Maryam Banikarim | What CMO's Talk About Behind Closed Doors

0:00The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit IHearEverything.com. Welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions, and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five-time CMO, Mike Linton. Welcome marketers, advertisers, and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions, and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite.

0:54I'm Mike Linton, the former CMO of Best Buy, eBay, farmers insurance and ancestry.com here today with my guest mariam banakaram today's topic what cmos talk about behind closed doors now mariam is a four-time cmo having been in charge of marketing at next door high at hotels gannett corporation and univision and nbc oh and nbc so many cmo jobs i can't even keep track so many so many i don't have enough but even paper to write all your stuff down. She's currently the chair of the Wall Street Journal CMO console and host of the Messy Parts podcast, a show that focuses on the struggles and setbacks behind extraordinary careers.

1:39Full disclosure, I've known Miriam for a number of years as we were both members of the original Marketing 50. She also did a show earlier in CMO Confidential called Tales from the Marketing Crypt, which also featured her TED Talk on Life is Like an Obstacle Course. Welcome back, Miriam. Thank you for having me on for a part two. I'm waiting for part three already. There you go. Well, keep your eyes peeled for good topics. So let's jump right in. You are talking to marketers all over the world. What's your take on the state of marketing? Well, you know, it's interesting having done the job myself for a long time like you, you know, it always feels like the tools are evolving.

2:27And now there's a sense that the tools are evolving at a much higher pace, right, with AI. And I see it from the vantage point of the Wall Street Journal CMO Council, but also as a member of a public board, because you're having to oversee from a governance perspective that organizations are up to speed on all things AI. And I think the thing that I'm noticing now is that there's a pivot from AI being a tool for efficiency to AI being a tool for growth and innovation. Because I think that everybody was quick to get to the cost savings, but it's actually not that easy. In fact, today, I noticed that somebody shared a headline of companies hiring people back again.

3:09Because it's, first of all, it still hallucinates. It's not perfect. Adoption is still a thing. And there are very much things that you still need a human for. Now, will that change? I don't know. I saw a very scary documentary about AI on the plane. But the truth is people are beginning to use it. People are beginning to do things like the craziest one I'd heard was that they had a conference for agents by agents. And that was actually at the request of an agent. So, you know, some people are quite evolved. I think the biggest thing is that you have to change culture. It's not just introducing the tools.

3:47It reminds me of many, many years ago when I worked at NBCUniversal, it was in the GE days. And so not surprising, GE had introduced Salesforce to the sales team as a way to use CRM, which was not a thing at that point. And the salespeople just wouldn't use it. They just couldn't get adoption. And so at one point they said, okay, well, the only way to do that is to actually tie it to compensation. So it was like, if we don't see you log in and log out, and it was the basic days, so they could track whether you'd signed in, you won't get your bonus. And so people would literally log in and then log out.

4:24That's an easy bonus. I wish that's all I had to do. So I think you have to figure out culturally how you bring people along. It's been interesting to hear that some of the people doing the best vibe coding are not in the technology department, but in the marketing department, which I guess isn't surprising because you're looking for creativity. So I think we're going to see all kinds of different things show up, but for sure, there's not a conversation of, are you using AI? It's more just the degree to which people are using AI and how the depth of the AI they're using and how that shows up. And our market is doing a lot of this out of fear of not, of being passed or because it's a really great idea.

5:02Because one of the things I'm hearing is marketing is the front end of a lot of AI. And if you're not doing something, you're going to be killed. So you've got to be doing it. Tell me what you're seeing. It's the expectation. The expectation is that you're going to be using it. And even at the board level, I think if I just went to Stephen Wolf's Alpha Council conference, and people, if you're on a public board, you're supposed to be asking those questions. How are you using it? What are the risks? Like, the expectation is that you are using it. The degree to which you're using it, how you're using it, I think those obviously vary.

5:38There are people who've plugged everything in. Other people are still experimenting. I think if you were a solopreneur, I clearly use AI, but I don't have everything on one system married to each other because if it goes down, I don't have an IT department who's going to come rescue me. But companies are all really behind walls and in protected environments, and they really are pushing people to use it in ways that obviously are safe and logical for the organization. Now, does it always work? As we know, not always. You know, somebody said, you know, the most creative people are in the marketing department, but they don't necessarily know how to protect some of the data and they'll put it in.

