This week, despite the oodles of copy spilled on the topic of the CMO/CFO relationship, I found a fresh analogy to torture.. planets.
An awful lot is written about the relationship between CMOs and the rest of the leadership team, the CFO specifically.
With advice that suggests CMOs need to learn to speak C-Suite (and in particular stop using the damn “brand” word) and start communicating using spreadsheets not whiteboard markers.
An idea I quite like to explain this communication divide is that a CFO works in a world of absolutes, certainty, and what just really happened. The numbers are the numbers.
Whereas the world of the CMO is a little less certain, looking forward to what they would like, predict, intend, or hope will happen. And it’s not just the future, sometimes it’s hard to discern what just really happened.
It’s all a probability, not a certainty – whether it’s future performance or revenue attribution, if it were easy and certain, we’d have cracked it by now.
Of course, with data and digital marketing, we are trying to iron this out, turn B2B marketing into a science, and remove some of the inconvenient fuzziness. It’s a brave CMO that says that the impact marketing makes on a business can’t be 100% measured. And this pressure grows when the going gets tougher and the fun stops.
Does anyone ask for an ROI on the choice of marble on the reception floor or the decision to incorporate “biophilic design” (plants to you and me) into the workspace? However, a website redesign must wash its face as part of the marketing investment against ARR uplift calculation.
So, riffing off the title of the classic book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray, I would like to present the idea that CFOs are from Mars and CMOs are from Planet 9.
Planet Nine, I have learned today, as I tried to find a fresh analogy to torture on a Tuesday, is a hypothetical large planet, about 5 to 10 times the mass of Earth, that is thought to orbit the Sun far beyond Neptune.
And I love this quote that I came across in my research from an article on Wired, from one of the astronomers working on this –
“On the theoretical side, the model is holding up beautifully, and we’re slowly chipping away at the observational side.”
Yep, we can see the effect, we know it’s there – but we can’t attribute it to a thing we can see yet.
Sound familiar?
Yet the CFO, on a particularly clear night, and with little equipment and math, can point out of the window in the general direction of Mars and say it’s there.
So, I present to you – CFOs are from Mars, CMOs are from Planet 9.
Fancy more of this?
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or now Threads! – or listen to my weekly podcast at Rockstarcmo.com
The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.