Forbes guide to being an influential CMO - Seth Matlins

Summary

Podcast Summary: Uncensored CMO – Forbes Guide to Being an Influential CMO with Seth Matlins

Episode Information:

• Title: Forbes Guide to Being an Influential CMO
• Host: Jon Evans
• Guest: Seth Matlins, Managing Director for the Forbes CMO Network
• Release Date: March 26, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Uncensored CMO, host Jon Evans engages in a deep conversation with Seth Matlins, the Managing Director for the Forbes CMO Network. Seth is renowned for producing influential lists such as the World's Most Influential CMOs and the Most Entrepreneurial CMOs. The discussion delves into the essential qualities that define a great Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), the challenges CMOs face within corporate structures, and strategies to enhance their influence both internally and in the broader marketing community.

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The Role and Challenges of CMOs

Jon Evans initiates the conversation by highlighting the critical role of CMOs and their often-underappreciated challenges. Seth Matlins responds by addressing the disparity between CEOs and CMOs, noting that "90% of the CEOs of the world's largest companies have no marketing background or experience whatsoever" (02:00). This lack of understanding from top executives often results in suboptimal resource allocation and diminished growth prospects for companies globally.

Seth emphasizes, "The CMO's job is really the hardest job in the C-suite" (02:15), underscoring the immense pressure CMOs face to drive sustainable, profitable growth amidst limited support and understanding from other executive roles.

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CMOs Transitioning to CEO Roles

Jon raises a pertinent question regarding the scarcity of CMOs ascending to CEO positions. Seth agrees that the system is "broken" (03:35) and attributes this to several factors, including a lack of financial acumen among CMOs and their insufficient focus on driving financial metrics. He stresses the importance of CMOs understanding that their primary objective is to influence "sustainable, profitable growth" (04:00), which is ultimately measured by financial outcomes.

Seth also points out that CMOs often fail to communicate the true value of marketing to CEOs and CFOs, who may "undervalue it because they don't understand it" (04:23). This disconnect leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where marketing remains undervalued and underfunded.

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Building Influence as a CMO

The conversation shifts to the strategies CMOs can employ to build and maintain influence within their organizations and the marketing community. Seth shares his philosophy, "There’s nothing more influential than a job brilliantly done" (29:46). He emphasizes that influence stems from consistently delivering exceptional results and being perceived as such by peers and stakeholders.

Jon adds that effective CMOs are "obsessed with the execution of what they're doing" (43:45), highlighting the importance of hands-on involvement in both strategic planning and tactical execution. Seth concurs, stating that CMOs must "earn the permission to have your expertise trusted" (07:36), which involves managing internal relationships and setting clear expectations.

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Creating and Sustaining Influence Through Leadership

Seth discusses the significance of representing the customer in decision-making processes. He references the idea of leaving an "empty chair" for the customer in boardrooms, a practice inspired by Jeff Cottrell, CMO at Topgolf. This metaphor underscores the necessity of keeping the customer’s perspective at the forefront of strategic discussions.

Further, Seth elaborates on the balance between short-term achievements and long-term strategies. He notes, "Today's CMO faces having long-term strategies measured by short-term results, which is not particularly sensical" (32:57). To navigate this, CMOs must implement robust metrics and milestones that allow for iterative progress and adaptability.

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Forbes’ Lists: Influential and Entrepreneurial CMOs

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Seth's work with Forbes in creating the lists of the World's Most Influential CMOs and the Most Entrepreneurial CMOs. Seth explains the complexities involved in measuring influence, stating, "It's incredibly difficult to measure influence" (21:15). The methodology involves analyzing over "8 billion data points" to create proxies for influence, ensuring a balanced evaluation that goes beyond mere popularity metrics like social media following.

For the Most Entrepreneurial CMOs, Seth describes the list as "100% qualitative" (35:30), focusing on CMOs who "embrace failure as opportunities to learn and get better". These CMOs are characterized by their innovative mindset, willingness to take strategic risks, and ability to apply creativity across their business operations.

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Advice for Aspiring Influential CMOs

When asked about tips for CMOs to enhance their influence, Seth offers pragmatic advice:

1. Do Your Job Brilliantly: Excellence in execution naturally leads to increased influence.
2. Manage Internal Relationships: Building trust and understanding within the C-suite is crucial.
3. Be Visible and Hands-On: Active participation in key projects ensures that CMOs leave their mark.
4. Balance Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Vision: Developing strategies that account for both immediate results and future growth.
5. Represent the Customer: Always advocate for the customer’s perspective in strategic decisions.

Seth encapsulates this philosophy by stating, "If you are not marketing internally, the odds of your success are much less" (06:43).

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The Unchanging Fundamentals of Marketing

In addressing the future of marketing, Seth asserts that despite rapid changes, the core responsibilities of marketing remain constant. "Marketing's job remains fundamentally about capturing attention and influencing attitudes and behaviors to drive sustainable, profitable growth" (48:25). He draws on timeless principles such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and behavioral economics to emphasize that human motivations are enduring, even as marketing tools and platforms evolve.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Seth and Jon reflecting on the enduring principles of marketing and the essential qualities that make CMOs influential and entrepreneurial. Seth’s insights highlight the importance of adaptability, creativity, and strategic thinking in navigating the complexities of modern marketing landscapes.

Notable Quotes:

• Seth Matlins: "The CMO's job is really the hardest job in the C-suite." (02:15)
• Seth Matlins: "If you are not marketing internally, the odds of your success are much less." (06:43)
• Jon Evans: "Ritson said, your primary job is to be the voice of the customer in the room where decisions get made." (19:11)
• Seth Matlins: "Marketing needs much better marketing." (05:43)
• Seth Matlins: "If you don't have that, then it's the Alice in Wonderland quote. If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there." (30:29)
• Jon Evans: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" (40:10)

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This episode offers valuable perspectives for current and aspiring CMOs, emphasizing the need for strategic influence, internal advocacy, and a balanced approach to short-term and long-term objectives. Seth Matlins’ experiences and insights provide a roadmap for enhancing the role of CMOs within their organizations and the broader marketing community.

