What value is the CMO and the overall marketing department bringing to companies?
The short answer is good-ish. CMOs are doing better now than they were a few years ago, per their CEOs, but their departments are still floundering a little.
Anna Adams-Sarthou, Director of Strategic Communications, Boathouse Group
Grappling with the increasingly complex external forces of political and economic disruption, technological advances and ever present competitive threats, most CEOs have no choice but to spend the majority of their time focused on external factors. The push for growth takes center stage, driving reactive strategies and soaking up attention, often making operational issues like workforce, reputation and employee morale a much lower priority.
This is clear in Boston-based Boathouse Group’s recently released 4th annual CEO Study on Marketing and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Boathouse developed the survey in 2021, with the intention of it being an one-off project to demonstrate to the industry the declining respect for Marketing as well as the declining tenure of CMOs in companies. Now, four years into conducting this as an annual survey, the study reveals patterns of data on Marketing and the CMO, delving into CEOs’ strategic focuses and their expectations and assessments of their CMOs and Marketing Departments.
The research sampled 150 CEOs of high revenue—$250M-$1B+—companies with an almost even mix of public and private. Two thirds of the sample size were technology, healthcare, banking/financial services, retail, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals/biotech
The study probed how CEOs view their role and what takes up the bulk of their time and thought processes, as well as their views on their CMOs and marketing departments. Boathouse’s Director of Strategic Communications, Anna Adams-Sarthou, offers deeper insights in this Q&A with Bulldog Reporter:
Q: What are CEOs primarily concerned with, and what kind of downstream effect does it have on their teams and their productivity?
A: The effect is major, in that it’s very difficult for CEOs’ strategies to be realized. In fact, 87% of CEOs reveal they have yet to fully realize their transformation strategy, according to a Boathouse study of CEOs and CMOs.
The reason? To begin with, there is a clear and significant gap between company priorities that impact financial performance and organizational issues.The data showed that CEOs’ top business priorities are growth and profitability, financials, and, from an organizational standpoint, their top priorities are tech/AI and productivity/efficiency. Workforce was third on the list of organizational priorities. What’s more, CEOs view their top stakeholders as their C-Suites and their Boards, which is where they also spend the most of their time, with employees taking up much less of their time and day to day attention. A Gartner study from 2024 reflects the same: growth tops the list, cited by 56% of CEOs, followed by technology implementation (42%), the strengthening of the organization’s operating model or corporate profile (36%), and financial stability (25%). Employees are not a top priority.
So it’s no wonder there’s a strategy implementation problem – and likely also a morale problem, too. CEOs don’t spend enough time either communicating with their employees or prioritizing company culture, workforce development and employee retention. Employees are left attempting to implement a strategy that has been delivered to them via a trickle-down effect with little context as to its purpose and value and, critically, what their role in realizing the strategy really is.
How does Marketing play into this?
In a somewhat similar vein, while CEOs are feeling increasingly better about their CMOs, they continue to show less value in their overall marketing departments. Four years ago, only 21% of CEOs rated their CMOs as “best in class.” That number has more than doubled, with 45% of CEOs giving their CMOs that rating in 2025. Conversely, in this year’s study, nearly 63% of CEOs rate their Marketing department “average” or “underperforming”—a significant shift from last year’s 51% rating.
While CMOs are better aligning their own time, work and priorities with that of their CEOs, what’s apparent is they are not doing a good job leading their own teams.
It is great to see that CMOs are connecting better with their CEOs and that there’s a stronger understanding of vision and strategy. We know, from our data, that CEOs care about their CMOs serving as a trusted partner and advisor. However, the fact that marketing departments are not viewed in the same “best in class” capacity as their department leaders demonstrates a leadership gap between the CEO and company employees and the CMO and their department employees/direct reports.
While not directly addressed in the study, do you think Chief Communications Officers and their communications departments could also fall into this juxtaposition?
Probably. As professional communicators, I like to think that we do a better job than most of communicating with our own teams. At the end of the day, so much of a company’s reputation is built on strong employee sentiment, rooted in robust employee engagement and internal communications.
That said, it really starts with leadership and management skills across the board. Being able to understand the CEO’s vision and strategy is the first step, then being able to accurately translate that to your team, then operationalize the plan with digestible tasks, action items and division of labor so your team knows what the expectation of each of them is, and then toeing the line between providing helpful oversight, information and expectations—exercising good delegation—while not micromanaging. That’s really where the leadership skills come into play, and it’s something that CCOs, CMOs, CEOs and everyone else in leadership positions in any company should make sure they address in addition to attempting to push forward “their version” of projects.
What is more important in today’s workforce, technical skills or power skills?
The short answer is that it probably depends on the role. Technical skills are, of course, invaluable. Without highly-trained professionals in specific, technical capabilities, most industries simply wouldn’t work or even exist. That includes functions like marketing and communications.
However, as we get into the C-Suite, especially the role of CMO, the success of any project or vision is most frequently enabled by a marriage of power skills and technical skills. A 2023 Project Management Institute study—which defines power skills as communication, problem-solving, collaborative leadership and strategic thinking – found that 90% of respondents agree that power skills help them work smarter and 80% feel their organization places value on all employees possessing power skills. Knowing this and the data from Boathouse’s own studies, CMOs and their teams will find the most success, respect and ability to integrate with each other as well as with other teams in the company by recognizing the dual imperative of doing the work and incorporating the interpersonal skills—the power skills—in the process. That’s the sweet spot for efficiency and success.
Download Boathouse’s CEO Study on Marketing and the Chief Marketing Officer here.
