Modern CMO: artist or scientist?

In the May 7th cover story of B to B magazine, the headline screams: “CMO under pressure to develop new skills.  Increasing influence in corporate strategy brings new expectations, responsibilities.”The job description of today’s chief marketing officer is often not well defined. According to the story, “this new breed of CMO must possess not only traditional marketing skills such as brand strategy and product marketing, but a breadth of capabilities including operations management, process development, financial analysis and strategic decision making.”

There’s no surprise that today’s CMO has an average tenure of just 20 months. In addition, a study released by the CMO Council disclosed that only 40% received an “A” grade by their CEO.

I recall a conversation I had a year ago with a former Omnicom colleague who now works at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (GSB). He said that GSB’s focus was on forming people to emerge as strategic thinkers and financially savvy. He said that an often repeated phrase around the halls of Chicago GSB is that you don’t want your CMOs eyes to glaze over when they’re looking at the balance sheet. You want marketing to become a rigorous discipline, like finance or engineering.

And so it is.

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