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What’s Really Holding CMOs Back?
Why are today's marketing leaders feeling more pressure than ever? And what's actually getting in the way of marketing effectiveness?
Join Lee Roth, Co-Founder of The Actionists, and David Teicher, Co-Founder of The Qru, as they explore the biggest challenges facing modern marketers—from leadership burden and organizational alignment to AI readiness and the power of community-driven solutions. They also announce the new partnership between The Actionists and The Qru, launching the Collective Intelligence initiative to help marketers solve industry-wide challenges together.
CMOs, marketing leaders, brand strategists, agency leaders, and marketers looking to overcome organizational barriers, build stronger teams, and make marketing more effective through collaboration and actionable insights.
00:00 – Meet David Teicher & the story behind Qru
03:55 – Why Qru is gaining traction among marketers
06:46 – Lessons learned from building a startup
11:06 – Breaking news: The Actionists × The Qru partnership announcement
15:19 – Introducing the Collective Intelligence Derailers Report
18:25 – The four biggest derailers holding marketers back
19:53 – AI readiness: Why most companies are earlier than they admit
22:00 – The hidden burden of marketing leadership and the rise of the "Chief Empathy Officer"
26:10 – Turning marketing challenges into actionable solutions
27:20 – Using marketing to improve media and internet literacy
Transcript
Lee Roth (00:01)
Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Mold. My name is Lee Roth, co-founder of The Actionists. And today I have the opportunity to speak with someone who probably everyone listening to this already knows and loves. And that's my friend David. David, welcome to Breaking the Mold.
David Teicher (00:18)
Thank you so much, Lee. I'm really excited to be here. truly, it's been great working with you and having you as a friend and supporter, and I'm excited for our conversation today.
Lee Roth (00:28)
Well, likewise. So well, let's just get right into it. So I think one of the reasons why we get along so well is because we have such a kindred entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, we both started our companies within about a year of each other. So, but for our listeners, and in case there's someone on this planet that doesn't know what you have built, tell us about Qru and really what was the impetus behind starting Qru?
David Teicher (00:52)
Yeah, I mean I appreciate the opportunity, so thank you for indulging me. I mean for first of all, we're still a baby, like you said. We're only about fifteen, sixteen months old. We launched in January of twenty-five. Yeah, we're approaching the terrible twos, I suppose. We're a toddler now. but look, I spent and my co-founder Ariel, we spent a lot of time in the events industry, in this in this space, in the marketing, advertising, media world, primarily focused on large format conferences, summits, and look, we love what we did. We love this space and bringing people together, there's a magic about that, right? When you bring great people together. But you know, in talking to the marketers and you know other executives that we worked with over the years, it became very clear, I would say, you know, that there was like this tension around events that we identified. On the good side the appetite for human experience has never been higher, right? People are craving opportunities to be with their peers, to meet great people, to share, to learn, to exchange, to build that network, right? We have this idea that the core idea that everybody needs their crew right? So on the one hand, that's where the name came from. So on the one hand, the demand for in-person experiences has never been higher.
What we identified was that what they were looking for out of those experiences has evolved a lot over the last few years, and that people were craving more intimate, curated, more bespoke or participatory opportunities. so what they were looking for was a little different. So that was one tension, and then the other tension was just around time management, right? I mean, like it's time has always been the most precious resource, but as teams shrink and expectations grow, the idea that you know these marketers, especially the more senior you get, you know, they're heads down doing the job, right? They have to prioritize work and family and personal lives. So even if they are craving these opportunities, you know, the struggle to justify time away was really tough for them. So we said, okay. We're going to rethink the experience a little bit and focus more on the intimacy, the curation, the participatory, interactive, peer-to-peer nature of these events. and our KPI in that respect is time well spent. At the end of the day, we need to be creating value. We need people to leave these experiences feeling like this was a valuable use of their time so that for the next event.
They don't have to struggle to justify those few hours away. So those are really the things that led to Qru. But it ultimately comes down to that basic universal human truth. Everyone is craving human experience and human interaction. It's just what they're looking for out of those environments has evolved. So we're just listening to our community and trying to build and response in that respect.
