PALO ALTO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 04/24/07 -- The casualty rate of Chief Marketing Officers can be reduced if CEOs and boards better understood the role, requirements and value of a CMO and empowered the right individuals to architect all aspects of a company's operations around the customer experience, says a new study that looks at how to better "Define & Align the CMO" in the enterprise.

Conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and sponsored by MarketBridge, a leader in building high-growth sales and marketing operations for Fortune 500 companies, the study found that a paucity of effective ROI metrics for marketing was also undermining the CMO position and function as a whole.

According to the CMO Council, title inflation, unrealistic expectations, flawed hiring practices, talent deficiencies, and lack of requisite business and strategic leadership skills are big contributors to the limited shelf life of CMOs. The Council's research also points to the fact that 50 percent of executive searches are to replace incumbent CMOs who are primarily hired to fix broken marketing organizations, not drive business value.

The yearlong research by the CMO Council encompassed qualitative and quantitative interviews with CMOs, CEOs, board members, senior marketers and executive recruiters throughout North America. The 80-page report, priced at $295, along with a complimentary executive abstract, is available for download at www.cmocouncil.org.

The landmark study uncovers startling contradictions in upper management: most executives consider the CMO a valued member of the executive team, yet they also believe many CMOs lack the background and skills needed to be a top management player; a challenge numerous senior marketers share with their CIO counterparts at many companies.

In a sharp commentary on the connection between strategic value and performance, most CMOs involved in top-level decision-making get high marks from their CEOs for their overall performance, while those CMOs who remain in tactical mode get significantly lower grades. The blame for these problems, meanwhile, extends to executive recruiters who draft candidates without gaining true insight from their clients into the skill sets, qualifications and experiences needed for the job and cultural environment.

The study found that:

--  Nearly three-quarters of the C-suite executives surveyed consider the
    marketing organization "highly influential and strategic in the
    enterprise." At the same time, nearly two-thirds also say their top
    marketers don't provide adequate evidence of ROI with which to gauge
    marketing's true performance.
--  In a clear sign of the strategic role played by marketing executives,
    nearly 70% of the CMO respondents to this study report directly to their
    CEO. However, only 40% of that number get an A grade for their performance
    from the CEO.
--  A majority of the recruiters surveyed believe that CMOs have a shorter
    shelf life than other C-level executives. The average tenure of CMO
    respondents to this study was 38 months. (In a past report, the search firm
    Spencer Stuart pegged the number at 23 months).
--  For the most part, CMOs get more respect from the boardroom than from
    the CEO. Most of the board members surveyed, over 80%, believe that within
    the next two years, the CMO position will gain greater credibility with the
    rest of the management team. But in another reality check, less than 20
    percent also say that an increasing number of CMOs will rise to the CEO
    position.
    

"Conventional wisdom holds that the CMO is a strategic player in the C-suite, but this study shows a significant gap between perception and reality," said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "That's why the CMO Council strongly advocates a significant change in the way this position is defined and structured. That change needs to be driven by the CEO, who must decide whether the company needs a marketing chief in the C-suite, and then lay the groundwork for establishing the position. There should be nothing less than an immediate consensus on the part of all stakeholders, from the CEO to outside recruiters, around a clear definition of the role and required competencies of the CMO."

"If CMOs do face an identity crisis, it's not for lack of marketing competence or creativity -- the CMO leadership capabilities and talent levels in the surveyed companies are higher than ever," said Tim Furey, CEO of MarketBridge. "Rather, the identity crisis stems from a perceived lack of measurable results. The most successful CMOs are aggressively instituting rigorous performance measurement and analytics in every aspect of their organizations, and tying those metrics to revenue and profit growth."

About Marketbridge

MarketBridge (www.market-bridge.com) is a leading provider of integrated Sales and Marketing consulting and managed services to Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Merck, Philips, Siemens, MasterCard and BT. MarketBridge relies on a disciplined, empirical approach to help its clients design, build and manage marketing through sales processes that leverage traditional brand marketing and field sales channels with greater on-line, call center, and database marketing resources. MarketBridge is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland with offices in San Francisco, Toronto and London.

About CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior marketing and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 3,000 members control more than $70 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures. Companies represented on the CMO Council have combined annual revenue of over $600 billion. Visit the CMO Council web site to find out about the initiatives geared to address executive marketers' challenges at www.cmocouncil.org.

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