The CMO is dead
By Professor Dominique Turpin
I have some sad news: the Chief Marketing Officer is dead.
Fortunately, I’m talking about the CMO position rather than a particular person. But the decline of the CMO’s influence is an alarming trend in companies that claim to put the customer first but in reality continue to be product-driven.
CMOs are increasingly powerless and peripheral. The CEO sets the overall strategy, the R&D and innovation teams design the product, and the CFO determines pricing and departmental budgets. The CMO, meanwhile, reports to a chief executive who often has only partial knowledge of the customer. No wonder some CMOs are considering a career change.
The CMO position is dead for several reasons:
