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Almost all major companies have a chief financial officer. They also have someone in charge of human resources, and another person leading their legal affairs. It’s hard to find an organization without a CEO.
The same isn’t true for chief marketing officers.
Overall, 63% of Fortune 500 companies have a marketing executive who sits on the leadership team and reports to the CEO, according to research firm Forrester. Whether an individual organization is likely to have one or not depends on the industry.
And the range is wide. Around 9 in 10 Fortune 500 companies in the financial services and insurance category have a conventional CMO position. Meanwhile, only 21% of energy and mining companies have a head of marketing.
“Certain jobs are mandatory,” said Ian Bruce, vp and principal analyst at Forrester. “Clearly, the CMO role isn’t.”
Chili’s Grill & Bar has a traditional chief marketing officer, George Felix, to avoid siloing the many tasks involved in marketing the brand—from making TikTok videos to introducing new menu items to shaping the restaurant chain’s interior design.
A single person in charge of marketing also helps when it comes to collaboration between members of the C-suite.
“One of the strongest relationships I have is with our chief operating officer,” said Felix. “Marketing’s job is to bring guests into our restaurants, but then we pass the baton to the operations team to deliver the great experience. We have to be in lockstep to make sure both sides of that equation are working well.”
Additional findings from Forrester show 84% of B2C Fortune 500 companies have a conventional CMO role, compared to 48% of B2B firms.
