Brand Editors?

David Kiley in his businessweek blog post quoted Larry Light, former CMO if McDonald's, who said that he was actually the 'Brand Editor' of McDonald's. He remarked that consumers and media had a lot more control on McDonald's brand perception than him. I completely agree with his sentiment. A CMO of a large multinational is likely to be a Brand editor given the nature of their job description. He is the guy who says yes or no to an ad agency's concept, clears a media campaign, signs a press release or gives a go ahead to someone's product promotion plan. He is highly unlikely to do much more without antagonizing the people in operations or quality or human resource department. That makes it a lot harder job and all are comfortable in their silos trying to improve one metric or the other by a few decimals without recognizing that they are not going anywhere. The CEO must take lead in busting these silos every so often and get everyone to take up a new challenge contributing to a common goal.