.
GREG: Okay. Okay.
BENNIE: And so yes, to your point, there are administration changes and general conversation changes, but when you have a brand or you have a business, your heart is your heart. And for companies that are committed in this space, solving for these problems or what they see are their next big windows, it's become a marketing concern. What was interesting also was the rise of an embrace of more portfolio careers.
BENNIE: Some background on it is I'm a big believer — being a CMO at heart — of insights driving our business and building and creating a space. And as a professional association, I feel like we have a stewardship responsibility and a strategic responsibility to pull together knowledge and insights to set the frame. And so one of the things we wanted to do was not just do a standard year ahead, what's around the corner report. We actually built something a little more complex. We put together a panel that we're working with and trained them as futurists.
GREG: Wait, like a panel of marketers, you mean, or a panel with —
BENNIE: A panel of marketers.
GREG: A panel of marketers. Okay. But then you had to train them then to go answer the question? I'm sorry, just touch on that.
BENNIE: Well, we trained them to do some work so that we actually had sessions to beat up the ideas of the future.
GREG: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
BENNIE: So this wasn't a unidirectional just answer the survey question. So we put together representative panels. So a lot of mixed methods in building this space out, but it gave us an opportunity to do exactly what we're talking about. So my panelists include big market-leading CMOs, smaller companies, large agencies, smaller agencies. So you get that diversity of industry, of space and perspective, but also then providing them with the tools to parse through what are the signals that we're seeing in your part of the world.
GREG: Yeah. What do the reports suggest? So give us some sample to the reader of that.
BENNIE: Some of the things that are suggested you're not going to be surprised to hear. The role of autonomous agents in AI coming up big. You expect that, you see it in more nuanced ways. Some of the things that were surprising was the resurgence of sustainability in the role of marketing space here.
GREG: Oh, really? Okay.
BENNIE: That's something that you thought there's a retreat happening, but we're actually seeing new ways in which marketing organizations are doubling down.
GREG: I mean, listen, you're in Washington. I thought sustainability was out of vogue now.
BENNIE: This is a future trend space in there. We got validated evidence that, while the language may have changed, the principles and the core and the direction of the business were still there.
GREG: Okay. Okay.
BENNIE: And so yes, to your point, there are administration changes and general conversation changes, but when you have a brand or you have a business, your heart is your heart. And for companies that are committed in this space, solving for these problems or what they see are their next big windows, it's become a marketing concern. What was interesting also was the rise of an embrace of more portfolio careers.
Portfolio Careers and Fractional CMOs
GREG: Yeah. It's funny. I was just going to ask you, can you talk about portfolio careers? It says portfolio careers and liquid workforce. What does that mean?
BENNIE: It's that next generation of dynamic marketing leadership. So you may not see it as much in larger organizations, right, but when you get down to the middle market and space in there, companies know the need and desire for marketing but may not have the apparatus to hire a full-time CMO. There are times in which, as a CMO, we all have tools in our toolkit that we have specialty areas and space in there. There are times that, from a work and project engagement, speaking from the marketer perspective, you're looking for a broad set of spaces. You may have one client that needs your branding expertise, another client needs your strategy expertise, a third client is pulling another part of you. You're building a career that allows you to have that space. Also, brands may not be able to accommodate, from a financial space, the investment in a standard full-time marketing leadership.
And it's the just in time, just in purpose kind of engagement that ... There's a time in a generation where companies looked down upon that role and space in there, companies are now seeing this as a way to upskill, punch above your weight, if you will. Marketers are more open for it and companies are as well. And we're seeing that as a growing area.
GREG: I almost wonder if there's a subtext to what you're saying that says, Hey, you need to have a really quality marketer. If you're going to go down the path of doing marketing, even your small business, you should have a really quality, diverse skill set, knowledge marketer.
BENNIE: Yes. Yes.
GREG: Okay.
BENNIE: That is true. And that's the reality. That's the need, but you're up against the market reality of I can't afford all of that at the same time.
GREG: Yeah. They're not going to go out and hire a million-dollar CMO, some of these small companies. They can't do that, especially if their marketing budget's a million bucks or God forbid less.
BENNIE: Right.
GREG: So I guess, huh. And you're right there, Bennie. I hadn't thought through because again, I don't work with the smaller marketers per se, no disrespect, it's just not where we focus in the things that we go after. Getting the wrong marketing person can really put you in a really bad direction. You're getting bad advice, you're getting bad direction. And given how dependent companies can be on marketing for some of their success and given the long-term nature of that investment, I'm just thinking this through out loud, it's like, boy, that really could be a problem.
BENNIE: Right. And so companies that strategically understand and can get a partner in that space ... And it may be a flex-time marketing solution, but imagine if you get the right steps right, how much that accelerates now with the tools and opportunities that are available now, smaller players can punch with the bigger players now with greater ease. It's often not the tools, but it is the strategy and the skill. And so if you can hire that at a fractional basis, you're a small regional player with big ambitions, right? So I'm a firm believer that you never let your current marketing situation describe your ambition or limit it.
GREG: It's funny you say that because I come from the world out of New York City, big media. So like I would've worked at ABC, CBS, NBC at the time. And those were pretty notorious. They would have, I don't know exactly, I want to be careful or speak on their behalf, but maybe a thousand advertisers that they built their multibillion-dollar revenue. And then you get people like Google and Facebook who come in and they talk in hundreds of millions of advertisers or tens of millions, well, they say. And so that's a whole different scale thing that now has made ... You're right. So in essence, what you're partly saying too is that the channels and/or tools that are made available to small marketers are dramatically different than they were at least some couple of decades ago.
BENNIE: When you think about it, the ability for businesses of all shapes and sizes to have a marketing-driven impact on their market and their customers and the world around them, it's never been this dynamic or as, I dare to say, easy. You can see the opportunity. When we were talking about those spaces in there, you knew there was no way you were going to get scale if you didn't have a certain amount of resource. Today, that's not the question, but it is you do need marketers who have the skill and the techniques. This isn't just pick the person who is most social.
GREG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not party planning, people. This is marketing.
BENNIE: This is marketing. And that skill is the difference between success — better yet, thriving — and existing for many businesses. And it's interesting because the smaller businesses, as you know, make up the ecosystem of the larger businesses. So many of the smaller marketing spaces I'm working are connected and their work needs to tie into their bigger partners that go into it.
GREG: So how many members are there? You guys are individuals. Well, I'm a corporate trade association. I think you're a professional society technically, right? You guys are member based. Yeah.
BENNIE: We're member based, but our membership expands that. So we talk about this as concentric circles. We have programming and resources for about 30,000 active members in that sense, in the traditional sense. We have over a million folks who are in our professional social network.
GREG: Got it.
BENNIE: But we also have teams and companies that come in because we do the training and we talk about this a lot. We have connections with formal education, which you'd imagine, right? Your AA, your BA, your MBA, and so forth. But when you think about it, we spend most of our time learning outside of those formal constructs. So that's where our training, just-in-time resource certification comes in because we're a big believer in the continuous lifelong learning in the marketing play. We're a growing profession, as you know.
GREG: Really? Do you think marketing's really growing? Do you know? I don't have the data. I don't have the stats on that. I should look that up.
BENNIE: In terms of the profession, yes. In terms of the skills needed, yes.
GREG: Yeah.
BENNIE: In terms of the way we show up —
GREG: The diversity of skills are really, really bad now, right?
BENNIE: The way we show up, yes. The naming conventions span in there. So marketing shows up in spaces where the name may not be, but the practice is.
GREG: Listen, it's going to be kind of interesting here — and I don't want to get into a whole AI doom dynamic, although I'm a huge fan and believer in AI, what it's going to mean for the business, for us becoming better. I wonder if the industry will actually contract given some of what's going on out there around AI. And again, I'm not trying to get into the will-people-lose-their jobs debate? That's sort of a secondary kind of thing. I don't know.
BENNIE: I think it's going to change. I think it's probably going to ebb and flow, right? You're going to see some contraction and some expansion. You're going to have some things that are going to most definitely go away or evolve to a way in which you don't even recognize it, but you're going to have new areas that are going to open up that the opportunity are going to create.
GREG: I mean, listen, I don't know that this is right here. Who would I ask? I asked Claude. It says that global ad spend across the trillion-dollar mark, 2025 and forecast to keep climbing and outpacing GDP growth. So I think marketing ... Yeah. I mean, listen, there's a lot of places too around the world that are not very sophisticated. I have operations in Vietnam. Marketing is the number one profession to get into in Vietnam. They are so excited because they come out of this world of business process and other manufacturing kind of things. Advertising marketing seems like this exciting business to go into. So they attract top talent out of schools there, which is very funny. I don't know that happens here in the US anymore, but yeah.
BENNIE: Well, I'll tell you this and I am certainly biased , but marketing is a wonderful profession. It's exciting. It's fast paced, it's dynamic. Sometimes we have moments where we get a little jaded here and there.
GREG: Dynamic with a capital D.
BENNIE: Always.
GREG: Oh my God. It's unbelievable. I couldn't think of anything more fun. If you like change — and not everybody does — but if you like change, oh my God, there couldn't be anything more fun and exciting than this, right?
BENNIE: It really is.
GREG: Did you always want to be ... By the way, Ben, did you always want to be ... You actually you have a master's in communications, right? Yeah, I think if I remember right. So you always wanted to be a marketing comms guy? Was that what that suggests? How did you know that? How did you know that when you were in university?
BENNIE: Like yourself, I started off, I was always an entrepreneur and it was marketing that was my entry point to entrepreneurship. So I talk about this all the time. My mom loves to tell the story. I started my first business when I was in the fourth grade selling candy on a school bus trip.
GREG: Oh my God, you're so funny.
BENNIE: I was marketing before I knew the four Ps or the strategy or the space in there. It made sense to me. It was how I navigated the world. So I kind of grew into that space, so this is what I want to do. Now strategy, brand, insights were the ways that helped me navigate the space in there. And so I've always thought of myself as that fully refined, rounded-out business leader, which I think is really helpful for you want all the four Ps of marketing and the strategy and other spaces to be a part of your toolkit, not just one.
