July 7, 2025 • 27 mins
We've just passed the midway point of 2025 -- what are the top 10 priorities for chief marketing officers (CMOs) for the rest of the year?
CMOs have been tasked with driving growth even while they grapple with external uncertainty, widespread burnout, and the rise of AI. What else made The Conference Board’s top 10 CMO priorities for the rest of 2025?
Join Steve Odland and guest Ivan Pollard, the Marketing & Communications Center Leader at The Conference Board, to find out what we can learn from CMO surveys, why the CMO-CEO relationship matters, and why 2025 is the year AI needs to contribute to revenue growth.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, asignature series by The Conference Board.
I'm Steve Odland from The ConferenceBoard and the host of this podcast
series, and in today's conversation,we're going to talk about the top 10
priorities for chief marketing officersin today's ever-changing marketplace.
Joining me today is Ivan Pollard,the leader of our Marketing
(00:20):
& Communications Center and theformer global CMO of General Mills.
Ivan, welcome back.
Thank you very much for having me, Steve.
Delighted to be here.
OK, so Ivan, here we go.
We'll start with the drama.
We're going to start with number10 on your priority list for
CMOs for the rest of 2025.
(00:40):
This is a really good exercise to do.
Of course, there are more than 10priorities for CMOs as there always are,
but we're going to go for the rank order.
And number 10 is the burnoutof the CMO and their staff.
I'm going to draw on data fromThe Conference Board, like our
CMO Meter and our C-Suite Outlook.
From the CMO Meter.
48% of marketing leaders are sayingthat right now they have a high
(01:03):
or very high level of burnout.
They have tactics todeal with it, of course.
72% prioritize aggressively.
61% say no, but never to the CEO.
And 44% are starting to delegate thework more effectively to their team.
So that's number 10.
Yeah, but it's not sustainable.
(01:23):
You can't just keep burning out.
And by the way, burnout is not necessarilybeing used in a clinical fashion.
It means that they're pushing themselvesand their teams too hard and they need
to get the priorities straight andmatch that with the time available.
Spot on.
And a part of helping that is going tocome up in some of the other priorities,
which is around how tech is bothhelping and enabling them to cope with
(01:46):
the workload, but also causing stress.
Yeah.
But you can't do that.
And by the way, if the CMOs themselvesare feeling that, wow, what their
teams must be going through.
So that's a good question, Steve.
And actually that burnout and the way thatyou deal with that links to number nine,
which is organizational design and howto optimize for agility and performance.
(02:08):
And, as somebody once told me, and it'sstuck, you have to plan for the "what
if," but you have to organize for "whatthe heck?" With all the change going
on in the outside world at the moment,there is a lot of pressure on rethinking
the best way to scope your team out tobe able to deal with the unexpected.
It's interesting, so these first two,number 10 and nine priorities, sound
(02:31):
more like human capital priorities,but that sort of underscores the
importance of people in marketing, right?
And you have to have a team that'smotivated, that's highly functional,
that has their accountabilitiesand responsibilities laid out.
It's about leadership in order toget creativity, innovation, and
everything that's expected, right?
(02:53):
Yeah.
Without a doubt.
And that's what the organizationis trying to be focused on.
How do we focus on the things thatmatter, empower our people to do the
things that they do best, and then usemachines to get it done more productively?
We'll talk about that.
All right, number eighton the hit parade, Ivan.
OK.
Number eight is just copingwith the fragmentation of what
(03:15):
marketing is and the implicationsfor the partnership with sales.
So thinking about 15 years ago,when I joined the Coca-Cola Company,
there was a brilliant woman who ledmarketing organization and capabilities
around the world, and she had usfocus on just over 20 capabilities.
I caught up with her last week.
She now runs marketing operationsfor a big global tech company.
(03:37):
She has them focus on 103capabilities, and of course, when
you use "focus" and "103" in thesame sentence, it raises eyebrows.
Yeah.
Doesn't sound like focus.
If you said three, but not 103.
So what does she really mean?
She obviously doesn't mean thatshe's tracking 103 things, but she's
saying that it's a complex world.
It's a very complex world, and infact, the organization, of course,
(04:00):
is no longer just a marketing team.
It stretches into sales, whichI'll talk about in a moment.
But also, of course, IT andall of the things that help the
marketers do what marketers dobest are actually a little bit more
distributed across the organization.
And even the things that you focus on,like imagine social media, for instance.
(04:21):
22% of all marketing money around theworld goes into social media at the
moment and that's the biggest channel.
And, of course, just socialmedia is not a thing.
It's hundreds of thousands of thingsfrom a micro-influencer to buying
ads on YouTube during the Super Bowl.
Yeah, this partnership with sales isan interesting one because in some
(04:41):
companies, sales is the line leadership.
In some companies, marketing'sthe line leadership, but sales
is the primary interface, with adirect interface with a customer.
And clearly, in a B2B world and alsoa multi-tiered B2C world, that's
different than in a straight B2Bworld, where marketing is more direct.
(05:03):
So that leads you to needing toreally describe and agree upon a
RACI, or some tool like RACI, wherethere are discrete ownership of each
area so that balls aren't droppedand frustration doesn't ensue.
So it's a partnership, but it's also awell-orchestrated dance with that part.
(05:24):
Yeah.
It's a great dance.
And that dance is getting morecomplicated but also much more rewarding.
So yeah, in some companies, marketingleads, in other companies, sales
leads, in all companies, they have towork together, and they need to look
like partners on the dance floor.
I think one of the things that iscausing a little bit of confusion,
that we are hearing from our members,as the funnel is getting more and more
(05:46):
automated, and as the data becomes alittle bit more distributed, the need
for collaboration becomes even more.