Lee Roth (03:55)
Well, clearly you're doing something right because in the year and a half that I've been attending and since you've started, you keep growing and growing and growing, not just in terms of people, but the amount of crews you have, the quality of experiences. But tell me, why do you think you have so much traction right now among marketers?
David Teicher (04:14)
I appreciate that. I mean, I think look, we are still new, still growing. I mean, like I said, we're trying to execute on this vision, right? So you know, we are constantly getting feedback from the community on what's important to them.
From a content perspective, what's important to them and what makes these experiences valuable from a form factor perspective. So as long as that's our North Star, right? Those are our guiding lights, you know, Qru will be successful because we are building with the marketers' best interests in mind, right? So that that's one. ⁓ and then you know, I think it also just goes back to what I was saying about that fundamental human truth. Everybody feels so a lot of people, I don't want to say everybody, feel very isolated now, right? Like we are as a society, we're staring at phones, we're staring at screens, we're staring at email, at AI, at spreadsheets. So the opportunity to be with your peers in this kind of intimate or curated environment and find that camaraderie, find that community, and you know, something that we've talked about a lot: that group therapy, right? That commiseration and of feeling like you're not alone in the challenges and mandates that you're facing as an executive in this industry, can be really powerful So for us, it's right creating these environments, but also bringing the right people together, right? So we have a cohort-based model. and to what you were alluding, we have six cohorts now around challengers, around leadership, media, culture, CPG, loyalty. We're going to be launching new cohorts.
I think that's a big factor for us is bringing like-minded people together who are seeing the world through similar lenses, who are facing the same challenges, because then they get into you know these experiences that we're putting together and they open up with each other and they realize they're not alone.
And they get that group therapy dynamic where they're like, my gosh, it feels so good to know that we're not the only ones dealing with this, right? If you poke your head into like our workshops, our roundtables, that's the number one thing you'll hear is like, my gosh, you're dealing with this, we're dealing with this. How did you figure it out? And so for us, it's like this two-piece puzzle, right? One piece is the group therapy, and then the other piece that I think we're going to talk about a little bit more is like, okay, now that we all know that we're dealing with the same challenges.
How can we similarly source, you know, community driven solutions to those challenges, right? So I think that's really fundamentally you know, again, part of what makes Qru special and why it's been successful so far.
Lee Roth (06:46)
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I feel like other events you're being spoken to. At your Qru's you're being spoken with. You're part of something. You are participatory.
Which is so different from other experiences that I've had. So we've talked so far about all the greatness of Qru. But as we all know as entrepreneurs, it's not always an easy road, right? There's always challenges that come along. Talk to me about something that maybe didn't work out and what you might have learned from it.
David Teicher (07:16)
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this. you know, there's a few things. So, first, you know, kind of what you were just mentioning, in terms of what makes Qru different, you know, everybody in our industry, there's a lot of events in our industry. And they've trained people to think about events and treat events differently. So for us, we know how we want to go into it, right? And everything that we were talking about from a participatory, you know, peer-to-peer perspective, you're talking with, you're not being talked at, all of that stuff. But it takes a lot of unlearning, right, for people to get that and treat events differently. So, you know, we've seen a lot of you know, there's a there's a non-committal approach and a transient approach that people take to events when you've been to a lot of conferences, you're one of a hundred, you're one of thousands of attendees.
Nobody will know if I don't show up, if I duck in, duck out, right? So for us going at it and saying, hey, we're going to do things differently, people will get it right away. it takes effort to, from a communication perspective, you know, from our side to really convey what we're trying to build and what we're trying to do differently. And some people have gotten it right away, and other people, it's a journey and it's a process. So that was a learning for us, certainly just because we're setting out to build something different doesn't mean it's going to happen overnight or people are going to get it overnight. I think the other thing is what worked yesterday doesn't necessarily work tomorrow. And we're learning that as well. Like we're always trying to hone and refine our format and our product and our Qru experience and you know, we got to a point where I felt like we had this signature style and signature, you know, form factor and cadence of the different components that we're going to have at our events, content and workshops and roundtables and special guests and all this. But you know, we get feedback constantly. And you know, if I look at Cannes, for example, like we've talked about, we were very lucky to even be at Cannes last year, right? A few months into our existence, but we tried a few different things. We tried, we did some content, we did private roundtables, we did VIP stuff, and we would have some of the most amazing CMOs and marketers that I've worked with come to us after our round tables and said, That was the most valuable thing I've done my whole week at Cannes. So when it came time to plan this year, we're like, great, let's take that feedback, forget all the other stuff. We're going to triple down on these on these round tables. But then when push comes to shove, you learn that.