GREG: No, listen, I got into the business because I read George Lois's book, "Damn Good Advice," back when I was at university and I was just so enamored of that. And then I also tripped over on Jerry Della Famina's book "From Those Wonderful [Folks] Who [Gave] You Pearl Harbor," probably not a title you would use today. They talked a lot about being in the business of advertising. I thought that was so exciting. I literally picked up from Seattle and I moved to New York City to go into advertising. That was really my whole story. I didn't have any other exposure or even knew it was a thing until I read those books and knew that that was a profession that I could take on.
BENNIE: See, I love the idea of building things new and really drew in the idea of rebuilding things. So early on in my career, you had those moments where you weren't necessarily getting a call from the big brands, but I saw all this work that brands that struggled need and new brands needed to rebuild or build and that became really exciting and dynamic for me. It's how do you build a brand when you don't have the multimillion-dollar advertising budget. How do you actually think of that full expanse of marketing?
GREG: Where you hired the agency. Listen, I remember ... The one I remember the best was the rebrand — and this would be as much visual as [not] ... of Lucent Technology. It was AT&T's GBCS division that they turned into Lucent. That was a $500,000 project. Oh my God, that'd be almost two and a half decades ago. I mean, those are big, big thoughtful, those are interesting. When you're a small brand, you don't bring in a big Y&R agency to go figure that out for you. Very funny.
BENNIE: No. You know what you're doing? You're hiring the small regional agencies that we work with all the time and they do some killer work. We often think that bigger defines better in a marketing space in there, but I'm here to tell you —
GREG: Not always.
BENNIE: Oh my goodness. There are some killer works happening in brands and agencies all outside of the big markets that we think about that are informing the ways that ... As you know, dynamic ideas cross borders. You see some of the work coming out of Mexico City in creativity and other spaces in there.
GREG: Yeah, yeah. No, especially like Brazil. I have operations in Brazil, they're just all lit up with design, and I mean, one of the most powerful ... And I think they're the third-largest attending country of Cannes Lions, which is coming up next week. So yeah, very exciting.
BENNIE: It's that next generation of dynamic marketing leadership. So you may not see it as much in larger organizations, right, but when you get down to the middle market and space in there, companies know the need and desire for marketing but may not have the apparatus to hire a full-time CMO. There are times in which, as a CMO, we all have tools in our toolkit that we have specialty areas and space in there. There are times that, from a work and project engagement, speaking from the marketer perspective, you're looking for a broad set of spaces. You may have one client that needs your branding expertise, another client needs your strategy expertise, a third client is pulling another part of you. You're building a career that allows you to have that space. Also, brands may not be able to accommodate, from a financial space, the investment in a standard full-time marketing leadership.
And it's the just in time, just in purpose kind of engagement that ... There's a time in a generation where companies looked down upon that role and space in there, companies are now seeing this as a way to upskill, punch above your weight, if you will. Marketers are more open for it and companies are as well. And we're seeing that as a growing area.
GREG: I almost wonder if there's a subtext to what you're saying that says, Hey, you need to have a really quality marketer. If you're going to go down the path of doing marketing, even your small business, you should have a really quality, diverse skill set, knowledge marketer.
BENNIE: Yes. Yes.
GREG: Okay.
BENNIE: That is true. And that's the reality. That's the need, but you're up against the market reality of I can't afford all of that at the same time.
GREG: Yeah. They're not going to go out and hire a million-dollar CMO, some of these small companies. They can't do that, especially if their marketing budget's a million bucks or God forbid less.
BENNIE: Right.
GREG: So I guess, huh. And you're right there, Bennie. I hadn't thought through because again, I don't work with the smaller marketers per se, no disrespect, it's just not where we focus in the things that we go after. Getting the wrong marketing person can really put you in a really bad direction. You're getting bad advice, you're getting bad direction. And given how dependent companies can be on marketing for some of their success and given the long-term nature of that investment, I'm just thinking this through out loud, it's like, boy, that really could be a problem.
BENNIE: Right. And so companies that strategically understand and can get a partner in that space ... And it may be a flex-time marketing solution, but imagine if you get the right steps right, how much that accelerates now with the tools and opportunities that are available now, smaller players can punch with the bigger players now with greater ease. It's often not the tools, but it is the strategy and the skill. And so if you can hire that at a fractional basis, you're a small regional player with big ambitions, right? So I'm a firm believer that you never let your current marketing situation describe your ambition or limit it.
GREG: It's funny you say that because I come from the world out of New York City, big media. So like I would've worked at ABC, CBS, NBC at the time. And those were pretty notorious. They would have, I don't know exactly, I want to be careful or speak on their behalf, but maybe a thousand advertisers that they built their multibillion-dollar revenue. And then you get people like Google and Facebook who come in and they talk in hundreds of millions of advertisers or tens of millions, well, they say. And so that's a whole different scale thing that now has made ... You're right. So in essence, what you're partly saying too is that the channels and/or tools that are made available to small marketers are dramatically different than they were at least some couple of decades ago.
BENNIE: When you think about it, the ability for businesses of all shapes and sizes to have a marketing-driven impact on their market and their customers and the world around them, it's never been this dynamic or as, I dare to say, easy. You can see the opportunity. When we were talking about those spaces in there, you knew there was no way you were going to get scale if you didn't have a certain amount of resource. Today, that's not the question, but it is you do need marketers who have the skill and the techniques. This isn't just pick the person who is most social.
GREG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not party planning, people. This is marketing.
BENNIE: This is marketing. And that skill is the difference between success — better yet, thriving — and existing for many businesses. And it's interesting because the smaller businesses, as you know, make up the ecosystem of the larger businesses. So many of the smaller marketing spaces I'm working are connected and their work needs to tie into their bigger partners that go into it.
GREG: So how many members are there? You guys are individuals. Well, I'm a corporate trade association. I think you're a professional society technically, right? You guys are member based. Yeah.
BENNIE: We're member based, but our membership expands that. So we talk about this as concentric circles. We have programming and resources for about 30,000 active members in that sense, in the traditional sense. We have over a million folks who are in our professional social network.
GREG: Got it.
BENNIE: But we also have teams and companies that come in because we do the training and we talk about this a lot. We have connections with formal education, which you'd imagine, right? Your AA, your BA, your MBA, and so forth. But when you think about it, we spend most of our time learning outside of those formal constructs. So that's where our training, just-in-time resource certification comes in because we're a big believer in the continuous lifelong learning in the marketing play. We're a growing profession, as you know.
GREG: Really? Do you think marketing's really growing? Do you know? I don't have the data. I don't have the stats on that. I should look that up.
BENNIE: In terms of the profession, yes. In terms of the skills needed, yes.
GREG: Yeah.
BENNIE: In terms of the way we show up —
GREG: The diversity of skills are really, really bad now, right?
BENNIE: The way we show up, yes. The naming conventions span in there. So marketing shows up in spaces where the name may not be, but the practice is.
GREG: Listen, it's going to be kind of interesting here — and I don't want to get into a whole AI doom dynamic, although I'm a huge fan and believer in AI, what it's going to mean for the business, for us becoming better. I wonder if the industry will actually contract given some of what's going on out there around AI. And again, I'm not trying to get into the will-people-lose-their jobs debate? That's sort of a secondary kind of thing. I don't know.
BENNIE: I think it's going to change. I think it's probably going to ebb and flow, right? You're going to see some contraction and some expansion. You're going to have some things that are going to most definitely go away or evolve to a way in which you don't even recognize it, but you're going to have new areas that are going to open up that the opportunity are going to create.
GREG: I mean, listen, I don't know that this is right here. Who would I ask? I asked Claude. It says that global ad spend across the trillion-dollar mark, 2025 and forecast to keep climbing and outpacing GDP growth. So I think marketing ... Yeah. I mean, listen, there's a lot of places too around the world that are not very sophisticated. I have operations in Vietnam. Marketing is the number one profession to get into in Vietnam. They are so excited because they come out of this world of business process and other manufacturing kind of things. Advertising marketing seems like this exciting business to go into. So they attract top talent out of schools there, which is very funny. I don't know that happens here in the US anymore, but yeah.
BENNIE: Well, I'll tell you this and I am certainly biased , but marketing is a wonderful profession. It's exciting. It's fast paced, it's dynamic. Sometimes we have moments where we get a little jaded here and there.
GREG: Dynamic with a capital D.
BENNIE: Always.
GREG: Oh my God. It's unbelievable. I couldn't think of anything more fun. If you like change — and not everybody does — but if you like change, oh my God, there couldn't be anything more fun and exciting than this, right?
BENNIE: It really is.
GREG: Did you always want to be ... By the way, Ben, did you always want to be ... You actually you have a master's in communications, right? Yeah, I think if I remember right. So you always wanted to be a marketing comms guy? Was that what that suggests? How did you know that? How did you know that when you were in university?
BENNIE: Like yourself, I started off, I was always an entrepreneur and it was marketing that was my entry point to entrepreneurship. So I talk about this all the time. My mom loves to tell the story. I started my first business when I was in the fourth grade selling candy on a school bus trip.
GREG: Oh my God, you're so funny.
BENNIE: I was marketing before I knew the four Ps or the strategy or the space in there. It made sense to me. It was how I navigated the world. So I kind of grew into that space, so this is what I want to do. Now strategy, brand, insights were the ways that helped me navigate the space in there. And so I've always thought of myself as that fully refined, rounded-out business leader, which I think is really helpful for you want all the four Ps of marketing and the strategy and other spaces to be a part of your toolkit, not just one.
