Getting the call that you've been named Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a company these days must be like getting a ticking package in the mail with no return address. It's awfully intriguing but could blow-up in your face.

According to Spencer Stuart, an executive recruiting firm in Chicago, the average tenure of a CMO is just 23.6 months. The firm also found that among the top 100 marketers in the U.S., only 14% had CMOs in their posts for more than three years and nearly half of CMOs had only occupied the top marketing spot for 12 months—and the CMO position isn't a new phenomenon. Average turnover ranged by industry, from 10 months for apparel companies to 34.8 months for financial services marketers. Greg Welch, a senior director at Spencer Stuart and author of the study, cautioned newly appointed CMOs, "understand that the fuse is burning and the honeymoon doesn't last more than a few months."

Now, high employee turnover is universally recognized as a leading contributor to plummeting product and service quality, increasing consumer dissatisfaction, and deteriorating brand equity. There is general acknowledgment that high turnover means managers spend an inordinate amount of time hiring and training replacements rather than running the business. No one disputes the problems high employee turnover has wreaked on productivity and the bottom-line—at least when it comes to "front-line" employees. Yet we can't point to a single example of a company that admits to the same sort of problems caused by a constant churn of CMOs. We'd bet money if we had access to the Spencer Stuart data, we could draw a direct relationship between the performance of an industry and the length of tenure of the CMO.

Most companies make every attempt to try to improve conditions or make adjustments to keep front-line employees, yet when it comes to the CMO position, high turnover is so expected, so de rigueur, it appears to have become institutionalized. To us, this institutionalized turnover is just as disturbing, if not more so, as the actual findings of the Spencer Stuart study. A revolving door on the CMO suite means an awful lot of stops and starts with a strategy and programs. That isn't good for brands. It doesn't help make marketing more accountable—the CMO is often fired before the strategy is even implemented. That isn't good for the practice. Furthermore, it reflects a lingering short-term focus among senior executives who want to see an improvement in one quarter or else. And that isn't good for anybody.

Senior executives point to increasing competition, the declining effectiveness of TV advertising, audience fragmentation, the over-stimulated consumer, the agency relationship, and a whole host of contributing factors external to the company to explain poor marketing performance and declining brand equity, yet what they need to do is point the finger inward at the significant internal stumbling block to marketing success posed by here-today-gone-tomorrow CMOs.

When Coke and Pepsi released their respective entries into the not-quite-diet-drink category this month, we thoroughly expected both companies to come out swinging.

True to form, C2—according to the C2 micro-site, Coke's shorthand for the basic promise of one-half the carbs and half the calories of regular Coke—launched with an aggressive TV advertising onslaught set to the tune of the Rolling Stones', "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Coke bombarded television viewers with the message that, while we can't always get what we want when it comes to other things in life, we can get a soda with less carbs and fewer cals, but with a great taste. Links via MSN and other engines to a micro-site for C2 followed the next morning. Like the ads, a voice-over comes up as the site opens reminding us we can't do this or that, but we can get a soda with less carbs and calories but the same great taste. The 30-ton, $6.5 million dollar billboard currently under construction in Times Square in New York City will also promote C2 beginning July 1.

Yet, strangely, Pepsi has remained eerily quiet in the wake of C2's hearty pitch even though Pepsi Edge, its lower carb and low cal entry, hit store shelves virtually at the same time as C2.

Though some, the editor of Beverage Digest, for instance, have referred to C2 and Pepsi Edge as the biggest industry news in 30 years, others view the lower carbs/low cal alternatives with skepticism. "These drinks likely need a reason for being beyond just being 'reduced calorie' versions of existing products, otherwise they will be cannibalistic," explained Bill Pecoriello, a beverage analyst for Morgan Stanley. "However, with a compelling point of difference, they can perhaps create large new categories that drive growth."

So does the campaign for C2 demonstrate a "compelling point of difference?" Not bad creatively, the campaign also shares a clear message: you don't have to compromise on taste to get less carbs and calories. So "taste" appears to be that "compelling point of difference." As an aside, are we the only ones left wondering if Coke is implying Diet Coke with 0 calories tastes bad in its C2 advertising? That to get 0 calories you have to drink something God-awful?

Pepsi also seems to be taking the taste tact with Pepsi Edge. Though we haven't seen an ad or dedicated website for it as of this writing, the packaging for Pepsi Edge has "Full Flavor, 50% Less Sugar" emblazoned across the front. "Full Flavor," to us means that we're going to get something pretty darn close to Pepsi

Obviously, if you're going to advertise taste and flavor, you'd better have something good. So we put the claims to the test with a panel of "expert" tasters, a mix of men and women, different ages, devoted Atkins adherents and carb-lovers, and soda drinkers and non-soda drinkers. C2 won the blind taste test hands down, but our testers didn't exactly use words like, "delicious," or "yummy," to describe C2. Pepsi Edge was just terrible (which could explain why Pepsi's staying on the down-low with this one for the moment), so C2 essentially won by default. Most complained both sodas had a chemical taste and strange smell. Granted ours was an unscientific test, but it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of taste or flavor as believable or sustainable points of differentiation for C2 or Pepsi Edge, in any case.

