Cait Smith and Lindsey Osterlund attended the 2016 CMO Exchange, an intimate conference with marketing leaders and sponsors from a variety of industries. At a roundtable they hosted, some common pain points bubbled up... Marketers are in a windstorm of change, created by customer behavior, competitors, internal politics, rapid technology adoption, data sprawl and more. We collected and synthesized the ideas from roundtable attendees, and crowd-sourced more ideas internally at Centerline. This resulted in a culmination of tips, tools and resources that marketing leaders can apply immediately. Learn more at: http://www.centerline.net

1. Owning the Chaos: Adopting a journalistic mindset
to foster agility and meaningful customer engagement
2016 CMO EXCHANGE—ROUNDTABLE RECAP & INSIGHTS

2. JOURNALISTIC APPROACHES“CHAOS” MINDSET SHIFTS METHODOLGIES/APPROACHES
STEP 1:
Knowing nearly all of us are already
“publishers,” we asked ourselves: What
does it mean to take a journalistic
approach to publishing and content
creation?
First, we conducted a rapid-fire session of
what “chaos” means to us within our
organizations today. Key challenges, points
of friction, barriers to goals, etc.
STEP 2:
What sort of mindset shifts have to take
place for us to take a more journalistic
approach to marketing within our
organizations?
STEP 3: STEP 4:
ROUNDTABLE: RECAP
Let’s brainstorm!
Finally, what methods, tools,
approaches have worked for you in
applying a journalistic mindset?

3. How do we begin applying a journalistic mindset to marketing? How can that help us become
more agile and responsive?
We synthesized the biggest challenges expressed during the roundtable and paired them with
insights, ideas and resources so you can begin taking action immediately.
This document is organized in to four categories:
We had productive conversation during the roundtable, but…now what?
MEASURMENT ORGANIZATIONALCONTENTAUDIENCE
ROUNDTABLE: RECAP

4. AUDIENCE: INSIGHTS
Digging up insights about our audience extends beyond surveys and demographic data.
This is where we put our investigative mindset into practice!
• Assign internal advocates for each audience segment; make them responsible for
collecting and sharing those insights
• Pull emotional nuggets from customer feedback reports (both positive and negative)
• Get out into the field and talk directly to customers—surfacing unspoken needs—at
least once per quarter
• Dig for customer insights on internal social channels or comment boards; combing
that information to surface rapid, relevant stories or “snackable” content
• Implement SEO initiatives to better understand what prospects/customers are saying
and searching for; use that as a springboard for content creation
• Use social media listening to confirm audience assumptions
RAPID WAYS TO SURFACE AUDIENCE INSIGHTS:

5. Work together with select
members from marketing,
technology and sales to
complete one of these
worksheets for each audience
segment.
The goal is to get everyone
thinking around the customer.
These worksheets can serve as
jumping-off platforms during
content creation.
AUDIENCE: RESOURCES

6. How to UX Research To Surface Hidden Needs
Are We Trying Too Hard To Segment Content For The Buyer’s Journey?
The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing
Why Customer Intent is More Powerful than Demographics
Learning more about our audiences is a continuous process, not a phase of a project or a
singular event. Here are some resources for more reading!
CHECK OUT:
4.
3.
2.
1. What you’ll learn: How user experience (UX) research methods can increase
speed-to-value for your content marketing efforts.
AUDIENCE: RESOURCES
What you’ll learn: How to create universal content that works across the buyer’s
journey.
What you’ll learn: How to start using lead nurture to drive revenue growth.
What you’ll learn: How to reach more of the right audience, faster.