Transcript

[John Evans]

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored cmo. And in this episode, we're going to be talking to somebody that really knows all about being a great cmo because he's one of the most connected people on the planet. Seth Matlins is the managing director for the Forbes CMO Network and produces lists like the top most influential CMOs in the world and also the most entrepreneurial CMOs. So obviously I want to find out from him what makes a great cmo, and he has got the answers. This is a great episode. I really enjoyed this. Here it is. Welcome to the Uncensored cmo. Seth Matlins, great to have you.

[Seth Matlins]

Thank you. It's so good to be here. Longtime listener, first time caller.

[John Evans]

Well, and congratulations on the new podcast, of course, that's just gone live. How's it all going?

[Seth Matlins]

It's going really well. I mean, what do we have, like nine episodes as of this recording, and the feedback's been phenomenal. But that's all about the guests. They've, they've dropped real gems.

[John Evans]

I love the positioning as well. Why, why make it about CEOs? I think that's such a, interesting position to take.

[Seth Matlins]

The fact of the matter is, and you know, there's McKinsey data that, that shows this, that 90% of the CEOs, the world's largest companies, which is, say, even more CFOs of the world's largest companies, have they, they have no marketing background or experience whatsoever. Yet oftentimes they think they do simply because they've been marketed to as if I could dance, because I've watched Beyonce. And because they don't have this experience, and yet are the ones who provide the resources, whether that's human time or capital, to CMOs in pursuit of their mission, which is to drive growth, sustainable, profitable growth, they're really suboptimal stewards of those resources. They don't know what to expect, what not to, and on what timeline. And as a consequence, not only does the cmos job get harder, which is really saying something because I believe it to be the hardest job in the C suite, but growth is diminished company by company. And then when you, when you add up company by company, when you aggregate it at scale, global GDP is mitigated. And it's worth remembering that 2/3 of global GDP is based on consumer spending. So we're just kind of punching business and capitalism's evolution in the face.

[John Evans]

Yeah, of course, unless you're Martin Sorrel when you go, the CMOs got the easiest job it's ever been.

[Seth Matlins]

It's so funny you bring that up. Somebody just sent me that. That Martin had. Sir Martin had said that at ces. I was like, oh, that's probably just a provocation. What's he mean? So I looked into it, and I should give him the chance to defend himself. But what I saw was he was saying, well, it's such an easy job because now there's only four media companies you have to buy from. As if that was the extent of the CMO's job. I honestly, I don't think.

[John Evans]

I mean, if that's 5% of a CMO's job, that would be kind of generous.

[Seth Matlins]

It's fraction. I mean, it's a small fraction. Would that it were as easy as he suggests, but I don't think. I don't think he was well represented with that quote.

[John Evans]

One question I want to ask you. Why do you think there are not more CMOs making that jump to CEOs? Because I had Chris Burgrave on the podcast last year. He has some wild data about this, looking at when boards appoint CEOs, what skill sets they're looking for. Yeah, number one, financial acumen. Number the last position, the literally the bottom position was marketing. And I just thought that's a bit insane, really, because as marketers, you know, we are the voice of the customer in the organization. We're looking forward long and the short. You know, we're the ones looking forward. You'd think that CMOs would make a natural CEOs, but there's something broken that doesn't quite work there, isn't there?

[Seth Matlins]

Well, I think. I mean, look, I think you nailed it. It is broken. And I think there are many answers or many elements of the answer to your question, but amongst them is that a lot of CMOs don't have financial acumen. Amongst them is too many CMOs don't, in fact understand, or at least don't act as if they understand that their job is, in fact, to drive sustainable, profitable growth. And that is measured financially.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

You can. We can discuss, you know, stakeholder and shareholder value, but it is ultimately a financial metric. It's pretty easy on the bottom line. Not easy to do it, but easy to see what's happening. But then it goes back to the reason we created the CEO's Guide to Marketing, which is because they don't understand marketing. And again, oftentimes think they do. They undervalue it.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

And. And because they undervalue it, they don't consider it important. But I subscribe to the Peter Drucker quote which you know the legend of of management and marketing, which is that the enterprise has two core functions, innovation and marketing and that we've drifted so far from that, which I think, you know, you referenced it very quickly. The long and the short of it, marketing's greatest value is not what it delivers today, it's what it delivers today and over time. But today's CEOs and CFOs, let's have some empathy for them, are forced by the public markets and the capital markets to look at today, tomorrow and this quarter. They're not by and large thinking long term. Which by the way, I had a bunch of conversations with CMOs recently who come from private and or family owned companies who are planning for generations. When you look at the businesses that are thinking about what they're doing for generations, which obviously isn't bias towards the longer term, they tend to be doing really well.

[John Evans]

Yeah, you're so right. Actually think like a family owned business and thinking generations is entirely right. It's ironic, isn't it that marketing have done such a bad job of marketing. Marketing marketing in a way, isn't it, you know, we need to look at ourselves and go how do we market the benefit of marketing more effectively?

[Seth Matlins]

I couldn't agree with you more. I actually gave a talk about this at our CMO summit in Miami in 2023 that was titled Marketing needs Much Better Marketing. And what I said to our audience of some of the world's most important influential and successful CMOs at the time was we as an indis. You know, sorry, I want to actually correct myself. We are not an industry. We are a practice within the industry that is business. Right. And I think even thinking about marketing as an industry is wrong. And I do it all the time to be clear. But we're not marketing particularly brilliantly inside. If we start from the premise that most of the C suite does not have that marketing experience, it's not their fault that they don't know what to expect. And as I tell my kids who are just learning how to adult, one of the most important things to do is manage expectations. If you are not marketing internally, the odds of your success are much less than.

