Dive Brief:
- Average CMO tenure has declined 35% across industry cohorts since 2010, underpinning growing tenuousness and complexity for the C-suite role, according to a new study from Findem and CMO Huddles.
- Chief marketers who entered the position in 2010 had a median tenure of four years while those who did so in 2022 had a median tenure of 2.6 years. Current CMOs at publicly-traded companies tend to hold onto their seats longer than those at private equity or venture capital-backed brands.
- There is little difference between the tenure of B2B and B2C CMOs generally, but business vertical, company scale and operating maturity do produce disparities. The larger upshot is that CMO stability is getting shakier as marketers are asked to handle major transformation on shorter timelines.
Dive Insight:
Findem and CMO Huddles claim their findings are more comprehensive than other assessments of marketer longevity because they examined fully matured CMO tenures and broke that data out separately from insights pertaining to current marketing leaders. The study cuts off stable historical median tenure analysis with CMOs who entered the job in 2022 since many executives hired after that point in time are still in the same role.
While the report positions its methodology as distinct and wider-ranging than other research, many of the top-line takeaways are the same — namely that CMOs are working on compressed timelines compared to C-suite peers even as their remit expands to include more substantial transformation and growth-driving duties. Generative artificial intelligence began shaking up marketing in late 2022, for example, and CMOs have struggled to adapt to the upskilling demands of the technology.
“The CMO role has become the pressure cooker of the C-suite,” CMO Huddles CEO Drew Neisser said in a statement. “Companies want marketing leaders to fix growth, reposition the business, build demand, sharpen the brand, align sales, and prove impact fast. But the data is screaming that too many CMOs are being handed transformation-sized mandates on trial-period timelines.”
The study was based on time-ordered employment and company data from Findem rather than self-reported surveys from marketers. Findem is an AI-powered recruiting platform and CMO Huddles is a peer community focused on B2B marketers.
Along with the historical look into CMO patterns between 2010 and 2022, the study examined 13,000 current CMOs at U.S. businesses with 100 or more employees. Median tenure for marketing chiefs today is 36 months, around 30% shorter than that of CEOs.
One-third of marketers have been in their position for over five years while nearly the same share, 30%, have been in the role for under 18 months. CMOs at larger, publicly-traded brands tend to last longer — about four years — than those at P.E. and V.C.-backed businesses, where marketers have an average tenure of 3.1 years and 2.6 years, respectively.
Sixty percent of CMOs brought on this year are new to the role, and newer CMOs tend to carry more skills in areas including demand generation, strategy and product marketing. Over a quarter of CMOs hired this year have AI-related skills compared to 9% of CMOs who have been in the role for over four years.
Nearly one-fifth, 19%, of recent CMO appointments were promoted internally, roughly in line with patterns dating back to 2020. In addition, 55% of CMOs are women, a smaller portion than the overall marketing workforce, where 62% of employees are women. Findem and CMO Huddles noted any data on 2026 is only for the partial year and should be interpreted as pointing to directional trends rather than a definitive outcome.
Spencer Stuart, which regularly publishes CMO studies, most recently pegged average marketing chief tenures at S&P 500 companies at 4.1 years, among the lowest in the C-suite. The figure is lower for CMOs at consumer brands, where the average tenure is 3.5 years.
