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CMOs Join The Club To Share
Challenges, Strategies With Peers
More than 100 participants signed on for informal discussion group

The good news for heads of marketing over the past few years is that they have been welcomed into the executive suite and recognized as an integral part of the organization. The bad news for many recently-named Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) is that just as quickly as they sat down at the big table they are being asked to defend their impact on the bottom line to a group that typically is not versed in the changing world of branding.
The increased attention and demands have led to the formation of a new peer-to-peer share group called the CMO Club. Created in April of last year with only six members, the group has quickly expanded to more than 100 different participants. Pete Krainik, a former CMO for Avaya and Doubleclick, founded the CMO Club based on discussions with heads of marketing in a variety of different industries.
“What I found was most CMOs were struggling with the same issues, but there was no vehicle to share ideas and look at best practices,” said Krainik, who is currently head of sales and marketing for a technology start-up called QD Technology. “What we have done is create a community that gets together and picks some key topics to discuss in an informal setting.”
Members of the CMO Club include heads of marketing from a variety of companies targeting both B2B and B2C, including Konica-Minolta, DC Comics and Market-Bridge. Stephanie Fierman, senior VP of sales and marketing for DC Comics, says the open format of the group is part of the appeal for her. “The CMO Club is still new, but it has already attracted a loyal group of C-level marketers. The Club really fills a need crazed CMOs have to meet fellow marketers in other businesses,” Fierman says. “It also provides a format to talk candidly and informally about genuine issues.”
Topics covered during the first round of meetings have included:
· Demand generation engines;
· How marketing interacts with sales, technology and other lines of business;
· Establishing reputation and trust for your brand;
· Hiring and retaining quality staffers;
· Implications of expanding a brand globally;
· Agencies/solution providers and how they are working
“We had one club member who came from the sales side of the business and had recently taken over responsibility for marketing. He came to a recent meeting and basically asked the group ‘what should my priorities be for the first 30 days?’” Krainik said. “We had another executive that was in the midst of an entire re-branding campaign for a major B2B brand, come and present the plan to the group and asked for feedback.”
While solution providers are discussed and reviewed at the club gatherings, the group has observed a “no vendor” rule to avoid any hidden sales agendas from clouding the discussions.
Following the original dinner of six executives last April, the CMO Club has had 10 different dinner meetings on both coasts. The plan for 2007 is to expand the Club gatherings to other markets, including Dallas, Chicago and Boston, and also to add a guest speaker to the agenda at each dinner. The group has also recently established a blog and has plans for a different member to drive the content and topic discussions each month.
The first speaker for the group will be Jarvis Cromwell, a former CMO for some of the world’s largest companies on Madison Avenue and currently principal of J-2 Consultancy, addressing the topic of ‘Is Low Trust Hurting Your Sales and Marketing Performance?’ Based on industry trends, Cromwell predicts participation in the CMO Club will continue to grow.
“Unfortunately, we’re living in a world where nobody trusts big business and marketing effectiveness has become more elusive. For those reasons alone, the CMO Club has been incredibly useful,” Cromwell says. “The idea has succeeded beyond all of our expectations I think, because it operates on a truly simple principal: enjoying the company and counsel of smart people in a comfortable and low-key setting.”
While the group is clearly gaining interest among CMOs, Krainik is quick to point out that the key goal for the group is provide an informal platform discussion of common issues. “We are not looking at this as a replacement to other associations or groups. The Club is an additional channel for heads of marketing to share with and learn from their peers.

Email Marketing Exec Sends
Message for Balanced Approach

Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman
Stays Ahead of Growth Curve

Keeping up with the demands of a business that grew by 90% in the past year might seem like an all-consuming task to a lot of people. Gail Goodman, CEO of Waltham, MA-based Constant Contact, somehow manages to balance her career along with a passion for tennis and scuba diving, and still finds time to play an active role in local charities.
Constant Contact, a provider of email marketing services focused on the needs of small businesses, was named to the Inc. 500 and the Deloitte Fast 500 in 2006. Goodman sees no signs of that growth waning either, predicting that the coming year’s sales increase should be comparable to the 90% spike from last year.
Although Constant Contact has recently surpassed 85,000 customers, Goodman sees significant room for continued growth. “We are still at the early stage of adoption in terms of email marketing among small businesses,” Goodman points out. “If there are roughly 25 million small businesses in the U.S., I’d be surprised if one million are currently active with email marketing.”
In addition to its unique approach of focusing on the needs of small business, Goodman is quick to point to Constant Contact’s growing employee base as the key to the company’s success. A key part of her management approach is to be a “fanatical listener,” with both employees and customers. Listing Jim Collins’ Good To Great as one of her favorite business books, Goodman takes the customer-based message to heart and has gone as far as personally spending time on the company’s call center.