[John Evans]

Yeah, Chris, actually another stat that absolutely nailed it and I think I'm right in quoting I need to check, maybe check afterwards but about 6% of people in board roles have any marketing experience.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[John Evans]

Which when you think about you are marketing to 94% of the audience you're marketing to have no idea of marketing or the value it could create. So it puts into stark contrast, doesn't it?

[Seth Matlins]

And, and what you, what you see there, like there's some. It's such a vicious self perpetuating cycle.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

Which is they don't understand it, think they do. They don't value it because they don't understand it and oftentimes they think that they're the target when they're not.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

And, and a little bit more humility, a little bit more understanding and embrace of what they do not know would serve many a company well.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Now I'd love to get into talking about like the world's most influential CMOs and an amazing list you pulled together and you've done the same for the world's most entrepreneurial cms. Maybe. Before we get that, I just wanted to chat to you how you got to this, how you got to where you are today. And I want to pick out, if you, if I may, three little quotes I saw in your bio that just piqued my interest for different reasons. But the first one was you mentioned that you've only ever held positions that didn't exist prior to your role.

[Seth Matlins]

I've never had a job that existed before. I had.

[John Evans]

That is quite a track record. Have you created the roles?

[Seth Matlins]

Well, I certainly haven't created the roles each time though. Each time I either filled a role that was new or had a role created for me. I have created the role a couple of times. It certainly wasn't by design. You know, it's only linear in retrospect. It wasn't kind of a plan but it is a through line through my career and yeah, I was the first at a lot of places.

[John Evans]

It takes a certain, I think it takes certain bravery to do that. I know I being inspired by that, I went back look at my career and thought how many roles have I done that genuinely were new? And that end up being three. First one was I was at Britvic, which is the butler for Pepsi in the uk.

[Seth Matlins]

Oh yeah.

[John Evans]

And I created a, well we call it a seed brand team. It's basically managing all the new brands in a separate business unit and no one had done that before. And it was quite scary because there was no expectation of like what success looked like. What made me successful were different to what made other people successful. There's no kind of rule book for how to do it and it's quite a scary position. The second one, I did a private equity backed juice takeover. I was the first marketer ever in the company. And I remember everyone was like, going, what's this guy? What are you going to do? What are you going to like? And it's funny, my first job was design the company logo and design the new uniforms for the factory staff. You know, in their head, marketing was kind of like equivalently equivalent to printing stuff, you know, that's what they thought, you know. So I had to go on a massive, like, journey to go, let me explain what we're here to do, and, you know, that kind of thing. And the third one, ironically, is my current role at System One, which, you know, the idea of having a CMO in a research business, selling creative testing is quite an unusual thing. And again, the same journey of it. You have to kind of. You have to create a vision for what you're here to do. It's a very different sort of feeling, isn't it, when it absolutely is.

[Seth Matlins]

And look, I've been. I've been unbelievably fortunate in my career. I too have a beverage background, both. In my first job, I was third person in the marketing department for Evian in the United States.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

Because I was the third person in the marketing department. I was therefore the first to become the special events coordinator. A very, very glamorous job where really my job was to place Avion coolers and banners at tennis tournaments. I remember the first week of my career, I'm there and I'm sitting in my little cubicle and the CEO of Avion comes by and he says to me, hey, what did you do to move the business forward today? And I was like, fuck, I have no idea. And I thought about it and I was like, I don't know, but I don't think I caused it to fall backwards. But I bring that story up and it's a bit of a digression from your question, so apologies. But I bring that up because it ties to what we were talking about a moment ago, which is in that moment, the CEO of the company, who was a marketer, by the way, taught me one week into my career that even the guy placing coolers and banners at tennis tournaments is responsible for moving the business forward that day. And it's a lesson that I've never, ever lost. But I think I joined a number of agencies that hadn't had practice areas in what I was practiced at. So I started. I don't know, I think I've started six or seven practice areas inside two of Hollywood's biggest agencies. As it related to marketing. I. Yeah, so just happenstance. But it is, it is interesting and it taught me an incredibly valuable lesson which is the difference between being an entrepreneur and being entrepreneurial. And it is a massive, massive difference. And I am much more the latter than the former.

[John Evans]

Well, that's really interesting because actually that really jumps to my second point which I picked up, which is you talk about the scars of lessons learned as a failed entrepreneur. So unpack that a little bit more because I like the distinction you've just drawn there.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, yes. So when I left as CMO of Live Nation, I had an idea, I had several ideas and I wanted to see if I could turn them into businesses. I had not yet learned the difference between being entrepreneurial and an entrepreneur. I was just a God awful entrepreneur. First of all, I was the worst client I've ever had and you know, a career spent client side agency. I've had hundreds of clients. I was the singular worst. It was as if I had forgotten everything I had learned. I thought my ideas were so wonderful that I wanted to own them entirely. So I sought no outside capital. Not only did I not seek outside capital, but what comes with the right venture capital is advice. And I was doing it. I mean, honestly, like I could, I could list a thousand things I did wrong. It was very expensive in terms of time and capital, but it led me to here. So, you know, all good things.

[John Evans]

All good things, yeah. It's funny, a lot of people worry, don't they, in that, that phase that I'm having to give equity away in my business sometimes quite a lot of equity and people worry about that. But some of the VCs I've worked with have been incredible. The talent they bring in, the resources they, they know exactly what's going to happen next and what. It's almost like a model to scaling and then selling a business and you just get on this rocket ship with them and then better to have, you know, 20% of something worth a lot than 100% of something that, you know, doesn't exist.

[Seth Matlins]

I had 100% of something that does not exist.

[John Evans]

Yeah, Tough lessons.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[John Evans]

The third one that piqued my interest actually, which I. Lovely. And I hadn't seen this, you know, kind of articulated in the same way before. But you talk about the ability to make unexpected connections between fields and I think partly why I love doing the job I do now and I know we do similar sort of roles really, but we meet lots of people and we go to lots of events and we connect lots of people. If you start to see things differently because you can go, oh, there's something over there that solves that problem if you apply that solutions over there. It's quite magical, isn't it?

