Kelsey: [00:00:00] Well, thank you so much, Michael, for joining us on the next CMO podcasts. We're really excited to have you on the show. I know you're a little bit different of a guest than we normally have. You're a professor at NYU, so we'd love to learn a little bit more about kind of what you teach at NYU and educate our listeners.
Michael: Okay, calcium, Peter, it's a absolute pleasure to be here with you. When you say I'm a professor, it reminds me of that ad about, you know, I just play one on TV or something like that, you know? No, I I'm. As you said, I'm a professor clinical assistant professor of marketing at NYU school of professional studies, but actually I'm relatively new to academia in the sense that this is, I think just my fourth year at NYU.
And before that I had a 21. Career at a time Warner and another 10 years or so in business and consulting and, and. Actually running theater companies in my early life. So, you know, I think of myself probably as a hybrid between a professor and a practitioner, and that's very much kind of what we teach at the school of professional studies is a, an [00:01:00] applied professional education and we manage, or the portfolio that I support is a masters in integrated marketing a masters in PR and corporate communications.
And a new to launch this fall, which we're very excited about is an executive master's in marketing and strategic communications, which is really for folks you know, maybe minimum eight, but 10 to 15 years into their career, much more of an executive format, you know, intense kind of cohorts experience that you would get from a, a very top-notch executive program.
Peter: Well, that's great, Michael, and we're super excited to hear more about that program because I think it's really relevant to this audience. And it seems to me to be just a, a great time. To, to think about this kind of program because of the whole idea of communications and communications relative to the COO office is, is in an incredible time of transition right now.
And I, and I think there's [00:02:00] some great opportunities and probably some, some interesting challenges that are going to come up for a communications professionals. So tell me a little bit about, you know, why now, right. So why did this program. Become a thing at this moment in time?
Michael: Well, I think, you know, it was, it was driven largely from many and several conversations I was having with CMOs and CCOs. You know, I've participated in the Ana CMO growth council for a while. I've been out to Ken and sat on panels. We have an amazing advisory council of. Senior marketers, CMOs and CCOs.
And what you hear a lot is a concern, you know, in a positive way about talent and the need to recruit and attract and retain talent. And that's, you know, an industry thing, but also. The development of talent, even existing talent in a time of incredibly rapid change and, you know, broadening and deepening, or [00:03:00] however you want to describe it of the function of marketing and the function of PR.
And one of the things I kept hearing in these forums is maybe something we want to get into. This statement, you know, I wish the university taught X, Y, and Z, you know, like, oh, why doesn't the university teach X, Y, and Z? And my feeling is probably two things. One is many of us have a perception of, of the university that is actually based on our own experience 20, 30 years ago or something.
And frankly, it's all, you know, significantly different. But the second is actually the university can teach those things, does teach things. Those things does, does understand. We just need to, you know, programmatically. Reflect that we have a phenomenal sort of entry level master's in marketing and most as in PR, as I mentioned, but there was clearly an opportunity to design something for executives, professionals who were sort of on the cusp of that next stage that we've called it the path of C-suite.
So I think that you know, that that was one thing. And was. I'm sure we'll get into this. And your [00:04:00] audience knows very well is in the context of the fact that the job of the CMO or the job of the CCO is getting more complex. It is, you know, kind of almost by definition, requires us all to step back a bit and say, okay, what do I know?
What do I understand? How do I contextualize that? You know, and, and sort of educate ourselves in the broadest fashion. So, so in that sense, I think this is a great opportunity you know, with a prestigious university like NYU you know, that. Very long track record of teaching these disciplines to sort of step in and say, look, there's something for you as well.
So.
Peter: So a couple of things I wanted to dive into Michael one is is starting at a very high level. Would you, if you early in your career, one, would you say you wanted to be a communications professional? Is that, is that something that you would tell your younger self you wanted to do in.
Michael: Well, that's a lovely [00:05:00] question, Peter. I did not wake up thinking, you know, I did not enter early adulthood thinking that's what I wanted to do. I would, I haven't really reflected on this. I would tell you humorously that I was a very chatty kid and you know, a very outspoken kid. So much so that when I spent a summer in France, they even found the word for the same thing in French, for me, which I think is a Bovard or something like that.
You know, when I asked what that meant, they said, basically you talk a lot, you know, and I definitely have always enjoyed sort of connecting people, connecting ideas, you know staying fluid and current, and then talking about it and explaining things. So, so in that sense, broadly speaking, you know, I think of myself as a communicator.
