#80: CMO to CEO, Martech and the pendulum, Democrat digital skills, the danger of a single story
Bonjour de Montréal! (Je ne parle pas très bien français...)
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter #80:
1. Followup on truth (now disrupted)
2. Democratic digital skillz
3. How Trump shifted ad spend after DNC hack
4. On the Dot Feature
5. Martech's role in bringing us back to the art of marketing
6. CMO to CEO
7. Quote of the Week: the danger of a single story
1. Followup on truth (now disrupted)
Truth is the topic du jour.
Following my post last week on Truth, Lies, and Marketing, I came across this excellent HBR feature piece "Truth, Disrupted" in which the author (Sinan Aral) explores how false news spreads online.
"What we found was both surprising and disturbing. False news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in every category of information, sometimes by an order of magnitude, and false political news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than any other type."
False information not only threatens democracy. Misinformation affects our economy, investments, and businesses.
"In 2014 a false tweet claiming that Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion wiped out $130 billion of equity value in a single day."
The full article focuses on strategies to contain the spread of falsity, namely
Educating the players
Changing their incentives
Improving technological tools
(The right amount of) governmental oversight
Read the full article here.
2. Democratic digital skillz
Thanks to a timely feature in the NYTimes, "4,500 Tech Workers, 1 Mission: Get Democrats Elected" the group Tech for Campaigns has received an influx of attention and volunteers. This group focuses on getting Democratic candidates into the digital age.
"In a year and a half of existence, Tech for Campaigns has become a kind of Democratic Geek Squad — a national volunteer network consisting of more than 4,500 tech workers with day jobs at companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix and Airbnb. These volunteers, who include engineers, marketers and data scientists, are matched with Democratic campaigns across the country to provide training on digital skills, such as how to promote themselves on social media, build their email lists and use data analytics to identify potential donors."
The biggest task is to move Democrats from relying on traditional media (TV ads and print mailers) to social media, something marketers take for granted, and Republicans have figured out.
In 2016, state and federal Republican campaigns outspent Democratic campaigns 3 to 1 on Google ads, according to a presentation made to political ad buyers by Google’s election team... From April to July of that year, the period when many campaigns were building their email lists and garnering early support, Republicans outspent Democrats 20 to 1.
Read more here, and volunteer your digital chops to the organization's mission here.
3. How Trump shifted ad spend after DNC hack
Related to the above point about Republican campaign strategy and digital spend, watch this Rachel Maddow piece or read this thread about how Trump's team changed strategy after Russians stole DNC analytics.
Moving key digital spend into specific states (PA, OH) isn't notable. What's notable is the timing - Trump started advertising in Wisconsin the week after the hack, for example, for the first time in the election cycle.
We know Russia hacked DNC analytics sometime in Sept. We know in early Oct, Trump campaign abruptly redirected their ad spending, claimed changes were "data driven." These new ad investments were heavily in states that narrowly handed Trump the electoral college.
Pay attention. This is life with the internet - traditional warfare is now cyber warfare.
4. On the Dot Feature
Thank you to Melinda Garvey for a great feature on the four-minute podcast On The Dot - it's a fun daily source of inspo featuring women doing cool things. Listen to the episode I'm featured in (transcription available at link) and be sure to subscribe.
Excerpt:
"...a quote from the one and only Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”
5. Martech's role in bringing us back to the art of marketing
The brilliant Hally Pinaud (who is a marketing leader at Marketo) shared this AdAge piece with me yesterday "In Defense of the Lost Liberal Art of Marketing" from Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.
He says, fearful of the swing of the pendulum too far towards marketing data/tech:
Technology is a marketer's friend. Data is invaluable. But understanding the humanity of decisions is the lifeblood of marketing.
Hally's take on it:
"IMO, the point of Martech should be to make the technical parts of marketing easier. And I believe we're headed there. In the long term, that brings marketing back to art with a heaping side of data literacy."
I couldn't agree more. Technology should enable us to get back to what we do best as marketers, what our charter is - and has always been - in the first place: To win hearts and change minds.
6. CMO to CEO
Susan Lintonsmith is the President and CEO of Quiznos - but she was the CMO for four years, first.
I wonder how prevalent this trend will be. My work with the amazing team at Allocadia explored the importance of an accountable, business-minded CMO (like Carrie Palin at Box) -- those executives who successfully make the jump will indeed be prepared for the role of CEO.
This CMO Club article gives three reasons why Lintonsmith believes CMOs make great CEOs:
Experts at driving top line revenue
Natural brand leaders
Know customers better than anyone
On that last one, I say... allegedly :) Also, what about the CMOs supposed ability to communicate and to foster better communication and alignment internally? To me that's an extraordinarily important skill for a CEO, unifying all teams together.
7. Quote of the Week: the danger of a single story
"Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become... Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person."
"Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her TED talk "The danger of a single story"
Have a great weekend!
Best,
Katie
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