[Seth Matlins]

I can almost remember the moment that I kind of became aware of it and I mentioned that my first job was client side at Avion. My second job was agency side and I started a consulting practice inside a huge sports marketing and management company that, that no longer exists. It was called Proserve at the time. And our first two clients were a deodorant company and a company called Apple. And this is like mid, late 90s, so it's a long time ago. Apple was then, was not the Apple of today. And I remember flying home from the meeting with Apple and the remits couldn't have been more different. And I turned to the guy who I was with, who was my boss at the time, and I was like, it's unbelievable what this deodorant and this computer have in common in terms of both their objectives and their challenges and being on the agency side. And I think it's the great privilege of being on the agency side is you get to see so many different businesses and brands in so many different circumstances that not only do you get the diversity right, but you also recognize the commonalities and that ultimately we're solving for fundamentally the same problems over and over again, regardless of category, regardless of maturity, regardless of stage. The size of the problem may vary, does vary, but being able to connect those dots, being able to extrapolate from opportunity or experience A and apply it to solving a problem for category B, is really something I've learned how to do.

[John Evans]

And I think that's where creative agencies can be absolute masters, aren't they? Because they can bring that perspective. Actually, on a little bit of a tangent, but I recently met the inventor of Bailey's Irish cream, which is 50 years old, and I met the actual guy that invented it. And it's inspired because they wanted to create, they wanted to export an Irish liqueur and create something new. And the inspiration was from butter. So at the time, the brand called Kerrygold, which is kind of a classic Irish butter and it is all green and natural and so on. And if you look at the design of Kerrygold and the design of Bailey's, you go, aha, I see, exactly. Came from. But he'd just done the redesign and one, he took all the kind of the cues and authenticity of Ireland and the dairy expertise and said, well, what if a dairy company made a liqueur? And then this time There were no, there was no such thing as like a milk liqueur, you know, kind of thing. So he took the whiskey, but mixed it up with the dairy category and then out came Bailey's and then, you know, the rest is history.

[Seth Matlins]

Spirits history. Look, I think it's, you know, avion, at least domestically, right? You know, the, the European consumption of bottled water is much different than the American. Avion created the portable bottled water category, right? They took something that had only been sold in jugs and they put it in a different package and priced it at a super premium price and off it went for a while. It's not unlike what Liquid death has done 30 years later. Same. You know, there's a great Winston Churchill line about, you know, old wine, new bottles. That's all Liquid Death did. That's all Avion did. That's all a lot of categories do, or brands within categories do. And it actually speaks to the power of brand when you do it right, or the import and power of brand when you do it right.

[John Evans]

In fact, I got very lucky really early in my career. My very, very first branded project was to kids drink in the UK called Fruit Shoots. And the insight was just that what it basically, at the time, the only drink kids could get were in these cartons with little straws that you put in and they'd, they'd spill every. As soon as you squeeze in the spill everywhere. And I was, I was in responsible for the trade launch. I wasn't on the core team, but I did the kind of trade launch when we get got to market. But the basic insight was from sports drinks, they went and looked at how the cool kids were all drinking Gatorade effectively, and the younger kids were looking up going, well, want a bit of that? But of course it's sugary, it's too big. So we basically created a small sports drink about the size of a carton and it's by far the biggest success I've ever been involved in. It took 18 months just to catch up with the demand for a production point of view and went on to be one of the biggest soft drink successes in UK history. But from a basic insight of going, what can we take? I mean, it's within the category, obviously sports drinks are also drinks, but just looking at how another category is solved.

[Seth Matlins]

For a need look, I think you point to something that actually points back to why there are so few marketers on boards and in this CEO's chair. It's because organizational design has bifurcated and trifurcated the Things that marketers do best. And if you think about the import of packaging innovation, right, New categories, new brands, existing categories, that. That has kind of been in too many cases removed from the remit. The consideration set the scope of responsibilities from the marketing group who are exactly the people, to a point you made earlier, who are best positioned to certainly be of service to that because they're best positioned to understand consumer customer insights.

[John Evans]

One of my favorite quotes is Ritson, where he said, your primary job is to be the voice of the customer in the room where decisions get made.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And I'm like, that is bang on. Because the end of the day, there should not be any more powerful voice than the one that represents what your customer thinks and feels about your. Your product. Right.

[Seth Matlins]

You know, I think I've a guy named Jeff Cottrell who is CMO at topgolf and Coca Cola, was a client of mine and has been a friend of mine for a long time. And he taught me something that Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, taught him, which is in. In, you know, around the boardroom, they always left an empty chair and that empty around the table rather, they always left an empty chair. And that chair was for the end user.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

Like kind of an Elijah thing. If you're a Jew, you might get the Passover reference. But it's important that they're always in the room. And yet it's equally important. And Ritson is of course 100% right, but it's equally important that we never lose sight. Cite as marketers of the, you know, that tired but nonetheless true Henry Ford quote, which is if I had asked the consumer what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right?

[Seth Matlins]

And finding the balance between that is. Is everything that is absolutely spot on.

[John Evans]

Yeah, they're both. Those two things exist as equal truisms at once, don't they? Now, one of the cool things you do, of course, at Forbes, is create the list of the world's most influential CMOs. Right? So I'd love, well, two questions really wrapped up in one, but I'd love to know how you come up with that list. But secondly, really, more importantly, what makes an influential cma?

[Seth Matlins]

So, excuse me, When I got here, and it's exactly three years ago today, I think when I got to Forbes, I was the first practitioner, right? First marketer they hired for this. And, and the CMO network preceded me, I think for something like 17 years. There were iterations of it and kind of moments within it when I took a look at the methodology behind the world's most influential CMOs. It was obvious to me that first of all, I should say it's incredibly difficult to measure influence.

