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CMO Tenure Hits 48 Months, And Chief Marketers' Moves Reflect Rising Influence

This article is more than 9 years old.

CMO tenure has been climbing since 2007. 2014 was no exception: According to executive-search firm Spencer Stuart, the average length of time chief marketers remained in their positions last year was 48 months. That’s according to new data, out today.

CMO tenure jumped from 45 months in 2013 to 48 months last year. That’s double the CMO tenure from 2004, the year Spencer Stuart began formally tracking it. As in past years, Spencer Stuart based its data on an analysis of tenure of CMOs of the top 100 U.S. advertised brands.

That’s still shorter than the average tenure of, say, a CEO—80 months—but four years is certainly enough time to have an impact—on both short-term and long-term business results.

“CEOs several years ago began to embrace the executive committee, and in those cases, the CMO is firmly planted as an element of that,” said Greg Welch, senior partner at Spencer Stuart. “An example is [IBM Senior VP of Marketing and Communications] Jon Iwata—not only is he at the table when a question is asked, he’s the one that speaks the customer voice with authority,” he said.

“We didn’t see those kinds of marketers 10 years ago.”

For CMOs, the pressure is still on. With time less of an issue, expectations are high that senior marketers deliver on core business objectives and drive growth.

“CMOs’ ability to leverage digital and analytics to create value for the business also has been a factor in longer tenure,” Tom Seclow said in a statement. Seclow leads Spencer Stuart’s Marketing Officer Practice. “The ability to create measurably successful marketing initiatives built on customer insight has increased CMOs’ credibility in the C-suite.”

As in years past, certainly there has been lots of change—including CMOs’ making lateral moves to other companies, sometimes in vastly different industries. Benjy Karsch, for example, recently was named CMO of Revlon after spending six years as CMO of Cigna. Esther Lee left AT&T, where she was senior VP of advertising, to join MetLife as exec VP-global CMO. Todd Pendleton recently announced his exit from Samsung; his next steps are unclear. Deborah Wahl joined McDonald’s as CMO after serving as CMO at Pulte Homes. Michael Simon left his post as CMO of Panera Bread and is now CMO at Bai Brands. Dawn Hudson is now CMO of the NFL, having previously served as vice chairman of the Parthenon Group, a boutique consultancy. Mark Baynes left his post as CMO of Kellogg's and is now CMO of Keurig Green Mountain. Maryam Banikarim became global CMO of Hyatt after having served as CMO of Gannett. Frances Allen spent four years at Denny’s as executive VP and chief brand officer, and then recently joined Jack in the Box as brand president. John Kennedy became CMO of Xerox, moving from IBM, where he was VP of global business services. Christa Carone, meanwhile, was formerly CMO of Xerox and left there to become executive VP of marketing and communication strategy. And the list goes on.

In some cases, CMOs made lateral moves from large, established companies to smaller, nimbler or tech players to take jobs as CMOs, certainly, but in some cases, as different roles where they could apply their industry expertise and understanding of the big-budget marketing ecosystem. Liza Landsman left her post as CMO at E-Trade and is now CMO of Jet.com, a Quidsi company aiming to take on Amazon. Kevin Burke moved from Visa, where he was CMO, to Square, where he is now head of customer acquisition. Marc Speichert is now global client partner at Google, having previously served as CMO of L’Oreal. Jonathan Mildenhall left Coca-Cola, where he was most recently senior VP of integrated marketing communication and design excellence, to join Airbnb as CMO. Kim Kadlec, worldwide VP of the global marketing group at Johnson & Johnson for eight years, in April moved AOL to be head of relationship management, a new position.

“Similar to prior years, our CMO practice business has remained incredibly strong,” Welch said. “However, our tenure study is specifically focused on only the 100 largest advertised brands and companies, so it of course does not reflect the rest of the market’s performance, which includes smaller and midsize companies. Within these other markets we have also seen incredible demand for talent, particularly those who are digitally savvy,” he said.

“In 2014, we saw 23 new CMO openings appear in the top 100 companies, and the 23% number is actually slightly lower than what we have seen in prior years,” Welch added.

“Importantly, behind the data we are seeing all kinds of interesting moves,” he said. “[Some] executives we know changed industries altogether; as an example, from automotive to restaurants, from publishing to the hotel sector, and yet another jumped from financial services sector into the photo industry. Interestingly, we also had one case where two talented employees (within the same company) literally switched jobs—which is, as you might expect, fairly unusual. We have also seen a trend of marketers fleeing large corporations, instead choosing to be part of entrepreneurial startups that offer the potential of a handsome payday, with less bureaucracy.”

And calling it “good news,” Welch explained that several new CMOs were promoted to their posts, “demonstrating quality succession planning from within the same company.”

An example is Sona Chawla, who after spending five years heading up ecommerce and digital strategy at Walgreen’s, a year ago was promoted to CMO. Overseeing ecommerce prepped her for the larger CMO role; her expertise in ecommerce is informing her broader marketing and brand-strategy decisions now.

“When I joined about six and a half years ago, [the company] thought digital and ecommerce were going to be very important for our business,” Chawla said. “They brought someone in from the outside. I actually was a peer to the CMO when I came in. What my team and I did over the last several years was figure out how digital was going to be core to the business,” she said.

“By having a seat at a table, it was a great way to understand how digital would impact the business.”