GREG: No, listen, I got into the business because I read George Lois's book, "Damn Good Advice," back when I was at university and I was just so enamored of that. And then I also tripped over on Jerry Della Famina's book "From Those Wonderful [Folks] Who [Gave] You Pearl Harbor," probably not a title you would use today. They talked a lot about being in the business of advertising. I thought that was so exciting. I literally picked up from Seattle and I moved to New York City to go into advertising. That was really my whole story. I didn't have any other exposure or even knew it was a thing until I read those books and knew that that was a profession that I could take on.
BENNIE: See, I love the idea of building things new and really drew in the idea of rebuilding things. So early on in my career, you had those moments where you weren't necessarily getting a call from the big brands, but I saw all this work that brands that struggled need and new brands needed to rebuild or build and that became really exciting and dynamic for me. It's how do you build a brand when you don't have the multimillion-dollar advertising budget. How do you actually think of that full expanse of marketing?
GREG: Where you hired the agency. Listen, I remember ... The one I remember the best was the rebrand — and this would be as much visual as [not] ... of Lucent Technology. It was AT&T's GBCS division that they turned into Lucent. That was a $500,000 project. Oh my God, that'd be almost two and a half decades ago. I mean, those are big, big thoughtful, those are interesting. When you're a small brand, you don't bring in a big Y&R agency to go figure that out for you. Very funny.
BENNIE: No. You know what you're doing? You're hiring the small regional agencies that we work with all the time and they do some killer work. We often think that bigger defines better in a marketing space in there, but I'm here to tell you —
GREG: Not always.
BENNIE: Oh my goodness. There are some killer works happening in brands and agencies all outside of the big markets that we think about that are informing the ways that ... As you know, dynamic ideas cross borders. You see some of the work coming out of Mexico City in creativity and other spaces in there.
GREG: Yeah, yeah. No, especially like Brazil. I have operations in Brazil, they're just all lit up with design, and I mean, one of the most powerful ... And I think they're the third-largest attending country of Cannes Lions, which is coming up next week. So yeah, very exciting.
Career Advice and Collecting Art
GREG: Hey, Bennie, let me do this. As you look out ... So listen, I love the diversity of your experience and the background you have — and by the way, the excitement you bring to marketing, because I'm of like mind with that — as you've gone through your career, as a marketer or if you want to take as an association guy, go anyway you want, what is some of the best advice you think you've be giving? What kind of sticks with you? It might be what you pass along or maybe don't, but I don't know, what's the best advice you think you've been given over your career?
By the way, I had somebody answer that question, she talked about what advice her father had given her. I thought that was kind of fun. So wherever you want to go.
BENNIE: And I don't want to trade off of that, but I will tell you there are three pieces of advice that have always stuck with me.
GREG: Okay, good.
BENNIE: Great. And one of them was from my mother.
GREG: Okay, good.
BENNIE: One was from a professional mentor and one was from one of my teachers.
GREG: Wow. Okay, good. Let's do it. Okay. We'll do a mom ... Which one are we going first? Mom first or no?
BENNIE: We're going to go professional mentor first, mom second, and then teacher third, and you'll see the arc in there. But when I talk to students, as I get a chance to do, when I think about it, these three pieces always come back in. I had a mentor who's passed away now who was one of the managing partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and he would always say before any meeting or any engagement, always take five minutes to prep before the meeting because that's 10 minutes more than anybody else. And he would always say that.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: And early on as a young ... And it's that moment that we all have where you're like, check, our days are busy, our works are complex. But it's that moment, Greg, when you pause and go, what are we doing again? Let me sink back in, center focus, and go forward. It's a powerful space in there, and understanding it in context with what everyone else is not doing, really beautiful.
GREG: Yeah, I love it. Okay.
BENNIE: The second one is my mom who would always — and I remind her of this — she would always tell us, never take a no from someone who doesn't have the power to give you a yes. And as a kid who wanted to be an entrepreneur —
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: As a kid who wanted to be an entrepreneur, this served me so well when I was trying to get funding. You know those days in there, right?
GREG: Yeah, totally. I've done that.
BENNIE: And one can see the vision in there, but you're not the principal, you're the first person at the bank.
GREG: Where did mom get that advice though? How did she come across that? I don't know if my mom would've given me that kind of advice, but go ahead.
BENNIE: I don't know. I've heard it attributed to other people across the years in there. My mom is an educator by training and a writer and a scholar —
GREG: Okay, okay.
BENNIE: And this was something that she just imparted. And probably what she saw was she had a kid who was curious, who wanted to do entrepreneurial stuff, who she saw people say no to, and wanted to encourage me to keep pushing.
GREG: Yeah, I love that. It's such great advice because "it's not just about you, sometimes it's about them" is an element of that, and sometimes you just got to keep going. You want to know what mine is? I usually don't give mine. I'm going to give you one of mine. The team here would all ... My team here have heard it a hundred times. I says, we just follow up just this side of a restraining order, and frankly, I don't give a shit if they file a restraining order.
BENNIE: [laugh]
GREG: I don't know. I'm sorry. I've just given away my secrets to my board and my members, so I don't know if I wanted them to know that, but —
BENNIE: Don't do it. We can edit that out for you.
GREG: It's the same ... Or not edit it out.
BENNIE: The third one was equally life changing. A professor of mine when I was an undergrad, we were walking one day getting coffee together — and this is a beautiful story because it was a college town so these weren't big-brand coffee shops, these were the intimate coffee shops — and we were walking to get coffee and he pulled me aside and said, "When you get older, always collect art."
GREG: What?
BENNIE: Simple space. And he had been a professor that I had that was in the Yale School of Art, but he taught a class that was called design and it was design thinking before Stanford codified it. It was design thinking and space in there, but he had this conversation, and it was so powerful because it allowed me to think on — and I'm looking up going, "I can barely afford to stay in college. Why are you telling me to collect art?" But it was this notion of artists being problem solvers, artists being world creators, artists being space in there. And if you're engaging in art and artists as a part of your life, you're engaging in perpetual creativity, innovation, problem solving. It's a metaphor for all those other things, but it started with that, and I've been fortunate since that time to count numerous artists and troublemakers like yourselves as friends.
And you think about it, artists are typically solving problems of the moment and solving problems against tomorrow. And there's so much of that metaphor that reinforces our world as marketers, as business leaders, as strategists that kind of reinforces, right? Art also forces you to wrestle with ideas and problems and wrestle with being uncomfortable. And so those three things are about preparation, about resilience and grit, and about being open to creativity. And that nexus for me, really, that's the advice that —
GREG: I've never had anybody say that or explain the dynamics of art. And by the way, I actually have become, at a minor level — although there was just something sold here recently for tens of hundreds of millions, crazy, but whatever the whole auction circuit was going on recently — but I'm probably upwards of maybe a hundred pieces at this point. And the reason ... And I don't come from a household who would've had any appreciation for that, but what I find, what I think is going on is that I like having somebody's expression in my home. I think there's an energy that comes off of that that I just didn't see coming. So I'm a big advocate with my kids that they should start thinking about art — at a minor level — that they could go ahead and themselves start to collect. It does something to your space. I don't know. I did not see that coming.
BENNIE: It's one of those things that's been the great gift in my life to have that conversation, to have that access point. But I do ... I find when people ask, "Where do you get inspiration?" And I'm always saying from everywhere around me, because I've spent that time in there, I have artists that if I'm traveling like you are, that space in there, that I'll spend an afternoon in a studio, and that experience watching them problem solve helps me problem solve the things that we're talking about.
GREG: I don't know if I've taken the lesson like that, so I appreciate that, what you're learning. I'll keep that in mind. But I do, I think there's something very obviously noble about that you would dedicate yourself to create something — often visually — that somebody else can really appreciate or have meaning to them in their life. I think that's a very powerful concept that's not appreciated enough.
BENNIE: You know what was powerful for me is I picked up all these things that made sense in my world, right? I'm not holding a brush, I'm not holding a camera and no spaces in there. So those kind of surface lessons didn't mean as much to me, but we deal with innovation, we deal with creative challenges.
GREG: Totally, totally.
BENNIE: And you could see that process, commitment to idea breaking, commitment to world changing. So much about if we're introducing a new brand, you're introducing spaces that didn't exist before and how do we ... These are all problems that marketers have.
By the way, I had somebody answer that question, she talked about what advice her father had given her. I thought that was kind of fun. So wherever you want to go.
BENNIE: And I don't want to trade off of that, but I will tell you there are three pieces of advice that have always stuck with me.
GREG: Okay, good.
BENNIE: Great. And one of them was from my mother.
GREG: Okay, good.
BENNIE: One was from a professional mentor and one was from one of my teachers.
GREG: Wow. Okay, good. Let's do it. Okay. We'll do a mom ... Which one are we going first? Mom first or no?
BENNIE: We're going to go professional mentor first, mom second, and then teacher third, and you'll see the arc in there. But when I talk to students, as I get a chance to do, when I think about it, these three pieces always come back in. I had a mentor who's passed away now who was one of the managing partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and he would always say before any meeting or any engagement, always take five minutes to prep before the meeting because that's 10 minutes more than anybody else. And he would always say that.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: And early on as a young ... And it's that moment that we all have where you're like, check, our days are busy, our works are complex. But it's that moment, Greg, when you pause and go, what are we doing again? Let me sink back in, center focus, and go forward. It's a powerful space in there, and understanding it in context with what everyone else is not doing, really beautiful.
GREG: Yeah, I love it. Okay.
BENNIE: The second one is my mom who would always — and I remind her of this — she would always tell us, never take a no from someone who doesn't have the power to give you a yes. And as a kid who wanted to be an entrepreneur —
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: As a kid who wanted to be an entrepreneur, this served me so well when I was trying to get funding. You know those days in there, right?
GREG: Yeah, totally. I've done that.
BENNIE: And one can see the vision in there, but you're not the principal, you're the first person at the bank.
GREG: Where did mom get that advice though? How did she come across that? I don't know if my mom would've given me that kind of advice, but go ahead.
BENNIE: I don't know. I've heard it attributed to other people across the years in there. My mom is an educator by training and a writer and a scholar —
GREG: Okay, okay.
