Richard Sanderson | The 2026 Spencer Stuart CMO Survey - Marketers in the Messy Middle

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0:22Richard Sanderson:Welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions, and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five-time CMO Mike Linton. When is the last time you researched something on a website? If you're like most people, AI did that work for you. And that raises a question. If AI is doing the work, what is your website really for? This behavioral shift means AI bots are becoming your most important new visitors. A challenge our sponsor, Scrunch, is taking head on. Scrunch is the customer experience platform that helps you understand how AI agents experience your site, when and why they show up, and what's blocking them from being retrieved, trusted, or recommended.

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2:02I'm Mike Linton, the former chief marketing officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance, and Ancestry.com, here today with my guest, Richard Sanderson. Today's topic, the Spencer Stewart CMO's survey, marketers in the messy middle. Now, Richard began his career at Russell Reynolds and Booze & Company and moved to Spencer Stewart, where he leads the marketing, communications, and sales practice. He heads approximately 25 searches per year for the CMO, CRO, CCO, and sales leadership positions. This is Richard's fifth time on the show in our more than three-year run, and we consider him a CMO confidential OG.

2:47Full disclosure, we've known each other for quite a while, as Richard recruited me to the Allworth Financial Board. Welcome back, Richard. Thank you, Mike. Fifth time. Do I get a cut of the advertising revenue anytime soon? We'll send you a check for four cents. Wonderful. Thank you. You know where to find me. Hey, so Richard, we're covering two studies here. the annual CMO survey that Spencer has done for a long time and a CMO survey that you guys did proprietary on AI, right? Yeah, that's right. So thank you for giving us the opportunity. You're right. So we have Spencer Stewart has conducted a survey of CMO tenure now for something like 25, 26 years.

3:33It's probably the longest data set of longitudinal insights into CMO tenure. It was started by my great friend and colleague, Greg Welch, many years ago, and I've stepped into the breach and continue to run it this year. We've just published in the last week or so the latest results. And additionally, at the end of last year, Mike, we wanted to try and separate some of the, really try and separate the signal from the noise around what exactly is going on with AI and marketing. not so much looking at marketing technology, but perhaps my sense is some of the less spoken about topics around AI and marketing, which is what is it going to do to talent and teams?

4:15And it feels like every week now in the Wall Street Journal or some other publication of choice, there seems to be some headline about 1 ,000 job cuts here, 10 ,000 job cuts there. Some of it is associated with AI. Some of it is not. But what actually is going on and what decisions and headcount changes, amongst other things, do we expect marketing leaders to make? So we went ahead and conducted a survey there of 100 marketing offices and got some interesting results back on that. So two for the price of one this time, Mike. Well, I feel like it's a buy one, get one. So let's start with the state of the CMO, the study you've done for 20 plus years.

4:52In the overview, you titled this study, Shorter Tenures, Brighter Futures. Give us the overview of the CMO study and what has changed, if much, over the last year. Right. So just to set the baseline for your listeners and your viewers, Mike, we look at the S &P 500. So that is basically the largest 500 companies by market capitalization. We look at the chief marketing officer or the most similar role to that. And then essentially we're looking at all the features associated with when that person was hired, how long have they been in the role, where did they come from, insider, outsider, were they from the industry, outside of the industry, all the bits and pieces.

5:38Here's the headline. First of all, I think it always surprises people, but roughly about a third of the S &P 500 companies do not even have a chief marketing officer. That's, I think, to me, actually quite unusual. we'll compare that to, I think, 0 % of companies that don't have financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial financial But a full third do not have an enterprise-level marketing officer. The average S &P 500 tenure this year is about 4.1 years. That is actually remarkably stable. I mean, since COVID, we have now seen that number hover in the 4.1 to 4.3-year range pretty consistently.

6:17So this is remarkable, too, because that is against a lot of the common news you hear about CMOs getting, you know, caught left and right. Right. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to do this, because for years, I think there's this backstory of rumors, hypothesis, conjecture, but surprisingly little data. Here's what is true, though, Mike. At 4.1 years, that is below the average of the C-suite. In fact, that is the lowest average tenure of all the C-suite offices. To be clear, the average for all C-suite roles at these same companies is about 5.0 years. So that's almost a 25 % jump. So yeah, it is a year, approximately a year less.

7:08And so the short tenure may seem like an indication of a revolving door for marketing leaders, Mike. But in our analysis, we actually find the opposite to be true. And indeed, what we have done is actually track the exits of all the CMOs who left their roles between 2021 and 2025. And what we're finding is it's about 62%, so almost two-thirds. The reality is they are either promoted at their company or they went on to a similar or bigger role at another company. And so I think the mistake that historically people have made is to associate short tenure with failure. That is not the case. Indeed, what we're finding here is that the majority of CMOs when they exit are being promoted into either bigger or better roles.

