Addressing C-Suite Disconnect and Driving Business Transformation

The Chief Marketing Officer’s role has evolved from brand management to strategic leadership, which is vital for business growth. In 2025, CMOs must align with CEOs and CFOs, own the customer experience, and prove marketing’s financial impact to restore its influence.

Economic uncertainty and evolving consumer expectations demand this transformation. This article examines the challenges facing CMOs, the importance of executive alignment, and strategies to position marketing as a key driver of growth.

The CMO Paradox in Modern Organizations

The modern business environment presents a paradox for marketing leaders. While companies increasingly value customer experience and brand differentiation, many CMOs are excluded from critical strategic decisions.

At the same time, marketing leaders face mounting pressure to prove measurable ROI while also maintaining long-term brand value, two objectives that are often at odds in short-term financial reporting.

The CMO role now extends well beyond communications to include data analytics, technology management, customer experience, and revenue accountability.

Deloitte research notes that CMOs must balance four roles: Growth Driver, Innovation Catalyst, Brand Storyteller, and Capability Builder. Yet many companies have not adapted organizational structures to support this broader scope, leaving CMOs with unclear mandates and weakened influence.

This report examines this paradox and outlines a strategic framework to restore the CMO’s role as the primary customer advocate and driver of growth.

Marketing’s Diminished Role

Marketing once unified organizations around the customer, driving growth through integrated strategies. Now, its influence has waned. Companies with a single customer-focused leader, such as a CMO, achieve 2.3 times more growth than those with multiple roles.

Fewer CMOs hold executive positions, dropping from 71% in Fortune 500 leadership teams in 2023 to 66% in 2024, with only 63% reporting directly to the CEO. CFOs often view marketing as a cost, rather than an investment, and target it for cuts during periods of uncertainty.

Marketing struggles to tie its efforts to business outcomes, disconnecting it from growth.

Why Customer-Centric Growth Matters

Consumers in 2025 expect seamless, personalized experiences across channels. Over 80% of users utilize multiple channels for research or purchases, and B2B buyers now engage with an average of ten touchpoints, up from five in 2016.

Economic volatility and shifting consumer behavior require customer-focused strategies. CMOs, with access to consumer insights and market trends, can meet these demands by leveraging data and AI to personalize interactions, ensuring brands remain competitive.

CMO’s Role in Customer-Centric Growth

Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) should act as the primary advocates for the customer, ensuring growth strategies center on customer needs.

Historically, marketing has been the engine of growth and the integrator across functions, overseeing all customer interactions. Today’s fragmented environment necessitates a return to this role.

Companies should position the CMO as the custodian of the customer to accelerate profitable growth. This shift means granting CMOs strategic authority beyond campaigns and enabling them to influence long-term business direction.

Organizations that embed marketing into their corporate strategy achieve stronger revenue outcomes, showing that a customer-focused CMO fosters sustainable growth.

C-Suite Misalignment and Fragmented Responsibilities

A significant obstacle to customer-centric growth is C-suite misalignment. Responsibilities for revenue and customer experience are often divided among marketing, sales, digital, and customer experience leaders. As executive teams expand, accountability becomes unclear. When many leaders claim ownership, no one is accountable.

Customers then face inconsistent experiences, with each department offering a different perspective. Research shows that companies with a single executive accountable for customer growth deliver up to 2.3 times more growth than those with fragmented structures. This evidence supports consolidating customer responsibility under one leader.

Declining Influence of Marketing in the C-Suite

Marketing’s presence at the top level is shrinking. Only 66% of Fortune 500 companies had a C-suite marketing leader in 2024, down from 71% in 2023. About one-third of these firms now lack an enterprise-level CMO.

Many CMOs have also lost direct reporting lines to the CEO. This decline reduces marketing’s ability to influence strategy and sidelines the customer perspective in decision-making. Companies that minimize marketing risk weaken customer-focused innovation.

The CEO–CMO Disconnect

The relationship between CEOs and CMOs is strained. In 2023, 90% of CEOs stated that marketing’s role was clearly defined, but by 2024, only 70% agreed. At the same time, 80% of CEOs and 77% of CMOs say marketing is underfunded, yet budgets continue to decline (7.7% of revenue in 2024, down from 9.1% the previous year).

Only half of CMOs report participating in strategic planning with the CEO. This disconnect erodes trust, leaving CMOs undervalued and CEOs skeptical of marketing’s contribution to growth.

