107: The godlike CMO, getting back up after epic failure + the business of 420, Passover, and Easter
It's a holy weekend no matter what you celebrate: Easter, Passover, or 4/20!
In this edition (#107) of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. The Business of this Weekend: 420!
2. The Business of this Weekend: Passover!
3. The Business of this Weekend: Easter!
4. Getting back up after epic failure
5. The Godlike CMO?
6. Quote of the week: digital privacy
1. The Business of this Weekend: 420!
Happy 420! Did you know that global marijuana sales could approach $17B in 2019 (Motley Fool) as various states move us towards nation-wide legalization (notably NJ, NY, who will join MI, AK, CA, CO, ME, MA, NV, OR, VT, WA, and DC.)
Here in Boston we've had medical MJ since 2015, but our first recreational facilities have been open to the public more recently, bringing in $9.3M in their first four weeks of operation.
This year, Carl's Jr. made headlines as they became the first major fast-food chain to debut a cannabis-infused burger, to be sold at one location in Denver today.
Yes, it will cost $4.20.
This is the Green Boom:
Over the past year, investor enthusiasm for cannabis stocks has helped the legal marijuana market outperform Bitcoin and gold; in June, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first drug based on compounds found in marijuana; and a recent Pew Research survey shows that public support of legalization has doubled since 2000. (Quartz)
But, what casts a shadow across all this progressive legislation and business growth is who it leaves behind:
Marijuana legalization and the businesses that profit from it are accelerating faster than efforts to expunge criminal records, and help those affected by them participate in the so-called “Green Boom.” And the legal cannabis industry is in danger of becoming one more chapter in a long American tradition of disenfranchising people of color...
Many state regulations, as well as a new federal one in the 2018 Farm Bill, ban people with drug-related felony convictions from working in the cannabis industry.
Those affected by these bans are are statistically much more likely to be black, because of systemic biases built into the criminal justice system. (Indeed, government officials who helped craft the enforcement tactics of the “War on Drugs” starting in the 1960s have admitted the policy was specifically designed to undermine black communities and fragment the political left.)
The full Quartz piece is worth reading.
Let's drive the Green Rush without greed, holding ourselves accountable for an industry with consequential history.
2. The Business of this Weekend: Passover!
For Passover, here's a perfect lesson in professional services marketing through relevance and expertise from a shomer shabbat Passover cleaning company:
The founder of Home Clean Home (HCH), Nicole Levine, was born in Israel, and therefore knows the Halachot, or Jewish laws, involved with cleaning for Pesach. (Source)
The concentrated cleaning is done within the four weeks between Purim and Passover and takes hours — it includes breaking down every dining-room chair and reassembling it, emptying out all containers, shampooing every carpet, vacuuming every skylight and dusting every book. (NYPost)
“They look forward to it more than buying a Coach bag,” says Levine, who also runs side businesses that combat bedbugs, lice and hoarding.
Your expertise is a matter of perception that you understand your buyers best.
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PS: I'm keynoting the Society of Marketing Professional Services Boston Marketing bootcamp this Tuesday. Join us?
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3. The Business of this Weekend: Easter!
And finally, Easter, which this recovering Catholic will be celebrating with family this weekend.
(Note: Many of you are new to the World's Best Newsletter. You know that etiquette rule about not talking about religion or politics in a business setting?
This isn't that kind of newsletter.
Unsub link is at the bottom but WAIT don't you want to know how much cash we spend in the US on Easter? Stay with me. I promise it won't hurt.)
The National Retail Federation found US adults dish out an average of $151 per person during Easter, and that we are spending slightly less than last year, $18.11B in total.
For the record, $2.49B is spent on candy alone, as 180M eggs are sold thanks to the event’s ties to ancient pagan celebrations, where eggs symbolized fertility, birth and the coming of spring.
Speaking of fertility, this holiday is just one big celebration of baby-making. The whole bunny thing seems to have stemmed from the fact that rabbits are, in many cultures, "known as enthusiastic procreators."
Apologies in advance if I've ruined that Cadbury egg you were about to dig into.
4. Getting back up after epic failure
I found this story from entrepreneur Maren Kate Donovan, interviewed by Whitney Johnson, interesting.
Donovan is the founder and former CEO of Zirtual, a company that went from rapid growth and success to shutting down seemingly overnight (it was eventually sold in a firesale.)
A couple of faulty financial projections and a shift in their business model (plus some hefty blame placed on their outsourced financial firm) meant they were out of cash, while investors rightfully got cold feet.
Quote: "The numbers were just completed f***ed."
Donovan calls her failure a "$5 Million Dollar MBA" a sentiment I relate to from my own tenure as a startup co-founder.
