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While CEOs and CMOs are increasingly on the same page as regards a company’s overarching goals, many chief executives are still skeptical about the ability of CMOs to really move the needle when it comes to tangible business results.
That’s the conclusion of the fourth annual edition of a survey from Boathouse surveying 150 CEOs from leading US companies.
The degree to which CMOs appear to put the CEO and Board first has risen markedly since the first edition of the report. In the first edition, 56 percent of CEOs said they thought their CMO was motivated mainly by personal success, with just 44 percent judging them to be more committed to the CEO/Board. By this year’s survey the number focused on the CEO/Board jumped to 76 percent, with just 24 percent prioritizing personal success.
CMOs also appear to be doing a better job of reading the room when it comes to the political dynamics of the Boards they serve. In the second edition of the study, 63 percent of the respondents said their CMO understood the dynamics of the Board—a number that jumped to 82 percent this year.
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The survey respondents, for the most part, said their CMOs deserved rather high marks, with 71 percent saying they would give their CMO either an “A” or a “B” for their job performance. However, only 24 percent received the top grade. In addition, just 19 percent of CEOs indicated trust in the “growth-driving ability” of their CMOs.
About half the respondents (49 percent) still don’t give their CMOs a key role in creating and shaping a company’s strategy, instead relegating them to executing and operationalizing those strategies.
Plus, the high regard in which many CEOs seem to regard their top marketers doesn’t seem to be extending down to the team that works for them. Nearly 63 percent of respondents rated their company’s marketing capability as just “average” or “underperforming”—a big spike from the 50 percent recorded in last year’s survey.
Almost nine out of 10 of the CEOs surveyed (87 percent) said that the transformation strategies they have in place for their companies have not fully succeeded. Some of the top concerns they voiced were employee morale, culture and reputational risk.
So what problems do CEOs want their CMOs to solve as way to move the transformation process along? “Drive sales and/or grow market share” (perhaps not surprisingly) was the top choice, with 57 percent of the CEOs listing it. Other top priorities included maintaining and/or growing the company’s customer base, improving its brand/reputation, differentiating their company from the competition and better serving customers.
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