BENNIE: And this was something that she just imparted. And probably what she saw was she had a kid who was curious, who wanted to do entrepreneurial stuff, who she saw people say no to, and wanted to encourage me to keep pushing.
GREG: Yeah, I love that. It's such great advice because "it's not just about you, sometimes it's about them" is an element of that, and sometimes you just got to keep going. You want to know what mine is? I usually don't give mine. I'm going to give you one of mine. The team here would all ... My team here have heard it a hundred times. I says, we just follow up just this side of a restraining order, and frankly, I don't give a shit if they file a restraining order.
BENNIE: [laugh]
GREG: I don't know. I'm sorry. I've just given away my secrets to my board and my members, so I don't know if I wanted them to know that, but —
BENNIE: Don't do it. We can edit that out for you.
GREG: It's the same ... Or not edit it out.
BENNIE: The third one was equally life changing. A professor of mine when I was an undergrad, we were walking one day getting coffee together — and this is a beautiful story because it was a college town so these weren't big-brand coffee shops, these were the intimate coffee shops — and we were walking to get coffee and he pulled me aside and said, "When you get older, always collect art."
GREG: What?
BENNIE: Simple space. And he had been a professor that I had that was in the Yale School of Art, but he taught a class that was called design and it was design thinking before Stanford codified it. It was design thinking and space in there, but he had this conversation, and it was so powerful because it allowed me to think on — and I'm looking up going, "I can barely afford to stay in college. Why are you telling me to collect art?" But it was this notion of artists being problem solvers, artists being world creators, artists being space in there. And if you're engaging in art and artists as a part of your life, you're engaging in perpetual creativity, innovation, problem solving. It's a metaphor for all those other things, but it started with that, and I've been fortunate since that time to count numerous artists and troublemakers like yourselves as friends.
And you think about it, artists are typically solving problems of the moment and solving problems against tomorrow. And there's so much of that metaphor that reinforces our world as marketers, as business leaders, as strategists that kind of reinforces, right? Art also forces you to wrestle with ideas and problems and wrestle with being uncomfortable. And so those three things are about preparation, about resilience and grit, and about being open to creativity. And that nexus for me, really, that's the advice that —
GREG: I've never had anybody say that or explain the dynamics of art. And by the way, I actually have become, at a minor level — although there was just something sold here recently for tens of hundreds of millions, crazy, but whatever the whole auction circuit was going on recently — but I'm probably upwards of maybe a hundred pieces at this point. And the reason ... And I don't come from a household who would've had any appreciation for that, but what I find, what I think is going on is that I like having somebody's expression in my home. I think there's an energy that comes off of that that I just didn't see coming. So I'm a big advocate with my kids that they should start thinking about art — at a minor level — that they could go ahead and themselves start to collect. It does something to your space. I don't know. I did not see that coming.
BENNIE: It's one of those things that's been the great gift in my life to have that conversation, to have that access point. But I do ... I find when people ask, "Where do you get inspiration?" And I'm always saying from everywhere around me, because I've spent that time in there, I have artists that if I'm traveling like you are, that space in there, that I'll spend an afternoon in a studio, and that experience watching them problem solve helps me problem solve the things that we're talking about.
GREG: I don't know if I've taken the lesson like that, so I appreciate that, what you're learning. I'll keep that in mind. But I do, I think there's something very obviously noble about that you would dedicate yourself to create something — often visually — that somebody else can really appreciate or have meaning to them in their life. I think that's a very powerful concept that's not appreciated enough.
BENNIE: You know what was powerful for me is I picked up all these things that made sense in my world, right? I'm not holding a brush, I'm not holding a camera and no spaces in there. So those kind of surface lessons didn't mean as much to me, but we deal with innovation, we deal with creative challenges.
GREG: Totally, totally.
BENNIE: And you could see that process, commitment to idea breaking, commitment to world changing. So much about if we're introducing a new brand, you're introducing spaces that didn't exist before and how do we ... These are all problems that marketers have.
You Are Not the Target Audience
GREG: What's the advice you give your team, by the way? Do you have that top of mind? I didn't ask you that before, but I don't know. Is there advice? What do you offer to others?
BENNIE: Some of that is a space in there. I will tell you, my marketing teams, I will often tell them this simple phrase: "You are not the target audience."
GREG: Oh boy, no shit. Exactly. Nothing bugged me more in the agency where we personalized what we thought the customer's going to do. Oh my God, drove me crazy.
BENNIE: I tell them that constantly and I also go one step further that I am not the target audience, even if the target audience are people named Bennie who look like me and live in my house.
GREG: [laugh] That's a variation of my wife in real estate who says, "Buyers are liars." I mean, nobody really knows what they're going to buy. They don't really understand it at any kind of conscious level. They make decisions for all sorts of funny reasons and that's fine and your job is to help support them in that.
BENNIE: And then they post-rationalize it, right?
GREG: Exactly, exactly. Oh, well this was ... Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
BENNIE: You were always a loft guy, Greg, you knew it. You were always a loft guy, right? No, no, no, no. That's where we are. That's some of the advice I give.
GREG: It's very hard to separate yourself from that though. I find a lot of people really struggle with that as we've gone through strategy.
BENNIE: They struggle. I often push my folks to know when we're having spaces to free people up to be able to explore, that there are no wrong questions and no right answers. I can't tell you how valuable that is to start off, to set that frame, because often people have been hard-coded to "I can't ask questions because they're not the right ones." How many times have we heard, "It's a dumb question, it's not a real question." And it holds back our exploration, our learning, our breakthrough. But then also equally, the notion that there's only one right answer or there is a right answer holds us back. So I often give my teams, especially I lead and work with teams on purpose that are interdisciplinary and across functionals. That becomes an opening space. So the brand people and the strategists don't get to have more of the right answers than the finance and the technology folks.
BENNIE: Some of that is a space in there. I will tell you, my marketing teams, I will often tell them this simple phrase: "You are not the target audience."
GREG: Oh boy, no shit. Exactly. Nothing bugged me more in the agency where we personalized what we thought the customer's going to do. Oh my God, drove me crazy.
BENNIE: I tell them that constantly and I also go one step further that I am not the target audience, even if the target audience are people named Bennie who look like me and live in my house.
GREG: [laugh] That's a variation of my wife in real estate who says, "Buyers are liars." I mean, nobody really knows what they're going to buy. They don't really understand it at any kind of conscious level. They make decisions for all sorts of funny reasons and that's fine and your job is to help support them in that.
BENNIE: And then they post-rationalize it, right?
GREG: Exactly, exactly. Oh, well this was ... Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
BENNIE: You were always a loft guy, Greg, you knew it. You were always a loft guy, right? No, no, no, no. That's where we are. That's some of the advice I give.
GREG: It's very hard to separate yourself from that though. I find a lot of people really struggle with that as we've gone through strategy.
BENNIE: They struggle. I often push my folks to know when we're having spaces to free people up to be able to explore, that there are no wrong questions and no right answers. I can't tell you how valuable that is to start off, to set that frame, because often people have been hard-coded to "I can't ask questions because they're not the right ones." How many times have we heard, "It's a dumb question, it's not a real question." And it holds back our exploration, our learning, our breakthrough. But then also equally, the notion that there's only one right answer or there is a right answer holds us back. So I often give my teams, especially I lead and work with teams on purpose that are interdisciplinary and across functionals. That becomes an opening space. So the brand people and the strategists don't get to have more of the right answers than the finance and the technology folks.
Where Academic Research Meets Practice
GREG: Got it. I love it. I love it. Hey, Bennie, here's another one for you. So listen, given you run some of the leading peer-reviewing journals, I mean, Journal of Marketing, for example, I know pretty well. It's a very serious publication. It's really meant to rise above at an academic level. It's not just ... You don't buy your way into that thing. What is some of the advice that you're seeing appear in the journals of late that maybe has caught your attention? Is there something, I don't know if you see something there, there's a trend that's shifting. I don't know. Any of the recent articles you thought really caught your attention? I don't know. What are marketers learning from there?
BENNIE: We're really seeing researchers now have projects that have practitioners in mind. So these aren't just kind of an academic journey on its own. It's really anchored in, okay, we're going to talk about, in effect, real-world problems in the space in here and solutions we're seeing, especially at an executive level. So you're seeing how do we navigate some of the spaces with real-world data and space in there, but with this higher level of expertise and strategic discipline around it. I'm seeing a lot more of that engagement, which I think is invaluable for the profession, but it bridges that gap between established executive practitioner and solid academic researcher, right? Because there has always been that tension. We can speak to that.
GREG: Yeah. I've worked with academics a lot and my board has been like, "That is way too damn esoteric." I go, "Yes, but it's really interesting." And they're like, "Yeah, so what? What am I going to do?" I always tell them, I always tell academics, I say, "Listen, you can talk esoteric, but at the end of your conversation, you need to get back to one point. And that point is when they leave this board meeting on Thursday, what are they telling their teams on Monday when they get back into the office about what they're going to do?" I said, "You have to in three to four or five points, tell them what are you going to do next." Otherwise, it's all for naught at some level at this point.
BENNIE: Yeah. We're seeing that shift.
GREG: That academics, they're getting more attached to the outcomes and the struggles that a CMO has is really what you're saying, I think.
BENNIE: Yeah, we're seeing the embrace of practice and understanding that as an instrument to move forward. So you're getting the best of all the worlds in it, the executive experience along with that input. We're also creating on our end more dynamic and open ways. So we just launched an executive and resident series where we're taking some of the foremost CMOs and having audience not with other CMOs, which is normally the conversation. They're having direct members-only conversations with my academic portion of my community.
So they're talking about what's needed in terms of research. Here's what we need in terms of the next generation of marketing leaders that I'm hiring and look for. And the idea is to help better inform pedagogy. What am I teaching? What do I need to learn? What do I see? And what we're doing, the way I've set it up, it's we're opening with the big-brand CMOs, who are the largest hirers, talking to the academic leads. And much like we talk about having marketers across the sizes and scales of organizations, I have academic leaders across organizations as well. So we've got who'd you'd expect from Harvard and Yale and Wharton, but we also have regional players who are educating folks who are coming in. We have the players who are really strong in building people in consumer packaged good, like you take Indiana and Kellogg and Ohio State.
