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CMOs, your report cards are in.
For the past three years, independent marketing agency Boathouse has surveyed CEOs about their perspectives on their top marketers. The third annual survey of 150 US CEOs, conducted between Sept. 9 and Oct. 4, found that more chief executives gave their CMOs an “A” grade performance review for 2023 than 2022, according to a report published this month.
“During Covid…CMOs got wiser to [the fact that] they have to help manage all the audiences,” Boathouse co-founder and CEO, John Connors, told Marketing Brew. “They had to help with employees; they had to help with DE&I initiatives; they had to help with community groups [and] other stakeholders. So I think increasingly, because CMOs helped bail out CEOs with all those other audiences…they grade them differently.”
Good grades: When asked to grade their CMOs on an academic scale from A to F, 26% of CEOs gave their CMOs As for their overall performance in 2023, up from 16% in 2022, according to the report.
- Almost half (47%) gave their CMOs Bs, compared to 55% in 2022.
- Similar shares of CEOs gave their CMOs Cs in 2023 as in 2022 (25% versus 23%).
- Just 2% gave Ds this year, and 1% gave Fs (sorry to this CMO).
On a positive note for CMOs, the share of CEOs who said their company’s marketing is “best in class” increased for the second year in a row, Boathouse found, up to 49% in 2023 from 24% in 2022 and 20% in 2021.
Stay, stay, stay? CEOs are becoming more aware of the issue of short tenures among CMOs, but as of last year, most didn’t see that as a sign of failure, per the report. About half (51%) of CEOs said they see that “as a sign of success, not failure in their role” in 2023, up significantly from 19% in 2022. That turnaround could be because CEOs are “starting to take accountability for the short tenure” themselves, Connors said.
“CEOs are starting to feel like, you know what, maybe I’m being a bit of an asshole, and I’m not setting them up for success,” he said. “When you burn through two or three in a row, you start to say, ‘Maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s me.’”
For the good of the company: Despite some potential tension related to commitment issues, CMOs appear to be in the inner circles of many CEOs. CMOs are now in the “top tier of CEOs personal trust,” according to Boathouse, along with CFOs, COOs, and CSOs.
In fact, eight in 10 CEOs even “perceive CMOs would take a bullet for them” as of the 2023 survey, “a dramatic shift from 2021,” per the report. The question wasn’t meant to be interpreted literally, Connors said—more of a measure of whether or not a CMO would “put their own career on the line” for their CEO.