7:58And so short tenure should not be a signal of failure. And some of these roles, I want to go back to the third of companies don't have a CMO, which I think is pretty consistent with last year's study or roughly close. But a lot of these jobs is the CMO job evolving to be experienced revenue, super CMO kind of gigs. Is that right? It is. Look, we do find some difference across industries. So, for example, just 56 percent of health care companies have a chief marketing officer. Just 53 percent of industrial companies have a chief marketing officer. On the other hand, in financial services, that percentage, for example, is much higher.

8:38Some of it, I think, is related to regulatory constraints or just simply marketing in some industry verticals, Mike, is more of a support function than it is a commercial or revenue influencing function. so i mean like in industrials where i'm bechtel or i'm somebody like doing a lot of infrastructure stuff i am supporting the sales team or the you know the biz dev team is that what it is yeah i mean exactly i mean companies like i mean here's an example uh uh off the top of my head i seem to recall company like northrop grumman yeah lockheed martin neither of those two companies have chief marketing officers whilst i don't know what their customer base looks like i would imagine it's A lot of it is the government.

9:19A lot of it is probably sitting at the Pentagon, yes. And so there are situations like that. That's where I think a chief marketing officer reporting to a CEO part of a C-suite probably has lower value than I think in other industries or businesses where the CMO is directly influencing revenue. So there's point number one, which is about prevalence of the role by industry. But your other point is right, which is, and we've spoken about this before, which is this concept of a CMO plus role. So in the hospitality industry, for example, many companies have moved to a chief commercial officer responsible for sales and marketing.

9:58A big trend we've seen in the last couple of years has been in software companies that have moved to a chief revenue officer style role. And many retail companies now are just as likely to have a chief customer officer who oversees not only the traditional remit of a CMO, so some of the brand, creative, media, insights, analytics, but also a lot of the omni-channel activation, retail design, assortment, and for some, even the in-store experience. So, yes, it is true that, and this is not a new phenomenon, but the evolution of the role has continued to grow over the last five years. And you said in the study that more companies are hiring from within than previously.

10:38What's driving that? And tell us about it. Yeah. So look, we have found 62 % of chief marketing officers of the S &P 500 that we discussed were appointed from within. You know, the inverse of that, you can say 38 % are hired externally. And of those that have been hired externally, 27 % of them actually have held a CMO role before. Again, we did find some different patterns across industry. But I think the message here is that there was a feeling that if you wanted to be a CMO, you had to make a move. Yeah. It was easier. It was like an NFL coaching job. It's easier to be an offensive coordinator somewhere and get hired than it is to get promoted.

11:22Right. So at least if you look at this data set, and I accept this is the larger company market cap. This does not include a lot of the private equity, privately held businesses. It doesn't include small early stage businesses, but certainly these larger, more mature businesses, the reality is you're more likely to be appointed from within. And so what we're finding here is that companies, you know, many, many, but not all are doing a much better job around succession planning. If you are a major shift over if you go back 20 years, right? Well, I think it is. Yes. I mean, there is some assumption that to your point, it was a little bit more like football coaches.

12:00You had to move to get the top job. I actually think there has historically actually been a little bit of a crisis actually around succession planning. My biggest concern is that the marketing function has become a series of highly specialized sub-capabilities and often challenge a chief marketing officer. When was the last time you put your creative director to be your head of performance marketing or vice versa, for example? I mean, it actually very rarely happens. And now, of course, we're seeing specialized roles around your VP, marketing technology, experience roles crop up. I mean, it has become the marketing skill set has become a really broad and diverse church.

12:38And yet we are seeing some marketing leaders. I think what we're actually seeing is the ones that really do step up, Mike, are the ones who are in what I would say the divisional business unit or geographic marketing leadership roles. Where they got a wider remit. Correct. So they have my whole career building a brand or doing performance marketing or CRM. And it's harder to make that leap. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, what we are seeing, the greatest likelihood of an internal promotion are those that have held the full scope of CMO role, but maybe at a smaller scale. So specifically, as I said, they might be in a geographical business.

13:15They might be, I don't know, the CMO for Europe or some region, or they may be the chief marketing officer of a business line. I mean, a great example would be, I mean, I'll just pick on one example. In JPMorgan Chase, you have obviously, as people well know, Carla Hassan in the enterprise leadership role. But there's really nine or so business unit chief marketing officers under her who they have generally speaking have different scopes, but broadly speaking have full funnel remit within their business units. They are effectively mini CMOs and could easily be plucked off and sit in an enterprise role at another organization.

