POV

For years, CMOs have complained about not having a seat at the executive table. The issue is not whether marketing deserves a seat. The issue is whether the CMO brings a skillset the rest of the executive team cannot replicate: a deep understanding of the market, a real understanding of company strategy, the ability to contribute to the decisions that build competitive advantage, and the ability to position and message to the market effectively.

If the conversation is about campaigns, leads, brand awareness, and conversion rates, then marketing is operating as a function. Maybe a well-run function, but a function nonetheless, measured, budgeted, and questioned like every other line item in the budget.

If the conversation is about where to compete, why customers should choose you over every credible alternative, and how that choice will be defended over time, marketing becomes strategy. That is a different conversation, held with a different level of authority, and it is the one CMOs say they want. Few earn it, because few are equipped to have it.

Three disciplines, one system

In my book, OutPosition, I argue that companies win when they treat strategy, competitive differentiation, and positioning as a single reinforcing system rather than three separate disciplines owned by three separate functions.

Strategy determines the game you choose to play: which customers you will serve, which you will not, and how you intend to win. Differentiation determines why you deserve to win that game: the capabilities, assets, or systems that make your version of value difficult for a competitor to copy. Positioning determines how the market comes to understand and believe why you should win, occupying a specific, defensible space in the customer's mind.

Each of these depends on the one before it. Positioning without differentiation is a slogan. Differentiation without strategy is a feature. And strategy that never becomes a position in the customer's mind never gets the chance to compound.

Lexus did not become the quality standard in the luxury segment because of a clever slogan. The company chose to compete against Mercedes and BMW, built genuine competitive advantage on Toyota's manufacturing precision and quality discipline, translated that into a differentiated ownership experience, and only then earned the positioning: market-leading refinement and quality at a lower cost. The tagline, "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection," and the now-famous ad of champagne glasses balanced on a car accelerating to 80 miles per hour, were not the strategy. They were what made an already-earned position unforgettable.

The vantage point marketing already has

Marketing sits at the intersection of the customer, the market, and the company's internal capabilities. The intrinsic value of marketing is our knowledge of the market and customers and how they connect to what the company builds. Only marketing is built to hold all three perspectives at once and ask whether they add up to something a customer would actually choose, and pay for, over the alternative.

That vantage point becomes an asset only if the CMO uses it to inform strategic choices upstream, not just to translate them downstream. Too many marketing organizations are brought into the strategy conversation after the strategic choice has already been made, and asked to make it sound compelling. By then, the CMO is doing positioning without differentiation, or worse, positioning without strategy. No amount of creative brilliance fixes a position that was never earned.

The CMOs who earn a genuine seat at the table are the ones who bring evidence and judgment to the decisions themselves: which segment is genuinely underserved, which capability is structurally difficult for a competitor to replicate versus merely convenient to claim, and which differentiated value proposition a customer would actually change their buying behavior to get. That is strategic work. It happens before a single campaign is briefed.

Speak the language of the business

CMOs sometimes argue that CEOs and boards do not understand marketing. That may be true. But CEOs understand growth, competitive advantage, pricing power, market share, and enterprise value. If marketers want greater influence, the burden is on marketing to speak that language, not on the CEO to learn marketing's.

A seat at the table is not granted because marketing deserves representation. It is earned by contributing to the decisions that determine whether the company wins in the first place, and then by ensuring the market understands why.

 OutPosition: Beat Competitors at the Strategy Game, Not Just the Marketing Game

OutPosition was written to give CMOs, product marketing leaders, and product teams the skills and tools to think strategically: to understand the market better than anyone else at the executive table, to shape strategic choices instead of merely communicating them, to build differentiation that holds up under competitive pressure, and to position the company and its products to win.

It draws on decades of real-world experience in senior leadership roles at companies including Microsoft, Rackspace, and Keeper Security  — not academic theory, but the actual decisions, mistakes, and turnarounds that come from owning strategy inside organizations of every size, from Fortune 50 companies to venture-backed startups.

The book's central idea is simple to state and hard to execute: OutPositioning is not about outspending or outshouting the competition. It is about outmaneuvering them at the strategy game before the marketing game even begins. It´s about choosing a sharper battlefield, building an advantage competitors cannot easily copy, and earning a position in the customer's mind that reflects real, defensible superiority.

CMOs who master this do more than improve marketing's output. They change what marketing is for. The future of the CMO is not better marketing. It is greater responsibility for competitive advantage.

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OutPosition: A Practitioner's Guide to Achieving Market Dominance Through Strategy, Differentiation, and Positioning Mastery is available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions at www.OutPositionBook.com, at Amazon.com and from leading booksellers.