I love the marketing profession, and watching our community members build healthier companies and lives. Why? Because marketing leadership combines head and heart—not just during the Valentine’s Day holiday, but throughout the year.

Collaborative, cross-functional planning requires us to explore new growth strategies. Those strategies should fulfill three guiding principles: they must boost the bottom line, align with our core values, and drive predictable 2023 results.

ChatGPT, tougher privacy rules, and a growing demand for differentiation can decimate well intended thought leadership and content strategies.

When I reflect on this crazy year, my favorite moments shared one common wave: they involved acts of generosity.

After a 3-year COVID hiatus, we hosted the 6th CMOs Leading Innovation Conference in scenic Daniel Island, South Carolina. The cohort included CEOs and marketing leaders from across the country, with a focus on growth planning, resilience, and agile strategies in the new customer era.

I have invested 22 years studying and experimenting with holistic mental hygiene habits. And I will never stop learning. It’s a fascinating field of study. I’m passing along many that work well for me and my CEO coaching clients.

Now is the perfect time to step up, reduce attrition of your best talent, and, in turn, dramatically boost brand repute. This is a marketer’s moment in the sun.

Many promising marketing innovations never see the light of day because we do not fully understand the importance and timing of the idea incubation process. Naming your idea, then allowing ample time for testing and idea sharing, are essential steps in any innovation cycle.

Marketing innovation is about applying creativity to improve your stakeholders’ condition. It requires us to challenge our established beliefs and assumptions. It often also demands that we learn from our past as a way to inform our future.  We often need to set aside the past, and begin with a clean slate. This process helps us design an empowering narrative to guide us forward. It bolsters our resilience.

That’s the underlying theme of our 6th annual CMOs Leading Innovation Conference (CLIC ’22): “Growth Curves Ahead: The Resilient CMO.”
We’re gathering in historic Charleston, South Carolina at the International African American Museum….

Did you encounter a silver lining from the past pandemic era?

I certainly did. I witnessed an extraordinary number of people who paused, and confronted their existential crisis head-on.

In The Earned Life, Marshall Goldsmith and co-author Mark Reiter meticulously capture the existential moments that we endured. In Section One, Marshall describes how CEO clients become goal-obsessed. It leaves them feeling empty and deflated. He has witnessed these behaviors at the highest levels;…