7. Reusing, repurposing and surfacing existing content creates opportunities to reach
audiences across several channels rapidly, without sacrificing quality.
• Create “storylines” for prioritized audiences, then audit existing content to see what
content can be re-purposed within that storyline
• Assign an internal lead to crowdsource ways to adapt existing content to new channels;
apply proxy measures to rapidly learn and iterate
• Create “snackable” content, like pull quotes, GIFs or teasers, that can be promoted on
appropriate channels and link to deeper/heavier content
• Capture visuals throughout the creation process—sketches, photos, storyboards and
other behind-the-scenes artifacts—and use them as teaser content
• Identify the content types that perform best with content analysis tools like BuzzSumo
70-80% of marketing content
goes unused because it’s not
optimized for various
channels*
*Source: SiriusDecisions
CONTENT GOALS:
Extend the life of your content
Increase speed-to-value
CONTENT: INSIGHTS
IDEAS TO EXPLORE FOR MORE RAPID CONTENT CREATION:

8. Content Planning Jumpstart Guide
How to Take an Audience-Centric Approach to Content Marketing
8 Essential Ingredients of Content Reuse
Podcast: How to be Original and Make Big Ideas Happen
As you’re planning to create content spanning the buyers’ journey, identify existing assets
that can be repurposed before investing in net-new content.
4.
3.
2.
1.
CONTENT: RESOURCES
CHECK OUT:
What you’ll learn: A step-by-step approach to creating a complete content plan.
(Bonus: Includes a downloadable worksheet.)
What you’ll learn: How to cut through the noise to make meaningful connections with
diverse audience segments.
What you’ll learn: How to get the most out of your content and identify reuse
opportunities.
What you’ll learn: How to champion new ideas and fight groupthink to create new
content.

9. Building a culture of measurement is an incremental process. Start with a baseline set of
KPIs, a handful of tools, and a willingness to ask “why?”
• Conduct social listening around key influencers to dovetail or capitalize on
existing conversations
• Create a listening command center with highly visible screens to show mentions,
alerts, engagements, etc. to publicize content and campaigns internally; this will
help create a culture that is aware and proactively listening and responding
• Pull together a small cross-functional team to brainstorm feedback loops per
audience segment—include competitive benchmarks
• A/B test campaign content on traditional and social channels to determine
allocation/investment
• Create a rubric for prioritizing efforts based on a collaborative scale
WAYS TO RAPIDLY APPLY MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES:
“A successful organization can only
measure so many things well, and
what it measures ties to its definition
of success.”
Harvard Business Review: Know the Difference Between
Your Data and Metrics
MEASUREMENT: INSIGHTS

10. Becoming an analytics expert
Lean Analytics: Use data to build a better startup faster
Podcast: Data Network Effects
HBR: Know the difference between your data and metrics
Building feedback loops is an integral part of the content creation process, allowing us to
shift investments to where efforts are most effective.
4.
3.
2.
1.
MEASUREMENT: RESOURCES
CHECK OUT:
What you’ll learn: How to use analytics, data analysis, and tools to build a data pipeline
that delivers insights.
What you’ll learn: How to apply elements of the Lean Startup movement to create
interactive cycles of learning.
What you’ll learn: The considerations necessary to strike the right balance of data
and network influence to achieve overall success.
What you’ll learn: The differences between collecting data and collecting metrics,
and how what you measure is what you manage.

11. Fostering opportunities to work more collaboratively and rapidly requires a willingness to
take on experimental approaches during content planning and creation.
• Set up contributor pods to encourage cross-discipline collaboration
• Assign internal reporters within different product groups to bring back
story ideas and customer insights
• Schedule a daily stand-up meeting with a hand selected editorial board
that includes folks from your team and the business units/sales teams
to discuss upcoming opportunities
• Embed beat reporters to monitor related topics and look for
opportunities to engage in conversations
• Encourage retrospectives after content creation efforts to celebrate
wins and discuss lessons learned
IDEAS TO EXPERIMENT WITH INTERNALLY:
ORGANIZATIONAL: INSIGHTS

12. Becoming a Digitally Mature Enterprise
How to Align Your Entire Company With Your Marketing Strategy
Your Design Team Needs A War Room. Here's How To Set One Up
How Adidas Newsroom Is Creating 5 Great Pieces of Content Per Week
Every organization has unique internal challenges that influence how they adopt a journalistic
approach to marketing and increase agility. The key is this: just start somewhere.
3.
2.
1.
4.
ORGANIZATIONAL: RESOURCES
CHECK OUT:
What you’ll learn: What drives digital success, the strategies behind it, and the
necessary risks to gain competitive advantage.
What you’ll learn: How a canvasing tool can help map and align marketing efforts to
strategic organizational goals.
What you’ll learn: Ideas for setting up a dedicated space for team collaboration and
problem solving.
What you’ll learn: How internally-created newsrooms are sparking opportunities for
innovation in content creation and marketing response in real-time.