13:50There are many CMOs over really big businesses too. Correct. Correct. And so that's where we do see this promotion. And that's why, as I said, I am sensitive. This data set is skewed slightly towards larger or higher market cap companies. But certainly amongst that group, we are seeing a much better job of succession planning and grooming the next generation of marketing leaders to step into the top C-suite enterprise level role. Speaking of that, let's flip to the second study, which is marketers see 2026 as a make or break year for AI, according to your study. Share the dynamics at play there.

14:28What are you hearing from your study? Yeah. So this comes back to where we started, Mike, which is we had one today. Again, there's been a lot of conjecture and hypothesis around. So what exactly is AI going to do? And through our lens at Spencer Stewart, we're obviously most interested in it from a leadership, teams and talent perspective. I think we're all seeing headlines every day about various job losses. Some of it may or may not be associated with AI. There is a sense there is a moment of reckoning coming. And so we actually asked 100 CMOs that participate in our survey, you know, what exactly do you expect to happen?

15:04And so here's where we are. I mean, there's a sense of when we ask them, you know, how many of you have actually reduced headcount in the last 12 to 24 months? The answer was not many. Only 17 percent have actually cut jobs directly as a result of AI in the last 12 to 24 months. However, when we ask them, well, what about the next 12 to 24 months? Then it looks very different. 36 % of chief marketing officers tell us they expect reductions in headcount in the next 12 to 24 months as a direct result of AI. It's the content production and likely agency-facing roles that are most vulnerable. When we cut the data across industry, we try to see where are there differences.

15:49Are there differences across industry? Are there differences across holding structure? So in other words, public versus private versus non-profit. In fact, the only statistically significant dimension which we could find difference was actually amongst size. And this is actually the really important point. There is significant pressure to reduce costs for the largest companies. Definition of large here is revenue greater than$20 billion. That's approximately, if you would equate that back to our S &P 500, it's roughly the top 200 or the top 250 companies in terms of market cap. or revenue. Now there, some of the numbers were quite staggering.

16:30At that point, 37 % of CMOs in those companies told us that their CEOs or CFOs are essentially giving them what's called efficiency targets of at least 20 % over the next 12 to 24 months. That is significant. 20 % is a lot. 20%. Because if you think about the size of these marketing teams for companies - A thousand person team. Right. I got to find 200 heads in that. And a billion dollar budget says I have to find 200 million. Let's take a short break for a word from our sponsor, Scrunch. Over the weekend, I asked AI to do dozens of things for me. Please help me make this dishwasher start working.

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18:04Now, back to our discussion with Richard Sanderson. That's right. So, you know, some of the headlines here were around, you know, headcount. I know that's what captures people's attention, but it was clear that in small or midsize companies, the story is really about redeployment, upskilling. There is significant benefits to workflow shifts rather than true business model shifts. However, for the large companies, the cost savings and efficiency gains expectations are significant and they're coming now. There's a sense we heard from chief marketing officers or certainly the feeling or the sentiment they're getting from their CEO or CFO that, look, guys, you've had two years to do all your pilots.

18:50Now it's show us the money. Well, and we've done a couple of shows with agencies where the pressure on agencies to to do this is enormous. And then we did a venture cap show with a gentleman named Rob Ward, who basically said the real tip of the iceberg here on the cutting is just getting underway. A lot of this was kind of just the beginning. And so we got a lot of points on here. And so in the study, you said, CMOS, they think they're in the messy middle. Yes. And tell me, why is it so messy? And is it more messy in marketing than other places in the company? Well, so let me answer that. So there's two parts there.

19:33There's, you know, what's going on with marketing. And then I think you're asking a broader comparative question with, you know, how else is AI impacting other parts of the enterprise? Let me pick the marketing piece of that first, Mike, and just touch on that. We had asked them simple questions around, do you see yourself as a laggard or as a leader? The answer is very few saw themselves at the edges and most were clustering in the middle. In fact, 51 % of CMOs perhaps not surprisingly think they are around average. It's like a well-begone study. Right. I think we went a little bit further around.

20:05So where exactly is your marketing team on the AI adoption journey? Again, we gave an option of five answers. On the one hand, those where they're just individual team members are just doing some individual uncoordinated experimentation. Hardly anyone said there. We also asked the other end of the spectrum, how many of you are in fully transformed AI native marketing organizations? And again, actually zero percent answered that. So no one thinks that at either end of this, the vast majority tell us that either piloting projects in some functional areas or they're beginning to scale proven use cases across multiple teams.