But I hadn't. I, you know, I, I, and, and also I was passionate about the theater. I, I, you know, that's part of my history. I studied at Yale at the drama school. I studied English as an undergrad at Oxford and, you know, really acted and directed. So, you know, theater and the spoken word was very much part of what drove me.
And I suppose that's you know, at some level I found that. Of of what marketers do. You know, that [00:06:00] capacity I think they say of poetry. What I think words with or color rich said yeah. What off was said, but NASA well expressed. Yes. So this idea of, you know, things, thoughts, you have ideas you have, but you know, the poet then expresses them really well.
Or the Dramatists expresses them really well. And I think advertising has a lot of that in it. Yeah. Beautiful Chris tagline or something like that. And obviously marketing is much, much more than advertising. We all know that, but you know, there was something in that I didn't really, I didn't really think about it as a serious career, probably until I started working at time Warner, which was already, you know, a couple of careers in a way going through.
One was in the theater, web marketing was certainly part of my job as a general manager. And then one was in strategy consulting where I came marketing was part of the equation, but I couldn't say I was a marketing consultant at that time. I was a strategy consultant and really once I got to time and I started thinking about it, certainly once I was given a, you know, a formal role within the marketing organization, which led ultimately to becoming the acting chief marketing officer there.
But [00:07:00] you know, that that's when it sort of really took hold and the, and the passion deepened.
Peter: it's interesting because you you, you immediately went to I said, I find really interesting, which, which is sort of you being the medium. And and how, how much do you think the role of the, the chief communications officer is the medium versus the message and in the creation of the message?
It obviously that's a silly question. It has to be a balance, but talk to us a little bit about how a senior executive should think about the, the mixture between them.
Michael: yeah, it reminds me of that lovely question. That it was awesome. Composers and lyricists, you know, did the music or the lyrics come first? You know, it's that sort of question. Yeah, I think you know, I think it's probably true for marketers too. It should all start with a business objective. I mean, this is, this is sometimes the challenge, you know, we, we teach our students and hopefully it was a discipline.
I tried to follow that. You know, you've [00:08:00] got to be very clear about your business objective today. You know, we're talking a bit more holistically about that as purpose and, you know, actually we go back to Jim, Stangle his work. He, his definition of purpose is more sort of the raison d'etre of, of being not, not specifically social purpose or corporate values and things like that.
But really, so I think, you know, I think that. The answer to your question, is that a good CCO, good CMO is highly aligned with the corporate strategy, vision, mission, et cetera, purpose of the company. And that, again, that's one of the things I think we're hoping. Really reinforced and in the executive masters, but you know, then you have skillsets, you know, you have people who are skillful at expressing that and nurturing in that and, and, and, and enabling it and building it in different formats.
You know, I'd, I'd even go so far as to say, including data, you know, data, we should, you know, data is not antithetical to this idea of communication. It's very much part of it. But, but to, you know, to answer your question, I think the, [00:09:00] the, the chief communications officer has to be very clear about you know, the business objectives and then the communications objectives.
And then they sort of can, can craft a better message. Sometimes inspiration sort of jumps in and you, you find something that seems to resonate or you've tested something with an audience that resonates and you say, okay, I think we could build a story around this, you know, or that this angle is a stronger story, but hopefully it starts Then to the personal side of that question, which I think is partly in your question as well, Peter, which is as an individual, I think that's actually one of the roles I see having developed most, in a sense this need and capacity for senior leaders of communications, strategic communications, PR marketing, whatever, to be able to translate complex ideas into simpler forms of expression.
And frankly, that's not always. Consumers or customers sometimes just internally, you know, you find yourselves as the person who can explain the [00:10:00] metaverse or explain NFTs or explain, you know, the market has, seems at least or the CCO seems, at least there'd be in that role quite often, perhaps even more so than the CTO or the CIO sometimes in an organization.
So, yes, I think that's that human capacity to, to translate simplify, et cetera, is very, very important as well.
Kelsey: Michael, I know we talked a little bit about the CCO and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, you know, the CGO and how marketers are being morphed into this role. And, you know, everyone's aware of the shortened tenure of the COO level, and I think that's. CMOs are becoming not as strategic as they used to be.
So what's kind of going on there. How can we stay ahead of the curve and how can we earn back our power as the CMS?
