The Introduction of the Gen X CMO
The most important change happening in Marketing- the introduction of the Gen X CMO
Harvard Professor Harry Dent suggested that the baby boomer “age wave” would result in an employment, economic and stock market crest between 2007 and 2009, when baby boomers would reach their peak career years in their early 50’s, and then our largest single demographic would start to retire and decrease their spending.
Most of the literature around online marketing and the ROI of advertising has discussed the changing nature of consumer media consumption habits. There have been a lot of pixels spilled noting that Gen X, Gen Y and the Millennials/Gen Z now consume over 60% of their media on the internet, but less than 20% of global media spend and effort is on the web.
While the new Generations X-Z changed their media consumption habits due to major innovations in technology and media, the Baby Boomer Generation still held the office of CMO in large companies and the Presidency at large agencies—and they held the purse strings as well. The earlier Baby Boomer generation is unfortunately stuck in the business models and media types of the past. While Millennials are “digital natives” and Gen X and Gen Y are “digital immigrants,” the Boomers are being left behind labeled as the “digital ignorants.” These are the folks who grew up with the Marlboro Man and Mad Men. “Creative” ruled the day. When business results were down, a CMO called up the ad agency and ordered up another TV commercial.
Over the next 5 years, however, the age wave impact will truly occur. The current 50-to-60 year old Baby Boomer CMOs will retire and be replaced by 35-45 year old Gen X and Gen Y CMOs. Not only will a new generation of CMOs be taking office, they will take office at a younger age than their predecessors. These new CMOs will have grown up with Apple computers at school and Ataris at home, and will have come of working age in the mid-to-late 90’s, at the dawn of the first internet boom. The new CMO won’t need to learn how to use current technologies or embrace new ones, because agility and speed and innovation, coupled with math, science, computers and analytics, are part of their genetic makeup and their schooling. The new CMO is also a CIO, CTO and CFO as well, and they will be more comfortable doing more in-house, running the numbers, and not requiring big media or big agencies to get the work done and make results happen.
Most importantly, the new CMO will demand accountability and ROI from their staff, their spend and their partners. “Marketing is the new Finance,” says Ann Lewnes, CMO of Adobe. The new CMO will know how to facilitate conversations but not dominate them, they will simultaneously be global and local, they will use more highly targeted and sophisticated messaging through more nichey and organic channels to influence specific constituent personas.
Intel’s Sean Maloney and Adobe’s Ann Lewnes, are examples of this younger, digital-savvy CMO, and it only makes sense that the first wave of the new CMOs would appear at the largest technology companies. We are also seeing Gen Xers appear, however, at more traditional companies as well, such as P&G’s new Marc Pritchard.
In the next 10 years, the face of marketing will change even more dramatically than it has over the past 10 years. Not just because consumer tastes or technologies will continue to evolve, but because the first wave of the truly digital, Gen X CMO will be taking office, and they will be the ones writing the checks and driving the decisions.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #1: If you are a search marketer or digital marketer in a company with a Gen X CMO, then you’re in luck. Focus on ROI, analytics, and financial metrics when pitching for budget. Provide cost-benefit analyses, tradeoffs and risk assessments. Don’t be afraid to push for software and personnel to get things done in house, rather than outsourcing.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #2: If you are a search marketer or senior interactive executive in a company with a more traditional CMO, then you have a few options. Focus on the creative aspects of search and digital and how they enhance and extend the value of the traditional media such as TV, print and radio. Expect to leverage the agency of choice of the CMO, or provide “options” of which agencies you prefer, with some leaning more toward technology enablement and some leaning more toward pure service. Make sure to be aligning yourself with any up-and-coming potential Gen X CMOs, or be prepared for one to be brought in from the outside—the average tenure of a CMO is still less than 2 years. If you are feeling more aggressive or you think YOU are the Gen X or Gen Y CMO that’s next in line, you can always pitch your CFO or go straight to the CEO on the benefits of paid and natural search and digital marketing overall, and make a play to get more budget and prove it. This is a risky career strategy, however, for those in large traditional companies!
At the end of the day, if you do great work—both creative and metrics-based, you let your work speak for itself, and you make others around you (including your CMO) look great and achieve great results- then your time will come soon enough and you will become one of the next generation CMOs that are driving global changes in marketing!
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6 comments
Great post Russ. While I agree with many of your point of views above, I’m almost more interested in seeing what a millenial would do as CMO. When you look at the CMO title and you’re using a large enterprise like Adobe; you need to look at it from the perspective of even your local community here in San Diego. Who are the CMO’s of young companies? Who are emerging as great leaders with skillsets that the Gen X/Y can’t compete with? In this digital age where we consume bits of information cross platform … who’s more suitable to be the marketing leader in 2 years, since the Gen X/Y’ers may be out of date by then?
