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Dear CMO: You know how hard it is to explain to your mother what it is that you do. She pretty much makes it up when she explains it to her friends. Apparently all of her friends’ kids have easy jobs to remember, like “doctor”. No, sonny-boy does something altogether too complex to describe the […]

Dear CMO: Isn’t ‘up and to the right’ brand positioning a great place to be? We all love getting higher prices for our stuff, making more gross profit, and basking in the adoration of our captive markets. All this, of course, is predicated on the rather huge assumption that your customer base agrees with your […]

Dear CMO: Using focus groups to answer questions is asking them to perform an unnatural act. Like asking a classroom of pre-schoolers to sit and listen, asking a group of PTA parent volunteers to check their egos at the door, or asking your family to just get along during the holidays, groups of seemingly normal […]

Dear CMO: I recall a thought-provoking paper written by a head of marketing some years ago describing the state of the art in the science of retail. The writer described how in order to drive increased revenue per consumer they were studying consumer foot traffic patterns as they moved through the store. They did this […]

“The revolutionary war is a war of the masses” Mao Tse-Dong “A journey of a thousand li begins with a single power point presentation” (unknown) Dear CMO: Warfare is an overused business cliché. We run campaigns, launch flanker brands, have our ‘war room’ in the back where it smells like Lysol, and every once in […]