Is it time to rename the CMO?

Ear­li­er this year, Three UK rein­ter­pret­ed the tra­di­tion­al CMO role and merged mar­ket­ing with its cus­tomer team. John­son & John­son abol­ished the title of CMO, while McDon­alds and Coca-Cola have rein­stat­ed their CMO posi­tions, revers­ing ear­li­er moves to replace them. But why are com­pa­nies obsessed with chang­ing titles? Should oth­er com­pa­nies fol­low suit in chang­ing the CMO role to move with the times?

Yes: the CMO role is too broad and varied

Accord­ing to exec­u­tive research firm Spencer Stu­art, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cers (CMOs) at the top 100 US adver­tis­ers are in post for just 41 months on aver­age, com­pared with 76 months for their chief exec­u­tives. This sug­gests the CMO role does not do exact­ly what it says on the tin and the title needs to be changed.

“Too many brands have lost sight of the impor­tance of the 4Ps of mar­ket­ing and have for­got­ten how to pull the levers of prod­uct, price, pro­mo­tion and place,” says Chris­t­ian Pol­man, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer at Ebiq­ui­ty, a mar­ket­ing and media con­sul­tan­cy.

“Although focus­ing just on the four Ps in fact miss­es the point about the crit­i­cal role mar­ket­ing can play to influ­ence con­sumer behav­iour, dri­ve busi­ness inno­va­tion, and help busi­ness­es recov­er and grow.”

Jason Ball, founder of busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) mar­ket­ing agency Con­sid­ered Con­tent, says: “In B2B, CMOs are expect­ed to run every­thing from bot­tom-of-the-fun­nel lead gen­er­a­tion and sales sup­port all the way up to thought lead­er­ship and brand devel­op­ment.”  Accord­ing to Ball, the CMO role often requires deliv­er­ing quar­ter­ly results, as their sales col­leagues do, but with­out the foun­da­tion of a sol­id, longer-term strat­e­gy.

“This sets them up to fail because they’re nev­er giv­en the time and scope to deliv­er what real­ly mat­ters: endur­ing busi­ness growth,” he says. “So, we see this revolv­ing door as busi­ness­es con­tin­u­al­ly abol­ish and then rein­state the role.”

Ste­fano Maifreni, founder of Eggcel­er­ate, a B2B con­sul­tan­cy for British and Ital­ian small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es, points out that the CMO is fast becom­ing a chief cus­tomer offi­cer, over­see­ing cus­tomer inter­ac­tions and expe­ri­ences. “My view is that, increas­ing­ly, many CMOs will act as prod­uct man­agers,” he says. 

Digital marketing and the role of technology

For Sarah Shilling, CMO at mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Unlim­it­ed, the CMO role needs to be reimag­ined because of the grow­ing pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy. “There are many rea­sons for the CMO role being dis­placed, one being the change in the chief tech­nol­o­gy officer’s role and a sud­den surge in pro­gram­mat­ic around the cus­tomer jour­ney,” she says.  “Overnight, dig­i­tal heads had a bet­ter han­dle on data and there­fore a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in under­stand­ing cus­tomers, how they behave and how to com­mer­cialise those behav­iours.”

There are many rea­sons for the CMO role being dis­placed, one being the change in the CTO’s role and a sud­den surge in pro­gram­mat­ic around the cus­tomer jour­ney

In the Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Trends Report 2020, from Zen­desk, a sup­port, sales and cus­tomer engage­ment soft­ware provider, two thirds of those asked cit­ed cus­tomer ser­vice as the key dri­ver for brand loy­al­ty, ahead of price, prod­uct or ser­vice.

Peter Lorant, Zendesk’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa, says: “Your mar­ket­ing team should have an inter­est in the insights your cus­tomer expe­ri­ence team derives from cus­tomer inter­ac­tion and in turn should use these insights to cre­ate a uni­fied, cohe­sive mes­sage in mar­ket­ing, sales, ser­vice and beyond. Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence tech­nol­o­gy that uni­fies these teams can help make cross-depart­men­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion around cus­tomer needs sec­ond nature. C‑suite mem­bers may come and go, but this cus­tomer-cen­tric approach is here to stay.”

Demand for the near real-time met­rics pro­vid­ed by per­for­mance mar­ket­ing means there’s been less of a focus on longer-term brand build­ing and this is why it’s time to rethink the CMO role, argues Mar­ti­na Poehler, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at Fresh Rel­e­vance, which uses cus­tomer data to max­imise the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. “Mar­ket­ing teams’ atten­tion has shift­ed from the big­ger pic­ture and led to many becom­ing engrossed in low­er-fun­nel adver­tis­ing or dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing, to the detri­ment of build­ing deep­er and more valu­able cus­tomer rela­tion­ships,” she says.

