I'm always reading about the short tenure of CMOs today and the various reasons for this, from the complexity of technology to shrinking budgets. But the big picture here is that the old process of marketing that prevailed before accountability was demanded just won't fly anymore.

And I don't suggest we counteract this or evolve in the way that most people in the industry recommend, which is to comb through big data for insights or discretely track each piece of media to make sure it's working. Sure those things will help, but they won't move the needle and they won't keep the CMO in his seat.

What I suggest actually draws from traditional methods of testing media, but none that were ever published or popularized. But they were used. By people like David Sarnoff, who passed them along to David Oreck who taught me about them when I worked with Oreck a few years back.

Since then I've layered in digital functionality that allows us to segment the customer and map them to precise locations. Then we test media in those targeted ares. We measure marginal metrics on a macro level (this is the key to Sarnoff's method!).

A recent article stated that "CMOs are let go because their crystal balls don't seem to be functioning."

Well this methodology is that crystal ball. When you understand on a testing scale how media will affect a specific type of customer, you can easily scale those efforts without wasting budget and with a high degree of certainty that they will work.