6:20And, you know, we have to figure out how to put up guardrails. Like these are all interesting, important points. I think it's creating a lot more interaction between the CTO, the chief digital officer, the CMO, where there's just more convergence. So let's go to the title of the show, Behind Closed Doors, because between the podcasting and the CMO console and everything else, I'm sure you hear a lot of what's really on people's minds that's not out in the open. Tell me, what are you hearing behind closed doors? Well, I mean, I hear more and more about people wondering if they want the job. Now, of course, they have to be at a place in their career where they go forward not to have the job or to ask themselves that question.

7:11I think there's just more questioning that's happening than I have had expected before. Now, you and I started off this conversation saying, you know, especially if you're with people who've been in the C-suite, they don't quite know how to turn it off. So it's hard for them to think about retiring. So you do a podcast or something, you know, because you can't turn it off. Exactly. You find other ways to be busy. You write a book, you do a podcast, you teach, you know, you join boards. But I think there's just more questioning of, is this the job I want? I increasingly see people who are CMOs now sometimes pivoting to become chief growth officers, chief commercial officers.

7:50Like the job of the CMO obviously just constantly is pivoting. There's more people who are in comms who now own brand or marketing, right? Like you're just seeing lots more changes in definition for what this job was from, you know, when Jim Stengel was the CMO of P &G, which as you and I know is a lot of go. Yeah. But at this, like I, I want, I may not want the job is I want it to evolve or I don't want it at all. Or it's more than I thought. What are you hearing there? I think it's all of those things. I mean, I think it's a lot. And I think, you know, marketing's always been the place that's easy to sort of look at and flip out.

8:30So, you know, the, the rate of transition in a CMO job has pretty much been the same, you know, it varies by a couple of months here and there. I think people, you know, wonder if this is the job or if there's a different way to do the job. I know CMOs who want to be CEO. You know, as I think I mentioned you, I just had Jeff Jones on, you know, he was one of the first CMOs that we were cohorts of who went on the ride share business globally for Uber and then became the CEO of H &R Block. And then also you remember, why am I blanking on his name? Our friend who was at Mattel, Richard Dixon. So he went to go run Jones Group, then he went back to Mattel and now he's running Gap, right?

9:14So some people have that. It's funny, I asked Jeff Jones if he'd always known he wanted to be CEO, because for me, I never was interested in the CEO role. In fact, I remember a boss who was a CEO saying, well, you can take this job when I'm gone. And I thought, I said, no, when you go, I'm going. And she was like, what do you mean? Like, it just couldn't occur to her that I wasn't interested in that. I was like, I know what I'm good at. I also know what gives me joy and managing Wall Street is not one of them. So, I mean, I think part of it is just having clarity as to what you want. And I think the other thing I would say to you is I talked to a lot of CMOs in Cannes and I was interested in the fact that a lot of the tech CMOs no longer have to sell in the idea that brand matters.

9:57But what they're saying is that they now have CEOs or executive teams who understand that the combination of performance and brand really yield the best results. So they no longer have to do the presentation I had to do over and over again, which is like, here's the value. Why the brand matters, yes. And they only realize the brand matters when things go sideways and all of a sudden they have to worry about their reputation, right? But now they don't have to do that anymore, But they're definitely marrying performance and brand in ways that really yield them much better results. And I definitely saw that in Nextdoor when we did tests to see if we could pull something out or how we combine things.

10:35For sure, when you had the overlay, it performed better. And that's what they're all saying as well. So when you were at Cannes, I never say it right, you probably got a feel for the real impact on what's going on with agencies and marketing jobs in general. How do you feel about the ad agency, the media agency business, everything else going on? Well, I mean, you just have to read the headlines. There's like layoffs, consolidations, and then Cannes on fire. Yeah, there's there's more activations and can than I've ever seen. Right. And and can extends past the corset to yachts and helicopters and Saint Tropez.

11:19And I don't know, you know, villas and whatnot. At the same time, you know, I was at the ad council dinner when, you know, one of the big holding companies had announced layoffs in the morning. And then we were all, you know, let them eat cake having dinner. And so I think that people definitely notice that people talk about that. I think there's a sense of just more uncertainty than I've seen before. And it's partly because people sort of have a sense that they could show up at a job and not know what's coming. Right. That didn't used to be quite as pronounced, I would say to you. On the flip side, I would say to you, a lot more people have side hustles than in our era because they know that there's less security.