Fragmented Customer Journeys

Customers expect seamless experiences across digital, retail, and service channels. However, overlapping roles, such as chief digital officer or chief customer officer, often create inconsistent customer journeys.

Departments send conflicting messages, and no leader owns the experience. CEOs themselves admit that they no longer know who represents the customer internally. This fragmentation hurts loyalty and satisfaction. Clear ownership is essential to delivering consistent experiences.

Challenges in Measuring Marketing’s Impact

Measurement remains one of marketing’s weakest areas. Only 30% of CMOs say their organization clearly defines marketing ROI, down from 40%.

CEOs and CMOs also prioritize different metrics: 70% of CEOs rely on revenue or margin growth, while many CMOs emphasize brand awareness or engagement.

Without shared metrics, the value of marketing appears uncertain. This disconnect often leads CFOs and CEOs to view marketing as a cost rather than an investment.

CMO–CFO Collaboration on Shared Metrics

A strong CMO–CFO partnership is one solution. Together, they can define KPIs that balance short-term and long-term outcomes, linking brand equity and media performance to revenue and profit. Financial validation increases credibility across the C-suite.

Companies with joint CMO–CFO dashboards are better equipped to align marketing activities with business outcomes and secure budgets for growth initiatives.

CMOs as Strategic Business Leaders

To regain influence, CMOs must adopt a general manager mindset. Too often, CMOs are excluded from strategy. They should engage in product, innovation, and resource allocation decisions alongside other leaders. Only about half of CMOs currently participate in company strategy.

By expanding their scope and demonstrating financial acumen, CMOs can effectively connect marketing to long-term business goals. This approach ensures customer insights inform enterprise-level choices.

Building Customer-Centric Organizations

Customer-focused growth requires integrating all customer-facing functions to ensure seamless customer experiences. The CMO should serve as the central advocate for the customer, coordinating sales, service, and digital efforts to deliver a consistent customer experience across all channels.

Marketing leaders are well-positioned for this integrator role due to their deep understanding of customer behavior.

Companies like Fortune Brands Innovations exemplify this principle by integrating customer feedback into every decision. When CEOs endorse marketing as a strategic partner, the whole organization becomes more customer-driven.

Growth Benefits of Unified Leadership

Organizations with a unified executive responsible for growth consistently outperform peers.

Fortune 500 companies with a single growth or customer leader deliver up to 2.3 times more growth. This focus improves accountability, internal collaboration, and customer outcomes.

Unified leadership also protects marketing from indiscriminate cuts, thereby reinforcing its role as a driver of revenue, rather than just a discretionary cost.

Executive Misalignment Challenges

Misalignment among executives hinders marketing’s potential, creating disconnects that disrupt strategy and customer focus.

CEO-CMO Disconnect

CEOs and CMOs lack a shared view of marketing’s role. Only 70% of CEOs, down from 90%, say marketing’s purpose is clear, while 31% of CMOs believe CEOs understand modern marketing.

CEOs often view marketing as merely advertising, rather than a strategic tool for growth. Only half of CMOs participate in strategic planning, limiting their impact. CEOs must empower CMOs to act as customer advocates, ensuring their strategic involvement and support.

CEOs should also learn modern marketing tools to recognize their value.

CMO-CFO Partnership

CEOs prioritize revenue growth and margins (70%), but only 35% of CMOs track these metrics, focusing on brand awareness. This fuels doubts about the impact of marketing. A CMO-CFO partnership can address this by linking marketing to financial outcomes.

CEO’s Role

CEOs must appoint one customer-focused leader, typically the CMO, and encourage cross-functional collaboration. Companies with a clear marketing leader achieve twice the growth rate (above 5% annually).

At Fortune Brands Innovations, the CMO’s collaboration with the CFO tied investments to outcomes, securing support and driving growth.

Proving Marketing’s Financial Impact

Showing that marketing’s return on investment (ROI) remains challenging reinforces its perception as a cost center. Only 30% of CMOs define a clear ROI, down from 40%, and 79% understand how marketing KPIs connect to growth, down from 88%.

Fragmented data obscures impact, and short-term metrics like return on advertising spend overshadow long-term goals like CLV.

An international hospitality company’s CMO excelled at acquisition but ignored post-acquisition engagement, costing more than the customer value generated. A comprehensive approach tracking the full customer journey is essential.

