Just 15 years ago, chief marketing officers were largely tacticians. They took their direction from the corporate strategies designed and handed down by the corner office. Their function was oversight of the marketing mix–ensuring everything from mass-media advertising campaigns to the fulfillment of paper-coupon promotions supported those larger goals and functioned smoothly.

CMG Partners' 4th Annual CMO’s Agenda shows how much that world has changed. The contemporary CMO must grapple with a myriad of forces beyond their traditional scope: changing government regulation, corporate citizenship, and a tightly interconnected world. All of these combined force the CMO to operate in a more complex environment.

Several recent events illustrate how CMOs are impacted by complexity. When the federal government passed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act in May 2009, banks were given just 90 days to mobilize the first of three sweeping regulatory changes in the handling of their credit card customers. While all business functions of card-issuing banks were impacted, marketing was perhaps the most dramatically affected. Catapulted to the front lines, CMOs found themselves as a directive voice in the war room as banks looked to that role to be a critical strategic adviser. CMOs also found themselves serving as crucial counselors to their firms’ C-suite, often leading meetings that looked to preserve the brand and customer experience as the industry bore the rap for an economy gone awry.