Michael: Right, right. I probably would take some issue with your premise that we're not as strategic as we used to be, because I think it, you know, I, I, that's probably some are some aren't, but you know, it's, it's obviously an evolution, Kelsey, I guess, you know, that we're, we're looking for, but you know, the, [00:11:00] I, I think, I think the.
Of the CMIO, but the job of the marketing function is, is very complex, has become much more complex. And one of the ways in which I think has been a much more complex is this need to sort of orchestrate across multiple touch points, you know? So for a brand to have impact and engage customers it clearly isn't, it never really was, but it clearly isn't through the marketing and the advertising.
Or even some of the close and things like pricing that marketers sometimes control, but you've got a whole host of other touch points that, that, you know, customer service engineering, whatever operations delivery, et cetera, that, that sort of touch that. And I think that already needed to be orchestrated across sometimes functional lines.
And then I, on top of that, I think you had this idea you know, which you're referencing in your question, which is about how. To ensure that the marketing function doesn't sort of get lost in demand generation. Yeah. And I think that's probably what's happened. And again, I'm a big fan of the value and impact of digital marketing, but there [00:12:00] are people who argue that CMOs got lost by chasing the digital shiny object, you know, cause it was measurable and it was performance, you know, and they either sort of stopped doing as much brand building, which has always been.
You know, purview or they sort of lost alignment with the broader growth strategies of, of the company. And, and, you know, that's, what's more needed these days is I, you know, some, some, according it humanized growth, but see CEOs, I think CEOs are looking. And CFOs to their senior leaders to really be a contributor to the broad institutional growth, whether it's, you know, new business models, new business lines, you know, they, they want people who can contribute to that.
And my sense, yeah. Whether it's either the coordination of the revenue function, which is often kind of, what's created chief growth officers, you know, so bringing sales and marketing together, or this broader sense that, you know, if we're going to grow in the world, we need someone focused on growth, [00:13:00] which kind of brings strategy and all these things together.
Or even sometimes you're hearing chief experience officers, which acknowledges that, you know, to manage that consumer experience, you need more than just marketing more. You know, customer care or whatever you need those things in an integrated way. So I think that's what's happening. Obviously it scares the living daylights out of a lot of CMOs and And the, what I call the death knell of the Spencer Stuart survey every year, you know, that rattles the cage a little bit more about how many months do we have left and things like that.
But yeah, I, I, but I think, you know, I think CMOs understand and acknowledge that and, and again, without sort of pushing too hard, that's exactly what this executive masters is trying to do. It's trying to say, look, you have a set of capabilities as the CMO, as the chief communications officer, or, you know, an emerging and emerging.
How do you leverage those to be of greater value at the C-suite level in driving growth for your company? So
Peter: Michael. When you look at incoming students into your program, into your executive masters, [00:14:00] what would you say is the biggest gap you need to. for, for them as they, as they take this leap to the next level.
Michael: Well, you know, I think it actually is very individual, so I can give you some domains and I I'm happy to talk those through, but what we, you know, in conversation, we spoke to several, several folks who we would say we're in the target market, so to speak. And what I would say when I start to summarize all those conversations and like good marketers, we built personas.
And, you know, we really tried to think this through was that each person we spoke to had a. Different a puzzle piece that was missing. Yeah. So I, so I, the image in my mind was this sort of jig, so laid out and there was kind of a puzzle piece that was missing. And so for some, it would be you know, I've, I've been I'm the CMO now of a successful startup, but it's still really, frankly, quite small.
And I'm interested in going into a bigger company and playing that role. You know, what would I [00:15:00] do differently in a bigger company? It could be. I've had a very successful career as a sort of mark comms, communications, brand-oriented marketer. But I really don't understand this world of data and digital and technology, you know, and I need to understand it not to be it, but to manage an integrator, you know, or a lot of PR folks I think are seeing that they're being called upon to sort of integrate more marketing elements into their offerings.
And so they say, all right, I'm a relatively successful PR person here, you know, leading the PR function in the company. But I do aspire to one of those growth roles or combined CMOs CCO roles, which you're seeing a lot going on. You know, like Jonathan attache, I think just that's his title now. IBM is both, you know, so, so, you know, I think that that's another missing puzzle piece.
We hope we're going to bring a global perspective as well. So for some folks who've been more US-based often when they join a larger company, multinational Clary, clearly you'd have to think about global at every level, you know, [00:16:00] cultural Tates and managing distributed teams and all that sorts of.
