CMOs at billion-dollar spend organizations are strategic operators managing the marketing P&L, not necessarily experts in every tactic. At smaller companies, the role persists but tenure is shrinking and CMOs juggle more hats. Both require an operator mindset above all else.
The CMO that I met up with spends more than $1 billion globally a year on marketing. Literally more than $1 billion. Like, that's a crapload of money to spend more than $1 billion. I do think when you have spend levels of that high, the CMO understands marketing. They may not be the expert at everything, but what they're really good at is strategy and managing a P&L.
I think the death of a CMO doesn't apply to like a global organization, but I think to a smaller organization, I don't think there's a death of that role. You always need a leader, but I think the role changes pretty drastically because even the last few years, the last 10 years or so, We've seen that CMO tenure going down and down and down. And you and I have met a lot of CMOs, like the global ones, they have a lot to manage, right? They're very impressive people on their own. But the smaller, like very small company CMOs, like let's just say like 100 people or so, they've probably got to change.
On the global level, when you're looking at big organizations, what the CMOs are really good at is they're just good operators more than anything else. You're not just there understanding marketing, you truly are an operator, but you're operator for everything related to marketing.
