Most senior executives say they consider the chief marketing officer a valued member of the executive team. Yet they also believe many CMOs lack the background and skills needed to be a top management player.
According to “Define and Align the CMO,” a study from the Chief Marketing Officer Council, CMOs are also perceived to be lacking financial management acumen, global business intellect, the ability to provide solid ROI data, and most important, a strategic mindset. The blame for these problems, meanwhile, extend beyond the company to executive recruiters who draft candidates for the position without gaining true insight from their clients into the skills needed for the job.
“Conventional wisdom holds that the CMO is a strategic player in the C suite, but this study shows there’s a major gap between perception and reality,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, in a statement. “No one questions the value of marketing in this competitive business environment, and the CMO, as the person who oversees this large portion of the operating budget, clearly has important strategic and tactical responsibilities. But this is definitely not happening nearly as well as it should.”
The study, which is based on surveys of 1,500 marketers and search firm executives, also found that
- nearly three-quarters of the C-suite executives surveyed consider their marketing department highly influential and strategic. At the same time, nearly two-thirds said that their top marketers don’t provide adequate ROI with which to gauge marketing’s true performance.
- nearly 70% of the CMO respondents report directly to their CEO. Only 40% of them get an “A” grade for their performance from the CEO.
- a majority of the recruiters surveyed believe that CMOs have a shorter shelf life than other C-level executives. In a past report, the search firm Stuart Spencer pegged the average tenure of a CMO at 23 months. The average tenure of CMO respondents to this study, however, was 38 months.
- more than 80% of the board members surveyed believe that within the next two years, the CMO position will gain greater credibility among the rest of the management team. But in another reality check, fewer than 20% of those board members also said that an increasing number of CMOs will rise to the CEO position.
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