So that's him. And then, and then I, and then I think sort of very generic thing well, not generic, but perhaps Universal's better word. Cause it's true for everybody is, is that opportunity to really reflect on their leadership and executive style and executive presence and all, all of the things that we know as you advance in your career are more the sorts of things that help you succeed than some of the really finite technical skills.
So that's often I think a war that people hit in their career as you know, I'm very well in the function, but how do I get perceived as a, an executive leader? You know,
Peter: finishing school, right?
Michael: finishing up, but I would hate, hate to be thought of that way. Cause I, you know, when I think about finishing school, I think about, you know, skiing in the Swiss Alps and you know, wearing a fancy clothes or whatever, you know, this is, this will be, you know, tough work, you know, be good, you know, good, fun, engaging.
We've built it for executives, you know? So we're doing sort of the week at the model where you got come in for a few weekends in a [00:17:00] semester and you know, Online everything. So it's not, it's not like showing up for lectures in the morning, but, but but you know, we, we expect people obviously to put a lot into it and the more you put in as they say, the more you get out, but but ma maybe that was your finishing school.
Peter, I don't know, by my mine is much more sort of Rosie.
Peter: Yeah, I, I certainly wasn't skiing in the Alps with fancy clothes for my finishing school. I'll tell you that. The one thing that I was point to when I look at a core skill and often a core skill gap that senior executives have, and it's one of my favorite interview questions. so if ever anyone ever interviews me with me, they'll probably hear this question.
It's
Michael: so Peter, I lost
Peter: ask
Michael: on your question.
Peter: they've sold a complex idea in a new initiative inside a company, basically convinced a company to take on a new investment and do something different. And I think that's one of the things that really Def differentiates senior leaders is the ability to sell an idea and [00:18:00] get a company to make a strategic shift.
If you seen that and And if you have, I mean, how, how do you think about sort of teaching that level of competency to to, to.
Michael: it's actually one of the questions I ask as well in interviews, Peter says that's intriguing. You know, I, I I'll give you, I'll give you some sort of frames perhaps to answer the question. One of the things that I, this comes as much from my time managing and leading teams and leading initiatives that were often, you know, change.
Programs in essence was, and again, not to sound too pretentious here that the Austrian philosopher Schopenhauer was, was quoted quotas as having said that all truth arrives in three stages. First it's ridicule. Second it's resisted. And then finally it's seen as self-evident, you know, and I found that very often in [00:19:00] organizations, you know, you come up with a new idea and the first thing they say is, oh, Michael, with his crazy ideas, you know, you had another one.
Then when they see, you know, you've got some traction and you're making progress, they'll say, oh, well, we can't do that for. Reason a and B and C and D and all that. And then finally, when the idea is implemented and successful, everybody says, oh, well, you know, we were doing that for years. You know, we've always done that.
So I think so. So I think one of the, one of the ways to deal with resistance and change management challenges is, is to have some longer term perspective. Over time, you know, you're going to face these different resistance or you're going to face challenges, but the ultimate, ultimately you can prevail a strong, you know, a good idea supported with passion and, and, and, and insight and evidence and, and, you know, practical feasibility, all that, you know, will ultimately prevail if it's positive to the company. We teach students how to build their professional networks, you know, and inside companies. And and we teach students how to use data and data storytelling through things like, you know, data visualizations, and, [00:20:00] and to really help animate their story and engage. And I, hopefully we teach them too.
And I think the executive masters will be even more time on this to really kind of identify opportunities for growth. And how you, or any new, you know, sort of introductory idea. In fact, we're going to have. At core specifically about some of these pivotal moments, like product launches or even crisis comms, which is sort of, it's the inverse kind of, of what you're, you're saying, like when things go terribly wrong, how do you, how do you manage?
So, you know, I think, I think there are. Quite deliberate things that we know and can teach and the sharing of human experience around these things is also one of the critical things. When you come into a program like the executive masters is you're able to speak to other professionals, professionals in your cohort, but also the guest speakers that we'll have and, you know, CMOs and CCOs that can share openly that experience of how they manage change, move, move things.[00:21:00]
Peter: of the things that you mentioned a concept, Michael, is the idea of, of a timeframe and strategic thinking a little bit like. Term. And I think that is a consistent struggle. I see in organizations these days, because time has sped up for some strange reason in marketing in communications and brand tend to be things. that have a longer term strategic time horizon that you need to think through.
