That doesn't happen all too often for agency executives. Yes, we meet with CEOs and often present to them.
But, typically our plans, programs and campaigns are thoroughly vetted and approved by their communications and marketing heads well before such a greeting ever takes place.
So, when I have an opportunity to spend any significant time and find out what makes a
Fortune 500 CEO tick, I really try to take full advantage of it.
And, just the other day this happened. One of our newer clients is a start up. The company's founder and CEO just recently spent a number of years running a $5 billion financial services company (which we also represented.)
Now, with his new enterprise in startup mode, we found ourselves trading knowledge in a way that I never thought would happen. He's just learning to be an entrepreneur for the first time and is anxious to make the right decisions out of the gate (I guess from my mistakes.) And, I'm extremely interested in hearing his views on what in my little world of communications, PR and marketing actually matters to the leader of a large, international company.
Boy, did I get an earful that I won't forget anytime soon.
Let's start with the topic of something near and dear to my heart – measurement. This client is a financial/ operations guy. Most people assume that number crunchers always want everything measured. More to the point, the belief is that they need to see what we call ROI (return on investment). Did a $100 spent on PR bring back $200 in value?
Not surprisingly, he confirmed that this is important. However, he threw out a big but..."But, too many communicators are measuring things that I don't care about. And, most of them feel they have to show a return so much quicker than is realistic. So, the result is that costly measurement programs, that offer me very little insight into whether a campaign actually could work, are presented to me. As a result, we waste money and I lose respect for them."
He also thinks it’s fascinating that communicators are typically very artful in presenting ideas and campaigns. Yet, they fumble all over themselves with ugly, much too lengthy PowerPoint metrics presentations. These boring meetings provide way too much analytical information, yet very little prescriptive strategies into how the program can be improved. That is one of his big pet peeves.
His next topic for me was a good one. He referred to it as, "Stop squeezing your square peg into my round hole."
That means much of his experience with professional marketers is based on them pushing (or selling) in services, products, disciplines and even campaigns that just don't really fit into his business needs. The problem is that many communicators think alike and try to solve business challenges with the same tool from the overly used tool box rather than dig extra deep into the business issue at hand and create a new tool that really has a chance to succeed.
He cited as an over simplified example the ad agency executive (who used to work for him) who thinks that to penetrate deep into consumer markets, a full blown ad campaign is a must. What he never really understood is that the trust issues (or lack thereof) within his particular industry are so egregious, that commercial messages are largely unbelievable and can work against a company if not handled correctly.
I had the fortune of asking a number of other topical questions. And, his responses were equally hard hitting (and most definitely welcomed.)
I hope to have many more discussions like this in the near future. This type of one-on-one market research is really invaluable. It allows agency executives to "stop drinking their own Kool-Aid" and conduct real account planning based on what the ultimate client really cares about. Because nothing else really matters.