Inside the Head of a CMO

I came accross two pieces of research, recently, and together they explain a fair bit about why working with CMOs feels different than it did even just a few years ago. The first is Boathouse's fifth annual survey of CEOs about their marketing leaders. The second is a study called "Confessions of a CMO," in which thirty marketing chiefs around the world talked anonymously—Chatham House rules—about how they actually operate.

The first study tells us what's happening to CMOs. The second tells us what CMOs are doing about it, and that second one might give you some ideas about how you sell to them, serve them, and think about how to position your own firm a little differently.

The Whiplash

Start with the contradiction, because it's quite stark.

CEOs like their CMOs more than they ever have. Seventy-nine percent say they're strongly aligned with their marketing leader (a five-year high). Seventy-one percent believe their CMO puts the CEO's interests above their own, up from 55% the year before. Eighty-five percent say the CMO is an effective builder of trust inside the organization.

If that's all we knew, it would be great news. But there's a looming contradiction buried in the data: sixty percent of those same CEOs view marketing as overhead (a cost center). One year earlier, 65% called it a profit center, essentially reversing how they felt in just one year.

And only 15% would give their CMO an "A," down from 24%. A third graded them C or lower. And when asked whether they're confident marketing can deliver ROI, 13% said yes. That's kind of a failing grade.

So the modern CMO is winning the relationship and losing the argument. The CEO trusts them, enjoys them, believes they're loyal—and quietly suspects the function they run doesn't make money. Their strengths, per the survey, are concentrated in relationships rather than strategy or execution. If I was a CMO, I'd be terribly nervous about that, and I'm going to suggest that a CMO's nervousness might translate into a different relationship with their agency. While you're helping to move the needle for the CMO, the CMO is saying, "Shoot. My boss likes me but doesn't believe I'm helping the company all that much."

The CMO's Incentives

When a CMO starts thinking like that—and apparently many of them are—they are not going to waste any personal capital on your behalf, but they are definitely going to demand the kind of results that can bolster their own relationship with the boss.

Here are some quotes from the study:

• "I've always had to come in sideways, because the minute you say 'brand,' people's eyes glaze over. So I start with culture."
• "I call everything a pilot." When it's all a test, debate ends and data decides. One didn't even ask the CEO's opinion on a rebrand element—just put the logos on the wall and waited.
• "I was successful if everyone believed the idea was theirs, the outcome felt inevitable, and nobody recalls exactly what role I played."
• "I don't push decisions—I adjust the mood until the decision pushes itself."
• And my favorite, from a CMO whose marketing was dismissed in a leadership meeting as "the coloring-in department": "I didn't defend marketing. I just smiled and made a quip about how expensive the crayons were. Everyone laughed, including the CFO. A few minutes later, that same exec was asking for our input on a pricing brief."

These are not the behaviors of a functional leader presenting a case, but rather the tentative offerings from an operative without any confidence. The modern CMO has concluded—correctly, I think—that open advocacy for marketing is career-limiting, and that influence now has to be smuggled into the building disguised as something else: culture, talent, customer insight, "acquisition efficiency." One CMO reframed a controversial sports sponsorship in exactly those finance-friendly terms, and suddenly it looked irresponsible not to spend the money.

I'm not sure we're in a place to criticize these CMOs, either. If you got a C grade from your boss, would you rock the boat, or listen more carefully for clues about which way the wind was blowing, and then cross your fingers that something was working? The glaring message to me, here, is that you'd darn better be doing things that work...and then help CMOs sell themselves. That's probably also the best way to ensure that you follow that CMO to their next job.

Why This Matters to You

If you sell expertise to CMOs, it might be helpful to understand that you're no longer selling to a buyer with confidence and power, but instead arming an operative. Not only is your role more important and influential than it used to be, but you have less help within the company selling your recommendations, and a shorter leash when they don't work. Here are some specific thoughts on what might change for you.

First, the big reveal is dead. The ta-da moment—the agency's favorite piece of theater—now actively endangers your client. As one CMO put it: "You brief, you go off, you do work and then you present something and ta-da. Whereas actually, the magic happens in the co-build." A dramatic unveiling forces the CMO to either champion your idea publicly (exposure they can't afford) or kill it. Co-building, though, allows for more thoughtful revealing, as well as letting the CMO get some credit for their part in building it together.

Second, your ideas should be designed to make them easily stealable. The CMOs who survive have learned that the more fingerprints on an idea, the safer it becomes. If your work only succeeds when everyone knows it came from you—or from your client—you've built something that's a bit more fragile. Make it claimable. Be comfortable letting your credit come in the that later renewal, not this meeting.

Third, speak the CFO's language calmly or risk irrelevance in their mind. Your recommendations must be framed in terms of financial performance. You describe the upside, as always, try to limit the downside, as always, but then introduce notions around the cost of not acting on this initiative.

Fourth, notice the how the Boathouse's CEO asks CMOs to reframe their role: talk about enterprise growth instead of marketing's contribution. "One looks selfish, the other shows you're a team player." The same is true for your firm. And to tie this back to the statistics I started the article off with, if you're still selling marketing outcomes, you're selling into a category that 60% of CEOs see as overhead.

Instead of looking for applause to come your way, send ammunition their way, instead, and relax as you build a longer-term relationship where the CMO feels like you are a net positive for their career.