To those who think that all brand names can be crowdsourced, I have one word: iPad. And another word: Wii. These are two of the more successful brand names of the last ten years, and I guarantee that you would not get them from a crowd.

What my research and dealings with CMOs tells me is that the job is less and less about marketing, and more and more about corporate strategy and leadership. And that the challenges in front of you as a corporate officer, rather than the head of marketing, have more to do with understanding the customer than understanding CPMs and creative.

Abusing a customer to the point where you become an Internet sensation is surely an epic fail. But it's not really a PR issue, even if it involved a PR firm.

What did we learn from the events of 2011 that might help us work smarter in the year ahead? Several things happened, but the lessons boil down to just one: Know what your brand stands for to your core customers and you’ll do the right thing.

Through trial and error I think I've discovered what it takes to build and market a successful business. The following five lessons are what I think to be the most important.

IBM just released its first Global CMO Study. In it, 71 percent of chief marketing officers reported being underprepared for the “Data Explosion.” What’s more, CMOs cite longevity as a challenge and transparency as key to success as reported on CMO.com. The irony is that today we have more data at our fingertips than ever before, yet feel starved for real information and true insight.

I'm continually amazed by what software now enables marketers to do. But in many companies, it falls into the IT-marketing gap. A new report from Forrester Research proposes a major organizational shift to address this problem.

Contrary to the old sales cycle, the modern revenue cycle includes the parts of the business that feed and foster sales: marketing, branding, PR and social media. This bigger-picture process makes it possible to take this part of the business that has long been a cost center, and transform it into a true revenue driver.

Some people believe that CIOs are leveraging the rising use of marketing automation tools within the enterprise as an opportunity to try to wrest control of these efforts and usurp power from marketing leaders.

At the recent Dreamforce conference, HubSpot's Business Systems Manager Leah Norris (representing the marketing side) and Nancy Kamerer, account executive and former senior director of sales development at Salesforce.com (from the sales side), discussed how to get sales and marketing to work in tandem. Here are five tips on how to create "Smarketing."

Conventional wisdom says that content marketing should take the approach of informing without overtly selling. This is pretty much gospel in the B2B marketing world. But the mass of marketers do things differently. It’s prudent not to keep content separate from marketing, even if it is supposed to be "journalistic," and here’s why.

Survey data confirms a positive correlation between having a close marketing and sales alignment and achieving satisfactory lead generation results. But that same survey of B2B marketers shows indicates that relationships between marketing and sales meay be deteriorating.

Being the subject of someone’s anger can actually help you concentrate on certain types of tasks, but when it comes to more creative tasks that require open, lateral thinking, a dose of snark can do the trick.

Every time someone at RIM decides to change careers, the move is taken as something bad for RIM. But the company's in a transition period, and changes are to be expected. Here are some recent RIM management change stories placed in a more positive light than you may be used to.

Here are five things you can do right away to help you demonstrate that Marketing is focused on adding value to the business and that you are a revenue-focused marketer.

Sales, advertising, customer service, HR, and IT all want control of the digital media budget. I understand why they would ask for it, but I don’t think they’re as well-equipped to head the effort as PR pros. Here’s why PR should lead your social media efforts.

The lifeguard analogy strongly resonates with me about the need for a brand to have a Chief Content Officer.

This series challenges a number of established employee engagement “principles and practices,” while it demonstrates how the “meaningful workplace” concept addresses the same business objectives of improved morale and increased productivity and engagement--albeit from a more compelling human perspective.

Integrated marketing has absolutely nothing to do with how many things a marketing department does. It has more to do with developing a fluid plan on how to best achieve the strategic intent of the organization, usually with a set of priorities. Does anyone appreciate the difference?

These four books are worth your time, whether you're a marketer, entrepreneur, or anyone interested in business. They include a much needed manifesto for the importance for high quality writing in marketing, advertising and our culture as a whole, and a goldmine of ideas and resources to help anyone faced with the real task of figuring out what a brand stands for.

Organizational culture and leadership are the real keys to social media adoption. Some companies have a culture and leadership style that is hungry for learning and look for ways to work smarter. while others choose to carry on the old-fashioned way. Here are some of the qualities that make an organization ready to embrace social media.

Planning for a social workflow before you apply tools and management techniques to it will reduce the risk of failure and give you a solid understanding of where better information flow will reduce your risk overall and contribute to efficiency.

Last week IBM announced a new software portfolio that is the clearest indication yet that social media has truly changed the business landscape. While the comparison between IBM's new social software solutions and Facebook could be considered all wet from the start, the mere fact that I'm discussing both in the same sentence should make you take notice.

Shifting a corporate culture from a subjective, intuition-driven approach to an objective, data-driven approach can be a daunting challenge for any executive. Doing so involves appealing to your company's "elephants" and "riders."