Experimentation is risky, but less so than stagnating. Here's how to balance big ideas and the bottom line.

With average job durations of 18 months or less, chief marketing officers at major brands don't last all that long these days. Acknowledging the nature of the beast, Scot McLernon led a panel of interactive gurus in a discussion of challenges that face today's marketing professionals.

In a few words, McLernon summed up the sentiments of his panelists, who each urged experimentation their own way:

"Right or wrong, do something," McLernon said.

Easier said than done.

Tim Mapes, CMO of Delta Airlines, gave frank insights to the audience about his experience helping to launch a corporate blog.

"We took a look out there online and realized that our customers were talking about us no matter what," Mapes said. "From our perspective, we simply had to launch the blog and let our customers have a voice in the experience, even if that means hearing a lot of complaints."

According to Mapes, the shift from talking to consumers to speaking with customers could mean the ultimate demise of what we now call marketing.

"Marketing is the wrong nomenclature," Mapes said. "Marketing is management of an experience. The faster we get out of 'marketing' and understand that brands are managed by all of us, the better off we'll be."

But doesn't that mean resistance from an agency?

Maybe not.

Jean-Philippe Maheu, digital chief for Ogilvy, stressed that the best agencies are those that serve brands based on the best idea for the brand, not the agency's bottom line.

"We have been working with Six Flags amusement parks," Maheu said. "At the end of the season the company told us that it wanted some ideas on how to give away 40,000 tickets. We had several ideas, but the one that won out was an idea that didn't translate into dollars for Ogilvy."

Rather than holding a contest or buying media to advertise free tickets, Ogilvy told Six Flags to put the tickets on Craigslist. Within a few hours, the brand generated a tremendous amount of positive publicity as eager consumers gobbled up the tickets.

"The client was simply thrilled," Maheu said. "It was a big idea that worked very well for Six Flags."

While that kind of outside-the-box thinking is slowly becoming the order of the day with today's cutting edge marketers, Peter Krainik, founder of the CMO Club, said brands still need to make a fundamental shift in how they think about engaging with their customers.

"There are a lot of organizations out there that are thinking about how not to fail," Krainik said. "What they need to be doing is creating the inspiration to want to win."

But none of the panelists said a winning attitude means that you have to have winning ideas. In fact, Maheu told the audience not to expect homeruns every time, since their job is to balance an art with a science.

Mapes was a little blunter, pointing out that big ideas often require big failures.

"If you have 10 big ideas, eight of them are probably going to be absolute failures," Mapes said. "But that's actually good. You want those failures. Only the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world actually do it. We need a lot more crazy people."

With that, Mapes, who spent time at an agency before going to work for a brand, said the onus is on clients to push the envelope.

"It all starts with the clients," Mapes explained. "If they are risk adverse, lethargic or scared, you won't have a good idea."

According to Krainik, CMOs at brands will find those big ideas when they stop thinking as brand builders and start thinking as business builders.

Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMediaConnection. Read full bio.