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Last year ended on a bad note for chief marketing officers.
Anheuser-Busch InBev announced its U.S. CMO, Benoit Garbe, was stepping down. UPS cut ties with its chief marketing and customer experience officer, Kevin Warren. Walgreens parted ways with its CMO, Linh Peters, after hiring her the year prior. Etsy did the same with its top marketer, Ryan Scott, even as it was preparing for its first Super Bowl ad.
In some cases, the CMO title isn’t coming back. AB InBev, for instance, assigned the country’s marketing duties to U.S. chief commercial officer, Kyle Norrington. Likewise, UPS put its marketing efforts under chief commercial and strategy officer, Matt Guffey. Etsy handed its marketing responsibilities to Raina Moskowitz, who is now chief operating and marketing officer.
“Fortune 500 companies are eliminating chief marketing officer roles as the position loses C-suite clout,” declared a headline published on Fortune. “CMOs are facing an existential crisis—but there is still time to secure the future of marketing,” proclaimed Mastercard’s chief marketing and communications officer, Raja Rajamannar, in a column.
New data from LinkedIn adds more weight to the trend. In the United States, the number of chief marketing officer job postings on the platform was 62% lower in February 2024 compared to February 2023. On a global scale, CMO job postings were down 47% between the same two time periods.
Despite a decrease in demand for CMO roles, LinkedIn data shows CMO tenure is flat at Fortune 500 companies.
Lisa Sy, senior insights analyst at LinkedIn, noted these figures, along with a decline in CMO hires and slowdown in CMO titles appearing on the platform, point to a broader shift in how CMO roles are evolving into titles such as chief brand and analytics officer or chief marketing and communications officer.
Experts say the emerging pattern highlights how the marketing industry is changing, as top marketers are under increasing pressure to anticipate changes in consumer behavior, keep up with advances in technology and prove the value of their ad spend. Those who struggle to collaborate with others in the C-suite may not last long.
