The corner office with the marketing title on the door has always had a revolving quality to it, but the spin rate appears to be accelerating.
The average tenure of a chief marketing officer has fallen 35 percent since 2010, according to new data, continuing a trend that has made the CMO role one of the most precarious seats in the corporate suite. The decline reflects not merely the impatience of chief executives but something more fundamental: an ongoing uncertainty about what, exactly, the marketing chief is supposed to be responsible for in an era when the old certainties about brand-building have given way to newer uncertainties about data, technology and the ever-shifting attention of consumers.
(One might note that 2010 was also the year the iPad was introduced, which seems relevant.)
The findings arrive at a moment when artificial intelligence is promising — or threatening, depending on one's disposition — to reshape how consumers discover and evaluate products. New research suggests that while shoppers remain skeptical about letting AI agents make purchases on their behalf, the technology could fundamentally alter the consideration pathways that have long been the CMO's domain to influence.
Which raises a question that boards and chief executives may already be asking themselves: If the funnel is being rebuilt by machines, who should be holding the wrench?
The CMO role has been subject to periodic redefinition for as long as there have been CMOs, of course. The title itself became widespread only in the 1990s, and the job description has expanded and contracted with each new technology that promised to change everything. Some things do change; tenure statistics, it seems, are among them.
Whether the executives who occupy the role briefly will have time to figure out AI before they are replaced by someone else who will try remains, as always, an open question.
Original story published in adage.com: "CMO tenure down 35% since 2010 - Ad Age"