[John Evans]

Yes, right.

[Seth Matlins]

And so what we had to do was look at the methodology and look at the proxies we were creating for influence. But that also required a definition of influence. And so our definition of influences is it's got two fundamental layers, which is how are you influencing the results of your business? And by the way, that too is very hard to isolate. We create proxies for that. And then how are you influencing the marketing community writ large? Because, so taking the second one first, because we're looking at your influence across the marketing community which then influences global enterprise, there's become more of a link between the size of the business than perhaps there had been before. Because the size of one's platform does matter.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right?

[Seth Matlins]

World's most influential CMO list maker goes from Company X, which is the largest maker of widgets in the world, to a new category that is a startup. It's unlikely they will have the same influence despite being the same marketer because their canvas, their platform, is less so. I think, I think the list prior to my coming was a little, was leaning into metrics and it's an entirely data driven list. We work with Sprinklers, our principal partner, and LinkedIn as a secondary data partner and literally analyze something like 8 billion data points across seven or eight different kind of categories that I cannot remember now. But again, we're creating proxies and what, what I noticed was it was a little bit too much of a popularity contest. And just because a given CMO has a big LinkedIn following or a big insta following, that's not a platform. That may be a platform for influence, but then we do the qualitative work, say, how are you using that platform? We also did the work to make sure that the cmo, who is not a particularly active promoter, right, not a particular, is not penalized for that. We also, I'm kind of talking about some tactical things. Recognize, you know, we'd been measuring for sentiment and it was just last year. So that was my. When I first got here, we really couldn't change methodology. We were just too far down the road. So last year was the second one where we continued to evolve methodology. We recognize that positive sentiment was not necessarily the sole indicator of influence because oftentimes negative sentiment about something done influences the community very broadly.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

It teaches us what not to do and how not to do things. So we factored that in two years ago. We started really looking at financial results and obviously, you know, you don't want to look at ebitda, you don't want to look at profit measures because that's typically outside the CMO's control. So we look at revenue measures and then we look at revenue measures within categories. Right. So if we have a handful of luxury marketers who have made the list or a handful of automotive marketers, we're comparing them to their peers, not to outside of category. But. But influence is, you know, is oftentimes an internal metric.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

Going back to the very reason we created the CEO's guide. And so much of the conversation we've had, which is if you can't influence your C Suite colleagues, your CEO and cfo, you're probably not going to have much influence externally.

[John Evans]

That's such a true. I mean, often when I'm talking to people about what is it like being a cmo, a lot of people ask the question and I always tell them, you'd be surprised at how little marketing 4ps you actually do that. A lot of the job is managing politics and persuasion.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[John Evans]

Right. It's navigating the organization way an organization.

[Seth Matlins]

An unfortunate necessity, but a necessity.

[John Evans]

And I think you talked about influence comes from the stage you're on. In case. If you're on a big stage, there will be a lot of politics and there'll be a lot of persuasion to do.

[Seth Matlins]

Typically, yeah.

[John Evans]

And you have to. It's a bit like the kind of gladiator quote, win your crowds and you win your freedom sort of thing. But you know, that, that, that I think is true. You have to. In a big organization, you have to come up with a way of. Bit like having your own media plan, isn't it? You have to kind of work out who do I need to talk to, what the message needs to land, how do I get everyone, you know, on my side to get the permission and freedom to do the job?

[Seth Matlins]

There was a book that was popular in the United States like, I don't know, 200 years ago. I'm being hyperbolic, of course. And it was called Everything I Need to Know about Life I learned in Kindergarten. And just it goes, you know, it's what I'm teaching my kids about adulting. It's what we talked about before. Manage the internal relationships, manage expectations. Meet people where they are not where you want them to be. I mean, it is just be a marketer internally.

[John Evans]

That's huge. And I think that tension between the internally external and realizing that winning the battle internally Buys the freedom to win the battle externally. And if you lose the battle internally, doesn't matter what you do externally, you're out.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, you have to earn the permission to have your expertise trusted. Yeah, nobody ever, you know, I had Andrea Bremer on the podcast who's the CMO at Ally Financial. And we talked about this. She talked about this. Which is nobody ever asks. No CMO ever challenges the CFO on their cap table, on their accounting processes. It's like, why does the CFO feel they're in the position to challenge the cmo?

[John Evans]

Yeah, everyone's a brand manager.

[Seth Matlins]

Everyone's a brand manager. But actually, and we had another guest, actually just Kofi Gottfried, who's the CMO at Doordash, who makes the point. And I think it's an important one. Everybody is in fact a brand manager, which is to say that everybody in an enterprise has the potential to influence the trajectory of brand and business by what they do and do not do. Tactical example, actually, I think it's more a strategic one. It's why I've always thought customer service should, at a minimum, matrix into the cmo. Because customer engagement, when I'm dissatisfied, you have my full attention as a customer. And typically it's not reporting into the cmo.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

Typically the information flow may be inadequate, but everybody influences brand. Whether it's, you know, the assistant to the assistant marketing manager who's at home talking about her job or his job with their friends. It all adds.

[John Evans]

I totally think that's a really powerful insight because twice in my career I've had customer service reporting to me as the marketing director. Both times, the problem I had on the brand, I knew instantly. And my brand tracker took months. It was like this rear view mirror. Like six months later, oh, you had a problem, like, you know, you had a quality control problem six months ago. But my customer service line ringing hot and getting the complaints through to me, that's when I knew. And you know, at a visceral level and you know, it's not like reading a report in a 50 page report, you're literally hearing from the consumer exactly what they think of you. It's so powerful.

[Seth Matlins]

It's everything. I fought very hard to get it inside my remit when I was CMO at Live Nation because it reported into tech, because it was delivered on a tech platform. It's just the wrong way to think about it. And it's, it's a, I think it's a problem that exists pervasively.

[John Evans]

I would say be careful what you Wish for, though.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes, sir. 100%. You know, you really, what you really want are the ability to influence the responses and the insights, not the control.

