Confessions of a CMO with Mark Ritson

Summary

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Uncensored CMO: Confessions of a CMO with Mark Ritson

Podcast: Uncensored CMO
Host: Jon Evans
Guest: Mark Ritson (Marketing Professor, Columnist, and Consultant)
Date: January 21, 2026

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Overview

In this lively and irreverent episode, Jon Evans welcomes back the ever-opinionated Mark Ritson for a candid exploration of the realities of the Chief Marketing Officer role, drawing on anonymous insights from the new "Confessions of a CMO" research, conducted with Worldwide Partners International. The conversation strips back the myths, exposes the politics, and celebrates the unsung art of being a modern marketing leader, touching on tenure, organizational change, influence, and the multifaceted identities CMOs must adopt. Whether you’re in marketing or aspire to senior roles, this episode is a practical, humorous, and honest examination of what it really takes to survive and thrive as a CMO.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin and Purpose of “Confessions of a CMO”

• Jon explains he partnered with Worldwide Partners to commission research asking CMOs what they really think—anonymously—to cut through the PR-approved narratives.
  “The conversations you have before you start recording and after recording, they're probably the hottest takes, right?” (A, 02:34)

• Mark and Jon highlight how CMOs are typically media-trained and rarely honest in public, making this research uniquely valuable.

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2. Is the CMO Role Dead? Debunking the Tenure Myth

[03:53–06:36]

• ⁠Jon provides data showing CMO tenure is actually stable and increasing, countering the annual media obituary for the CMO job:

  • Pre-2000: 3 years
  • Early 2000s: 3.5 years
  • Post-financial crisis: 2.9 years
  • 2010s: 3.7 years
  • COVID drop: 3.3 years
  • Most recent: 4.3 years—the highest ever

• Mark’s take:
  “If we take the sort of the lower tier out that are a bad choice and they get rid of quickly about a year, which are really pulling the average down. We're up to six, seven years, which is as long as you would want for any senior management role.” (B, 05:53)

• Both argue it's time to stop blaming marketing outcomes on “short CMO tenure.”

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3. The Changing CMO: Roles and “Chief...Officer” Identities

A. Chief Mutiny Officer

[07:01–11:53]

• Theme: The CMO’s job is to "stir the ship," create constructive disruption, and represent the customer's voice within risk-averse organizations.

  • “My job isn't to steady the ship. My job is to stir us out of stagnation.”
  • “I shake the machine to create disorder, so ideas emerge. I force change before the company makes itself irrelevant.”

• Mark: CMOs must inject market reality into internal conversations:
  “Our prime directive is to represent the consumer...most marketers aren’t either, thinking about their ads. So for me, this Mutiny point is brilliant.” (B, 08:20)

• "Mutiny" should be evidence-based and planned, not chaos. Data is rhetorical fuel:
  “This is how I convince and influence. This is how I show everyone the evidence...it’s like having the ace of spades in your deck.” (B, 11:03)

B. Chief Missing Officer / Chief Machiavellian Officer

[12:34–17:17]

• Theme: The CMO’s influence is often invisible; true effectiveness comes from subtle internal maneuvering and political skill.

  • “They channel influence under the cover of alignment.”
  • “Marketing priorities move through disguised as somebody else’s strategy.”
  • “I only succeeded if everyone else believed the idea was theirs.”

• Mark:
  “The only way you're going to get these kind of people, particularly senior people, to do what you want is for them to think it's what they want.” (B, 14:25)

• Jon:
  “The more fingerprints on an idea, the safer it is. And in nature, what is less identifiable is harder to attack.” (A, 16:09)

• Both laugh about shared stories of spreading brand tactics along CEOs’ commutes to win internal visibility.

C. Chief Mood Officer: Balancing Fact and Feeling

[18:57–22:17]

• Theme: Internally, as with consumers, emotion matters. The CMO must combine evidence and belief to win decision-makers’ support.

  • “Sometimes the room doesn't need more numbers, it needs to believe.”
  • “You only earn permission for the magic when you’ve done the maths.”

• Mark:
  “If we don’t make the rest of the executive feel, they’re probably not going to be interested either.” (B, 19:18)

• Discussion: B2B buyers are just as emotional as B2C. Everyone has a view on marketing, making the CMO a “lightning rod for every irrational thing a company does.” (A, 20:45)

D. Chief Meaning Officer: Creating and Sustaining Purpose

[22:17–28:25]

• Theme: With the founder gone, the CMO shapes organizational meaning, uniting the company behind the “why” and ensuring purpose flows from core values to execution.

  • “Half my job is saying out loud what everyone else is pretending not to be true.”
  • “I bought a billboard on the CEO’s journey home just so he could see where we were spending our money.”

• Mark:
  “At some point they retire...the CMO has to step up and go, I've translated that and this is the meaning of the company.” (B, 23:39)

• Notable tactics: Out-of-home media targeting leadership for visibility.

• On communication:
  “Scientists speak in studies, marketing speaks in stories. We need to combine both.” (A, 27:04)

• Mark's principle of "bothism": blending storytelling and data for maximum impact.

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4. Chief Momentum Officer: Making Change Happen

[28:40-40:30]

• Theme: Beyond planning, the CMO must push the organization to execute, create bias for action, reframe risk, and sustain strategic focus.

  • “Ideas are worth $0 unless you can execute them.” — Mike Cesario, Liquid Death (A, 29:42)
  • “We don’t have a marketing problem, we have a change problem.”
  • “I need to make bold moves appear reasonable.”

• Mark: The true test is sticking to the plan when the going gets tough, resisting the urge for “strategic agility” mid-year, and fighting for execution: “Strategic agility for me is a contradiction in terms on a 12 month plan...I like a 12 month marketing plan because in that 12 months, not that much is going to change.” (B, 30:03)

• Execution > Strategy alone:
  “An average idea brilliantly executed will beat your brilliant idea averagely executed.” (A, 29:56)

• Both discuss methods like zero-based budgeting, owner mentality, and approaching decisions with VC/PE discipline (“create uncapped upside and capped downside”).

  • “If it was your money, would you spend it?” (B, 37:07)

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5. Surprising (and Not-So-Surprising) Findings About CMOs

[41:00–44:27]

• Jon and Mark are impressed with the wisdom and humility of the (anonymous) contributing CMOs—none fit the negative stereotypes.