And in some, some spaces perhapsit verges into competition.
Who's taking the lead, andwho's got the R and the A?
You're right (06:00):
Without a RACI, it doesn't work.
Number seven on your list ofpriorities for CMOs in 2025.
So in 2025, we're seeinga bit of a resurgence of
thinking a bit more long term.
So how do you balance thelong-term strategic work with
the short-term executional work?
Again, going back to our CMO Meterin March, 61% of CMOs—so one of the
(06:23):
biggest challenges, in fact, it wasthe biggest challenge in managing their
work—is getting that balance right.
And the biggest cohort ofmarketing leaders are in the 30%
strategic, 70% execution work.
And we also found, going back tonumber 10, that the more executional
work you do, the more likely you areto be stressed out and burning out.
(06:46):
So managing that balanceis really important.
How do you advise CMOs who say, look,I don't have time to think about the
long term cause I'm just buried in theday-to-day execution and, gee, wouldn't
it be a luxury to have that time?
But I'm never going to have it.
How do you encourage them oradvise them to make that time?
(07:08):
I think it's the sort of theeffort-reward equation here.
You can find a lot of evidence that thebetter you have formulated a long-term
strategy, with a vision and all of yourgoals clearly articulated, it's actually
easier to get the execution all work done.
So you invest in the strategy in orderto be able to accelerate the execution.
And when you find the balance,it makes it a much more rewarding
(07:31):
and productive function.
That then suggests that thereneeds to be an alignment across
the C-Suite on the long term.
And once there is, then the CMOs and theirteams can go and focus on the execution.
You see this all the time wherethere's misalignment or there
isn't buy-in, and so you've gotmarketing operating on their own.
(07:54):
And when that happens, then it'sthis constant tug of war between
short and long term, right?
So it's the need to make sureeverybody's in the same boat
from an objectives perspective sothat there's freedom to execute.
Brilliant.
I think that's very well put, Steve,and it leads us to number six on
the list, which is strengthening therelationship with the CEO and the CFO.
(08:14):
So that's on the balance of thethings that we are hearing from our
CMOs and from outside in the world.
We see that is a necessary needthat, as a CMO, you are a business
leader that does marketing.
You don't want to get isolatedas the marketing person.
So we find that 55% of CMOs at the momentsay they have a very strong relationship
(08:37):
with the CEO, 48% with the CFO.
Having said that, almost all of them aresaying that they're working harder to
strengthen that relationship and makesure that alignment directs their work.
So an interesting little factoid was 76%of those CMOs who said that they were
having a bigger impact on the business inthe last six months also said they have
(09:00):
a very strong relationship with the CEO.
Yeah.
And they feel more rewardedand motivated because they know
that there's this alignment.
Remind me, what is theaverage CMO tenure these days?
So the average CMO tenure is, it depends.
If you're doing Russell 3000, it'sjust over two and a bit years.
(09:20):
In the Fortune 100, it'sstarting to edge towards four.
And whilst that's the average, we've got alot of people who go quickly, and several
people who have stayed for over a decade.
CEO tenure is roughly five years.
And that means that every CEO isgoing through two CMOs per tenure
on average, which is terrible.
(09:40):
You can't really have a partnership thatway, and you can't get a cadence going.
So it does suggest that this isa really important relationship.
And it's not just about, "Hey, let's gohang out together." It's about making
sure that there, there's consistencyand alignment around that, the
strategic plan and the goals of that.
And you've written a lot about this.
(10:01):
Yeah.
And we'll put some links that you canfollow under the podcast, but yeah,
you are absolutely right, Steve.
It's not about being friends.
It's about being partners.
So that notion of tenure extendsover time, the more aligned
you are on your objectives.
yeah.
The CFO is the other piece of this,and that's a case where there needs
(10:22):
to be alignment on delivering resultsand the commitments, but making
sure that CFOs understand that.
I had a CFO once who described toinvestors that a marketing spend
was just a one-time expense and wastrying to get them to sort it out.
That suggests a lack of alignment,a lack of understanding between
(10:46):
the two areas, both of whom areaccountable for driving results.
So these relationships, as yousay, are so critically important,
And may I suggest that perhaps the CFOwas the one that wasn't connected there.
Marketers these days know, as Isaid, they're business leaders.
Whether they all are able to acton it, Steve, I think is a valid
point, but business leaders firstwho are expected to deliver results.
(11:12):
We're talking about the top 10priorities for CMOs in 2025.
We're going to take a shortbreak and be right back.
Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
I'm your host, Steve Odland, from TheConference Board, and I'm joined by Ivan
Pollard, the leader of our Marketing& Communications Center at The Conference
Board, and a very important former CMO.
(11:35):
So we're talking aboutthe top 10 priorities.
We're halfway through the list.
Coming up now on number five.
OK, so we talked about marketinggetting more complicated.
At the same time, it'sgetting more automated.
And this is a really interestingperiod where marketers can have
a greater impact on the business,perhaps, than we're seeing currently.
(11:55):
So how do you get ahead in this?
One of the things that drives that,of course, is the last three or 10
years of really starting to seethe rewards of the application of
AI and other MarTech applications.
I touched on it earlier, we areseeing 44% increases in productivity.
And productivity, of course,we're seeing savings, and that
(12:18):
was perhaps the drive for 2024.
In 2025, we're starting to seemore pressure being put on to
show the gains, the rewards, therevenue-driving opportunities of AI.
And that's really what the prioritiesfor the CMO are at number five.
And number four, by the way, is aswell as looking at what they're getting
(12:39):
from what they've currently done, ofcourse, they have to be looking, the CMO
has to be looking at what comes next.