And how, how can we help emerging marketing executive leaders? So thread that needle between doing the urgent in the immediate and the tactical and making sure that there's enough pipeline this quarter and enough customers and revenue, but at the same time, taking on that broad, strategic tectonic shift, they need to IM impact to, to get the company to a new level of brand awareness or a new strategy or something like that.
How do they balance the. [00:22:00]
Michael: Yeah, well, I I'm always, you know, I, I like to think in frameworks and that maybe that's helped me Succeeded in academia somewhat, you know, because they love frameworks. That certainly helped me in consulting with my two by two matrix CS and things like that. But, but, you know, as a prophet Kellogg who I liked very much good Martin might be a Sony.
And he talks about these three horizons of marketing. And, you know, so the, the first horizon being demand generation the second being sort of essentially brand building and the third, he calls thought leadership, which is really. He means in that sense, I'm actually creating a whole new market spaces and you know, the stuff that blue ocean strategy teaches you.
So say if you, you have to start your day, I think to answer your question, Peter, by acknowledging that the role of a CMO and arguably anyone, you know, up and down the chain is across those three horizons and that, you know, Ensure that you define success for yourself and with your CEOs and your senior [00:23:00] partners that you believe the function of marketing can contribute at those three levels.
Yeah. So you have to sort of be in the fight, let's say and you have to acknowledge that that's the game you're playing that the game you're playing is not just, you know, the day-to-day demand gen. You know market marketing or, or creating advertising that sometime is the reductive form of marketing.
So that is number one is to acknowledge that. And then the second obviously is to get smart about the different stages and how those are done. Case studies are wonderful. You know, they get derided a little bit, but we use them in the industry as well. You know, where you can read great case studies, you hear there's so much wonderful content like you have on your podcast where you're talking to people who've been through these things.
There's a lot of ways to educate yourself about, you know, how to build a brand. That one obviously has been covered in a hundred textbooks, so books and, but you know, also about strategy and all the, the new thinking around new forms of business model. The debate, you know, that we had [00:24:00] recently not debate, but you know what we teach students about the difference between what they call the platform and the pipeline, you know, that as, just as new ways to thinking, or we we've used design thinking in, in, in our programs to encourage students to think differently about solutions, you know, the business model, canvas, whatever the things, whatever the tools and frameworks or the case studies that you can educate yourselves.
We'll help you build the capabilities you need for each of those horizons of marketing, but they are different. I guess that's the key thing. I think they are. They are different skillsets that make you a good strategist and growth leader, then make you a great, you know, demand gen marketer.
They're all complimentary. And they build on each other, but, but you know, you have to sort of shift into a new gear, I guess, maybe it's the way to think about it. I don't know if that's responsive to your question, but it does feel to me like sometimes people, in fact, one of the surveys, you know, when we were going through the analysis, building the degree, I think it was a Deloitte survey actually, of CEO's and then they surveyed CMOs and only [00:25:00] 5% of the CEOs said they felt that we're any good at this stuff.
You know, the strategy growth stuff, which was very sad. You know, I think we, we sort of beat ourselves up a little bit. And, and, and, or that sort of slightly negative noise is, is, is too loud, frankly. These days I think. Complish CMOs that I happened to be at the marketing hall of fame. The AMA New York does their annual one and Antonio Lucio was honored.
And I think those were the first words he said, it's like, let's quit beating ourselves up. You know, you know, marketing is awesome basically and went on to talk about trust and some other very important things. But I thought that was a really good rallying, you know, it was a good note to hear from a senior leader, obviously.
Peter: It's it's amazing if you think of the, the breadth of skills required to be an effective CMO these days, and it's, it's similar to what the CEO role has gone through. You can, you can point to any senior executive role. I think they've gotten more and more complex. Time, but, but certainly [00:26:00] with the rapid emergence of digital with changes in the way the world is happening with, you talked about trust and privacy, which has had the CMO of one trust on a couple of weeks ago, talking about the whole idea of the evolution of trust and organizations.
There are lots and lots of new frontiers that a senior marketing communications professional needs to understand. So one thing I've seen change more than almost anything else in, in the last decade or so. Is the role and you specifically focus on communications. It is, is the role of the communications professionals specifically within the domain of marketing and the idea of the fact that you used to just sign up your PR agency and then just go through the motions, just like you have to hired your ad agency and you went through the motions.
And how do you think about the role of. Public relations and media relations in, in this [00:27:00] world where everything has changed so much in the way that we can meet.
