What It’s Like for CMOs to Adopt a Little “A”* Agile Mindset?
By: Steven Keith
Tags: CMO, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

image via Ken Garduno

If you’re a CMO, or within a box or two of her on the org chart, chances are you’re looking for a few new ways to achieve more outcomes in a shorter number of hours across a smaller group of talent. If that’s the case, I have an idea for you.

While working with a handful of CMOs concerned with the mounting pressures of modern marketing (omni-channel awareness and a deep buyer-based, engagement style of digital marketing) I’ve noticed some consistent patterns. I’ve noticed that some CMOs have people on their teams who are recommending a patchwork of semi-agile processes along with: a host of other current (read: trendy) marketing approaches and strategies such as: lean marketing, move more to the cloud, harness the power of data, measure more meaningful outcomes, automate!

While every single one of these elements can be prioritized as important, none of them really embody the holistic mission of modern CMOs — on their own.

Not surprisingly, as stated above, the most consistent pattern at the top of a CMO’s list is their need to accomplish more incrementally positive outcomes in less time with fewer dollars. Sounds simple enough, and it also sounds a little like agile in some respects. But not the Big “A” agile you’re probably thinking of. Let’s break this down.

accomplish more + do it in less time + use fewer resources = success

My experience is that to the CMO:

Accomplish more = Creating and activating more strategic marketing assets (content, campaigns) through social traction, listening programs, channel penetration and experience consistency, etc. that is moving some needle in a positive direction.

Do it in less time = Creating, activating, and seeing more positive outcomes within smarter and more compressed cycles all in shorter time frames.

Using fewer resources = Creating smaller, more autonomously effective teams who manage to get more work done through design thinking and rapid prototyping squads operating in more of a “learn fast / fail fast” laboratory setting.

Together, this is what you could call “Little A” agile.

“Little A” agile, as opposed to “Big A” agile, simply means faster, more responsive, smarter and more nimble all at the same time — not the “Big A” agile that is the canonized, process-oriented development religion. The Little “A” agile is more expansive and embodies more.

“Little A” agile addresses the need to accomplish more in less time with fewer resources by adopting intelligent speed and accountability for more meaningful outcomes.

I believe the success of “Little A” agile for modern CMOs depends on intelligent speed and accountability. A CMO’s version of auto racing’s “zero to sixty” is “information to outcome.” How fast can we move from information (data/numbers, research, customer usage analytics, etc.) to outcome — and win?

Intelligent Speed — moving (individually or as a team) deliberately faster to increase the pace at which incremental learning outcomes can positively influence ultimate outcomes.

Example: setting up a marketing automation system via Marketo and testing several micro campaigns all in a few days to see how it works and how you need to tweak it.

Accountability — the belief that the individual roles and their interconnection to adjacent peer roles can be more effective if people in those roles embody more (individual and collective) ownership of ultimate outcomes as opposed to incremental parts of a process.

Example: while Jeff’s job is to be an SEO specialist, he is jumping in to help Heather, the information architect make some changes that will allow Terry’s content team to produce more conversions on their e-commerce website that Mike, over in IT, is responsible for.

What makes these people different is that there is a sense of sharing or blending of responsibilities despite the rigor of their job description in service of a bigger picture.

Through a CMO’s eyes, Little “A” agile means powerful, quick marketing reflexes in the form of strategic content and messages in the shortest amount of time from people and teams capable of seeing and acting on the bigger picture.

CMOs have to do this both in a carefully planned content arc across significant paid and owned media channels AND in a near chaotic, unplanned, totally reactionary social environment and make it seem like it’s all a carefully orchestrated marketing system — all at the same time. It means maintaining dual paths of rapid content to keep the bases covered and get more meaningful work done.

Path A. This is the more planned, editorial process of following a content strategy, creating premium content, distributing it through planned channels with strategic cadence and having a little more manageability and predictability in the outcomes. GE’s long-running Ecomagination campaign is a terrific example of this.

Path B. This is all about being strategically reflexive and in the moment. Reacting in a way that reflects the brand’s virtues, values and expression in mostly unplanned circumstances. Think Oreo’s fantastically-timed super bowl tweet, after the lights went out: “You can still dunk in the dark.” It was a well-planned media play because they were ready to pounce regardless of what happened. That’s Little “A” agile.

Now think, for a second, about the risks CMOs must manage.

Imagine for a second being responsible for your brand’s expression thrown into today’s attention-bankrupt hurricane of choices and sentiments.

These marketing executives, their teams and their agencies have to stimulate audiences proactively, and remain perpetually at the ready to react via social channels. They have to make their audiences think, discuss, react and hopefully share in an environment that is as unpredictable as it has ever been. They have to remain adaptively compelling in exchange for likes, retweets, links, shares, images, comments — all in addition to their day job which is to prove that the money they need to meet this new demand is making money attributable to their actions. For a growing number of CMOs, this IS becoming more of their day job. One false move and it could have a negative multi-million dollar impact with one “bashtag” on Twitter. Ask JP Morgan, Quantas, McDonalds and Home Depot.

Not so easy. They’re under pressure to be everything, everywhere a potential customer might be and then some. And somehow hope they can engage a relatively unknown audience without offending anyone.

A little more about “Little A” agile content and how it can help manage these risks:

The Internet and it’s restless users have forced a shift in the way companies engage with people (consumers) before, during and after the sale. We all know that. But what we stop thinking about is how this pressure is persistently applied. As CMOs, we cannot avoid reacting to this. It affects the way we have to think about content and its ability to engage. It affects the way we have to measure success, process content, streamline processes, think more modularly, manage distribution and, ultimately, drive growth through content.

Engagement is now the sum of how well brands can hand people value, quickly and creatively packaged into experiences that make people feel good about that engagement.

How they do it is by using intelligent content that’s relevant now to those who matter most.

CMOs are now thinking about how quickly they can plan, create and distribute the right content in a fraction of the time they’d like.

They have to maximize the opportunities to put something of value (entertaining, funny, useful or nostalgic) in front of people who will “pollinate” on behalf of the brand, for free — and in a way that makes them feel good about engaging. And they have to prove that the sum of these actions is strategic for the brand and contributing to the bottom line.

They’re also thinking about how to organize to increase their ability to respond in modern market time. How can they perpetually reduce their “information to outcome” time and gain enough consistent positives to chart meaningful wins.

To increase their odds of becoming more adaptive, more agile, more successful and more deliberate, many brands are becoming their own media companies and in-house publishers.

This helps them persistently mine their corporate knowledge shafts for better stories, smarter applications of their products and services, interesting and entertaining tangents that reflect positively on their brands. And most importantly, many would argue that they have to do this faster and better than their competition to maintain the ever-critical first mover advantage. But is that even possible for them? In which case, they have to find another battleground upon which to compete. Maybe the best battleground for some is instead more relevant and timely.

Agile content means building journalistic/publishing and broadcasting abilities so CMOs can figure out what content to share, stories to tell and better and faster (or more relevant and timely) ways to generate the greatest possible response.

When you talk to executives in depth about Little “A” agile applied specifically to content, the first thing that comes to mind is quality production of content, more quickly. For savvy CMOs, agile content becomes so much more than quality production. It’s more about making sure you’re applying a fundamental understanding of people and their considerations to your process: and allowing that to influence not just how we create content, but how we make it play in the most engaging way within its best environment before the opportunity is lost or taken away.

That’s what it’s like for CMOs to adopt a Little “A” agile mindset.

*Little “A” agile is a term coined by Centerline.net’s John Lane, as far as I can tell.