As somebody said at one of our AI events,it doesn't matter where you are on the
journey, so long as you're moving forward,and you'd better all be moving forward.
So what's next is agentic AI, or AIagents, and managing end-to-end workflows.
(12:59):
So instead of "Write me an email," youdon't set the task, you set the objective.
"Find me five new qualified leadsthis week for no more than $20
a lead, and then tell me what Ineed to do best to convert them."
Yeah, but let's go back to thevalue on number five, cause
we didn't really finish that.
This seems a friction point, or apotential friction point, between
(13:21):
CMOs and either the CEOs or theCFOs, which is a prior priority.
Because AI is an investment, number one,so there's that potential friction point.
But it also can be flipped around to bea great source of alignment because AI
can really help in the productivity side.
(13:41):
Talk about that.
Yeah.
And let's remember.
Marketing, sales, customer service.
They are probably the first movers.
They're in the vanguard of AI, butthe CFO and CHRO and CLO are all
deploying AI applications, too.
All of them need to prove that thisis returning on the investment.
(14:01):
And we're starting to see definitegains, for instance, in productivity,
efficiency, innovation comingthrough the marketing chain.
There was some research that landedthis week, it reflects a little bit
what The Conference Board said (14:12):
49% of CMOs are seeing efficiency gains.
40% are starting to seecost gains, reducing costs.
And interestingly, 39% of CMOs aresaying that automation is starting to
help them reduce their agency costsand reliance on external partners.
So we're seeing that cost saving,Steve, that is the thing that
(14:34):
everybody's demonstrating.
I think the priority for the balanceof this year is starting to show
revenue growth that's coming from AI.
Yeah, we'll come to that.
I sat through a brilliant presentationthat you made to a group of CFOs, a
CMO presenting AI to a group of CFOs.
I've never seen them more excitedwhen you showed them how they
(14:56):
could save millions of dollars increative design through use of AI.
Talk about that.
Yeah, so generative AI was perhapsthe thing that lit the fuse for this
becoming scaled about in marketing.
So this was a while back, GPT-3,essentially we just gave it a
prompt saying, make some packaging.
(15:17):
We gave it a very shrewd prompt, ofcourse, which is what you have to
do, and it generated a new packagingdesign that we would never have thought
about because it went back into thehistory of the brand we were doing.
It did it in two minutes live.
Was it perfect?
No.
But was it a reallyinteresting start point?
Yes.
So here are the savingsthat the CFO looked at.
Number one, I didn't pay an agency.
(15:37):
Number two, I was usingan open-source GPT model.
Number three, I did not waste threemonths of my team's time going
backwards and forwards about the startpoint, which is usually what happens.
And the brief, the prompt wasactually written by using GPT
to help me write the prompt.
So very clear savings there, Steve.
(15:58):
And when you say the shrewd prompt, whatyou're really talking about is the brief.
You're giving them, hereare the parameters around
which you should design that.
That's all you mean.
That's not hocus-pocus.
Not hocus-pocus.
And in full transparency, I usedChatGPT to help me write that prompt.
Yeah, so I continue to hear that peopleare worried about their jobs being
(16:20):
supplanted by AI, but I just view this asan enormous productivity and innovation
tool that doesn't do away with peopleat all but makes them more productive.
But back to number four, though.
On the next applicationof AI, where does that go?
Mark Zuckerberg on May the 1st didan interview with a third party where
he's talking about the future of the$1.15 trillion advertising economy.
(16:43):
Mark's point of view was you couldessentially remove that entire business.
His literal line was, "Link yourbank account to us, and we'll take
care of the rest. Tell us what you'rewilling to spend and we will get
you the business that you need."
Now I think you could take issuewith that, but it is an extension
of what's the possibility.
And just to put that in hard terms, thereare jobs that are going to disappear.
(17:08):
There are jobs that are goingto get created as well, though.
So WPP announced on Monday it'sletting 45% of their staff go from
their big media agency called GroupMbecause a lot of those things that a
media agency does can be automated.
It can be made more efficient, can bemade better, so it's not just about
(17:29):
getting there faster or cheaper.
You have to get there better.
And unfortunately, those peoplewill reskill and find other jobs
which will get created by AI.
Yeah.
And you hope that people are open to that.
And I think if you don't fearit, it allows you to learn new
things, because it really, AI isgetting rid of all of the mundane,
repetitive kinds of work products.
(17:51):
But it can be disruptive to people,and that's what causes a little bit of
fear, so you have to get ahead of it.
OK.
We're coming down to the final three.
All right.
The number three priority is?
How will AI agents change marketing?
So I just touched on that a little bit,that those automated repetitive tasks
(18:11):
that actually a machine does better.
That's the thing that's critical here.
It still needs people to work withmachine, but you just don't need as many.
We're already seeing those implications.
In the marketing budget report that'sjust broken, you're seeing that marketing
budgets are staying flat year on year.
So 7.7% of revenue—average companythey talked to was $6 billion—so 7.7%
(18:35):
of revenue is going on marketing.
Interestingly, in 2020, thatwas at a recent high of 11%.
Marketers are expected to compete ina very chaotic environment, to win
in that environment, and obviouslydrive efficiency and productivity.
So I think we're starting to see it changethings, automated some of those tasks.
But to put it super-simply, Steve,look at what's happening to search.
(18:58):
So I don't know if this fact is trueor not, but I read online almost 10%
of Amazon's e-commerce is now comingdirectly to them through an AI search.
Not SEO search or a Google search,or even directly from Amazon.
So we're empowering the AI tomake trusted decisions for us
about, for instance, what to buy.
And that's going tochange the whole ethos.
(19:20):
We focused for 15 years now onmaking sure that we click with the
algorithm, and we're going to haveto shift from clicks to mentions.
