A recent article by Harvard Business Review stated, yet again, that 80% of CEOs don’t rate their CMO. Really? I’m struggling to believe that 80% of CMOs are rubbish. Could it be that some CEOs just don’t know what they’ve got?
Let’s face facts. Some companies don’t even have a CMO, and those that do rarely give their CMO a seat at the board table. There is even debate, still, about the validity of putting “the customer in the board room.” Seriously? Any company that doesn’t have a CMO in the boardroom may as well publicly state “sorry, customer, you are so unimportant to us that not only do we not discuss you in our boardroom, ever, but we have no interest whatsoever in what you want. We so undervalue you that we’re not even prepared to have our CMO involved in the decisions we make about our company because, between us, he’s just the guy who decides what colour our logo is.”
Surely there is no debate. I recently saw some research that revealed companies with a CMO achieve, on average, 15% higher financial performance. That’s evidence, right there, never to underestimate the power of the function. If companies want to thrive, the marketing function must be empowered.
Read more of this article by Sherilyn Shackell on CMO.com.
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