Whereas the chief advertising officer (CMO) publish isn’t about to vanish tomorrow, it’s unattainable to disregard the mounting proof of its regular erosion.
As ADWEEK reported in August, the common CMO tenure slipped from 4.1 years in 2024 to three.9 years in 2025. Final 12 months, 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 as a value heart reasonably than an funding.” And 2025 knowledge gathered by advertising 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 will not be as fatalistic about their futures.
Throughout a roundtable dialogue at ADWEEK Home: Promoting HQ on Thursday, ADWEEK chief model and neighborhood officer Jenny Rooney invited three main CMOs to problem the notion that entrepreneurs are an endangered species within the C-suite—and help that counter-narrative with explanation why CMOs nonetheless matter.
Alison Hiatt of Vera Bradley, Uzma Rawn Dowler of Main League Baseball, and Christie Sclater of Clinique steered methods CMOs can convey their relevance to CEOs beneath stress to chop prices and more and more trying to AI as a panacea. Listed here are a number of of them.
Be greater than a marketer
At the moment, a CMO’s job obligations stretch far past the normal boundaries of promoting and promotion, however CFOs and CEOs usually don’t absolutely respect that. So it falls to the chief marketer not simply to advocate for what they do, but in addition to translate it.
“The CMO function, in my thoughts, is sort of a get-shit-done officer,” Dowler stated. “The ‘C’ and the ‘O’ are there, after which within the center it’s best to simply put no matter you could put in there, as a result of our roles will not be simply advertising.”
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 considering behind, or validity of, an promoting marketing campaign or advertising technique. It’s in all probability 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—it’s important to remind them, ‘Hey, this truly isn’t meant for you,’” Dowler stated. “However we’ve all this knowledge and analysis to indicate that it’ll 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 inventive director, and even the advertising division total. Rightly or not, it’ll fall to the CMO to elucidate AI’s place, and advertising’s place above it.
“AI is a software, not a technique,” stated Hiatt, who added that CEOs ought to keep in mind that CMOs aren’t promoting a intelligent thought, they’re delivering what a model wants most—shoppers. “On the finish of the day, with advertising, you’re shopping for a buyer,” she stated. “We’re not speaking about that sufficient.”
Clarify why management is essential
Sclater identified that whereas AI might be able to generate content material, that’s no alternative for a advertising 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 tip, the place is the shopper?” Sclater stated. “There’ll at all times be a must carry issues collectively, to carry concepts collectively round a central mission of serving a buyer.”
Keep 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 stated. “If there isn’t a spot the place the purity or the essence is distilled and robust, inherently the algorithm will transfer to create totally different variations of it. The CMO at its greatest can also be form of conserving that purity, conserving that consistency.”
