Comments on: It’s Time for a Chief Web Officer

By: Chief Web and Chief Internet Officers (CWO, CIO) « Webgrizzly’s Blog

Chief Web and Chief Internet Officers (CWO, CIO) « Webgrizzly’s Blog — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:51:29 +0000

[...] Today I accidentally surfed on this blog post about Chief Web Officers. I must say I’m with the blog post in that companies and corporations of this age should start considering hiring top-level officers to be in charge of the company’s whole web environment and presence. There are way too many wrong paths that can be taken with web strategy and way too many evil n’ greedy consultants. [...]

By: Chris Tingom

Chris Tingom — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 23:18:37 +0000

You go Don! Glad to hear you’re keepin’ it alive.

By: Don

Don — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 23:10:43 +0000

This is exactly what I do for the company I work for (Kudos to Chris for putting me in contact with this employer). My title is “Director, Web Systems”. Meaning that anything my company does on the Web is delegated to me and I make the technical decisions. This place has been burned many times and it’s my job to see that it doesn’t happen again.

By: David Martinez

David Martinez — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 04:33:01 +0000

Yeppers, I have seen money tossed out the window on many occasions. Companies do need marketing people, but marketing people need to understand the box, before they can work outside of it. There are some great marketing people (and CEOs for that matter) that strive to understand the production and delivery systems that the web has to offer. But unfortunately, they are far and few.

David Martinez
http://www.seidon.com/
http://www.futurefront.com/

By: James Archer

James Archer — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 04:29:44 +0000

Chris,

This is a great post, and I totally agree with you. There are few corporate officers who genuinely understand how the web works in a comprehensive way (technology, content, hardware, software, aesthetics, branding, etc.).

A web site is a living, growing organism, and as an increasingly fundmental part of so many businesses, it’s essential that major companies have an executive whose job it is simply to understand and manage it. It would cost a lot less to create such a position than these companies are probably losing in a given year because of their sloppy, haphazard web presence.

By: Mark Bixby

Mark Bixby — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:08:36 +0000

I worked for a division of Honeywell where the Marketing department was actually a sub-group of IT. It was a brilliant arrangement. Technology drove Marketing. It supported our brand as technological leaders, and certainly served our customers better. Ah yes, the golden years indeed. Love your site BTW!!!

By: Mike Stickel

Mike Stickel — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:57:05 +0000

I absolutely agree. The CEO’s have enough trouble keeping the company together and knowing the business. They have all sort of people — we’ll call them experts for lack of a better term — in different areas of the company explaining what’s up in their area, why isn’t there one for online or web initiatives?

By: Chris Tingom

Chris Tingom — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:53:35 +0000

Something important I left out of my meeting was that I wasn’t saying an IT department or a marketing department can’t pull of a successful web site. By all means if there are web savvy people working in those departments that’s great. I think you summed it up well when you said someone that has the CEO’s ear and the CEO actually listens.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:43:57 +0000

No doubt! I work for an IT department that understands the importance of our external web presence, but yet we don’t have the power to champion a solution. We just hired a CIO, but our shop is so far behind on critical infrastructure updates, he’s not concerned with our web.

I almost miss the days of a single webmaster who had the CEO’s ear and when he talked, executives listened. Ahh….the golden years!