The CMO’s Perspective on Innovation: An Interview with Spiral Marketing

Lisa Nirell CMO Innovation

What are the innovation opportunities and challenges today’s marketing leaders face?

I was honored to be asked back for a second interview with Spiral Marketing, a podcast that helps current and future business leaders, marketers and entrepreneurs elevate their brand. (Their first return guest!)

Host Karl Boehm and I discussed the recently released 3rd Annual Energize Growth CMO Report, From Fledgling to Falcon: How CMOs Make the Leap from Order Taker to Innovator. This survey of 100 global marketing leaders uncovered the biggest innovation opportunities and challenges among CMO communities.

The consistent trouble that marketing leaders face is that even though they have the title VP of Marketing or CMO, many organizations treat them like order-takers at a drive-through window.

This behavior is frustrating to marketing leaders who want to escape this dysfunctional mindset that downplays their true potential. They don’t want to be order-takers. They want to be strategic market-makers and innovators. They don’t want to fix yesterday’s problems. They want to be known as the people who design the future.

In the interview, I share where this is happening, where it isn’t, and what the roadblocks to marketing innovation are. Some of the insights discussed include:

  • The definition of innovation—the ability to apply creativity to an existing relationship, program or process in order to reach a new and improved state
  • The pitfalls of confusing innovation with problem-solving (which many companies and marketers do)
  • Why all our frenzy about mobile learning and mobile advertising may not apply to many members of the C-suite (this one may just make you re-think your mobile marketing strategy)
  • The surprising “70% / 8% Rule”

We also discussed some key takeaways for marketing teams and entrepreneurs, including:

  • Why leaders who try to go it alone fail at innovation, and the importance of developing change champions within your organization
  • How to create a culture of experimentation, to allow innovation to germinate and create new seeds of change

I invite you to take 13 minutes and listen to the interview here.

If you haven’t already, I also encourage you to download the CMO Innovation Report to see the results for yourself. You’ll receive exclusive marketing innovation tools, as well as a 3-minute survey to gauge your innovation readiness.

Copyright 2015, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.

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