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HUNTING THE UNICORN – HOW WE’RE DRIVING THE CMO OUT OF EXISTANCE AND INTO MYTHOLOGY

It’s a well-known anecdote that the average tenure of a CMO is short – just under two years in fact – but little

real thought as to why this is. CEOs might blame marketers for being too fluffy and flighty, always looking for

the next adventure rather than long term commercial success. CMOs could potentially retaliate that the Board

has unrealistic expectations or no understanding of the value marketing can add to a business and it’s

certainly the case that analysts tend to ignore aspects like customer loyalty or brand equity when making an

evaluation of business success. We would go further – as the role of the CMO continues to morph into Chief

Customer Officer or Digital Marketing Director or Customer Experience Director, neither the business or the

individual really has a grasp of the role or accountabilities; leading to unrealistic expectations of what one

individual can harness and really achieve and a cycle of mutual disappointment with the outcomes.

That the role of marketing within businesses has grown increasingly nebulous is undisputed. As new channels

are developed, new trends are identified and more data becomes available, these aspects are awkwardly

bolted onto the job description and the CMO role finds itself with more responsibility and less definition.

Arguably, marketing is the most rapidly changing function on the Executive team and there has been relatively

little consideration of how all of these new elements can sit comfortably within the strategic remit of just one

person. Indeed, on a recent search, a senior executive dryly summed up the situation: “so you’re looking for

someone who is a cross between Jesus and a character from Mad Men?”

Whilst this was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, just consider three of the issues that have been flagged as the key

challenges for CMOs in 2016:

1) Big data and faster analysis of insight

2) Individualisation not personalisation

3) Creating spellbinding content marketing

Any one of those issues could be the work of an entire career for one marketer, yet CMOs are expected to be

master of all – not only technically savvy and highly analytical, but founts of originality and creativity.

Undoubtedly, these rare creatures do exist, but they are few and far between, so what options for the CMO

that admits they can’t do it all?

Firstly, there is an argument for devolving the powers of the CMO to subject matter experts, creating separate

functions for data and creativity for example. This currently works well for some very large businesses who

have the headcount and investment to justify this. However, it does not make financial sense for smaller

businesses and even in larger business, the practice can create silos. It also doesn’t solve the problem of

coordinating the various functions, as most CEOs are working to cut down their direct reports rather than

increase them.

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Secondly, the demands of the CMO on an executive team are not just as functional experts. Increasingly,

clients ask us to find CMOs who are “business people with a background in marketing”. Expected to contribute

to commercial and strategic decisions that sit outside of their immediate functional responsibility, CMOs need

to be business leaders who can understand a P&L, not just NPS. Just like in other business functions, those

who are most passionate about their own area (be it accounting or digital marketing) and have developed

deep expertise are less likely to have the skillset or inclination to take on broader leadership roles. By

emphasising the need for experts, more junior marketers are less likely to be open to career moves that round

out their operational or commercial understanding. Thus, businesses are effectively strangling the future

talent pools for CMO candidates and the lack of capability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The answer? Certainly there’s no silver bullet. Any CEO looking to hire a CMO or design a marketing function

for their organisation should keep in mind these points:

1) What type of marketing do you want to do and subsequently, what type of marketer do you

need? Perhaps a strongly analytical marketer who can process large amounts of raw data to

produce useable insight is exactly what is required, so hiring an FMCG brand marketer is unlikely

to be the right solution

2) What is the role of the CMO within the business? Will they sit as part of the senior management

team? If so, functional expertise does not guarantee good leadership

3) Encourage more junior members of the marketing team to take on roles that push them beyond

their comfort zone. CMOs do not spring into the world fully formed and you are more likely to get

the CMO you desire if you help to shape them

If not, the likelihood of a successful hire recedes into the distance and you might as well be searching for that

unicorn after all…