• Mark:
  “They're not the best marketers. They're not the smartest people in the room. Sometimes the best marketers stay marketers. They don't become the CMO. These are the additional skills that make someone CMO worthy.” (B, 41:41)

• The CMO role is a juggling act, demanding constant adaptation between meaning, mood, mutiny, and momentum.

• The hardest shift: New CMOs often find themselves detached from marketing, navigating broader business realities and loneliness at the top:
  “Suddenly realize the agenda in the boardroom has absolutely no marketing in it at all...Completely different conversation.” (A, 43:48)

• Mark concludes:
  “They're far more C than M. My marketing caterpillar has disappeared and I'm now the chief butterfly and I'm probably going to be a CEO one day.” (B, 44:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Marketing is the lightning rod for every irrational thing a company does. Everyone has a view on the logo.” — A, 20:45

• “If you understand marketing properly, it isn't advertising. That's a tiny slice of it. Our prime directive is to represent the consumer, the person that pays for everything inside the company, because nobody else is thinking about her.” — B, 08:20

• “I only succeeded if everyone else believed the idea was theirs.” — CMO Confessions (A, 14:15)

• “Scientists speak in studies, marketing speaks in stories. We need to combine both.” — A, 27:04
  “Bothism—that’s a beauty, right? Storytelling and statistics together are more powerful than one or the other.” — B, 27:10

• “If it was your money, would you spend it?” — B, 37:07

• “What a lot of these points come back to is coming at it from an owner’s mindset.” — A, 36:58

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 — Welcome and research context
• 03:53 — Debunking the “CMO tenure crisis”
• 07:01 — “Chief Mutiny Officer” and leading constructive disruption
• 12:34 — “Chief Missing/Machiavellian Officer” and internal influence/politics
• 18:57 — “Chief Mood Officer” and balancing emotion/data internally
• 22:17 — “Chief Meaning Officer” and preserving brand/founder purpose
• 28:40 — “Chief Momentum Officer” and execution discipline
• 36:08 — Applying owner and VC/PE mindsets to brand management
• 41:00 — Surprises from the research; what makes a great CMO
• 43:48 — The real experience of new CMOs and career reflections

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Tone & Language

The episode is informal, witty, and direct—typical of Mark Ritson's down-to-earth, plain-spoken style and Jon’s honest, self-deprecating humor. Both speakers use vivid anecdotes from their own careers and pepper the discussion with memorable one-liners, making marketing leadership both enlightening and entertaining.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen (or -read) for anyone interested in the real challenges and craft of modern marketing leadership. Rather than focusing on textbook theory or outdated stereotypes, Jon and Mark unpack what makes the CMO a uniquely challenging—and rewarding—role, blending persuasion, politics, storytelling, and relentless execution, all in service to the customer and growth. Highly practical, highly human, and very fun.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now, last year I got together my good friends at Worldwide Partners International, a collection of 95 independent agencies across 50 countries, to commission a brand new piece of research called confessions of a CMO. We want to find out what do CMOs really think when they're not on camera? And now this research had got so much great insight in it and we thought, how could we explore some of the insights and learnings from it? And there is no one on this planet better to have a conversation about this with than the one and only Mark Ritson, who we all know is the most opinionated marketing professor on the planet. So I thought, wouldn't it be fun to talk to Mark about what we discovered about CMOs and what they're not prepared to say in public? This episode will. It was so much fun. You're going to love it. Here it is. Mark. Welcome back to Unsensed cmo.

[B]

Here I am. John, how are you?

[A]

I'm good, mate, I'm very good.

[B]

This is quite an exciting discussion we're about to have. I'm intrigued by this.

[A]

I know, Me too, mate. I tell you what it was. This almost goes back to why I set the podcast up. So when I in the dim and distant past, when I used to be an actual cmo, I couldn't say anything in public. Right. Because I was media trained within an inch of my life, I had to stick to the party line. No matter what question I got asked, I'd bridge to the party line, that kind of thing.

[B]

You were a good boy back then.

[A]

I used to be, yes, exactly. And the reason I called this uncensored CMO is I want to have proper conversations about what's really happening in marketing. Right.

[B]

But you've told the story about Cannes before.

[A]

I have. Where this all comes from, people are aware of that.

[B]

Were you drunk when they interviewed you that day?

[A]

I must have been.

[B]

How come you were so uncensored in that moment, do you remember?

[A]

Well, it was the only thing I had to do all week, so basically I was unemployed at the time.

[B]

Or you'd stopped being a cmo.

[A]

I stopped being a cmo. So I was completely unemployed.

[B]

You got fired, didn't you? That was the thing.

[A]

Second time that year. Yeah. So I was on my second firing. So this is terrific at this point.

[B]

You've been fired twice, you were drunk and at Cannes.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

On the beach.

[A]

And basically I'm on the beach and I'd done the one thing that week was some panel. I think I was doing a panel with Sir John Hegarty or something like that. And then afterwards, this journalist comes up to me from CNBC and says, oh, can I interview you about what you think about Cannes? And I made one comment which was, there's one person not in Cannes, the customer. And basically I went on a ramp for about four minutes about like, why are we celebrating each other's work and we're not celebrating what works in the real world? And that, that became the thing they covered. And he stops the camera, he looks around, he goes, you, sir, are the first uncensored CMO I've met. All week I thought, there it is. There's the idea.

[B]

Funny, those little moments.

[A]

It is, isn't it? Fate, serendipity, you know, like chance, like, you know, right place, right time, and then it all comes together. But the guys at Worldwide Partners approached me last year and they said, well, you obviously have some great conversations on the podcast with CMOs, but what if you could ask them anonymously? Because the conversations you have before you start recording and after recording, they're probably the hottest takes, right? That's right. So they came up this idea called confessions of a CMO. What would CMOs say under the cloak of Anonymous? Anonymous. I can't even say that. Words.

[B]

And a cloak of what?

[A]

A cloak, of course, you know, but what if they could say things anonymously about how they really felt and the challenges they faced and they weren't quoted?

[B]

And it is, you know, we both know this. It's very, very different the minute you're having a beer, particularly with very big CMOs, the difference in their opinions is striking, right?