So AI, of course, isreading what people say.
It's reading Glassdoor, it'sreading Facebook, it's reading
X, it's reading Reddit.
Interestingly, of course it's also readingyour own website and your own comments.
(19:41):
So agents will change marketingfor sure, without a doubt.
And of those 103 capabilitiesthat I talked about that big
tech companies looking at, itwill change every one of them.
It's interesting, it reminds me of aperiod in time, back in the late '80s
and early '90s when the web startedto be used, and websites started to
be developed by companies, by brands,by businesses as a selling tool.
(20:05):
And everybody wanted their website to bethe portal for the industry and so forth.
And it didn't evolve that way.
It evolved to a search engine ortwo becoming the portals because
it was just far more efficient.
Even if you knew that you wanted to lookat Coca-Cola's caffeine-free drinks, it's
(20:32):
easier to Google it than it was to tryto find it through Coca-Cola dot com.
So people have learned this.
So AI, to me, is an evolutionof that whole process.
Yeah, nicely put.
I think that's right.
Automation has always been, goall the way back to the steam
engine or things before that.
(20:54):
Automation has always been about doingthe things that human beings can do and
taking the work off us, and doing thembetter, faster, smarter, and cheaper.
AI is the next evolution of that.
I just think it's an exponentialleap forward versus where
we were with the internet.
Moving faster, doing more,and getting much more.
Wait till physical AI startsto really manifest everywhere.
(21:16):
Yeah.
So the reason it's the number threepriority is that people have to hop on
this and make sure that you're deployingit in the best way for your business.
Number two on the hit paradefor priorities for CMOs.
Number one and number two arenot going to surprise anybody.
Number two is all about the externalfactors that affect, essentially, what's
going on in a particular market for a CMO.
(21:38):
So at the beginning of the year, weasked them, what's on your mind for 2025?
The most important priorities, in rankorder: inflation, geopolitics, AI,
and changing customer buying behavior.
So that is a constant that wealways have to think about that.
What are my customers and what aremy current consumers thinking, and
(21:59):
how am I going to shape what I'vegot to offer value in that world?
Yeah.
But this is, it's interesting causeI think this year—now we've been
through many black swan events, whichby definition are not forecastable.
But the fact that it used to be thatyou have one once in your lifetime.
Now it seems to be every few years.
It's not that you can necessarily forecastit, it's just that it's going to happen.
(22:21):
These things are going to happen, andyou have to build in that agility to
your teams and the ability to pivotin your messaging and your marketing.
So I think your point is really important.
Yeah, you can write a marketingplan and everybody goes, "Yawn, of
course we've got to take into accountexogenous factors," but they've never
been as impactful as they are today.
(22:43):
And consumer behavior, yeah, they shiftover time, but it was more generational.
Now it's every few years, driven bytechnology, And you've got social media
as a lightning-fast communication tool.
All of this stuff just converges to createa more important understanding of the
external world, economics, geopolitics,which is not what you would've described
(23:07):
as something that CMOs needed toreally focused on a few years back.
I think the good CMOs were aheadof that game, Steve, and they were.
But every CMO nowadayshas to be able to do this.
Of course, as we talked about, AI andthe internet helps, but that's only
one signal that you could be reading.
You have to be reading many signalsfrom many of the different stakeholders.
(23:30):
And as I said earlier, you've gotto plan for what might happen.
So, scenario planning.
You've got to organize to be ableto react to whatever does happen.
And that, I think, is an interestingchallenge for today's CMO.
OK, here we go.
Drum roll.
The number one priority forCMOs for the balance of 2025 is?
(23:51):
Well, I kind of want to askyou what you would guess, but
I'm not allowed to do that.
You'll be pleased to know that inevery conversation we're having, in
all the research that we're doing,that the biggest thing that a CMO
wants to focus on is driving growth.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Whether they're doing it well, I think,is the challenge, but every one of
(24:11):
them is trying to do it well, tryingto prove it's working, and trying to be
competitive in the way that they do it.
Driving growth, you go all the way back toDrucker, the principles of marketing about
winning a customer and retaining them.
They stay the same.
The practices are definitely changing.
And by the way, this is alsowhat we see the CEOs want
(24:33):
from their marketing leaders.
And this is part of that friction that wetalked about earlier, and the gap between
CEOs and CMOs is this hyper-focus on it.
But you know what, Ivan, if it was easy,you wouldn't need these super-brainy,
super-experienced, super-innovative CMOs.
And so, it's hard to figure thisout, and it's hard then to translate
(24:56):
it into tactical programs thatwill actually move the needle.
So it's not that, necessarily, CMOsare not focused on it, but it's that
success added is sometimes elusive.
Yeah, and I think I thought for amoment then you were going to say
super-brainy, super-experienced,and super- adaptable machines.
But no, you're right.
(25:17):
We need the humans still here.
When they start working with thosemachines, and we put the two together,
then I think we can start to seereally interesting new methods and new
approaches to driving growth acrossall sorts of different businesses.
And that's what The ConferenceBoard is here for, helping people
stay ahead, connecting people.
That makes them better, and doing itin a way that helps society improve.
(25:41):
But your whole thesis here is that there'sgreater and greater complexity, exogenous
world, micro factors, consumer andcustomer changing behavior, technology.
All of this then says these tools thatare emerging here, AI tools and other
kinds of analytical tools, are reallyarriving at exactly the right time.
And that in order to sort this, it's notjust about hiring an agency and saying,
(26:05):
giving me a good storyboard and let's go.
It really requires more than that.
And hence the order of your priorities andthe number of these priorities for 2025.
Yeah.
