Scott Griffiths | Primer on the Marketing CFO - Why it Might Be Right for You | CMO Confidential

Summary

CMO Confidential Episode Summary: Scott Griffiths | Primer on the Marketing CFO - Why it Might Be Right for You

Release Date: October 8, 2024

Introduction

In this engaging episode of CMO Confidential, host Mike Linton delves into the intricate relationship between marketing and finance with his guest, Scott Griffiths, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Affiliate Network. Scott shares his unique perspective as the first-ever Marketing CFO at Farmers Insurance, shedding light on the challenges and strategies involved in aligning marketing initiatives with financial objectives.

Guest Background

Scott Griffiths brings a wealth of experience, having started his career at KPMG in England as an auditor before moving into various roles at Countrywide and Farmers Insurance. Notably, he was the inaugural Marketing CFO at Farmers, a role that required him to bridge the gap between marketing aspirations and financial accountability. Mike mentions, “Scott was the first pick of the marketing team to become the first ever marketing CFO at Farmers and we worked together for many years” ([00:31]).

Marketing and Finance Intersection

Scott begins by addressing common perceptions about marketing and finance. He acknowledges the stereotype that marketing often presents a “biased version of the truth” ([02:19]), but emphasizes that responsible marketers aim to showcase the positive aspects of a product without misleading customers. He criticizes internal reporting practices that favor marketing’s success narratives over objective performance metrics.

Establishing Alignment and Measuring Success

One of the primary challenges Scott faced was aligning marketing activities with the company’s strategic goals. He explains, “we had to look at every marketing activity spend through a strategic standpoint” ([05:07]). Scott and his team assessed each marketing initiative’s contribution to moving the company from point A to point B, eliminating activities that didn’t align strategically.

A notable example Scott shares involves Farmers Insurance’s sponsorship of NASCAR. He points out the misalignment between NASCAR’s audience and Farmers’ target customers, leading to inefficient spending despite the high visibility: “when you looked at who the target customer was for Farmers and who the target viewer was for NASCAR, they were completely misaligned” ([05:44]).

Challenges in Team Alignment

Scott discusses the complexities of managing a diverse marketing department with various sub-functions like search, brand, events, PR, and internal communications. He highlights the importance of creating a KPI scorecard that ties marketing activities directly to corporate goals, facilitating objective decision-making ([07:05]).

Why Most People Aren’t Good at Their Jobs

Scott introduces a thought-provoking segment on workforce performance, citing the normal distribution to explain that only a small percentage of employees are exceptional or poor performers, with the majority falling into the average category ([10:14]). He emphasizes that average performers do their job satisfactorily but lack the drive to generate outstanding results. Scott asserts, “most people aren't good at their job” ([09:50]), underscoring the need for organizations to cultivate and retain top talent to achieve excellence.

Managing Conflict Between Marketing and Finance

Scott elaborates on the inherent conflicts between marketing and finance departments, often rooted in differing priorities and biases. He stresses the necessity of collaboration, data-backed decisions, and mutual understanding to bridge these gaps. Scott advises leaving egos aside and focusing on shared objectives: “everyone in the room needs to leave their ego at the door” ([22:35]).

He provides practical tips for facilitating productive conflict:

• Avoid Managing by Consensus: Majority rule can lead to mediocre outcomes if most team members are average performers ([24:01]).
• Empower Top Performers: Delegate strategic decisions to high-performing individuals to drive progress ([24:02]).
• Focus on Shared Goals: Align discussions around overarching company objectives rather than departmental wins ([25:49]).

Saying No Effectively

A critical aspect of Scott’s role involved making tough decisions to allocate resources efficiently. He advises maintaining objectivity and credibility by basing decisions on measurable data: “Be objective, right. And be seen as being objective” ([26:53]). Scott also recommends using constructive language when declining proposals, such as suggesting alternatives or testing new ideas: “No, but how about we test the theory?” ([28:12]).

Advice for Finance Professionals Aspiring to be Marketing CFOs

Scott shares two key traits essential for finance professionals considering a transition to a Marketing CFO role:

1. Comfort with Ambiguity: Marketing outcomes are often less tangible and require navigating uncertain results. Scott mentions, “Marketing by its nature is very ambiguous” ([30:17]).
2. Strong Communication Skills: The ability to articulate complex, ambiguous data succinctly to stakeholders is crucial ([30:15]).

