A new podcast appeared!

New from me at LightningPod: Building Better CMOs, a podcast that will make marketers smarter and stronger.

The bad news: Today is not Friday. Sorry.

So, why am I in your inbox? Well, that’s the great news: I have an exciting update on what I’ve been working on at LightningPod for the past several months. Today, we’re launching Building Better CMOs, a podcast from the nonprofit MMA Global aimed at making marketers smarter and stronger.

The host of Building Better CMOs, Greg Stuart, came to me last December with a lot of big questions that he wanted to explore in a podcast, including: What do marketing leaders get wrong? What have the most successful ones learned in their climb to the top? How can today’s and tomorrow’s CMOs prove their worth and elevate marketing at a time of rapid digitization and changing consumer demands?

We’re beginning to unravel these topics and more in our first three episodes, which are available right now:

Norm de Greve from CVS Health talks about a huge problem he sees among marketers coming out of school and into the workforce, and the balancing act between being successful and doing the right thing. He knows a thing or two about that, having overseen the removal of cigarettes from CVS stores in 2014. 🚭

Linda Lee, CMO of Meals and Beverages at Campbell Soup Company, used to be a scientist, and she still thinks like one. I loved the way she challenges the conventional wisdom around climbing the ranks of a big company, and her explanation of what “intuition” actually means in marketing. 🥫

And Jonnie Cahill has what for many people might be a dream job: As CMO of Heineken USA, he gets to call beer a business expense. He has a ton of smart insights on what makes great marketing campaigns work, and I had fun editing in the audio of ads he referenced. 🍻

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Building Better CMOs is the latest addition to a slate of business and tech podcasts I’m working on for LightningPod. So look forward to seeing it in future newsletters alongside the likes of Grit, Lock and Code, The Smart Home Show, and The Brand Publishing Show. New episodes will drop every two weeks.

One last thing — I know a lot of you reading this are also podcasters, which means you know how important word of mouth is to a new show. So please, forward this one on to anyone you know who works in marketing, is studying to do so, or just finds business stories interesting!

Palate cleanser: Is this your cat??

A reminder that there’s no regular newsletter this week (back on Friday June 9). But I couldn’t let you go without a palate cleanser:

I dunno where Simon got those, but I guess it wasn’t CVS.