And I like the idea that the AIand technology is causing some
of the complexity, but it's alsocreating all of the opportunity.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
(26:26):
Ivan Pollard, thanksfor being with us today.
Thank you very much for having me.
And thanks to all of you forlistening in to C-Suite Perspectives.
I'm Steve Odland, and this series has beenbrought to you by The Conference Board.
Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, asignature series by The Conference Board.
I'm Steve Odland from The ConferenceBoard and the host of this podcast
series, and in today's conversation,we're going to talk about the top 10
priorities for chief marketing officersin today's ever-changing marketplace.
Joining me today is Ivan Pollard,the leader of our Marketing
(00:20):
& Communications Center and theformer global CMO of General Mills.
Ivan, welcome back.
Thank you very much for having me, Steve.
Delighted to be here.
OK, so Ivan, here we go.
We'll start with the drama.
We're going to start with number10 on your priority list for
CMOs for the rest of 2025.
(00:40):
This is a really good exercise to do.
Of course, there are more than 10priorities for CMOs as there always are,
but we're going to go for the rank order.
And number 10 is the burnoutof the CMO and their staff.
I'm going to draw on data fromThe Conference Board, like our
CMO Meter and our C-Suite Outlook.
From the CMO Meter.
48% of marketing leaders are sayingthat right now they have a high
(01:03):
or very high level of burnout.
They have tactics todeal with it, of course.
72% prioritize aggressively.
61% say no, but never to the CEO.
And 44% are starting to delegate thework more effectively to their team.
So that's number 10.
Yeah, but it's not sustainable.
(01:23):
You can't just keep burning out.
And by the way, burnout is not necessarilybeing used in a clinical fashion.
It means that they're pushing themselvesand their teams too hard and they need
to get the priorities straight andmatch that with the time available.
Spot on.
And a part of helping that is going tocome up in some of the other priorities,
which is around how tech is bothhelping and enabling them to cope with
(01:46):
the workload, but also causing stress.
Yeah.
But you can't do that.
And by the way, if the CMOs themselvesare feeling that, wow, what their
teams must be going through.
So that's a good question, Steve.
And actually that burnout and the way thatyou deal with that links to number nine,
which is organizational design and howto optimize for agility and performance.
(02:08):
And, as somebody once told me, and it'sstuck, you have to plan for the "what
if," but you have to organize for "whatthe heck?" With all the change going
on in the outside world at the moment,there is a lot of pressure on rethinking
the best way to scope your team out tobe able to deal with the unexpected.
It's interesting, so these first two,number 10 and nine priorities, sound
(02:31):
more like human capital priorities,but that sort of underscores the
importance of people in marketing, right?
And you have to have a team that'smotivated, that's highly functional,
that has their accountabilitiesand responsibilities laid out.
It's about leadership in order toget creativity, innovation, and
everything that's expected, right?
(02:53):
Yeah.
Without a doubt.
And that's what the organizationis trying to be focused on.
How do we focus on the things thatmatter, empower our people to do the
things that they do best, and then usemachines to get it done more productively?
We'll talk about that.
All right, number eighton the hit parade, Ivan.
OK.
Number eight is just copingwith the fragmentation of what
(03:15):
marketing is and the implicationsfor the partnership with sales.
So thinking about 15 years ago,when I joined the Coca-Cola Company,
there was a brilliant woman who ledmarketing organization and capabilities
around the world, and she had usfocus on just over 20 capabilities.
I caught up with her last week.
She now runs marketing operationsfor a big global tech company.
(03:37):
She has them focus on 103capabilities, and of course, when
you use "focus" and "103" in thesame sentence, it raises eyebrows.
Yeah.
Doesn't sound like focus.
If you said three, but not 103.
So what does she really mean?
She obviously doesn't mean thatshe's tracking 103 things, but she's
saying that it's a complex world.
It's a very complex world, and infact, the organization, of course,
(04:00):
is no longer just a marketing team.
It stretches into sales, whichI'll talk about in a moment.
But also, of course, IT andall of the things that help the
marketers do what marketers dobest are actually a little bit more
distributed across the organization.
And even the things that you focus on,like imagine social media, for instance.
(04:21):
22% of all marketing money around theworld goes into social media at the
moment and that's the biggest channel.
And, of course, just socialmedia is not a thing.
It's hundreds of thousands of thingsfrom a micro-influencer to buying
ads on YouTube during the Super Bowl.
Yeah, this partnership with sales isan interesting one because in some
(04:41):
companies, sales is the line leadership.
In some companies, marketing'sthe line leadership, but sales
is the primary interface, with adirect interface with a customer.
And clearly, in a B2B world and alsoa multi-tiered B2C world, that's
different than in a straight B2Bworld, where marketing is more direct.
(05:03):
So that leads you to needing toreally describe and agree upon a
RACI, or some tool like RACI, wherethere are discrete ownership of each
area so that balls aren't droppedand frustration doesn't ensue.
So it's a partnership, but it's also awell-orchestrated dance with that part.
(05:24):
Yeah.
It's a great dance.
And that dance is getting morecomplicated but also much more rewarding.
So yeah, in some companies, marketingleads, in other companies, sales
leads, in all companies, they have towork together, and they need to look
like partners on the dance floor.
I think one of the things that iscausing a little bit of confusion,
that we are hearing from our members,as the funnel is getting more and more
(05:46):
automated, and as the data becomes alittle bit more distributed, the need
for collaboration becomes even more.
And in some, some spaces perhapsit verges into competition.
Who's taking the lead, andwho's got the R and the A?
You're right (06:00):
Without a RACI, it doesn't work.
Number seven on your list ofpriorities for CMOs in 2025.
So in 2025, we're seeinga bit of a resurgence of
thinking a bit more long term.