[John Evans]

That's it. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So what would be the tips in terms of advice to a CMO to create influence? What are the things they should be doing to build up their level of influence based on the sort of insights?

[Seth Matlins]

We are very careful not to provide too much advice such that the system can be gamed because we really do try and find, you know, get as close to on point as we can be. And by the way, if anyone has thoughts on how we can get closer, I'm always open to that. We're always open to that. But I don't think there's anything more influential than a job brilliantly done. That isn't to say, by the way, that every brilliantly done job rises to the level of awareness. Sometimes it's just brilliantly quiet. Sometimes it's that small thing you've done, that little incremental thing you've done that wound up yielding exponential return, which is why it is very hard to measure influence. I think we do a pretty good job. But, you know, I wouldn't tell anybody that it comes down to anything other than first and foremost doing your job brilliantly or at least being perceived as doing your job brilliantly.

[John Evans]

You're right about the noise crazy, actually, because there are some people that you meet that are incredibly efficient and influential and do amazing things. They just don't talk about it.

[Seth Matlins]

Correct.

[John Evans]

And then you've got those that may not be doing such a good job, but they're very good at talking about it. So you need to kind of somehow balance those factors. Inspired by your kind of. Your award list. I came out of my list of six things I tried to think about. So I'll test these out and tell me what you think. But the first thing I thought again, looking at, I mean, Kofi would be a good example, but looking at other.

[Seth Matlins]

Cms on the list last year had it.

[John Evans]

Yeah, seemed to have created a lot of influence. They all seem to have a very clear vision for where they're going that they can articulate simply and powerfully.

[Seth Matlins]

Look, I. There's no question that that's a prerequisite.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

I would even argue that that's putting aside influence for the moment. If you don't have that, then it's the Alice in Wonderland quote. If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there. Yeah, right. And you know, one of the things I wrote about in the preface to last year's list. The, the thing we absolutely can't measure but is such an essential element of this is what the CMO said no to. Because no matter how many resources you have, you have more opportunities that are interesting and potentially efficacious and lucrative. So, you know, strategy is, as it's been said, the art of sacrifice.

[John Evans]

And so, yeah, I mean, the next thing I think that CMOs need to be better at to get influence is bringing the evidence and then creating stories around them that get told. And I think you see people that are very good at that, they just have a way of picking evidence that backs up what they're saying. But then there's a narrative that they create that starts to kind of get embedded in the corporate culture and, and reference.

[Seth Matlins]

You know, I, I don't think you're not wrong. I think my push and, and so just, you know, for context I'm thinking about what you're saying and like, okay, how would we adapt that, adopt that into the methodology? I think my only push there is the first thing that came to mind was kind of, that's the award show mentality. And by the way, it's. We actually don't consider awards at all. What we try and do is find those things and that rise to the level of kind of in the ether. And, and that's not a qualitative assessment. That's why we have 8 billion data points. But yes, we are in the business of telling stories and of narrative. And yet the line is, are you promoting your work or is your work working?

[John Evans]

That's spot on. Yeah, that's a very good distinction to draw actually because you do see those people that are just very good at the stories.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes, right.

[John Evans]

And they're very good at self promotion and everything they do is, you know, is a, is a press release, does.

[Seth Matlins]

Not benefit from it whatsoever.

[John Evans]

And we all know the kind of people where you just go constantly winning awards, business is in trouble. Right. So there's got to be that filter, hasn't there? Between the ability to create a narrative that everyone unites behind, but also clearly evidenced by, by results. Yeah, if I was. That was going to be my next bit actually is that the. They identify proof points and wins that basically create belief in the direction they're going. And I think that's a key thing that it. Because it's important when you're trying to bring people with you that they see the evidence that the Strategy is working 100%.

[Seth Matlins]

One of the biggest challenges today's CMO. Amongst the biggest challenges today's CMO faces is having long term strategies measured by short term results which you know is, is not particularly sensical and, and you have to bring people along and that requires having the right OKRs or KPI or whatever, you know, metrics you have or however you build metric metrics in place and you have these milestones so that you can iterate adapt and know how things are going so that you have a better chance of doing better tomorrow than today.

[John Evans]

You referenced it early but I think balancing the long and the short is the key skill in that thing, isn't it? Because you've got the short term wins and the long term wins that all building up.

[Seth Matlins]

There's not my phrase but marketing has a lag effect and unless it's purely short term and then it might have a lag effect, it's just not evaluated. It's a potentially negative flag effect.

[John Evans]

The next one we've already talked about which is represent the customer where decisions get made. And then the final thing, I thought it's very topical but you almost need to consider yourself as if you're running a campaign to be president. So almost think about the. I take, I hold that lightly but what I mean is thinking about who do I need to talk to? What's, you know, what's the series of events I'm going to do, what's the kind of communication I'm going to make, how I'm going to bring people with me. Almost thinking about, I mean, remember in a. I was in a bit of troubled spot on Lucozade in the uk, we'd had a reformulation that went wrong and we had a very short time to fix it and it was quite dramatic. It was, you know, impacted about 20% of turnover. It was huge. I got some advice from a PR agency and they basically said think like the Prime Minister, right. And you've got an election day and you need to get to that point who needs to be on board? How are you going to communicate to them? What are the, what are the messages they're going to remember, you know, and again that a bit like your pushback earlier actually that can be. If, if you're doing it for the sake of the publicity, that's not good. But if you're doing that for the sake of getting the business, you know.

[Seth Matlins]

Communication, if you're doing it on behalf of brand and business, two thumbs up. If you're doing it on behalf of yourself, probably not. But yeah, I think there is a lot of lessons that can be learned from politics and applied here, which is so much of what business is is a get out the vote effort and the vote is just measured with wallets.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Now you've got the world's most influential CMOs and at the same time you also run the world's most entrepreneurial the entrepreneurial CMOs, which is amazing. What led you to pick those two as your sort of categories?

