The Key to CMO Impact? Bolster All Dimensions of the Person Behind the Title

By: Jenny Rooney

2020 was always expected to be an inflection point.

In the 10 years leading up to 2020, marketers, thought leaders and journalists alike waxed philosophical about how the turn of the decade — with a buzzy double number to boot — would usher in a transformed world for CMOs: fully digitally enabled organizations, DEI and sustainability as completely foundational to all business practices, and CMOs squarely entrenched in the C-suite as true business drivers deserving of a seat at the boardroom and open-office corner tables. The year held promise.

In the end, 2020 was indeed an inflection point. The COVID-19 pandemic, racial-justice movements, as well as ongoing political, economic and global turmoil, have all upended — in positive and negative ways — so much about our culture, our world, our communities, our businesses, and, yes, our brands and brand leadership. Not to mention new technologies that are transforming marketing both internally, in terms of how work gets done, and externally, in terms of how consumers and customers engage and transact with brands and businesses (looking at you, metaverse/Web3/NFTs).

Impact for CMOs today requires access to resources and a community that support, empower and promote them, not just as professionals, but as people. That will drive not only individual performance, but, as a consequence, the performance of the enterprise—borrowing the very expertise and toolkit applied to business-strategy consulting.

Let's look at where we are now, particularly in the area of supercharged digital transformation that the pandemic spurred, which speaks to the new environments in which CMOs find themselves: According to Gallup, 58 percent of American workers report working remotely always or sometimes to avoid COVID-19. Gallup research also indicates that a quarter of all U.S. workers — 26 percent — would now ideally prefer to continue working remotely, if given a choice, when society fully reopens.

Meanwhile, eMarketer research shows that in the wake of retailers' shifts to online and consumers' comfort and ease with digital engagement, e-commerce sales will continue to grow robustly, reaching 23.6 percent of total retail sales by 2025 versus 11 percent in 2019.

And according to the latest Gartner CMO Spend Survey, “the pandemic has catalyzed digital business initiatives as we adapt to the demands of employees, customers and other stakeholders, who were forced into new digital options that they have now come to favor.”

There has been a massive impact on marketing spend, of course, given inflation and economic woes: “Marketing budgets as a proportion of company revenue [are] at their lowest point in the history of the survey, down from 11% in 2020 to 6.4% in 2021,” according to Gartner. “The annual snapshot from the survey may give the impression that there’s been a dramatic one-off cut to budgets. However, data from various surveys in 2020 and into 2021 indicates rounds of cuts to budgets, applied even to businesses that experienced a positive business outcome from the COVID-19 pandemic. As in previous financial crises, the enterprise has been quick to cut marketing budgets but slow to restore.”

Also, with business shifts, CEOs and CFOs have made customer-experience and digital commerce “enterprisewide strategic priorities, rather than marketing-owned programs,” according to Gartner.

New demands placed on CMOs require them to, as Gartner explains, “rebuild the marketing engine for flexibility in a changing environment, reassert marketing’s digital orchestrator role to avoid further loss of influence, and execute adaptive strategies that prove marketing’s value to the enterprise.”

Additionally, according to the Gartner CMO Strategic Priorities Survey 2020-2021, 95 percent of CMOs believe that brands should take the lead in finding solutions to major societal and cultural issues. That's become a vital responsibility, not only of brands, but of chief marketers today.

All are shifts and demands are foundational, and all not entirely new—but further push them into directions in which they have been already headed.

Transformational Times

Of course, these are only a few of the many ways that the world has transformed and the changes affecting CMOs' responsibilities. All of that change has left them facing a very new reality, as marketers, as business leaders — and, fundamentally, as people.

The realities of today have caused CMOs to grapple with more complexity, more challenges, more choices and more opportunities than ever before — and not just in the specifics of their jobs. They helm dispersed marketing organizations and manage brands with dispersed customers. Purpose is priority.

And virtual is now reality. Home is office. While CMOs are cautiously reassessing which events and conferences to attend, business travel is still largely down, screen time is up.?

Change is constant. Look no further than headlines announcing CMO shifts—even “the CMO is dead”—and often-concerning tenure trends—that oft-cited Spencer Stuart study puts CMO tenure at 40 months.?

Access to diverse and far-flung talent has never been greater. Work's future is today. Consumers are at once within and beyond reach. Families and friends have become both more and less accessible, depending on circumstances, as colleagues and teams are tied together with technology. Life is short, and health and wellbeing loom large.

Let's face it: Being a CMO is exciting, multifaceted, inspiring — and tough. CMOs we have queried have told us that it can be lonely at the top, that there's never enough time to be able to meet all demands, and that balancing internal and external expectations is daunting. At the same time, our newly changed world has them rethinking their own priorities.?

"COVID proved that I am more than my job," one CMO told us. Meanwhile, others have remarked at how having clarity and understanding of personal strengths, not just as chief marketers but as effective business leaders, has become paramount.

