Transcript

Bennie F Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of AMA’s Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected. Through our conversations, we’ll introduce you to the visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.

Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my guest is Dan Csont. Dan became Corpay’s  first corporate chief global marketing officer in September of 2020. Previously, he served with brands such as Delta Airlines, where he led the branding and product for Delta’s elite global footprint.

Prior to Delta, Dan held CMO roles at both TEI Connectivity and PSCU Financial Services. He brings a deep knowledge of branding strategy as well as experience that is across demand generation, the voice of the customer, digital marketing, public relations, and relationship management. Dan has really served as a CMO, CMO. So I’d like to welcome to our podcast today, Dan.

How are you doing, good sir? Welcome.

Dan Csont

Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks, Bennie.

Bennie 

Well, it’s really great to have you here as you started at a really particular time during 2020 as your company’s first Chief Global Marketing Officer. Take us back to that moment. What really shaped this role for you? What made you take the jump at that time to become the first Chief Global Marketing Officer for an organization right in the heart of a little pandemic?

Dan 

Yeah, exactly. Happy to. So when I joined the company, it was really at the precipice of a whole series of transactions that turned it into, shifted the foundation of the company and shifted the vision of the company. And so the primary thrust of my role was to come in and unite the marketing function, build it because it was stratified across the company through a series of acquisitions and it was disparate and bring it together and then ultimately rebrand the whole company. And it was a very difficult thing to resist joining an S&P 500 company and having the opportunity to completely rebrand it. It doesn’t come along too often. And so that was really the task at hand. But for anyone that knows anything about

Bennie 

Right.

Dan 

Rebranding a company is much deeper than changing a logo. And so it’s been multiple years and just an exciting process. But that was really the impetus for joining the company.

Bennie 

Right. And when we think about rebrand, you really were all in on this. This wasn’t just a color palette change or an approach to strategy. It was a core re-establishment of the name and aligning all of these functions. We often see rebrands have fits and starts when they go through. What was your guiding principle to get you from the beginning and through this?

Dan 

Sure, yeah. I mean, as you mentioned, just to elaborate a little bit, there’s a few reasons why companies rebrand. One is strategic. Another is, you know, they have an M&A transaction. Another is, you know, perhaps they are running from, you know, some bad PR. And in our case, it was really a strategic decision, long-term strategic decision. The company had changed a lot in the last 20 years, certainly in the last five or six. And the name of the company,

Bennie 

Right.

Dan 

And more so really just deeper into the company, the brand just did not fit. The Fleetcore name, which was our previous name, did not fit where we were going and where we were now and where we were going more importantly. And so that was really the impetus for change. That’s the kind of fun rebrand to do because it touches the entire company and has many constituents. And I’m sure we can dive into more of the details, but that was really the driving force for the rebrand.

Bennie 

So tell me a little bit about your team. Coming in, as you mentioned before, there were elements and staff members who were working on marketing before you came in. But your role was really to galvanize and bring them together as one team. Give us a bit of what team at play to support your work at Corepay. And to give you all a little context, Corpay is a multi-billion dollar S&P 500 global company.

Dan 

Yeah, sure. So we actually had about, or have about 300 people globally doing marketing in the company. So it’s a pretty big footprint, but the company grew pretty rapidly over the last 20 years through a lot of acquisitions. And so really where it stood was we had a lot of people that were doing marketing, but in a vacuum or in a silo in many cases. So my job was to come in and unify that and bring, keep,

Bennie 

Okay. Right. Mm-hmm.

Dan 

The local knowledge and focus without shifting to some sort of fully corporate model, but also bring a corporate model that could support the businesses and really create a happy medium. That was really the task. And it’s more of an art than a science to do that because you don’t wanna lose that local knowledge of customers and that local connection, but.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Dan 

You can’t do things 20 ways. You can’t have 20 websites and you can’t have 20 different sales teams and 20 different sets of messaging. And it just doesn’t work that way when you become a large entity. And so this was a unique opportunity to take a company this size and really bring it together. And so now we have, you asked about the team, about 300 people doing marketing, but we have a CMO of each of our five business units who report to both me and the local president of those businesses. And then I have a corporate team that I built with some of the main functions, you know, brand, PR, data and analytics, things like that, that at a corporate level, we support the businesses and kind of help drive things closer together. So that’s really the complexion of the team.

Bennie 

And in your role as the overall global CMO, I know you report directly into the CEO. Talk a bit about what has been some of your advice for having a successful executive partnership between the chief marketing officer and the CEO.