Lunch with Gail
In order to stay close to employees, Goodman has implemented a program where every other week she has lunch with employees from different areas of the organization to talk about customer issues, processes, etc.
Many of Constant Contact’s employees also share Goodman’s passion for giving back to the community. The company recently a program called Constant Contact Cares 4 Kids, which assists community-based non-profit organizations by providing free use of a Constant Contact account. Originally, the recipients had to be nominated by a company employee, but the program has recently been expanded to allow Constant Contact’s customers to sponsor a non-profit, with the expectation that the sponsor will volunteer their own time to assist with initial set-up. “Our management and employees are all big believers in supporting non-profits, so we’ve taken the knowledge and experience we have built and given some of that back.”
Goodman has also given back with her own time, as she recently joined the Board for an organization called Massachusetts Maternity and Foundling Hospital Corporation, which funds residential and educational programs for pregnamt and parenting teens.
Outside of her career and charity work, Goodman also manages to keep pace with her personal passions for tennis and scuba diving. “You ask any employee here and they will tell you I’m a tennis addict,” she says, adding that she plays 2-3 times a week and recently upgraded her cable package to add The Tennis Channel.

Private Jet Exec Stays Grounded
Despite Fast Pace of Success

Jets International CEO McKelvey
Changing Charter Travel

Nate McKelvey is flying, literally and figuratively. The CEO of Jets International is running one of the fastest growing companies in the country. In addition, Nate and his wife, Susie, are raising a fast-growing fleet of kids, ages 2 and 5. Suffice to say, McKelvey isn’t finding much downtime these days. He is by no means complaining. “That’s why I’m in business,” he says. “I’m selling time.”

By automating the previously inefficient process of booking private jets, Jets International saves time and provides peace of mind for a lot of other busy executives. The company’s unique online auction model allows customers to shop for available charter flights based on price, safety, and service levels.

Based on the company’s recent track record, there are no signs of McKelvey or Jets International slowing down. The Quincy, MA-based company was recently included in Deloitte’s 2006 Fast 500 list of the fastest growing technology firms, based on its staggering 1,001% growth from 2001 through 2005.

The company’s client list continues to expand among corporate executives, Hollywood celebrities, government officials, and others. McKelvey predicts the departure schedule will expand at the same rate in the coming years. “We continue to see a mass exodus away from the corporate ownership and shared ownership models. And because people are flying at such a high rate, there is so much demand out there that we still have a ways to go,” McKelvey says.

The company’s auction model does make it easier for customers to find the most competitive rates for private jet service, but McKelvey clarifies that the main criteria “is not about price” for the majority of his clients. “As we continue to grow, our number of trips gives us greater leverage with our partners so that we can continue to provide better service, quality, and safety for our clients.”

In order to continue to better serve its client base, Jets International is planning to use technology to provide other related travel services.

“The next level for us is encompassing services like catering and ground transportation right into the system,” McKelvey said, pointing out the difficulty in finding consistently high quality service, as service resources vary greatly from one suburban airport to another.


Check Points
The needs of high profile clients often demands that McKelvey and his staff make themselves available 24/7, as McKelvey was reminded on a recent Saturday afternoon. But, once again, McKelvey isn’t cursing his success or regretting a moment of the ride.
“We are dealing with such an incredibly talented pool of people on a daily basis – some of the best minds on Wall Street, top CEOs – I feel very fortunate. Many of them have become friends and have offered great insights for our business.”
Like many other successful executives who have struggled before finding their mark, McKelvey remembers well his more modest beginnings. “I sold insurance in the mid 1990’s and it was difficult to get anyone to want to talk about health insurance, but now we have access to high level people and they want to learn more about what we are offering.”

While his company is managing to save time for his clients, McKelvey admits he has to work at maintaining the balance between work and family life. He credits his work on the Board of the local chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), a community of business owners, as a great foundation for connecting with other folks that have dealt with the same issue.

“That has been a great way to share business as well as personal experiences with people that are in similar situations to mine,” McKelvey says. “And my wife has attended some of their events with me and met other spouses that she has a lot in common with, which is also great.”

Of course, there are also a few spoils of corporate success that spill over into family life, which score points for dad on the home front. Playing off of a marketing partnership his company has secured with the New England Patriots, McKelvey was recently able to help coordinate a local soccer clinic with players from Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution team. For someone in the business of selling time, McKelvey knows he has to play all of the angles with his kids as well as clients.

Worth... A Read
Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords for Success
By Mike Krzyzewski and Jamie K. Spatola

Unlike some other sports figures that have offered their take on the business world, Coach K manages to deliver his insights without arrogant overtones. Co-authored by his daughter and sectionalized into 40 mini-essays on topics like adaptability, communication, motivation and selflessness, the format is accessible and fast-moving.
The approach of playing off the coach’s favorite buzzwords sets up a little like an A-Z on the basics of business and life skills, but he peppers each essay with personal anecdotes about experiences like playing for and then being an assistant coach under Bobby Knight.
In addition, because of his successful resume in producing championship teams and also high quality people from the men’s basketball program at Duke, business executives will likely find some level of common ground between the chalk board and the board room as they breeze through 3-5 pages on guidance, passion, respect, etc.

Worth...A Listen
Half The Perfect World
Madeleine Peyroux

You don’t have to be a fan of jazz or easy listening to appreciate the treatment the sultry sounding Peyroux. On her latest disc, she offers fresh takes on old standards like The Summer Wind as well as more contemporary classics like Joni Mitchell’s River and Tom Waits’ Heart of Saturday Night.
For those folks that have yet to hear the stylings of Peyroux, her music is relaxed without being overly sleepy, meaning it plays comfortably in a Starbucks, a cocktail party or on your office stereo. Her voice recalls classic songstresses like Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holliday, while at the same time playing well among contemporaries like Norah Jones and Diana Krall.