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.

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