Why the CMO role has not got easier

At CES last week, Sir Martin Sorrell declared that the role of the CMO has got easier. The premise of his argument is that four channels represent “half the market” outside mainland China: Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok.

As an agency managing director working on the day-to-day, this does not chime with what I’m hearing and seeing. So, on this particular point, I have to disagree.  

There’s been a mission creep imposed on the role of the CMO over the past decade or so. With the expansion of the customer journey, they’re being asked to do considerably more than what the role is used to: Creative, research, brand strategy, CRM, social, PR, even HR. Altogether, that’s a lot of stuff to consider in the marketing mix—and far more than any one person can realistically be expected to be expert in or meticulously oversee.

And as we know, squeezed marketing budgets need to be spread more thinly right at a time when there’s far more channels available than there’s ever been—each requiring their own special attention. If you look at media agencies, we’re increasingly handling more briefs that include content, sponsorship and data sharing partnerships and into spaces you’d not ordinarily expect for a traditional media agency such as B2B and content capabilities.

With all that marketing evolution comes challenges, not least keeping sufficiently upskilled, maintaining the right team composition, building the right martech stacks, bringing in the right (and increasingly multiple) specialist partners, and so on.

This is in response to a pressing need to deliver the sort of multichannel marketing customer-centricity that helps a brand outsmart the competition and deliver results.

None of this sounds easier to me.

And because of commercial headwinds and evolving business models, CMOs are also seeing wider board members such as CTOs and CIOs leaning into their work, and therefore ours—in media agencies. This is thanks to media and marketing becoming more connected to data and tech, which impacts a greater number of people across business. As such, CMOs are dealing with a greater variety of questions and challenges from a broader part of the business.

Altogether, the once heralded ‘Four Ps’ are no longer the core focus of the function and we’ve seen that coming through in the change of titles such as chief customer officer or even the job title of CMO being made redundant entirely.

The stakes are, therefore, clearly a lot higher for CMOs.

So, while Sir Martin is factually right that four players dominate half the market in adspend, it’s an over-simplification of what the marketing industry is today and dare I say it, of what is required to be successful in it to drive commercial results.

For avoidance of doubt, I suspect there’s a bit more to his point here than how it’s come across. After all, you don’t stay at the top of the game for many years without knowing a thing or two about the status of your industry. Claiming things have gotten easier may be a fair comment to make to a head of media, but that won’t resonate with CMOs who are worried about the other half of the market and some that keeps them up at night.

As a media agency that’s evolved beyond paid media services, we are ever more acutely aware of the little time our clients spend thinking solely about paid media. The traditional transaction model of media agencies is finished. We need to become more consultative in nature if we are to better serve our clients’ CMOs and achieve their commercial objectives.

Critical to this is understanding why CMOs roles have not got easier.