« Taglines and Internal Mantras | Main | Brand Value of the CEO »
I am confident that I have read almost every paper and article on the plight of the CMO. Partly because I occupy a similar responsibility, but more because I could not understand why public failures dominate any successes in the role. It is almost if we are all attempting to eradicate the title of Chief Marketing Officer. The press love to dump on CMOs, CEO's love to fire them to buy themselves time, clients are largely unimpressed, and staff reject their czar-like status.
Try to find a generic CMO job description and that will be a clue as to the challenges such a role faces. It seems that those who take on the job must possess an incredible bundle of talents and personality.
CMOs must have the ability to craft and deliver messages and experiences that engage employees, markets and other stakeholders. They must be fantastic storytellers. Their formal and informal networks must grease the channels of communications.
They must stretch from (traditional) advertising and brand development to a rare combination of leadership, creative, analytical and financial skills. At the same time they are wholly comfortable with media alternatives, emerging markets, fragmentation, social networking, digital and other technologies. They are the trend spotters
CMOs are more like "Chief Coordination Officers" with great intuition and ability to convince many on everything. Their natural curiosity makes them a strategic aggregator and magical disseminator (the dot connector). They lead cultural change efforts while being the voice of the customer so engage all company functions not just communications.
They must boost returns on marketing investment while possessing P&L savvy and ensure that top-line revenue growth is consistent. All the while being fresh, innovative and unconventional.
Anyone who occupies the role has to be a team player, be well respected and credible, avoid and abhor star status, balance the left and right brains, be confident, intelligent, smart, streetwise, well educated. Self deprecation and self effacement are good too. Their power of persuasion allows them to reject command and control - they exude influence.
In other words, they must be nuts to take on the job.
With these excessive expectations how can one succeed? Yet 47% of the Fortune 1000 have CMOs according to Booz Allen Hamilton. At the same time, Spencer Stuart informs the world that individual CMO tenure is in no danger of exceeding 24 months. That means there are approximately 235 vacancies per year for top tier CMOs (good business for those in executive search).
One has to wonder what the talent pool is like for filling this position even if the crazy expectations were reduced. It is no wonder the CMO attempts to justify their existence by firing the incumbent ad agency and marketing consultants, drives knee-jerk tactical course corrections, contributes to messaging and positioning confusion, and makes excuses to the CEO who wonders why performance is not through the roof.
This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 8, 2008 5:07 PM.
The previous post in this blog was Taglines and Internal Mantras.
The next post in this blog is Brand Value of the CEO.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
RSS Feed
Comments (2)
Johnny Garnet
Finally, someone nailed the real issue. The expectations are too great for the CMO. And I have no empathy for the egoist who takes on such a broad and nebulous role.
Posted by Johnny Garnet | February 13, 2008 3:20 PM
Debbie
Thought i would add this piece to provide more information on the topic...
A study by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart shows that the average chief marketing officer at big companies isn't managing to hang on to the job for just over two years. The study, which tracks CMOs at 100 leading consumer companies, found that the average tenure for CMOs today is 26.8 months--compared to 23.2 months in 2006, 23.5 months in 2005 and 23.6 in 2004.
Still, maybe the title should be changed to "chief get-me-outta-here officer:" Less than one-third of the CMOs have had their jobs for three years or more. And 16% of the companies have a CMO position that is either vacant or there is no such role in the organization. So while CMOs do seem to be staying out a little longer, "there are twice as many vacancies in the top marketing role as there were last year," the recruiting firm says.
Although it may seem that many high-profile personnel changes recently have involved women--Julie Roehm, Jerri DeVard, Mary Minnick --Greg Welch, global practice leader for Spencer Stuart's Consumer Goods & Services Practice, says that rapid turnover among CMOs is "an equal opportunity killer and does not appear to gravitate to one gender versus the other. He cites Bill Pearce, Marc Lefar and Javier Benito as examples.
"We believe that the bar for success in the CMO ranks continues to escalate in general," he tells Marketing Daily, "and we are, in fact, pleased to see many recently appointed females who are thriving in these roles." He cites as examples Mary Dillon at McDonald's, Mary Miller at PetSmart and Kathryn Olson at Shutterfly.
One of the characteristics cited by Spencer Stuart as part of a CMO's skill set list is "team player." Welch says "most wise CMOs typically choose to take on a lower profile these days" as opposed to an era that saw "rock stars" at the helm.
"The top leaders that we know are charismatic executives who are serious about empowering--and then give credit--to their team," he says. "Those executives who work well across their organization, truly partnering with functions like IT and Finance, demonstrate the 'Team Player' characteristic that we seek."
The study chalks the high turnover up to "very real pressure for CMOs to quickly and measurably deliver brand results." Among the companies making changes in recent months: Macy's, Wal-Mart, Volkswagen, Chrysler, Verizon, Sears, and Safeway.
Spencer Stuart says the CMOs who are thriving in the current marketplace have the following 10 skills:
Customer Orientation
Global Perspective
Influence & Impact
Hands on Leadership
Creates and Manages Change
Results Focused
Risk Taking
Strategic Thinker
Team Player
Technical Expertise
Posted by Debbie | February 18, 2008 2:08 PM