Chief Marketing Officers at Work

By: Josh Steimle

Narrated by: DJ Holte

Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

This book contains 29 exclusive, in-depth interviews with chief marketing officers like Jeff Jones of Target, Linda Boff of GE, Brian Kenny of the Harvard Business School, Trish Mueller of The Home Depot, and Seth Farbman of Spotify.

This book provides a fly-on-the-wall perspective on what it's like to be a CMO and will help C-level executives, agency owners, marketing team members, and others who interface and collaborate with marketing departments to understand how marketing drives growth at both startup and enterprise levels, and how marketing has moved from art to science. Trends in digital marketing, analytics, and marketing automation have pushed marketing to adopt data-driven approaches that would make a CFO's head swim. Marketing increasingly overlaps with business functions that were previously viewed as separate and distinct like sales, HR and recruiting, customer service, operations, and technology. This change in the status quo requires individuals in these roles to better understand how marketing works and how it can help them achieve their objectives, and the interviews in this book deliver those insights.

©2016 Apress (P)2016 Joshua J Steimle

Eye Opening and Helpful

What did you love best about Chief Marketing Officers at Work?

I fell in to the role of CMO at our company as we were growing from start up to mid-size business. I've been in the role for a couple of years now and we've continued to grow but I could never shake the feeling that I really had no idea at all what I was doing. I didn't come from a marketing background and I didn't have any training or experience in marketing. I've always wondered what CMO's at the big companies do every day and what am I not doing? CMO's at work gave me a glimpse in to their world. It helped me to relax and understand that there isn't a set path that anyone is following. Some of the CMO's interviewed were similar to me and had landed in their roles from varied backgrounds.

It was great to hear how they organized teams. It was great hearing about some of the things they were focused on and what worried them. It was a relief to hear from these established professionals that they have the same struggles and that the problems they are trying to tackle are the same ones we all face.

in short, the book was an eye opening relief. I am so glad I found this book. It has changed my outlook on my role. I highly recommend this for anyone who is new in the CMO role or for those hoping to get in to that role one day in the future.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Listening to the CMO from Quiznos. Hearing her talk about the importance of the relationship between the CMO and Operations connected with me. It's an area of struggle for me.

Book needed better marketing

This the story of how major marketing leaders view and accomplish their work. I gave the book a lower score for a couple of reasons. First the editors should have used female voices for the female leaders. It would have made for a better listen. Second only a couple of CMO mentioned the importance of product and the value proposition of what they were marketing. I realize it’s all about channels, messaging and distribution but product quality needs to be discussed and it will ultimately determine success and failure. Book was too long to many stories of the same “I do this and this” and not much new creativity. Certainly nothing in depth about struggles, challenges or failures.

Good stories, a bit conflicting

I thought the insights were good but any time you get 20+ people to give their opinions on things there's going to be conflicting advice. Overall I enjoyed the listen and it's cool to hear from such high level marketers.

Great insights from marketing executives

This book groups a couple dozen of interviews with CMO of large companies where they talk about personal career, marketing industry in general, philosophy on how to build and run teams, etc.
great format. Similar questions are asked across interviews so it is possible to compare on CMO To another. The part I appreciated the most was when they talk about their path to executive level; which school they went to, first jobs and their whole career path. Also insightful is to know how marketing teams are organized.

Highly recommended reading if you want to learn how marketing executives think and how marketing teams work

A bit too repetitive

Some interviews were insightful but it become too repetitive after few interviews. I think author missed a grand slam opportunity to add one final chapter to reflect on all these interviews and provide a vision of future and his perspective

Super Insightful Book Into Mindsets of Marketers

If you could sum up Chief Marketing Officers at Work in three words, what would they be?

Informative, Insightful, Fresh

Any additional comments?

I highly recommend this book to anyone who's in marketing. You learn much more about how these successful marketers think which is highly valuable.

Insight from the front lines.

I found this audio book both interesting and informative. Marketing has undergone a total transformation in recent years.

You can read or listen to any number of academic books on marketing. Few would provide the insight into the industry as a whole, a very broad insight, that you will get from listening to this book.

Awesome book

I enjoyed the interviews of every CMO.

Listening to their journey gave me confidence to keep going in my journey. I personally don’t know any close marketing professionals.

This book has help me connect with CMOs I’m LinkedIn.