[A]

Striking, exactly. So the idea was, how do you get all those opinions out there without putting them? It's a great idea. So Confessions of CMO was born, and I thought it'd be great to kind of pick on some of those confessions and get your reaction to them. But before we do that, I thought one of the debates that always happens in marketing is, is the CMO role dead? Is the CMO tenure getting shorter?

[B]

Here we go.

[A]

You know what I mean? It's the same old thing. Every year we have the same debate. I actually thought I'd get some data.

[B]

Very good.

[A]

Which I'll run past you.

[B]

So, by the way, thank God you've done this, because it echoes through the world of marketing. It's the reason we don't spend enough on brand management. It's the reason why marketing isn't doing well. It comes back, oh, the CMO tenure. So I'm genuinely fascinated by what you're about to say.

[A]

So here we go. And I'm breaking it down into decades. Right. So pre 2000, so this is literally when I was a boy, the average tenure was actually quite short, three years.

[B]

Yeah. Now I have to say here, remember the average marketer has one testicle. Right. And what I mean by that is averages really hide the presence of diversity. Yeah. So in that average figure are some very good CMOs doing 8, 9 years. Sil Salah sort of style tenures. And there's a whole bunch of plonkers that get in and everyone goes, hang on a minute, we've made a terrible mistake. So we, we have to point out that, you know, that as a very, very nominal distribution is my $20 word.

[A]

Now we then get some good news. So in the early 2000s, the 10 year increases to 3.5 years. So starting to, starting to get some momentum, which is great.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Until guess what happens in 2009. The financial crisis. Financial crisis hits globally and it drops to 2.9 years now. So obviously it's a reaction therefore to global cost cutting, economies going down and one of the first rolls that gets cut, the CMO roll. Right.

[B]

But you would argue that probably was across the board. We saw that cutting back. So it isn't a marketing phenomenon, it's a company's.

[A]

It's a company wrapping this crisis. And this theme continues. Right. So what happens in the 2010s that then the tenure grows to 3.7 years, so it actually gets longer.

[B]

Which by the way, if you looked at 10 years of CFO, it's not that different.

[A]

It's quite similar. And then of course, what happens in 2019? Covid hits. And so the 10 year drops to 3.3. And since then, this is the interesting thing, since then it's up to 4.3.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It's actually now the highest it's been since records began.

[B]

I think there's two points there. Right. So again, if you put my average point in, okay, average is 4.4 years. If we take the sort of the lower tier out that are a bad choice and they get rid of quickly about a year, which are really pulling the average down. We're up to six, seven years, which is as long as you would want for any senior management role. So I think you've effectively destroyed the myth that these short CMO tenures are causing any kind of problem. They don't exist for the most part. Right.

[A]

And I think the point, I think you've made before as well, is we always make the assumption, like me, they get fired, but actually they sometimes get promoted. There are other outcomes available. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, when you put it side by side with CFOs, it ain't that different. And I wish we could stop talking about it.

[A]

So let's get into confessions of CMOs. So in the report, what they did quite neatly, after listening to all the CMOs talk honestly about the pressures they face, what they said, the CMO role's not dead, it's just changing. It changes with the environment. It changes with the challenges that face today. And so what they came up with is this lovely construct of changing the M in cmos. So the first one they came up with change. Chief Mutiny Officer. Chief Mutiny Officer, which I love that. I love that as a kind of phrase.

[B]

So this is one of the themes.

[A]

That comes from one of the themes that come through. So what they say, what they're saying in the report is the CMO has to wear many hats. One of the hats he has to wear is Mutiny. So a couple of quotes here that I quite enjoyed. My job isn't to steady the ship. My job is to stir us out of stagnation.

[B]

Very good.

[A]

So that was good. I shake the machine to create disorder, so ideas emerge. I force change before the company makes itself irrelevant.

[B]

All great quotes. Right? They've obviously got some good cmo.

[A]

They have, yes. And this kind of reminds me of, I think, one of my favorite quotes of yours that you made, I think, on the first podcast that we got together, which is your primary job is to represent the customer, where decisions get made.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And organizations get very staid and very internal. The customer in most people's customer in most big organizations is inside the company.

[B]

And it's super dangerous. Right. I mean, it's a point that really bears repeating. Right. If you understand marketing properly, it isn't advertising. That's a tiny slice of it. Our prime directive is to represent the consumer, the person that pays for everything inside the company, because nobody else is thinking about her. Literally not thinking about her. And most marketers aren't either thinking about their ads. Right. So, you know, during COVID the job wasn't to produce amazing ads. It was to, in the boardroom, get everyone to realize this is what's happening in the consumer's world right now, bringing that voice in. So for me, this Mutiny point is brilliant because we're the ones that bring in that change and that perspective. And I tell you, I've seen this happen. I would say Dozens of times, companies will sit looking at a sales line over, you know, quarters or years and imputing all of this stuff about what's going on. It's like, dudes, it's just, literally, it's just a single line of revenue, right? It doesn't tell you anything. You need to bring the consumer in. And to the Mutiny point, that's a very volatile thing to do, but the volatility is real. You know what I mean? It's not that the company wants stability, it's that that stability is false stability. We make our money from the market. Whatever the market is doing, we have to bring that in and to one of those quotes there, shake it up a bit.

[A]

I mean, the other kind of Mutiny I found as well is the time frame in which you want to create change. I remember doing a job very early in my career, I created this unit of. We called them seed brands. I took all the innovation and I managed them as a separate business unit. Because what I realized is that the way we manage big brands on kind of monthly cycles of promotion, we'd launch a new brand in one month and the next month be something else. So I actually created a structure that looked over three to five years and kept focus on those brands. Rather than just launch and leave, we kind of launch and nurtured and grew. And it reminded me of that amazing Carl Mellor and Len Lojisch quote of like, if brands are built in years, why are they managing quarters? And I think some of the mutiny that actually CMOs have to do is actually looking ahead to where the organization's going and also make decisions based on the long term.

[B]

No, I like that. I like that point. And the other element of this, when you get back to the Mutiny thing, it's just that the company doesn't want change, but if the consumer's signaling it, you ever look at a conversation with an OPS guy? The last thing they want is any form of change. We literally want to keep everything the same and the market moves and shifts around and evolves, right? And competitors make them change as well. So I think that Mutiny point and disturbing the stability is a super important point and it's only going to come from a good cmo. The CFO isn't going to shake the ship. Do you know what I mean? That's not what they do. Maybe the CEO in some cases, but the CMO's job is to say, hey, we're moving.

