Where CMOs lose
In late summer 2024, Gartner asked 125 CEOs and CFOs how satisfied they were with their head of marketing. The results aren't exactly a celebration:
- only 22% have clarity on what marketing is accountable for,
- only 38% see their CMO collaborating effectively with other senior leaders,
- 69% would remove a CMO mainly for failing to deliver promised results,
- 54% cite a lack of respect from senior peers as a reason.
That last number is the interesting one. Half of these executives aren't talking about campaigns. They're talking about relationships. CMOs don't just lose on creative. They lose at a table where everyone else speaks a different language.
Spencer Stuart, which has tracked executive tenure for years, adds the other side of the coin. CMOs at large US companies last 4.3 years on average, against 4.9 years for the C-suite overall. But 10% of departing CMOs go on to become CEOs. Learn the other executives' language, and one day you might run the whole company. #justsaying
The CFO: translating into the language of money
This is the most important reach of all. And the hardest.
Performance is easy to explain to a CFO because it fits their spreadsheet. Brand doesn't. In my experience, a brand campaign pays back in 8 to 12 months, not a week. And the research backs this up. Les Binet and Peter Field of the UK's IPA analyzed hundreds of campaigns and showed that emotional brand effects keep growing for years and are strongest after three years or more. Fast sales activation, by contrast, delivers a big effect right away and then fades quickly. The recommended split? Roughly 60% brand, 40% activation.
To a CFO, all of that sounds like "give me the money and you'll see in a year." So you won't win them over with a better deck. You win them over by translating brand into their language:
- time: when the money starts coming back, and how you'll know,
- risk: when you'll stop the campaign yourself (a kill criterion),
- proof: a control group, meaning regions or customers without the campaign, to compare against,
- customer cost: how brand gradually lowers the cost of acquiring each new customer.
In my case study, every proposal listed what it costs, how I'll know it's working, and when I'll kill it. Not because I don't believe in my ideas. Because CFOs don't believe in ideas without brakes.
The CEO: who decides what
The second reach is toward the CEO. And this, I think, is where the biggest shift is happening. As AI takes over much of the craft (copy, banners, reports), what's left for the CMO is what AI can't do: decide where the company grows, and own the outcome. That's work that overlaps with the CEO.
That's why I put a simple decision-rights table in the case study. I'd recommend it to any CMO in their first month:
| I decide | Together, CEO has the final say | CEO decides |
|---|
| Marketing, communications, community, CRM, marketing budget allocation, measurement | Annual plan and revenue targets, new markets and teams, pricing and monetization, product priorities for growth | Finance and shareholders, M&A, technology, organization, legal |
It looks bureaucratic. In reality, it saves dozens of meetings and a fight or two. When it's clear who decides what, the CMO doesn't need a stamp for every campaign. And the CEO knows where they can relax.
Sales, product and customer: understanding is enough
For the other "C"s, you need less. Not depth, just the ability to speak the same language:
- CCO / CSO (sales): marketing has to track pipeline and revenue, not just leads. I wrote about why marketing and sales belong under one roof in my article on the revenue department.
- CPO (product): marketing doesn't design the product, but it has to understand pricing and what the product can do. The best campaign won't fix a product nobody wants.
- CXO (customer experience): advertising is the promise, the customer experience is keeping it. Guard only the promise and you'll lose in the reviews.
The CTO and AI: everyone's a bit of a developer now
Collins Dictionary named "vibe coding" its Word of the Year for 2025. It means programming by describing what you want to an AI and letting it write the code. Andrej Karpathy coined the term in February 2025, and within a year one engineer's quip became the word of the year.
I've lived it. I built the Don Marketer calculator myself, with no developer, in two days. Then I spent another two to three weeks fine-tuning it based on feedback and analytics. (In fairness: as of yesterday, I'm an official ambassador for Lovable, the platform it's built on. So I'm not entirely neutral here.)
For a CMO, the rule is simple: build the prototype yourself, but don't run it yourself.
- What you can do on your own today: a landing page prototype, a calculator, automated reports, a quick test of an idea in an afternoon instead of a month in the IT queue.
- Where you need the CTO: security, customer data, privacy compliance, uptime and integration with company systems.
CMOs used to need to understand technology to order it. Now they need to understand it to build it. And above all, to know when to stop.
Where not to reach
Reach doesn't mean playing every role. A CMO posing as an amateur CFO loses the first cash-flow debate. A CMO playing CTO will one day launch a form that leaks customer data. The T-shape has one deep leg and a wide top. If all your legs are the same length, you're more of a stool. Stable, but you won't get anywhere.
For a small salon owner: the owner of a small business is the entire C-suite in one person. CEO, CFO, CMO, and CTO whenever she sets up the booking system. "How much reach" isn't her question. Her question is which of those roles she neglects every week. For most small businesses, it's marketing. Not for lack of money, but because nobody knows how much to put in.
Ten rules for talking to a CFO so you both walk out happy
1. Never say "awareness" without a number next to it. To a CFO, it sounds like "some money."
2. Bring the spreadsheet before they ask. Whoever brings the spreadsheet sets the agenda.
3. Say upfront when the money comes back. Performance in weeks, brand in 8 to 12 months. CFOs don't mind waiting. They mind not knowing how long.
4. Give every campaign a kill criterion. Nothing calms a CFO like a marketer with their own brakes.
5. Measure against a control group. Without one, "before and after" is just a feeling in a nice chart.
6. Never show revenue alone. Always with margin and costs. Revenue without margin is calories without a serving size.
7. Talk about risk, not creative. CFOs don't buy ideas. They buy probability.
8. Admit what didn't work before they find it. Trust is built on written-off campaigns too.
9. Invite them to one shoot. Anyone who's watched a crew wait three hours for the right light never asks again why ads cost so much.
10. Thank them now and then. They're the only person in the company who reads your whole budget.
Expert perspective: "For twenty years I've heard that CFOs don't understand marketing. The truth is, marketing doesn't understand CFOs. Translate brand into time, risk and customer cost, and you won't have to fight for the budget. You'll get it, because they know what you'll do with it," says Michal Krčmář, founder of Don Marketer and a CMO with nearly two decades of experience in global marketing.
The takeaway
The CMO of the future won't be the one with the best campaigns. It'll be the one who can explain a campaign to the CFO, defend it to the CEO, build its prototype themselves, and knows when to call the CTO. Marketing stays at the core. It just picks up a few more languages.
And whether CMOs really do become CEOs, as I'm betting, we'll see in a few years. I sent my own bet yesterday, as a PDF.
And if you want to bring your CFO a number before they ask for one, the Don Marketer calculator works out your budget, your brand : performance split and the line below which your ads lose money, in 2 minutes.
Sources: Gartner: Only 45% of CMOs Surpass Senior Executive Expectations Despite Achieving Objectives (February 2025, 125 CEOs and CFOs); Marketing Week: Only 40% of marketing leaders called CMO (Spencer Stuart, CMO Tenure Study 2024); IPA: The Long and the Short of It (Les Binet, Peter Field); Irish Examiner: Vibe coding becomes Collins' Word of the Year (November 2025); the author's own experience.
