Season Finale: Why Don’t CEOs and Marketers Get Along?
The executive rift that kills companies
We’ve reached the Season Two finale, folks, and this one is a doozie.
The relationship between Founders/CEOs and their heads of marketing is…not good. To use the term “broken” doesn’t fully describe their current relationship status, because, well, do you remember a time when it was healthy to begin with?
You know the story: CEOs don’t understand marketing, so they micromanage their marketing leaders, into poor performance. Meanwhile, marketing leaders struggle to show value to their CEO, because much of their work isn’t tied directly to revenue and they are having to teach marketing as they are reporting to the CEO on performance.
I remember my first week in a marketing leadership role at a startup, my CEO dragged me into an ad hoc, hour-long debate about the ROI of webinars. We didn’t have any planned, and I had a long list of tasks that would impact company objectives, but the CEO was passionate about the topic and wanted to engage. It didn’t go well. The more I tried to explain the benefits of webinars in general, the more heated my CEO got.
By the end, I was shaking from the confrontational encounter, which happed on display for the rest of the team in our open office.
So, friends, we’re getting into the muck in our Season Two finale, sharing stories from our experiences working with founders/CEOs in-house and agency-side over the last decade. We’ll hit on a few themes:
The importance of shared language and understanding of metrics
How communication and trust impact the CEO/head of marketing relationship
The balance between brand and funnel-building initiatives
Why CEOs and founders should step back from leading marketing departments
The spicy takes are abundant in this one—proceed with caution. 😉 We’re sending off season 2 with a bang. We’ll be back in September 2023 with a few surprises!
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Gratitude Overload
This is the part where we share our infinite thanks to the geniuses behind Share Your Genius. Don’t Say Content wouldn’t be possible without their support and creativity. When you’re ready to pick up the mic and launch your podcast, reach out to Rachel and Katie (and tell them we sent you).