[A]

But there's a lovely nuance here that brings me back to mini mba, actually, because people assume that mutiny is chaos, but actually it's not. Mutiny is planned. Right. And I think the best thing that teams and CMO can do is come armed with the evidence to kind of create that change.

[B]

Super important.

[A]

And that's a really important point because people think mutiny, they think chaos, destruction.

[B]

Not true.

[A]

It's not true at all.

[B]

Well look, there's a key point and we do talk about a lot on mini NBA marketers use data to build their strategy. Great. But there's a second role for data which is rhetorical, which is this is how I convince and influence. This is how I show everyone the evidence. Yeah. And you find a lot of marketers are great at generating data and using it to build their approach, but they don't realize when you bring it to an argument, it's like having the ace of spades in your deck. Because it's not like here's my point of view now the CFO disagrees. It's like woomph. Here's what our market is telling us. It doesn't matter what you or I think. Here's the data. And not enough marketers use data to support the mutual.

[A]

Exactly. And to our very first point about the customer in the room, like, you can argue with me all you want, but you can't argue with the customer. Right. The customer is the one point of view that no one can argue with. And should you? Not ever.

[B]

And if your data is properly collected, which is important. Right. It has to be representative, then you've got the evidence to convince anyone.

[A]

Exactly. Now I've got a little pet theory that I roll out every now and then about the real four P's of the cmo. I always joke about the fact that, I mean, in fact, you said this to me once. The CMO is rarely the best marketer in the team.

[B]

And they'll admit that. They'll admit that straight away.

[A]

It's true. Isn't. And I always think the four P's of the CMO are kind of people planning, politics and persuasion. You have to create the conditions for great marketing to happen. And that involves kind of picking the right people. It involves having the right plan. It involves persuading the organization what to do. But it also requires navigating organizational politics.

[B]

More than anything else. I'd put it a different way. I say there's a lot more C than M in cmo, Right?

[A]

Yes, definitely. And that comes nicely onto the second point, which is now in the report. It's called Chief Missing Officer, which I think is to describe the fact that actually the CMO's influence can sometimes go through an organization unnoticed. In the radar. Yeah, in a way. But I think, although this word may not be popular, but I think it's about manipulation in the positive sense.

[B]

I like that. Or you could have Chief Machiavellian officer.

[A]

Yeah, even better. Yeah.

[B]

But it all mean the same thing. The political dimension of getting the consumer and marketing agenda through the company. So we can. I mean, this plays out most commonly with what I call the question which is asked of me wherever I go at every event. I'll do a talk tonight. This question will definitely come up. Right. And the question is always paraphrasing it. I get it. I know we need to invest more money on brand building. How do I get the bozos in my leadership team to get it? And the answer is the CMO here, the Chief Manipulation Officer, how do I get the rest of the organization to get it?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Through the dark arts of politics and Machiavelli. And manipulation it is.

[A]

Now, there's some amazing quotes here. I'll read a few of these out because I enjoyed this one. They channel influence under the COVID of alignment.

[B]

Very nice.

[A]

Which I thought was very good.

[B]

Very nice.

[A]

Marketing priorities move through disguise as somebody else's strategy.

[B]

Again, I've got a specific. I used to have a mate who was the Chief Branding Officer at Deutsche bank, and he would say, I don't even use the B word of brand because it turns people off. I just work out what their language is and that's what brand will be. If I'm having a meeting with the HR team, it's their HR agenda. I'm just, you know, I'm basically just changing the words.

[A]

It's perfect. You just reverse, exactly reverse, into the language and thinking a strategy of who you're presenting to. I only succeeded if everyone else believed the idea was theirs.

[B]

That's a huge one, I got to tell you. My favorite example of this is I used to work for Michael Burke, who was the CEO at Louis Vuitton. But prior, when I worked for him, was the CEO at Fending. And I used to do a lot of training for lvmh. And he'd been at one of my training courses. About three years later, I'm in Rome and he's basically shouting at me, telling me something that I taught him three years earlier in the Art of Luxury Branding course. I always said to my MBA students, what do you think I did? Did I say, actually, Michael, I think you'll find I taught you that. Or did I Go. You're blowing my mind with this information. Right. I think it's a key point that the only way you're going to get these kind of people, particularly senior people, to do what you want is for them to think it's what they want 100%.

[A]

And you have to suck up your own ego on this one. You just have to let go of all that frustration, don't you?

[B]

Look, the way I describe it to junior executives is there's two games of chess. There's the game on the top of the table that no one smart is playing and there's a game underneath that everyone's playing. So lose the game on the top of the table. Right. The one underneath is the key one. Right. Be convinced by someone of their argument. That's really your argument, to do what you want them to do. Right. And this is a skill. I have to tell you, I see it in many French managers. The Irish are fantastic at it. The British tend to be useless at it.

[A]

They are. You know, I discover the Japanese are masters at this. Like the meeting. I learned this. The meeting is never.

[B]

No, no, no, no, no.

[A]

The meeting is a pure performance.

[B]

That's right. You get the call afterwards.

[A]

Yes, exactly. I learned this too late afterwards.

[B]

Well, I have a Japanese sister in law and I can tell you. Yeah, you want to see how to manage relationships, Just study someone who's smart in Japanese. Oh, I see what you're up to here.

[A]

You know, Exactly. I like these couple of quotes as well. The more fingerprints on an idea, the safer it is. And in nature, what is less identifiable is harder to attack. It's good, isn't it? Good stuff there. Now, I learned this on Lucas. This is the first of my two firings in a year just to get back to the scene of the crime. But we'd reformulated because of sugar tax. Remember, as an exec team, we all literally voted in an exec team together to make the change. Literally, literally holding hands. We're going to do this together. It's the right thing to do. Right side of history. You can imagine the kind of bravado the moment it went south. Like, the moment. I mean, it was like within seconds of it going south. It's a marketing problem. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you remember we had that meeting? We're all kind of hugging and going is the right thing for our future and our children and generations to come. And then we have a marketing problem and John's going to fix it.

