Chief marketing officers are vital to strategic decision-making, but increasingly, they’re being left out of the discussions that matter most—to the detriment of both customers and growth. “Kelsey and I are on a singular mission to bring CMOs back,” McKinsey Senior Partner Shelley Stewart III said recently, referring to Senior Partner Kelsey Robinson. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Shelley and Kelsey join Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly to discuss new research on worsening disconnects in the C-suite, as well as how strengthening alignment between CMOs, CEOs, and CFOs can make a meaningful and sustainable difference in organizational performance. This conversation originally aired as a McKinsey Live webinar following the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
What’s changed for CMOs?
Lucia Rahilly: The current global business climate is rife with uncertainty—macroeconomically, geopolitically, technologically. Amid all this change and volatility, growth continues to be imperative, but it also risks being elusive for some organizations.
We recently released research on how to reignite growth successfully, in particular by homing in on the relationship between the CMO, the CEO, and the CFO and harnessing the power of that partnership. Shelley, you were recently on the ground at Cannes Lions, where you shared that research with CEOs and other executives. Talk to us about the vibe at Cannes and some of the takeaways that resonated most.
Shelley Stewart III: The energy on the ground at Cannes was incredible. Leaders and CEOs are navigating an incredibly dynamic and complex set of situations: the rapid rise of gen AI, geopolitical uncertainty, reshaping supply chains, and much more fragmented customer behavior. There’s a temptation in these moments of disruption to focus on efficiencies in productivity and cost. While those are important, they can’t come at the expense of also focusing on growth.
There’s a temptation in these moments of disruption to focus on efficiencies in productivity and cost. While those are important, they can’t come at the expense of also focusing on growth.
Lucia Rahilly: Kelsey, what did the research tell us about the role of the CMO in the current growth calculus?
Kelsey Robinson: For sustainable, profitable growth, the idea of the customer at the center is vital. When marketing leaders are embedded in strategic decision-making and take responsibility for a customer-centric growth strategy, companies perform better. When companies involve marketing executives in strategic planning, we’ve seen a 1.4 times higher top line. And when there’s a single, integrated customer-centric executive in the top team, we’ve seen 2.3 times the growth.
When marketing leaders are embedded in strategic decision-making and take responsibility for a customer-centric growth strategy, companies perform better.
So the growth equation and the need for a marketing executive are clear. The challenge we’re seeing play out, from an organizational point of view, is the proliferation of roles in the C-suite and on executive teams. Over the past five years, the size of the executive team has increased by 50 percent. We’ve added great roles: chief digital officer, chief data officer, chief revenue officer, sometimes a chief customer officer, and sometimes all those roles alongside a CMO. That means there isn’t one person thinking end to end about strategic growth for customer acquisition or retention. While everyone is responsible for that, no one really is.
Why the disconnect in the C-suite?
Lucia Rahilly: Based on our research, having a single, integrative marketing role in the C-suite offers an opportunity for growth that’s both realistic and within reach. Shelley, tell us more about the disconnect between CEOs and CMOs.
Shelley Stewart III: There’s a real disconnect, and our data suggests this disconnect is growing. By one measure, we found the gap between the CEO and the CMO has grown by 20 percent. Again, during this time, it has been critical to deliver growth, yet only 50 percent of CMOs are involved in strategic planning alongside the CEO. That’s a startling statistic in a world where the CMO should really understand the end-to-end customer journey. That lack of alignment creates issues.
The other evolution is that marketing has become more complex as customer fragmentation has increased. And measuring marketing performance has gotten more complicated.
We asked executives whether CEOs understand modern marketing. Sixty-five percent of CEOs said they’re confident they do, but only about 30 percent of CMOs believe that CEOs understand modern marketing. That’s really troubling, and again, at a time when CEOs are grappling with all sorts of other issues, this disconnect is to the detriment of the customer and growth.
Lucia Rahilly: Kelsey, talk to us about how the CFO fits into this axis and why alignment among all three roles is both vital and challenging.
Kelsey Robinson: This year, we talked to executives at over a hundred of the largest global companies. We increasingly added the CFO to this discussion because we think this trio is important to unlock the growth potential we’re talking about.
