TakeAway: One of the major trends among global top marketing talent is that the concept of traditional brand marketers is giving way to an emerging breed of “mosaic” marketers.
The mosaic marketer may be someone who has worked in several international markets or across different marketing or functional disciplines such as classical brand management, customer/channel marketing, retail, luxury and customer relationship management.
Focus on the P&L…sound familiar, Advance Mark Strat guys?
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Excerpted from AdAge, “How to Become a CMO” By Marie Han Silloway, December 8, 2010
Given this new reality, we believe there are seven critical competencies necessary for CMOs to succeed in this playing field:
1. Be a visionary, creative thinker
See what others don’t see, resulting in a stronger consumer and commercial proposition.
Example: When P&G launched one of their shampoo brands for women in China in the early 1990’s, the brand director was agile enough to launch single use sachets (trial size packages) in addition to regular bottles. They understood that female consumers holding down blue collar jobs in factories did not want to buy large amounts of shampoo. Typically, the factories had common shower facilities and they did not want to share their ‘good’ shampoo with others. Hence the sachets were not only affordable, but removed the embarrassment of refusing to share their nice shampoo.
2. Communicate effectively in and out of the region
Example: Dermot Boden, CMO of LG Electronics, is a 23-year veteran from the consumer healthcare world who’s worked across 20 countries, such as the U.K., the Philippines, U.S., Brazil and Japan. LG wanted someone from a different industry, but with some Asia experience, and Dermot’s mandate was to work with the team to establish and elevate the marketing to world class levels. to shift the focus from product to consumer, and to lead the way to building a stronger relationship with consumers. It was actually a huge change-management agenda requiring Dermot to understand the state of LG’s marketing across all of their global markets and know how to communicate effectively, respectfully and with finesse about raising the marketing bar.
3. Handle a complex portfolio across diverse markets
A diverse brand portfolio requires thoughtful investment strategies that take into account operational needs and restrictions of the market. As a result, the new breed of CMOs must be visionary but also able to balance innovation with commercial practicalities.
4. Focus on the P&L
Marketing will receive more and more operational and bottom line targets.
5. Be organizationally savvy
In a common pitfall, executives don’t invest enough time building “bridges” within the organization. In the field, it’s the relationships that lead to trust that will get you the test market you want or the focus that you need to make an initiative successful. At headquarters, it’s the relationship and trust that gets the budget approved or the KPI blessed.
6. Develop talent
The CMO needs to develop a culture that values talent and must know how to build a flexible team that can anticipate rapid market changes. Marketing is one of the hardest functions to develop competencies for because of the depth and breadth of strategy, innovation, lateral thinking and international perspective required. In particular, exposure to international markets, growth markets, mature markets, religious and culturally diverse markets.
7. Speak another language
Some clients have recognized the role that Asia plays in leading innovation in certain categories and have built global R&D centers to drive innovation out of Asia in cosmetics, personal care products, food and beverage, apparel design and even sports such as Badminton. Speaking the local language enables one to connect with the local market and teams in a way that no other can.
Edit by AMW
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Full Article:
http://adage.com/print?article_id=147510
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The Homa Files 
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