What Does It Take To Be A Winning CMO?

It has been well-publicized that CMO tenure is one of the shortest life spans among C-level executives. With the rate of change accelerating, and many categories reaching a mature, slower growth stage, how do CMOs transition from “survive to thrive” mode. Here are some key insights to consider.

Listening to CMOs recently during Advertising Week NYC XI, it became clear the issues keeping CMOs up at night include (1) keeping up with the pace of (consumers) changing behaviors; (2) the rapid transition of marketing to digital and mobile channels; (3) required investments in new marketing technologies; (4) delivering exceptional customer experience in an omni-channel world; and (5) finding the new (organization) talent required…the needs are significant and expensive.

Dana Anderson, new CMO at Mondelez, stated these are the “new marketing basics”…requiring transparency, openness to collaboration internally, and listening to everyone’s POV to develop and deliver integrated solutions. Brian Jones, CMO at Dell, added “it’s about the right organization structure…and the skills required are changing…including consideration of “build vs. buy” options, and also a realignment of the right agencies/partners. Lisa Cochrane, SVP Marketing at Allstate, added “change is happening faster so it’s essential to be nimble to stay on top of priorities including improving customer experience, launching new products and acquiring new marketing technologies.”

Each CMO indicated their company presently spends between 25-30% of their marketing budgets in digital…and all expect this to grow to more than 50% within 5 years. Accenture Digital just published their 2014 global CMO survey of over 550 senior marketers in 11 countries and spanning 10 industries…and 37% of participants projected digital would represent 75%+ and mobile 50%+ of marketing budgets within 5 years. So this underscores the rapid pace of change and certainly confirms digital marketing will become the dominant channel shortly.

So how do you become a “winning CMO” in the face of these rapid digital changes?

Here are 5 key steps according to Accenture Digital:

1. Lead and transform the marketing role as a digital perspective transforms the enterprise.
2. Embrace the full omni-channel customer experience.
3. Integrate channels with real-time analytics and then act on the insights.
4. Invest in agile technologies and cloud-based services.
5. Re-orient the marketing operating model and integrate new talent to harness digital innovation.

Each of these 5 steps are challenging and require significant changes both within the marketing organization as well as collaboration on an enterprise-wide level. We are certainly hearing this from our CMO clients as they reshape their organizations to a digital- and mobile-first mindset, increase investments in analytics, new technologies, and new people in order to provide leadership in transforming omni-channel customer experience. Digital domain expertise is essential, however, it is becoming the “price of entry.” In all our assignments, our clients are asking for digital strategy, customer experience, and marketing talent with the leadership skills to collaborate and drive change on an enterprise-wide level influencing LOB teams as well as corporate staff functional areas.

This reminds me of previous studies we have seen, and reported upon, where the differentiator between successful and unsuccessful leaders was the ability to implement change successfully across large, matrix organizations. Strategic skills are only the starting point…60-70% of the success (or failure) of marketing programs rests in the execution. That’s why we look for tangible examples of specific measurable results produced by executives in previous assignments.

Are you a winning CMO? What areas do you need to embrace more proactively in order to lead marketing transformation most powerfully?