Michael: Yeah, well, it's a question I give a lot of thought to, you know, partly because of. To this current role the university more from the marketing side, but I am responsible for programs that come into PR and communications, strategic communications, and, and also, you know, it just a fun fact, the very first academic college course taught on public relation.
So core public relations was taught almost 100 years ago by ed Bernays, who many people know the sort of quote unquote, the father of modern PR the father of PR at NYU. So the very, very first college course in public relations for taught at NYU in a hundred, almost a hundred years ago. So, you know, it's in our blood, so to speak academic area.
And I have the great privilege to work with colleagues here, including Jennifer Scott, who joined us from having been the managing director of Ogilvy PR and the head of thought leadership. So she teaches in our program. Now it's actually what a lot of our faculty is [00:28:00] like. She's a full-time faculty colleague.
And we talk about this a lot. I think the key thing it to answer your question is that the role of trust and corporate reputation You know, the position and profile brands and companies take in the world with respect to you know, social issues or the climate et cetera, is, is much more significant today than, and significant in the sense, but significant to the brand, you know, in the classic way we think about it also significant to the corporation and the expectations people have on the corporation than it has ever been in the past.
And it's probably true to say that. Colleagues in PR have a lot more historical experience in thinking about how to manage and develop and grow reputation and build trust across a number of different publics as, as the PR profession likes to call them. The marketing folks have traditionally. Yeah.
So it's not to say that that form of relationship building hasn't happened in marketing, [00:29:00] but, you know, PR clearly has, has been giving that a lot more thought for a lot longer. And so I think the, you know, the skills and expertise of, of people classically trained in public relations or, or strategic communications broadly is, is, is more significant now than it ever has been before.
And you only have to look. You know, the F the famous trust barometer from Edelman, you know, to see that individuals, whether employees or customers are looking increasingly towards companies to provide the sort of moral leadership or you know practical leadership in many cases that are left as gaps by.
The political system dysfunctioning or just our inability to sort of align resources as a society. So, you know, I'm, I'm not arguing the pros and cons of capitalism or the role of politics or anything. I'm just saying that, you know, increasingly that is an expectation upon companies to act in that way and to act with trust at the heart of [00:30:00] what they do.
And so I think, you know, how we show up in the world, what we say. The messages we deliver across a broad range of, of, of, of audiences and stakeholders, which is the other, you know, sort of popular term is very significant. And a thing that marketers, you know, obviously need to think much more about gain gets you out of that zone of demand gen and into some of these other zones of, you know, building brands and, and thought leadership and, and building, you know, sort of sustainable growth at a whole different level.
Peter: Yeah, it, it seems like there, there are a whole bunch of prerequisites, of course. For a CMO for a company in general, for them to be able to be in the world and market to customers in the world. And one is sort of this, this bedrock of trust and reputation. And of course, in, in a, in a world where. People are increasingly skeptical, skeptical of any messages that they hear because the, those things that they may have previously trusted, you know, [00:31:00] the people like to bash the media, putting air quotes around that these days. But any kind of, even historically trusted source is now. Greeted with significant skepticism for the first time.
So building that trust over a period of time, I think is an incredibly important thing. And in you, you can lose that trust in a nanosecond, of course if, if you, if you violate if you violate those things and so if you think about if you think about the. If I was to prioritize my effort as a, as a CMO or CCO in for, for the next two or three years.
What, what are the biggest couple of initiatives that you would focus on or encourage your students to focus on? For for, for their organizations is it a brand and message? Is it is it a framework for demand? Is it a data strategy is a trust. Is it completely [00:32:00] unique to their environment?
You know, what are your.
Michael: Well, you know, I think it's somewhat unique to your environment and more importantly, where you are in the stage of growth and development, you know, including your market, your capabilities, you know, some organizations have, you know, very deep creative talent and and others have, you know, extraordinary digital talent, et cetera.
So I think it is somewhat driven clearly, but not, not to Dodge the question at all, because I think it's a fabulous question. I mean, I do think that there are some, some universals which have sort of been accelerated or amplified in the last few years. One is a much more holistic view of the consumer.
And one that is as we teach at NYU human centered and data-driven yes. So the idea that we keep ding dogging as an old, you know, as a, as an industry between data and creativity or mathemagic, or poetry and plumbing or whatever, you know, sort of duality you want to pick for the day, it it's sort of a nonsense argument because it's [00:33:00] both, it's clearly both it's human centered and data-driven.
