Interim marketing directors (IMDs) are often used by companies, alongside other interim executives in finance, HR, operations or general management. The usual situation is for the IMD to gap fill between permanent post-holders, i.e. for maternity cover, or sudden departure such as illness, a resignation/firing. But recently I’ve seen something different happening.
In the first example, the CEO of a B2B barristers’ chambers hired an IMD to help him with a strategic rebrand and far-reaching sales and marketing programme development. The chambers had no-one capable of doing that work and had to react quickly to a fast-changing market.
In the second example, the CEO of a small B2B manufacturing company brought in an IMD from the fmcg sector to carry out a strategic marketing review and bring an injection of new ideas and consumer marketing techniques he’d learned from large companies. In neither case was this ‘business as usual’, or ‘holding the fort’ until a permanent marketing director could be hired and in place.
So my question for B2B Marketing readers is this: have you encountered an interim marketing director yourself taking on tasks that fall outside the usual day to day work that marketing directors carry out? I’d love to know if my two cases are just isolated incidences or whether this is an increasing trend among B2B companies.
