Host: Nadia Cameron - Editor - Marketing | Associate Publisher

Short CMO tenure, job complexity, unrealistic expectations of delivery – commonly driven by short-term ultimatums – plus a disconnect on the metrics that matter, are all contributing to a dangerously common misalignment between CMOs and their CEOs and CFO. And it’s a recipe for trouble for marketing leaders wanting to enact strategic growth.

That’s the view of four luminaries participating in the latest CMO Awards Podcast episode. All know a thing or two not only about providing marketing’s value as CMOs, but also now sit on the other side of the c-suite: ADMA CEO and former FMCG CMO, Andrea Marten; Lounge Lovers CEO and former Aldi and Westpac marketing chief, Samuel Viney; Adobe director of digital strategy group APAC and former Tourism Australia CFO, John Mackenney; and Seek commercial growth APAC leader and former consumer marketing lead for ANZ and customer chief at Mercer, Cambell Holt.

There is an ongoing refrain marketing leaders need to do more to build and demonstrate commercial acumen and their value to the c-suite. And we have a fresh report making the point again: In the latest Gartner survey, only 27% of CEOs and CFOs reported their CMO’s performance exceeded expectations over the past year.

Confidence in a CMO's ability to prove the value of marketing to the enterprise is held by just half (54%) of senior executives. Gartner’s survey also found only 34% of CEOs and CFOs agree with CMOs on the role of marketing in supporting growth. And only one in five CEOs and CFOs report receiving significant clarity from their CMO regarding marketing accountabilities.

They’re sobering figures, and they’re not in isolation. Viney paints an all-too-common “chicken-and-egg” scenario: New CMO comes into an organisation and is confronted with demands to improve marketing’s performance “after the last person didn’t achieve what we expected”.

“When asked if you’re going to be able to do it, the CMO will say of course I am, that’s why I’m here,” Viney comments. “What you get then is two challenges: Number one is you're perhaps being unrealistic with the expectations you're setting … secondly, just understanding the metrics that matter in the context of a new organisation, particularly if you're changing sectors, takes time.”

As a former CFO, Mackenney agrees there’s a further translation issue between the language of finance and marketing which he’s constantly coming up against in his current role at Adobe – in fact, he often finds himself being the “CFO whisperer” for marketers. But he doesn’t put all the blame on CMOs.

“I think it's incumbent on a lot of CFOs to better understand, actually, what are the levers that the CMO has, really, what are the some of the cost drivers and the benefits drivers there, so we can have a better understanding between two really critical roles in the organisation,” he says.

Yet Martens points out we're still seeing many CMOs reporting on outputs like campaign performance instead of strategic business outcomes and things like customer growth, retention, margin, contribution, pricing, power and overall business improvement and business performance. “They're the metrics that, at the end of the day, the CEOs and the CFOs are looking for, and they're the metrics that actually influence the total enterprise value. They're the conversations that are not being had,” she says.

Holt agrees CMOs need to do a better job of business-grade insight to align their own ability to deliver value. “Early on, I discovered the best way to align yourself and to create mutual understanding is to take on the task of learning someone else's language, then also take on the task of translation within the marketing function. Don't make it the CFOs challenge to learn your language, learn their language and speak it, and train as many people in your function as a marketing leader to speak the other person's language as well.”

This CMO Awards podcast series is hosted by Nadia Cameron, associate publisher and editor of marketing at Mi3, plus program leader for the CMO Awards.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host: Nadia Cameron - Editor - Marketing | Associate Publisher

At its core, the job of the CMO is to deliver business growth. And if Mi3’s story on marketing jobs recently and what company CEOs want in their marketing hires in 2025 is anything to go by, there is a recalibration back to topline growth rather than just pure cost cutting and efficiency, coming our way – good news for marketers, it seems.

Yet companies are increasingly favouring alternative job titles, such as chief growth officer and chief customer officer, or creating new functional structures and ways of working to set the north star and signal the need for disruptive, transformational growth. At the same time, diversity of marketing remits makes it difficult to understand what levers marketing chiefs will actually control in their pursuit of growth for a business.

In episode three of the CMO Awards podcast, powered by Mi3, three marketing and business luminaries with the mantle of delivering net new approaches to growth, share how they define and pursue that ambition: Lion co-MD and former chief growth officer and CMO, Anubha Sahasrabuddhe; SiteMinder chief growth officer, Trent Innes; and recently installed McCain growth marketing director and former Chobani GM of growth, Olivia Dickinson.