Given her digital savvy and data prowess, hers was a natural segue when the CEO asked her to take on additional CMO responsibilities.

“Digital is always trying to integrate into the core business. I was already involved in those broader business conversations,” she said.

Meanwhile, the list is almost as long of CMOs who have stayed in place—sometimes for nearly 10 years—but have taken on additional, more general-management responsibility within their organizations.

They are taking on broader work, having demonstrated an ability to lead and bring value as integral business drivers. Examples include Chipotle’s Mark Crumpacker, who was named CMO in January 2009, and then in 2013 was also named chief development officer. Steve Easterbrook was recently named CEO of McDonald’s, after having served as chief brand officer. Jeff Jones, CMO of Target, took on additional responsibilities for leading the company’s work in architecting the guest experience across all channels and touch points. The company also recently announced that Jones will create and lead a new guest center of excellence, “designed to enable the organization to develop a greater sense of advocacy and empathy for the guest in all of its business decisions.” Marty St. George, meanwhile, is now executive VP of commercial and planning at JetBlue, leading teams responsible for all revenue-generating activity at the airline—marketing, sales, revenue management, network planning, alliances, operations planning, cargo and international. Ann Mukherjee is now president of the global snacks group and PepsiCo Global Insights at PepsiCo, having previously served as CMO of Frito-Lay North America. Bill Brand was named president of HSN, while maintaining previous CMO responsibilities. Jim Farley, the former  executive VP of global marketing, sales and service and Lincoln, at Ford Motor Co., is now executive VP and president of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Beth Comstock added the title of president & CEO, GE Business Innovations, to her CMO role at GE.

What marketing leaders who have gotten promoted all have in common is an adoption of digital, a relentless focus on data, and a proclivity toward being a natural teacher, or mentor, Welch said. “All those skills enable them to influence the organization.”

Case in point is Brian Niccol, who was CMO of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell before being named CEO of Taco Bell in January. “He’s innovative, a great coach, a team-oriented leader,” Welch said.

Geoff Cottrill is another example. A year ago he was named VP and general manager of brand and segments at Converse, having been CMO for six years prior. “I’m still responsible for leading brand strategy and marketing,” Cottrill said. “But I have the added responsibility for being general manager for each of our businesses, with teams that are cross-functional teams coming together to focus on a common consumer,” he said. “We have gone from functional-segment to consumer-segment offense.

“For me, it was an exciting opportunity to develop my general-management skills beyond just marketing, to start thinking more holistically at the enterprise level about how all our various initiatives come together.”

CEO Jim Calhoun presented the opportunity to Cottrill 14 months ago. “I’m growing into this job, letting go of some of the marketing things I’d been leading and really looking at this from a broader perspective,” Cottrill said.

Another example is Michael Fischer, who was CMO at Coldwell Banker for five years before becoming COO.

“I had operational experience at Nissan and felt comfortable in that space,” he said in an email. “Also I knew that the only way the brand would reach its full potential was to get the ops side to understand/appreciate/support the branding efforts, so that we had one voice to our brokers and agents. Focus and one voice in a non-business format franchise model with independent contractors as agents is the key to success.  That’s a huge challenge and I wanted to take it on.  It’s basically implementing B2B marketing with clear business KPIs to measure success.”

He said the CMO role prepped him for his COO job because he always looked at marketing “with a focus on how the effort would be operationalized. Also, the company really values the CMO position, and our CEO always includes the CMO as one of the three senior level positions (CEO, COO, CMO) to the brokers, and that exposure helped me establish the relationships with our brokers and agents and better understand their businesses—so I knew what I was getting into, and they knew what I brought to the table,” Fischer said. “It was pretty seamless.”

Of course, in several cases, the way for CMOs to gain general-management expertise and responsibility is to move outside the company, assuming roles as CEO or president at other organizations.

Rob Price is an example of that. For eight years he was CMO of CVS, and he is now president of Edible Arrangements, a role he assumed 11 months ago.

“The blessing that I had from the longer tenure as CMO was the horizontal learning, navigating a complex operational environment,” Price said, “eventually having accountability for ecommerce, having to develop a very strong comfort with data analytics, and then over time earning the opportunity to lead larger and larger teams of people. And those things are hard to accomplish in a two-year stint. In two years, you can drive results and exercise your functional craft, but it’s probably not sufficient time to earn your full degree and be ready for graduation.”

His advice to other CMOs seeking broader roles? “You have to get involved as a CMO in things that are not obviously marketing-related or marketing-led. You have to lend yourself to being a team player as part of broader institutional efforts, major initiatives,” he said. “By doing so you accumulate the ability and the sensibility [to be a chief executive]. Having touched all of those things at least a little bit you grow an appreciation and a reverence for the importance of those other functions. And then when you are leading them, the people appreciate that you have that appreciation and that sensibility.”

New technologies, more transparency with consumers and data, and technology in general “have been a fabulous springboard for those who want to own the customer voice within in the organization,” Welch said. “It’s a great time to be a CMO, despite some volatility, for sure.

“I do think that CMOs and the profession is getting better,” he added. “And when I think about the support that a sitting CMO has today—a better dashbroad, metrics, science that’s better understood by the boss, other agency partners you can lean on—I felt like in the early days, no one had the answers—there was a concerned look in everyone’s eye—now we’re getting a cadence; we’ve seen the profession grow up in the last several years.”