Through it all, CMOs have remained some of the most driven, creative, innovative, passionate and thoughtful corporate executives — and powerful assets in the C-suite and on boards. They're highly visible, they speak for their brands, they have deep knowledge of their consumers and customers, and they can have tremendous impact on business transformation.

But in this time of change and greater complexity, what resources do they need, themselves, to navigate the now? We all know (or at least talk a lot about) how authentic and human leadership is necessary and beneficial in so many ways. But how do we get there? How can and should CMOs be supported? How do they find balance as people who, not unlike the people who report to them, are also trying to navigate new work norms, perhaps new jobs, and even new dynamics in personal lives?

CMOs are forever on a quest to understand and serve their consumers. Just as they are able to do that, and just as they are able to track the impact of their latest ad campaign, they also should be able to self-assess, tracking the impact they have both within and outside the specifics of their title.

Sure, role-specific data abounds. Discussions at panels and conferences deconstruct functional details.

What CMOs need is data that provides clarity into themselves as people — how they work, where they can and should invest time and energy, and how best to bolster their individual strengths and be supported, satisfied, and empowered in all aspects of their lives. That, coupled with a community of peers who understand, who have been there and are doing that, is a potent combination of much-needed foundation for our "now" generation of marketing leaders.

Forward Momentum

CMOs have told us that what is so critical for them is this vision, sightlines into who they are, their personal strengths, and a report card that provides visibility — intelligence — around how all of the aspects of their lives do and don't fit together, where they could level up and where they could dial down.

To that end, we have created a bespoke diagnostic that identifies individual strengths, thought-leadership platform, social-insights analysis, and CMO archetypes analysis developed in concert with a team of academics, ex-practitioners and industry-association heads. From there we pair individuals with a personal advisor for 24/7 access to support, more data, access, resources, business schools—a long list of powerful assets.

That always-on advisory, coupled with our unique, invitation-only, curated community of C-level marketers, with events, gatherings, VIP guests from adjacent industries, and innovative, outside-marketing thinkers, creators and changemakers, provides an unprecedented level of clarity for each CMO in our orbit—which enables them to thrive and drive themselves, their businesses, and culture and society forward.

We have identified five dimensions within which CMOs can have and therefore assess their individual impact:?self, company, industry, people and culture and society. Insight into them and where they fall on each will enable CMOs to develop a blueprint for strength-building, satisfaction and success moving forward.

To be successful, not just as a professional but as an individual, CMOs need to balance these five key dimensions.

Self

This dimension incorporates assessment of hard and soft skills, certainly, but also movement among roles inside and outside companies; board seats; global experience; engagement with universities and students; and even things like time management, balance and navigating responsibilities of personal lives.

Company

The company dimension includes financial metrics, of course, but also reporting structure, marketing budget, involvement in strategic business decisions and creation and stewardship of internal culture and purpose priorities.

Industry

This component assesses public profile and reputation, personal brand, thought leadership, specificity of focus, and involvement in industry organizations, for example.

People

The people dimension is about nurturing teams and talent that thrives in and outside the company, the ability to access, attract and retain people, the ability to create environments in which people want to work, and critical alignment and collaboration in the C-suite.

Culture and Society

The pandemic and economic and global strife has shone a spotlight on inequity, sustainability and supply-chain issues, humanitarian efforts, and more. CMO for the last decade have assumed the mantel of internal culture steward, working closely with CHROs, as well as that of brand purpose, mission and influence. That expectation is only becoming more pronounced, and this dimension addresses that.

All of this perspective and insight, gleaned from leadership assessments as well as from sector, social-presence, C-suite, direct-report and peer-feedback data, enable CMOs to thrive personally so that they can thrive professionally. It's the radical clarity that's so needed now; it's individual intelligence.

As I wrote in a recent LinkedIn post, one size doesn’t fit all. Just as there are multiple definitions of CMO per company, there are many, many people who hold the CMO title but who are truly unique individuals with distinct and different skill sets, aptitudes, mindsets, educational backgrounds, career experience, passions, and more. Being able to identify, define and articulate those individual strengths and then assess best fit and highest potential impact on a brand and business is key, now more than ever, given how much exponential complexity there is, in not just the function of marketing but in business, among consumers, and in culture and society. But the power potential for CMOs now (or equivalent title) is exciting. They reframe the practice as they live it, through their actions. Because we should be way past mere talk about this at this point.

Personally, I'm tired of these articles and research that cast CMOs in a defensive light. C-level marketers need to recapture their swagger, their gravitas, by owning a true and real new story and then living it. And choosing next positions wisely, ones that align with their values, their strengths, their assets, their expertise and growth capabilities—not the other way around.

CMOs, find that North Star and unlock the vision necessary to take the next step, the holistic clarity to forge a new path, lead with conviction, enthusiasm and energy, make effective decisions, and flourish. Use this moment to identify what's possible, what's meaningful, and what's worth not just your time and energy, but — yourself.