The CMO Role Isn’t Dying, It’s Just Going Through A Metamorphosis

To borrow a quote attributed to Mark Twain, “The report of my death has been greatly exaggerated.” The demise of the CMO role has been written about a great deal recently, but the reality is that now is a great time to be a capable marketing leader. According to Richard Sanderson, leader of Spencer Stuart’s marketing, sales & communications officer practice in North America, the role isn’t dying, but it is changing dramatically.

“The marketing function has gone through enormous expansion of scope in the last decade. The ‘Modern CMO’ is expected to be a brand visionary, a product marketing guru, and also an expert in new capabilities around data science, martech, and life cycle marketing,” said Sanderson. “The reality is that very few people can do it all, but those that can are increasingly in demand and have significant strategic and commercial impact on their organizations. Hence an unrivalled opportunity to step up into a ‘CMO Plus’ role.” While these roles may sometimes be entitled chief customer officer or chief growth officer, it is becoming common that the expanded role is called chief marketing and [fill in the expanded scope] officer. Let’s explore five of these CMO Plus archetypes.

Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer – CMOs often play a co-producer role of corporate strategy (read more about that here), but in the case of Ashley Kramer, the role has been formalized in her scope. As chief marketing and strategy officer for GitLab, she guides the dev ops software company’s product-led growth strategy. Kramer explained, “I think modern CMOs are starting to take new and unique approaches on how to use data and analytics as signals, to really understand how to drive the organization in the right direction, into more of a growth mindset. And that's everything from product marketing to brand awareness.” She attributed her ability to lead strategy to her unique background in software engineering and product management. She elaborated, “I've had all of the different roles that we sell to. That leads to me having deep empathy. I've been a software developer, so I deeply understand the pain points that they have to go through when they don't have a platform like GitLab, when it comes to everything from checking in code, getting it into production, and working with product managers. I've been in their seat. And that is really, really helpful because, strategically, I can think about what they need and guide my team in that way.”

Chief Marketing and Experience Officer – One of the major new areas of focus for many CMOs is improving the customer experience, given how important it is for building a brand and enhancing loyalty. Mickey Mericle recently took on the job of chief marketing and experience officer at Mattress Firm and she sees the two disciplines tightly connected. She explained, “I think the synergy is ultimately the connection point of the customer. Marketing relies on knowing the customer from an audience perspective, gaining insights into their buying behavior. And then the customer has an experience beyond marketing. I think of those two as customer connections, one is outbound, understanding and talking to them. And the other is follow-through, making sure that everything after they've come into our store or visit our website is delivered. Whether it’s physical delivery, problem-solving after the fact, or it's returns, all of these are connected to the customer.” She continued. “A big part of my job in owning marketing and customer experience is bringing the data to the people who do own each touchpoint. Our supply chain leader is awesome and is looking at his delivery metrics. He is looking at on-time deliveries, at how many are delivered within the window promised. What he doesn't necessarily understand, and I bring that to him, is the impact of that on the customer’s perception of us.”

Chief Marketing and Digital Experience Officer – As marketing and experiences have become more digital, the role of chief digital experience officer (CDXO) is sometimes merging with the chief marketing officer. That was the case at healthcare company Providence where Shweta Ponnappa recently became chief marketing and digital experience officer after previously serving as CDXO. “The way I see marketing supporting brand right now is driving the brand story further and delivering personalized experiences. These digital touchpoints, how we bring the brand promise life, that's key to me. The Providence promise is, ‘Know me, care for me, ease my way.’ That speaks volumes to how innovation can bring that promise to life. So, if we can relieve friction in their digital journeys, and there's some hard journeys that patients have, that's how we bring the brand alive.” She added, “Marketing at Providence has stopped being just about brand, it's become about driving incremental attributable growth. A lot of this growth comes through digital exploration and digital commerce such as finding our physicians online and making appointments. If we look at all of that under the digital commerce umbrella, it just makes sense for digital experience and marketing to live together.”

Chief Marketing and Category Officer – Many companies are seeking to strengthen the connection between marketing and their commercial operations. That is certainly the case at Chobani where Meredith Madden was recently elevated to the role of chief marketing and category officer. She elaborated, “I started category management for the company 10 years ago. It has been very sales-focused, data-, analytics- and insights-driven. We brought over shopper marketing into my function – shopper marketing in a lot of places sits on the sales side. They're the day-to-day customer marketers. There wasn't as much interaction with our brand and creative teams which I thought was really weird.” Her dissatisfaction with the disconnect eventually led to her adding the chief marketing officer to her category leadership duties. She explained, “Everything felt backwards, and I just continued adding on parts of marketing [to my responsibilities]. I guess it was because I had strong leadership qualities and I could see different teams and the things that weren't working and could help make them work better together.” She continued, “We were so siloed! And we're physically siloed in our office because there's a brick wall, with marketing and creative on one side and the operational and category teams on the other side. So breaking down the wall metaphorically, because it's a load bearing wall, was one of the first jumping-off points that we needed to get these teams closer together.”

Chief Marketing and Sustainability Officer – Another hot topic at companies today is managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and it is impacting CMOs. Lisa Johnston recently expanded her role to become chief marketing and sustainability officer at Aveva to guide her company’s ESG strategy. Johnston explained, “Sustainability became part of my role because I’m a member of the C-suite which looks at risks and opportunities. Two years ago I observed that the topic of ESG was both an opportunity and a risk. It’s an opportunity because Aveva is in the great position of having solutions that help companies reduce their environmental footprint. We provide industrial software that helps manufacturers produce what they produce more efficiently, reduce waste, reduce energy consumption and measure what is going up their stacks. The risk was that we had no plan two years ago.” She elaborated that the ESG plan was not only being asked for by customers and investors, but most importantly, by employees. “They were asking ‘What’s our purpose? Why are we here? I see we could be helping the world, why aren’t we?’.” She sees great synergies between her marketing and sustainability roles. “When an organization builds its brand purpose and brand narrative, that helps tell the story to employees and to the world about why we exist. Marketing is responsible for articulating the why and for keeping it current. There is a pull in the world of sustainability from employees who want to understand our purpose. Being a purpose-driven company often falls in the hands of marketing, as I think it needs to.”

Casey Carey recently joined Gtmhub as CMO and has gotten involved with ESG, talent recruiting and other “CMO Plus” issues. But he acknowledges that a CMO doesn’t need control in order to make an impact. He said, “I'm a big fan of leadership without authority at all levels of the organization, and especially at the executive level. You shouldn't have to have the boxes underneath your box to make an impact and influence the organization. Ultimately, I think organizations are evolving in a way that they are much more networked models than they are hierarchical models. So leadership without authority is a super important skill for any executive, but maybe even more so for CMOs. I think a lot of these things like employer brand, ESG and experience could make sense for your business depending on the talent and leadership, but I don't think there's a single answer to any of those.”