Harvard Business Review July/August 2020 pp24 Marketing “CMO’s Declining Fortunes”
Reviewing top executive compensation from 1999-2017 reveals the rise and fall in value of the key roles of CFO, CMO, COO and CTO. As a “proportion of various C-suite officers in the top tier” shows that compensation declined most and is still declining for Chief Marketing Officer roles followed by Chief Operating Officer. CFO increased about 30% from baseline and is still increasing while CTO, Chief Technology Officer, increased about 130% from baseline and is also still increasing. The decline for CMO started before 2005 and is likely the result of “the proliferation of tech companies (which tend to invest less in traditional marketing), a decline in retailers and manufacturers (which are more reliant on it [marketing]), and changes to marketing itself, as customers increasingly get information online rather than from ads.”