Not long ago, a CMO said something to me that gave me pause: “We still need to rewrite the narrative.”

He wasn’t talking about a brand’s story or a social commentary or even our industry’s stance on an emerging issue. He meant the “CMO narrative.” 

For as much ground as our field has gained in elevating the chief marketer to be a growth leader within organizations, there’s still a lot of work to do to change the way CMOs are perceived by their C-suites, boards, organizations and the broader business world. Chief marketers are business drivers and changemakers within their organizations, and the global CMO narrative needs to reflect that.

But correcting misperceptions that marketing is a cost center rather than an investment, that a CMO’s KPIs are vanity metrics and that our industry is all talk and no action takes time.

As part of that transformation, we are introducing Marketing Vanguard by Adweek, a platform expressly built to respond to the realities C-level marketing leaders—a unique and key component of the overall marketing community—experience every day.

But it’s an effort worth continuing. Especially now, in an era marked by exponential technological change and societal polarization, companies need the creativity, innovation, adaptability, empathy, relationship-building and storytelling capabilities that often only CMOs can bring.

Building on its legacy, Adweek is working to become even more of an indispensable resource for the overall marketing industry, providing the headlines that break news but also diving deeper to analyze trends, generate insights and deliver implementable strategies that marketers can put to use every day.

Why now

Despite marketers sometimes not being the best marketers of marketing, the CMOs we talk to every day are tired of being characterized as anything less than vital and imperative business leaders in the C-suite. They need the language, tools and connections to write a new narrative.