Champions of Growth Podcast

Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and Nick Primola, EVP of the ANA, join host Matthew Schwartz to discuss some of the major priorities for CMOs and marketers for 2023. Against the backdrop of a shaky economy, brand managers face a slew of challenges, ranging from recruiting new talent to fostering more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The pressure is also on CMOs to bridge the gap between marketing and other departments throughout the organization.

Jeff Lowe, CMO at Smart Technologies, and Jenna Pipchuk, EVP-chief sales officer at Smart Technologies, say they have cracked the code to the B2B sales and marketing stalemate. In 2019, they joined forces to engineer a complete overhaul of the company’s sales and marketing departments, and in the last few years have built a new model in which both sides operate in unison. Lowe and Pipchuk share how they created change, along with positive results to show for it.

“Two seconds of lunacy from the Nth node.” The title of a long-lost Ed Wood movie? Nope. It’s one CMO’s take on what’s so scary about being a CMO these days. The “two seconds of lunacy” refers to what happens when a senior manager, supplier, or whomever says or does something on a whim and ends up undermining the CMO and laying waste to a marketing effort/campaign. In a special, Halloween-themed episode of Champions of Growth, Jonathan Copulsky, senior lecturer at Northwestern University, and former CMO at Deloitte, discusses what else is spooking CMOs these days, why things may be getting worse, and what chief marketers can do to ease their fears.

Ross Martin, president of marketing agency Known, discusses how the pandemic has spurred dramatic changes in both consumer behavior and the workplace. A 2020 study conducted by Known, titled “The Human Condition 2020: Shock to the System,” found that just 13 percent of Americans believe things are going back to what they were like during the ”Before Times.” Martin stresses that brands and organization need to buckle up.

Sherry Ulsh, director of indirect procurement at The Hershey Company, who oversees marketing procurement, provides several takeaways for how brand managers and procurement executives can bolster what can often be a complicated relationship. She also discusses the sense of urgency at Hershey when it comes to bolstering supplier diversity and expanding the candy company’s aperture for talent.

In our latest episode of ANA Champions of Growth, host Matthew Schwartz talks with Greg Welch, partner at executive search firm Spencer Stuart and founder of the company’s annual “CMO Tenure Study,” about how to reverse the downward trajectory in CMO tenure. According to the latest report, the average CMO tenure was 40 months in 2020, the lowest since 2009, as the pressure mounts on CMOs to demonstrate their value to C-suite and prove that marketing is an asset and not an expense. Is the challenge akin to rolling a peanut up a hill?

In our latest episode of ANA Champions of Growth, host Matthew Schwartz talks with Caroline Reed, founder and CEO of Creed Consulting, about how to improve agency-client relations and stem the growing tide of agency account reviews among brands and organizations. Agency churn spiked amid the pandemic, with nearly one-third of U.S. companies wanting to switch their ad agency in the next six months, according to a 2021 survey released from marketing matchmaker firm setup (the last year for which such stats are available). Reed stresses that both sides need to be clearer on supply and demand as well as what long-term success looks like. She also recommends that with people’s interactive skills becoming a bit rusty due to working from home more frequently, agency and client folks may need to relearn some basic rules of communication.

In our latest episode of ANA Champions of Growth, host Matthew Schwartz talks with Mallory Russell, head of global content marketing at Square, about how brands and organizations cater to Gen Zers. Sixty-seven million strong, Gen Zers, who were born between 1995 and 2012, have started to draw some sharp distinctions from their millennial predecessors (not to mention previous generations). For marketers who want to engage the Gen Z cohort effectively, safety is the baseline. And unlike, say, Gen Xers or baby boomers, Gen Zers are not so much interested in what’s being marketed, but how companies market their products and services and why. Russell shares some key insights about how what makes this increasingly influential generation tick.

In our latest episode of ANA Champions of Growth, host Matthew Schwartz talks with Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard and president of the company’s healthcare solution, about the “Fifth Paradigm” of marketing. That’s how Rajamannar describes the dozens of technologies ranging from robotics to the metaverse that he says will have a profound impact on how brands engage with their audiences. It’s the central thesis of his new book, Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow’s Consumers. Rajamannar provides some major takeaways from the book and shares his thoughts on how marketers can strengthen their relationship with the C-suite and whether CMOs face an existential crisis.

In our latest episode of ANA Champions of Growth, host Matthew Schwartz talks with Laura Korchinski, VP of account services and head of the U.S. operation at Visual Latina, a global agency whose clients include Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, and Mondelez International. While some brands recognize the need to change their marketing strategies to cater to profound changes in demographic, identify, and community, Korchinski says that other companies continue to traffic in stereotypes and fail to acknowledge that no culture is a monolith.