What makes a chief marketing officer successful: Is it internal importance within a company, or external influence in the public domain?
Appinions, a company that tracks individuals' influence in both traditional and social media, believes it's the latter, and has compiled a list of the most influential CMOs in the world, topped by execs at companies like Apple and Ford. When these people talk, the world not only listens but reacts.
"I presented these findings at the ANA [Association of National Advertisers] Conference and there was [nearly] a coup," co-founder and CEO Larry Levy told Business Insider. "Some CMOs from big companies were there who didn't make the list, and they were so pissed. Like, these guys are very competitive when it comes to these things."
Appinions, which recently raised $3 million in funding, digests 100 million opinions from 5 million English-speaking sources (from blogs to Twitter to New York Times articles to speech transcripts to any other written word that appears on the Internet). Unlike Klout, this doesn't just measure frequency of mentions, but rather opinions, context, and the impact it had on a surrounding audience. Was it reblogged and re-tweeted, in other words?
The algorithms were developed by Professor Claire Cardie at Cornell, and rigged so that The Wall Street Journal holds more weight than Joe Shmo's blog, for instance.
The research was compiled in conjunction with Forbes, which asked Appinions to look at CMOs at the 100 most important companies in the world (as determined by the publication). Of course the list isn't perfect. While it measures outside influence, it can't quantify how CMOs quietly influence the world around it based on internal strategy within a company.
Who do you think should have made the list?
29. Marc Pritchard
Global brand-building officer at Procter & Gamble
Pritchard wields P&G's $9.3 billion marketing budget. Recent successes include its Olympics "Thank You, Mom" campaign.
28. Michael Zuna
CMO at Aflac
Zuna joined Aflac in 2009 after stints at agencies Saatchi & Saatchi and Arnold Worldwide. Zuna is known for making quick gametime decisions. In fact, he booted comedian Gilbert Gottfried, the former voice of the Aflac duck, when he Tweeted offensive jokes about the Japanese tsunami the day of the disaster.
27. Mary Szela
VP pharmaceutical operations at Abbott Laboratories
Szela began her career as a nurse before transitioning to the business side of health care. She was named "One to Watch" in Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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