The new title should reflect con­trol over cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and renewed influ­ence on the prod­uct roadmap, accord­ing to Poehler. “By man­ag­ing all inter­ac­tions between the com­pa­ny and the cus­tomer and orches­trat­ing an expe­ri­ence that adds val­ue through­out the cus­tomer life cycle, mar­ket­ing will be able to grow the brand and dri­ve prof­it in a mean­ing­ful and sus­tain­able way,” she con­cludes.

No: clarity in a time of uncertainty is vital

Organ­i­sa­tions should be cau­tious about chang­ing the title of CMO title, unless it comes with an authen­tic change to the role or remit,” says Emma Robert­son, chief exec­u­tive of Engine Trans­for­ma­tion, a dig­i­tal and data con­sul­tan­cy. The CMO role’s func­tion with­in an organ­i­sa­tion is large­ly well defined, she argues, and this clar­i­ty shouldn’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed, espe­cial­ly in a peri­od of dis­rup­tion. “In our expe­ri­ence, effec­tive CMOs are the con­sis­tent and com­mit­ted voice of the cus­tomer, pre­vent­ing organ­i­sa­tions from being too inward look­ing.”

The CMO role is a rel­a­tive­ly new one at Voda­fone Busi­ness. “Pre­vi­ous­ly, mar­ket­ing was sit­u­at­ed in our dif­fer­ent lines of busi­ness, sales and strat­e­gy, but there was a real­i­sa­tion that we need­ed a mar­ket­ing organ­i­sa­tion which could take a more holis­tic approach, real­ly get to under­stand cus­tomer needs and have a leader who can take a seat in the board­room,” says Iris Mei­jer, the company’s CMO.

The chal­lenge pre­sent­ed to the com­pa­ny by COVID-19 has val­i­dat­ed the deci­sion, she says.  “Many organ­i­sa­tions have had to rip up plans, answer new cus­tomer con­cerns and adapt their brand pur­pose overnight. This over­haul could not have hap­pened with­out mar­keters steer­ing the way,” says Mei­jer.

Rather than change the title or rethink the role, some mar­keters argue that CMOs and boards need to get back to basics. “A num­ber of reports have iden­ti­fied CMOs have had the scope of what they are respon­si­ble for sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced to the point that they are increas­ing­ly only respon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” says Dar­ren Sav­age, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer, at Trib­al World­wide Lon­don, a dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence agency. “The CMO role should be refanged with its lost respon­si­bil­i­ties and expand­ed to include inter­nal organ­i­sa­tion­al ele­ments around inno­va­tion.” 

There’s already evi­dence this is hap­pen­ing. Tom Pep­per, senior direc­tor of LinkedIn Mar­ket­ing Solu­tions for UK, Ire­land and Israel, points to recent research from the com­pa­ny that sug­gests near­ly half of UK mar­keters (49 per cent) have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rede­fine their roles as a con­se­quence of COVID-19’s impact on their busi­ness. “I’ve heard from mul­ti­ple senior mar­ket­ing clients that they feel they now have a seat at the board table, which wasn’t always the case,” he says.

Are today’s CMOs really chief growth officers?

Adobe Inter­na­tion­al pro­vides an exam­ple of how the CMO role is evolv­ing with­out any need for a change of title. CMO Alvaro Del Pozo says: “Our teams are respon­si­ble for more than just pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns; they are the stew­ards of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, ensur­ing every sin­gle touch­point from our dig­i­tal chan­nels across web and social, through to events and even the prod­ucts them­selves, is con­sis­tent, tight­ly inte­grat­ed and deliv­ers against the ever-increas­ing expec­ta­tions of our cus­tomers.”

Amelia Stir­ling, chief mar­kets offi­cer at law firm Burges Salmon, agrees. “I’ve seen a greater focus on the whole cus­tomer jour­ney, which requires the CMO to lead col­lab­o­ra­tion across all areas of the busi­ness, ensur­ing all the touch­points con­tribute in a mean­ing­ful and con­sis­tent way to the over­all expe­ri­ence,” she says.

Accord­ing to Michael Frohlich, chief exec­u­tive of Ogilvy UK, chang­ing the title or allo­cat­ing the CMO’s respon­si­bil­i­ties to oth­er depart­ments can lead to siloed think­ing. “Mar­ket­ing needs to be woven into the core of the busi­ness, requir­ing a more col­lab­o­ra­tive and joined-up role,” he says. “A deep under­stand­ing of the needs of the busi­ness the CMO works in and how com­bin­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties to achieve greater impact is where val­ue is to be found.”

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