[Seth Matlins]

So you know, as I mentioned, the world's most influential existed before I got here. I created the world, not the world's. I created the entrepreneurial CMO list for a couple of reasons. One, when I got here we had something called CMO Next. And when I looked at the list over the past couple years, they were all CMOs now. So I didn't understand it. So I was like this is kind of makes no sense. Let's, let's start over. Forbes has been championing entrepreneurial capitalism for 108 years now. So I thought as a marketer it might be good to have something that ties back to the mass, the core brand as influence does. With that said, I also have a bias that more and more an entrepreneurial approach to mindset, to an attitude towards strategic risk taking will distinguish CMOs moving forward as of today, and we say this, I hope clearly not every great CMO is an entrepreneurial CMO and not every entrepreneurial CMO is a great one. There is a difference. And so as we created this list, which 2025 will be the fourth annual, it is a qualitatively driven list. While the world's Most influential is 98% data driven, this is 100% qualitative. I should say it's probably 98% qualitative with data metrics that that factor in data inputs. Rather we look for those who and it is a nomin. We don't have nominations for the most influentialists, we do for the. It's entirely nomination driven for entrepreneurial who who are neither beholden to the status quo nor who get rid of it just for the sake of getting rid of it. Sometimes the status quo works really well. Not oftentimes in today's world, but sometimes it does. Whose approach to marketing is neither beholden to the past nor disruption for disruption. So take who embrace failure and things not going according to plan as opportunities to learn and get better. Because there's a huge, huge difference between missing the mark and missing the point. Missing the mark in today's world, when you're selling to and I use marketing and selling interchangeably a Market as idiosyncratic as human beings happen to be, missing the mark is inevitable. There is no such thing as perfect data. We were talking about Rory earlier, you know, has this, this great LinkedIn post on the false God of perfect measurement. Would that it was perfect. There would be no failures, unfortunately. It's, it's imperfect because humans are humans. But missing the point, that's inexcusable, right? Like, and by the way, we all do it. I mean, I do it constantly. So I guess I'd like to say it's not quite inexcusable, but you got to catch yourself and you gotta correct. But massive difference between missing the mark and missing the point. And I think too much of the work is missing the point. As a observer of the work, you know, we try and champion the spirit as, and create examples for, and moments to learn from on both these lists, some of the best marketers in the world.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I mean, this is a really hard thing to get right, I think, because the gravity in most organizations is how do I avoid a mistake? How do I cover my back? You know, how do I not be in the firing line? And the ones that are really doing the interesting things are the ones that are going to potentially get shot and are going to put themselves in vulnerable positions and are going to be in a position where they can be isolated by their colleagues or they can be blamed for things. And I've seen that play out in my career.

[Seth Matlins]

Quite the fear of getting fired, which is to be clear, a real fear, right? Like it's legit. But the fear of getting fired because your boss or your boss's boss doesn't understand or because you did some gets in the way of growth, right? You have to have the permission to try. Because there are too few sure things in today's world. There is no playbook, in my opinion, that. That is right all the time, any more than a playbook is right when we consider where that came from, metaphorically, which is sport. Would that every play succeeded, would that every data point was right, would that every effort landed. It's just not the way the world works. And yet, and yet, back to the beginning of our conversation, the chief marketing officer is held to account as if they should be perfect, as if their information were perfect and their efforts should be as well. As if any investment that the CEO makes in her own life outside of work, she expects a perfect return.

[John Evans]

Yeah, that's fun. I love the. Greg. Greg Hahn. Sorry, Greg Hahn's quote from Mischief where he says, what would you do if you weren't afraid.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And I think that's one of the most truisms of being an entrepreneur because I think most of what holds us back is that fear of failure. And you know, the consequences of saying.

[Seth Matlins]

Greg, don't get mad at me if I'm wrong about this, but I actually think that, I think that that was something that Facebook, before they were meta, had on the wall of their office. And you know, fear is. Fear's a hell of a motivator. And it's why I always point to this 1974 IBM ad as one of my favorite ads of time. It was a print ad picture of a mainframe computer and all it said was nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

B2B ad that spoke to the human emotion that was driving a very significant purchase. But fear, hope, dreams, aspirations, expectations, image, expression, etc, identity, because the fear of being fired really can with your identity or being fired can. And you know, those are all motivators that either can facilitate and, or get in the way of purchase behavior.

[John Evans]

Yeah. So what, what are the, so from the list you've looked at a lot of entrepreneurial CMOs. What are they doing that makes them entrepreneurial? What, what, what stands out?

[Seth Matlins]

I mean they're trying, they're succeeding. They are, you know what it, they're, they are applying creativity across the breadth of their business. Right. Creativity is I think underutilized and under misunderstood. They are creative marketers. Whose, who the expression and activation of their creativity is not limited to a quote unquote campaign. Oftentimes it expresses itself that way, but that is the expression of an insight and a strategy. And they are relentlessly listening to the effect and impact or absence of same of what they're doing and to their users and potential prospective users.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I love that definition of creativity actually because I did an exercise a couple of years ago where I wrote down my five most creative moments in my career. One of them was an ad and in fact it was the fifth. The other four were product innovations, route to market innovations, internal organization innovations actually. And I think it's applying that creative muscle that so many marketers have to the problems of business. Yes, that's really where the magic happens. And then you go so much further and so much faster than just we had a campaign, it was a one off hit, it got talked about and then we're on to the next.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And it brings us back to the Drucker quote, innovation and marketing. And everybody I believe in an enterprise has the responsibility to be creative in pursuit of solving for problems. And I also think it's long past time that we stop thinking about and using advertising or campaign as proxies for marketing. There's a leverage inside a massive arsenal.