Dan

Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is to learn the business. You really can’t have any credibility with any senior leader, especially a CEO of a company, if you don’t really understand the business. You can’t come in, even in a function like marketing, you can’t come in with all kinds of marketing knowledge. And when you try to apply it to the business, if you don’t understand it, it really just falls flat. And a CEO can see through that pretty quickly.

Bennie

Right. Right. Mm -hmm.

Dan 

And it just won’t work. So I would say that’s the first thing. The second thing is to understand what’s really important to them, understand their vision for the company. This was one of the biggest steps I had to take when I came on board. It’s one thing to discuss, hey, let’s consider rebranding the company. It’s another thing to really do it. And in the process of doing it, that vision and that CEO perspective is so important because CEOs

Bennie 

Right.

Dan

Really set the tone for the entire company. So really having my finger on where he wanted to steer the company in the next 10 to 15 years and what was important to him and his vision was very important. So I’d say those are probably the two most important things.

Bennie

In that moment, you talk about the vision, when was the moment that you woke up and realized that you had become Corpay? That the team and the company and the business had really internalized the new brand. When was that moment?

Dan 

Ha! Yeah. yeah. Well, yeah, no, it definitely has. I mean, the probably the the the moment that it really has, I would say there’s there’s two. The first is when you see the first advertising on digital channels and and it’s it’s all new. I mean, it’s everything that you’ve created is there and the world is seeing it. That’s that’s probably the first thing.

Bennie 

Or is that moment heaven? Right.

Dan 

But the second one is kind of an interesting one. When, when the signage changes in the building and you get off the elevator and it has the new name, I’ll tell you, it’s, it hits you. It really does. My boss, my boss came in that day, you know, cause he named the company originally. He essentially founded the company and he named it Fleet Core originally. And so he came in my office that day and said, wow.

Bennie

Right. Great, great. Okay.

Dan 

I’ve known we were going to do this for multiple years and still when I walked in, it hit me. Wow, it changed. So I’d say those two moments.

Bennie 

Alright, alright. We all come to those kind of first love moments when we see a brand and get that promise in space. So taking you back to when you first realized you were Corpay, when did you first realize that you were a marketer?

Dan 

That is a great question. So, and I would caveat that by saying, I think the marketing function in the CMO role, people that are going to be really good at it have to have a diverse background. And I definitely do. I actually, when I graduated, or actually when I was in undergrad, I was an accounting major. Who knows what the heck they want to do in college. I just knew I wanted to.

Bennie

Right. Okay. Right.

Dan 

No, I was very pragmatic and I knew the accounting firms. So I graduated, became a CPA and passed the CPA exam and became an accountant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. And I will tell you, doing something that absolutely feels like the wrong thing is the best way to help find the right thing. I realized very quickly that

Bennie 

Right, right. Well, yes.

Dan 

Rather than keeping score, which is what accountants do, I wanted to put points on the board and play offense and that’s what marketers do. And so having that foundation of, wow, I don’t want to do this, but now I really know I want to do that is extremely helpful. Then I got my MBA marketing and shifted into marketing and was lucky enough to have some people take a chance on me to shift into the marketing function and the rest is history. 25 years later, it’s been.

Bennie 

Right, right.

Dan 

It’s been marketing. The other interesting thing though about, about my career or the timing of my career is that marketing has changed so much in the two thousands in the last really 20 years and certainly in the last seven or eight. And so

Bennie

Right.

Dan 

I started my career kind of before that wave started cresting. And now I’ve seen it all the way through, you know, the advent of digital marketing and CRM and all the tools that a marketer can use today. When I started in the marketing function, it was much more of a, of an art than a science. And now if you don’t have any kind of financial, financial acumen, you’re not going to be successful as a CMO because you have to understand the business. You have to understand the P&L.

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

And you have to be able to articulate with data how you’re impacting the P&L. And now with the tools we have, you actually can do that. And so I’d say that’s been a critical success factor and having the accounting background probably helped me a little bit with that. I don’t know, who knows? But everybody comes there in different ways, I think. Everyone I speak with who’s had a long career has reached their final point or their…

Bennie

Right. Right?

Dan 

Place they’re happy with in many different ways. And I’d say, you know, that’s an important ingredient.

