Data Gurus

Cliff Courtney, the President and CEO of Courtney180, joins Sima on the show today.  Cliff’s journey Cliff comes from a marketing-driven background. He believes marketing is a good background for all companies. Specifically for him because he has worked predominantly in chief strategy officer roles in Omnicom agencies and then in chief marketing roles, also for Omnicom agencies. As a result, he had good scope for go-to-market plans and how to execute and sell them. Challenges The biggest challenges Cliff ever faced were how to de-commoditize the commoditized brands. (In other words, how to differentiate certain commonly-found items from other, similar items.) Another challenge he faces is that most brands are challenger brands that are competing with companies with bigger budgets and footprints and more impact. So to win these days, he has to be cagey and very smart when optimizing his media messaging.  The expanding sphere of influence of the CMO The sphere of influence of the CMO has expan