On paper, it didn't look like an obvious choice.
Why would Carnival Cruise Line, a global travel brand with $20 billion in annual revenue, hire a digital general manager from a publisher of lifestyle magazines as its new chief marketing officer? Yet that’s exactly what the cruise company did in 2008, appointing Jim Berra to his first-ever CMO role.
Even today, Berra knows how fortunate he is that Carnival took a chance on him. Sure, some aspects of publishing and cruises overlap, as did his prior experience leading Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ loyalty efforts. The media and travel sectors, for instance, both have a big customer loyalty component that makes up the majority of their revenue. Marketing in the two industries also depends heavily on tailoring personalized messages to distinct customer segments. But mainly Berra attributes his hiring to serendipity. He says with the emergence of social media as a storytelling platform, Carnival needed a CMO who could build a content production capability and tell the brand’s story with scale, which connected nicely to his experience at Rodale, the former publisher of Men’s Health and Prevention.
“Timing is everything,” says Berra, who in 2015 moved on to the CMO role at the cruise line Royal Caribbean International.
That it is, and in part because of the pandemic, a lot of other people are finding themselves in a position similar to Berra’s—in the CMO seat for the first time ever and not exactly sure how it happened. Historically, about one-third to one- half of new CMOs appointed annually are first- timers, and that number has been on the rise in recent years. Caren Fleit, managing director of Korn Ferry’s Global Marketing Officers practice, attributes the increase to the fact that the more complex the CMO function has become, the less it is understood in the C-suite. She says the pandemic, which erased nearly 10% of all marketing jobs, fundamentally changed business and engagement models, further complicating the role. “It’s like jumping onto a speeding bullet train,” she says.
Entering the C-suite is daunting in normal times, and these are anything but normal times. The crushing financial impact of the coronavirus amplifies the pressure on CMOs to demonstrate how they are driving overall business performance. The problem is, many first-time CMOs lack the broad range of skills and experience needed to be effective C-suite leaders, says Zach Peikon, a principal in Korn Ferry’s Marketing Officers practice. Pointing to Korn Ferry research that shows strategic thinking represents the most significant capability gap in the marketing function, Peikon says of first-time CMOs, “Not everyone can make the leap.” To help with the transition, Korn Ferry asked several long-standing CMOs to reflect on the challenges they faced early on, how they overcame them, and the advice they wish they had received when they were first-time CMOs.
The following are excerpts from our conversations.
Our panel
What was the largest adjustment you had to make after becoming a CMO for the first time?
Greg Revelle: For me, it was understanding how the CEO and board of directors viewed success. You have to switch your mindset to think about marketing from their perspective. Marketing is geared toward sales growth, while boards and CEOs, and CFOs for that matter, want sales and efficiency. Being able to drive sales while giving money back to the organization is how CMOs get credibility in the C-suite.
Andrea Brimmer: I'd say it was realizing that it is not only OK to have an opinion on business issues outside of marketing—it is expected. In fact, being one-dimensional and limiting your opinion to marketing makes you a target in the C-suite, whereas adding a critical voice to the room creates value.
Jim Berra: Definitely. That’s true. It’s not about being a subject-matter expert anymore. It’s about being able to connect marketing to the larger organizational imperative. You are building agendas and priorities for the entire organization, so I’d say just as important as having an opinion outside of marketing is soliciting the input of other leaders about marketing.
Marisa Thalberg: I agree. CMOs have to be a champion of the function in the C-suite but also recognize that they are showing up as part of the management of the whole company. You have to know when to speak with a functional hat and when to speak with an enterprise hat.
Barbara Goose: It's important to understand that as CMO, it isn't just about growth but what kind of growth. Not every company or division has the same growth mandate. Some may not even want growth, just greater profitability. Not being aligned on what the organization wants can lead to problems.
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It is not only OK to have an opinion on business issues outside of marketing—it is expected.
— Andrea Brimmer, Ally Financial
What advice do you wish you'd gotten about being a CMO?
Brimmer: Don’t be overprotective about the brand. CMOs can get into adversarial relationships with other business leaders by thinking theirs is the only voice that matters when it comes to the brand. The reality is that the more committed people are to the brand, the easier it makes things for the CMO. When everyone has ownership, there is more pride across the organization.
Thalberg: As a new CMO, you first need to be a student of the company, the organization, and, of course, continually the industry. At the same time, a big part of the role is to be a teacher to your team, but just as importantly to your peers and your board, so they can be brought along on the “whys” behind marketing, not just the “whats.”
Goose: Similar to that, I’d add that CMOs also need to be a storyteller to the C-suite. You need to break down for other C-suite leaders what the customer journey looks like—whom you reached, why they acted on a particular message, and how that influenced their decision. I find that capturing our work in video is the best way to help other C-suite leaders digest and see through to the analytics.