He emphasizes that success in this role hinges on blending financial acumen with an understanding of marketing dynamics.

A Humorous Anecdote

Towards the end of the episode, Scott entertains listeners with a funny story about underestimating a prominent golfer's appearance at a Farmers-sponsored event. He recounts mistaking professional golfer Rickie Fowler for an average teenager, highlighting his own fallibility: “I was not good at my job” ([34:10]).

Conclusion

This episode of CMO Confidential offers invaluable insights into the role of a Marketing CFO, highlighting the delicate balance between strategic alignment, objective measurement, and effective communication. Scott Griffiths provides actionable advice for both marketing and finance professionals aiming to enhance collaboration and drive business success. His candid discussions underscore the complexities of integrating financial discipline with creative marketing strategies, making this episode a must-listen for executives navigating similar challenges.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Griffiths ([02:19]): “The real question as CFO of marketing was to cut through the BS and give an objective and measurable view of the performance of marketing.”
• Scott Griffiths ([10:14]): “Most people aren't good at their job. They do their job satisfactorily, but they lack the drive to generate outstanding results.”
• Scott Griffiths ([22:35]): “Everyone in the room needs to leave their ego at the door. It’s about agreeing on the end goal.”
• Scott Griffiths ([26:53]): “Be objective, right. And be seen as being objective.”
• Scott Griffiths ([28:12]): “No, but how about we test the theory?”
• Scott Griffiths ([34:10]): “I was not good at my job.”

Listen to More Episodes:

• Marketing, the Battle Between Believers and Non-Believers. Parts 1, 2, and 3
• Secrets from a CFO, Scott Lindquist. Parts 1, 2, and 3
• A Marketer Turned Tech Exec Talks About Big Data, Mainframes, and AI

Stay connected with CMO Confidential on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and the I Hear Everything network.

Transcript

[A]

The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.

[B]

The podcast that takes you inside the.

[A]

Drama, decisions and choices that go with.

[B]

Being the Head of marketing.

[A]

Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton. Welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them. The Chief Marketing Officer, Confidential CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, ebay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guest Scott Griffiths. Today's topic, a primer on the marketing CFO why it might be right for you. Now, Scott is currently the Chief Financial Officer of the Affiliate Network, a private equity backed company. I think I said that right. He started his career at KPMG in England as an auditor, was a VP Report of Reporting and analytics at Countrywide, and had numerous positions at Farmers including eight years as the Marketing cfo. Full disclosure, Scott was the first pick of the marketing team, our marketing team, to become the first ever marketing CFO at Farmers and we worked together for many years. He's recovered mostly from that. Now the team always felt that his British accent made hearing no a bit more palatable. Welcome Scott.

[B]

Thanks Mike. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Of course. Now this job was a first ever at Farmers and it was, it was your exposure to marketing prior to taking it was, was kind of limited. Tell us what you thought about marketing and finance and the intersection before you took this job.

[B]

Yeah, I mean the perception of marketing, there's this perception of marketing math, right? Meaning that the anything you, you hear from the marketing team has been carefully crafted and manipulated and potentially a biased version of the truth. And I will say, you know, from my years there, to some extent that stereotype is true. Right? And how, how can we blame marketers for that? Right? That is exactly what they are paid to do to the outside world. You give them a product or a service and you ask them to sell it and that product and service is likely to be imperfect. And so the market shines a light on the good and steers clear of the bad. And I never heard of a campaign that started with hey, you can save Money by buying our product and then ends with but that product's probably going to break after a couple of weeks. And so the problem is some marketers take that approach when, when reporting internally. An example of that at farmers we had, we measured the heck out of brand and our brand perception, Right? Yeah. And I remember a big deal was made when we shifted the perception of farmers from being kind of an old fashioned stodgy company to being more fun and dynamic. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan.

[A]

Well, we moved it from a heritage, I mean it got moved from a heritage brand to a more current brand. Stodgy. We wouldn't have said yes.