[B]

It's so typical. I mean, and Our remit, if you notice, when things are going well, the marketing remit is tiny, but when the shit hits the fan, we're pretty much responsible for everything. You know what I mean?

[A]

Exactly. Success has many fathers and failures. And orphanas, they say. Another lovely little comment that came out of this section as well, which I know is close to your heart because you talked about it in Cannes, is consistency over time is what will keep the brand alive. Which is an interesting quote, actually, but we know from the data that actually, that's surprisingly true.

[B]

No, the data supports it. And I think there's a couple of elements that quote that I love. So, yeah, first of all, not changing too quickly because the market, we want to change, as we said, but not changing for the sake of change. There's also a bigger one, which is over time, the paradox of branding is you have to change tactics to stay consistent to your brand. And you only see it in my experience with a brand that's 30, 40 years. I was in Switzerland this week with a brand that I won't name that's just about to turn 40. And it is around that time with humans and brands, where if you've done the same thing, weirdly, you start to become slightly contradictory to your own position, because what sexy and cool and, you know, sporty meant 25, 30 years ago is now often the inverse opposite. You know what I mean? Bread used to be healthy, and now it's like the last thing anyone wants to do is eat bread. You know what I mean? So I think there's that consistency point where over the paradox of time and brands is that to stay consistent, you do have to change eventually what you do. You know what I mean? And I love watching that play out with brands of a certain age.

[A]

Yeah, I love Dove, actually. Dove have done that really well. You know, they were groundbreaking 20 years ago with real beauty, but how they deliver it today with ar, completely different. Totally different. But actually on still on the Money.

[B]

It'S a beautiful example.

[A]

Really good example. Okay, the next profile is the Chief Mood Officer. Mood, yes. So basically balancing facts and feelings. Now, two quotes here that sound a little bit contradictory, but kind of play two points here. Sometimes the room doesn't need more numbers, it needs to believe. And you only earn permission for the magic when you've done the maths.

[B]

Yeah, I like it. I mean, we talk a lot about this when it comes to talking to consumers, right? We know about the power of emotion with consumers. All we're saying here is the same logic of persuasion and impact works Internally as well, that if we don't make the rest of the executive feel, they're probably not going to be interested either. Right? Yeah, I think it's a powerful point.

[A]

And we get this with B2B actually, because one criticism I often get, systems, oh, that's great for B2C brands, John. But obviously in B2B that would be different. It's completely different. You know, we act completely rationally in B2B when we make decisions, don't we? You know, it's like, well, actually, the wiring of our human brains hasn't changed in many millions of years.

[B]

I come down hard on it now. Many NBA. Every B2B guy is going to say to me, oh, yeah, but you know, these Examples are from B2C. B2B is different. I'm like, listen, first of all, it's not. Second, the minute you go, B2C is like that, but B2B is different. I go, just look what you've done. You've just put everything in B2C together as if it's the same. We're selling insurance, cars, ice cream, sex toys, banjos. You know what I mean? They're all different. And so is B2B. You know what I mean? We can look across the similarities. So yeah, I think. And what we've seen from the data is exactly your point, that in B2B, emotion is a gigantic. I mean, we rationalize it later, right? You don't get a chief technology officer saying, yeah, I bought it because it felt like the right choice. I'll make up some bullshit reasons to rationalize the choice. But yeah, the mood is. The internal mood, I think is key.

[A]

It is very, very key. This is one of my favorite quotes, actually, entire report here. Marketing is the lightning rod for every irrational thing a company does. Everyone has a view on the logo.

[B]

Yeah, no, everyone's a marketer, right? No one's a cfo. Right. Even the CFO doesn't really want to get involved in it. But everyone's got a marketing point of view. And I mean, I tell you how I see this. Especially in Australia, there's a certain. Is a real tragedy where you get a really good marketing team that have built a good strategy and a good set of tactics. And they have one of those bozo CEOs that thinks he's an expert and it always is he. And he comes down and says, well, I don't want that. I saw this yesterday. I want that. And what's sad about it is really crap. Marketing teams don't care. They Go. Okay, yeah, we'll do that. Those really good marketing teams that have a bozo CEO are the ones that realize it's stupid and realize it won't work, but are kind of forced to do it. You know what I mean? So that lightning rod thing. Yeah, absolutely. Everyone thinks they're a marketing genius.

[A]

It does. And it plays out in some of the biggest stories from last year. I mean, you look at Jaguar, the Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle, backlash, even Cracker Barrel, when they change the, you know, change the logo, like President Trump gets involved in that one. I mean, it's like everyone feels like they have. Everyone's got a stake in the marketing and the marketing.

[B]

You know, the CMO has to respond to that or not, as the case may be. Right. So I think we talked about it before, but there's always been, I think, a response required. But I think we're seeing more and more smart brands going, the right responses. Let's just let the storm pass. You know, it may be that. It may be the wisest course.

[A]

Right. The next one is chief Meaning Officer. Now, this interesting one, because marketing is so broad, it covers so many disciplines, there's a role for marketing to align the organization around why it exists and its purpose and then designing the organization as well to deliver that. And this touches as well on the fact that I know you often point out, marketing is often seen as one of the four P's, not the whole four P's. And there's a role for us to influence the organization at scale and remind of its purpose.

[B]

And more broadly, when we look at what brand positioning is meant to be, it's primarily meant to be, what do I want the consumer to think? But there is a role in good positioning which we can overdo about. This is what we stand for. This is why we're here. These are our values. Right? I mean, we talked about the work that was done with Starbucks a few months ago, and it's good work because it's very clear on this is the customer promise. But there's also four or five brand values for. This is what we do. This is who we are. This is our meaning. Right? And I think that without marketing, you don't get that. You sometimes get it from a strong founder organically to begin with. But at some point with scale, marketing has to kind of articulate it and give the company its meaning. And I think that's a legitimate role. And the CMO's got to do it. You know, I mean, and it's a bit of a sad one. Because I work for Benefit Cosmetics for a very long period of time in San Francisco. And when the two twins, the founders, Gene and Jane Ford, were running it, they provided the meaning because it was running through their bodies. It was fun and it was beauty and you felt it coming out of them. At some point they retire. At some point they have 25,000 employees and 42 different offices. The CMO has to step up and go, I've translated that and this is the meaning of the company. And now we have to, in the nicest sense of the word, make it artificial. So I think chief meeting officer for me is right up there as one of the key ones providing the, you know, why do we do these things? Who are we as an organization, as a team? Why do we exist? I think that is a CMOS job.

