CMOs are becoming Seed stage VCs
CMOs are becoming Seed stage VCs
Gone are the days of one big brand launch
We are moving to a world where CMOs must operate like seed stage VCs, not Private Equity players.
Let me explain…
There is a fundamental tension with how the most effective campaigns now run and how most marketing teams are set up.
In the past, the cost of entry on print / TV ads necessitated a big “launch” moment — everything was geared around a noisy spike that a brand could achieve and then sustain as best as possible. In that world, you want all your resources loaded together - then you take one big shot on goal and hope it hits.
Since media was relatively centralised (under 5 big newspapers and under 5 big tv channels, in most markets), attention was not dispersed. More often than not, if you aligned high media spend, with expensive branding, and a well-made product, you could be assured of a hit. Fewer shots on goal, high conversion rates: the Private Equity model, if you will.
Now — media is fragmented (see previous edition of
embedded below), while attention is thinly spread, so there’s no guarantee of dollars spent equalling any kind of outcome.
And so, what the best CMOs and marketing leaders are realising is that there is no “one launch” anymore - you can keep taking shots on goal. The marginal cost of engaging with / producing the next trend on TikTok or viral video on Reels is so low, and therefore so you’re permitted a much longer tail of bites.
So long as you set up your talent / support structures correctly, you should be nimble and agile enough to make one campaign last months not minutes. With many shots on goal, you just need one or two big hits on social to “return the fund”: this is the Seed stage VC model.
When we talk about a brand moving at the speed of culture what we really mean is its ability to metamorphose and appear in the right form and the right place at the right time; whether that's because of a trend out of a sports match, a spontaneous moment involving a celebrity or a Oscar-worthy meme from a TV show that goes viral.
It requires the proactive creation of a reactive muscle.
When people ask why challenger consumer brands like Prime, On and Gymshark keep cleaving off chunks of big brands’ market share, it’s because they’ve got that scrappy reactivity inbuilt to their ways of working.
They achieve relevance and therefore memorability because they’re taking 100s of shots on goal for every 1 that gets approved after the 3 weeks of legal that the big brands have to go through.