The CEO–CMO relationship is something we’ve studied for the past few years. The CFO is also critical in that room to ask, “How do we think about resource allocation? How do we think about investment?” For the group, the real questions are, “What is marketing driving for the business? What is the outcome of all the marketing activity that we do?” In my experience working with many CMOs, I find a lack of trust and alignment in answering that question.
One interesting stat came up when we asked CEOs and CMOs whether they thought marketing was underfunded. Eighty percent of CEOs and about 77 percent of CMOs said, “Yes, marketing for my company is underfunded.” But over the last year, dollars going to marketing decreased from 9.1 to 7.7 percent of sales on average. There’s clearly a disconnect between the aspiration for funding the discipline and the growth executives want to see. To us, this underscores the need for the involvement of a CFO.
This year, 70 percent of CEOs told us that part of how they assess marketing’s impact is year-on-year revenue or margin growth. But only 35 percent of CMOs had margin growth on their list. I think a lot of CMOs would say, “We’d own the whole P&L [profit and loss].” That lack of alignment shows the challenge many companies are facing.
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What should CMOs do differently?
Lucia Rahilly: What needs to happen, practically speaking, to begin bridging this C-suite gap?
Shelley Stewart III: Kelsey and I are on a singular mission to bring CMOs back. Great ones know what drives growth, but they’re often stuck in this gap between insight and execution. There are three things we’ve highlighted.
One is to give marketing custody of the customer: Let marketing really own the customer journey and be that single point that feeds the rest of the organization, from product development to sales. This is about having deep insight into questions like: “Who are our customers today? Who are our potential customers? What do they care about? What do they need? Where do they buy? How do we touch and engage them?”
Two, adopt a general manager’s mindset. As a marketer, you may not have a P&L in your organization, but think about your interlocks with the people who do have P&Ls and how to ensure the way you judge yourself and are judged by the organization is based on the financial returns of the business.
Three is tied to two: working in the C-suite with the CEO and the CFO to come up with a measurement system that aligns activities to the outcomes the business cares about—ultimately, growth.
Another thing is to rethink slashing the marketing budget. Saving dollars in the near term risks costing you growth, assuming your marketing organization is high performing, because, done well, marketing drives revenue. It helps you attract new customers, keep customers, and increase customer lifetime value.
Lucia Rahilly: I’m hearing that there needs to be education, and maybe also a mindset shift, for CMOs to lead in advocating for an organization’s customers. Kelsey, can I get your thoughts here?
Kelsey Robinson: CEOs and CFOs have typically been general managers and P&L owners. Our research found that nine out of ten CEOs don’t have a marketing background. Likewise, CMOs have not grown up with a general manager mindset.
The onus is on the CMO to hook into the chassis of financial, strategic, and business unit goals in a much more integrated way. To wake up with a general manager’s mindset, the CMO would ask, “What are the near- and medium-term goals for everyone in the businesses or products I support? How do the day-to-day activities of my team enable those? How do I communicate to the other parts of the organization what I’m doing for those goals? And while I might not own the whole P&L, how can I communicate the component that I’m driving, and where might I need help?”
It’s about making sure teams show up with a more holistic, business-centric mindset and collaborate cross-functionally as well. We acknowledge there’s a gap educationally and role-wise. I think the mindset switch sets a higher bar for the CMO to speak and act in a way that will build that CEO–CFO bridge.
What should this look like in practice?
Lucia Rahilly: Suppose I’m a CMO, I’m listening to this, and I’m in violent agreement. We all know measuring the impact of marketing initiatives is notoriously difficult. How do I get started communicating to my CEO and CMO colleagues how I’m performing in delivering these strategic outcomes?
Kelsey Robinson: We acknowledge that creating a measurement system is difficult. Over the last ten to 15 years, we’ve observed huge growth in very measurable, direct-response marketing. That means the CFO gets excited and says, “OK, I can put this many dollars in and quickly see the outcome.” But that doesn’t maintain a healthy cross-funnel, cross-customer business.
A lot of companies, including our clients, run into challenges trying to prove and align on what they’re trying to drive—not just direct sales but also the short-, medium-, and long-term health of the business. This is something for the trio to do. All three must be aligned on what they mean by growth.