[A]

There's an amazing book actually called the Founder's Mentality, A couple of Bain consultants that looked at founder led companies, performance versus management led ones. The founder ones outperformed dramatically and they kind of boil down to the kind of reasons why. But one of them was an owner's mindset and a sense of insurgency as well and being close to the customer. I think they're broadly the kind of three things. And actually when you no longer have the founder, I think the CMO needs to fill that void, fill the gap very much.

[B]

And the thing I've learned working with LVMH for many years with very strong founders, we'd often acquire the brand and they'd come inside or they'd be the son or daughter of the founder, is it can be very dangerous to become too dependent on the founder because at some point they do die, right? Literally, they pass away. And if you look at some of the. The story of Christian Dior is a great one. Dior's death, I mean, he died 10 years after the brand was created. It sends it off into, you know, paroxysms of chaos for 30 years. Because the founders, everything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's the spirit of the company, it's the creation, it's the leadership, it's the symbolic face of the brand. You lose that overnight and the brand is in trouble. Whereas I think if a CMO can gradually artificially replace them with good thinking, it really serves the company well for the future.

[A]

It does, it does. A few little quotes that made me smile in this one. Half my job is saying out loud what everyone else is pretending not to be true.

[B]

Again, these sound like proper big hairy CMOs, right?

[A]

Exactly. But part of your job is to burst the bubble or Burst the myths that kind of exist. And I know that's what you do a lot. We got Byron Sharp to thank for making a specialism out of, you know, bursting those myths, which are very important, aren't they? Another one made me smile. But by the way, I think everyone marks me guilty. This one. I bought a billboard on the CEO's journey home just so he could see where we were spending our money.

[B]

Unfortunately, as you know, that's one of the oldest, dirtiest tricks, right? Is the first question when you work in outdoor advertising is, and where does your CEO live? Exactly. Just draw out the little root here and they're like, is it this brand's everywhere all of a sudden, right? No, I think it's absolutely true.

[A]

I remember working on Pepsi and it was, I think, run up to the London Olympics, and Indra Newey was flying in. And I remember my team were literally told the precise, you know, geographic location, every turn in the road, every little corner store suddenly turned into.

[B]

We're not joking, right? This is not a joke. This happens.

[A]

People don't realize this. When I tell people that, really, I'm like, this actually happens. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, like buying billboards, dressing up stores, you know, giving brides.

[B]

Same with sponsorship. Right. If we know there's a particular love of a CEO on a particular event, suddenly there's money going into it, you know?

[A]

Exactly. Scientists speak in studies, marketing speaks in stories. We need to combine both.

[B]

I like that. I mean, if you look at my concept of bothism, that's a beauty, right? Storytelling and statistics together are more powerful than one or the other qual and quant, you know, But I think we're often. If you, you know, when I, when I worked with McKinsey for a long time in the old days, and McKinsey would say, there's violinists and there's chemists. We want to try and get both. And I think that's exactly what that quote speaks to is marketers need a little bit of both. If we're too data driven and scientific, we're not going to have that emotion that we talked about earlier. But at the same time, if it's all that storytelling, it. It turns very quickly into childish hoo ha, you know, so that mix of the two, the theme around the data presented, well, I think is absolutely the core. A great CMO can. Can take you through a story, but with the right data framework around it.

[A]

Exactly. I had ac, who's the cmo Unilever, on the podcast recently. She was a great episode I saw it. But her ability to summarize very briefly and succinctly what they're trying to achieve and the brand framework was exceptional. But she's got, I know, 400 brands, 60 billion turnover. There's a lot of marketers that all have to understand what they're there to do. And so the storytelling back with the data is absolutely right. Your job is to simplify.

[B]

You're right. And I read a great Harvard Business Review article years ago called Leadership is Repetition. And basically, once you've got that story in the statistics, the key is just to keep saying it over and over and over again because everyone has to hear it, and usually about 17 times.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. So we've talked about creating Mutiny, setting the mood, delivering the meaning you need to create the momentum. This is absolutely, absolutely key. So, Chief Momentum Officer and I think there's a couple of insights or three insights that came out for me is, number one, getting approval, number two, reframing risk, and number three, creating a bias fraction.

[B]

What's the last one?

[A]

Bias fraction. So basically getting everyone to. Well, basically following through. So creating a strategy is one thing, but getting the organization to deliver against it. I mean, we casually say, oh, we've locked the plan, therefore we assume it's going to happen. But actually creating the change in organization can be pretty.

[B]

Well, it comes out with AI. You know what I mean? Continual question at the moment like, what role do marketers have if AI can eventually produce really amazing brand plans? And I think it can eventually. There's still a role for a brand manager because someone still has to execute the bloody thing, right? So I think the manager part of brand manager, the CMO role there is still crucial.

[A]

I mean, there's a lovely quote from Mike Cesario of Liquid Death founder. He said, ideas are worth $0 unless you can execute them. And we've got to focus on the execution, haven't we? Because otherwise an average idea brilliantly executed will beat your brilliant idea averagely executed.

[B]

Well, we've gone down this rabbit hole for about 40 years in strategy, right? Talking about, is strategy about the plan or is it about the execution? And there's no surprise, ultimately it's both. But we do tend to focus more on the strategic development. And to your point, once the plan's locked down and presented and approved and funded, we tend to then slip up on the execution, it not being done. And also you get that horrible thing with a lot of marketers and a lot of CMOs where the agility, innovation, lack of attention and Patience plays out and they just start deviating almost immediately from the plan. Right. So I like a 12 month marketing plan because in that 12 months, not that much is going to change. I still think there's room for tactical agility. Oh, there's a new tool and there's a new opportunity, that's fine. But strategic agility for me is a contradiction in terms on a 12 month plan. Right. We said this would be our plan, we're going to do it. I mean, you had that experience with the CMO working with Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle, right. And he was hit by that enormous push to change it and his reaction was, no, our strategy is clear. It fits our strategy. We'll stay with this execution.

[A]

Yeah, the old phrase, everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face.

