5 Tips for Wannabe CMOs with Laura Favretti
Welcome back Croners with our marketing column 5 tips for CMOs Wannabe. The expert delivering precious bits of advice for this episode is Laura Favretti – CMO & Co-Founder @ Speed2Net.
Laura brings together passion and expertise, thanks to her wide experience and curiosity. Are you ready to become a CMO?
Don’t miss her tips!
Let's start with the basis: who's Laura?
I am a positive and curious person, I love to travel, meet new people and discover new cultures. I enjoy cooking for my family and friends but never do the same thing… Experimenting is my favourite word.
Laura Favretti's career background
Laura has been fortunate enough to work in the field she studied.
After graduating in Business Administration with a specialisation in Marketing from Bocconi University, she has held various marketing roles in large multinational companies, ranging from trade marketing to product marketing, and from strategy to communications.
She can confidently state that she has explored all aspects of marketing and is more convinced than ever of its vital role in any company, not just FMCGs.
Laura has collaborated with people from all continents and backgrounds, building strong and learning greatly from each interaction.
At Black&Decker, she practised the key rules of marketing and learnt how to manage the marketing mix. At Carrier, she managed large projects with many stakeholders spread across the globe. At Candy, she enjoyed the speed, flexibility, and experimental mindset of an entrepreneurial organisation, and at Vorwerk, she delved into the fascinating world of direct sales.
In recent years, she decided to utilise her experience to serve as a marketing and strategy consultant to mid-sized companies and embarked on a new venture as a co-founder of a start-up, where she also holds the role of CMO.
They have developed a platform that facilitates networking between individuals and companies during events, promising the establishment of genuine new contacts.
What brought you to the marketing world? How did you discover your passion?
I discovered marketing during my first course at university and immediately wanted to deep dive into reading Kotler’s bible.
Before deciding on the Business Administration course, I wanted to study Psychology, but I passed the test at Bocconi University and started there.
The good news is that Marketing is the perfect balance between the concreteness of numbers and facts and the intangible rules that guide human preferences: that’s why I think it is the most fascinating area of a business.
What are your 5 tips for a CMO wannabe?
Gosh, that’s a tough one…
I would first focus on the C of the CMO: to be a good Chief you need to have a clear vision and you always have to listen. I know it may sound banal, but many managers when they get to a Chief role, tend to be self-referred.
The best Chiefs I met, had very clear their vision and strategy: this is essential to build alignment. At the same time, they were extremely open to feedback and able to manage it.
Technically it is called Active listening, and it is the capability of truly listening and elaborating the information.
Simple to say, very hard to do it right.
Now, talking about the M part, I need to start with crucial information for all wannabe marketers: be prepared to discuss your projects with a lot of senior executives who have strong ideas about marketing, but no specific competence.
This is particularly true if you will be working in B2B environments, while in FMCG it is less frequent. The root cause is that everybody is a user and is exposed to marketing activities of different products/services, so they think they know how it works.
So, the good CMO will have to face this internal challenge in addition to the external ones. In my opinion, there are 3 key elements for success:
1. Insights: make sure you know deeply the segment you are playing in, your target audience, competitors, the macro trends, and your objectives.
2. Briefs: spend time and energy preparing excellent briefs for your internal and external partners. They will be your most important tool when discussing the details of projects, as they will be the North Star to refer to, when making the final decision. This is particularly true nowadays with AI: you need to write accurate and insightful prompts to get a qualitative output.
3. Networking: marketing is a pivotal function in an organization, so good marketeers need to establish meaningful relationships with a huge number of stakeholders, from sales to finance to engineering: everybody is a precious source of knowledge and insights, as well as a potential ambassador for your new campaign.
Think of yourself as the influencer of the marketing team.
What's your source of inspiration in marketing?
With social media today there are a lot of sources, I personally watch a lot of videos and articles from international magazines or blogs, particularly from the UK, US and Australia that normally capture trends ahead of others.
Also, there are some exciting “influencers” in this category that can be easily found online (see for instance Giuseppe Stigliano). Last but not least I always enjoy watching TEDs (Seth Godin delivers the smartest talks).
What's the most important soft skill to train in marketing?
As I mentioned, being marketing a pivotal function in all organizations, there are a lot of expectations from its representatives: marketers should be empathetic, creative yet analytical, flexible, organized, positive, open, communicative, etc … in a few words a “superhero”.
So, my only piece of advice is “Take it easy”, if you feel under pressure step back and look at the big picture, there is always a solution; and don’t forget to have fun, this is the most amazing job you could do.
Keep reading 5 Tips for CMOs Wannabe