[John Evans]

Yeah, back to your Kofi example. Actually, another criteria I think that stands out, entrepreneurial CMOs is they are so obsessed with the execution of what they're doing. Whereas, I mean, more corporate CMOs will be, you know, they'll be in the plan, they'll be in the process, they'll be in the sign off, they'll be in the kind of, you know, big picture. But when. I mean, Kofi's good example actually, because even though it's a $40 billion turnover business, it still runs like a startup where everyone's obsessed with, you know, making sure the execution is brilliant and you can just, you just feel that knowledge of the. Everything they know, they're in the weeds, they're getting the feedback from the customer.

[Seth Matlins]

I couldn't agree more. And I think that that is a massive problem across the community. And too many CMOs delegate too much. And of course delegation's essential. I don't mean to suggest that it isn't, but what winds up happening is, is the game of telephone, you know, where, where there are 10 kids around a table and I whisper Acme Widget Company into the first kid's ear and by the time it gets back to me, it's like let's go figure skating.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right?

[Seth Matlins]

The core idea, the message has gotten diluted and because we all hear things differently, I was in Cannes last year and chief Creative officer, I was speaking with a CMO on stage and I'm going to leave everybody anonymous. Chief creative officer of the CMOS agency came up to me and said, one of the things about, you know, this guy is he's in the, he's in the edit bay with us.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

And I was like, do you mean your other clients aren't like. I couldn't understand that. Not for everything and searching. Certainly not for all this. The, the massive amounts of content required for social. But if, if you're in. And if you've gotten edit bay and as the cmo, you're not dropping into that, I don't think you're doing your job because it's going to wind up in the world and you won't have had your fingerprint on it. And if you don't have your fingerprint on it at the end, you can't be sure that the fingerprint you put on it in the beginning is there and you are accountable and you should be accountable.

[John Evans]

Actually, just. Just trigger thought in my mind. So I've only ever won two creative awards. I won an Effie once and a can once. Now I've only entered two. Just for clarity. Right. So nice job. Never mind.

[Seth Matlins]

I said that in a thousand.

[John Evans]

I had Fernando Machado on and he was. He was losing count of his award. He's like, I got 200. Or is it 220? I get a mix, it's either 200 or 220. And I said, dude, I got two. But how many of you entered anyway? Anyway, slightly beside the point, but the point you made is spot on. Actually. I've never worked this out before, but they're the only two where I've been in the edit suite literally re editing with the team and just trying to make it better, you know, make the story work. And now that's not to say I was in either example. Actually, in neither example was I dictating the idea or was I overly steering it. But in both examples, because we cared so much about the output and what we were doing, I spent at least a day sat there in the studio with the final edit just trying to get it that looks.

[Seth Matlins]

Not everything matters as much as everything else. But for the things that matter, the things that are the big bets or the strategic bets, that's yeah, gotta be there.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

In my opinion, I think you're right.

[John Evans]

The other thing that I noticed with entrepreneurial CMOs as well is they can do a lot with a little.

[Seth Matlins]

They have to.

[John Evans]

It's often the constraints that actually creates the crate, creates. Fosters the creative environment that leads to kind of some of the breakthroughs.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, it's our. Our friends Adam Morgan and Mark Barton wrote the book A Beautiful Constraint. And. And you know, great business people, great entrepreneurs, great marketers do recognize the beauty and constraint.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right?

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, it can suck, but it can also be a tremendous luxury if you figure out how to work with it and around it.

[John Evans]

Yeah, it's a perfect reframing, isn't it? How do you use your disadvantage to your advantage and use it as fuel to.

[Seth Matlins]

Exactly.

[John Evans]

To go ahead. I thought I'd round up by now. I think this is a Bezos quote. I think the whole idea that don't tell me what will change, tell me what won't change, and I'll build a business around that. So, you know, you and I get to talk to a lot of people. A lot of CMOs, you know, sat at the beginning of 2025, as you look ahead, what are you seeing that's changing and what are you seeing that's not changing?

[Seth Matlins]

Well, everything's changing, right? And you know, AI is sorry, everyone, but yes, it's changing everything, right? And so needs no more articulation. But. But I'm really interested and maybe it's because I'm lazy, so I'll caveat with that. I'm. I'm always interested in what's unchanging. Right? There's a great book by a guy named Morgan Housel called what Stays the Same. I think that's what it's called, and I've sent it to a dozen CMOs. Because at the end of the day, despite the change, marketing's job remains fundamentally about capturing attentions and influencing attitudes and behaviors such that you drive sustainable, profitable growth. It is unchanging. And no matter what changes, that will not change. No matter what changes around us human beings and the architecture of our brains, why we do and do not buy is unchanging, right? Which is, say, the fundamentals of it, the Maslow's hierarchy of need, the iceberg of behavioral economics.

[Chris Burgrave]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

And. And if we remain focused, right? And I'm not a huge sports guy, but I'm going to use another sports metaphor, which is the blocking and tackling, then we can build with creativity on top of and around and even underneath that, and have a much better chance of winning. And Warren Buffett has, has a. Actually, Morgan Housel, I think, references this Buffett quote, which is when somebody asked him, you know, what new categories are you looking at investing in? He said something to the effect of, I'm far more interested in the categories that aren't new and are going to be here in a generation. Right. That premise seems, seems to have served his investment thesis quite well.

[John Evans]

You're absolutely right. So I think whenever Anyone goes on LinkedIn and said, Everything's dead and everything's changing, what we forget is. Exactly. I love how you've articulated. Is the fundamental basic human nature and how we choose to buy what we buy and what influences our decision making does not change the toolkit by which we make those influence. Influence those change influences.

[Seth Matlins]

And it will always be emotional and then rationalized intellectually. And it's really, really fucking hard to quantify emotion.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Seth, it's been amazing, mate. Congratulations on the Forbes list and your network.

[Seth Matlins]

Congratulations to those podcasts as well. Thank you, thank you. It's a great privilege to be here with you and at Forbes.

[John Evans]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Seth Matlins]

Thank you.

[John Evans]

Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button and 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 X Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.