[B]

It's exactly true. And you've got to take a few of those and stay with the plan. So I think that idea of a CMO that's determined and has that ability to go, you know, we're going to stay focused on this. And also the other bit is, remember, when we get into the tactical execution, it can be very distracting. There's lots of bells and whistles and events and things going on. Being able to step back and say, what was the plan? What was the strategy? Does this tick the box? Keep going with it? I think is that the cool headed CMO that isn't getting, you know, distracted by all the ephemera that go on within the tactical world.

[A]

And as we've talked about many, many times as well, sometimes it means doing the same thing over and over again and not changing it all the time.

[B]

That's crucial.

[A]

That's absolutely key part because you're bored.

[B]

But no one else even gets the message yet. You know what I mean? I think it's absolutely essential that we just keep banging the same drum over. I mean, you've, you've learned it with podcasting, right? You end up saying the same shit over and over and over again and still people don't register 100%.

[A]

Right, let's jump in some of the quotes in this one then. So one quote here, we don't have a marketing problem, we have a change problem. I think it probably speaks to what you just talked about actually, is that, you know, coming up with the marketing plan is one thing, but actually creating is another one. The next quote here, I need to make bold moves appear reasonable.

[B]

Yeah, that's nice. That's nice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's a hell of a skill, right? I mean, I've worked For Some pretty good CMOs who have this amazing ability to convince you that everything is fine and everything's working. And I'm never sure at the time, are you just saying that, or do you really think that and it really doesn't matter. It's the convincing bit that you want to be held by someone that appears to have. Has it all under control. And I'm not sure how many CMOs have that capability.

[A]

I've got a flip to this one, which is we need to make safe decisions appear expensive or risky. Because if you think so, we did the extraordinary cost of Dahl Can a couple of years ago, and what was fantastic, the opportunity cost of it is exactly everyone. So what I notice with most marketers is the. They'll spend the most amount of money on the safest things and they'll spend the least amount of money on the apparently risky things. And when we measure them from a system one perspective, we always notice that the risky things are often ones that work. But we're scared. Right. So we reduce the investment. The thing that everyone's aligned to has been through the process, got everyone signed up for. They tend to be the safest bets that don't typically work.

[B]

But there's no guarantee that that will be the effective one. Exactly. It's perfect. Right. Because when you think about it, what do we know works best? New stuff that the consumer's not expecting. That doesn't look like competition. Yeah. It's a great observation.

[A]

So next one is everyone said it was obvious in hindsight, but when I said it at the time, it sound crazy.

[B]

So much truth in that. Right. I mean, I experience it with columns. Right. I've learned long ago that if I call something absolutely correctly, no one will remember me calling it. So there's no point. You know what I mean? And it's the same with a good cmo. They're going to be looked at as crazy. But the minute it plays out, not only is no one crediting the cmo, everyone else is taking the credit.

[A]

Yeah. In retrospect, everyone's a genius.

[B]

It was obvious. Right. I knew straight away this was going to work out.

[A]

Interesting one. Interesting. Different one here. So I applied a VC approach to every decision I made.

[B]

Very good.

[A]

I created uncapped upside and I combined it with capped downside.

[B]

Very clever.

[A]

And that's a. I've not heard that before. I like that.

[B]

Whoever they've spoken to, they've got some properly smart, experienced CMOs. The whole idea of VC ing your business is one of the, I think the strongest things, the illumination, it's almost immediate. You can hear all these arguments, for example, about why we need to keep these brands. You say, great, great, great. If we were working in private equity and we came in and bought this business, what's the first thing you do? Oh, I kill all of those brands straight away. Well, there's no real reason that that wouldn't apply. And I think it's absolutely. It's a brilliant switch. You can click and I think a good CMO that realizes you've always got to think that way.

[A]

I think one of the best parts of my career, I was in private for four years and I love the purity of thinking that goes into it, right. We're buying the brand for these reasons. We're going to sell it on after a number of years and we almost.

[B]

Know when it's going and who we're going to try and sell it to.

[A]

And they came up with this idea. I just. Utter genius. On day one of owning the business, they wrote the investment memorandum for the exit in the future. They wrote it on day one and it was, it was one page. It's four boxes said, what would have to be true in terms of the market, what would have to be true in terms of people, what have to be true in terms of the brand? What would have to be true in terms of promotion, production, efficiency and then work? What has to be true in terms of finance? And you start literally with the end in mind, say we're going to sell it for this much. And then you, you get on the bit of paperwork, many things, three or four under each, right? Financial measures, people, measures, and then you just work out your plan from there. And the clarity that brought.

[B]

And often they pull it off. I mean, my private equity experiences was always the stunning. Really changed the way I thought about my career. Every time we looked at a brand. When I worked for a couple of private equity funds and we were sniffing around brands we might buy and I'd say to them, why do you want to buy this brand? And they're like, we don't. We want to buy in this category and this is the only one for sale. And you're like, whoa, wow. Why the category first approach? Because if the category is good, the brand will be fine. And we just don't think that way in marketing. We start with a brand. The reality is, if you had a choice, a number two, number three brand in a really fast growing, very lucrative category is always gonna be the number one brand in a shitty declining category. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I Think that changed often how I thought about brands. It was like, let's start with the ocean they're swimming in rather than just the brand itself.

[A]

I mean, what a lot of these points come back to is back to our founder's point is coming at it from an owner's mindset as well, which we rarely do in marketing.

[B]

No. And we could do more of. I had an old CMO boss who used to say to me, if it was your money, would you spend it? Right. And again, it's one of those questions that instantly changes everything. If it was your money, would you put it in? Would you do this? And suddenly you feel this cold bucket of water and then clarity, you know. So I think absolutely a spot on.

[A]

I've done that in a few teams actually where we. I mean, I know it's popular financial concept of zero based budgeting, but you start with nothing. So you literally start with nothing.

[B]

Super liberated.

[A]

You build up the business case from the bottom. Because what I noticed is, and it didn't matter what size of brand, but you know, brand had £10 million last year. They'd write a plan that added up to 10.5 million. Weirdly like, yeah, it's funnily enough. And the split, the strategy and tactics would be broadly the same.