We also have emerging universities who are building [the] next generation. So having this direct conversation — this is what we need — the feedback when we did this was amazing from both the CMO, but this direct interengagement with the people teaching the next generation of marketing leaders.
GREG: Right, right. Very interesting. Okay. So Ben, here, let's get to the fun conversation. So this has all been good. It's all been good. But now you and I now got to go solve problems.
BENNIE: Okay. Let's solve these.
BENNIE: We're really seeing researchers now have projects that have practitioners in mind. So these aren't just kind of an academic journey on its own. It's really anchored in, okay, we're going to talk about, in effect, real-world problems in the space in here and solutions we're seeing, especially at an executive level. So you're seeing how do we navigate some of the spaces with real-world data and space in there, but with this higher level of expertise and strategic discipline around it. I'm seeing a lot more of that engagement, which I think is invaluable for the profession, but it bridges that gap between established executive practitioner and solid academic researcher, right? Because there has always been that tension. We can speak to that.
GREG: Yeah. I've worked with academics a lot and my board has been like, "That is way too damn esoteric." I go, "Yes, but it's really interesting." And they're like, "Yeah, so what? What am I going to do?" I always tell them, I always tell academics, I say, "Listen, you can talk esoteric, but at the end of your conversation, you need to get back to one point. And that point is when they leave this board meeting on Thursday, what are they telling their teams on Monday when they get back into the office about what they're going to do?" I said, "You have to in three to four or five points, tell them what are you going to do next." Otherwise, it's all for naught at some level at this point.
BENNIE: Yeah. We're seeing that shift.
GREG: That academics, they're getting more attached to the outcomes and the struggles that a CMO has is really what you're saying, I think.
BENNIE: Yeah, we're seeing the embrace of practice and understanding that as an instrument to move forward. So you're getting the best of all the worlds in it, the executive experience along with that input. We're also creating on our end more dynamic and open ways. So we just launched an executive and resident series where we're taking some of the foremost CMOs and having audience not with other CMOs, which is normally the conversation. They're having direct members-only conversations with my academic portion of my community.
So they're talking about what's needed in terms of research. Here's what we need in terms of the next generation of marketing leaders that I'm hiring and look for. And the idea is to help better inform pedagogy. What am I teaching? What do I need to learn? What do I see? And what we're doing, the way I've set it up, it's we're opening with the big-brand CMOs, who are the largest hirers, talking to the academic leads. And much like we talk about having marketers across the sizes and scales of organizations, I have academic leaders across organizations as well. So we've got who'd you'd expect from Harvard and Yale and Wharton, but we also have regional players who are educating folks who are coming in. We have the players who are really strong in building people in consumer packaged good, like you take Indiana and Kellogg and Ohio State.
We also have emerging universities who are building [the] next generation. So having this direct conversation — this is what we need — the feedback when we did this was amazing from both the CMO, but this direct interengagement with the people teaching the next generation of marketing leaders.
GREG: Right, right. Very interesting. Okay. So Ben, here, let's get to the fun conversation. So this has all been good. It's all been good. But now you and I now got to go solve problems.
BENNIE: Okay. Let's solve these.
The Boardroom Leadership Gap
GREG: I'm sorry for the listener. This is going to be an eight-hour episode of Building Better CMOs. No, but Bennie, as the point of Building Better CMOs, as I tell all the CMOs that join in the episodes, I says, listen, I'm not here to do CMO hero worship. That exists. That's all fine. No problem with that. However, I as a trade association guy am looking for the problems. What are the challenges? What are the issues that we don't get right? What do we not completely understand? Where are we either lacking in orientation, lacking in knowledge, lacking in skills, lacking in whatever it might be that really would dramatically improve marketing if we could get over the hump? And I mentioned to you earlier, it's sort of funny.
I mean, I've now [made] upwards of 60 episodes. I don't think anybody's ... Very few people get the same issue right. We have a lot of issues in our business. So I'm curious, from the unique perch of you having been a CMO and then in sitting the role at AMA, what do you think we as marketing really kind of don't get, get wrong, should be better at?
BENNIE: I think something we were talking about before that spans no matter what size CMO you are — big, medium, large — where you are — for profit, nonprofit, B Corp — it's we can get better, tremendously so, at winning and leading in the executive space and boardroom. We can get better at that. There's been the conversation, the classic cliché of a seat at the table and space in there, and part of what makes a cliché valuable is there's a shred of truth in there that comes through. And when you look at it, when you look at the literature review, when you look at the research, when you look at the quiet conversations, where we often lose out is not on our marketing, we lose out on our executive placement and leading the business.
GREG: Does that suggest that then marketers are not trained to be business leaders? I mean, a lot of marketers have MBAs so we assume that they've gotten some of that orientation. So that's general management training. It's not leadership training per se. Okay. So what do you mean that we're not grabbing it, we're not granted it, we don't deserve? I don't know. What's happening? Yeah, keep going.
BENNIE: Here's the reality. We spend all of our time in our career, we're really good at the M part. We're really good at the marketing part. We struggle with the "chief" and the "officer." So we struggle with the, it's not just our work and our function but leading the business. And so those are the battles, challenges, and conversations where we can get better. Because when you look at that short tenure, that short tenure isn't because of our marketing prowess, it's because of disconnects with leading the business. It's because of disconnects with our other executive peers at the table.
I mean, I've now [made] upwards of 60 episodes. I don't think anybody's ... Very few people get the same issue right. We have a lot of issues in our business. So I'm curious, from the unique perch of you having been a CMO and then in sitting the role at AMA, what do you think we as marketing really kind of don't get, get wrong, should be better at?
BENNIE: I think something we were talking about before that spans no matter what size CMO you are — big, medium, large — where you are — for profit, nonprofit, B Corp — it's we can get better, tremendously so, at winning and leading in the executive space and boardroom. We can get better at that. There's been the conversation, the classic cliché of a seat at the table and space in there, and part of what makes a cliché valuable is there's a shred of truth in there that comes through. And when you look at it, when you look at the literature review, when you look at the research, when you look at the quiet conversations, where we often lose out is not on our marketing, we lose out on our executive placement and leading the business.
GREG: Does that suggest that then marketers are not trained to be business leaders? I mean, a lot of marketers have MBAs so we assume that they've gotten some of that orientation. So that's general management training. It's not leadership training per se. Okay. So what do you mean that we're not grabbing it, we're not granted it, we don't deserve? I don't know. What's happening? Yeah, keep going.
BENNIE: Here's the reality. We spend all of our time in our career, we're really good at the M part. We're really good at the marketing part. We struggle with the "chief" and the "officer." So we struggle with the, it's not just our work and our function but leading the business. And so those are the battles, challenges, and conversations where we can get better. Because when you look at that short tenure, that short tenure isn't because of our marketing prowess, it's because of disconnects with leading the business. It's because of disconnects with our other executive peers at the table.
Why Marketing Loses Control
GREG: What either journal article, what research, what insight, what knowledge do you have that supports that leadership is the problem? And then I want you to get into more like what exactly does that mean? There's an element of it that you made it about our ability to show up at the table, at least you sort of identified that was the problem. Okay. I would think that we would have that training. So I don't know, keep going on this a little bit here.
BENNIE: Yeah. It's interesting. We have the training, but we talk about this as well, that what's happened over the last few years is the terminology, the words, the practice of marketing isn't just settled in marketing now. It's showing up in other disciplines that are at the executive leadership space. We, then, in some respects —
GREG: Wait, marketers are showing up in other disciplines or you said are marketing —
BENNIE: Marketing capabilities.
GREG: — capabilities are showing up in other parts of the organization.
BENNIE: Right. Other parts of the organization are really eager to take advantage of those things. Why? Because we know marketing and marketing functions lead the business. So if you're gravitating to what leads the business —
GREG: Somebody else is going to take those.
BENNIE: Right. We're losing out on —
GREG: Bennie, it's funny. So I actually do know the research on this. We've done extensive academic-based research and we know that 30% of marketing capabilities sit outside the role of CMO. 30%, that's the number. That's a big deal.
BENNIE: Well, here's another spot. I was having a conversation with some of the academics recently and we were talking about just classically the four Ps. When you think about it, most chief marketing officers don't actually control the four Ps.
GREG: No, no, no, no.
BENNIE: How many chief marketing officers control pricing?
GREG: None.
BENNIE: How many have control over product?
GREG: None.
BENNIE: You start to think through it. We've had a bit ... An academic that I love, she's a former CMO and she's joining our board, Kim Whitler out of UVA Darden.
GREG: I know, Kim. I love Kim. She's one of my very favorite people. She's done some of the best research out there. There's no question about that.
BENNIE: That's who I was going to immediately when you talked about it. Kim —
GREG: Totally. She's exceptional. Yeah.
BENNIE: For those who haven't had a chance to dig in with Kim, love her dearly. She's been on my board. She's coming back on my board right now. She is that contemporary. When I talk about what market research looks like now in a dynamic way that's practitioner, future, and market? Kim.
GREG: Totally, totally. I would never miss an opportunity to want to work with Kim ever, ever, ever. I totally agree with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're right. And some of that work that you're talking about has been done by her. She actually has an interesting data point. We had her share this at one ... I run a CMO/CEO summit every year and she came one year and she talked about how when boards of directors, which are typically legal and finance people, when they have a marketer at the board, on average, those companies do 3% better. Because the problem is that legal and finance are doing what they do, which is they assess risk. Those are risk dynamics. And a board is supposed to be focused on risk. I don't want to besmirch that. It is a big deal. But when you don't have anybody say, "Yeah, but what are we doing to grow?" which is where a marketer should go, a CMO would go, that's totally changed the structure of the business.
