Over the past decade, I’ve attended CMO event after CMO event and have noticed something. Getting older doesn’t seem to benefit marketers in the same way it does for other C-level positions. While grey hair may carry positive meaning (i.e., experience, wisdom, useful insight) for a general counsel, CFO, or CEO, there seems to be unwritten rule that age doesn’t benefit marketers. As one example, a board of directors (made up primarily of finance executives over the age of 50) was looking at potential CMO candidates. The recommended candidate from a recruiter was a 46 year old with terrific credentials and experience. The board disapproved of the candidate because he was “too old”.
How is it that years of experience are valuable for the board members, but not for a potential CMO? To gain perspective on this question, I queried Gene Morphis, former CFO and author of Jobs Over Fifty: The Guide to New Employment for the Experienced Worker, and Survive And Prosper Fifty Steps to Job And Career Security. His perspective on the topic follows.
Kimberly Whitler: Why do you think that 45+ year olds are an endangered species?
Gene Morphis: Let’s split this into three groups: 1) Over fifty year olds, 2) Thirty-five to fifty, and 3) Under thirty-five.
Here’s the difference and why it matters. If you are over-fifty, you probably remember when PCs and Macs showed up in your office. You had to learn DOS or WordPerfect or Lotus 123. You learned to play video games on an Atari. You also remember the evolution of the mobile phone, from something rich people had in their cars to today’s ubiquitous smartphone. Using my favorite phrase-to survive and prosper you developed a certain mastery of those technologies. For you, the Internet came later. You have a smart phone, but you don’t live on it.
If you are in your late thirties or forties, you grew up with computers in your house and probably in your high-school. So you are very familiar with that technology – it’s intuitive to you. You learned about the Internet early on. But you were out of college before you had a mobile phone, and couldn’t afford a smart phone until later.
But if you are in your twenties, you grew up with all that tech. You’re native. You didn’t have to learn it later in life, you learned it from childhood. Ask any parent of young children about how astonishingly fast they figure out IPads. It’s the difference between growing up with an English-speaking parent and a Chinese speaking parent versus learning Chinese as an adult. Watch a group of twenty-somethings in Starbucks. . They only talk occasionally – they are connected to each other and the world through a device.
If you are a company considering repositioning marketing spending from traditional broadcast and print media, and you’ve heard about this thing called responsive design and are trying to decide whether to use Pinterest, Instagram or Snapchat, who are you going to lean on? The over-forty-five year old guy? The 40 year old woman? Or the 27 year old chic from Stanford?
Whitler: Is this perspective unique to CMOs? How does it compare to other functions?
Morphis: It may not be unique, but it is more acute. Examples: You are the corporate general counsel. You know the history of the company, corporate filings, corporate structure, board actions over the years, litigation history. Law changes slowly not quickly. Your specific knowledge is valuable.
You’re the controller. Been involved in the last three IRS audits, know how the consolidation and translation of foreign subs has to be done. Have a good working relationship with the outside auditors. Now, there are constant new rules from the SEC, Dodd Frank, etc., but if you stay current on those, you’re in good shape. Your company knowledge is valuable.
You’re the head of factory operations. Steadily improve processes, eek out some productivity gain, control labor costs and find some more efficient machines and equipment, you can keep your job forever.
Here’s the conclusion: tech is driving change everywhere, but at the interface of businesses and consumers, where marketers live, change is super-fast. That makes specific company history less valuable. Knowledge of new marketing communication channels is more important. Incumbents have little advantage over newcomers.
No one likes to hear about age discrimination. They think it can’t happen to them; it only happens to old folks who get behind the times. Wrong. This might be the first time ever that 30 year olds find that they are being discriminated in favor of 20 year olds.
So what does this mean when you are standing in line to get your latte’ on your way to work? The days of graduating from college at 22, working at Prudential or P&G or IBM for 43 years and retiring at 65 are over. You are going to work at a lot of places. Some of those job searches are not going to be by choice.
Whitler: What can executives do now to get prepared?
Morphis: There are three things that executives can do now.
- Perform at a high level every day. Superior employees are rarely fired. That is what my second book, Survive and Prosper Fifty Steps to Job and Career Security is all about-how to perform every day so that you are the last person your employer wants to fire.
- Prepare for the eventual job change. I know this is demanding. It is just like working out. We all want to be hard-bodies with flat abs, the “V” and biceps, but not many of us are prepared to work out seriously an hour plus every day. Preparing yourself for getting fired, outplaced, downsized, or being redundant in a merger requires similar effort.
- Join and attend professional groups. You’ll meet new people and be exposed to new ideas.
- Attend conferences in your industry, even if you have to take vacation time and pay for it yourself.
- A lot. Business pubs like Forbes. Specialty pubs like Fast Company and Wired. Trade pubs in your industry. Best-selling business books. Blogs by thought leaders.
- Work your network every day. Call one person that you haven’t talked to in a while-every day! My business motto is simple: big networks win. Develop and manage your online persona. Ditch the spring break beach photos from Facebook. Use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn blogs. Follow interesting people on Twitter-there are hundreds of thousands. They will expose you to a constant barrage of new ideas. Follow @kimwhitler. She is doing a great job for professional marketing folks pushing them on big data, collaboration and educating them on using new communication channels.
I’m totally convinced that the folks who do these things will keep positions longer, and find new work far faster when they need to. If you’ve fallen behind on technology, let your network atrophy, haven’t established a positive online presence, not only are you not in the game, you aren’t on the roster. There will be times that you just want to go home, order a pizza and watch TV, but you signed up for the local Association for Corporate Growth monthly dinner meeting. Go to the meeting. Big networks win.
About Gene Morphis: He is the author of Jobs Over Fifty: The Guide to New Employment for the Experienced Worker and Survive And Prosper Fifty Steps to Job And Career Security (both available on Amazon). He is the founder / Chairman of Big Diamonds and former CFO for Francesca’s, David’s Bridal, and CVS.
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler @TheOldCFO
