Study: CEOs Believe the Performance of Their CMOs Is Improving

CMO tenure is shorter than ever, but that might mean that chief marketing officers are doing their jobs more efficiently, which makes their professional relationship with the CEO even tighter. That’s one of the big takeaways from Boathouse’s third edition of its “CEO Study on Marketing and the CMO.” The study provides insights from 150 CEOs from top U.S. public and private companies across 17 industries, from CPG to healthcare and telecommunications. The study shows where CMOs are winning and losing, where they are showing signs of success and any issues the CEO sees in the overall job. Boathouse founder and CEO John Connors said that the agency started the study to help the CMO because they were seeing tenure decline. But three studies in, they are now picking up interesting CEO data that helps understand the CEO-CMO relationship, and it finds that there is more trust now between the two C-level positions. “The CMO is getting smarter about how to work with the CEO, based on the last few years of getting beat up a little bit,” Connors told Adweek. Better trust in the CMO In 2023, more CMOs received an “A” grade from their CEO for overall performance in their role, with 73% giving an “A” or “B,” versus 61% in March of 2022. Connors said that part of that can be attributed to the fact that as the CEOs have come out of the pandemic, they're not as frenetic about all the moving pieces within their company. Essentially, CEO focus has moved from being stakeholder dominant to shareholder dominant, which is sort of a return to pre-pandemic operations. The CMO became smarter during the pandemic as well, focused not only on the consumer, but also on employees, DEI and retention, which gave them a broader lens on operations, more aligning them with how the CEO has to view the business, which created synergy. “They had to see the business through the eyes of the CEO. Because employee issues became so important and supply chain issues became so important, issues that are typically CEO issues, they had to walk in the shoes of the CEO a little more,” said Connors. As such, CEOs graded their CMOs better than the last two years, with CEOs scoring them higher across each area of responsibility within marketing, including relationship and trust, innovation, strategy. CMOs are receiving better grades from their CEOs than in previous studies. In addition, CEOs say that 87% of CMOs understand their vision and 80% take action to execute that vision, plus 73% say their CMOs are bold and push the organization forward. And in a dramatic shift from 2021, the CEO’s perception of CMO loyalty is growing—8 in 10 CEOs perceive CMOs would “take a bullet” for them (up from 3 in 10 in 2021). Connors said that one telling stat in the study was that 71% of CEOs see that brand and reputation are the same thing. In the typical CPG world, brand purists separate those two as comms versus branding, and never the two shall meet. But with the CEO seeing them as the same, agencies and clients need to see that results and metrics are now blending together, just as silos are being broken down. Add AI to the mix One of the reasons Connors sees silos breaking down is because of AI, and the CEO is helping lead the AI charge in many industries. According to the study, 76% of CEOs are integrating AI into their organizations, and marketing has the broadest AI adoption. CEOs believe that 58% of their CMOs have made AI presentations, asked for funding or created new processes using AI, and CEOs believe that 90% of CMOs are tackling AI in service of the company’s marketing performance, not their own career growth. When Boathouse asked CEOs why AI matters in marketing, the majority viewed it as a tool to sustain innovation, and the rest were split between disruption and efficiency. AI integration in marketing appears to be most predominant in content generation and personalization, analytics and customer experience or research. “CEOs don't know whether they're a disrupter or sustaining innovation or whether they're using it to cut costs and be efficient,” said Connors, adding that most CEOs want to use AI but don’t know exactly where and how to best use it yet. Connors believes that as CMOs continue to evolve in their positions and gain more trust with the CEO and the rest of the C-suite, they will have more opportunities to make an impact, even with shorter tenures. Boathouse also hopes that their annual study, as it gathers more data over the next few years, will be seen as the standard for CEO studies in marketing, especially as it relates to the CMO. Those who want to see the full study can request one here.

Leadership & Talent

Study: CEOs Believe the Performance of Their CMOs Is Improving

Boathouse's research found AI is helping to break down silos as CEOs push for its adoption

Kyle O’Brien

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Kyle O’Brien