According to a recent article in the Media Daily News, NBC Universal (NBCU) is developing a CMO in Residence program to try and collect knowledge about the needs of specific industries from marketing leaders who used to work within those industries. NBC hopes this effort will lead to more effective integrated marketing campaigns that will improve business for NBC’s clients while also enticing advertisers to invest more in NBCU.
According to Maryam Banikarim, SVP of of integrated sales for NBC Universal, "'The goal is to utilize the expertise and insights of top CMOs in specific categories, so NBC can ‘enhance our ability to develop programs and ideas that more directly address the needs of our clients’”.
Personally, I find this approach to be fresh and very smart for two reasons. First, the experts will know what works best for each respective targeted industry. Second, I’m quite certain that NBCU will have these experts utilize their clout and relationships to lobby advertisers on behalf of NBC. The questions are will it have legs and will these CMOs play well with others?
I see little downside here unless the cost of bringing the former CMOs aboard exceeds the amount the program will net on the back end. Although I find that prospect unlikely.
The first CMO to join the NBCU family is former K-Mart marketing executive, Bill Stewart. Clearly the discount retail industry is a mark. It will be interesting to see what other categories are targeted. But place your bets on automotive, travel & hospitality, electronics and real estate as a few options.
Hmmm…I wonder if they will include the nonprofit sector in the program?
