09 Oct How CMOs can rebuild CEO trust
According to recent research conducted by the Harvard Business Revenue, 80% of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs. If that wasn’t shocking enough, it appears as though the frustrations are mutual, with 74% of CMOs stating they believe their jobs do not allow them to maximize impact on the business.
The explanation perhaps lies in the fact that in many organisations CMOs are still only being allowed to impact from the outside-in. The most influential drivers of customer experience (and therefore sales) are entirely out of their hands: product design, pricing strategies and website/store design. The research corroborates this theory, with nearly half of CMOs having a “downstream role”, working primarily on using marketing communications to sell the products, services, and experiences that others design
Focusing solely on MarComms was fine in the old world of communication when advertising was the main lever for sales growth. But the ‘mass ad exposure’ model is delivering diminishing returns. With the seismic changes in the media landscape and accompanying fragmentation of audiences, we need to rethink the modern communications model.
Rather than restricting the marketing department’s impact to factors outside the business, CEOs need to give CMOs license to start from within. Similarly, it is time for CMOs to step-up their impact and regain the respect of CEOs by reframing their marketing from the inside-out.
Sonder are passionate proponents of Inside-out Communications and we have created a short video to explain how the model works. Click here to watch it and start making enough impact in your organisation to earn back the respect of your CEO.