Strategies for CMO Success

CMOs can restore marketing’s role by adopting a strategic, customer-centric approach and aligning with executives. Key strategies include:

Owning the Customer Experience

CMOs should lead the customer journey, integrating insights from sales, digital, and support teams to deliver a consistent customer experience.

At General Motors, the CMO’s customer focus enabled the company to become the second-largest electric vehicle seller in the U.S., striking a balance between customer satisfaction and business results.

Thinking Like a General Manager

CMOs must set long-term goals and make data-driven decisions that benefit the organization, not just the marketing department.

A financial services provider’s CMO utilized customer feedback to redesign digital products, resulting in a 25% increase in digital revenue and demonstrating the impact of a strategic approach.

Building a Unified Measurement System

CMOs and CFOs should co-develop KPIs like CLV and revenue impact, using tools like media mix modeling.

Transparent reporting, as at Chipotle, boosted top-line growth by three percentage points over several years, earning executive trust.

Leveraging Technology

AI and marketing technology (MarTech) enable personalized experiences and optimize ROI.

However, only 56% of MarTech investments are used effectively due to poor training. CMOs must upskill teams to maximize tools, as seen in a global consulting firm’s AI-driven customer loyalty initiatives.

Success Stories

• General Motors: The CMO’s alignment with the CFO drove a 94% increase in electric vehicle sales, positioning GM as a market leader.
• Fortune Brands Innovations: The CMO’s collaboration with the CFO tied investments to measurable outcomes, driving growth.
• Chipotle: Transparent metrics under a former CMO led to a three percentage point increase in top-line growth.
• Haleon: The Chief Customer Officer leveraged AI and data to personalize shopper experiences, striking a balance between customer and business needs.

The CMO’s Role in 2025

In 2025, CMOs face economic uncertainty, technological disruption, and rising consumer expectations. They must unify cross-functional efforts and champion customer-centric strategies.

Partnerships with CEOs and CFOs secure resources, while robust measurement systems prove ROI. AI and MarTech deliver personalized experiences in a privacy-conscious world.

Companies empowering CMOs as customer advocates achieve up to 2.3 times higher growth. The CMO’s resurgence is essential for thriving in a complex market.

Implementation Framework

Establish Shared Metrics

CMOs should work with CFOs to design measurement systems that directly link marketing activities to financial outcomes. This means moving beyond vanity metrics and adopting standardized definitions of marketing ROI across leadership teams.

Redefine the CMO’s Scope

Modern CMOs expand their influence beyond traditional marketing to integrate all customer-facing functions, encompassing a broader range of activities. This approach ensures a cohesive customer experience that strengthens loyalty and drives growth.

Develop Cross-Functional Leadership Capabilities

CMOs need to build business expertise beyond marketing. They should understand financial metrics, operational constraints, and strategic planning to collaborate effectively with other executives.

Create Integrated Customer Journey Ownership

Organizations should assign clear accountability for the customer experience. Consolidating related functions under a single executive, whether the CMO or another role, reduces fragmentation and ensures consistency across the organization.

Implementation Roadmap: Building Alignment and Demonstrating Value

Strengthening the CMO-CFO Partnership

Research shows that strong collaboration between CMO and CFO can unlock 20–40% more financial upside. Four stages describe maturity:

• Mutual Suspicion: Limited trust and siloed agendas
• Conditional Cooperation: Collaboration only around specific events
• Mutual Understanding: Shared KPIs and budgeting
• Full Strategic Trust: Joint accountability for growth

CMOs should initiate joint sessions with finance teams to align on metrics and constraints.

Developing Integrated Measurement Systems

CMOs should balance short- and long-term outcomes through:

• Short-term: Campaign ROI, cost per acquisition
• Medium-term: Satisfaction, brand consideration, share of voice
• Long-term: Brand equity, lifetime value, net promoter score

General Motors’ CMO uses a comprehensive framework that aligns top-to-bottom funnel metrics with clear definitions and trade-offs.

