Expanding roles and avoiding pressure: Your Marketing Week
At the end of every week, we look at the key stories, offering our view on what they mean for you and the industry. From the expanding CMO role to the need to banish the term ‘high performing’, it’s been a busy week. Here is my take.
CMO-plus
CMO-plus
We’ve written frequently about marketers being overstretched. Of the fact marketing leaders are being forced to add more to their plate and take on additional responsibilities, often without appropriate compensation or support. CMO is just a starter for 10 it seems, with chief marketing and ‘fill in the blank’ officer increasingly becoming the norm.
In the past few months, Sainsbury’s has promoted Mark Given to chief technology, data and marketing officer, UKTV made Penny Brough chief marketing and AI officer, Carwow promoted Ben Carter to chief customer, marketing and media officer, and just last week, Coca-Cola broadened Manolo Arroyo’s remit to executive vice-president and chief marketing and customer commercial officer.
And these are far from isolated examples, it seems. Analysis of CMOs at S&P 500 companies published this week by advisory firm Spencer Stuart shows it is a growing trend, with many businesses extending the responsibilities of their top marketer and introducing broader titles.
While these are framed as promotions and illustrative of the confidence being put in marketing to lead with authority as businesses explore growth opportunities in areas such as data, tech, and AI, it also puts more strain on marketers, many of whom are already stretched to breaking point.
Interestingly, Unilever, which is in the midst of a marketing transformation, has gone the other way. Its former CEO Alan Jope told me about his intention to introduce a “CMO-plus-plus” role back in 2019 following the departure of long-standing chief marketing and communications officer, Keith Weed. “It will still be chief marketing officer at the core and then we’ll bolt on a few different things,” he said.
Since then, Unilever has gone through many CMO iterations, with ‘digital’ and ‘growth’ being added and taken away at various points, and ‘commercial’ even replacing marketing altogether in 2022 as Unilever looked to remove silos between marketing and sales.
But with the appointment of Leandro Barreto, who took on the stripped back title of CMO at the start of January, Unilever has gone back to basics. It doesn’t look like others will be following suit any time soon though.
Sending the wrong message
Burnout is a very real problem in marketing – it’s another issue we’ve explored extensively in Marketing Week, with data from this year’s upcoming Career & Salary Survey once again painting a bleak picture. And it is only being fuelled by the fact marketers’ workloads are becoming a seemingly never-ending to-do list, all while resources diminish and expectations rise.
It is leading to a culture where ‘high performance’ is not only expected, it’s a necessity.
But although intended as a badge of honour, describing someone as ‘high performing’ could be doing more harm than good.
While it suggests someone who goes above and beyond, who works fast and gets things done, it is also perpetuating and normalising a relentless, hamster wheel culture where there’s no off switch, no time for reflection, and few boundaries.
It’s certainly a phrase I have used, but reading Abby Dixon’s column this week, it has made me think twice. She suggests it puts pressure on teams to perform in already challenging times, when what’s actually needed is clarity on priorities and psychological safety.
It’s a reminder of how important the language used by leaders is. While phrases like ‘high performing’ might be meant as a compliment and said with the best intentions, it could be reinforcing unrealistic ideals that actually have the opposite effect.
As Dixon says: “Better to focus on sustainable performance while resource is an issue. An approach that focuses on doing great work well, that is intentionally delivered in line with strategy, with the realities of resource and investment. And with wellbeing in mind.”
Cruise control
One of the concerns levelled at AI is that its use could result in a sea of sameness. That ads within a particular sector, influenced by similar data and with similar goals, may all become much of a muchness.
But Fred Olsen Cruise Lines believes the opposite is true. We spoke to the firm’s head of marketing Holly Goddard this week, who explained that by taking a hybrid AI approach, the brand has been able to stand out. Its latest campaign features real people experiencing real moments, but uses AI to enhance the creative and scale the concept.
The family-run firm is not the biggest, so its pockets aren’t as deep as its competitors when it comes to budgets, which is where AI can help create efficiencies and scale. But in doing so, it didn’t want to lose what it believes sets it apart – its personal experience and human element, so featuring real guests was essential.
It shows there is no one-size-fits-all formula for using AI. As brands continue to experiment, case studies like this highlight the breadth of the opportunity and the different approaches that are being taken, which are going to be increasingly useful.
The week ahead
We will be taking a look ahead next week to explore how the role of marketing might evolve over the next decade.
