The Marketing Campaign CMOs Need to Convince Companies They Need a CMO

And the cereal of the national champs...

Jared Blank

Jan 10, 2024

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going?

Happy new year! I feel like it’s been a while. Probably because it’s been a while.

Today we’ll talk about:

An AI wearable thing.
CMOs need a campaign about CMOs
Intercom’s billboards
Mapl-Flakes

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It’s an AI-Powered Wearable Software Distribution Thingy

Let’s ease back into this, shall we?

You probably have no memory at all of the announcement a few weeks ago that a company called Humane created an AI pin that you would wear and do something. Or it would do something to you. Honestly, I don’t even remember anymore. Some stories called it an “AI-powered wearable.” Does that help? There were stories about it, so it was, like I said, something.

Founders love to quote Steve Jobs, often while they’re being accused of treating everyone around them like garbage or robbing investors of hundreds of millions of dollars, but other than being a scapegoat for terrible founder behavior, Jobs actually did do one thing (????) well: When he introduced the iPhone, he clearly described what it was, even though it was something new:

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone*.

(*Editor’s Note: If you remember back to the first iPhone, one way he re-invented the phone was by making it difficult to hold a 3-minute conversation on the phone without the phone hanging up on both of you. Though maybe the “reinvent” part was that both of you were hung up on, whereas previous phones required one person to hang up while the other person thought to themselves, “I shouldn’t have told my girlfriend I wanted to watch wrestling on Valentine’s Day.”)

So that’s a good way of introducing a new product.

If you aren’t Steve Jobs and you’re rolling out a new product, here are 2 good ways to do that:

Tell people either it’s like a product they currently know but better/faster/cheaper/smaller/larger/purple; or
It combines multiple products into one.

Apple started with number 2, then has spent the past 15 years number 1’ing the product once a year.

That’s one way to do it.

The other way to do it is how the founder of the “ai pin” did it:

In case you were wondering what an “ai pin” is, it’s a contextual computing device where the world around you becomes your operating system and the way to do that is “something else.”

Also it’s the world’s first “ai driven contextual computer and platform.”

Also also it changes software distribution.

Also also also that something else will cost you $699.

Marketing Is the Most Respected of All the Disrespected Jobs

I think most-to-all of us in marketing would say that one of the reasons we enjoy being in a marketing role is because we believe that marketing makes an important contribution to a company’s revenues.

In a positive way. Like I’d guess that most of us don’t think to ourselves, “I’d like to spend $3 million on marketing this year and get less than $3 million in return.”

That would be stupid.

And sure, some brand marketing folks will say something like, “We’ll need to spend $10 million this year on branding, because branding, and then something something, and it’ll help the business.”

OK, I suck. That’s not what brand marketing folks say. They will say, “We’ll need to spend $10 million this year on branding, because branding, and then we’ll need to budget $2 million for a brand study to see how much that branding impacted our branding and then something something and it’ll help the business.” My apologies.

But - say what you/I will - brand marketing folks also think that their marketing skills help the business. Because of course.

Which is why I’m always surprised to see announcements like this one from Etsy:

Etsy isn’t the only company to eliminate the CMO role when business isn’t great. UPS announced last month that they were doing away with the top marketer role. Bank of America did the same a couple of years ago. Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds noted that Johnson & Johnson, Uber, Lyft, Beam Suntory, Taco Bell and Hyatt Hotels all also dropped their CMO positions.

(Russell Reynolds addressed this change by changing the name of their CMO practice to be called “customer activation and growth.” So that solved that.)

I know this isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s quite remarkable that marketing leaders - who convince people to buy products for a living - have not been able to convince their bosses that they should keep their jobs because marketing helps drive sales.

Which is why I have to give credit to Terence Reilly, the marketing chief who has either been responsible for or, more importantly, taken responsibility for whatever the hell he’s been able to pull off while running marketing for Stanley, the maker of a cup that even if you’re not on social media (like me!) you can’t avoid hearing about. Also he was either responsible for, or taken responsibility for, the marketing success Crocs has had over the past bunch of years.

So what I’m saying is - CMOs need to do more PR for themselves. Most companies think you’re not valuable. One of the jobs of marketing is to convince people that at stupid old cup is worth hundreds of dollars. You’re better than a stupid old cup. Even if that cup comes in pink. Please market yourselves.

Top - or Bottom - of the Billboard Chart

It is unusual for gobbledy to be the subject of a mainstream media story, so I was in one way pleased to see the SF Chronicle write about gobbledy, while in another way, I was pretty annoyed.

I was pleased when they wrote a story about these billboards that customer service technology company Intercom has put up in San Francisco. Really - how often do we see articles about software messaging (other than when you get this newsletter)?

On the other hand, the reporter writes, “There’s a sea of gobbledygook on the region’s buses, transit stops and highways.”

No, Soleil Ho, there’s a sea of gobbledy! It’s gobbledy. C’mon!

(Turns out getting the wider audience to appreciate your messaging is difficult.)

Anyway, it’s unusual to see mainstream publications write articles about messaging, and I know that this billboard has been part of a somewhat controversial campaign amongst us software marketing folks.

The “this ad is stupid” camp thinks this ad is stupid. More specifically, they believe it’s unattractive, too-cute-by-half, doesn’t represent the brand, and shouldn’t be on a billboard because billboards are typically used for mass marketing (“Injured in an accident?” and “Strip club next exit.” Those types of things. Apparently only for personal injury attorneys and strip clubs. That’s all I could think of.)

But what injury attorneys and strip clubs have in common is that a billboard is a way to make people remember a simple message.

And we can argue all day about whether Intercom is a complete customer service platform and also the leader in AI customer service, but if those are the two things Intercom would like people to know, well…I remembered those two things without even having to look back at the photo.

What was interesting to me was that they took that messaging and crapped it up for their website (or maybe they took their website messaging and de-crapped it for their billboard):

I guess that’s fine (though virtually every product we’ve ever talked about here has either kept costs low or improved profits; kept some team happy; and made your customers even happier.)

But why have a clear simple message on the billboard and then a somewhat-less-clear message on the homepage? If you believe in the messaging, why not believe in it everywhere?

I wonder if this quote from the head of Intercom’s design agency explains it:

“That [billboard] in particular was designed by Intercom’s CEO Eoghan McCabe and their creative director Scott Smith.”

Which I think means, “Don’t blame me for that piece of crap.”

(Thanks to the fine marketers of CMO Coffee Talk for bringing this to my attention).

Go Blue!

Back before you could pay college athletes, you couldn’t pay college athletes. But back before THAT, you could have college athletes endorse products.

And in honor of Michigan’s National Championship, I wanted to share a 1903 ad for Mapl-Flake cereal where the Michigan Football team somewhat heartily endorses the maple-flavored bran flakes, with All-American Halfback W.M. Heston** proclaiming the breakfast food, “highly satisfactory.”

(**Coach Fielding Yost called Heston the best college football player he’d ever seen and, in 1904 he averaged nearly 13 yards a carry. Apparently those Mapl-Flakes really worked. Worked = made you poop.)

(*Via Wall St Journal & Twitter & UM Bentley Historical Library*)

Congrats to the Wolverines - I was lucky enough to see the victory in person.

And congrats to you for reading to the end of this. As always, I’m happy to chat about how we can work together to improve your messaging. Or about college football. Or about Mapl-Flakes. Here’s my Calendly link.