[B]

You know, paraphrasing, paraphrase. But. But yeah. And while that is true, and I'm a big proponent of brand and its long term importance, it needs to be brand for a reason. It needs to deliver business results. And so when you kind of dig further, because we ask a lot of questions about the brand, the question is, okay, well what does that get us moving the brand from being old fashioned to being more current. Well, you kind of dig a little deeper and it didn't do anything really because those people that recognize that move their perception weren't going to shop with us. They were all price shoppers and not in our value saying so brand. But when presenting, you kind of get this bias view. So it's quite simply my job as CFO of marketing was to cut through the BS and give an objective and measurable view of the performance of marketing.

[A]

And just, just before we get into the meat of this discussion, tell us how you went about that. Because you were the first ever. And a lot of these measures, you know, we jointly created. How did you get everybody aligned on this? Because it's not, it's not an easy thing to put this kind of structure in place.

[B]

Yeah. And I think you find common ground because I think whether it's finance marketing, everyone has positive intent. Right. They want to do the best for the company, but different on how to do that. So I think the first thing you do is look at every, in this case marketing activity spend through a strategic standpoint. Right before you start putting dollars and cents to it is what does it bring to the company, how's it getting us from A to B, wherever we want to be. And a lot of things fall off the table very quickly. I mean, when we first took a look at everything we were doing in marketing, a lot of it did not make strategic sense. Right. I'll give you an example. You're more than familiar with. Right. We, we sponsored a NASCAR couple paid many, many millions of dollars to watch a car go around the track many, many times with the Farmers logo on it. Now you could do a lot of work to figure out in dollars and cents what you got for that. But when quite simply you looked at who the target customer was for Farmers and who the target viewer was for nascar, they were completely misaligned. And so getting agreement on the strategy and how everything fits in, that is step one. And then kind of step two is you do the, the measurements. And I know you've, you've kind of covered this in a lot of other presentations as well. Right. And they're all like, absolutely right. You collaborate, you make data backed decisions, you test and learn very quickly. You agree on measures of success while also acknowledging that not everything is measurable. And you create a KPI scorecard that ties marketing to those overall corporate goals. All of that's been kind of said and done. Right. And it's all very true. And it's actually all pretty simple. Right. And so the real question of doing.

[A]

That, except for the emotional connection goods, well, you and I killed an awful lot of sponsorship money and shoved it all into a lot of it into digital capital. We also had at the time, I think there's still like 15,000 agents out there that all wanted to watch all this stuff. How did you manage all that complexity not just within the marketing department, but all the customers of the marketing department within the company?

[B]

Yeah, I mean Farmers had its, has its complexities. Right. And uniqueness and problems it has to solve just like every other company. Right.

[A]

And I keep hoping for that company with no problems, but it's never happened.

[B]

No, I mean whether you have budget constraints, you know, Farmers have independent contractors, their agents, 15,000 people out there who you can't control as you would an employee and you have to support them. And yeah, everyone comes along with their biases right? Now I've listened and been part of many discussions on how marketing and finance should work together to make this happen. And they all come down to the same things I just mentioned. Right. Collaborating, making data back decisions, measure success, KPI scorecards. And that's all very true. Right. And I mean, super easy to say. It's super easy to say. And if, you know, I could go into a lot of time as to how we did that, I would just recommend that. I think you did a na, a panel at the ANA which discussed very topic. Everything that they said was true. So go back and watch that so you can put a link in the, in this, this podcast, but like you say, it's easy to do. So the real question is, why aren't people doing this? Why is not every marketing department doing this and being incredibly successful and optimizing every dollar and having KPIs that are aligned? And so, you know, as I was thinking about this, I remember attending a leadership development program, and on the first day the trainer asked about leadership. If there are so many books, podcasts, and training classes out there on leadership, why isn't there a preponderance of great leaders? You know, you can, if it's as simple as following the seven habits of this, the five rules of this, the checkbox, you know, of that to great leaders should be around. And it's the same with marketing, right? Everyone kind of knows what to do. Why are they not doing it? And so my answer then, and it's the same today, is that most people aren't good at their jobs. And the same answer can be applied to most corporate situations because average people don't create great results.

[A]

So let's, let's jump into this and go a little deeper. Tell us what you mean by most people aren't good by that. And then how do you recognize not good and good? And then what are the characteristics of not good? Because we've already, we've already talked about good, but do the Griffiths opinion on this.