12:00The other thing at Cannes was that there was a lot of creators. For the first time, Cannes had an official creator track. And I think that media has transformed. We don't all gather to watch the morning news or the Today Show or whatever. People are creating content in other places and the value of owning your own audience, particularly for creators, is a thing. and so it was interesting and actually kind of amazing to be invited to like a creator lunch and sit with people who are creators globally that adobe had invited to be part of a whole track and then also to just hear from them about what their experience is like they tended to be slightly younger but um i remember after after i'd been to one of the events we stayed connected on instagram and i noticed that he'd been locked out of his instagram account or his facebook account which by the way, we all know happens, right?

12:56Like you, if that's how you're making your money and all of a sudden your audience is taken away from you, it's a real thing. And in fact, I had Rick McGuire, who's one of the bigger accounts on Instagram who had subway creatures that had happened to him early on. And he figured out a way to get his audience back, but there's no phone number to call. I mean, if you remember back to when you and I started in the business, can you imagine not being able to call someplace? So, and by the way, I've had this experience before myself. So if you have an issue with some account, you know, it's like that meme of like agent, agent, agent beyond that, because there's actually no phone number.

13:32So you can go and come, you know, put in a thing and a comment and hope you hear back somewhere in your lifetime. That's a real, real thing. So, I mean, I think it's interesting that it's become even more complicated and for people whose entire life, right? Like they're, they're working. Yes. It's like turning off the electricity or how. Yeah. So the internet go out. So when, um, when you were at Cannes, a bunch of people, and we've had a number of them on the show feel like Cannes is really like a throwback. It's not really breaking any new ground. And it's more of a boondoggle where everyone gets an award.

14:13What's your thoughts on that? Look, I think that if you go to CAN, you have to know how to navigate CAN. It can be very overwhelming. There are people who go for the first time. And honestly, there was somebody who, of course, used AI to create a document that had every single event that was happening at CAN. So it was like 1600 events in four days. Like, that's a lot to manage. So I think you have to have a plan for what you're going to get out of can right like anything it's like if you're thoughtful about what your goal is then i think you can accomplish that i actually spent a couple of um couple you know afternoons like in the palais which less and less people go in the palais because frankly i mean in the old days of can that was where the action was and you had to buy an expensive ticket to get in now you could go to can and never go into the palais right because so many of the activations are not within the the grounds right there i thought it was super interesting um one of the partners from goodby silverstein actually showed a video that was probably half baked where he wants to make a musical and he'd use ai only to create a short clip of a musical he wants to get funding like as a pitch deck and he was showing it and i think like what's always interesting to me because this is not the first wave of technology that you and I have lived through.

15:32Yeah. There's always early adopters. There's always naysayers. There's definitely people I interview for jobs or I talk to who say to me, AI is bad for the environment. I don't want to use it. And you think to yourself, you're going to get left behind. Like, I don't know how that works, but I understand their concerns at the same time. Right. And what was interesting to me was seeing him not just use the AI to do that for his side hustle, but to share it on the big stage. And, you know, at first I was like, okay, well, that was kind of a half-baked idea, but really it takes courage to show a half-baked idea as the head creative at a big agency, right?

16:08But it reminded me of the early days of the internet, which now is hard to believe, but in 1980, in 92 or 93, I think I graduated in 93 and I was at Y &R. and in those days the only people who did websites were engineers and so you see the websites and they were so bland and I remember one guy actually took a couple of creatives and trained them on the computer and then had them make dvds because that that was the day when we thought dvds would outlive the internet and the dvds were so lush and interesting and so I think what you're beginning to see it not just be tech people like other people experimenting with it and where that leads I think will be interesting.

16:51I interviewed Will.i.am. He's all in on AI, right? He's like, we joke that he should create an agent of his mom because he brought his mom with him to Cannes and they were so close and we all wanted to be able to call Will.i.am's mom like he does. And I will say like, it's hard to imagine that AI is a fad and it's going away, but will it change and morph? Sure. But it was also scary to see this documentary where the people who worked in the risk space around AI, of which there weren't many, they were clearly outnumbered by, you know, all the Sam Almans of the world. They didn't want to procreate.

17:26Hey, tell me about the side hustles. You said there's way more side hustles. What are you seeing on the side hustle front? And is that career protection or just fun? I think it's both. I actually asked at a dinner, how many people who work for you have a side hustle. And most people's employees had side hustles. And some people said, we don't pay them enough. So they have a side hustle. So I'm okay with it. They tended to be more on the consulting side. They were like, no, you're not supposed to have a side hustle. Cause you know, those are still jobs where you're supposed to sleep under your desk.

