– Marketing moves. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of moderating a conversation between three high-level, repeat CMOs at March Capital’s annual Montgomery Summit in Los Angeles. In between discussion of the right time for a startup to hire a true CMO, the latest uses of AI in marketing, and go-to-market strategies, another topic kept surfacing: what CMOs wish their CEOs knew.
Marketing can be a mystery to founders and CEOs—especially in tech. Sometimes, they hire a top-dollar marketer and don’t know what to do with them. “For many CEOs, it’s a black box—and it costs money,” says Johanna Flower, who was the first CMO for CrowdStrike, growing the now $4 billion-in-revenue cybersecurity business through its 2019 IPO.
The way to set a CMO up for success is to let them into the core of the business, argues Jennifer Johnson, a four-time CMO who succeeded Flower as CrowdStrike’s marketing chief. “One of the mistakes I see founders making is that they hire a marketing person and then they don’t spend enough time with them. They don’t let the marketing person truly understand the vision, where we’re going as a company, where can we be successful, what are we disrupting,” she says. “The marketer needs to know that in order to really facilitate creating the right market positioning.”
For a new CMO, defining that positioning is often their first task. That involves sitting with the CEO and teasing out of them the company’s story and value, the way to win the battle for customers’ minds. “What problem are you ultimately solving?” asks Johnson. Not why your product is faster, cheaper, or better—but what problem can you, specifically, fix.
Too many startups change that story multiple times—or don’t take the time to refine it until they’re years in. “Drafting your S1 is not the time to figure out your positioning,” says Denise Persson, the CMO of Snowflake, the $3.6 billion-in-revenue cloud-based data platform. Marketers can’t do that alone, however. “It’s actually the entire company and the entire leadership team’s role to help the CMO get that story right,” says Johnson.
Another myth these CMOs hope to bust? The concept of “healthy tension” between sales and marketing. “It’s a very, very stupid idea,” says Johnson. “You start having that misalignment, and then someone will be fired—usually the marketer,” she says. “As a founder or CEO, you need to facilitate that alignment.”
Then, and only then, will that CMO hire pay off.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Sara Braun. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
– Pay to play. WNBA players participating in Saturday night’s All-Star Game made a statement by wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Pay Us What You Owe Us.” The annual spectacle takes place as the league and players attempt to negotiate a new contract amid the WNBA’s fast growth. Their current agreement is set to expire after the 2025 season. Washington Post
– Imminent danger. A newly passed law in Texas is aiming to provide clarity on the circumstances in which doctors are allowed to perform an abortion in the state. The Life of the Mother Act now stipulates that a pregnant woman’s death or impairment does not have to be “imminent” for an abortion exception to be in place. The legislation is a result of activism from doctors and patients, as well as reporting which revealed that at least three Texas women have died due to delays in care. NPR
– Epstein developments. The Justice Department asked a federal court on Friday to publicly release grand jury transcripts from the sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The move comes amid heightened scrutiny on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the case, as well as a recent Wall Street Journal article detailing a graphic birthday message that President Trump wrote to Epstein in 2003. Trump has denied the existence of the message and has filed a lawsuit against the paper’s publisher. Wall Street Journal
– Immigration hurdles. On Friday, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, ruled that a person cannot seek asylum for persecution based on their sex. Experts argue that the decision is likely to make it difficult for women fleeing gender-based violence to immigrate to the United States. Mother Jones
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
UBS Global Wealth Management announced the appointment of Kathleen Ferraro as market director for the Greenwich and Stamford, Conn., offices. She most recently was an executive director at Morgan Stanley.
The Campbell’s Company appointed Mary Alice Dorrance Malone Jr. as a member of the board of directors. She is the founder and chief brand director of Malone Souliers.
Blue Rose Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing human trafficking, grooming, and exploitation, appointed Dominnique Karetsos as chief impact officer. She previously served as the founder and CEO of Healthy Pleasure Group.
ON MY RADAR
How Taylor Swift turned a glitter freckle maker into a sensation Bloomberg
The founder of Deliciously Ella started a blog when suffering from severe chronic pain. Now, her multimillion-dollar snack empire is going global Fortune
The Court’s liberals are trying to tell Americans something The Atlantic
PARTING WORDS
“You see your parents work so hard. You know what you have, and you know what you don’t have. And then you can also see what you want in your life and realize that you cannot bother people for that. You’ve got to go do it yourself.”
—Actor Sandra Oh on what she learned growing up as the child of immigrants
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