The mid-market is overlooked by Madison avenue, by the trades, by employees, and by agencies.
This is the first in a five-part series I'm calling "A Love Letter to the Mid-Market." Over the next few weeks I'm going to dig into why this segment is so misunderstood, what they actually need from their partners, and where the industry needs to get better.
Nearly 200,000 U.S. mid-market businesses (companies doing between $10M and $2B in revenue) represent one-third of all private sector GDP and employ approximately 48 million Americans. That is just one definition. I believe the definition is way-wider. If the U.S. mid-market were its own country, its GDP would rank it a top 10 economy on the planet.
And yet... go to any major advertising conference....and count the case studies. You'll see Nike. You'll see P&G. You'll see brands with nine-figure media budgets that most marketers will never work on. The industry rewards scale. It hands out trophies to the work that had $20M in production behind it. The last 9 out of 10 years worth of Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes were DoorDash, P&G, Cadbury, Burger King, Tide, State Street Advisors, REI and AXA. These are all massive global brands.
The mid-market CMO is probably not at Cannes, nor CES. She is home with her 3-7 person marketing team trying to figure out how to make $3M in media or marketing budget work like $10M or how to make $10M work like $30M. She is also figuring out how to get the darned "window cling" up in store no. 289.
And yet, she is systematically underserved by this industry.
The big holding company agencies were not built for them. The pitch process wasn't designed for them. The research reports treat them as a footnote. The Gartner CMO surveys that everyone quotes, rarely if ever include her? So when the industry reads "what CMOs are thinking"... it's actually reading what billion-dollar CMOs are thinking. The mid-market isn't really even in the data.
That's a market failure. It's also an opportunity.
That opportunity is what I want to write more about in parts 2-5. I think its an employment opportunity for some, I think for the trades, its an economic opportunity. I think for CMO's, its an opportunity for get louder and prouder about your work and to stop letting it all sit below the radar. I think for college graduates its looking beyond the most trendy logos. Its a big mid-market festivus for the rest-of-us.
I think its the mid-market's time to shine. In parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 I will get into all the detail of how I think that shine happens.
This is the first in a five-part series I'm calling "A Love Letter to the Mid-Market." Over the next few weeks I'm going to dig into why this segment is so misunderstood, what they actually need from their partners, and where the industry needs to get better.
Nearly 200,000 U.S. mid-market businesses (companies doing between $10M and $2B in revenue) represent one-third of all private sector GDP and employ approximately 48 million Americans. That is just one definition. I believe the definition is way-wider. If the U.S. mid-market were its own country, its GDP would rank it a top 10 economy on the planet.
And yet... go to any major advertising conference....and count the case studies. You'll see Nike. You'll see P&G. You'll see brands with nine-figure media budgets that most marketers will never work on. The industry rewards scale. It hands out trophies to the work that had $20M in production behind it. The last 9 out of 10 years worth of Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes were DoorDash, P&G, Cadbury, Burger King, Tide, State Street Advisors, REI and AXA. These are all massive global brands.
The mid-market CMO is probably not at Cannes, nor CES. She is home with her 3-7 person marketing team trying to figure out how to make $3M in media or marketing budget work like $10M or how to make $10M work like $30M. She is also figuring out how to get the darned "window cling" up in store no. 289.
And yet, she is systematically underserved by this industry.
The big holding company agencies were not built for them. The pitch process wasn't designed for them. The research reports treat them as a footnote. The Gartner CMO surveys that everyone quotes, rarely if ever include her? So when the industry reads "what CMOs are thinking"... it's actually reading what billion-dollar CMOs are thinking. The mid-market isn't really even in the data.
That's a market failure. It's also an opportunity.
That opportunity is what I want to write more about in parts 2-5. I think its an employment opportunity for some, I think for the trades, its an economic opportunity. I think for CMO's, its an opportunity for get louder and prouder about your work and to stop letting it all sit below the radar. I think for college graduates its looking beyond the most trendy logos. Its a big mid-market festivus for the rest-of-us.
I think its the mid-market's time to shine. In parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 I will get into all the detail of how I think that shine happens.