Establishing Governance Structures

Sustaining alignment requires:

• Executive sponsorship to ensure resources
• Cross-functional committees with marketing, sales, finance, IT, and service
• RACI matrices to clarify responsibilities
• Regular review cycles to track progress and adapt

Strategic Recommendations

Immediate Actions (0–6 Months)

• Assess C-suite alignment using the partnership model
• Develop integrated metrics with shared definitions
• Map customer journeys to identify fragmentation

Medium-Term Initiatives (6–18 Months)

• Establish cross-functional steering committees
• Enhance marketer training in financial and business leadership
• Create customer-segment-based teams for consistent experiences

Long-Term Shifts (18–36 Months)

• Appoint a single executive for the end-to-end customer experience
• Align incentives to reward customer-focused outcomes
• Embed customer orientation into hiring, training, and leadership practices

The Solution Framework: Three-Pillar Transformation

CMO-CFO Strategic Partnership

The strongest solution is closer alignment between CMOs and CFOs through shared metrics and joint planning.

Companies that implement strong collaboration between the CMO and CFO achieve incremental financial improvements of 20 to 40 percent, demonstrating the value of marketing-finance integration.

This partnership requires mutually defined KPIs that link marketing activities directly to financial outcomes.

CFOs contribute by framing marketing discussions in terms of board-level investment considerations, while CMOs provide customer insights and market intelligence.

Collaboration should extend beyond budget allocation to include strategic planning, performance evaluation, and resource optimization.

General-Manager Mindset Adoption

CMOs must evolve from marketing specialists to strategic business executives with a general manager perspective. This shift requires adopting a profit-and-loss mindset and evaluating marketing investments in terms of long-term business outcomes, not just campaign-level metrics.

Key elements include strategic planning beyond marketing, company-wide competitive positioning, and resource allocation that maximizes overall performance.

CMOs with this approach can shape product strategy, influence organizational priorities, and improve company results.

Modern CMOs often oversee the full brand, product, and service experience. This expanded scope requires broader business knowledge and fiscal responsibility, positioning them as potential successors to the CEO while strengthening their role in the C-suite.

Customer-Centric Integration Strategy

The most effective approach positions the CMO as the leader of all customer-facing functions, including marketing, sales, customer success, and digital experience.

Customer-centric companies achieve 60 percent higher profitability than those without a customer focus, and organizations with customer-focused CEOs are 64% more likely to outperform their competitors.

The CMO, with a deep understanding of customers and a cross-functional perspective, is well-positioned to drive this shift.

Implementation requires removing silos and establishing a consistent approach to managing the customer journey.

The CMO ensures alignment across all touchpoints, from brand awareness to post-purchase retention.

The Competitive Advantage: Why This Transformation Matters

Revenue Growth Impact

Companies with unified customer leadership consistently outperform their peers in revenue growth.

The 2.3x multiplier for organizations with a single customer-focused executive represents a significant and enduring advantage.

Customer-centric organizations also improve retention by 20 to 30 percent and increase lifetime value, thereby creating sustainable revenue streams and strengthening their market positions.

Operational Excellence Benefits

Unified customer leadership reduces inefficiencies created by fragmented ownership.

With marketing, sales, and customer success operating under one leader, organizations lower acquisition costs and improve satisfaction scores.

Integration also enables better resource allocation across the customer lifecycle, ensuring investments drive maximum business value. This strengthens both revenue growth and profitability.

Market Differentiation Advantages

In commoditized markets, superior customer experience becomes the key differentiator. Strong customer advocacy prevents market erosion and creates barriers to competition.

Satisfied customers also generate referrals, lowering reliance on paid acquisition and creating long-term competitive advantage.

The Path Forward for CMO Leadership

CMOs must shift from functional roles to strategic leadership, driving customer-centric growth through cross-functional integration and financial partnership.

The solution framework, encompassing a CFO-CMO partnership, a general manager mindset, and customer-centric integration, provides a roadmap for this transformation.

Companies adopting these approaches gain measurable advantages in growth, efficiency, and differentiation.

The need for change is urgent. Only 66 percent of Fortune 500 companies currently retain C-suite marketing leadership, and marketing budgets have declined to 7.7 percent of revenue.

Without transformation, CMOs risk marginalization and reduced relevance.

The path forward requires strategic thinking, accountability, and commitment to customer leadership.

CMOs who succeed will strengthen their influence, secure their role, and drive sustainable growth in a competitive market.

The CMO’s role in 2025 is central to business success. By owning the customer experience, aligning with executives, and proving financial impact, CMOs can restore marketing’s growth-driving power.

A strategic mindset, collaborative partnerships, and a customer-focused approach will lead organizations to sustainable success.

