Over the past 30 years, there has been tremendous change in the role of marketers within the firm. A “Chief Marketing Officer” title was created, CMOs serve on leadership teams, and many are invited into the boardroom. Recently, we've witnessed CMOs stepping into CEO roles. Just last week, the Chief Brand Officer of McDonald's, Steve Easterbrook, was appointed the new CEO.
Yet, while some contend that the role of CMO has become more important, others point to the disaggregation of marketing activities across several C-level roles (e.g., Chief Data Officer, Chief Customer Experience Officer, etc.), as evidence that marketers have become marginalized. As an example, five of the twelve executives on the McDonald's Corporate Leadership Team have some responsibility traditionally allocated to marketers, suggesting a splintering of marketing across different leaders. There are chief officers in the following areas: communications, brand, consumer and brand strategy, corporate strategy, and global digital.
Given the differing perspectives, I turned to Bruce Rogers, Chief Insights Officer of Forbes and the leader of Forbes’ CMO Practice. His experience interacting with CMOs over time has provided him with unique insight on the changing role of the CMO. Below are some of Rogers' thoughts.
Q1: How has the role of the CMO evolved over time?
A: If you just look at the past ten years, an amazing transformation has occurred. Facebook is just a little over ten years old and with the advent of digital social media, marketers have evolved from the broadcaster of communications and the owner of communication asets to the managers of customer-based assets. Old-school marketers who were in demand 10 years ago, like Sergio Zyman, put a premium on managing ad agency relationships. They were essentially Chief Communication Officers. Today, CMOs are essentially Chief Transformation Officers, Chief Analysts, Chief Customer-Asset Officers. Expectations are generally higher and the skills required of today’s CMOs are very different.
Q2: What caused the change in the CMO role?
A: Over the past ten years, two critical changes have occurred. First, the value of an ad impression started to disintegrate with the fragmentation of media options and vehicle choices. There is an increase in the rise of social media and multi-channel shopping behavior. Complexity has increased significantly. At the same time, access to consumer data and the sophistication of the tools used to analyze the data has enabled greater consumer understanding. In the old world, right-brained CMOs ruled the world. Today, both sides of the brain have to be accessed to be successful. It isn’t enough to make great ads. The channel, the media, the method, and an assortment of other decisions require more than just great creative. CMOs who are able to understand the ROI of all marketing activities will rise to the top of the “must recruit” list. The CMOs who understand attribution models and have an ability to understand which dollars to cut and where to invest to generate the highest ROI will become tomorrow’s marketing leaders – and I contend – firm leaders.
Q3: It sounds like you believe that we may see more CMOs transitioning into CEO roles. Is that true?
A: If you actually look at the job of today’s CMO, these transformational CMOs look and act a lot like CEOs. They create a vision, set goals, build consensus, collaborate across the organization, and lead effective implementation that delivers results. It’s almost an impossible job because they have three big roles: 1) owner / driver of brand purpose and the mission of the business, 2) owner of the customer and driver of insights generated from data, and 3) organizational leader focusing firm efforts on relentless customer centricity. When you think about it, what part of the business does the CMO not touch? That’s why the best CMO roles are very much a CEO-role in training. We’ve done research around this and high performing CMOs look like CEOs.
As the role of the CMO is becoming more important to the organization, you will start seeing more CMOs make the leap to CEO. The CFO ascended in the financial downturn due to the need for risk mitigation. However, the only thing that CMOs haven’t been able to do is to make the leap is to have the financial acumen. As more and more CMOs find ways to become financially adept, their ascendancy is likely.
These transformational CMOs are in short supply. They are not only able to leverage data succesffully but they have the ability to serve as the Chief Inspiration Officer. They have to think through how to organize the company to be articulate about the brand purpose and mission. They need to drive efforts to train and educate the organization. They don’t just have the responsibility but the obligation.
Q4: Can you think of an example of a transformational CMO?
A: Antonio Lucia at Visa is the CMO and head of HR. He is in charge of defining how the company will compete, on what dimensions it will drive superiority and differentiation, and then, through the HR role, create the internal advocacy and evangelism necessary to deliver on the brand promise. No amount of external messaging can compensate for internal brand positioning or understanding. You can’t make up for a lack of passion within the organization.
What do you think? Will some of today's CMOs become tomorrow's CEOs and if so, what will determine who makes it to the top? Join the discussion @KimWhitler
