Anthony Palmer, President and formerly the Chief Marketing Officer at Kimberly-Clark, claimed that, “the role of a CMO is really pretty simple. You can’t ever lose sight of the fact that your role is to sell more stuff to more people for more money more often. That has to be the ultimate goal. You also have to inspire the organization to take calculated risks, and inspire the organization to love winning more than they are afraid of losing.”

Inspired CMOs see themselves as champions and drivers of growth who can anticipate customers, develop their organizations’ Marketing capabilities, and figure out how to demonstrate Marketing’s impact on the business in terms that matter to their C-Suite leadership team. In fact, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) should operate under another title: the Chief Value Officer (CVO), since it is the CMO’s job to guide and transform Marketing into a Center of Excellence that serves as a model across the organization.

What separates those who merely survive from those who manage to thrive? Surviving CMOs tend to focus on lead generation, pipeline management, branding, and customer acquisition. Thriving CMOs, on the other hand, think beyond this and instead increase their stake in growing customer lifetime value and developing long-term customer profitability. Typically, these CMOs lean toward the analytical end of the Marketing spectrum as opposed to the creative end.

Are You Perceived to Be a Champion and Driver of Growth and Value Creation?

Let’s dig down into what makes a CMO thrive. Generally, it begins with three characteristics:

Thrivers close the gap between Marketing and the customer by creating customer-centric business strategies and models that allow them to serve as the “voice of the customer.”
They embrace and leverage data to analyze market and customer trends and strengthen their knowledge of the customer and market to create customer-driven products, exceptional customer experiences, and a culture dedicated to value creation. Their Marketing organizations use their data-to-insights business acumen. As a result, they are more credible, and their data are more relevant.
They take the helm in helping the company anticipate and respond rapidly to changing market and customer needs, as well as lead the charge in establishing new Marketing capabilities.

Organizations thrive only if they can acquire and keep customers. To put it in a nutshell, we will defer to Peter Drucke,r who encapsulated the framework of a successful business by saying that the “purpose of business is to create a customer.” So, if you subscribe to Peter Drucker’s philosophy and adopt Phil Kotler’s position that it is Marketing’s purpose to find, keep, and grow the value of customers, then Marketing must be at the center of the structure to drive your company’s value.

Learn more about how your Marketing organization can operate as a Center of Excellence and make Marketing more relevant to you and the C-Suite. Here’s how to start to fulfilll Marketing fundamental mission of value creation.

Start by reading our How to Guides. We recommend What You Must Know About Marketing Centers of Excellence: A Why and How Primer.
Listen to educational recordings. A good place to start is by tuning in to Creating Marketing Centers of Excellence: A Case Study and Driving Marketing Excellence | Virtual Roundtable – BoardRoom Events.
Read case studies to learn how a new perspective helped companies make change happen. Take a peek at Case Making Marketing Relevant to the C-Suite.

FAQ:

(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)

Q1: What is the “simple” definition of the CMO’s job—and why does it matter?
A: As Anthony Palmer framed it, the CMO’s job is to “sell more stuff to more people for more money more often,” while inspiring calculated risk-taking and a culture that loves winning more than it fears losing. This matters because it anchors Marketing leadership in growth, value creation, and organizational courage—not activity for activity’s sake.

Q2: Why should the CMO be viewed as a Chief Value Officer (CVO)?
A: Because the CMO’s role is to guide and transform Marketing into a Center of Excellence that serves as a value-creating model across the organization. Inspired CMOs act as champions of growth who anticipate customers, build Marketing capabilities, and demonstrate Marketing’s impact in terms that matter to the C-Suite.

Q3: What separates CMOs who survive from CMOs who thrive?
A: Surviving CMOs tend to focus on lead generation, pipeline management, branding, and acquisition. Thriving CMOs expand the agenda to grow customer lifetime value and long-term profitability. They typically lean toward the analytical end of the spectrum—building credibility through data-to-insights business acumen and outcome-based performance management.

Q4: What three characteristics distinguish thriving CMOs as growth and value creators?
A: Thriving CMOs:

Close the gap between Marketing and the customer by creating customer-centric strategies and models and serving as the voice of the customer.
Embrace and leverage data to analyze market/customer trends, strengthen customer knowledge, and enable customer-driven products, exceptional experiences, and a culture of value creation—making insights more credible and relevant.
Lead adaptability and capability-building by helping the company anticipate and respond rapidly to changing market and customer needs and by establishing new Marketing capabilities.

Q5: Why must Marketing sit at the center of value creation?
A: Because organizations only thrive if they can acquire and keep customers. Drucker’s principle—“the purpose of business is to create a customer”—combined with Marketing’s purpose to “find, keep, and grow the value of customers,” implies Marketing must be structurally central to driving customer value and, therefore, enterprise value.

Q6: What is the practical next step for CMOs who want to be perceived as growth champions?
A: Begin transforming Marketing into a Center of Excellence—strengthening customer-centric strategy, analytics capability, and performance management discipline—so Marketing can consistently prove and improve its contribution to customer value and business outcomes in boardroom terms.