You know so this idea of bracing, the embracing the full humanity and understanding, you know, what makes consumers tick at a, at a, at a, at a very deep level, I think is always central to good marketing companies and the source by which they will grow, you know, but it's also clear to me that, that we, you know, companies need to now understand better.
Influence of global and the globalization and I, where I think about that is not the classic model of, you know, how do we export product to another country? I mean, that's already, you know, More than five decades old, but it's this idea of what we sometimes call the globalization of influence and innovation.
So it could be, you know, what you do in another country with respect to your factory and how you manufacture has an enormous impact on your reputation in the U S you know, or it could be the fact that. There is significant innovation around e-commerce and robotics [00:34:00] and a whole different social media platform in China that is ultimately informing how we will do things, you know, or company.
When I say we, we could be Italy or we could be Argentina, but it's this idea that those ideas though, the, the, the weld the weld, the source of innovation and. And the source of influence and impact on your brand can come from anywhere in the world. And you need to embrace that, you know, so that's the sort of, now maybe that model for some looks more like, you know, national versus regional, you know, since idea like it can't all just be done from corporate headquarters.
How do you embrace a much broader set of, you know, sort of cultures and practices and things like that. And then I, I guess, I guess the third is around Defining more clearly and it, and I think this is just a healthy exercise. What the nature of the purpose and commitment of the company is centrally that, that does seem like a very healthy exercise that companies need to do.
Marketing teams [00:35:00] need to live. And there'll be central to and that includes obviously aspects that we talked about in terms of reputation and, and what issues you'll take a stand on, et cetera. Foundationally, I think a lot of, of what will drive marketers capacity to contribute in the future is around innovation.
And that that perhaps is an area to explore even more. That it is part of what we're teaching. We recently brought in a wonderful new faculty member, Barrio Gordon, who was a executive at Unilever and worked at Kantar before that. And it has specialties around innovation and, you know, really exploring.
New ways to grow new, you know, sort of, not, not sort of, not sort of just hacking against the optimization of, you know, digital marketing programs, but really exploring. Brand new ways to grow and think about growth and, you know, broadly called innovation. That would seem to me in a very powerful project for marketers to take on and embrace.
And [00:36:00] again, not just think about, oh, well, that's product innovation, or is that, you know, really, I think about it more as sort of business model redesign or as we mentioned before, Blue ocean strategy teaches us is, you know, really thinking differently about market spaces and creating new market spaces.
That would be powerful. You know, if we, as marketeers were very much part of that,
Peter: So in other words, the too long don't read version of this is that there's a really broad portfolio that marketing communications executives need to consider. And it sounds like That if they want to prepare themselves for success in there at the right stage of their career, they ought to think about your program.
So believe it or not, we're we're already coming up to the end of our time here, Michael. And before we get into Kelsey will ask us the last question. Tell, tell people how they can learn more about your program in it may be who should consider exploring it a little.
Michael: Yeah, well as a practical [00:37:00] matter, you want to go to S sps.nyu.edu. And look for the executive masters in marketing and strategic communications. And I will supply some details for your listeners, which I'm sure will go in the show notes. And and or they can write to me, I mean, send me an email.
If you're a care giving out my email on the on the podcast. It's michael.dot. At nyu.edu. So M I C H a E L dot D I a M O N D nyu.edu. And I'd be delighted to hear from folks you know, responses, reactions, and obviously interest in the program. But the web has a lot of the data and the information and all the, all the very practical things you need.
And if you don't make headway there, then please get in touch with me.
Kelsey: Well, I'm going to wrap it up with the last question, but this has been such a wealth of knowledge, Michael, really excited that we had you on the show today. But what advice would you give to those that are CMOs or aspiring to be one-time? Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, well, I would say [00:38:00] I think the most important thing is this idea of staying. You know, I often talk about intellectual curiosity, but stay curious is number one and, and have a bias for action. So I think that's the other key thing for marketers. At some point, you've got to just decide, move on and, and, but most important is to think about impact.
And I, you know, and I say this a little bit as someone who came from the research and insights world at some point is, you know, really thinking about actionable insights that have impact, you know, so stay, stay here. Bias to action thinking always about impact and you know, that that should be a good, a good sort of model for how to move forward.
Kelsey: Love that. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Michael, make sure to join the next Simo and plan out on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you have any ideas for topics or guests, you can email us at the next CMO at planet. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks, Michael.
