Whereas the chief advertising and marketing officer (CMO) put up isn’t about to vanish tomorrow, it’s unimaginable to disregard the mounting proof of its regular erosion.
As ADWEEK reported in August, the typical CMO tenure slipped from 4.1 years in 2024 to three.9 years in 2025. Final yr, 63% of Fortune 500 corporations had CMOs—however in 2025, that determine had dropped by 5%.
It will get worse. A McKinsey paper launched in June famous that “CFOs usually view advertising and marketing as a price heart fairly than an funding.” And 2025 information gathered by advertising and marketing agency Boathouse reveals that 14% of CEOs admit to having considered eliminating the CMO’s place.
Scary? Very a lot so. However regardless of the numbers, CMOs themselves usually are not as fatalistic about their futures.
Throughout a roundtable dialogue at ADWEEK Home: Promoting HQ on Thursday, ADWEEK chief model and group officer Jenny Rooney invited three main CMOs to problem the notion that entrepreneurs are an endangered species within the C-suite—and assist that counter-narrative with the explanation why CMOs nonetheless matter.
Alison Hiatt of Vera Bradley, Uzma Rawn Dowler of Main League Baseball, and Christie Sclater of Clinique advised methods CMOs can convey their relevance to CEOs beneath stress to chop prices and more and more seeking to AI as a panacea. Listed here are just a few of them.
Be greater than a marketer
Immediately, a CMO’s job tasks stretch far past the standard boundaries of promoting and promotion, however CFOs and CEOs usually don’t totally respect that. So it falls to the chief marketer not simply to advocate for what they do, but additionally to translate it.
“The CMO function, in my thoughts, is sort of a get-shit-done officer,” Dowler mentioned. “The ‘C’ and the ‘O’ are there, after which within the center you need to simply put no matter it is advisable put in there, as a result of our roles usually are not simply advertising and marketing.”
Market to your prospects, not your self
Outcomes-obsessed and more and more skeptical chief executives could also be extra more likely to query the pondering behind, or validity of, an promoting marketing campaign or advertising and marketing technique. It’s most likely a good suggestion to remind different company chiefs that they don’t must get the thought.
“If they’ve [skeptical] opinions about sure issues, it’s okay—you need to remind them, ‘Hey, this really isn’t meant for you,’” Dowler mentioned. “However now we have all this information and analysis to indicate that it’s going to resonate for the folks that it’s meant for.”
Get forward of AI
As generative AI will get extra superior, the C-suite might be much more more likely to query roles just like the CMO and artistic director, and even the advertising and marketing division total. Rightly or not, it should fall to the CMO to clarify AI’s place, and advertising and marketing’s place above it.
“AI is a instrument, not a technique,” mentioned Hiatt, who added that CEOs ought to do not forget that CMOs aren’t promoting a intelligent concept, they’re delivering what a model wants most—customers. “On the finish of the day, with advertising and marketing, you’re shopping for a buyer,” she mentioned. “We’re not speaking about that sufficient.”
Clarify why management is crucial
Sclater identified that whereas AI might be able to generate content material, that’s no alternative for a advertising and marketing chief that may function coach, interlocutor, choice maker, and innovator.
“Within the absence of a CMO, we’re simply operating a relay race, and enterprise turns into the handoff to a different handoff—by the point you get to the top, the place is the client?” Sclater mentioned. “There’ll all the time be a must deliver issues collectively, to deliver concepts collectively round a central mission of serving a buyer.”
Preserve consistency the place algorithms can’t
As AI is ready to generate countless permutations of a model AI, the CMO in the end turns into the final guarantor of custom, recognizability, and solidity.
“The CMO holds tight to the model,” Sclater mentioned. “If there isn’t a spot the place the purity or the essence is distilled and powerful, inherently the algorithm will transfer to create totally different variations of it. The CMO at its greatest can also be sort of preserving that purity, preserving that consistency.”