Just because that's what they say doesn't mean that that's what they're going to make their priority. And you know, you've got the speaking circuit and you've got these other things. So, you know, for us, we're always listening, we're always refining. And like I said, what worked yesterday doesn't work necessarily work tomorrow. So I think for us, like our mentality is to our my point earlier, we want to build with the marketers' needs and interests as our North Star. So we've learned we can never we can never make assumptions.
We always have to talk to our community to really understand what they're looking to get out of these environments. and again, what they were looking for yesterday may be totally different than what they're looking for tomorrow. The format, the topics, all of that. So we have to be on this like constantly evolving, iterating journey. because the second we rest and say, Hey, we figured it out, is this is we're out, we're obsolete, right? So that was also a big learning.
The last one is going to be a quick one. bringing on a fractional CFO to manage all the finances and P&L and invoicing. as that would be my recommendation for anybody else on the entrepreneurial journey. As soon as that's in your budget, lifesaver. Making that up, yeah.
Lee Roth (11:06)
Okay, let's do a first on Breaking the Mold. Let's break news on Breaking the Mold. David, you wanna take the honors on this?
David Teicher (11:15)
I mean I could start, but this is a collaborative thing, but you know, I think you should participate in this announcement. Like I said, we've been thrilled to have you as a friend and a supporter and a participant in various official, unofficial capacities as we build Qru, but we're excited to take that, you know, to the next level and announce an official partnership between the Qru and The Actionists around our joint Collective Intelligence product.
Lee Roth (11:39)
I'm so excited about the partnership because when I think about it, it's Collective Intelligence is really for marketers by marketers. All we are doing, and when I say we, I mean the collective we(s) we're bringing together the best thinking in the world about the topics of the day for marketers, and we're codifying it, and then we're giving it back to the community. So I'm super excited about because this is not some like theoretical report we're putting together. These are literally getting the words of the top marketers on the planet, putting it on paper and then sharing it with everyone, which I'm super pumped about.
David Teicher (12:14)
Exactly, and it's such a core part of our DNA and our foundation. Like everything that we do, from like I said, the format of the experiences is informed by what the marketers are looking for. When we developed our first few cohorts around culture, media, and leadership, that came from marketers in our community telling us what they want first. The event content, again, driven by what the marketers are telling us. So the roundtable topics, our quarterly themes.
David Teicher (12:41)
Everything is meant to be driven by marketers and the feedback that we're hearing. So for us to build this together and create a research and Intelligence product that addresses those communal challenges, right? With communal solutions that are sourced from the marketers themselves, that speaks to exactly what we're all about at Qru. And you know, but it's a daunting task, right? To take all of these disparate insights, the anecdotal, the you know, surveys, you know, all this stuff and to your point, synthesize it and codify it and convert it into an output where it's digestible and these marketers and the executives can really extract the insight and disseminate it amongst their teams and they get that expert analysis from other industry leaders that, turning into that kind of product is is not easy. And we're just really thrilled to have you and the team at The Actionists on board to build that.
Lee Roth (13:39)
Yeah, likewise. as I said in the very beginning, it really is two kindred spirits with very similar philosophies. You know, we are both in companies in perpetual beta mode, always listening to our clients, to our marketers, to the people that we work with just to to make it better, to give better products, to give better insights, to be give better strategy. So us coming together was kind of like the easiest no brainer on the planet for us.
David Teicher (13:49)
Yeah.
And good people rule, right? I mean, I think that's you know, Ariel and I, when we talk and we set out, you know, to build Qru, and it's like, you know, we just want to do good things and be good people and work with good people, right? And it's sometimes it's that simple. but you know, it really speaks to those two puzzle pieces before because like look, I love
Lee Roth (14:08)
Yeah.
