The chief marketing officer is at risk of becoming an endangered species. Just last month, Compare the Market followed Starbucks, Etsy and UPS in scrapping its CMO role and distributing the duties among senior leaders – a step already taken in recent years by Hyatt Hotels, Johnson & Johnson, Uber and Lyft.
But writing off the CMO role altogether might be premature. Earlier this year, Gap reinstated its CMO role. In 2019, Coca-Cola brought back its global chief marketer position two years after axing the role while McDonald’s also saw the errors of its ways in 2020 and brought back its global CMO role a year after scrapping the position. Elsewhere, Avon recently promoted its CMO to CEO.
Back to Compare the Market, meanwhile, and there’s more to its recent announcement than first meets the eye. While it has scrapped the CMO title, it has replaced it with two distinct roles.
Looked at one way, the company has lost an influential leader with a finger on the pulse of consumer expectations who can navigate disruption while also driving growth. But, on the other hand, it has greatly expanded marketing’s C-suite impact.
Compare the Market now has two marketing experts – Mark Vile, former CMO and now chief brand officer, and Tom Wallis, former chief revenue officer and now chief customer officer – in the C-suite instead of one.
The CMO role is as crucial as ever
Differing approaches to the CMO role are playing out against a backdrop of continuing upheaval and profound transformation in the marketing landscape, meaning scrutiny of marketing and its place in the boardroom will likely continue.
The challenges facing marketers have multiplied significantly over the past decade with a proliferation of channels dividing consumers’ attention.
At the same time, procurement departments have put marketing expenditure in the spotlight and, combined with the recent economic turmoil, dwindling budgets have yet to recover from the post-pandemic slump.
Adding to the pressure, the CMO’s role as the voice of the consumer in the boardroom has never been more critical.
The CMO’s role in driving transformation
There are a number of critical transformations that businesses must embark on over the coming decade – switching to a circular economy, to a carbon-free future and to an AI economy while also responding to a rapidly changing society.
All of these transformations require marketing’s influence. This is because of the importance of building brands that are deeply in tune with consumers as they are impacted by change. To build such brands, CMOs and board-level marketers must get closer to the business and to the C-suite.
They must learn to speak the language of the CEO, a language grounded in data, and they must clearly deliver the CEO’s vision for how and where they can add the most value to the business and deliver for customers.
Get this right and the rewards are significant. CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategy are twice as likely to have a greater than 5% annual growth compared to their peers, according to research from McKinsey.
How Philips used marketing to transform
Marketing’s role in business transformation can be powerfully demonstrated by electronics giant Philips. Its campaign to promote reconditioned products forms a core part of its effort to have 25% of revenue generated by refurbished products by 2025.
The company’s high level of ecommerce returns was a major business cost and contributor to landfill. By encouraging purchase of refurbished goods – which it positioned as “better than new” – it elevated refurbished to premium and prompted a rethink of consumption habits.
The campaign’s success was threefold. It helped reduce landfill waste and carbon emissions, reduced the needs for new parts and helped Philips improve its sustainability performance. It also won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for creative business transformation last month.
Why marketing isn’t dead
Any organisation which sets out to redesign its marketing must ask itself some penetrating questions about how to flourish on the frontiers of change.
This means applying the fundamentals of marketing to society’s transformations, whether these are technological shifts, socio-economic changes in the audience, climate change or sustainability issues. By doing this, marketing will take a central role within the business.
Make no mistake, the CMO role will continue to come under scrutiny as priorities and structures evolve but marketing remains critical to business success.
The CMO is far from endangered, even if those performing this function do so under different titles. Companies must adapt and reinvent their brands to stay relevant and thrive. The future of marketing lies in driving business transformation, integrating with business strategy, and meeting the fast-changing needs of consumers and the market – whatever title the leader may have.
Dan Southern is managing director of marketing consultancy Frontier
