03/16/2017
There is a saying in my country which says in Spanish "Más sabe el Diablo por viejo que por Diablo" which more or less translates to "The devil knows more because he is old, not because he's the devil." Or in other words, with age comes knowledge and wisdom. Yet, most countries, except honorable exceptions (i.e. most Asian countries revere their elders and some european countries actually enforce anti-aging legislation), fail to acknowledge this reality and succumb to the myth of "youth" as if it was a panacea that will infuse vitality to a company that more than likely is failing to reach the next level because of purges, turnovers, and tenures that are becoming ridiculously low, instead of looking at the actual causes.
According to a recent study by Spencer Stuart, one of the leading executive recruiting firms in the world, where they tracked the careers of CMOs from 100 of the top U.S. ad spenders, they determined that the average tenure for marketing chiefs fell to 44 months as of 2015 (3 years 8 months), down from 48 months (4 years) in the prior year. Spencer Stuart also found that nearly a third of the study’s CMOs were new to their job in 2015. This is the highest since Spencer Stuart began formally tracking CMO tenures in 2004. Granted, that the higher rate of turnover and short tenures are being driven by some factors such as retirements, a record year of mergers and acquisitions when duplicate roles are often eliminated. But it has been my experience as an international marketing consultant for the last 6 years that CEOs and boards change marketing chiefs mostly because they feel that by doing so their sales will be revitalized if they go for a younger, believed to be hungrier, but, instead, more inexperienced and prone to basically perpetuate this vicious circle of ever increasing shorter tenures. There is this erroneous belief that younger executives "must be more in tune with digital platforms and leverage big data and new technologies in their advertising efforts, in such a way that the intensity, the pressure and the demands on CMOs has reached levels which are becoming each time more impossible to fulfill. In fact, the median tenure, a metric that is less skewed by outliers, among CMOs in the study also fell in 2015, slipping to 26.5 months (that is a ridiculously low 2 years and 2.5 months down from 35.5 months or just shy of 3 years in 2014). CMOs not only have the lowest tenures of any other C-Suite members due to this misperception, but are also the youngest ones among all C-Suite members, with the only probable exception of the CIO. CMOs tenures are more or less about half of the average tenure of a CEO.
Dear CEOs, time for a reality check. If you think you are going to revitalize sales or improve the quality of your marketing output by blaming the CMOs and replacing them with younger more inexperienced ones just because "you can," I challenge you to look at the data. First of all, why do you think the tenure is reducing? Isn't that what we call a self fulfilling prophecy? Most new CMOs are outside recruits, and the recruiting period takes time, adjusting to the new reality takes time and effort, effective contribution to the teams usually happen by year 2, they seldom happen in year one, that's for sure, but by year 2 the new CMO is already on his way to being ousted by year three. Is this any sustainable way to do smart business? My personal experience and observation over the last 6 years clearly says no, and yet we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. Why? This is particularly more evident when the CEO doesn't really understand the role of marketing in the company, especially consumer centric companies, where Marketing must become the voice of the customer in order to succeed in the role. I have personally seen CMOs trying harder to keep their jobs rather than trying harder to exceed targets, this is a symptom, not the disease. CMOs are not stupid, they know what the average tenure is, so you enter into this malaise by year two, basically when you are just starting to deliver. And still, here we are and this is the reality. As a business coach I have tried to steer client CEOs to avoid these vicious circles, those who heeded my advice and kept Marketers secure in their positions, basically achieved stronger results than those who didn't and changed. Empirical data, but doesn't it make sense?
The culprit of stagnant sales and lack of growth isn't in the majority of cases the marketing leader, and yet he or she is the one singled out first to be used as a scapegoat of what in many cases is either systemic or operational, or trend related, poor ex*****ons are not necessarily attributable to the marketing head and yet, there you see the turnovers. Does this solve anything? Will hiring a younger cheaper person turn around your business, not necessarily, and more often than not, it won't, period. there are certain advantages in feeling secure in your job, which given the current tenure trends is increasingly a rare feeling. One real effect is increasingly solid plans and closely monitored ex*****on of strategies, somethi9ng that doesn't happen when you have to look over your shoulder each time the wind changes. This is just common sense, but unfortunately, even though most company leaders claim they use, reality has made me a skeptic. Until I see a change in the positive, I will still beg to differ.
