The Gist
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AI in marketing. Artificial intelligence is rapidly redefining what it means to be a CMO.
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Role revision is necessary. As the CMO continues to evolve, leadership tactics must change with the times.
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Adapt to changes as they come. The uncertainty of marketing leadership makes it difficult to predict a CMO’s role in 10 years’ time.
Preparing for the next decade of marketing leadership might not feel like a top priority to those busy preparing for quarterly earnings calls. With an average tenure of 3.3 years, that’s almost three jobs into the future. Who can think that far ahead?
Being able to understand both technology and people is what makes someone great CMO material — this fact will remain constant as their role evolves over the next decade. But today’s CMO might want to consider whether their title will be different, what their value will be in an organization and if their job will be replaced by AI in the coming years.
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Better Understanding the CMO
Marketing leadership looks different based on a company’s structure and culture, but the common thread is staying ahead of the curve. This requires paying close attention to consumer behavior, trends and technology — then knowing what to do with that information. Studying human behavior specific to how messaging is consumed and evaluated is an evolving task. Being a leading CMO requires not only understanding psychological factors but also a slew of customer data points.
The CMO as General Manager
“In many cases, the marketing leadership should think of themselves as general managers,” said Bill Tine, CMO at King Arthur Baking Company. “That puts them in a better position to add value to the entire company and to the people in their department. It’s really how you approach the job that matters the most.”
And Don’t Forget to Be Analytical and Creative
Tine also mentioned that the CMO is expected to be both analytical and creative. No matter what the role looks like in a decade, these qualities will likely still be sought after.
Will the Title of CMO Stick Around?
“In the future, the title might look very different,” said Alex Romanovich, founder and CMO of GlobalEdgeMarkets. “I’m not even sure if the title of CMO is going to stay with us. Marketing has to be different. Marketing of the future has to be different.”
Romanovich resonated with Tine’s idea about adopting the “general manager” title, suggesting the addition of the word “growth” to focus on optimization.
Will the Role Evolve Into Chief Optimization Officer?
“Can you imagine having a role of a chief optimization officer?” Romanovich asked. “Somebody whose job is going to be to optimize every process in the company, whether it’s marketing, HR, finance and apply certain methodologies to optimization.”
He went on to explain how that might be a good thing in terms of value to an organization because marketing would be seen as less of a cost center. Whether the title is chief revenue officer or chief digital strategist, the company tends to be best served by someone who is data savvy.
“Technology touches marketing more than most other functions, and it’s also an enabler of customer experience customizations,” said Lilly Liu Minkove, former CMO of Hair Cuttery Family of Brands. “You don’t have to have all the skills yourself, however. You have to have enough leadership savvy to know what skills you need to bring in-house and then bring out the best in your team.”
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Because Minkove has worked in change management, she has seen a variety of marketing-adjacent titles and roles. Although the leadership role is often filled by a marketing-communications professional, she contends that this role encompasses merely a fraction of the full scope of responsibilities a marketer should undertake.
“It’s a really important position,” said Minkove. “Marketing will continue to play a pretty standalone role. I think what I’ve seen more is the Chief Customer Officer or CMO blended. It might be a similar parallel on the B2B side, where it’s focusing on the customer, but marketing is one piece under that.”
How Marketing Leadership Is Shifting
Marketing is undergoing a fundamental transformation, with a shift from traditional spend allocation to direct revenue generation. In many organizations, this shift has already taken place. In 2019, for example, Uber reduced its marketing team by 33% and fired the CMO at the time even though revenue growth hit 37%, up from 30% the year before.
Taking on the Tech Role
If CMOs take their place on the throne of tech innovation, demonstrating how tools like AI can lead the organization through tough customer segmentation trends, they can increase their value. Marketers must adapt to become technologists, analysts and creatives because technological, data-driven approaches are key.
And Don’t Forget to Partner With Finance
“They must be well-connected to finance to flex with the business and embody a multifaceted approach to drive business growth and revenue,” said Tine. “The marketing technology stack continues to get bigger and bigger. If the head marketer hasn’t grown up that way, it will be hard for them to become it. It’s a really challenging position.”
Could AI in Marketing Replace the CMO?
Romanovich is curious about whether AI could replace the CMO, as every department turns to it for guidance in achieving growth. “Imagine that you’re going to have an AI engine in the middle of a corporation that is going to interact and interface with other divisions. All of a sudden your other divisions, by discipline and function, are going to share information with this AI enterprise.”
He used the example of a large corporation like General Electric wanting to learn what the turbine division was doing in order to incorporate learnings from their efforts into marketing a different division or product. The marketing team would interact with the AI rather than the department as a more efficient way of gathering information without disrupting the team’s daily operations.
“The role of optimizer may not necessarily be a person, it could also be an artificial intelligence, or it could also be an LLM, it could also be a variety of different technological advancements that could be used,” said Romanovich.
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Preparing for the CMO’s Future
CMOs are notoriously competitive with each other. However, over the last few years, more and more of them have banded together for support and resources. In fact, 15 years ago, Pete Kranik formed the CMO Club — a project from Salesforce — as an in-person community for CMOs to meet up in a peer-to-peer environment.
“He was ahead of his time,” said Romanovich. While Salesforce recently sunsetted the program, almost all of its members came back together as Club CMO, with active chapters across the country.
Getting Out of the Office
“The best way to lead in the future is to have these forums, like the Club CMO dinner in Washington D.C.,” said Minkove. “Talking to other CMOs and getting out of your office is important because it’s about working on the business versus working in the business.”
Listening to Outsiders’ Perspectives
She and Tine believe that breakthroughs can occur after listening to an outsider’s perspective. An open exchange of ideas (and frustrations) from someone in a different organization or industry can incur a new era of marketing leadership. Collaboration is key to the CMOs evolving role.
“There could be best practices in terms of the digital transformation element where you can see how other companies are similarly trapped in legacy systems, facing the challenges that we’re facing,” said Minkove. “I do feel like it can be kind of lonely when you’re trying to figure out your own brand and it always feels like they’re not enough resources.”
Building Coalitions
For the future CMO, Romanovich also stressed the importance of coalition building and having the courage to lead. Although he was referring to internal resources, alliances with great resources are crucial nonetheless.
“We need to redefine the way we do things,” he said. “I would take the leadership position and say, I’m not going to wait for them to ask me. I’m going to go in and tell them. However, you have to be also ready to do so, and this is where the coalitions are going to be important. A coalition with technologists, a coalition with data scientists, and others.”
Next Decade? How About the Next 10 Months?
In Philip Kotler’s book, “Marketing 5.0,” he showcases modern examples of how big consumer brands are currently using tech innovations in ways accessible to enterprise marketers — with a fundamental premise about their usage.
“Technology should follow strategy,” Kotler writes. “The key is that those companies must have marketers who know how to design a strategy that applies the right tech for various marketing use cases.”
Maybe it’s due to the Law of Accelerating returns, but these CMOs feel too much will change over the next decade to determine how the role will be shaped in the future. After all, iPhones didn’t exist 20 years ago. Forty years ago, most people didn’t own laptops.
But now, with AI and ChatGPT, the next generation of acceleration is upon us. In order to guess what a marketer looks like in 2034, one would have to know what a consumer would look like, too — and that is anyone’s guess.
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