[B]

I do the same mini mba, the exam. I deliberately don't give them a budget for their. They have to build a marketing plan for a fictional company. They know the company spent $4 million the previous year, but I just leave it hanging there. And 90 of them go, okay, 4 million. Again, I'm like, why start zero based? And remember, zero base is how much am I going to invest? And also what am I going to invest it on? The allocation is also zero based. Right. And I think zero based has a bad reputation because of that. I think it's a liberating. It doesn't, you know, more often than not you end up asking for more money than the previous year. It's just marketers, I tell you. Sometimes because something sounds, ooh, zero doesn't sound very good. Right? That must be a negative thing. You know what I mean? If we'd have called it positive projection modeling. Oh yeah, that's great. That's a bad name. Bad brand name.

[A]

I think a lot of problems as well. We design the organization around the tactics, don't we? So we've got a department for social, a department for media, department for creative, a department for. And basically everyone's basically pitching to keep their jobs and keep their budgets alive.

[B]

And as much as they had last year, they want again.

[A]

Exactly. Rather than going, actually, what's the business problem we've got to solve and how can we solve? I remember doing this on Liptonized tea, actually, which is quite a beautifully simple example. Unilever had handed me the brand, it was being transferred from Unilever to Britvic and they dumped this massive file on my desk with everything they'd done is properly integrated campaign. Anyway, I love the campaign idea. It was basically, don't knock it till you try it. Because they'd worked out in the uk, right? We don't like iced tea, Right. We drink our tea hot, simple. And yet when people try it, they love it. Right? Simple insight. So I remember saying to the brand manager, so how much do we spend on sampling? Oh, no, we didn't do something. No, we did, we did bus wraps.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm just like, what do you mean? So I can see the challenge by driving off into the distance. But I don't get to we.

[B]

I brought zero based budgeting into a very large medical global company as part of their brand planning process. And I can always remember the first year going around reviewing all the marketing plans around the world and you'd be like, okay, so you've proposed, you know, you want $12 million for the therapy and you're going to deliver X amount. And then my CMO would say, and is that it? There's nothing else? No, no, that's it. That's what we want. Nobody used. That's the marketing budget. Right? There's nothing else. Oh yeah, there's another 18 million that we want to spend on other like maintenance stuff. And he's like, no, no, no, no, this has to. If it's not in the plan, we're not doing it. And I'm like, that's not fair. And it's like, no, no, we meant zero base. Yeah, you want. That's what you're getting. If we approve this plan. All that other dodgy stuff that's happening that can't be attached to strategic objectives, that's what we're coming for.

[A]

Well, remember the thing my team often said to me when we did this? They go, what do we tell Tesco? Because they were used to going into Tesco going, we're going to spend £5 million on TV out of it. And they literally tick every single box. I was going, I said, well, maybe go to Tesco and go, we're going to give you the most effective campaign that you've ever seen in this category. And it's going to make your rate of sale jump by 25%. They'll love that. But no one wants to do that because it was like, no, no. We want a shiny new campaign. Any surprises in this? Actually. You talk to a lot of CMOs?

[B]

No.

[A]

A lot of categories.

[B]

I have to be for once, not very cynical. I'm very surprised. They got such smart CMOs who really do know their stuff. And obviously it's anonymous. It's frustrating. We can't look at the list. They sound like the kind of cmos you'd want to work for, which I think is my big surprise. How do we get the report then? Because it does.

[A]

Yeah. ConfessionsofACMO. Okay, so, yeah, bought the URL, so go to that download. Actually, just on your point there, I do know the name. Obviously I'm not gonna mention them, but I do know the names of the CMOs. They're all a list. Big brands, you know what they're doing. Been in role a long time, working on some pretty cool brands as well. Yeah, we definitely got the look from.

[B]

A marketer's point of view. What's great is if. If our listeners want to grow up to be a cmo, and most of them do, it's a lovely little checklist of. You know, I think the thing I'd communicate about the CMOs I've worked for is we said it earlier, they're not the best marketers. They're not the smartest people in the room. They're quite happy to admit that they have other skills. And sometimes the best marketers stay marketers. They don't become the cmo. These are the additional skills that make someone CMO worthy. And for that reason, I think it's a fascinating report.

[A]

And what struck me as well is that they each touch on it. The CMO has to do a lot and be a lot to a lot of different people. And actually, you know, I kind of smiled a lot when I. When I was reading through this, and, you know, I can see the best CMOs actually managed to blend a lot of these different skills and they can adapt to different situations and, you know, they can be meaning one minute, mood the next minute and create mutiny the time after that. No, it's a good combination of all these things, isn't it?

[B]

And also on the back of your initial research showing that, you know, we aren't struggling with tenure, what we're struggling with is the ability to play these different complex roles. And it's interesting. Well, you know, that old book about what got you here will not get you there. The skills that make you a promotable marketer aren't these skills. You know, this is a different set of top level skills. So I think you again, get a sense of. For me, there's always a bit of tragedy when a great marketer gets promoted right up to the top because they're not going to do marketing anymore. They're going to do all this stuff.

[A]

You know, and that's the cold, hard shock that I think many people I speak to get is they up to head of marketing, maybe marketing director. You're in it, right? And you're enjoying it. You're doing it because you love it, right? You get a thrill from making a bit of innovation and doing a new campaign, whatever. And then you get this cold, hard reality when you're CMO A, you don't have a team, right? You're no longer a bunch of marketers talking about marketing. You're suddenly talking to an ops person, a finance person, a salesperson, very lonely. And then suddenly realize the agenda in the boardroom has absolutely no marketing in it at all. You're talking about kind of pay rises or strategy or bank loans or whatever else. Completely different conversation.

[B]

That's the moment where a lot of these short tenured CMOs get found out and the board are literally asking themselves, what have we done here? But then you see these other CMOs that emerge and it becomes their great moment, right? And they again, back to my point, they're far more C than M. I know one woman I work for in Australia who was a very average but, you know, very highly successful marketer, but then found her metier as a brilliant cmo, right? And you could just see that it was, you know, my marketing, you know, caterpillar has disappeared and I'm now the chief butterfly and I'm probably going to be a CEO one day and it was wonderful to see.

[A]

Well, that's a beautiful place to end, mate. Thank you very much.

[B]

What a good report.

[A]

There it is. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on XenSoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name. Name John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.