Bennie 

Well, it really isn’t kind of looking back at bringing all those skills to bear. And you’re right, these are things that sometimes in marketing leadership. I hear marketing leaders shy away from that, shy away from the finance and embracing the numbers, but it’s so much a part of your success portfolio, right? The tools that you have to be able to understand the business in multiple languages. Now, one of the areas that, you know, most recently was in your title and space in there, outside of your

Dan

I think skills to build.

Bennie

Financial acumen and your leadership in another space was working in customer and brand experience at Delta Airlines. And we know, you know, airlines at the heart of B2C kind of intensity. What did you take from that experience as you moved into these larger B2B roles? But talk a bit about the Delta experience.

Dan

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll answer the question specifically, and I’ll broaden it a little bit. But I think, again, as a CMO, you have to understand the inflow and the outflow of the role. On one side, you’ve got product development and operations and how the company runs and the new things the company’s going to try to do that you’ll ultimately market. And then on the other side, you have to understand the go -to -market and the sales and the service and how you actually sell the product. And so understanding both sides of that equation with the CMO in the middle is obviously important. The role, coming back to Delta, the role you just described, I was able to really look more at the inflow into marketing. Because I had the brand and marketing function and I had the experience function. And so one fed into the other. Most of our marketing and advertising

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Right.

Dan 

Was driving the concepts of our customer experience and building the brand stronger and stronger. So to actually own that function for a while and design the things and help produce the things that were going to be on the planes, that were going to be in the airports, that customers were going to experience really was the feeder to what we were going to ultimately advertise and market to sell. And so it was a really cool way to get a different angle at the marketing function. And again, adds to the experience in then doing the whole thing.

Bennie 

Wow. So, you know, in thinking about the global CMO role, we’ve sometimes heard people say that the new today’s CMO job is too big. But I often contend that it’s the right size for the strategic impact that we want to have in marketing. How have you seen your CEOs view change over marketing and marketing’s role in the business over the last few years?

Dan 

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll answer that a little broadly and then I’ll zoom in. I, first of all, I really think that, one of the biggest challenges I’ve always had in most CMO and senior marketing roles. And I’ve talked to others that have had the same is convincing folks that marketing is a very relevant and impactful function. And it’s gotten easier in recent years, but you know, many, many operators and general managers and sales leaders and pro, you know, hardcore people, they just, they, they kind of think of it as the side function as opposed to really the core of how we can actually create not just short -term customers, but long-term customers. And so I have a, I have a boss who gave me this term that, that I love, which is the marketing of marketing internally is so important.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

How you sell the function internally to your peers and to your CEO is absolutely critical and almost as important as what you do externally. And so I would say that is just an absolute critical part of the function is really showing the value that marketing brings to the table.

Bennie 

That’s right. That’s right. Right. Right. And I’ll add to your conversation when that point and it’s building the credibility before you need it. Right. Because because where does that come in? The marketing of marketing? It comes in in those inflection points, getting a budget approved, getting a new strategy introduced. Right. Taking a risk on new platforms and spaces. If you haven’t done the work that you talked about before, marketing, marketing, building the credibility, you’re really, you know,

Dan 

Yes. Yes.

Bennie

Swimming against the tide for those moments.

Dan 

Very much so, yeah, very well said.

Bennie 

So when you think about the contemporary CMO, and not just yourself, but what we see in industry in there, what do you think the biggest challenges for this year? What do you think the biggest challenges are for CMOs?

Dan 

CMOs in general.

Bennie 

Yeah, just in general, love to hear your thought as somebody who’s been there, done that, is continuing to do the work. You know, as you look forward, what do you think the biggest challenges are for CMOs in this industry?

Dan 

I really, yeah, I really do. And really just about any industry, it seems. I think one of the biggest challenges for CMOs is linking the brand to demand and ultimately to the selling, the selling the customer and how the marketing function can actually create the sales opportunity, which ends up in the customer and then the experience after they become a customer to potentially upsell them and keep them for a long time. Those two things are absolutely critical. It is not just about generating revenue or generating new customers. It’s also about keeping customers. Retention is such a critical component. It’s so much easier to sell more to your current customers than get new customers. And so I think one of the biggest challenges CMOs have is really having success in both of those places, both…

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

Attention and upsell to customers as well as creating new customers and how they use the marketing tools to create those leads that are much warmer and much easier to close for sales. I think that’s got to be one of the core things that a CMO has to really worry about or really be successful with in a company.