[B]

Yeah, let it rip. So it sounds very harsh, right? Saying that most people aren't good at their job, but I'll approach it and answer it in two, two different ways. One's from kind of a mathematical standpoint and then more in the real world. So for my statistician friends out there, I'm talking about the normal distribution. Yeah. And that means if you get a lot of data points around a specific measure and their own bias, you'll see similar results. Whether that's people typed, how fast they can run a mile, their shoe size, in this case, how efficient and effective and good they are at their job. And what you'll find is that there are outliers. Right. So around 2, 3% over here are really bad at their job. Right. Fact, we know those people, they don't stick around that long. There's probably about 12% that are in there that are below average. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you have about 3% that are doing great jobs and that are good. Which means statistically, most people, about 70% of people fall into this average category.

[A]

A normal distribution. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. And there doesn't mean they're doing a bad job. They're doing okay. Average, satisfactory. They come to work each day, do what they want. But again, those people are not going to generate great results. They're not going to initiate change. And so when I say most people aren't good at their job, I'm talking about good with a capital G and four O's, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The good. You say when you've eaten a perfectly good steak, you know, oh, that was good. You know. You know, so people that are good and I think society, we kind of lost perspective of that a little bit. Let me give you a couple of examples and I apologize. I'm going to pull this up on my phone because I found out a couple of weeks ago that I use rideshare like everybody else.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I found out that as a passenger, I get a rating. Yeah. Rating. And I don't know if you can see this. I'm gonna put it up my me with more hair and less wrinkles, but there you go.

[A]

Oh, you're a five zero. Wow, that's fantastic.

[B]

I'm a five zero, which means I am the perfect passenger. I'm exceptional. Great. Extraordinary fact is I'm not. Every Lyft drive that I can remember is I get in the car, I sit in the car, I exit the car. Now, that to me, makes me a solid average. A three. A three Stop.

[A]

Yes. But we know this scale is only one point large. Four to five.

[B]

Exactly. And I think we get into that, right? There's no. If everything's a five out of five, you kind of lose. It's difficult to distinguish between what is average and what good. Because good means, you know, I didn't solve myself in the back seat. That's kind of the benchmark being five stars.

[A]

You're really killing it. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, to my knowledge, I've never, you know, changed a wheel for the guy, you know, that's, you know, and it broke down or given them cpr. If they've had, you know, a heart attack, I sit there. Another example, right? If you buy anything from Amazon, the first thing you click at is four star on above. I don't want to look at anything below that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I need to look at what makes.

[A]

I was looking like, well, look, this is how I. Personnel reviews have become so corrupted because it's like Lake Wobegon where everybody's above average. And so you're not really parsing this out. Drill into, though, the characteristics of finance and marketing people that make you just average for sure.

[B]

And I'll give you real life examples. Right. But now we have this, you know, everyone's great. You also, what you also see and it kind of falls into the finance and marketing is this reciprocal arrangement, right, Where I give you five stars. If you give me five stars and I don't, I won't call your baby baby ugly. I won't be, you know, a protagonist because next time I'm going to be presenting and I don't want you to do it. And I see that a lot in the, in the. Particularly when people are asking for money, looking at how to, you know, the performance of something. There's this standoff in terms of I won't say anything bad about you, but the understanding is next time you're going to support me. It gets very political and you end up with suboptimal decisions. So finance kind of where you look at okay and okay is what would happen every year. And it's throughout my, my various roles is you have the finance person, truly an accountant, right. And they'll come to you and say, for example, hey, I need you to cut 20% of your marketing cost because that makes the, My budget balance, Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So congratulations, you made your budget balance. And you know, maybe you get a clap and a round of applause for that, but then you kind of sit down with them and you go, okay, well, you've cut my, my budget. Okay, we're going to reduce sales. Right. Because I cannot, you know. Right.

[A]

They should be related if you're a.

[B]

Very good marketer and it's like, no, no, no. You just have to cut costs and deliver the sales. I think we've all experienced that. And they say, well, have you, you know, I've got any ideas how to do that? No, no, no, no, no. My job is just to deliver the, the numbers and the bad news. You have to go and figure it out. And ultimately you end up with a, a budget that is very nice and looks very pretty on paper, but is not backed by any substance, any actions and so on. So what happens next, the following year, when you're trying to get to this budget is you're reporting on why you didn't do it. Right. You didn't reach the whole year. Right? The whole year. And that accountant that set that budget and it's damaged your job to explain why you didn't hit that budget. So I think there's, that's an example of a somebody that's doing that, you know, the letter of their job description, but not helping anything move forward. Another example of finance is kind of the non strategic thinker. Right. I work for many sales organizations and inevitably someone in finance, you're looking to cut money cyclical and you always have to cut money at some point that they will come up with a great idea of cutting commissions. Because hey, that's easy enough thing to do. 1% here saves me x million dollars later on without thinking of the strategic implications. Because what happens is you cut salespeople's income, you take money out of their pockets, the good ones will leave and you're left with the average ones. And so this, this whole cyclical thing. Right. And so while commissions and compensation is definitely a, a lever to look at and optimize a simple math to say, hey, if I cut well, and what.

