A little over three years ago, VanillaSoft, the industry's most successful sales engagement platform hired Perry-Martel International to conduct a search for a critical role in their senior leadership: Chief Marketing Officer. According to Adweek, “Across the corporate landscape, the length of a Chief Marketing Officer’s tenure with a company is becoming shorter, with the average now roughly less than the amount of time it takes to get a college degree.” That would be about 3.5 years. That’s why this series is titled “How to Avoid the CMO Money Pit.” With that short a tenure at a senior executive level, everyone loses.

In this new series, Peter Clayton you inside the search, the hire, and the results of VanillaSoft’s CMO search. Having covered the talent acquisition, recruiting technology, and HR space for over 15 years, I can tell you CMO rolls are the shortest-lived in the C Suite. Why? Expectations rarely live up to reality. Also, according to a MarketingDive Brief, “Aside from overseeing all branding, marketing, and advertising activity, including much or all of the related tech, many brands now also expect the CMO to bear key responsibility for customer experience, personalization and company revenues.” In other words, you going to need a unicorn as CMO. And there aren’t many of them. VanillaSoft, having a unique perspective on the market, knew they had to go outside to fill this roll. In this video, we’ll take you through the process step-by-step. The first episode is titled The Set-Up. Finding a Unicorn, and features the principals of Perry-Martel International, David Perry and Anita Martel; and Darryl Praill, the Unicorn. Enjoy.