Bennie

Right. Now when you think about it and I look at the really ample team that you have, I’m going to pull through the organization a bit. We’ve talked a bit about the role as a CMO. What do you look for in emerging marketing leadership? What are the qualities that you look for as people progress in their career and the organization?

Dan 

Yeah, it’s a really, really good question. I’d say there’s two dimensions to the question. The first dimension is the actual person themselves and the capabilities they have. And then the second is obviously the subject matter expertise they have. I think it’s both. And the more senior you want to become in a company, the more you have to have both. How you engage with other people, how you collaborate, how you speak up or don’t speak up.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

At the right times and listen. Those types of, you know, the basic, basic skills of being able to lead a team and take something from point A to point B, that’s not just PowerPoint slides, but actually has real results. And then not just the what, but the how you do it. That’s kind of the one dimension to me is, and I look for that in people. Do they have those critical success factors? Then the other dimension is really

Bennie

Mm-hmm, right.

Dan 

You know, do you have the subject matter expertise? Marketing is a broad function, but there’s really a core set of understanding you have to have. And people come at it from different angles. It’s okay. If you’re more of a data-oriented person, you can come at it from one angle. If you’re more of a creative advertising type person, you can come at it from that angle. If you’re a real detailed person, there’s a place for you in marketing. If you’re a big picture strategic person, there’s a place for you in marketing.

But the key for a CMO is to identify those in their people and then put them in the right positions for them to flourish, or in some cases, put them in positions that is a challenge for them to develop. I’d say that’s, to me, that’s what I look for as I build a team and as I try to progress people. The other thing I just wanna mention that I think is critical is…

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Dan 

You know, it’s one thing to have these concepts, but as the leader, you have to demonstrate a passion for caring about people’s careers, caring about their development and having them know that you want to be a part, you want to help them versus you want to take their work and take it into a meeting they’re not in and, you know, make themselves look good. People pick up on those things in leadership. And I think they really look for people that are going to

Bennie

Right. Right. Mm-hmm.

Dan

into them. And so I think illustrating that as a leader is critical.

Bennie 

Have there been people in your career that you’ve seen have done that for you? It’s always one of those questions.

Dan 

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I would say it’s really interesting because I think it goes both ways. I’ve learned some of the most important things in my career from actually people that I absolutely did not like working for and did not want to be. I learned what I didn’t want to do or what I didn’t want to be, which I think is actually sometimes almost more powerful than having a leader that you want to emulate.

Bennie 

Right, right. It makes you really self aware of your leadership, right? Because you’re right. You have these horrible experiences and you come away going, I know if I have the chance, I’m not doing that.

Dan 

It does. That’s exactly right. And I tell you, it’s very powerful. And then, yes, I have had, I’ve been very blessed to have some leaders that have taken the time to invest in me and push me sometimes. And one thing though, I will say is, it’s a two -way street between the employee and the leader. And I think the employee, if they show, not only their capabilities, but they show the desire to learn and the desire to try things and the intellectual curiosity to push back or challenge or ask questions, if they show that. And then the leader has to catch it. So it’s a pitch and a catch. The leader then has to see that and then build on that. And I think those two things together are really, really critical in the development process, because the employee doesn’t really want to

Bennie 

Right.

Dan 

To show those things, it’s really hard for a leader to develop them very much because they can’t really challenge them and they can’t really move them along. So I’d say that’s a critical dimension too.

Bennie

I think you’re right, and the kind of playing dynamically well with others, right? And I think about how you just described your structure in which you have CMOs for different parts of the business and geographies. In thinking about that, how have you seen collaboration and idea sharing or expansion work across your teams, your senior leaders?

Dan 

Sure. Another really great question. First of all, in any large company, from what I can tell, with very few exceptions, the people that can collaborate and work well together and lead groups well, and like I said, listen and speak, those are the people that really, really succeed in that environment. For us, our CMO roles are critical because…

When I got here, we didn’t really have CMOs of the businesses. We just had people doing marketing. And now each of our CMOs is at, they’re a member of the president’s staff of each business and they sit at the table at their staff meetings and they’re expected to be a part of the team that’s growing the business. And that’s a big, big shift for marketing. Coming back to your original question around, you know, how does marketing get on the radar screen and kind of prove its value? When you’re sitting at that table,

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Okay. Right. Right.

Dan 

Much easier to then actually produce something. But then at the same time, if you don’t produce something, you won’t be at that table long. So that’s the first thing we tried to create with the CMO role. And then the real interesting thing is whenever you have a large global team, the balance between what do you centralize and what do you keep decentralized is really something that

Bennie 

Right.

