Dive Brief:
- Kelly Bennett, Netflix CMO, headed up ExecRank’s list of top CMOs and marketing executives. Netflix’s Bennett has served as CMO since 2012 after leaving Warner Bros. as vice president interactive, worldwide marketing with the pictures group.
- The rankings were achieved by statistical and algorithmic analysis of performance across 24 success categories, including business results, experience in executive role, company earnings per share and reputation.
- Rounding out the top five were: Philip Schiller of Apple; Andrew Sherrard of T-Mobile; John Slusher of Nike; and Karen Walker of Cisco.
Dive Insight:
"To get on the list it's a lot about what we call executive branding and getting your name out there," ExecRank Chairman-CEO Jonathan Aspatore told Ad Age. "Whether it is through publishing thought leadership, speaking engagements, board seats, or simply showing that your company did a great job of growing the top line last year."
Aspatore added each year’s ranking aren’t apples-to-apples because the algorithm gets tweaked every year.
Last fall, Forbes, ScribbleLive and LinkedIn teamed up for the 4th annual CMO Influence Study naming Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, as the most influential CMO. Schiller took the No. 2 spot on ExecRank's list.
The modern marketing landscape more and more calls for CMOs to have tech know-how, and the ranking's results point to a future where the lines between tech and marketing blur further -- the top three chief marketers all come from tech brands. Further, Gartner research from several years ago predicted CMOs will be spending more on IT than CIOs by 2017. Now that forecast looks like it might be on the conservative end given the growth of CMOs’ technology role and the rise of the CMTO C-suite title.