BENNIE: And it changes what's valued, right? So then we look down and if there's going to be an exit from the island early, which one of those seats often gets voted off when you get to the executive level, right? If the board doesn't reinforce growth and those dynamics in there and marketing is half fulfilled, you lose out.
GREG: Yeah, yeah. So listen, it was Dara Treseder said one year — I can repeat this — at my event, she said, "Yeah." She goes, "Because everybody else in the C-suite can do marketing as a side hustle." Everybody ... That got a big laugh in the room. It was an uncomfortable laugh probably at some level.
BENNIE: Of course.
GREG: So Bennie, why do you think that marketers don't own the leadership position within the company? What's really going on with that?
BENNIE: I don't know.
GREG: How do we fix that?
BENNIE: It's a big persistent problem. And some of it is, it's probably multifaceted. Some of it I've seen is getting over our own imposter syndrome as marketers. I've had conversations where marketers eschew what they see as the hard business topics. How many times have our CMOs listening shied away from finance conversations, shied away from a ... Right?
GREG: Not knowing finance could put us at a disadvantage. I would totally agree with that and an appreciation for that. Maybe I think your first point there, not having enough therapy to get over their imposter syndrome, I think is where you went a little bit. So that's probably in the list. [laugh]
BENNIE: That's on the list. And in our roles, we end up in this wonderful space where I often keep the confidences so I don't name the guilty, right?
GREG: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. There we go.
BENNIE: I'm talking to leaders of all spaces and they're coming in like, "Bennie, when the finance sheets come out, hey, I'm done." And you're seeing these spaces like, "I need you to double down and lean in." Or, "We're going to talk about our world, but you can't use your language. You have to embrace and use the other language in the space." And that creates a sense of uncomfortableness, right?
GREG: Yeah. If it's out of your domain, then you're going to kind of stay away from that. I don't know, Bennie, I don't know, I think I look a little bit older than you are. I'll tell you, what you want to do as you get older, because at my age, I think I know it all. So maybe that's what you're hoping that we get to. There's another answer to the question. We got to stop putting young CMOs in place. We're going to let them get older. I don't know. I'm just kidding.
BENNIE: Well, here's the thing. There's one thing in life where you can think you know it all and you're fearless because you think you do. And there's one part in life where you know you know it all and you're equally as fearless. I think we need a bit of both of that.
GREG: Totally. You know what though, I'll tell you what, is Bob Pittman spoke at one of my events one time, the CEO of iHeart and founder of MTV, he said, he goes, "The only advantage of being older is pattern recognition." And the older I've gotten, the more I realize how true that is. I've seen this show. I know what's going to happen. They're going to do this. We're going to do that. It's going to go like this. That's going to happen next. This is what they're going to say. This is what we're going to say. At some point you're just like, it's all pretty perfunctory. Very funny.
BENNIE: Yeah. But I think that, once again, we have an opportunity, as business continues to evolve and change, there's so many conversations that are clearly — put blinders on for a second, put masks on for a second — clearly marketing conversations. And you look up and it's coming out of the voice of the COO. It's coming out of the voice of those spaces. I think as marketing leaders, we need to take a full push that we are unapologetically leading the business. Marketers shouldn't come in... And many years, you think about in organizations, marketers are driving growth, but we don't get credit for the money, but we get credit for the expense.
GREG: I have a strong expertise in measurement. I cofounded multitouch attribution 20some-odd years ago. I was just trying to solve a simple problem for internet, [it] turned out to be the big answer. Okay. I've been around measurement for years. It's a thing I really understand well, but we as marketers have not solved the measurement problem. We still have marketers using last-click attribution, which is the dumbest thing you could use. There is no relationship between last-click attribution, click-through, and business performance. That's insane that it still shows up anywhere. So it seems to me, what I'm wondering and listening to what you're saying here is that I wonder if there isn't some other missing part of this, just that there are better business leaders. There's gaps, I'm concerned. I don't know. You see the journals and what they say. Yeah.
BENNIE: Yeah. I think to your point, it's gaps. You think about it, there's always been large company models in which you do a bit of a rotation in your leadership because you're always going to have your specialty in your area. You're an expert in those lines in there, but you get a chance to understand the rest of the business through those spaces and it gives you greater credibility as a leader. I think we often miss out on that.
GREG: Wait, because CMOs don't become CIOs for a time being. Is that where you're going?
BENNIE: Not so much in the space in there, but we don't necessarily have structures in which we sit in other spaces. So unless you have a natural affinity or curiosity, we think about ... I was always amazed at the experience that I had, how much I learned from being at SHRM and HRCI about HR.
Now I learned about it through a marketing lens as a marketer. By no means am I saying I'm an HR person, but I can play one on TV. I understand the role of talent essentially in building an organization. I understand employer brand, all these nexus that comes into that, but being able to have that experience, it's going to give you broader comfort and control when you're up against the executive space of running the business. You're not a one-trick, one-song wonder. You talked a bit before about how you're perceived in the rest of the space. I think marketers sometimes are unaware of how we're perceived in these other executive conversations. If the rest of the board is about risk, we don't understand how we're perceived.
GREG: Well, Bennie, I'll tell you the thing I've started to say to people a lot that seems to have resonated. So you're a guy who sits in the boat I'm talking about with this. And by the way, I consider myself a marketer. It's all that I've ever wanted to do. So I'm in the camp. If everybody in the C-suite is paid based on growth — and they are, that's how all bonuses are attributed within companies — and the CMO is allegedly the person ultimately most responsible for growth, then why isn't she or he the most important person in the room?
And it's a variation on what you said. We lack somehow ... I don't know if it's personal. What I'm trying to figure out in listening to you, is it personal stature, which is a little bit where you're kind of going in what you're saying there, or is there some other dynamic that's ... And listen, I think this is the problem that we all as marketing — especially association leaders — should help solve, which is what are we doing to raise the stature and gravitas of the CMO and marketer? How do they have more impact, given especially what I just said about the importance of what they do to everybody's personal financials, which is, at the end of the day, what matters most to everybody. But I don't know. It's very funny, Bennie, that we're in this place.
BENNIE: Yeah. We have responsibility and agency of all the spaces in there, but we often don't have ownership. You think about it, we drive it up to the 11th hour and then another executive leader snatches it from us.
GREG: Is that our fault or is that the organization's fault? Is that the CEO's fault? There's very few CEOs that ... In fact, I open up my CMO/COO event with ... I always invite a CEO who was a CMO to tell us what they wish she or he would've known. It was Jeff Jones last year, this year, it's Ann Mukherjee from Pernod to talk about what would they want to tell their younger self as a CMO now that they're CEO?
BENNIE: Right. Well, here's the thing. We know that these things — decisions and presence — don't start just from scratch. The thing is you're always going to work against. You're working against 30 years of business where marketing wasn't at that space.
GREG: True.
BENNIE: So you're playing catch-up. No one ever questions whether the CFO should be at the table.
BENNIE: Yeah. It's interesting. We have the training, but we talk about this as well, that what's happened over the last few years is the terminology, the words, the practice of marketing isn't just settled in marketing now. It's showing up in other disciplines that are at the executive leadership space. We, then, in some respects —
GREG: Wait, marketers are showing up in other disciplines or you said are marketing —
BENNIE: Marketing capabilities.
GREG: — capabilities are showing up in other parts of the organization.
BENNIE: Right. Other parts of the organization are really eager to take advantage of those things. Why? Because we know marketing and marketing functions lead the business. So if you're gravitating to what leads the business —
GREG: Somebody else is going to take those.
BENNIE: Right. We're losing out on —
GREG: Bennie, it's funny. So I actually do know the research on this. We've done extensive academic-based research and we know that 30% of marketing capabilities sit outside the role of CMO. 30%, that's the number. That's a big deal.
BENNIE: Well, here's another spot. I was having a conversation with some of the academics recently and we were talking about just classically the four Ps. When you think about it, most chief marketing officers don't actually control the four Ps.
GREG: No, no, no, no.
BENNIE: How many chief marketing officers control pricing?
GREG: None.
BENNIE: How many have control over product?
GREG: None.
BENNIE: You start to think through it. We've had a bit ... An academic that I love, she's a former CMO and she's joining our board, Kim Whitler out of UVA Darden.
GREG: I know, Kim. I love Kim. She's one of my very favorite people. She's done some of the best research out there. There's no question about that.
BENNIE: That's who I was going to immediately when you talked about it. Kim —
GREG: Totally. She's exceptional. Yeah.
BENNIE: For those who haven't had a chance to dig in with Kim, love her dearly. She's been on my board. She's coming back on my board right now. She is that contemporary. When I talk about what market research looks like now in a dynamic way that's practitioner, future, and market? Kim.
GREG: Totally, totally. I would never miss an opportunity to want to work with Kim ever, ever, ever. I totally agree with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're right. And some of that work that you're talking about has been done by her. She actually has an interesting data point. We had her share this at one ... I run a CMO/CEO summit every year and she came one year and she talked about how when boards of directors, which are typically legal and finance people, when they have a marketer at the board, on average, those companies do 3% better. Because the problem is that legal and finance are doing what they do, which is they assess risk. Those are risk dynamics. And a board is supposed to be focused on risk. I don't want to besmirch that. It is a big deal. But when you don't have anybody say, "Yeah, but what are we doing to grow?" which is where a marketer should go, a CMO would go, that's totally changed the structure of the business.
BENNIE: And it changes what's valued, right? So then we look down and if there's going to be an exit from the island early, which one of those seats often gets voted off when you get to the executive level, right? If the board doesn't reinforce growth and those dynamics in there and marketing is half fulfilled, you lose out.
GREG: Yeah, yeah. So listen, it was Dara Treseder said one year — I can repeat this — at my event, she said, "Yeah." She goes, "Because everybody else in the C-suite can do marketing as a side hustle." Everybody ... That got a big laugh in the room. It was an uncomfortable laugh probably at some level.
BENNIE: Of course.
