Liveworld

Remember those days long ago when people tried to reduce marketing to “the guys who make the ads”? It wasn’t really true then, but it definitely isn’t true now. Today’s successful B-to-B CMO—that is, the one leading their company to growth—isn’t thinking about ad spots so much as she’s thinking about Marketechture, the way a company orchestrates the integrated customer experience across products, marketing communications, channels and employees. The thing that engages all these pieces into a unified whole, a single brand experience, is social media.
Social media reorganizes the entire company around the customer, an orientation that will soon be required for companies to compete. If anyone asks you who in the organization owns social media, look him in the eye and say, “Our customers.” Optionally, you can throw in a wink, but what you’re saying is true: Effective social media is by, for and about the customer. If they ask who your social agency of record is, say, “We are.”