All agree putting ‘growth’ front and centre in job titles sends an unambiguous message as to a company’s intent to pursue new growth opportunities, the whole-of-organisation approach required to get there, and the disruptive nature of what is required. It’s also given each executive the power to make the hard decisions necessary to deliver sustainable growth. In Lion’s case, generational shifts around beer consumption provided a burning platform for change, while in organisations such as Chobani, pursuing agility in product innovation pipelines, again with the aim of following consumer trends, created the path to new growth – even amid fears of cannibalising existing SKUs.

For Innes at Australian hotel management software-as-a-service company, SiteMinder, growth is encapsulated in the phrase ‘win, love and grow’. “It's not just a simple case of winning them. You actually need to love them. And if you actually do that, you have the opportunity to grow with them.”

It’s this thinking that has Innes suggesting marketers too commonly fall into the trap of generating short-term demand instead of thinking about customer lifetime value. “I think marketing has fallen a bit too much into the ‘we're here to create demand’ position… Growth is not demand, it's not sales. It is a team sport, so it has to be across the entire end in business.”

Which is why Innes advises marketers to think like a CEO and to “try to get outside of your lane and think about the broader business … How does the broader business look at marketing, and what role do you play in growth?” he asks. “For marketing leaders moving forward to remain relevant, they're going to have to start thinking like that.”

Dickinson describes growth in three words: “Bold, strategic choices … we're talking bold bets, sharp focus, but really importantly, knowing when to walk away if it doesn't serve the bigger picture,” she says.

Ensuring employees understand Lion’s growth investment is about delivering for future generations is not a won-and-done job, but requires ongoing productivity hunting, is another must for Sahasrabuddhe. “That really helps change your mindset when you are faced with going through the tough choices,” she says. “And there are plenty of tough choices, but they're in service of growth, which gives you a very clear why.”

This CMO Awards podcast series is hosted by Nadia Cameron, associate publisher and editor of marketing at Mi3, plus program lead for the CMO Awards.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host: Nadia Cameron - Editor - Marketing | Associate Publisher

Being able to convince others is the most critical skill marketers need to possess – the whole job of marketing is to influence consumers to consider then purchase your brand, after all. But as marketers progress into senior management positions, they also need to get better at getting team members as well as executive leadership and internal stakeholders onside.

In episode 2 of The CMO Awards podcast series, powered by Mi3, three leading marketing chiefs who exhibit influence in spades tell us how they’ve done it: Former Google director of marketing ANZ, Aisling Finch, Tourism Australia CMO, Susan Coghill, and Creative Australia executive director of development and partnerships and former ABC director of audiences, Leisa Bacon.

For Finch, who spent 13 years with Google, advocating for the local market to global stakeholders was a daily job. Having started with an Australia-first advocacy approach, picking and choosing the metrics that told the story she wanted to tell, she switched a blunt instrument for nuanced engagement and putting herself in the listener’s shoes.

“I found it actually quite a disarming strategy to almost go the opposite way of advocacy and say to people: ‘Okay, so we're 55th in population in the world, why are you even spending time with me?’ It’s almost that underdog card. But then you build a bit of credibility – you bring data, bring empathy… and you start to build a story. It's quite disarming and builds trust when you say, ‘interesting, we’re 55th in terms of population, but guess what, we’re 13th on GDP. And look at the willingness of consumers to spend on smartphones, or content,” she says. “Putting yourself in their shoes, being empathetic, and bringing in data without over advocating – I found that to be more effective.” That, and sharing the odd Tim Tam, she quips.

Being honest and sharing bad news early is another must CMOs agree on. Coghill, has a “no surprises” rule she applies from team to CEO, finance team, and corporate affairs. “I joke with them I am still a Catholic school girl and feel the need to confess everything and bring everybody into the tent,” she jokes. “But it has served me well, and it has kept my colleagues well informed and able to help me when and where I've needed it.”

It’s a similar philosophy for Bacon. “In media – and especially the ABC – you are so heavily scrutinised, you have to be transparent about the good and bad all the time,” she comments. “I would apply that going forward to every job I would do. Transparency builds credibility, it builds trust, but it also is just a good way of working.”
Bacon adds: “You can’t actually have influence without credibility, and you need to do things to actually build credibility”.

This CMO Awards podcast series is hosted by Nadia Cameron, associate publisher and editor of marketing at Mi3, plus program leader for the CMO Awards.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.