David Teicher (14:27)
Being the marketer therapist, right? And playing that role and again, like facilitating the group therapy. And you know, it is cathartic, I think, for a lot of these executives and individuals to feel like they're not alone when they're going through these challenges. But that is only half the picture, right? So the other is okay, when somebody has figured out a framework or a process or something that can help address those challenges, how can we then make that discoverable?
To the larger community, right? so that's where this comes into play. It's you have like the group therapy piece, but then you have the the community-driven solutions. And I think that's the idea of this this framework of Collective Intelligence that everybody is feeding into. And then our role is just to help surface the insight and surface the commonalities, right? And then convert it into this output.
Lee Roth (15:19)
I think that's a beauty of The Qru. Really, what I'm hearing is like the more you put in, the more you're going to get out of it. Right. And I think that's the same with Collective Intelligence. but let's talk about the first report. So the first report is on derailers. And derailers very simply are things that get in the way of marketers' effectiveness. Cause with the basic premise that most marketers are pretty good at what they do.
David Teicher (15:29)
Yeah.
Lee Roth (15:43)
But there's a lot of internal things that get in the way, right? And so we're really excited that our first report is on derailers. David, why don't you talk a little bit about some of the people we interviewed, just so the people listening know the kind of quality experts that we talked to when we built this report.
David Teicher (16:03)
Yeah, I think first and foremost to some of our advisory board members because I know that they're always gung-ho for these types of opportunities. But Jay Altschuler from MasterCard, Pasy from Citi, I think we talked to Jacs from American Airlines and Doug Zarkin, who is phenomenal and incredibly insightful. so just talking to some of these these industry leaders and executives, but to your point.
And this is something we hear about a lot, is like some the biggest challenges are not around capability or talent, right? But it's about addressing some of those systemic or process protocol or foundational obstacles that are right. So I know, you talked with Jay and he was fantastic in being able to say, yes, we were facing a certain challenge, and here's the process that we built internally that if other marketers are going through this same challenge, they could potentially replicate pieces of that process, right? Identifying, you know, the right stakeholders or the right measure KPIs or the right language that they need to hear in order to sell things through or to get everybody on the same page in terms of you know internal alignments or unified measurement internally, right? Because to what we were talking about, it's like, okay, this is a a universal problem.
Lee Roth (17:01)
Yeah.
David Teicher (17:23)
Who has figured out ways to address it and how can we take those solutions and make them accessible to the broader community?
Lee Roth (17:30)
Absolutely. And I cannot forget Charlotte, who is at Jaguar and also one of my favorite people on the planet, Devaunshi who's at Diageo, who I've worked with when she was at Pepsi and she's like one of the smartest, nicest people you'll ever come across. So these are the kinds of quality of human beings and marketers we're talking about here.
David Teicher (17:51)
Exactly. And I think, you know, there'll be a lot of other amazing marketers and good people that that weigh in on these reports, but that goes to your point that you were making earlier that there's this value exchange with Qru. Like what we put in and what is, you know directly connected to what you get out of it. That's true for our events, and that will be true, you know, with these reports, right? Like tapping into the collective insights from the community, we're going to give lots of marketers in our community the opportunity to share what's working from them, and they'll also have the opportunity to learn what's working for others, right? That's exactly the value exchange we're looking to help facilitate.
Lee Roth (18:25)
And if you're listening right now, if you want to get involved, contact David or I, and we will make that happen for you so within the Derailer Report itself, there were really four thematics or four core derailers that spoke to everyone. And the four that we talked about, one was the Alignment Tax, which quite frankly, I was terrible at when I was at the Coca-Cola company, but I've since learned from it. But the amount of time and energy spent on getting your organization aligned on strategy, on tactics.
Two, the Leadership Burden. And this one has always been there, but it's really emerging, which is around the idea of as CMO or senior leader, the responsibilities not just to drive marketing or marketing effectiveness, but to lead your team and all the challenges that come with that. The third was AI Readiness and the gap between what you'd like to do versus what the organization might be able to do.
