For the past couple of years I’ve been active in an up-and-coming CMO-only professional group called The CMO Club. It’s simply one of the best marketing executive groups I’ve encountered, so I thought I would pass along the tip. It was started by Pete Krainik, a former CMO himself of M&M Mars, Avaya, and DoubleClick, with the intent of keeping it CMO-centric, vendor free and focused on high-value peer-to-peer sharing.
CMO Opinions on The CMO Club
Pete treks around the country hosting local CMO-only dinners with great conversations and guest speakers. There is a social networking site with increasingly good content and the dinner schedule, but the real action is interpersonal at the dinners and bi-annual leadership summits.
The next CMO Leadership Summit is coming up in San Francisco on November 13th and 14th and yours truly will be orchestrating a breakout session focused on the unique challenges of the Startup CMO (had to be a plug right?) The summit is an investment at $995, but for nearby CMOs there are upcoming dinners right before in Orange County 10/19, San Diego 10/20, and Bay Area 10/21, so you can decide for yourself if it is for you (dinners are a more modest investment…about $100).
Here is the session description….anyone following my Startup Musings series will find the angle familiar. Hope to see you there!
So You’re a Startup CMO, Now What?
Whether by choice or by chance, CMOs find themselves in startups for many reasons: to follow a dream, to strike it rich, career change or simply as the victim of economic circumstances. Whether you are coming into it from a fortune 500 company or right out of B-School the creative, managerial and leadership challenges are unique and if you’ve never done it before, there are lot’s of ways to fail. This session will tackle trials and tribulation of the startup CMO and provide a open forum to share experiences from the trenches, lessons learned and secrets of success. Topics covered will include gaining leverage through creativity, getting stuff done on a shoestring, building something from nothing, managing rapid growth, budgeting when cash is king, overcoming a technical handicap, making yourself essential, developing relationships with the board, how to choose the right startup, and managing career transitions.
Lots of Smiling CMOs at the last CMO Summit in NYC May 2009