As one CMO noted, “Nothing gets sold without a customer buying it.” By centering the customer and uniting executives, CMOs will shape a future of profitable growth.

Repositioning the CMO as the customer’s advocate restores marketing’s strategic role and delivers stronger growth.

The current decline in marketing influence, misaligned responsibilities, CEO–CMO tension, and unclear ROI weaken organizational performance.

These challenges can be addressed by empowering CMOs with broader mandates, pairing them with CFOs to validate metrics, and consolidating customer-facing functions.

Firms that unify leadership around the customer achieve stronger results and greater resilience.

The evidence suggests that companies with a CMO at the center of their growth strategy perform better than those without a clear customer ownership strategy.

The CMO’s Strategic Role in Customer-Centric Growth: FAQs

What Is the Evolving Role of the Chief Marketing Officer in 2025?
The CMO role has expanded from brand management to strategic leadership, requiring alignment with CEOs and CFOs, ownership of the customer experience, and accountability for financial outcomes.

Why Is There a C-Suite Disconnect in Modern Organizations?
Fragmented responsibilities across marketing, sales, digital, and customer experience roles create unclear accountability, weakening customer focus and strategic alignment.

What Is the CMO Paradox?
The paradox lies in marketing being critical for growth and customer experience, yet CMOs are often excluded from strategic decisions and pressured to prove short-term ROI.

How Has Marketing’s Role in Organizations Diminished?
Marketing’s influence has declined, with fewer CMOs in executive teams and reduced direct reporting to CEOs, leading to diminished authority in shaping strategy.

Why Does Customer-Centric Growth Matter in 2025?
Consumers expect seamless, personalized experiences across multiple channels, making customer-centric strategies essential for loyalty, differentiation, and profitability.

How Can CMOs Drive Customer-Centric Growth?
CMOs should act as primary customer advocates, ensuring all growth strategies prioritize customer needs and influence long-term business direction.

What Challenges Arise From C-Suite Misalignment?
When multiple leaders share responsibility for revenue and customer experience, accountability becomes diluted, leading to inconsistent customer journeys.

How Has the CEO and CMO Relationship Changed?
Trust between CEOs and CMOs has declined, with fewer CMOs participating in strategic planning and shrinking budgets reducing marketing’s credibility.

Why Are Customer Journeys Increasingly Fragmented?
Overlapping executive roles and siloed departments create inconsistent messaging and experiences, leaving customers dissatisfied.

What Are the Main Challenges in Measuring Marketing’s Impact?
Only 30% of CMOs have a clear ROI definition, and misaligned metrics between CEOs and CMOs make it difficult to demonstrate financial contributions.

How Can a CMO and CFO Partnership Strengthen Marketing’s Role?
By co-developing shared KPIs that balance short- and long-term goals, CMOs and CFOs validate marketing’s financial impact and secure budgets.

Why Must CMOs Adopt a General Manager Mindset?
Thinking like business leaders allows CMOs to influence product strategy, resource allocation, and financial planning, ensuring marketing’s role connects to company-wide goals.

What Does It Mean for CMOs to Own the Customer Experience?
It means leading integration across sales, digital, and service teams to deliver consistent customer experiences at every touchpoint.

What Role Does Technology Play in CMO Success?
AI and MarTech enable personalization and ROI optimization, but CMOs must ensure effective training and adoption to realize full value.

Which Companies Showcase Successful CMO Strategies?
Examples include General Motors (EV growth through customer focus), Chipotle (ROI transparency), and Fortune Brands Innovations (CMO-CFO collaboration).

How Can CMOs Prove Marketing’s Financial Impact?
By linking marketing activities to outcomes like customer lifetime value, revenue growth, and profitability using comprehensive measurement systems.

What Is the Three-Pillar Framework for CMO Transformation?
It includes building a CMO-CFO strategic partnership, adopting a general manager mindset, and integrating customer-facing functions under unified leadership.

What Are the Growth Benefits of Unified Leadership?
Organizations with one customer-focused leader achieve up to 2.3 times more growth, stronger accountability, and improved collaboration.

What Immediate Actions Should CMOs Take?
They should assess C-suite alignment, develop integrated metrics with CFOs, and map customer journeys to identify gaps in experience.

Why Is Repositioning the CMO as a Customer Advocate Critical?
Placing CMOs at the center of customer strategy restores marketing’s influence, ensures growth accountability, and builds resilience in uncertain markets.