From the outside, the CMO pipeline can look like a revolving door at hyper-speed. In just the past two months, we’ve seen the top marketers at Peloton, Lowe’s, and State Farm leave.

By the numbers: According to executive-search firm Spencer Stuart, the average CMO tenure in 2020 and 2021 was around 40 months—the lowest in more than a decade. Some companies are turning to fractional, aka temporary, CMOs as a result.

“Marketing is probably the most challenging role to recruit for on an executive team because there are a lot of layers to it,” Maryanne Martire, partner at executive recruiting firm Daversa Partners, told us. “You can be incredibly successful building a narrative for a business one day and then 12 months later, the company has shifted and they want someone who’s going to be very sales- or revenue-driven.”

Looking ahead: As company goals and expectations shift, how can current and prospective CMOs remain competitive? While some factors may vary, experts and CMOs across various sectors told us there are a few things that can help them stand out (or stay in).

Let’s get technical

Martire said she looks for four main things when hiring a marketing executive:

• Past positive marketing outcomes
• Signs of being willing to take risks
• A quantitative understanding of why certain marketing tactics work
• Strong leadership skills

Stacy Kemp, executive lead of Deloitte’s CMO Program, said some of the most common terms found in job descriptions for CMOs today are “data and analytics” and “customer insights.”

Another skill that she said is important for CMOs? Understanding the economics of the business. Keep reading here.—KH

You know what they say: good things come to those who wait. But for NBCUniversal, it took nearly three years of patience before the company could again host a fan event dedicated to its reality franchises like Real Housewives and Below Deck.

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, BravoCon—a convention chock-full of celebrity appearances, cocktail parties, panels, performances, and photo ops dedicated to all things Bravo—returned this past weekend to the Javits Center and the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.

• It was the second such event since the company hosted the first BravoCon in 2019, and ahead of its Friday kickoff, NBCUniversal had already sold 30,000 passes.
• “We hated waiting, because we had such a successful inaugural BravoCon,” Ann Scheiner, NBCUniversal’s EVP, advertising and partnerships, told Marketing Brew. “But it’s definitely worth the wait because it’s so much bigger and better than it was in 2019.”

Let’s quantify bigger and better: Ticket sales this year (which started at $170 for a one-day pass but went up to as much as $1,950 for a three-day VIP package) represent a threefold increase from the 2019 festival’s 10,000 tickets sold. On the sponsorship front, the media giant lined up four times as many sponsors as it did in 2019, with a total of 19 brands representing 11 new categories compared to its first year, including Bud Light Seltzer, Chevrolet, and TRESemmé.

Read the full story here.—KS

Vox Media opened up its SSP to advertisers.

• The home of New York Magazine, SB Nation, The Verge, and its namesake site, Vox, among others, has been making substantial investments in advertising technology since 2016.
• In June, it announced its own supply-side platform. After beta tests that began in September, it’s now ready for business.

Big picture: Though these investments aren’t entirely unique—the Washington Post debuted an ad-buying network called Zeus Prime last year—they’re part of a rising tide in media as publishers try to wrestle back some control from ad-tech vendors, whether by axing open-market programmatic all together, investing in their own ad tech, or testing targeting tools like seller-defined audiences.

Third-party ad-tech partners “don’t have a direct connect to the audiences and that creates misaligned incentives,” AJ Frucci, Vox Media’s SVP of media revenue and head of Concert, its ad marketplace, told Marketing Brew, explaining that they “contribute to a more convoluted and a more indirect path between buyer and seller.”

Read more about why Vox Media invested in its own SSP here.—RB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Ad tech: This Twitter thread takes a look at the ad mechanisms behind news startup Semafor.

Stand out: At Advertising Week, a Liquid Death exec explained why it goes for a “more timeless” social media strategy instead of glomming onto viral trends.

Get a raise: How to ask for a promotion as a social media marketer.

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Stat: One person. One ad. Shown 142 times in nearly three minutes. That’s according to research presented by Krzysztof Franaszek, the founder of Adalytics, during AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference.

Quote: “Ms. Covington was already a full-time social media creator when she became the poster child for apple cider and knitted wool, but since then she has doubled down on making fall central to her brand. It’s a strategy that has paid off.”—The New York Times profiled Caitlin Covington, the woman who spurred the “Christian Girl Autumn” meme

Read: “Death threats, Insomnia, and Near-Minimum Wage: A Meta Customer Service Contractor Reveals What It’s Like to Be on the Frontline of Facebook Customer Complaints” (Insider)

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• How Eliqs is trying to brand your beer and wine
• Inside Mastercard’s ‘10-layer’ sonic branding plan
• YouTube rolls out host-read video ads for podcasts