Just Google It: 7 Questions Every CMO Wants To Know

Google-owned YouTube is a wasteland, but like all wastelands, when you brush aside the layers of dirt and debris, you’re in the position to discover a gem or two. The video that follows may not meet gem status, but it is a find worth noting here.

Tara Walpert Levy is VP of Agency and Brand Solutions at Google. She’s the kind of powerful client who can make or break an agency. Therefore, ad execs who want to learn how to play Google’s game will need to give her thinking a thorough airing. Thanks to Harvard Business Review and Google’s “Think with Google” new video series on YouTube, this is now possible.

Levy is a matter of fact in her thinking and her delivery.

The level of demand and expectation for brands has gone up. People are living in a world where they get any content or experience they want, when they want it, how they want it, and that expectation for brands becomes more dramatic as well. Fundamentally, people are impatient. They want everything right now. It amazes me that over half of the visits to a mobile website are abandoned because it takes more than three seconds to load the site. Three seconds! You’d think people could wait four seconds.

Patience is a virtue, and virtues are out of fashion at present. What’s a CMO to do?

Levy discusses the need for analytics and analytical thinking. She also weighs in on the need for big-picture thinking:

As an executive team, you need to bring an open mind to your vision and a relentless pursuit of the ‘why’ you’re going to make any of the changes you decide going to make. One of the big risks in technology is people can get a little bit disttacted by shiny objects. If you’re really focused on the fundamentals of your business and why your customers are behaving the way they are, there’s a big opportunity particularly in marketing to leverage your partners and your customers (and) to be much more fundamental to who they are and relevant to what they’re interested in at any particular moment in time.

When it comes to creating and running a data-driven marketing operation today, Google sets the high bar. Right now, there are not a lot of companies prepared to clear it.

With the power of Google behind you, concepts like mass personalization and customization are more than idle thoughts. That must be a good feeling, knowing that you’re able to think and act at the bleeding edge.

When you don’t have the benefit of a powerful analytics engine inside your company, or the ability to take raw data and make it into actional information for the marketing and creative teams, notions of meeting customer’s desires as if by magic, seem remote, at best.