The CMO was once a true partner to the CEO, grounded in a shared language of customers, margins and growth. That alignment ensured marketing had a permanent voice in the room where budgets were set and strategic bets were made. This was the era when figures like David Ogilvy were not just advertising leaders, but influential voices in business strategy, shaping how companies thought about growth, brand and the customer.
Over the past two decades, that relationship eroded as marketing expanded and became disconnected from the metrics that define business performance. Recent research from McKinsey & Co. found that while 70% of CEOs measure marketing on revenue growth and margin, only 35% of CMOs track those same metrics.
Marketing once owned the four Ps — product, price, place and promotion — but distribution, product and pricing migrated to other functions, leaving marketing focused on promotion. CMOs became stewards of activity rather than owners of outcomes, reshaping how the position was perceived at the highest levels of the organization.
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