When do Chief Marketing Officers Matter? -- A Marketing Manifesto

The plight of marketers from a political and organizational standpoint is significant and includes: 

• Everyone in the organization thinks they are a marketer.
• Few take marketing seriously or understand what it is--but are "pretty sure it consists of making catchy jingles."
• Most organizations view marketing purely as an expense and when the going gets tough, apparently the tough start slashing marketing budget and laying off marketing staff before they touch anything else.
• In smaller companies, marketing is held in such low esteem that marketing duties are often given to <>. . . secretaries who are told to "make a brochure. . . or something." 

And we marketers weather these indignities despite everyone being confonted with a constant tidal wave of evidence that marketing makes all the difference:

1. The companies we admire most (Apple, Nike, Starbucks, etc.) are--without exception--monster marketers.
2. Generally, the first thing we decry about companies we don't like--cigarette, alcohol, pharmaceutical companies and so on--is the fact that their marketing is so effective it appears to turn people into zombies walking the Earth in search of Camels Lights, Michelob and Viagra.

Well, the good people of marketing academia are trying to aid our plight. Dr. Eric Boyd has written a paper analyzing when Chief Marketing Officers make a difference which is slated to be published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2010. The paper looked at, and found, the following:

1. The effectiveness of a CMO can be greatly diminished in the face of extraordinary customer power. Company sales are becoming more concentrated in a few large clients. With that comes a large influence of that customer over policy and a risk aversion that can hamstring the marketing function (as well as other functions). For instance, if WalMart accounts for 20% of your company's business, as nice as it would be to pull in a Target or Lowe's as client, Job #1 is going to be to keep WalMart happy. And that perspective can be suffocating to marketing and business development.

"So, CMO, what is it you would say that you do here. . . exactly?"

2. CMOs can provide the largest effect on firm value (for better or worse) if that executive is brought in from outside the firm, is given a broad mandate and has the seniority and experience to gain internal credibility. Some of this sounds like commonsense, but it really comes down to commitment. Many companies who do not have a history of marketing and then decide to hire a marketing "guru" often hamstring that professional through an aversion to change and risk. But, to hire a CMO and then not utilize that person's talents is like getting engaged with the idea that you can still date--it's not going to work and besides, what's the point? Organizations need to decide what they want to be and then own that decision. The firms studied that did this, on average, achieved a significant ROI for their marketing investment and a resulting increase in share price.
As we have seen in other articles, when it comes to business strategy & marketing, doing nothing is better than taking half-measures. If you are going to be a bear, be a grizzly. Don't get Fred the office manager to make a brochure in his spare time and pretend you are "ramping up" marketing. That's like asking Paris Hilton to fix your car or Terrell Owens to do your taxes. Activity does not equal results. Firms need to hire skilled professionals and then let them do their job, otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time, money and energy.