[A]

You'Re saying is don't move levers independently, you have to move the entire system.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And, and I think that's great advice to finance. Let's flip this over to the marketing side and what makes not great marketers.

[B]

Yeah. So every marketer I met has come with, with biases. Right. And that's totally fine. We all have biases in the marketing world. You'll have an opinion as to Linear TV is dead. Nobody watches it, direct mail, nobody opens it. Everything needs to be online. Sponsorships are cherry on the cake. They're not, you know, that's if you have excess funds, all of those stuff totally fine. I think the, the not good marketing folks come in to two areas, right. The ones that stick to those biases even if the data shows they are on. And again, a current example, unbranded search, right. We, we were able to prove that unbranded search, we were losing our shirt on it because the type of person that would look and use unbranded search and we paid them to go to our site, we're not interested in our product. Right, Right. So we were paying a lot of people to come just to go somewhere else. Now one of the decision makers in this area was very steadfast that people are shopping online. We used to be there and unbranded search, despite the fact that we were losing our shirt on it, which did not make any sense at all. Right. And so that was a, you know, an example of a bias being stuck to regardless of what I would call.

[A]

Them, beliefs that can't be unearthed or changed by math.

[B]

They're so dug in and it's, you know, it happens. The other one, and we kind of touched on it earlier, right. Is the inability to call your own baby ugly. So you kind of take the data and distort it, manipulate it, exclude some of the other data to show only the positive of your particular role. Again, I give an example of this with a golf event that we sponsored. We conducted a study to figure out what do we get for this. And the team came back with impressions. We generated a gazillion impressions, right? And those impressions were far more cheap and efficient than going out to TV and getting those. I don't know if you remember this, but over half of these impressions came from one one source. Do you want to take a guess or do you remember?

[A]

And then please.

[B]

So over half of these impressions that were gazillion came from the bibs that the caddies were wearing. Notice true, they were there. So every time they, there were 5 million people at home, every time a caddy would drift into shop, another 5 million impressions. Now I don't know about you, but what I'm not a golf fan, but if I'm watching golf, I'm watching the guy with a club who's hitting the ball. I'm not looking at the background to see what's happening. And I'm pretty sure I never made a buying decision based on a bib that a caddy was wearing.

[A]

That's a great example. That's also under the theory that all impressions are not created equal. And also if you're counting that as an impression, you might as well just buy billboards on highways and, and get impressions that way because it's a lot cheaper. So I think an excellent example, keep going on this.

[B]

I'm sure, I mean I can give countless examples, right. But that the goal is to be, you know, the good marketers are. Yes, you come with biases. Yes, you come with perceptions. Yes, absolutely. Not everything can be measured and ticked and tied. But you need to be open minded and willing to, to collaborate and get to better decisions.

[A]

So let's talk about that and how, how you helped make that work as the marketing cfo. And also inherent in that. And, and I will say as a preamble, this marketing not a homogeneous function. Tons of you could have search, brand, you know, events, pr, all internal comms. You know, for us we had sales or agent marketing. None of those are the same. They all come with biases, the trade offs of money and everything else that is inherent conflict. Tell us how you as marketing CFO helped manage and coordinate that conflict. And I know because we work together, you're a great believer in conflict. That gets to a better answer. But coordinating that in a way that everyone plays right not so easy. Give us some tips.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. So conflict in the right way is. Absolutely leads to a better outcome. Right. And I think there's a few key things that have to happen to facilitate that. Number one, everyone in the room needs to leave their ego at the door. It's not about proving you are right or the other person wrong. It's about being agreement on what the end goal is and have a discussion because there's never one way of getting from A to B. Right. So don't lose sight on the end goal, leaving your ego at the door and being open minded. Right. So we mentioned these biases, person A and they usually come with whoever you know the function that.