GREG: So Bennie, why do you think that marketers don't own the leadership position within the company? What's really going on with that?
BENNIE: I don't know.
GREG: How do we fix that?
BENNIE: It's a big persistent problem. And some of it is, it's probably multifaceted. Some of it I've seen is getting over our own imposter syndrome as marketers. I've had conversations where marketers eschew what they see as the hard business topics. How many times have our CMOs listening shied away from finance conversations, shied away from a ... Right?
GREG: Not knowing finance could put us at a disadvantage. I would totally agree with that and an appreciation for that. Maybe I think your first point there, not having enough therapy to get over their imposter syndrome, I think is where you went a little bit. So that's probably in the list. [laugh]
BENNIE: That's on the list. And in our roles, we end up in this wonderful space where I often keep the confidences so I don't name the guilty, right?
GREG: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. There we go.
BENNIE: I'm talking to leaders of all spaces and they're coming in like, "Bennie, when the finance sheets come out, hey, I'm done." And you're seeing these spaces like, "I need you to double down and lean in." Or, "We're going to talk about our world, but you can't use your language. You have to embrace and use the other language in the space." And that creates a sense of uncomfortableness, right?
GREG: Yeah. If it's out of your domain, then you're going to kind of stay away from that. I don't know, Bennie, I don't know, I think I look a little bit older than you are. I'll tell you, what you want to do as you get older, because at my age, I think I know it all. So maybe that's what you're hoping that we get to. There's another answer to the question. We got to stop putting young CMOs in place. We're going to let them get older. I don't know. I'm just kidding.
BENNIE: Well, here's the thing. There's one thing in life where you can think you know it all and you're fearless because you think you do. And there's one part in life where you know you know it all and you're equally as fearless. I think we need a bit of both of that.
GREG: Totally. You know what though, I'll tell you what, is Bob Pittman spoke at one of my events one time, the CEO of iHeart and founder of MTV, he said, he goes, "The only advantage of being older is pattern recognition." And the older I've gotten, the more I realize how true that is. I've seen this show. I know what's going to happen. They're going to do this. We're going to do that. It's going to go like this. That's going to happen next. This is what they're going to say. This is what we're going to say. At some point you're just like, it's all pretty perfunctory. Very funny.
BENNIE: Yeah. But I think that, once again, we have an opportunity, as business continues to evolve and change, there's so many conversations that are clearly — put blinders on for a second, put masks on for a second — clearly marketing conversations. And you look up and it's coming out of the voice of the COO. It's coming out of the voice of those spaces. I think as marketing leaders, we need to take a full push that we are unapologetically leading the business. Marketers shouldn't come in... And many years, you think about in organizations, marketers are driving growth, but we don't get credit for the money, but we get credit for the expense.
GREG: I have a strong expertise in measurement. I cofounded multitouch attribution 20some-odd years ago. I was just trying to solve a simple problem for internet, [it] turned out to be the big answer. Okay. I've been around measurement for years. It's a thing I really understand well, but we as marketers have not solved the measurement problem. We still have marketers using last-click attribution, which is the dumbest thing you could use. There is no relationship between last-click attribution, click-through, and business performance. That's insane that it still shows up anywhere. So it seems to me, what I'm wondering and listening to what you're saying here is that I wonder if there isn't some other missing part of this, just that there are better business leaders. There's gaps, I'm concerned. I don't know. You see the journals and what they say. Yeah.
BENNIE: Yeah. I think to your point, it's gaps. You think about it, there's always been large company models in which you do a bit of a rotation in your leadership because you're always going to have your specialty in your area. You're an expert in those lines in there, but you get a chance to understand the rest of the business through those spaces and it gives you greater credibility as a leader. I think we often miss out on that.
GREG: Wait, because CMOs don't become CIOs for a time being. Is that where you're going?
BENNIE: Not so much in the space in there, but we don't necessarily have structures in which we sit in other spaces. So unless you have a natural affinity or curiosity, we think about ... I was always amazed at the experience that I had, how much I learned from being at SHRM and HRCI about HR.
Now I learned about it through a marketing lens as a marketer. By no means am I saying I'm an HR person, but I can play one on TV. I understand the role of talent essentially in building an organization. I understand employer brand, all these nexus that comes into that, but being able to have that experience, it's going to give you broader comfort and control when you're up against the executive space of running the business. You're not a one-trick, one-song wonder. You talked a bit before about how you're perceived in the rest of the space. I think marketers sometimes are unaware of how we're perceived in these other executive conversations. If the rest of the board is about risk, we don't understand how we're perceived.
GREG: Well, Bennie, I'll tell you the thing I've started to say to people a lot that seems to have resonated. So you're a guy who sits in the boat I'm talking about with this. And by the way, I consider myself a marketer. It's all that I've ever wanted to do. So I'm in the camp. If everybody in the C-suite is paid based on growth — and they are, that's how all bonuses are attributed within companies — and the CMO is allegedly the person ultimately most responsible for growth, then why isn't she or he the most important person in the room?
And it's a variation on what you said. We lack somehow ... I don't know if it's personal. What I'm trying to figure out in listening to you, is it personal stature, which is a little bit where you're kind of going in what you're saying there, or is there some other dynamic that's ... And listen, I think this is the problem that we all as marketing — especially association leaders — should help solve, which is what are we doing to raise the stature and gravitas of the CMO and marketer? How do they have more impact, given especially what I just said about the importance of what they do to everybody's personal financials, which is, at the end of the day, what matters most to everybody. But I don't know. It's very funny, Bennie, that we're in this place.
BENNIE: Yeah. We have responsibility and agency of all the spaces in there, but we often don't have ownership. You think about it, we drive it up to the 11th hour and then another executive leader snatches it from us.
GREG: Is that our fault or is that the organization's fault? Is that the CEO's fault? There's very few CEOs that ... In fact, I open up my CMO/COO event with ... I always invite a CEO who was a CMO to tell us what they wish she or he would've known. It was Jeff Jones last year, this year, it's Ann Mukherjee from Pernod to talk about what would they want to tell their younger self as a CMO now that they're CEO?
BENNIE: Right. Well, here's the thing. We know that these things — decisions and presence — don't start just from scratch. The thing is you're always going to work against. You're working against 30 years of business where marketing wasn't at that space.
GREG: True.
BENNIE: So you're playing catch-up. No one ever questions whether the CFO should be at the table.
No Licensure, No Gatekeepers
GREG: But to be fair, the [CFO] is educated to be a CFO and is probably certified generally as CPAs are all certified. So we in marketing don't have that.
BENNIE: We don't have the mechanism of licensure and it's one of those things in which we are ... On the continuum of professions, there are always the legal professions, the ones that licensures are part of, and the ones that are passion.
GREG: They have the Bar Association that makes them, gives them credentialization. The AMA for medical — is it AMA, right? And so it did for medical, for doctors. I have to point out to people — and a lot of people don't realize this — the medical profession suggested strongly that the way to cure all that ailed you and to prevent disease was bloodletting as little as 200 years ago. I mean, bloodletting, really, people, we're killing people with bloodletting. That's a terrible thing to have done, and yet that's what the medical profession believed until they got their act together. I almost wonder if marketing's in its bloodletting age.
BENNIE: Wow.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: It's a powerful conversation. I know you put it in there. I didn't thik you were going there.
GREG: But it might be, because we just don't have ... We believe a lot of stuff that's just not necessarily true. I mean, you have the journals, you know what the journals say.
BENNIE: Here's the challenge. I think it's less of the actual practicing, seasoned practitioners of marketing. Marketing always benefits from the fact that licensure creates a gate. It creates a professional gate of who can be in.
GREG: Oh, that's interesting.
BENNIE: There's no gate on the marketing space in there because your profession is defined by the entire sphere. It's not the CMOs you're talking to, right? But going back to our iceberg example, there's a lot of other folks who think — to that uncomfortable laughter — I can just kind of do marketing on the side.
GREG: Yeah, totally.
BENNIE: That muddies the pool and muddies the space in there.
GREG: We make it look easy.
BENNIE: We do, right?
GREG: And it's honestly, if you take a step back, and I've done this exercise, you look at all the science you need to understand to be good at marketing, hard science, soft science, everything from analytics all the way through to sociology. It's a very complicated role that you need to have command of to be really masterful at, I think.
BENNIE: I think you're right. And one of the things I love to tell people is I firmly believe the adjectives matter.
GREG: What does that mean?
BENNIE: It's not about just being a marketer. There's no gate to become a marketer. You can say you're a marketer. The adjectives matter. I'm a good marketer. I'm a dynamic marketer. I'm an effective marketer. It's those things that matter.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: If you do these things, you market. That does not mean you are the hallmark of the profession.
GREG: I wasn't going to go here, but I'm going to right now. You ready for this? Maybe we'll tell the producer to cut this out later.
BENNIE: Cause problems. [laugh]
GREG: So I've started to develop a thesis in my mind. I was an agency guy for a decade and my job was to persuade the client that the campaign recommended was the thing to do. It was not per se to develop the best campaign, it was to sell the client on the campaign that we had developed. And it's funny, when I talk to agency people today and now that I'm of advanced years and understanding and knowledge, I listen to what some of them say and I go, "Well, that's just foundationally not correct. That is wrong. I don't know why you don't know that, but you don't. And you're recommending that to a client." So there's a part of me that says this ecosystem in part we've created has done its own damage to itself. It's a funny thing. I interviewed somebody yesterday, it was the same damn thing.
I was just like, "Oh my God, you're just trying to persuade me of what is not truth." And that shows up in the impact that we have because if it's not right, it's not right.
BENNIE: And that shows up in eroded credibility.
