Eighty percent of CEOs responding to a global survey admitted that they don’t trust their marketing departments, saying they believe marketing team members don’t have business credibility and are too disconnected from the financial realities of their companies.
But Denise Kohnke, who has worked 25 years in marketing and directed brand development for more than 100 organizations, thinks the opposite is true. She says it is CEOs who are too disconnected from their marketing departments and don’t understand how they can help grow companies.
“The truth that CEOs must embrace is that marketing is their best friend,” says Kohnke, founder and CEO of the marketing firm House United LLC (thehouseu.com) and author of All of the Other Marketing Books Are Crap (www.smartcrap.com). “If you’re a CEO, stop doing it yourself and buy your marketing department some beers, then get out of the way.
“The relationship a CEO has to marketing should be stronger than any other departmental relationship because it’s marketing that does the heavy lifting of pulling an organization forward.
Kohnke offers four tips to help CEOs communicate better with their marketing team and give it the kind of support it needs:
“When done well,” Kohnke says, “marketing will make a CEO look great – like a 40-year-old Richard Gere walking into a boardroom with a $20,000 custom suit and a briefcase full of million-dollar ideas. It’s all presentation and framing conversations to boards, customers, non-customers and employees.
About Denise Kohnke
Denise Kohnke, author of All of the Other Marketing Books Are Crap (www.smartcrap.com), is founder and CEO of the marketing firm House United LLC. (thehouseu.com) Her book is packed with astute advice delivered with edgy, sharp-witted humor. Kohnke has directed brand development for more than 100 organizations in her 25-plus years in advertising and marketing. She was the strategist behind the 2012 Effie award-winning campaign "No One Deserves To Die" for Lung Cancer Alliance.
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