Berra: I know now that brand building isn’t the be-all end-all of marketing. Effective financial management, accountability, and metrics are just as important. My advice to CMOs is to figure out how to turn marketing from a cost center to a revenue generator.
Revelle: I wish someone had told me that what gets you into a CMO role isn’t what will make you successful as a CMO.
CMOs are constantly going to be questioned about their brand’s stance on a host of social issues.
— Greg Revelle, Kohl's
What are some unique challenges that first-time CMOs face today that you perhaps didn't face?
Berra: The level of accountability, which was already increasing, totally accelerated with COVID. CEOs and boards want to see how marketing activities are driving new customers, sales, and margins. CMOs today are under intense pressure to prove out what they are doing. You can’t overinvest in customer feedback; things are changing so fast you need immediate feedback loops.
Revelle: Customers are much more engaged with social issues and they demand transparency, so CMOs are constantly going to be questioned about their brand’s stance on a host of issues. Understanding these complex issues from a variety of perspectives, and responding appropriately, is critically important. You have to work with all of your stakeholders and ultimately have to make the right decision for your organization.
Goose: Marketers have to reinvent connections and engage consumers in ways they never have before. It’s a constant process of testing, learning, and optimizing, with the expectation that results will get better over time. There’s no such thing as a yearly plan or a set-it-and-forget-it mentality anymore.
Brimmer: That’s a major challenge because people are incredibly fatigued. With budget cuts and layoffs, marketing departments are spread incredibly thin.
Thalberg: Particularly in times of business crisis, the marketing budget can be a prime target for cutbacks. As a leader, it’s important to be able to bring advocacy for what the function needs with as much concrete modeling as possible regarding what the impact to the business will be with and without the proper funding. When investments aren’t optimal, it takes a combination of creativity to work with what you have, as well as transparency about trade-offs.
CMOs have the shortest tenure of any C-suite position. The function also ranks near the bottom in terms of succession planning. Could that be why we are seeing an increase in the number of first-time CMOs?
Thalberg: The short tenure narrative is frustrating. It suggests a lack of patience, understanding, and support. CMOs can also fall victim to being handed the accountability on results—often quite short- term results—without the corresponding authority and/or resources to fairly own that accountability.
Goose: It’s hard to prove marketing results in the short term. Public companies are focused on quarterly results, and marketing results don’t turn over that quickly.
Brimmer: The function is losing a lot of good talent to other industries. Great marketing minds are going to tech companies or other companies and using the function as a launching pad to other positions. We have to figure out a way to attract, cultivate, and retain more high-potential talent.
Revelle: I think the tenure and succession issues are intertwined. CMOs need to have strong teams to help drive the function with them now that they are part of the C-suite. If CMOs devote too little time to enterprise initiatives, they won’t have the overall impact on the business that’s expected of them. Building great marketing teams can help both increase CMO tenure and develop successors.
Berra: I agree with that. The length of tenure is often a product of the CMO’s ability to be a problem solver for a wider set of questions outside of marketing. CMOs who are too focused on a media plan, for instance, aren’t helping the organization pivot to a new market, product, or operating model.
The short tenure narrative is frustrating. It suggests a lack of patience, understanding, and support.
— Marisa Thalberg, Lowe's
It's common for organizations to tap a new CMO from the agency side of the industry, as has happened with a few of you. What are some challenges a first-time CMO going in-house from an agency can expect?
Brimmer: Well, the biggest difference is that the agency side has one or maybe two pieces of business, whereas the CMO has the whole pie. Instead of being part of an agency, you are now managing them, so you have to figure out what you really need. Do you need separate digital, social, and media agencies, for instance? Also, culturally, on the agency side, you are with your people. Everyone is a creative spirit like you. As a CMO, you are often surrounded by a group of people who may not get you and, in some cases, think you are frivolous.
Goose: When you are on the agency side of the table, you don’t realize the speed of change and breadth of what happens inside a company. Agencies operate within the scope of the brief given. In a company, the brief sits within the context of so many other things. That’s why it’s important for CMOs to have in-house people who understand internal relationships, products, and services and how marketing activities fit in relation to them. Agencies are great for bringing in outside ideas..
As a new member of the C-suite, what are some opportunities first-time CMOs should be thinking about?
Revelle: How can CMOs apply their skills more broadly to understand what consumers will need in the future, adopting an organizational perspective instead of just a marketing one? CMOs have an opportunity to help organizations anticipate those needs and develop strategies to improve overall performance, not just marketing performance.
Berra: There’s an opportunity to invite yourself into a broader set of strategic decisions and help shape business strategy, product innovation, and even talent acquisition.
Thalberg: The window in which you are looking at things with new eyes is inherently limited, so take advantage of it. If you can marry your fresh perspective with institutional knowledge, it can be very powerful. Demonstrate that you understand the fundamentals but can come at them in some new, exciting ways.
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For more information, contact:
Caren Fleit: caren.fleit@kornferry..com
Zach Peikon: zach.peikon@kornferry.com
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