Recent sightings of this species suggest that the CMO may be on the latest endangered list, just as the CIO was in last decade. However, if you look around, the CIO is still here, and I suspect so will be the Office of Chief Marketer. Its survival depends on what it becomes. We have all heard about how the marketing business is changing. This is NOT news. The more relevant topic is what form marketing will take in light of viral marketing, social networking, blogs, and web-based everything, and under the pressures to measure the return on marketing investment, drive revenue, and continuously align to deliver to the company’s strategic objectives.

As the CMO becomes more of a business partner to the CEO and COO, the role will need to take on that of collaborator and unifier among product management, sales, service and delivery. If you look around, new-generation marketers are going beyond what is rapidly becoming the table stakes de jour of blogs, communities, social networks, customer experience management, permission marketing and the like. The surviving CMO will use what is learned and gathered from these new forms of connecting to and with the marketplace to become a new force within the enterprise, unlocking barriers to growth in yet to be discovered ways. Furthermore the surviving CMO will interlock product management, sales, services and marketing in order to drive greater efficiencies and impact with the customer.

Who knows what the shelf life will be for methods and tools of-the-moment for the marketing organization. Clearly the fittest survivors will be those who can demonstrate their ability to deliver to strategic objectives.

Debra Colombana, Vice President of Client and Market Development
Debra.Colombana@phelongroup.com