How The CMO Who Knows All
Spends Her Time
by Mr. W. B. Tyler
She doesn’t always accept invitations to the lavish birthday parties of the world’s most elusive royal families and invisible power brokers.
But when she does, she is so late she’s actually on time.
Nobody sees her arrive.
But you will know she’s there by the signs…
…A hush will blow through the party, and fewer guests will be seen.
Potentates will contain themselves to stage whispers and furtive glances.
People will slip quietly out back, arm-in-arm, to gather at the edge of a circle formed around a graceful woman of iron intensity, whispering a story—as all hold their breath.
Meet the CMO Who Knows All.
She is the CMO
Who Knows All
The tales of this CMO are legion, and lest you think they are exaggerated, let me say, the opposite is true.
I know, because I was once in a room at a particular museum in New York City as the curators unveiled a memo she once wrote to her team, which caused the crowd to weep uncontrollably.
None realized that there, in the back, she stood. I saw her bend down to apply smelling salts to the nose of a tour guide who was overcome, and press a mysterious note into their hand as she helped them to their feet.
She is known to have reviewed a full Super Bowl commercial and given notes only from her Apple Watch. When she runs A/B tests, both variants win. At the sales kickoff, people hold candles before an icon of her likeness.
The agency Wieden and Kennedy wants to do whatever she wants to do. When her board members come calling and she isn’t in the office, they sit patiently in the lobby waiting for her arrival.
She spells return on investment “RI” because usually, vendors and ad networks simply return her full investment. Her personal network makes Facebook’s social graph look like a crude toy. Nobody was surprised when her Zoom background won her a Nobel Prize, but they were when the Nobel Prize directors called her from Stockholm to deliver the news, she replied, “It’s 3 AM, never do this again” and hung up.
Like a black hole, she is never viewed but always visible in how she distorts the reality surrounding her.
Nobody knows her full calendar or the extent of her travels, but it has been said that she lives vicariously through herself, keeps elusive company, and summers in the fastness of an ancient mountain stronghold where she uses falconry to help her think.
A lesser CMO would struggle to keep up with it all and still lead the company’s earnings calls.
But she misses nothing.
This is why she is regarded, simply, as the CMO who knows all.
And yet, one problem was beyond her reckoning.
She once asked her team, “Where is all of our content managed? Where is it being used–and how has it performed?”
She was met with preemptive resignations and sobs for forgiveness.
Nobody, even her, actually knew where it all was. Although she did know why.
Her brand’s content comes from dozens of agencies, internal teams, and manifests in a variety of formats that once awed the Smithsonian chief curator—from photos and banners to 3D renders and rare works of art that the Sotheby’s rare-finds team would die for a mere glimpse of.
Even with the strongest governance processes and modern digital asset management, the content chaos and data sprawl happening were beyond her control.
No team was large enough, and with more incredible content coming in by the day, there was not enough time on this earth to sort it all and actually know what every piece they possessed.
So then, the simple question of “What exists?” was not entirely answerable.
And the challenge deepened.
Because once this content was used–distributed across social media, ad networks, and retargeting systems, TV spots, radio ads, and out-of-home—it had effectively left her team’s view. And often it was vectorized, saturated, masked, flipped, clipped, and duplicated into infinite permutations by their dozens of agencies.
This is why no one on her team–some of the greatest minds in marketing–could answer for all of the places their content was utilized.
And as for what their constellation of published creative assets had actually accomplished against the brand’s loftiest goals—well, that remained a mystery even to them.
And so, the CMO was left unable to answer three simple questions:
- Where is our content?
- What content is actually being used?
- What content is delivering the most value?
For any other leader, these would have been tough questions. For her—they were unacceptable.
Because she knew the world had changed. As CMO, she was no longer simply the steward of brand, but the oracle of business growth.
She was expected to not only inspire—but to prove. To measure. To align campaigns with commerce, brand with boardroom, and story with strategy.
Her agencies could make anything. Her team could publish anywhere.
But without true visibility—into what was working, where, and why—even she could not turn insight into impact.
Until Tenovos tied it all together.
She doesn’t always use software, but when she does, it is Tenovos Glass.
Tenovos Glass has the power to plug into all the platforms where her content is managed, all the channels where her content is published, and use AI to scan the infinity, bringing it all into a unified view that ties everything together.
It tells her things that no other dashboard had ever dared–like which content actually performs, what should be retired, and where to invest next to drive real business impact.
I know it, friend. I know of many remarkable things she has done, like apply smelling salts to the nose of a docent overcome in a museum by her memo … because that docent was me.
And the mysterious message she placed into my hand … well, that is a tale for another time.