Let’s take an example from the research. We asked the CMO of GM, Norm de Greve, to talk to us about what he did to reestablish marketing when he came into the role. He did three things. One, he developed a measurement framework and said, “There’s going to be everything from top- to bottom-of-the-funnel metrics. We’re going to have fast-twitch metrics, and we’re going to have customer lifetime value metrics. Let’s align on how we define them, which are most important, how we make trade-offs across them, and also that we care about all of them, not just the fast-twitch ones.”
Second, he supported a holistic portfolio of brands and aligned on how to think about an allocation approach across this portfolio—how to be smart about trading dollars between one subbrand and the next.
Last, he established a cadence for an ongoing dialogue with his CFO and the broader leadership team, including making decisions based on points one and two. I think GM has seen strong year-on-year growth as a result and real success in some of its primary objectives for EVs [electric vehicles], too.
Lucia Rahilly: What’s one piece of practical advice you would give to help leaders get started? Anything you’ve seen work particularly well in accelerating bridging that divide?
Kelsey Robinson: Step one is to sit down and discuss the goal of marketing and the metrics to be accountable for. The first draft is not going to be right, but you can at least sit down and start the conversation. Ask, “What are we measuring? What are my goals? How does that tie to the P&L?” If you’re a CMO and you proactively ask, “How am I coming to the table, and how am I trying to make sure my function is accountable?” you’ve already changed the dynamic relative to most companies.
Shelley Stewart III: Everyone cares about the customer. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. But force the discussion around, where does custody of the customer sit today? Get the top team aligned on the different places it sits. Then put that in front of everyone, saying, “How can we have an integrated view?”
In other words, if you’re the CMO, you don’t have to make the conversation about you; instead, make it about the customer. Make it clear that what matters now likely sits across different places in the organization. Even that level of transparency can force a very good discussion that I hope all stakeholders can be aligned on: “We need a more integrated view of the customer to win in this market.”
Building capabilities for the future
Lucia Rahilly: Many CMOs don’t have a P&L background, as the two of you mentioned. And lots of CEOs may think or say they understand modern marketing, but do not have a marketing background. How should we think about addressing the education element of the CEO–CMO–CFO divide?
Kelsey Robinson: It starts at the top. Question one is, how do you bridge the education gap at the very top? Frankly, there is trust in top relationships. Those execs—the CEO, CFO, and CMO—are all there to deliver great performance for the company. So even an honest conversation about what’s changing in marketing could be used as an excuse.
For example, a CMO might say, “I’d love to talk about how marketing is evolving and the pieces I think are most important for our business. Would you be up to meet for 45 minutes?” That already starts to bridge the gap. And the CEO or the CFO could say, “We should sit down and have a deep-dive session on objectives by business unit, and what we want the shape of the P&L to look like overall.”
Then there’s a question about talent below the C-suite and how to cultivate it. It’s very important for marketers to show up every morning thinking: What can I do to drive the business forward today? I don’t think marketers or marketing managers or creative directors are often asked that question. It’s important to really push them on their mindset, too.
Lucia Rahilly: Did you hear any interesting themes emerging at Cannes—especially around gen AI, which has particular ramifications for creative work such as marketing?
Shelley Stewart III: Navigating through disruption as the new norm was obviously the macro theme. Also, the recognition that you don’t have the luxury to wait and see; you have to proactively turn disruption into opportunity.
Folks are talking about how AI will reshape marketing organizations in terms of the makeup and skill sets required. There’s a recognition in marketing, but really across all functions, that organizations that win will be those where people plus agents are working hand in hand. A scary thing I’ve heard is that it won’t just be humans asking agents to do tasks but also agents asking humans to do tasks. But you have to embrace this technology. It’s not about agents replacing people. It’s that the organizations where humans master agentic AI will be able to leapfrog their peers.
Kelsey Robinson: Of the disciplines where AI will have the most impact, marketing is in the top three, along with technology and customer service. We published a McKinsey Global Institute report on this. And there’s huge potential in cost and speed components to change the game for some companies. There’s a big shift from pilots to reimagining domains. Companies have moved from “We proved we could do this campaign a lot quicker” to “How do we take the entire creative process and rewire it from end to end?” That’s not just about a tool; it’s about reassessing every step in every workflow.
The world will fundamentally change. We need to assess how we’re going to maintain creativity and inspiration and what their roles are. How do we embrace agentic AI to find time efficiencies and reallocate that time, versus fearing the marketing ecosystem will dissolve? As Shelley described, it has to be a “human and . . .” answer.
