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Michael Sprouse joined Epic Advertising as Chief Marketing Officer on June 1, 2007. His current responsibilities include overseeing all marketing strategy for the company, media buying, direct marketing programs, public relations strategy and outreach, internal communications, corporate development and cross-platform initiatives.

Prior to Epic Advertising, Sprouse served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Playboy Enterprises, Inc. In his time at Playboy, Sprouse helped to oversee a business transformation as the youngest senior executive in the company's 54 year history. His marketing leadership opened up many public speaking and PR opportunities including the Keynote presentation at ETail (twice) as well as numerous press mentions.

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Why CMOs Can’t Keep Their Jobs

Written on
June 4th 2008
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by Mike Sprouse  |
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A strong CMO must have the ability to know what things they can impact – internally and externally – to the highest degree, not spend time on things that they can’t impact in the foreseeable future, and always be ready to adapt their roles on the fly and evaluate what they can truly impact on a daily basis.

Caveat: This does not imply that a CMO isn’t strategic; remember the ability to be a strategic thinker is already built in to the very reason you got the CMO job in the first place. It’s presumed that you know how to match your own department’s mission statement.

So how do CMOs build their own careers and establish internal and external goodwill (however it is measured, which could vary widely) for their companies?

The reason I’m so adamant that the answer lies in more speed and substance is because what a CMO focuses on today for their organization could be slightly different 30 days from now, which could be totally different six months from now. I would offer that a reason why CMO tenure is about half of a CEO’s tenure is because CMOs get too stuck in a certain mold, or way of thinking, or strategy, and aren’t able to adapt their own organization fast enough. Alternately, it could be that their organizations adapt faster than the individual CMO, and that person can’t keep up or becomes frustrated; in either case change is inevitable.

In my opinion, it’s not that CMOs don’t have power to enact change or don’t have a platform with which to demonstrate their business, branding, marketing, product development, business development or technical capabilities (all of which tend to fall under the CMO umbrella). Another study I read showed that one of the top areas of frustration for CMOs was the inaccessibility of the CEO. This might be valid for some; however, a CMO is counted on to help shape the overall company’s strategy and then to manage that strategy. Where it becomes difficult is in a rapidly changing business, because this means the CMO has to adapt and manage even faster and be a quick thinker. Not one of the traits mentioned above lists “ability to adapt to a fast-changing industry” (which most all digital media is these days) or “must be a quick and decisive thinker.”

We have reached a point where industry change is expected and happens rapidly. Technology comes and goes quickly, and some of it “sticks” and gets adopted, but some doesn’t. Marketing tactics likewise come and go as well. Consider for a moment that maybe five years ago, it was commonplace for executives to be asked to contribute to a “three-year strategic plan”. If I was asked to do this now, my response would be “huh? A three-year plan in the online space?” Some Internet-based companies get funded, launched and sold — or shut down — in this time frame. For a CMO, it’s not just about helping form the right strategy; it’s about forming the right strategy and executing that strategy quickly and then refining that strategy over time again and again. Think about all the online and offline media companies who have had to try and redefine their strategies in recent years to encompass new media. It is not an end game.

For CMOs to have a true impact in and out of the Executive Suite, they have to know their organization and customer base (businesses and/or consumers) cold while always keeping one eye on the industry at large. CMOs should understand that they shape their own roles every day. There is not really a true job description in most cases because, yes, so much is expected of them – but they have to possess the ability to quickly say “ok, we need to scrap that initiative, do this instead and here’s a new timetable with a budget and forecast.”

From my own experience at Epic Advertising, I can tell you there are things I’ve done in the last four months that I never thought I would do six or eight months ago. Likewise, looking at back at the initial job description from a year ago when I took the job — you could now basically blow that up too. The takeaway is that CMO who want to have a true impact on their company can’t only look at themselves and say “Do I have some technical expertise? Check. Can I think strategically? Check. Am I results focused? Well, sure, I like to benchmark myself and make sure I’m hitting my performance goals so….check”. All of these are expected, so what do you really do?

If you lead a marketing organization, or sit in the CMO chair, recite this piece of the serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” And then recite it every 45 days because most likely the exact list of things you can and cannot change will probably have already changed by then. The irony is that by being quick to adapt and dynamic in your thinking, it might actually open up opportunities to lead — either your company, or your industry.



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Reader Comments.

What a delightfully straight-forward article. I smiled so broadly when you wrote, “Now take these top 10 “traits” and throw them right out the window. Just scrap them.”. How very, very true.

Just think: how many people within large organizations (let’s put aside SMBs for the moment) don’t know, at all, what a CMO a) stands for as an acronym, or b)is tasked to accomplish as a CMO. With just this said, structure, goals and responsibilities are likely to be quite distant from most CMO positions.

IMHO, the CMO position is an acronym “hangover” from the Internet bubble days. How about the old-fashioned V.P. of Marketing. Simple enough?

Posted by Christopher Regan | 1:23 pm on June 4, 2008.

what percent of CMO turnover occurs voluntarily versus due to terminations? I think the theories as to why tenure is only an average of 27 months need to take that into account.

Posted by name witheld | 5:49 pm on June 4, 2008.

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