'I Would Never Hire an MBA': Chief Marketing Officers Get Candid
June 4, 2015 9:00 AM
Bank marketing was once largely a function of architecture. More than anything else, customers were looking for safety and solidity and banks sought to convey those concepts through their buildings. Today, with branch traffic steadily declining, bank marketing is reinventing itself as chief marketing officers a relatively new title in the industry face unprecedented challenges and opportunities.
From May 22, to June 2, American Banker Research surveyed chief marketing officers, from banks ranging in size from $100 million to over $10 billion in assets, about how their role is evolving. Here are some of their unvarnished answers.
'Push, Push, Push'
"The only way to compete with fractured marketing and millennials' propensity to choose big banks is through long-term brand education, content, and grassroots," says the CMO at a $1.2 billion-asset bank. "A driver of change has to push, push, push internal partners to change processes, despite the promise only of long-term results while they have experience seeing results from baits-and-switches."
Team Players Wanted
"My goal is for the marketing team to be viewed as a collaborative partner to our business leaders, bringing marketing expertise and applying that to solve their business challenges," says the CMO at a $12 billion-asset bank. "We don't have the right answers all the time... sometimes we need to work together to get there."
Struggling to Do More With Less
"The demands are high and our staff is lean so it takes a lot of morale boosting to keep the team engaged with meeting expectations and not feeling burned out," says the CMO at $16 billion-asset bank.
Seeking the Right Skill Set
Asked to name key requirements or skills that are important to becoming a successful CMO, the executive with that title at a $1 billion-asset bank responds: "Ability to write; ability to communicate; understanding of processes...I would never hire an MBA because marketing is practical and strategic, not theoretical."
Mission-Critical Tasks
A CMO at $17.3 billion-asset bank describes the job as being a strategic advisor, since it includes "helping senior management with answering: 1) what's the lay of the land [and] 2) what's required to win."
Identifying Areas of Need
"Lack of resources to effectively manage all new advertising channels" is a challenge identified by the CMO at $1.8 billion-asset bank.
Weighing the Pros and Cons
The CMO at $12 billion-asset bank sums up the job thusly: "It's a tremendous opportunity. We are in an industry that is evolving and becoming more 'retail,' but is heavily regulated. So we don't have carte blanche to totally redesign the banking experience. But we do have the freedom and the chance to find new and better ways to serve our customers. As a CMO, that's all you can ask."