[A]

Yeah. It's amazing how many people are biased towards their own function.

[B]

Yeah, of course. And it's great that they have the passion for that. You don't want to lose that. But if they're just going in to prove that their function is better or more efficient than this function, you're never going to get anywhere. Right. And so don't recite the goal. Be open minded, keep it professional. Of course, which you know is a given and if necessary disagree but commit. Right. And I know that's a very easy phrase, but you're never going to come to a 100% of people agreeing with what the outcome should be.

[A]

How did you manage around that? We did have some great conflicts as a team and I'm sure you've been involved in many more and other places. How did you as marketing CFO facilitate that?

[B]

Well, I think the way. So I'd like to rephrase that a little bit.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Knock yourself out away from the what makes a good team and how you notice you have a good team and what to do with that. Right. Because odds are you don't have a uniformly good team.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, if you have 10 folks, you're probably going to have a couple of good folks again, the capital G, four O's and you know, one that probably shouldn't be on the team and most do an okay job. Now of course you could just say hire all great people. But that's not realistic.

[A]

That's not realistic.

[B]

Things you shouldn't do. Right. One is manage by consensus. Right. So going back to the decision making process, you could take those 10 folks and say, okay, we just need to get consensus. Most people agreeing to it. But if you go with the majority, if the majority are average, you'll get an average output because of it. Right. And again it's no people just doing the job. But they're not going to move the ball forward. And I think the other risk is if you have these two great people on the team, you overload them and get them to do all the other stuff instead. You should actually free those people up, empower them to make the decisions, because they're the ones that are going to actually move things forward and let the remaining team members do their job, but don't ask them on strategically important things, right? So when you have a decision to be made that's strategically important, it's not tactical. Get those good people in the room to do it and free them up and give them the autonomy. Right. And I would say, you know, some advice of people. If you are good or you aspire to be good at your job, to do two things right? One, surround yourself with other good people because these will be the ones that will challenge you and teach you and make you even better. And the final thing would be, again, if your boss is not Good again, capital G4O's. Find a new boss. There's nothing more stifling to your career. Right. Than having an okay boss because they will not advance you. Right? So just going back to your original question, how do you facilitate this? I think there's a tendency for being overly inclusive and of course you should get different views and opinions at the. But at the state. At the risk of getting inclusion from people who aren't going to create conflict and move things forward.

[A]

Well, I think the other thing that is super important is this. There's only one real scorecard that matters, and that's sales and profit and maybe market share and retention. The other individual scorecards like impressions or how people feel about it in the company or anything less important to the score. And if you can't put your function down and look at the big score and you're arguing little score, you're not being a good player. But a lot of times you were in the position where you had to say no or you know you are a lot of times in early projects, there's always way more projects than there is time or time and money. And you, you were the first bank of no. I think they called you or something like that. What are some tips for saying no and why you train people on why you said no?

[B]

Yeah, I think there's a. The key. Well, there's two key things other than my accent.

[A]

One is, yeah, the accent really helped. I mean, that was 90% of it.

[B]

I know I. I've been faking it for many years. But. But number one is Be objective, right? And be seen as being objective. If anyone perceives you, whether it's the CFO or the enterprise, the CEO or your peers are being biased in your own assessment, you lose all credibility. Right. You've now created your own marketing math that nobody believes. I think the other key thing is finance kind of runs the risk. And I put kind of that, the legal team in this category as being the people that say no, just as a default answer. And what you look for and what you should provide if you're the marketing CFO or business partner is know. But so if possible, right. So somebody comes to you, asks for money to do xyz, you know, you may look at it, do your due diligence, and answer maybe no.

[A]

But this is a mirror of the objectivity thing you just said about marketers, which is your job isn't to say no, it's to spend the money the most wisely and to help people do that. And I think some people get confused with that. And sometimes you have to take risks with the money.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if there's, there's times when judgment has to override the math, because marketing is wonderful in its ambiguity. Right. And there's so many different factors that impact it. There's not as easy as, hey, this channel does this, this channel does that. They all interact with each other and assist each other. Right. And so there's definitely judgment has to override the math at some point, which is why can I kind of go to this concept of no, but because it used to be yes and but for the final, it's no, but. So, hey, you want to do this? No, but how about thinking it this way? No, but how about we test the theory? Right. And how can we best do it? You know, a big proponent of design thinking. Right. Is if there's something you have to.

