An Invitation to Play CMO

This is not a traditional article, but a really cool feature of the Customer Centricity Conference coming up in May. I personally hate going to conferences that waste my time because it is hard to know where those "nuggets" of insight will be gained. The idea of a robust simulation to make concepts stick is used graduate schools like Wharton. In fact, this one was developed by the amazing Sarah Toms at Wharton Labs in conjunction with Professor Pete Fader. It is hands-down the most valuable way I've found to turn learning into action. For one day, you get to be the CMO of Hartnow Enterprises. You get to make 9 rounds of data-driven spending decisions and instantly see how your marketing choices grow company value (or don't). You will have a team of about 5 people to help you. But only one team will win. This game is played at a conference which is like no other. I guarantee you will get the concepts at the Customer Centricity Conference on May 10th and 11th in San Francisco AND come back ready to use them. We spend Day 1 listening to the leaders from Wharton, the San Francisco Giants, Viking Cruises, Electronic Arts and more. And Day 2 applying what we learn at Hartnow. Hartnow is a fictional company, but that does not lessen the difficulty of each decision. Should you buy CMS technology? Which additional features and reports, that each come with a hefty price tag, should you choose? How should you distribute your budget across your business units? And how much should go into branding? And ultimately, did it drive sales through customer acquisition and retention, and therefore company value? These are the data-driven questions you and your team will wrestle with on Day 2 of the Customer Centricity Conference. You can actually see a working demo of the initial game screen and dashboard. The log in details are at the bottom of this page. Though I can tell you from experience, this is just a taste. Once in the game, you will get access to A LOT of decision-making data which you can visualize or analyze any way you want. At the midpoint we will check out the standings for all the teams and discuss some of your decisions so far. After an afternoon of more data-driven decision making, we will come together again, see who the winner is and discuss which strategies paid off. Will it be you? Come join us in San Francisco. I'll see you there soon!