This week’s Adweek cover story is about alleged ageism in the advertising industry. “War of the Ages” tries to present a picture of aging baby boomers getting tossed from high-six figure jobs and being replaced by less expensive, “hipper” younger professionals. These hipper and younger professionals also happen to know a lot about network-centric marketing than the axed veterans.
While that last statement may be a generalization, here is the bottom line: Just as The Marketing Consigliere briefly blogged a year ago in “Digitally Deficient CMOs Need Not Apply,” a day of reckoning for Marketers is nigh – and they need to get on the net-centric (or as I say C4ISR) bandwagon.
George Hayes, an axed executive from Universal McCann who is featured in the article and is suing the agency and its parent company, is mentioned as being 53 years old. The Marketing Consigliere is about to hit the 48 year milestone – not too far behind Mr. Hayes – and has some advice for him and other peers who have been enjoying significant six-figure incomes for a while – Pay heed to the careers of square-rigger captains at the dawn of the age of steam, or cavalry officers at the dawn of the tank.
The Marketing Consigliere knows that it is a lot of work to get out of your comfort zone to learn about “new media,” but it has to be done if you want to be perceived as relevant and billable. Don’t let Alvin Toffler’s visionary Future Shock be about you…
I recently published a report for a client about the “new CMO” and couldn’t agree more with your post. And it’s really not only about new media… new-breed CMOs are also asked to be quant jocks—able to define, track and influence metrics that will drive marketing investments and return. For some old-school marketers, these forces are simply too far outside of their comfort zone.