Our prognostications: we don't see either C2 or Pepsi Edge leading to new categories that drive growth. More than likely, they'll strip away sales from the diet extensions of the core brands (they do taste better than diet) and certainly won't bring non-soda drinkers into the market. There's still a whole lot of sugar and carbs in C2 and Pepsi Edge AND they are full of chemical sweeteners. What's attractive about that to a non-soda-drinker or, for that matter, a regular soda drinker? If pressed to pick a winner, we'd pick C2, based purely on the results of our taste test and the marketing blitzkrieg, but we think it'll be a Pyrrhic victory for Coke.

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John Wanamaker was famous for many things. He invented the department store concept, introduced employee benefits, and served as Postmaster General for the U.S. In marketing circles, however, he is perhaps best know for his famous quip, "I know that half of my advertising is wasted—I just don't know which half." We thought about Wanamaker's observation recently when we read the results of a newly released Deutsche Bank study that concluded, "TV advertising doesn't work for mature packaged goods."

Conducted by Information Resources Inc., the study looked at 23 household, personal-care, food and beverage brands and found only 18% generated a positive return on investment in the short term, defined as one year or less, from TV advertising. Interestingly, home and personal brands, representing the biggest and fast-growing ad spenders, actually saw ROI decrease as ad spending increased. Over the course of the past three years, ad spending increased 8% versus sales growth of 4.5%.

The Deutsche Bank study further corroborates what other firms have found. MMA, the world's preeminent marketing mix modeling firm and keeper of the largest database measuring the effectiveness of campaigns for established packaged goods, discovered that advertising for consumer packaged goods returns less than a dollar for every dollar invested. To Wanamaker's point, there's clearly a lot of dollars wasted, but thankfully for marketers, it doesn't have to be a mystery about where the money could be better spent.

Enter marketing mix modeling, which employs a complex set of very sophisticated equations that predict real world output (including new and repeat buying) from marketing plan inputs (such as primetime network television target rating points per month). Marketing mix modeling will tell you how you're doing (i.e., what's the ROI of TV advertising, newspaper, magazines, etc.), and often insights into improving the targeting strategy, positioning message, advertising executions, website, public relations efforts, and the media weight and schedule.

The advantage of marketing mix modeling is that it permits marketers to experiment with inputs to instantly see their effect on the output prior to, during, or after a campaign has run. Marketers can pose questions of the model: "Will more television advertising have a profitable impact on sales? More than direct marketing? More than couponing? Which day-part will have the most effect? How much more? At what cost? What about targeting and positioning, which strategy will work better?" It also enables marketers to quantify the specific effects of each element at different levels of investment: "What are forecasted sales if we increased each component in the marketing mix by 20%? By 100%? What happens if we decrease it by 10%?"

Marketing doesn't have to be a necessary evil, as cranky old John Wanamaker implied. With marketing mix modeling it can be a high-return venture.

For more insightful marketing discoveries, visit http://www.copernicusmarketing.com/discover/index.htm

Have a hot discovery for our next release? Contact us at info@copernicusmarketing.com

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We recently asked some of the brightest minds in B-to-B marketing what the biggest thing in the world of B-to-B marketing is today and they all said creating unique and all-encompassing experiences for customers. Consumer marketers too—inspired by the success of Saturn and Starbucks that treat the whole customer interaction as a marketing opportunity—are getting bolder and more attentive to creating phenomenal experiences for customers. A case in point: Coke's new 30-ton, $6.5 million dollar digital billboard in Times Square New York "opens" on July 1.

Experience engineers will tell you that, whether you want them to or not, customers literally experience the brand through all their senses, at every point of contact between buyer and seller, and walk away with an opinion—good, bad, or indifferent—about the brand, what it stands for, and what it means to them. Engineering customer experiences so they are positive ones is no easy task, which is why Clued In is such an important book for marketers to read.

Whether you are B-to-B or B-to-C, Clued In offers clear and practical how-to advice for auditing current experiences, and developing and launching a new customer experience program so transformational, it converts prospects to customers, once-in-awhile buyers to lifelong loyalists. A recognized expert in the field, Carbone makes a clear case for managing the customer experience in total and how marketers and their companies can significantly benefit from this approach.

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While we're sure there's a plethora of comic answers to the question posed above, we're in the midst of comparing the responses of a cross-section of American adults to a variety of questions to determine key differences between the members of these three political parties in terms of demographics, attitudes, opinions, proclivities, and behaviors. Expect a full report in the next edition of The Copernicus Mzine.

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