Dan

Is different in every company, but very important to strike the balance. You don’t want to have, you know, all different CRMs and all different tools and all different agencies. And you don’t want to have that across your footprint. You want to try to bring it together as much as possible, but you also don’t want to have vanilla and you don’t want to lose that, that local passion and that local energy. And so I’d say for us being so global, we’re, we’re very, very global company.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

Striking that balance with the teams where, hey, let’s take this data function and maybe try to make it more one group that services the entire set of businesses, but then let’s have each business still have their product marketing teams local. That kind of balance is really critical when designing an organization. You can’t just come in and say one size fits all, I guess is the point.

Bennie 

I think makes a lot of sense. Well, one of the first big thing we talked about was this kind of massive global rebrand. And we talked about finding the new identity in the company and the power moving forward. I’m going to ask a question that’s not a popular question sometimes. Was there any artifact of the initial brand that you held onto to incorporate into the new brand? Is there anything that you didn’t want to lose?

Dan 

Haha. Well, yeah, well, yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah, very, very interesting angle to come into. Yes, believe it or not, if you, if you look at the name Fleet Core and you look at the name Corepay, C -O -R isn’t both. We, we decided that as we were looking at new names, we were decided, we decided that we wanted to try to kind of pay homage to the, the, the

Bennie

But we wanted to show up in a new way. Yeah. Yep. Okay, yeah.

Dan 

Incredible success that Fleet Core has had in the last 20 years. And quite frankly, you know, the investor base, which has, you know, fueled our stock dramatically in the last 20 years from a growth perspective, they understood us as Fleet Core. And so keeping that, that core was an important dimension. However, there’s two ways to look at it. There’s core pay being the core from Fleet Core and there’s Corepay being core to your payments. And so we

Bennie 

Right. Huh.

Dan 

We liked the name because it had kind of a multi -dimensional angle. But that was the thing we wanted to try to keep. We did sit around and talk about it though. Hey, what do we want to try to keep from the old brand? That was about it. Everything else, we pretty much flushed everything and entire new color palette, entire new vision, new direction all across the board. But as I mentioned at the beginning,

Bennie 

Right. Yeah.

Dan 

There was good strategic business reasons for it. It wasn’t just because we didn’t like the color or, you know, hey, let’s change our name. There was a lot of thought that went into where we’re going in the next 10 to 20 years and what brand we want to ride to get there. And then of course you have the dimension of, you have multiple people that are constituents in a rebrand. You know, you have your customers, of course, who come first and prospects.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

Dan 

But then you have your employees. And for us, the unification under one brand was a huge employee effort because we had all these people who worked for these different brands that we had acquired. And now for the first time, they worked for one brand for the whole company that they could be proud of and, and new people being hired by the company. They could come to our website and see one, one brand that represents the entire company. And then of course, the investors, you know, that, that investor message of, Hey,

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Dan

It’s easier to explain a company when it’s one brand versus when it’s a bunch of brands. So anyway, those are probably the primary drivers and answer to your question.

Bennie 

Right? But it’s a great space to bring unity around a single focus and a single story. And to your point, we’re all a part of this brand that’s going forward. So there’s no going back to, well, this is the way X company did it, and this is the way Y company did it. You’re all Corpay.

Dan 

Absolutely.

Bennie

So when you look back over the last four, it’s almost five years, believe it or not. But what are you most proud about?

Dan 

Yeah, you know, the obvious answer, the obvious potential answer is the rebrand, but I would step past that and really say the team that’s been built and the progress the function has made, which we obviously talked a little bit about before, but I can’t tell you how rewarding it is to see something. I mean, there was no corporate team and the rest was really disparate. And now,

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Dan 

While we’re nowhere near where I want to be ultimately, we’re certainly so far from where we started. And, you know, it’s really gratifying. It’s also gratifying when you have your first couple of people move from one of the organizations to another one in the past that didn’t happen. Or you have your first, you know, conversations about succession or your first, you know, annual reviews.

Bennie 

Right.

Dan 

With your leaders where you’re talking about all the people in the business, all the people in marketing, and that had never been done before. Things like that are extremely rewarding because you’re helping people’s careers, you’re not just doing business. And so I’d say that’s number one.