And then last one, the age-old problem of the Measurement Gap. Even though the gap has been closing a little bit through the years, it's still there. So those were the four big derailers the Alignment Tax, Leadership Burden, AI Readiness, and Measurement Gap, which I'm sure again, most people listening are experiencing all of those in some shape or form. I guess my question for you is.
Was there anything going through this where you're like, geez, I didn't think about that or something very unexpected that came out of the report from the learnings?
David Teicher (19:58)
Well, there are two things. The AI side of things, it's so funny because when you go to events, you know, everybody makes it seem like they're so far in this journey that they're all AI experts. Everybody gets on stage and talks about this and that. But the truth is we are so in the early stages, it's so nascent at at so many brands, and a lot of the leaders and the CMOs and other executives that we talk to, they have to put on a front.
Right, whether it's internally or externally, they have to pretend to be experts, they have to pretend to know what they're doing. but they but many of them are still very early in that journey, both from a personal perspective, in terms of learning these tools and learning what they want to do, and organizationally as a company and as a business, it's so so early. and you hear about some really cool experiments and executions that make the news, right? But you rarely hear about the overarching strategy. And the coolest execution could be newsworthy, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything for the business strategically. and we can talk about that about the next derailers report where I know we're going to talk about the order of operations and execution and tactics being placed before the strategy, but AI, I think, is a really big example of that where a lot of the execution is coming before the actual organizational readiness. And then some of these executions fall short because there's no longevity to them, because they don't connect to any overarching strategy, or the organization was not ready with the right infrastructure and governance and processes. and people already struggle with AI fatigue, right?
It is really interesting and again if you go to some conferences it feels like everybody's so ahead and doing all this stuff and you feel like you're you're you're behind everybody else, but no, very few everybody's still so early in this journey. So that was one. And then the other is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum is the human element.
From a leadership perspective, our Q1 theme was around how every brand is a challenger brand. So it doesn't matter if you're a Fortune 500 company, Fortune 100 company, right? Like you have to think and operate like a challenger because you're dealing with smaller teams, shrinking budgets, but greater demands and expectations being placed on you. And what that does is it creates such a mental burden on some of these leaders because they're not just marketers and they're not just team managers,
They have to, you know, we were talking about this at the last event. They're not just CMOs, they're chief empathy officers. And they have to take care of their team's mental well-being and their own mental well-being. And it's really difficult for many of them right now. And that's not something that gets talked about. Again, we as an industry love to focus on the success and all the cool things and great things that are happening. but there's a lot.
That we need to talk about as an industry from a mental health and wellness standpoint, and the burden that's being placed on a lot of the leaders in our industry to be chief empathy officers and manage the emotions and challenges that face us as humans when we're dealing with shorter timelines, increased pressure difficult mandates, all while dealing with smaller budgets and shrinking teams, and it feels very unsustainable.
Lee Roth (23:39)
It really does. It really does. I think I agree with you. I think the emphasis on the leadership burden right now is what really stood out to me. And I think when we have CMOs saying basically we're all tveryone's feeling like we're this close to being let go at any given time, right? That is a tremendous, tremendous toll, not just on the CMO, but the entire team. And as the leader of that team who has to manage people who probably are going to go through layoffs, especially with AI, that is a very difficult road to go down. and that pressure is just enormous. And I think this is where Qru is so important because you do have everyone going through the same things and you have an outlet to express what you're going through and talk through all the pains and understand what other people are doing about it.
David Teicher (24:32)
Yeah, I mean that's to the group therapy piece, which I don't wanna be labor, but it is really needed and it is really powerful. And it wasn't necessarily something that we set out to say, hey, we wanna be that, but like it's something that we discovered was a a really powerful of just the format and the element. But yeah, I mean it'll be really interesting to see how our industry tackles this over we saw some of this during during COVID and during the pandemic where there were a lot of mental health burdens being placed on leaders and just things to deal with. So I do think that there's a little bit of a tool set there to draw on. But from a corporate culture perspective, I think a lot of the and again I'm only saying this anecdotally. I'm not in it, but like if you think about where we are as a society, I think there are fewer resources available and less time to devote to addressing those needs than say during the pandemic, when it was a priority for a lot of leaders to say, Hey, how are we going to help our team get through all this stuff and handle all this? Now it's just like this is just the reality. And if you know, I wanna I wanna help, I wanna be there, but there's just less opportunity for them.
