The tension between CFO and CMO

(Monday afternoon emergency 1:1 btw CMO and CFO to discuss softness in November numbers and the 'red flags’ in the performance of the brand campaign they just launched)

CFO: we have to cancel the brand campaign we just launched.

CMO: why?

CFO: november numbers are coming in soft and we need to cut all non-essential investments.

CMO: are we sure this is non-essential? this is the 4th time this year we've scrapped brand building investments as a result of short term softness. could we be overreacting? placing disproportionate importance on the short term at the expense of the mid and long term? missing a YoY revenue comp for a particular month isn't the end of the world.

CFO: i'll think about it. oh, B T Dubs ("by the way" for those of you who speak actual english), I'm looking at the performance of the campaign. It's horrendous.

CMO: why?

CFO: the cost per acquisition is 10x higher than our other spend.

CMO: as we discussed 57 times, we're not going to measure the effectiveness of this investment by how it drives short term revenue.

CFO: yea but i didn't think it would be THAT BAD. we'll see how Black Friday / Cyber Monday goes and we'll see if we can resume the investment in Q1.

CMO: i get it. curious - how are we determining that this campaign falls into the non-essential bucket?

CFO: we have a crazy high comp to his this november, so investing dollars in anything that doesn't help hit our number this month is off the table.

CMO: Hmm. I'm "Mr Disagree And Commit" through and through, but as you know, in Nov 2022, we had anomalistic product launches and multiple one-off press hits that drove the month. i know we want to grow every month by 20% this year, but as i've been saying, we don't have those anomalies this month. unless Taylor Swift runs on the field when her BF scores a touchdown at the November 20th chiefs / eagles game, looks straight into the camera and says "[insert your product name, value prop and tagline here]", it's not looking like the fundamentals are there to hit the number.

CFO: well let's hope that happens.

CMO: oh you best believe i pray about it nightly.

CFO: howabout this...let's focus on hitting our numbers to close out 2023, and in 2024, we'll take a really hard look at brand investments.

CMO: we had this exact conversation in November 2022.

CFO: but this time it's different.

CMO: famous last words. thought experiment...do we agree that if we had a choice between
A) a purchase we can measurably attribute to an ad because someone clicked on it, and
B) a purchase that comes from a person simply thinking of our brand and purchasing without being prompted by an ad, we'd choose B?

CFO: duh

CMO: even if there was no way to attribute the purchase to a specific marketing investment using our current process?

CFO: i see what you're trying to do and I DON'T LIKE IT

CMO mega passively aggressively: good talk. lots of progress here. can't wait to pick back up on this conversation in Q1!
—
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