Bennie 

Which is really great. Well, you know, we’ve talked about the companies and the experience that helped grow you. I’m going to talk a little bit about the environment. How has being a part of the Atlanta community shaped your marketing career the last 20 years?

Dan 

Well, yeah, it’s very, very interesting because in the much like the marketing function over the last 20 years, which has evolved a lot, the city, the city of Atlanta has evolved a lot too. So I’ve been in the middle of a lot of change. I originally moved here from Buffalo, New York, which isn’t all much different. Yeah, it hasn’t changed. So, you know, like I go back and everything is pretty much exactly the way it was when I left and in Atlanta, I barely recognize so.

Bennie 

Right. That’s a change. That’s a change. Yeah.

Dan

I would say that first thing is change. The second thing, and the fun of being a part of a city that’s growing and changing. But the second thing that I think is an interesting dimension is because of the size of the city and the growth and the opportunities from an employment perspective, the companies that I’ve worked for, whether they’re physically here or not, having an airport like the Atlanta Airport and a city that’s that, that has this many people has allowed me to do my career from here, even when I didn’t need to be here. And so that’s, you know, if you live in North Dakota, it’s gonna be really hard to do that. But if you’re in a hub city, almost every company has something in Atlanta. And so you’re kind of always connected. But I would really say the vibrancy of the growth of the community has just been exciting to be a part of and that gets your juices flowing.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Which is great. So I’ll ask, I can’t believe we’re at the end of our conversation. I could go on forever having these, these dialogues and thinking about the experience. But you know, in that, with the energy and dynamism of Atlanta and the space in there, what gets you excited about the marketing profession going forward? When you look down, down the line the next few years, what gets you excited about marketing?

Dan 

I would say the continued move to the importance in companies. We’ve come a long way, I say we, because really the collective marketing community, because everybody, every leader I speak with in marketing says the same thing. It was difficult to prove the function and it’s come a long way and the evolution of the tools. I mean, that’s a pretty standard thing, but I really think the next five to 10 years with this function is going to be the proving it.

Bennie 

Mm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Dan

Things have evolved so much from a capabilities perspective that now we have data and insights into things we never could track before. But what concerns me a little bit is when you have lots of those capabilities, sometimes there’s a proliferation of what’s really going on and what’s the basic story and what are the real key KPIs. And so when you have all this data, you can have all this…

Bennie

Right.

Dan 

All these metrics and all these things and sometimes you have to step back and say, okay, what does this mean? And what will, when I’m talking to a CEO or a president of a business, what can I say to them in two or three sentences that are gonna make them go, wow? And I can take marketing data and I can have the same data and I can have one person use it to explain what’s going on and I can.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Dan 

Have another person use that same data and if they say it the right way, one will be compelling and one won’t. So I think really how marketers leverage these incredible capabilities but don’t get overwhelmed by how many things, the toys and what they can do. At the end of the day, it’s business and unless you’re a non -profit, we’re in this to win it, we’re in it to make profit and how you can be a part of that equation for the company. But what excites me, so that’s the thing that I would say is, what I’d like to see evolve. But the thing that excites me is when that’s successful, when you see CMOs that can really show that impact and you see the company behind them, we need more of that in the next five to 10 years with the function.

Bennie 

Right. It’s kind of that space in which there’s less of asking for permission and more of a setting agenda.

Dan 

Yes, absolutely. And when you bring, you know, at first you bring a business case to the CEO and say, Hey, I want to do these things. I want to add these capabilities, whatever. You know, you’ve arrived when, when you bring that business case, you know, after having some success and they barely look at the, at the numbers because they’re looking at you and they say, wow, I trust you. I believe that if you’re bringing this thing to me, I can tell you’ve got your ducks in a row from what I’m looking at, but I’m not going to, you know, drill into it because I trust you, go do it. When you get that, that’s when you’ve arrived. And I think I’d like to see more of that in the marketing function going forward.

Bennie 

I think my friend, that’s a great quote to end on. When we see that level of credibility, that trust in us, that’s when marketing and the function has arrived and that’s when we have the impact. So Dan, thank you for this really revealing and incredible conversation about your journey and the contemporary role of a global CMO. Thank you for being a part of this episode. And those of you listening in, thank you for being a part of AMAs Marketing and Podcasts once again.

I’m your host, Bennie F. Johnson. We invite you to explore the resources of AMA, our executive marketing programs, and also follow Dan and his organization in the journey that Corpay has made. Thank you once again for being a part of this, and we’ll see you next episode.