GREG: And these other C-suite executives, you get to a certain level in a company, you're not stupid. You're pretty smart in figuring out and understanding the world. Even if it's out of your domain at some level, you might not have the actual skill set, but I wonder if that doesn't do real harm to us. And I've often wondered, is there a return to really understanding really how marketing works and making sure that people are rooting themselves in that? We have a whole thesis today and I'm already getting off track. Some people believe the brand is not valuable anymore. We actually believe it's more valuable than ever, but brand is not dead, but it is a victim of a crime and that crime is around the allocation. I've done a lot of the research around this. The way we allocate and do segmentation is foundationally, fundamentally wrong and flawed.
And then I combine them with a series of identity graphs, which I think are really misrepresented in this space. I've created just a disaster and [I] kind of wonder like ... if you look at the data, you guys have the data. It probably comes out of your journal. Listen, advertising's performance has not improved since — in fact, it's gone down — since 1960. And yet so much of us spend all of our time talking about advertising.
BENNIE: I was having the conversation this morning before we got into it about this broader conversation about advertising alone is not marketing.
GREG: Yes, exactly.
BENNIE: And you have the premise in there. You think about some of the most dynamic marketing, you see it happen out there, is devoid of traditional advertising.
GREG: Some brands have been successful in that way. I totally agree. Yeah. You know what? Here's the conclusion, Bennie, are you ready for this? I think you and I are going to be very busy for a very long time because there's a lot of work to get done to turn us into the industry that we all want us to be.
BENNIE: I think so. And marketing is a practice and a profession and a discipline that we all love.
GREG: I do.
BENNIE: And it's well loved, right? And so this is that ... What I love about our roles is this is that stewardship and leadership that we talk about. What I love is these conversations about what's now and next, but then having the same conversation with the aspiration of the 19-year-old who's looking at it fresh and new.
GREG: Totally.
BENNIE: And they're breaking through what's going to be next. And that's what keeps us going here.
GREG: And I think part of the good work that you and the AMA try to do is how do we recruit the talented, the best of the industry, to want to be a part of this next generation of marketers as we try to advance this industry.
BENNIE: And I'll tell you this, what's inspiring is they're not waiting. They're shaping it now. They're digging in now. I'm going to invite you to come and check out our international collegiate conference. It's the largest marketing competition in the world.
GREG: Oh, really?
BENNIE: We do every spring, my friend. Join me in New Orleans. It's going to renew your faith in what's next.
GREG: Oh, really?
BENNIE: Watching some of the smartest, baddest marketing students from across the country. What I love is they're coming from all the schools. They're coming from community colleges and Wharton.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: They're coming from public and private, right? And they're all going to make you feel bad about yourself.
GREG: [laugh] There you go.
BENNIE: You're going to pause and go, "I am glad I'm not competing today." But preparing them for a profession that we're solving for some of these things and asking some of the hard questions now to build a better platform for tomorrow.
GREG: Listen, I'm so excited that I said yes. It was funny when people wrote me and said, "Ben," I said, "I don't know. I don't know if I want a trade association [guy]." And then I realized you were a real marketer and I thought, oh my God, definitely we're going to have this conversation. I've been looking forward to this for as long as we've had it scheduled. So I can't thank you enough for coming on Building Better CMOs.
BENNIE: Likewise, my friend, and so many things in common. I didn't know you were collecting art until we answered that question. So we're going to get in trouble with that offline.
GREG: Oh, my wife is ... The number one thing she says, "Really? You're buying something more?" So there's an affliction, I suspect. [laugh]
BENNIE: Hey, that means you're doing it right. [laugh]
BENNIE: We don't have the mechanism of licensure and it's one of those things in which we are ... On the continuum of professions, there are always the legal professions, the ones that licensures are part of, and the ones that are passion.
GREG: They have the Bar Association that makes them, gives them credentialization. The AMA for medical — is it AMA, right? And so it did for medical, for doctors. I have to point out to people — and a lot of people don't realize this — the medical profession suggested strongly that the way to cure all that ailed you and to prevent disease was bloodletting as little as 200 years ago. I mean, bloodletting, really, people, we're killing people with bloodletting. That's a terrible thing to have done, and yet that's what the medical profession believed until they got their act together. I almost wonder if marketing's in its bloodletting age.
BENNIE: Wow.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: It's a powerful conversation. I know you put it in there. I didn't thik you were going there.
GREG: But it might be, because we just don't have ... We believe a lot of stuff that's just not necessarily true. I mean, you have the journals, you know what the journals say.
BENNIE: Here's the challenge. I think it's less of the actual practicing, seasoned practitioners of marketing. Marketing always benefits from the fact that licensure creates a gate. It creates a professional gate of who can be in.
GREG: Oh, that's interesting.
BENNIE: There's no gate on the marketing space in there because your profession is defined by the entire sphere. It's not the CMOs you're talking to, right? But going back to our iceberg example, there's a lot of other folks who think — to that uncomfortable laughter — I can just kind of do marketing on the side.
GREG: Yeah, totally.
BENNIE: That muddies the pool and muddies the space in there.
GREG: We make it look easy.
BENNIE: We do, right?
GREG: And it's honestly, if you take a step back, and I've done this exercise, you look at all the science you need to understand to be good at marketing, hard science, soft science, everything from analytics all the way through to sociology. It's a very complicated role that you need to have command of to be really masterful at, I think.
BENNIE: I think you're right. And one of the things I love to tell people is I firmly believe the adjectives matter.
GREG: What does that mean?
BENNIE: It's not about just being a marketer. There's no gate to become a marketer. You can say you're a marketer. The adjectives matter. I'm a good marketer. I'm a dynamic marketer. I'm an effective marketer. It's those things that matter.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: If you do these things, you market. That does not mean you are the hallmark of the profession.
GREG: I wasn't going to go here, but I'm going to right now. You ready for this? Maybe we'll tell the producer to cut this out later.
BENNIE: Cause problems. [laugh]
GREG: So I've started to develop a thesis in my mind. I was an agency guy for a decade and my job was to persuade the client that the campaign recommended was the thing to do. It was not per se to develop the best campaign, it was to sell the client on the campaign that we had developed. And it's funny, when I talk to agency people today and now that I'm of advanced years and understanding and knowledge, I listen to what some of them say and I go, "Well, that's just foundationally not correct. That is wrong. I don't know why you don't know that, but you don't. And you're recommending that to a client." So there's a part of me that says this ecosystem in part we've created has done its own damage to itself. It's a funny thing. I interviewed somebody yesterday, it was the same damn thing.
I was just like, "Oh my God, you're just trying to persuade me of what is not truth." And that shows up in the impact that we have because if it's not right, it's not right.
BENNIE: And that shows up in eroded credibility.
GREG: And these other C-suite executives, you get to a certain level in a company, you're not stupid. You're pretty smart in figuring out and understanding the world. Even if it's out of your domain at some level, you might not have the actual skill set, but I wonder if that doesn't do real harm to us. And I've often wondered, is there a return to really understanding really how marketing works and making sure that people are rooting themselves in that? We have a whole thesis today and I'm already getting off track. Some people believe the brand is not valuable anymore. We actually believe it's more valuable than ever, but brand is not dead, but it is a victim of a crime and that crime is around the allocation. I've done a lot of the research around this. The way we allocate and do segmentation is foundationally, fundamentally wrong and flawed.
And then I combine them with a series of identity graphs, which I think are really misrepresented in this space. I've created just a disaster and [I] kind of wonder like ... if you look at the data, you guys have the data. It probably comes out of your journal. Listen, advertising's performance has not improved since — in fact, it's gone down — since 1960. And yet so much of us spend all of our time talking about advertising.
BENNIE: I was having the conversation this morning before we got into it about this broader conversation about advertising alone is not marketing.
GREG: Yes, exactly.
BENNIE: And you have the premise in there. You think about some of the most dynamic marketing, you see it happen out there, is devoid of traditional advertising.
GREG: Some brands have been successful in that way. I totally agree. Yeah. You know what? Here's the conclusion, Bennie, are you ready for this? I think you and I are going to be very busy for a very long time because there's a lot of work to get done to turn us into the industry that we all want us to be.
BENNIE: I think so. And marketing is a practice and a profession and a discipline that we all love.
GREG: I do.
BENNIE: And it's well loved, right? And so this is that ... What I love about our roles is this is that stewardship and leadership that we talk about. What I love is these conversations about what's now and next, but then having the same conversation with the aspiration of the 19-year-old who's looking at it fresh and new.
GREG: Totally.
BENNIE: And they're breaking through what's going to be next. And that's what keeps us going here.
GREG: And I think part of the good work that you and the AMA try to do is how do we recruit the talented, the best of the industry, to want to be a part of this next generation of marketers as we try to advance this industry.
BENNIE: And I'll tell you this, what's inspiring is they're not waiting. They're shaping it now. They're digging in now. I'm going to invite you to come and check out our international collegiate conference. It's the largest marketing competition in the world.
GREG: Oh, really?
BENNIE: We do every spring, my friend. Join me in New Orleans. It's going to renew your faith in what's next.
GREG: Oh, really?
BENNIE: Watching some of the smartest, baddest marketing students from across the country. What I love is they're coming from all the schools. They're coming from community colleges and Wharton.
GREG: [laugh]
BENNIE: They're coming from public and private, right? And they're all going to make you feel bad about yourself.
GREG: [laugh] There you go.
BENNIE: You're going to pause and go, "I am glad I'm not competing today." But preparing them for a profession that we're solving for some of these things and asking some of the hard questions now to build a better platform for tomorrow.
GREG: Listen, I'm so excited that I said yes. It was funny when people wrote me and said, "Ben," I said, "I don't know. I don't know if I want a trade association [guy]." And then I realized you were a real marketer and I thought, oh my God, definitely we're going to have this conversation. I've been looking forward to this for as long as we've had it scheduled. So I can't thank you enough for coming on Building Better CMOs.
BENNIE: Likewise, my friend, and so many things in common. I didn't know you were collecting art until we answered that question. So we're going to get in trouble with that offline.
GREG: Oh, my wife is ... The number one thing she says, "Really? You're buying something more?" So there's an affliction, I suspect. [laugh]
BENNIE: Hey, that means you're doing it right. [laugh]