Okay, okay, I’m up already. I’ve been getting emails asking where the #@$@# my next post is. I guess I underestimated the force of the whirlpool you get sucked into when you start a new job. Thank you for your subtle encouragement.

I’m sipping from the firehose a little more everyday. I went out to Chicago last week to attend the CMO Council’s Marketing Performance Measurement forum at CDW. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with some great thinkers I haven’t seen in person for a while, and to see some new faces in the marketing revolution. Jonathan Knowles delivered the keynote, dropping a few jaws when he challenged the entire room to put a number on the revenue that would be lost at their companies if they were fired tomorrow. He went on to propose an approach for quantifying marketing’s contribution to the market value of a business–a discussion that I think 5 years from now every CMO will understand, but today leaves about 80% of the room gasping for air. 

Alan Scott, the CMO of Factiva, was the highlight of one panel focusing on real-world implementations of Marketing Performance Measurement practices. I presented at a competitive intelligence conference last year where I first met Scott, and I’ve been continually impressed by his straight-forward, high-energy approach to marketing. You get the feeling that amid all the fluff about marketing revision, Scott is the real deal making it work on the front line. Interestingly enough, he came up through sales, not marketing, which may explain his common sense approach to marketing tactics.

Overall, the forum was an interesting departure from the usual hotel conference. A half-day session hosted at the headquarters of CDW, rather than some stuffy hotel ballroom, the forum attracted aboout 50 local marketing leaders, offering a manageable opportunity to engage in peer-to-peer discussions and networking. The content was focused on high-level marketing performance strategy, with panelists representing companies and vendors with various angles on the issue. Not all of the panelists were sharply tuned and on target, but most, like Larry Angeli from Compuware were candid and accessible in their descriptions of what’s happening on the ground in their marketing organizations.

Our next stop is Boston on June 21st. If you’re in the area and you’re a CMO or VP of Marketing, take a look at the agenda and put it on your calendar. It’s a good line up.

Okay, enough promotion. I’ve got to start looking at changes to the blog design.