Thanks for following our blog and for your insightful comments. What we are both referring to, in my blog and in your comment, is the ever-present “generation gap” – that older people with power, money and influence “just don’t get” the younger folks.
First, to clear up a definitional issue, Wikipedia actually defines Gen Y and Millenials as the same age group, whereas I separated the Gen Ys as those born pre-2000 and Millenials as post-2000, so I may have caused some confusion there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenials. In either case, the GenY/Millenials/GenZ group was born, at earliest, 1982 or later, which makes them 27 years old or younger. The Gen Xers are currently between the ages of 28 and 48.
From the point of the blog, at Covario, we tend to work with Fortune 500 and Global 2000 clients and Internet Top 100 clients. Large companies like those are just now promoting people in their 30’s and 40’s (Gen Xers) into the CMO role- when the average age used to be 50 and above. They are still getting used to the idea that an executive in their 30’s could have the maturity, experience, presence and leadership to influence a global marketing organization. Additionally, while those same clients like us to think 5 and sometimes 10 years out for them, they are generally more concerned with next quarter and next year’s revenues and profits.
Further, I would still argue that the shift from a Baby Boomer CMO (focused on traditional media, creative, and outsourcing to agencies) to a Gen X CMO (focused more on digital media, metrics and accountability and insourcing using software) will be the most profound in the history of marketing- even more than the future shift from Gen X CMOs to future generations.
Your point stands, however, that future generation CMOs– the Gen Z/Gen i/whatever you want to call them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z%20-%20kids%20under%2016 will be exposed to media types we haven’t even conceived of yet, and up and coming marketers will need to be able to address those.
Only time (and great execution on all of our parts) will hopefully prove us both right!
Russ, interesting article. May I offer another actionable insight. What about outsourcing the entire position? That way, you can spend less money on the CMO position and hire someone who is in many ways more experienced. As you said – now CMOs are CFOs and socially adept as well. Check out Chief Outsiders. http://www.chiefoutsiders.com
They are outsourcing the CMO role. They only hire CMOs that have proven track records and KNOW all facets of the marketing function – as well as the financial and operational functions. And their fees are mainly results based.
This might just be the next generation of the CMO. And entirely more profitable for a company.
Harper
Russ, your analysis is one of the best I have seen as of late amongst all articles surrounding the evolution of the CMO.
Marketing is the function responsible for the creation, maintenance and growth of the value an organization. Unfortunately, many of the old (& new BTW) CMOs are good at the tactics of marketing. The new CMO is much more savvy at understanding and leveraging new media which as a side benefit has also brought in the idea of making decisions based upon measurement. We still find that many young CMOs also lack three critical foundations that make a CMO great.
First, many CEO’s and CMO’s have missed the most fundamental rule of business. The CEO is the #1 marketing executive in the company responsible for vision. The CMO is the #2 marketing executive responsible for translating the vision and value proposition of the company into an insightful, actionable and measurable plan that delivers results and alignment. In our quest to find brilliant CMOs, my firm has found that many of these very bright executives fail to understand the need and responsibility to answer the core fundamental marketing questions prior to launching into the execution of marketing (even though the execution can be measured).
Second, your article addresses this point well. Most current CMOs are unqualified to be a CMO. I asked Walmart’s CMO, Stephen Quinn, how he chose his senior team. He hires business people first, marketers second. CMOs have a bad rap because most of them do not have business and financial acumen. They do not know how their marketing budget impacts both the income statement and the balance sheet. Forget a marketing class, how about finance and operations?
Finally, CMOs fail because they do not have skin in the game. Why is sales the only function forced to live and die based upon results. If you want a great CMO, ask them to put their money where their mouth is. We do.
The Chief Marketing Outsider
Unfortunately, this article is based on an assumption that is incorrect…the assumption that CMO’s will be retiring between age 50 and 60; Not true. The average 50 year-old reports that they will work well into their 60’s, and this was before the recession. Many boomers have no intention of ever retiring. The idea of retirement between 50 and 60 is dying along with the parents of the boomers. Remember that this is a generation that lived to work, not the other way around. Boomers believe that work keeps them healthy, young and vibrant. According to Ken Dychtwald, the expert on boomer behavior the boomer reaction to the recession goes something like this: Cut back on spending? No way. Work another 10 years? Why not. And since the boomers will no doubt drive the recovery as well as the economy going forward, if you want a real picture of the future of the CMO I suggest you take a look at Bob Lutz, not a boomer, but certainly not ready to retire by any means. My guess is that your data from Professor Dent was written over a decade or more ago and that since then, he has revised it quite a bit. Try to be more current Mr. Mann.
[...] my blogs “The Rise of the GenX CMO” and “The Agency of the Future”, I described the historical and macro circumstances that got [...]
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