17:59So you have extra hours. Why are you using it on a side hustle? I interviewed somebody who'd had a side hustle and that eventually led to her separating from the company. And now that's what she does full time. and she makes way more money than she had at the company she was at before. So I think it's a variety of things, but the barrier to entry to start your own business and become Stephen Bartlett of Diary of a CEO is just not there anymore. So you do have people who try the side hustle because they think that's actually going to be much better for them in the long run, which then you're reminding me that I was on a plane coming back actually from doing the longest table in Miami and I happened to get upgraded, which, you know, when I'm working in my nonprofit world, I'm definitely not at the front of the bus usually.

18:42But anyway, I get on the plane and I'm sitting next to a 20 year old next to me. We bond over our love of Solomon sneakers, which is very trendy of me, I should say. Yeah, very good. Thank you. And it turns out that he's one of three guys who had just been written up in the Wall Street Journal as the three basically teenagers, although now they're in their 20s, who started an AI company that's a unicorn that's doing a more advanced version of Synthetic Research. And, you know, he'd been going to Miami, you know, at somebody's invitation, having sort of the time of his life, you know, at the Carbone Beach that, you know, was thousands of dollars to just get into.

19:19I was at the longest table where everybody's invited and there's no hierarchy at a potluck. So we were sort of comparing notes. But I said to him, what made you decide to do this? He was a freshman at Harvard when he left. He said, first of all, if you go to Harvard and you drop out, you can always go back. Matt Damon went back years later in his 50s and finished. So the risk is low. He said, it's a higher risk to take a corporate job because while you always have the safety nets of going back to Harvard and what do I have to lose? And I just thought that was such an interesting perspective, right?

19:52Like that was not a thing when you and I were starting. No, not a thing. Not a thing. Yeah. So he thought the corporate job was the bigger risk. Exactly. So, you know, you've previously on the show, you referred to yourself as a recovering CMO. I think you should, let's revisit that topic. Tell us about it and how are you recovering or are you fully recovered? Well, I mean, you know what, it's a good line to throw out, you know, in the sense that I'm not in the CMO seat at a big company like I was for, I don't know, over 20 years. But I do still spend a lot of time with CMOs. They're my people at the end, you know, kind of like you.

20:33And I think what I love about CMOs is by definition, they tend to be curious and they're interested in consumers and human behavior, which is a thing we all have in common. I now get to, you know, chair the Wall Street Journal CMO Council and spend time with CMOs and understanding what's on their mind and trying to be helpful to them. And that's obviously very satisfying. But, you know, from the podcast to the longest table, the other things I do, or even the interval, the community for people who are sort of at the, you know, where they have one more job or one more company in them sort of at a different stage in life.

21:08I've always been about community. It's not coincidental that you and I met in M50, I suppose. But I use the same skills that I used for years in the corporate arena, now just sometimes to different ends, right? The longest table has spread because of the storytelling. Tell us about the longest table. Yeah. I mean, really, it wasn't a business plan. You know, it was just an idea. I saw a picture of people having a meal together. We were coming out of COVID. And I was like, that looks amazing. They're having a meal together on the street. I had a neighbor who lived in an apartment during COVID. And he would put out a camping table to have a meal with friends.

21:44And I just thought that was amazing. I was like a moth to flame. I would like walk over. I was like, who are you? Who are these people? Why am I not invited to the table? That might be really the thing for me. That was probably the whole driver. How come I don't have a seat at the table? So we just tried it and we said we would rent tables and chairs and invite you to come. It was like connect, create community, eat and have fun. That was the entire agenda. And that first year, 500 people showed up. And now we get over 2000 people to the same event. I went to one, you know, there's 153 that are happening this year around the country.

22:17One in Puerto Rico just happened. There's one in October in Buenos Aires. There's one being planned in Adelaide, Australia. So it's crazy. and people say to me why do I think that that idea which was just a what if idea is like becoming a movement and I think it really is the storytelling and the fact that it's really about participation right so I think one of the things I think about in terms of leadership all the time is you know we in global CMO jobs or any of these big jobs we had it was command and control but when you do community building it's about grace and trust and you learn to let go and you invite others in to participate.

