4 types of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) or C-level marketing professionals

THIS IS WORK IN PROGRESS. I have written it for my current and former students who might have time to read…any feedback is welcome!

***

My experience teaching marketing to executives and as a consultant to firms of many different sectors shows me that people have very different expectations about the subject. What is marketing exactly? Isn’t it marketing just advertising and communication? If they do not have experience or studies in marketing, as it is many times the case, they probably look at the top executive inside their firms having the “marketing” term into his or her title and try to figure out what this guy does. This might generate even more confusion.

Data also shows that CEOs are, many times, unsatisfied with their Chief Marketing Officers. Definitely more than with their CFOs or COOs. Hence, CMOs are among the C-level executives with shorter tenures.

I think that part of the reason why this happens is because of the holistic view of marketing. Marketing is a discipline intrinsically linked to strategy design but also to sales and execution. Marketing is, David Packard said, “too important to be left to the marketing department”, so many C-level executives take marketing-related decisions. Marketing is also very contextual; different industries do different types of marketing. Hence, people with very heterogeneous profiles, previous careers, skills and personalities come to a CMO-type position. If CEOs do not understand this, they might promote or hire the wrong person, or create false expectations that will not be met at the end. 

Also, the CMO term is elusive, because in many cases most of the marketing responsibilities of a CMO fall into the CEO or among some old or newly coined C-level positions. A search on my Linkedin connections having the marketing title into it delivered many titles, such as Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. Other companies have not used the “Chief” term into the title, either because these managers are not in the management committee and report to a CMO or because of the business tradition in the industry or country of avoiding "title-inflation". Titles such as Marketing Director, Director of Marketing and Communications, Director of Marketing and Innovation, Sales and Marketing Director, International Sales and Marketing Director, Business Development Director, Business Development and Innovation Director might many times actually have the same responsibilities and organizational position as so-called CMOs in other companies.

But at the end two are the main elements of a CMO’s responsibility: strategy and sales. Hence, we could think on four well differentiated CMO profiles (the names for each of the profiles are mine, so please propose fancier ones :-)

THE SUPPORTER. The supporter is perhaps the simplest and most common CMO in many small and medium sized companies, especially in the B2B sector. Actually, this is perhaps not a CMO at all, for its lack of strategic vision and P&L responsibility, which makes him not a very attractive member of the management committee. Supporters have traditionally been responsible for studying the market and creating marketing content and executing a communication and presence plan (advertising, emails, white papers, fairs, etc.) to help the sales organization. The digital revolution has made supporters responsible for the development of many digital assets and tactics. Some of these assets and tactics -like inbound marketing, SEO, SEM…- have actually changed the importance of some of these professionals, as they are now asked to generate high quality leads.

THE REVENUE GENERATOR.  Revenue generators are responsible for top-line growth but have a more limited responsibility in designing the firm’s strategy. In some firms revenue generators are called CMOs, but in others they are actually the VP of Sales, country managers or general managers of a business unit. And they may have supporters working for them or at the same level in the organization. However, being responsible for top-line growth usually makes them much more respected at the C-level suite. In many firms revenue generators are those responsible for the sales organization. But these are also seeing a substantial change in the content of their job. They now have to deal with multiple channels, as a direct salesforce loses effectiveness in many sectors, and have to leverage the power of marketing technology (martech), while at the same time creating new generation experiences. Actually, a great percentage of the IT investment of companies today are initiated by revenue generators. However, aligning IT with the business is always a big challenge for these professionals.

THE STRATEGY FORMULATOR. These are managers with usually no direct sales responsibility, but with a higher focus on the customer, the trends, the brand and, many times, new product development. They might also participate in the design of the marketing plan, but have no direct responsibility on its implementation. While this might seem at first an incomplete CMO, I feel that many companies underestimate the importance of understanding customers and positioning the brand and hence do a very poor job here. And this is so important and could be so complex, that revenue generators or traditional supporting roles might not know how to do it well. Chances are, however, that strategy formulators will not be taken seriously in many organizations, especially when their capacity to generate top line growth is not easy to demonstrate.

THE DRIVER of GROWTH. Drivers of growth are CMOs with the entire set of marketing responsibilities. This is actually the role that many CEOs play, having other type of executives for different stages of the marketing planning process. CMOs having this role must speak the language CFOs understand, and have to learn to delegate and coordinate with many other managers.  It is definitely quite a challenge to find the right person for this role.

Finally, think of the entire set of stages of the marketing planning process: analyzing forces of change (the 5Cs: Customers, Competitors, Collaborators, Context and Company), determining the ambition (targeting, positioning and goals), marketing decisions (illustrated by the 4Ps model) and results. Each of these stages requires someone, besides the CEO, to take the ultimate responsibility for its design and execution. The following table summarizes the main responsibilities of these types of so-called CMOs along the marketing planning process: