The CMO role has seen its fair share of change over the last few years. From tightening budgets to uncertainty around the impacts of new tech like artificial intelligence and an average tenure among the execs of only 4.1 years, it’s fair to wonder what is in store for the future of the position. A recent report from Forrester found that the state of the CMO title largely depends on the industry and business model.
“The devil is in the details with this data,” said Ian Bruce, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “I would say that the stats suggest that in many industries, CMOs are very well represented and are doing very well. In other industries, they're faring worse.”
“The Representation and Tenure of Fortune 500 CMOs in 2024” report gathered data from December 2023 to March 2024 from Fortune 500 companies at the time data was collected. Additional data was sourced through company websites, LinkedIn pages, financial reports and other public sources.
Representation varies
While the CMO role is alive and well, the profile and visibility of the role is largely dependent on industry and business model. For example, 91% of financial services and insurance companies have a CMO or other marketing executive leader, while just 21% of energy and mining companies can say the same. However, the data found that the CMO is a more common position than not. Of the nine categories analyzed in the report, seven had a CMO rate of over 50%.
“Whether or not you know a company has a CMO is very, very dependent on the industry you're in,” Bruce said. “In some industries, it's normal, it's just how the industry works.”
Business model has also proven to be an important factor. While 63% of all Fortune 500 companies have a CMO or other marketing executive leader on their senior management team who reports to the CEO, there are disparities. Eighty-four percent of B2C companies have a CMO or other marketing executive leader, compared to 66% of companies with a mixed business model (B2B2C) with the position. Only 48% of B2B companies had a CMO role or equivalent.
What it takes to stay
Notably, women now make up the majority of executive marketing leaders in six of the nine Fortune 500 industries, including utilities and telecommunications (71%), healthcare (64%), financial services and insurance (56%), high-tech manufacturing (55%) primary goods manufacturing and pharma (53%) and retail and wholesale (51%). The categories where women do not make up the majority of executive marketing leaders include business services and transportation (44%), energy and mining (36%) and media, entertainment, leisure and hospitality (33%).
This trend is also stable across business models. Fifty-nine percent of B2B2C CMOs or executive marketing leaders at Fortune 500 companies are women, along with 51% at B2B companies and 50% at B2C companies. However, disparities between the two are evident. Men in senior marketing leadership roles tend to have longer tenures, with an average length of 4.3 years, versus an average of 3.8 years for women.
Disparities in tenure length exist across industries to varying extents. Utilities and communications have a significant gap, with the average tenure for men being 5.5 years while for women it is only 3.4 years. Some gaps in tenure are much closer, notably within the primary goods manufacturing and pharma sectors, where the average for men and women is 4.1 years and 3.6 years, respectively.
However, women do take the lead in some industries. For example, in business services and transportation, the average tenure for women is 3.4 years, compared to 3.2 years for men. Women also stay in high-tech manufacturing roles (4.2 years versus 3.8 years) and healthcare roles (4.3 years versus 3.9 years) longer than men.
“Where representation is high, tenure gets long, where representation is low, tenure goes down as well,” said Bruce. “These things correlate, which makes logical sense at the C-suite level. Where that's the culture in the industry, the CMO tends to stay longer in their roles.”