So how do you balance thelong-term strategic work with
the short-term executional work?
Again, going back to our CMO Meterin March, 61% of CMOs—so one of the
(06:23):
biggest challenges, in fact, it wasthe biggest challenge in managing their
work—is getting that balance right.
And the biggest cohort ofmarketing leaders are in the 30%
strategic, 70% execution work.
And we also found, going back tonumber 10, that the more executional
work you do, the more likely you areto be stressed out and burning out.
(06:46):
So managing that balanceis really important.
How do you advise CMOs who say, look,I don't have time to think about the
long term cause I'm just buried in theday-to-day execution and, gee, wouldn't
it be a luxury to have that time?
But I'm never going to have it.
How do you encourage them oradvise them to make that time?
(07:08):
I think it's the sort of theeffort-reward equation here.
You can find a lot of evidence that thebetter you have formulated a long-term
strategy, with a vision and all of yourgoals clearly articulated, it's actually
easier to get the execution all work done.
So you invest in the strategy in orderto be able to accelerate the execution.
And when you find the balance,it makes it a much more rewarding
(07:31):
and productive function.
That then suggests that thereneeds to be an alignment across
the C-Suite on the long term.
And once there is, then the CMOs and theirteams can go and focus on the execution.
You see this all the time wherethere's misalignment or there
isn't buy-in, and so you've gotmarketing operating on their own.
(07:54):
And when that happens, then it'sthis constant tug of war between
short and long term, right?
So it's the need to make sureeverybody's in the same boat
from an objectives perspective sothat there's freedom to execute.
Brilliant.
I think that's very well put, Steve,and it leads us to number six on
the list, which is strengthening therelationship with the CEO and the CFO.
(08:14):
So that's on the balance of thethings that we are hearing from our
CMOs and from outside in the world.
We see that is a necessary needthat, as a CMO, you are a business
leader that does marketing.
You don't want to get isolatedas the marketing person.
So we find that 55% of CMOs at the momentsay they have a very strong relationship
(08:37):
with the CEO, 48% with the CFO.
Having said that, almost all of them aresaying that they're working harder to
strengthen that relationship and makesure that alignment directs their work.
So an interesting little factoid was 76%of those CMOs who said that they were
having a bigger impact on the business inthe last six months also said they have
(09:00):
a very strong relationship with the CEO.
Yeah.
And they feel more rewardedand motivated because they know
that there's this alignment.
Remind me, what is theaverage CMO tenure these days?
So the average CMO tenure is, it depends.
If you're doing Russell 3000, it'sjust over two and a bit years.
(09:20):
In the Fortune 100, it'sstarting to edge towards four.
And whilst that's the average, we've got alot of people who go quickly, and several
people who have stayed for over a decade.
CEO tenure is roughly five years.
And that means that every CEO isgoing through two CMOs per tenure
on average, which is terrible.
(09:40):
You can't really have a partnership thatway, and you can't get a cadence going.
So it does suggest that this isa really important relationship.
And it's not just about, "Hey, let's gohang out together." It's about making
sure that there, there's consistencyand alignment around that, the
strategic plan and the goals of that.
And you've written a lot about this.
(10:01):
Yeah.
And we'll put some links that you canfollow under the podcast, but yeah,
you are absolutely right, Steve.
It's not about being friends.
It's about being partners.
So that notion of tenure extendsover time, the more aligned
you are on your objectives.
yeah.
The CFO is the other piece of this,and that's a case where there needs
(10:22):
to be alignment on delivering resultsand the commitments, but making
sure that CFOs understand that.
I had a CFO once who described toinvestors that a marketing spend
was just a one-time expense and wastrying to get them to sort it out.
That suggests a lack of alignment,a lack of understanding between
(10:46):
the two areas, both of whom areaccountable for driving results.
So these relationships, as yousay, are so critically important,
And may I suggest that perhaps the CFOwas the one that wasn't connected there.
Marketers these days know, as Isaid, they're business leaders.
Whether they all are able to acton it, Steve, I think is a valid
point, but business leaders firstwho are expected to deliver results.
(11:12):
We're talking about the top 10priorities for CMOs in 2025.
We're going to take a shortbreak and be right back.
Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
I'm your host, Steve Odland, from TheConference Board, and I'm joined by Ivan
Pollard, the leader of our Marketing& Communications Center at The Conference
Board, and a very important former CMO.
(11:35):
So we're talking aboutthe top 10 priorities.
We're halfway through the list.
Coming up now on number five.
OK, so we talked about marketinggetting more complicated.
At the same time, it'sgetting more automated.
And this is a really interestingperiod where marketers can have
a greater impact on the business,perhaps, than we're seeing currently.
(11:55):
So how do you get ahead in this?
One of the things that drives that,of course, is the last three or 10
years of really starting to seethe rewards of the application of
AI and other MarTech applications.
I touched on it earlier, we areseeing 44% increases in productivity.
And productivity, of course,we're seeing savings, and that
(12:18):
was perhaps the drive for 2024.
In 2025, we're starting to seemore pressure being put on to
show the gains, the rewards, therevenue-driving opportunities of AI.
And that's really what the prioritiesfor the CMO are at number five.
And number four, by the way, is aswell as looking at what they're getting
(12:39):
from what they've currently done, ofcourse, they have to be looking, the CMO
has to be looking at what comes next.
As somebody said at one of our AI events,it doesn't matter where you are on the
journey, so long as you're moving forward,and you'd better all be moving forward.
So what's next is agentic AI, or AIagents, and managing end-to-end workflows.
(12:59):
So instead of "Write me an email," youdon't set the task, you set the objective.
