Seek career opportunities not just for what they are, but for their latent potential. A skilled marketer can identify organizations with strong fundamentals but poor positioning and transform them, creating significant value by molding the available "clay."
A marketing function seen as a reactive service needs two transformations: first, instilling fundamental marketing acumen (the 4Ps, positioning), and second, rebuilding the team's confidence by helping them achieve and celebrate meaningful wins that contribute to organizational goals.
A strong, internally-focused culture can be a barrier to growth. Texas A&M's proverb "from the outside...you can't understand it" was reframed as a marketing problem. To achieve national impact, the brand story must be translated for external audiences, turning mystique into an accessible narrative.
Texas A&M targeted the 40% of Americans unfamiliar with the university. While student applications were strong, the goal was to influence national perception among faculty, researchers, and media. This strategy elevates the brand beyond its core "customer" base, driving long-term enterprise value.
Treat YouTube as a strategic capability for deep storytelling, not just a video repository. Its discovery algorithms continuously surface content to new audiences, building relationships over time. This approach turns video from a support service into an engine for reaching untapped markets.
Go beyond traditional sponsorships by asking "Who gathers there?" and "What does this environment let us demonstrate?" Texas A&M partnered with NASCAR and Dude Perfect not for logo placement, but to find authentic brand synergy and create value for audiences they couldn't otherwise reach.
To prevent a brand strategy from being rejected internally, ensure stakeholders co-create it. By involving a diverse group in the deep, ethnographic research process, they develop ownership. They experience the "epiphanies" firsthand and become evangelists for the new platform within their departments.
Initial presentations of a marketing vision to internal groups like faculty can fall flat. The key to gaining trust is to deliver tangible results that make their work more visible and valued, such as taking researchers from 25 to 3,500 annual media hits, proving marketing's competence and value.
Shift the perception of marketing from a reactive, promotional department to a proactive driver of enterprise value. The CMO's role is to act as a general manager, architecting value and materially contributing to an organization's strategic objectives, not just executing random acts of marketing.