From WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, to General Mills CMO Mark Addicks, to BMC Software CMO Nick Utton--to name a few--we've gone back through some of our most interesting interviews for this compilation of expert marketing advice. Flip through the slides for a variety of insights around people, process, and product.

1. Out Of The Mouths Of Marketers
These 13 tips from some of the world’s top
marketing execs will make you stop and think

2. “Forget what you learned last year.
Don’t focus on catching up to the
competition. Seek out what is
coming next, or, even better,
create what is coming next. The
world is changing so fast. What we
called new media a few years ago
is already old.”
Benjamin Karsch, Chief Marketing
Officer, Revlon:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Out with the old…

3. “This definition of creativity where
it just applies to the world of art
and copy, Mad Men, and Don
Draper is a mistake. You can have
creative data people. You get
creative financial people. The only
reason people feel like that is they
tend to think of creativity in a very
narrow sense.”
Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder/CEO,
WPP:
Read the full Interview here.
Data people can and must be creative…

4. “It’s not just about having
extraordinary talent on the team.
It has to be a combination of good
people with great talent. They
should be sensitive to other
people, considerate, and it’s not
about ‘me, me, me,’ ‘I, I, I, ‘ ‘my
accomplishment,’ ‘my reward,’ ‘my
growth.’ It has to be ‘we,’ it has to
be ‘our,’ it has to be ‘us.’”
Raja Rajamannar, CMO, MasterCard:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
It’s all about ‘we,’ not ‘me’…

5. “Ultimately you have to trust your
gut. And sometimes take a risk–a
risk that you just kind of know in
your gut is the right thing to do
and is worth making. That strategy
is not always successful, but in our
case it has worked so far. And
there’s a great deal you can learn
from missteps. It’s all a journey.”
Bridget Russo, CMO, Shinola
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Trust your gut…

6. “The best digital team has a
combination of digital experts--who’ve
probably come from outside--with
internal high-flyers. The role of the
digital team is definitely to be
coaching and advising the non-digital
teams on how to execute in digital, as
well as delivering solutions. If digital is
becoming pervasive, it can’t just be
done by the digital team.”
Mark Elkins, VP, Digital, Coca-Cola
Enterprises:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Hire generalists, not specialists…

7. “First and foremost, be clear as to
what your brand stands for. Next,
be customer-centric. And, third,
keep messaging simple.”
Paul Macaluso, Marketing SVP,
FOCUS Brands:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Three rules to live by…

8. My marketing philosophy involves
collaboration. I do believe that an idea
gets better if you work with a lot of
different people, so I think that’s
critical. The other critical thing for me
is pushing the envelope. One thing I try
to tell the team is, “If you never make a
mistake, you’re probably not pushing
hard enough.” We can’t be afraid to
make mistakes, do things differently,
and be bold.
Jessica Correa, SVP Of Marketing,
Planet Fitness:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Don’t be afraid of failure…

9. “”First you have to set the vision,
and customer centricity has to be
the final objective. Then you have
to change the DNA of the
business. Everything from
corporate success metrics to the
way operations and process flows
have to be more customer-centric.
Then you move to upgrading the
skills.”
Mark Zablan, President, Adobe
EMEA:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Customer centricity, the final objective…

10. “The reality is, mobile is the first
access point for the majority of the
people living in the [APAC] region,
yet most marketers anywhere else
in the world haven’t got their
heads around that yet.”
Wayne Arnold, Global CEO, Lowe
Profero:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Prioritize mobile in APAC…

11. “I have a very good and longstanding
collaboration with our CTO. Our strategy is
built on a combination of technology and
services leadership, so the technology
component is crucial to us. We have
deepened the relationship between the two
teams over the last couple of years,
especially in how to build our vision of a
networked society. Our deep understanding
of how the technology will likely develop is
a key ingredient to how we build industry
thought leadership.”
Helena Norrman, CMO, Ericsson:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Work closely with IT…

12. “Mobile is pervasive, digital is
pervasive, and you’ve got to make sure
you optimize your mix with digital
being an essential piece of both. It’s
not separate; it’s fully integrated. There
are no dividing lines, and you’ve got to
make sure that it’s all optimized.
Optimization is an aspiration, and to
get perfection in marketing is an
unattainable goal—but we want to
move toward it.”
Nick Utton, CMO, BMC Software:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Perfection is unattainable, but strive anyway…

13. “One of the biggest mistakes is
that [companies] get very
obsessed with competitors. And
I’ve always believed that you
should not be obsessed with the
competitors. You should be
obsessed with your own
customers.”
Faisal Masud, Chief Digital Officer,
Staples:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Don’t get hung up on everyone else…

14. “Bring new ideas into [your]
organization [carefully] and make
sure you fully understand how
they will dovetail with business
challenges, and how you get other
people comfortable with the new
technologies, new ways of
approaching the market, new
ways of marketing, etc.”
Mark Addicks, CMO/SVP, General
Mills:
Read the full CMO Interview here.
Make others comfortable with the new…