13. Little Bets - Peter Sims
What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian
Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank
Gehry, and the story developers at Pixar films
all have in common? Bestselling author Peter
Sims found that rather than start with a big
idea or plan a whole project in advance, they
make a methodical series of little bets,
learning critical information from lots of little
failures and from small but significant wins.
VIEWVIEW
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted
across the globe, changing the way companies are
built and new products are launched. Eric Ries
defines a startup as an organization dedicated to
creating something new under conditions of
extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one
person in a garage or a group of seasoned
professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What
they have in common is a mission to penetrate that
fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to
a sustainable business.
The Innovator’s Method - Nathan Furr &
Based on their research inside corporations and
successful start-ups, Furr and Dyer developed the
Innovator’s Method, an end-to-end process for
creating, refining, and bringing ideas to market.
They show when and how to apply the tools of
their method, how to adapt them to your
business, and how to answer commonly asked
questions about the method itself.
VIEW
ORGANIZATIONAL: BOOKS
Jeff Dyer

14. Centerline partners
with organizations to
create custom
Agile Marketing
Frameworks
tailored to their
organizational needs.
Brand Goals
Open-Ended
Personas
StorylinesChannels
Contributors
Feedback
Loops
The Ability
To Rapidly Act
With Valuable
Content
Journalistic Process

15. We're here to help you. Contact us for more
insights, ideas and resources you can use to
address your business challenges and meet
your 2016 goals.
Cait Vlastakis Smith
Executive Strategy Director
cait@centerline.net
336.830.2998
Lindsey Osterlund
Executive Director, Account Engagement
losterlund@centerline.net
720.435.5369

16. APPENDIX: ROUNDTABLE WHITEBOARD NOTES

17. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION | Step 1
What is “chaos” within your organization? What are
some of your biggest sticking points/challenges?
Content re-use and re-purposing
Influencing customers
Adapting to change and building consensus to move forward
Getting engagement with our content
Monday morning huddles when we talk through needs/issues to
address this week
Too many disparate target audiences and mapping them to the
right brands through personalized content
Inefficient measurement approaches across brands
Creating a culture of measurement
Simply stated: Strategic planning in a very tactical world
Making sense of too many information sources and figuring out
how to take action
Developing creative in a silo
Targeting content as people move through the funnel
Prioritizing resources to goals
Meeting the needs of audiences while meeting the needs of the
organization

18. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION | Step 2
What do you think it mean to take a journalistic
approach to your marketing efforts?
Remaining unbiased
Being transparent
Telling a story
Entertaining, not selling
Speaking directly to readers
Targeted, looking beyond swaths of demographic data
Authenticity
Using reliable and credible sources
Extracting stories from general industry news
Active listening to dig up stories within other stories
Living and dying by deadlines

19. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION | Step 3
What kind of mindset shifts have to take place
for your organization to apply this approach?
Understanding that there’s a balance between quantity and quality
Being “Ok” with fewer “sign-offs”
More focus on attributing metrics to efforts to determine what’s
relevant
Thinking wider than the immediate conversations happening
Speed + relevance > Perfection

20. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION | Step 4
What journalistic methodologies and agile approaches
that have worked well within your organization?
Sampling programs/initiatives with small sample sizes before
trying to get buy-in from the larger organization
Identifying emotional nuggets from customer feedback (both
positive and negative); look beyond the baseline of what they like/
dislike to surface emotion; use that as fuel for more campaigns
Field research and conversations with customers directly
Using SEO initiatives to better understand what prospects/
customers are saying; use that as a springboard for content
creation
Surfacing customer insights on internal social channels; combing
that information for nuggets to surface rapid, relevant stories
A/B test campaign content on traditional and social channels