And I think you mentioned this at the last event. It's not just about leaders taking care of their teams, it's about them taking care of themselves. the other thing that often falls by the wayside and you know, it's so burnout is a real real problem these days and I think this contributes to it in a big way.
Lee Roth (26:10)
But not to worry, because in Collective Intelligence and the derailer report, in every derailer there are three actions that we advise to take. So we're not just going to identify the challenges, but we are going to offer very solid solutions to the challenges that you're facing.
David Teicher (26:28)
and that one I think at the last event what we had probably had ten, fifteen people raising their hands after sharing some of these to weigh in on what been working for them.
Lee Roth (26:37)
I totally agree. So if you are listening and you're wondering how you can get your hands on the Collective Intelligence Derailer report, you can go to theactionist.co slash news and there you'll be able to download it free of charge. Or and I highly encourage you to do this, get in touch with Qru and start attending their events in New York, Chicago, Cannes, and other locations coming soon. be a part of The Qru. I promise you will not regret that decision.
David Teicher (27:05)
Appreciate that. Yeah.
Lee Roth (27:05)
No, it's true. I mean, I'm always giving you positive compliments, but it's all from the heart because it's really something special that you built.
David Teicher (27:12)
I love it.
Thank you. And we love having you as a part of it. And like I said, this is just the beginning for us.
Lee Roth (27:20)
I totally agree. we're getting short on time. So I do want to ask you one question that I ask all of my guests. And this is an important personal question I like to ask people, which is if you could take on any issue in the world and use marketing to help solve it, what would be that issue and how would you use marketing to help solve it?
David Teicher (27:39)
This is a loaded question because there's a lot of different directions that we could go here, especially in kind of the current political, geopolitical climate and all of the politic adjacent things that we education, healthcare, Healthcare politics. But like I was thinking a lot about it. And for me, one of the I think fundamental underlying areas that we could address is internet literacy and media literacy.
Lee Roth (27:40)
Areas of everything.
Is there is there something going on, David?
David Teicher (28:08)
and you know, I'm a big proponent of free speech and letting people believe what they want to believe, but I feel like there, you know, if we look at some of the division that's been sown locally, nationally, internationally, we have a huge disinformation and misinformation problem, and that's where a lot of it stems from. So I don't know how it would work, but if we could somehow you know, public service campaigns and announcements on teaching people of all ages and generations, if we're being honest, how to Parse through what's real and what's not. I mean, that's a problem. I mean, look with AI, it's only going to get worse and worse every day. It's hard it's not easy for anybody to know what's real, what to believe, what not to believe. And unfortunately, there are a lot of bad actors who take advantage of that and intentionally create and disseminate misinformation and to like I say, so that division. So I think a media literacy and internet literacy awareness on just, you know. Knowing where the source is and is it a trustworthy source and how to make determinations around is this legitimate or not legitimate, like I think that's going to be it's already so incredibly important. It's going to be more and more important every day as it gets harder to tell what's real and what's not.
Lee Roth (29:28)
Yeah, I so agree. That's one of my all time favorite answers. Thank you, David for being a great partner and for coming on Breaking the Mold. I am so pumped about what we're going to be doing together.
David Teicher (29:38)
Likewise, first of all, thank you so much for having me and for letting me talk about Qru. Thank you so much for being a great partner and supporter and advocate for us in our early days. And you know, like I'm always a firm believer that one plus one equals three, right? Like when you bring two great, you know, I'm not even saying this about myself specifically, but I think when you bring two of the right people or partners or groups together, they can create something that is greater than the sum of their parts. Right. And I think hopefully that's what this relationship is with with what we're building, and what we think about in general when we want to, you know, find and work with great partners to do great stuff. Right. So thank you for being a good partner to Qru and I'm excited for what's next.
Lee Roth (30:19)
Likewise, my friend. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. And don't forget, download the report today. Thanks, David.