New Research Suggests 76% of CMOs Should Be Fired

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 by Andy Beal

New Research Suggests 76% of CMOs Should Be Fired

According to new research from the CMO Council a surprising 76% of senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of their current customers. In addition, only 46.5% say they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value.

What does that tell me? That tells me that of the 650 senior marketers surveyed for this study, 76% of them should consider a career change. I mean, seriously, these are not just average marketers, these are guys that have the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) title.

To be fair, 64% of them are evaluating their marketing spend to increase yield and accountability and 60% are embracing new strategies to better engage their customer base.

But, now get this, 40% of CMOs plan to reduce head-count, overhead, or budgets in order to make up for their own incompetence–OK, so I added the "make up for their incompetence" part.

Final word–and wake-up call–goes to Donovan Neale-May executive director for the CMO Council:

"It is inexplicable that the vast majority of marketers are still struggling to source and extract meaningful insights from customer data at a behavioral, transactional and account value level,” noted Neale-May. “Marketing must assert its role as the owner of both customer experience and information and apply this to devising growth strategies that leverage better knowledge of customer opportunity and potential.”

If you’re willing to give up your deets, you can get a free copy of the 16-page executive summary here.

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12 comments on “New Research Suggests 76% of CMOs Should Be Fired”

Kenney and Kim Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:14 am

Great post. It’s hard to run or expand a business that doesn’t know it’s numbers. It’s hard to cut losses and roll out marketing campaigns if you don’t know what worked and brought in the customers. It seems they don’t have much of a backend product or system for creating new products for customers they already have in their funnel either.
Frank Reed Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:21 am

I’ve seen statistics that the average life span of a CMO is around the 23 month range. Heck, you have to count CMO life span like a baby’s.

Q: “Oh look at the cute little CMO, how old is he?”

A: “21 months.They grow up so fast then you have to push them out of the nest so they can learn the hard way.”

Maybe because many CMO’s know this they look at the job their as Chief Moneymaking Opportunity and not a chance to make an impact on bottom line performance. It’s similar to college sports coaches who don’t get enough time to make their own mark. Oh well.

Frank Reed’s last blog post..Your Thoughts Please?
Jordan McCollum Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:47 am

LOL, Andy, I though the CMO Council logo was some sort of winking frowny face… Would make sense, eh?
Andy Beal Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:49 am

@Jordan – hah!
Liz Micik Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:54 am

Taking a look at that stat from another direction I see CMOs saying they think there is still upside potential for revenue growth. In other words, they are covering their butts saying they can still contribute value to their companies. Who would want to step out front and say, “yes sir, there’s nothing left for me to do because I’ve already squeezed every dollar out of that wallet that I can.”

LOL…you couldn’t ask for better proof that “facts” drawn from stats are the easiest lies to tell.
Andy Beal Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am

@Liz – nice view point!
Edw3rd Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

Blast people with distorted Tweets/reportage just so that you can sell them software to track people blasting them. Lovely.
Brandon Cox Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

Seems like part of the issue is a failure to realize how little control we actually have over people’s perceptions. Marketing today is almost a response to the public more than a guidance of it. Truly great marketing minds are rare as a result.

Brandon Cox’s last blog post..eGrace Creative Gets A Big Mention
PS3 Says:

December 10th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

LOL at Frank, made me chuckle. Maybe the younger ones just have the drive and passion that is needed for the job…well, 24% of them at least
JT Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 1:46 am

Well, seriously I believe that most CMOs have to improve their perspective of marketing.

JT’s last blog post..Zen and PPC campaigns
Questar Blog » Blog Archive » Three quarters of all CMOs need to go? Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

[...] sure to check out Andy’s blog post and the CMO Council [...]
Almost half of CMOs don't understand retention and profitability metrics. Says:

January 29th, 2009 at 8:05 pm

[...] Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim provides a nice summary of the CMO Council’s findings, along with some great commentary (I chuckled at his incompetence [...]

Marketing Pilgrim