Her advice:
Founder/CEOs can often become a single fault point for their entire startup. And when you mess up as CEO, hundreds of people can lose their jobs. Have safety mechanisms in place: surround yourself with experienced advisors and don’t be afraid to ask for help — “fake it ‘til you make it” works until it doesn’t.
And:
“Know what you don’t know. Over-index on trying to understand what you are missing verses learning, or getting better at what you’re good at.”
There are two camps of reactions to her story. On one side, affected employees were understandably infuriated at the sudden shutdown. The outsourced financial firm who was blamed for the downfall turned that blame around to accuse the company of a failed business model (but remained complimentary about Donovan being a great CEO).
Others see this as another day in entrepreneurship, and say the positive things Zirtual achieved should be celebrated, especially, as this author notes in Forbes, their strong use of brand.
Overall, I'm encouraged by the resilience on display here. Sure, failure sucks. Businesses fail all the time. Shame abounds. But here, reading multiple perspectives of her story and her personal POV, there is a reassuring sense that life moves on.
As Donovan says in the podcast, "I wanted to be a person that no matter what came at me, I would always get back up."
5. The Godlike CMO?
This week I came across this piece by Yoav Vilner (h/t to Scott Brinker) featuring a "cheat-sheet" for the CMO or VP Marketing role.
That's what everybody wants today, right? A cheat sheet to complex situations and decisions. Hally and I were just lamenting that fact this week.
It's one reason his post went kind of viral, trending on Reddit and Medium.
Vilner claims to have seen the inner workings of 800 startups and helped 22 marketers in 2018 alone find startup roles. This led him to a major realization that I agree with:
The problem is, that a CMO is generally expected to be someone that should know everything. From events, to digital, to social, PR, paid campaigns, organic SEO, marketing automation, and more...
This makes the startups’ HR reps publish irrational job requirements for their VP Marketing/CMO roles.
To aid in this unrealistic expectation issue, Vilner published a cheat sheet to help out.
To him, the top most important skills of a CMO at a startup are:
1. Team management
2. Creative leadership
3. Marketing automation
4. Content marketing
And the least-important:
1. Collateral creation
2. Product marketing
3. Sales
4. Events (speaking)
We disagree only slightly.
I think (and someone pointed this out on Twitter) the ability to craft value proposition is critical, as is sales enablement. That falls under product marketing and should be part of what a CMO does well in smaller organizations (startups in this case) who may lack a product marketing lead.
In addition, the CMO is often tapped to be the chief evangelist -- that pesky notion that someone needs to galvanize the market to change and earn trust by putting a face to a brand. That puts speaking/events squarely in their camp, whether they are the ones on stage or orchestrating that responsibility for the founder to perform.
As you can tell, the magic phrase here is the dreaded IT DEPENDS.
What a CMO does depends on your business model, sales process, current team, maturity, funding level, market saturation, buyer preferences, and whether you too believe Easter is just a celebration of procreation.
Just kidding.
The point is that no CMO can do it all or meet the unrealistic job expectations often placed upon them by well-intentioned HR leaders / founders. That contributes to the low tenure of this role, it also creates a bad habit in our industry of celebrating the fantasy, god-like CMO.
I agree the #1 responsibility is team building and team management. It's about filling your gaps, hiring what's needed based on specific business needs, and being willing to throw out the dusty playbook of "here's what we did at my last company."
Recommended further reading for what great CMOs do:
Deloitte's annual CMO survey (Feb 2019)
HBR's "The Trouble with CMOs" (Aug 2017)
Openview's POV on the CMO role at various lifecycle stages of a business -- series of articles here (January 2015)
Bonus resource: Nandini Jammi's collection of templates used to develop product narratives.
I'd love to hear where you sit on this issue.
6. Quote of the week: digital privacy
"...digital privacy is a women’s issue." - Emily Chang in the NYTimes
Further:
Of course, privacy is a concern for everyone, but this is also an issue, like health care, on which women have a particular view. Women know, for example, what consent really means. It’s not scrolling through seemingly endless “terms of service” and then checking a box. Online consent, just as it is with our bodies, should be clear, informed and a requirement for online platforms.
Have a wonderful weekend, no matter what you're celebrating.
And thanks, as always, for reading.
Katie Martell
Website | LinkedIn | Twitter
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Event calendar:
I'll be speaking at the Society for Marketing Professional Services Boston bootcamp April 23rd.
PLAY 2019 from Brightcove is May 14th-16th, 2019. Let's talk video and how it moves buyers from apathy to action. Join us in Boston?
San Diego, here we come, for ConquerLocal 2019 - an event all about driving digital success for local businesses from Vendasta, June 10-12.
I'm speaking at Content Marketing World, September 3-6 in Cleveland, OH
I'm back at INBOUND 2019 in their new startup marketing track - let's talk about the 7 deadly sins of startup marketing, and how to avoid them!
>> Book me to speak, I'm a hoot. <<