[A]

Keep moving forward, you can't just stay.

[B]

Yeah. But keep. But also at the same time realizing that some point you do have to say no, we tried it, and it doesn't work, and move on. Right.

[A]

And we're going to stop. Hey, let's, let's. For the finance people listening to this, and this is before our final. Our traditional last question. What tips would you have for finance people thinking about a position like this?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's a unique position and it's not going to fit for every person with finance in their title or a CPA or anything like that. Could be. Could not. There's two main things I would think about. Right. One, particularly with the marketing role, you have to be comfortable with ambiguity. There's. Yeah, a lot of accountants like things. Debits to equal credits, assets and liabilities and shareholders, everything to be known, nicely packaged or going to a system where I can see, I made so many sales and this is the profit and all of this stuff. Marketing by its nature is very ambiguous. Right. What do you get from a TV campaign? What do you get from a sponsorship?

[A]

Yeah. The timing is not the same. The results aren't exactly affect everybody the same.

[B]

It's.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And I think for me, I loved it because it was always kind of a. I always say it's like a circumstantial case. Right. You don't have this smoking gun. So you have to pull all of these data points and say this is what it looks like it does. And yes, there's probably some other data points that suggests it doesn't do that. And so being comfortable with ambiguity is key and not, you know, it's not for everybody. The other one I think particularly with marketing is you have to be comfortable with communication because related to the previous comment, the numbers don't speak for themselves. Right. And so it'd be great to say, hey look, you know, this thing has an ROI of 200%, we should spend more. I wish you were that easy. Sometimes you might get close to that, but a lot of times you don't. And so you have to communicate ambiguous data to people that aren't necessarily used to consuming it. Whether that is all they don't have the time. Right. And you know, to understand the complexity of marketing. So be able to succinctly communicate what marketing does, how it does it, the next steps and why you make. You're making the decisions that you are.

[A]

Thank you for that. Now we're to our traditional last question. It's a two parter. You have to take one or both, but you have to take at least one funniest story you can tell on the air or practical advice we haven't discussed yet. You can take one or both, but you must take at least one.

[B]

I'm glad you caveat the, the funny story with one that we can share. So, so I've seen previous episodes there, so I was prepared. But so I think I mentioned earlier that we sponsored a, a golf event. And so early on in my career I'm like, in my career as marketing cfo, I was like, I need to go and see this thing. We're spending a lot of money. I need to see it with My own eyes. So I did. And it was a fantastically laid on event. Everywhere you looked, the Farmers logo was there. But it's a four day event and I'm not a golf fan. And so I was looking at other things that surrounded the event and found that the PGA Tour Wives had a charity and so my. Oh, that sounds fun. And so I went to this and this event. Well, there's events in San Diego and so the. The PGA Tour wives held a. An event where they taught bought in high school kids and taught them how to make salsa. I'll put that aside the fact that you teach San Diego kids how to make salsa. But while I was there, there's this teenage kid there, looked a bit like Justin Bieber. And I asked him, hey, do you like golf? Hey. It was a golf event and I'm a master of conversation. It seemed like a relevant question and he just gave me a look and just wandered off. Now I have four teenage boys and so I'm used to that look, so I kind of wrote it off. It wasn't until the dinner at the night, which was for the, you know, for the PGA event and so on, that I realized that when this teenager was brought up on stage that it was actually Rickie Fowler. Now, not only was Rickie Fowler one of the top PGA players at the time, he was also sponsored by Farmers Insurance. So not only did I not recognize him, I didn't recognize that we were spending a lot of money on it, but I will say he did look like a teenage boy.

[A]

If you go look, you proved objectivity right there.

[B]

I also proved that today, that day in particular, I was not good at my job.

[A]

There we go. All right, well, I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you, Scott. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, please, please, like, share and subscribe. Look for all of our shows on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and the I Hear Everything network, which include marketing, the battle between believers and non believers. Parts 1, 2, and 3. Secrets from a CFO, which is Scott Lindquist, who we also work with. What your agency wants to tell you but won't. Parts 1, 2, and 3. And a marketer turned tech exec talks about big data mainframes and AI. Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.