Drew Neisser - CMO Whisperer, Renegade Thinker, CEO of Renegade.com

Posts by Drew Neisser

Yes, TV Advertising Is Still Effective

January 14, 2019

When Jonathan Beamer took over as CMO of Monster nine months ago, he found a brand that, despite “ten years of neglect” from both a product and marketing perspective, “was still one of the strongest in the job search category.” He credits this residual strength to Monster’s original insight, “that people desperately want fulfilling work,” which remains as true today...

The Key to Your Brand’s Success: Highlight Its Problems

January 10, 2019

The other day, I was speaking with storytelling guru and “father of modern branding,” David Aaker. One of the best ways to create a “signature story” for your brand, he said, is to magnify the problem that your product or service addresses. As David’s advice was kicking around my cranium, I came across the story of cloud backup and data...

How to Tackle High Expectations for New CMOs

January 7, 2019

From the moment a new chief marketing officer starts a job, the expectations for improved marketing performance are outrageously high. The CEO is looking for simultaneous upticks in brand metrics and demand generation. The head of sales wants leads that almost close themselves. The HR chief is expecting instant improvements in Glassdoor ratings and an influx of highly qualified recruits....

Why a CMO Needs More Than One Job

December 17, 2018

You don’t get to be a CMO by being afraid of adding yet another responsibility to your plate. Successful marketing programs often touch so many aspects of a business from customer experience to employee recruiting, investor relations to product development, that it is easy to imagine your above average CMO already being stretched beyond capacity. So, it is with some...

Going High-Touch in a High-Tech World: Q&A with Zoom CMO Janine Pelosi

December 10, 2018

Just about 50 years ago, futurist Alvin Toffler predicted that as our lives became increasingly dominated by technology, we’d feel an increased desire for human interactions. This “high-tech/high-touch” phenomenon is embodied in the rise of social networks, both of the virtual and physical variety (just look at the increase in associations and trade show attendance). It also helps explain the...

Hey B2B Marketer, You’re Doing Content All Wrong

December 3, 2018

There is probably a point in one’s life when you stop having the dream about showing up late and unprepared for your final exam. I’m still waiting. And it doesn’t help when cognoscenti like Brent Adamson, principal executive advisor at Gartner, challenge the very definition of marketing—let alone the way most business-to-business brands approach the customer acquisition process. Of course,...

CMOs, Take a Walk on the Sales Side

November 26, 2018

Despite all the advancements in lead generation, lead scoring and automated lead nurturing, the age-old tension between marketing and sales is alive and well. CMOs still complain that sales can’t keep to the script and close the deal, while sales directors still complain that many of the leads they get from marketing are useless garbage because the targeting and messaging...

The Business of Vacations

November 19, 2018

Ensconced in the luxurious observation lounge of a brand-new 168,000-ton ship, Meg Lee, chief marketing officer of Norwegian Cruise Lines, greeted me with smiles and a champagne glass. This demonstration of the notion that travel should be fun ended with my first question about her definition of marketing. She responded: “filling ships.” “My job is to fill a fleet of...

Put Down Your Net and Start Spearfishing

November 12, 2018

As one of the founders of Marketo, Jon Miller helped make marketing automation a mainstream approach for b-to-b companies. And in his role as chief marketing officer back in 2011, few were better at creating content to drive inbound leads. In our interview back then, Miller noted that “our marketing team generates 80% of the sales pipeline” and that Marketo was...

Marketing Needs to Be More Than a Coat of Paint

November 8, 2018

It’s inevitable that a new chief marketing officer will launch a new campaign within 18-months of taking the marketing helm. In many cases, this new work will be no more effective than previous messages, simply because it’s like a new coat of paint on a rickety old house. However, when the new campaign is combined with an innovative product or...