22:52It's a little bit true now in marketing because things are two way. But I think that it's, you know, we were we've I've always wanted to do a longest table across the Brooklyn Bridge. I've told this story before, but I will say it again. It's you know, I like big crazy ideas. And I know it's feasible. I got Eric Adams to say yes, I walked it with the police, you know, I priced it out the whole nine yards. That was before he ran into his troubles. And so, you know, I've been trying again. He was the mayor of New York, if you're not following. Yes, exactly. That was a former mayor of New York. So now we have a new mayor.

23:23Everybody says he's the community mayor. It's going to be easier with Mamdani. And, you know, of course, he has a few things to take care of in his first year of office. So somebody said, oh, we should just do a stunt on the Brooklyn Bridge. Since he's the social mayor, let's do like a social video and tag him. So we sort of said it out loud. And then it was like, oh, wait, it's tomorrow. Oh, no, tomorrow's going to rain. Then it came up upon us. And I sent out a note to some of the core volunteers. I said, you know, in 12 hours, we're going to meet at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and go try this.

23:52Who wants to come? Eight people showed up. They brought tables, chairs, tablecloths. They cooked food. And we went on to the Brooklyn Bridge. My husband said, I'm playing golf, so I won't be able to come and get you if you get arrested. We set out a table. We put out the tablecloth. And for an hour, we sat and shared a meal and invited strangers to join us and made new friends and made a lot of social content at the end of the hour I was like you know what let's not push our luck I think like some people have to go to work we should like break down and go so we break down the table some people um head back to work a few of them had that had bought the bigger tables and chairs needed to take it onto the subway in their cart so that was the whole thing so I was helping them down you know the accessibility track down to into the subway and we get on and now there was four or five of us.

24:41And I just, I just said, I said, what if we did one on the subway? Wouldn't that be amazing? And Mike, I kid you not, I turn around and they're unfurling the eight foot table. They're putting the tablecloth on the china. And now we're sitting in the subway with strangers and strangers are eating the same food we're eating. They don't even know us. And we laughed so hard and took video content. And I thought to myself, you know, as a leader, you want people to feel empowered to take the baton without you having to say here's step one two and three like they own it right it's such an interesting leadership lesson because how many times are you like i'd like people in best buy to feel agency to solve somebody's problem and come off the manual like i didn't say we should do one i just said like what if and i turn around and it is just happening and i think it's because they feel a sense of ownership and it's theirs as much as it is mine.

25:36And so it's been an incredible leadership lesson. It's been an incredible journey. I'm so privileged to have met people who care so deeply, who show up at other people's tables and help them. And really the way it spreads is through storytelling because people see it and say, oh my God, that's amazing. I want to do one. And it's, you know, as we know in social, the things that tend to do better are controversy and negativity. So we have to have some nice Positive story. Yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. Meeting with makers. Can I flip back to the CMO gig? Yeah. In our first show, we talked about the fact that a lot of boards and a lot of CEOs really don't understand marketing.

26:19Is that, and you mentioned that the tech companies, maybe they feel the brand is now important. Do you still feel the trend of marketing with boards and CEOs is going in the positive direction or in the negative direction? I think it's very specific to the leadership team and your CEO. I didn't say it's definitely, like they're all in the clear in tech. No, do they really have a strong CMO? You did not say that. No, you did not. I just want to be clear. I mean, do you look and look at tech companies and can you name their CMOs the way you used to be able to name the big ones, you know, the Jim Stangles of that era?

26:58No, you really can't, right? I think they don't have to fight the way that, you know, that we did in the earlier days of technology. So there's a seat at the table, but no, I don't think like they fully, you know, I'm not, I just think like what they understand is the power of data and they know that now they need to care about that. But do I think that if Mark Zuckerberg had his druthers, that would be the one job he would save on his executive team? No, I don't think so. I mean, he's a great guy. He is a great guy who was his chief data officer who after um one of our friends um why am i i'm having one of those very bricks not gary breaks um my god the the one who's now at paypal um it'll come to me anyway he is he became he became um cmo like when i was still at next door like near the end of my tenure next door and he also owned data so i think that what you're seeing is like that marriage is much stronger for him and um actually he just got promoted to chief data officer and that's alex schultz right yeah yeah he's been on our show yeah yeah but i mean he just got promoted to chief data officer but he owned marketing and data yeah the data guy that they made and gave the cmo job to when um i don't know left to be named left yes hey so if you could go back in time to your first cmo role and give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself, you know, X years ago?