"Find me five new qualified leadsthis week for no more than $20
a lead, and then tell me what Ineed to do best to convert them."
Yeah, but let's go back to thevalue on number five, cause
we didn't really finish that.
This seems a friction point, or apotential friction point, between
(13:21):
CMOs and either the CEOs or theCFOs, which is a prior priority.
Because AI is an investment, number one,so there's that potential friction point.
But it also can be flipped around to bea great source of alignment because AI
can really help in the productivity side.
(13:41):
Talk about that.
Yeah.
And let's remember.
Marketing, sales, customer service.
They are probably the first movers.
They're in the vanguard of AI, butthe CFO and CHRO and CLO are all
deploying AI applications, too.
All of them need to prove that thisis returning on the investment.
(14:01):
And we're starting to see definitegains, for instance, in productivity,
efficiency, innovation comingthrough the marketing chain.
There was some research that landedthis week, it reflects a little bit
what The Conference Board said (14:12):
49% of CMOs are seeing efficiency gains.
40% are starting to seecost gains, reducing costs.
And interestingly, 39% of CMOs aresaying that automation is starting to
help them reduce their agency costsand reliance on external partners.
So we're seeing that cost saving,Steve, that is the thing that
(14:34):
everybody's demonstrating.
I think the priority for the balanceof this year is starting to show
revenue growth that's coming from AI.
Yeah, we'll come to that.
I sat through a brilliant presentationthat you made to a group of CFOs, a
CMO presenting AI to a group of CFOs.
I've never seen them more excitedwhen you showed them how they
(14:56):
could save millions of dollars increative design through use of AI.
Talk about that.
Yeah, so generative AI was perhapsthe thing that lit the fuse for this
becoming scaled about in marketing.
So this was a while back, GPT-3,essentially we just gave it a
prompt saying, make some packaging.
(15:17):
We gave it a very shrewd prompt, ofcourse, which is what you have to
do, and it generated a new packagingdesign that we would never have thought
about because it went back into thehistory of the brand we were doing.
It did it in two minutes live.
Was it perfect?
No.
But was it a reallyinteresting start point?
Yes.
So here are the savingsthat the CFO looked at.
Number one, I didn't pay an agency.
(15:37):
Number two, I was usingan open-source GPT model.
Number three, I did not waste threemonths of my team's time going
backwards and forwards about the startpoint, which is usually what happens.
And the brief, the prompt wasactually written by using GPT
to help me write the prompt.
So very clear savings there, Steve.
(15:58):
And when you say the shrewd prompt, whatyou're really talking about is the brief.
You're giving them, hereare the parameters around
which you should design that.
That's all you mean.
That's not hocus-pocus.
Not hocus-pocus.
And in full transparency, I usedChatGPT to help me write that prompt.
Yeah, so I continue to hear that peopleare worried about their jobs being
(16:20):
supplanted by AI, but I just view this asan enormous productivity and innovation
tool that doesn't do away with peopleat all but makes them more productive.
But back to number four, though.
On the next applicationof AI, where does that go?
Mark Zuckerberg on May the 1st didan interview with a third party where
he's talking about the future of the$1.15 trillion advertising economy.
(16:43):
Mark's point of view was you couldessentially remove that entire business.
His literal line was, "Link yourbank account to us, and we'll take
care of the rest. Tell us what you'rewilling to spend and we will get
you the business that you need."
Now I think you could take issuewith that, but it is an extension
of what's the possibility.
And just to put that in hard terms, thereare jobs that are going to disappear.
(17:08):
There are jobs that are goingto get created as well, though.
So WPP announced on Monday it'sletting 45% of their staff go from
their big media agency called GroupMbecause a lot of those things that a
media agency does can be automated.
It can be made more efficient, can bemade better, so it's not just about
(17:29):
getting there faster or cheaper.
You have to get there better.
And unfortunately, those peoplewill reskill and find other jobs
which will get created by AI.
Yeah.
And you hope that people are open to that.
And I think if you don't fearit, it allows you to learn new
things, because it really, AI isgetting rid of all of the mundane,
repetitive kinds of work products.
(17:51):
But it can be disruptive to people,and that's what causes a little bit of
fear, so you have to get ahead of it.
OK.
We're coming down to the final three.
All right.
The number three priority is?
How will AI agents change marketing?
So I just touched on that a little bit,that those automated repetitive tasks
(18:11):
that actually a machine does better.
That's the thing that's critical here.
It still needs people to work withmachine, but you just don't need as many.
We're already seeing those implications.
In the marketing budget report that'sjust broken, you're seeing that marketing
budgets are staying flat year on year.
So 7.7% of revenue—average companythey talked to was $6 billion—so 7.7%
(18:35):
of revenue is going on marketing.
Interestingly, in 2020, thatwas at a recent high of 11%.
Marketers are expected to compete ina very chaotic environment, to win
in that environment, and obviouslydrive efficiency and productivity.
So I think we're starting to see it changethings, automated some of those tasks.
But to put it super-simply, Steve,look at what's happening to search.
(18:58):
So I don't know if this fact is trueor not, but I read online almost 10%
of Amazon's e-commerce is now comingdirectly to them through an AI search.
Not SEO search or a Google search,or even directly from Amazon.
So we're empowering the AI tomake trusted decisions for us
about, for instance, what to buy.
And that's going tochange the whole ethos.
(19:20):
We focused for 15 years now onmaking sure that we click with the
algorithm, and we're going to haveto shift from clicks to mentions.
So AI, of course, isreading what people say.
It's reading Glassdoor, it'sreading Facebook, it's reading
X, it's reading Reddit.
Interestingly, of course it's also readingyour own website and your own comments.
(19:41):
So agents will change marketingfor sure, without a doubt.
