There are a lot of headlines about the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), some alarmist and others optimistic. What’s clear is that the function—when led with an eye on the end customer and the business—is increasingly important to future growth. However, it’s becoming more common for Heads of Marketing to sit below the C-suite, leaving them demoted from the decision-making table and often detached from enterprise strategy.
This directly puts growth at risk. Marketers’ deep understanding of customers and what motivates their behaviors allows them to “see around corners” on behalf of an organization and position their business more competitively. But too often they are turned to as storytellers rather than drivers of corporate strategy and revenue.
It doesn’t help that the traditional Four Ps—product, price, place and promotion—have increasingly been separated and distributed across functions. Sometimes this is in the form of a “Marketing +” role, but too often, this can leave marketing leaders with fewer levers for impact and the CMO appearing less strategically important, both internally and externally. That’s an expensive oversight.
The Directive: Connecting the Dots
A study by McKinsey & Company found that CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategies are twice as likely as their peers to have more than 5% annual growth. As Scott Braun, Chief Growth Officer at SimpliSafe and former Chief Marketing Officer at Drizly shared, “Marketing can drive value from its unique perch at the intersection of the consumer and competition, and it’s this intersection where breakthrough opportunities often exist. Marketing has an opportunity to be proactive and connect the dots… Where is the consumer and competition heading, and how do we win and drive growth in this context?”
Melissa Hobley, Global CMO of Tinder, was able to bring this to life by centering on insights, including where Gen Z consumers were consuming their content—TikTok and YouTube versus traditional media—to pivot how and where the company engaged with Tinder’s customer base and deliver positive impact on business performance.
However, this mindset can’t benefit the business in the same way if the CMO is not in the room where high-level decisions are made. That said, we also believe marketers need to earn their place.
So, what’s a CMO to do? In short, they must connect their knowledge of the customer back to the strategic direction of the enterprise—and bring along their key stakeholders. A few areas where partnership is particularly important:
- With the CFO: Do CFOs care about brand awareness? At some level. But to get them on board, marketers should turn to their keen ability to understand and tailor their message to the specific audience: for CFO’s, it’s about data and results.
- With R&D and Supply Chain: Bringing the voice of the customer to functions that can at times be a step removed from the marketplace helps strengthen the customer orientation of the entire enterprise—especially if the CMO is commercially oriented and wired for growth.
- With Product Leaders: Product and Marketing are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is Brand. The relationship between marketers and product leaders creates a crucial feedback loop, ensuring a consistency in strategy, message and audience through what you sell and how you sell.
When the CFO Can Help
At the 13th Kellogg Marketing Leadership Summit earlier this year, speakers and attendees discussed the strategic role of the CMO and the criticality of operating with this holistic approach to speak the language of the business. At the summit, Jim Stengel, a veteran CMO, related his experience connecting his role to the larger corporate strategy when serving as CMO at Proctor & Gamble.
Stengel wanted marketing spending to be tied to results that could in turn steer corporate strategy and spending. But he didn’t feel his team had the skillset to make that happen or the understanding as to whether “the money was working really hard for us,” something he wanted to be accountable for going forward.
He approached his CFO as a peer and asked for help. The result: he secured the placement of a director of finance on his team, and marketing was able to deliver a first-line view as to whether spending was generating desired results. This approach took marketing off the sidelines and placed it at the heart of strategic planning for the company. It was a key experience that showed Stengel how valuable a connection between the CMO and the rest of the C-suite can be. “I didn’t want marketing to be a black box,” Stengel clarified. “I wanted to be clear we’re in it together.”
Formulating a Cross-Functional Partnership
Similarly, when Jenny Lewis, CMO at The Knot Worldwide, joined the company there was a lack of understanding of the role that marketing played in driving business growth. Lewis called for a reset. At her first board meeting, she shared a “state of union” on where marketing was from various angles (acquisition performance, customer lifecycle/loyalty, cultural dynamics, competitive positioning, etc.), and a 3-year transformation plan to address these opportunities.
She articulated upfront what was going to be needed not just from her team, but her peer functions/leaders, to deliver growth. This was a key moment for the business, creating transparency about the way forward and a sense of partnership in the approach. Tim Chi, CEO at The Knot, confirmed Lewis’ impact stressing “at their best, CMOs combine vision, strategic thinking and a people-first approach to ultimately serve as a unifying force across departments, ensuring alignment toward shared goals.”
CMO as Unifier
Done right, the CMO sees beyond traditional confines and fosters vital alliances within the C-suite—they see the strategic picture, connect operational dots, inspire their teams, bring along the organization and its customers, and ultimately drive results. Yet, despite the success stories, many CMOs still struggle to break out of the narrowly defined roles that limit their influence on business strategy.
In many companies, CMOs behave in ways that fail to spotlight their strategic possibilities. In the McKinsey research, they sorted marketing leader behavior into three archetypes: Friend (good relationship with 1-2 of C-suite, especially CEO, with limited responsibility for growth and customer experience); Loner (limited relationship with C-suite and focused primarily on marketing communications); and Unifier (strong partnership with key players in C-suite to drive growth). The study found the vast majority of marketers are either Friends or Loners. Only 24% are Unifiers.
CMOs must address this disconnect head-on. Marketing has much to contribute to strategy, but marketing leaders can’t wait to be consulted or invited to speak up. Instead, CMOs must earn a seat at the table by connecting the voice of the customer to the strategic goals and KPIs of the enterprise—not in a silo, but by bringing others in the organization along. Getting this wrong leaves businesses detached from their customers and leaves money and results on the table. Getting it right allows marketing leaders to shape the direction of their organizations in a way that benefits the customer and delivers higher performance in the long term.
Pree Rao is Co-leader of Egon Zehnder’s Global Marketing and Sales practice; Martha Williams is a Consultant at Egon Zehnder.
Network