And of those 103 capabilitiesthat I talked about that big
tech companies looking at, itwill change every one of them.
It's interesting, it reminds me of aperiod in time, back in the late '80s
and early '90s when the web startedto be used, and websites started to
be developed by companies, by brands,by businesses as a selling tool.
(20:05):
And everybody wanted their website to bethe portal for the industry and so forth.
And it didn't evolve that way.
It evolved to a search engine ortwo becoming the portals because
it was just far more efficient.
Even if you knew that you wanted to lookat Coca-Cola's caffeine-free drinks, it's
(20:32):
easier to Google it than it was to tryto find it through Coca-Cola dot com.
So people have learned this.
So AI, to me, is an evolutionof that whole process.
Yeah, nicely put.
I think that's right.
Automation has always been, goall the way back to the steam
engine or things before that.
(20:54):
Automation has always been about doingthe things that human beings can do and
taking the work off us, and doing thembetter, faster, smarter, and cheaper.
AI is the next evolution of that.
I just think it's an exponentialleap forward versus where
we were with the internet.
Moving faster, doing more,and getting much more.
Wait till physical AI startsto really manifest everywhere.
(21:16):
Yeah.
So the reason it's the number threepriority is that people have to hop on
this and make sure that you're deployingit in the best way for your business.
Number two on the hit paradefor priorities for CMOs.
Number one and number two arenot going to surprise anybody.
Number two is all about the externalfactors that affect, essentially, what's
going on in a particular market for a CMO.
(21:38):
So at the beginning of the year, weasked them, what's on your mind for 2025?
The most important priorities, in rankorder: inflation, geopolitics, AI,
and changing customer buying behavior.
So that is a constant that wealways have to think about that.
What are my customers and what aremy current consumers thinking, and
(21:59):
how am I going to shape what I'vegot to offer value in that world?
Yeah.
But this is, it's interesting causeI think this year—now we've been
through many black swan events, whichby definition are not forecastable.
But the fact that it used to be thatyou have one once in your lifetime.
Now it seems to be every few years.
It's not that you can necessarily forecastit, it's just that it's going to happen.
(22:21):
These things are going to happen, andyou have to build in that agility to
your teams and the ability to pivotin your messaging and your marketing.
So I think your point is really important.
Yeah, you can write a marketingplan and everybody goes, "Yawn, of
course we've got to take into accountexogenous factors," but they've never
been as impactful as they are today.
(22:43):
And consumer behavior, yeah, they shiftover time, but it was more generational.
Now it's every few years, driven bytechnology, And you've got social media
as a lightning-fast communication tool.
All of this stuff just converges to createa more important understanding of the
external world, economics, geopolitics,which is not what you would've described
(23:07):
as something that CMOs needed toreally focused on a few years back.
I think the good CMOs were aheadof that game, Steve, and they were.
But every CMO nowadayshas to be able to do this.
Of course, as we talked about, AI andthe internet helps, but that's only
one signal that you could be reading.
You have to be reading many signalsfrom many of the different stakeholders.
(23:30):
And as I said earlier, you've gotto plan for what might happen.
So, scenario planning.
You've got to organize to be ableto react to whatever does happen.
And that, I think, is an interestingchallenge for today's CMO.
OK, here we go.
Drum roll.
The number one priority forCMOs for the balance of 2025 is?
(23:51):
Well, I kind of want to askyou what you would guess, but
I'm not allowed to do that.
You'll be pleased to know that inevery conversation we're having, in
all the research that we're doing,that the biggest thing that a CMO
wants to focus on is driving growth.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Whether they're doing it well, I think,is the challenge, but every one of
(24:11):
them is trying to do it well, tryingto prove it's working, and trying to be
competitive in the way that they do it.
Driving growth, you go all the way back toDrucker, the principles of marketing about
winning a customer and retaining them.
They stay the same.
The practices are definitely changing.
And by the way, this is alsowhat we see the CEOs want
(24:33):
from their marketing leaders.
And this is part of that friction that wetalked about earlier, and the gap between
CEOs and CMOs is this hyper-focus on it.
But you know what, Ivan, if it was easy,you wouldn't need these super-brainy,
super-experienced, super-innovative CMOs.
And so, it's hard to figure thisout, and it's hard then to translate
(24:56):
it into tactical programs thatwill actually move the needle.
So it's not that, necessarily, CMOsare not focused on it, but it's that
success added is sometimes elusive.
Yeah, and I think I thought for amoment then you were going to say
super-brainy, super-experienced,and super- adaptable machines.
But no, you're right.
(25:17):
We need the humans still here.
When they start working with thosemachines, and we put the two together,
then I think we can start to seereally interesting new methods and new
approaches to driving growth acrossall sorts of different businesses.
And that's what The ConferenceBoard is here for, helping people
stay ahead, connecting people.
That makes them better, and doing itin a way that helps society improve.
(25:41):
But your whole thesis here is that there'sgreater and greater complexity, exogenous
world, micro factors, consumer andcustomer changing behavior, technology.
All of this then says these tools thatare emerging here, AI tools and other
kinds of analytical tools, are reallyarriving at exactly the right time.
And that in order to sort this, it's notjust about hiring an agency and saying,
(26:05):
giving me a good storyboard and let's go.
It really requires more than that.
And hence the order of your priorities andthe number of these priorities for 2025.
Yeah.
And I like the idea that the AIand technology is causing some
of the complexity, but it's alsocreating all of the opportunity.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
(26:26):
Ivan Pollard, thanksfor being with us today.
Thank you very much for having me.
And thanks to all of you forlistening in to C-Suite Perspectives.
I'm Steve Odland, and this series has beenbrought to you by The Conference Board.
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