20:47Is this like, is everyone playing on a muddy field here and the marketer is just one of the most visible players or is marketing really more unique in this AI space? No, it does appear that I think marketing is in the middle of this maelstrom, Mike. I mean, we also ask marketing leaders within your company, who actually is taking the lead on AI strategy and implementation? I mean, who is the spotlight on? Interestingly, perhaps not surprisingly, in most companies, it's actually the chief information or the chief technology officer that is driving initiatives. But the CMO is number two, right behind it.

21:24um so if your cio isn't doing it there's an expectation that marketing is because you have you have this giant that both those groups have huge line items at these companies like you know you're just sitting on ginormous line items and that's where the cost will go or is it really more first principles this is where we have to re-engineer everything uh that's an interesting question i mean i think there is a sense of of course you know many markets more and consumer-related industries are sitting on sizable budgets. I mean, we've just seen in the recent Super Bowl, for example, I think there was even a stat that was published in the Wall Street Journal, I think that 23 % of ads are now AI influence.

22:05I mean, it is coming and it is coming now. And there is this sense, which you're hearing from your agency partners, the squeeze is coming and it's coming to marketing. Look, I'm sure there are significant savings to be had in AI, sorry, in the information and technology, depending the teams you're in. Clearly, there's a lot of threat to software businesses, the entire software valuation. Well, yeah, the valuation got hammered. In 2026, purely by, I think it was Anthropic releasing a small add-on that happens to help in the legal industry. Within 24 hours, you see valuations of the entire software industry collapse.

22:44I mean, there is a real sense that people are on edge, Mike, and this is the moment in 2026, where it goes from talk to the expectation of reality is coming true now. So let's talk about the downstream effects of that because the CMO is in the messy middle for a whole bunch of reasons. When you look down in the orgs for the future leaders of marketing or chief revenue officers or chief customer officers, what's this all going to do to career development and experience if everyone's shrinking budgets and people? Yeah. So a great question. I would say it's been notable, Mike, over the last two years.

23:31I feel my colleagues, and I'm sure this is true for other search and leadership advisory firms, we are having more fundamental discussions about, I mean, essentially what I call the four S's, strategy, structure, scope, and skills. there's more fundamental discussion around are we organized the right way is it supporting the strategy the way it should do we have the right have we scoped the roles the right way and do we actually have the skills we need to fulfill those scope mandates these are much more fundamental first principle discussions i think marketing leaders chief hr officers talent leaders are having now and i think it is being driven by ai i mean there is a sense that many job descriptions are being written for more AI first.

24:15There is a sense of moving from, I think, doing to orchestrating. I'm certainly seeing language now in position descriptions around designing prompts, supervising agents. I'm talking about AI agents here, to be clear. Only performance outcomes and building fluency and data hygiene. What's the experimentation design? What are the AI-related KPIs? I mean, it is clear some of these roles now, I think, are being redesigned and re-skilled for a more AI-centric future. We are seeing that now. And if I'm sitting here at the manager or the director level, and, well, I'm going to flip this over and say, you're looking at all these people.

24:59Are they going to be getting the same training needed? I can make a case that when I just take everything apart that you just said, you're going to have a lot less really good talent in the pool because of specialization, shrinking budgets, shrinking heads, and less training. Is that a fair assessment or not, if I look 10 years out? It could be. I think, honestly, our sense is, I don't want to say people are making it up as they go along, but there is clearly a lot of change coming. I mean, I'm certainly we were through the survey. We asked marketing leaders either what roles have you created or retired as a result of AI adoption?

25:40How are you transforming your existing teams and the culture to be ready? What are you doing around investing in upskilling, embedding AI into workflows? And importantly, how do you foster a culture of experimentation and continuous learning? I mean, there are some real questions coming from that. I mean, I think we heard all sorts of answers. I mean, you know, setting up senses of excellence, the phrase Tiger Teams occurred up in many. Tiger Teams is a great answer for almost any problem. Right. It is. I'm sorry. Agile, Scrum, whatever the buzzwords are. They are coming back because I think there is a sense that organizations are having to evolve their frameworks, their skill base and their capability base.

26:22But there's no obvious playbook here to lean on. I mean, I think that's the other thing. You know, what I heard from marketing officers in particularly is just the importance right now of peer and partner communities, whether it's CMO forums, peer groups, consulting partners, agency partners. There's a lot of learning by doing or listening from others. But this is a giant learn as we go runway for marketers. But also in the study, you know, I think you asked, are some elements of marketing getting ignored or less attention? And one of the things that came out, I think, was, yeah, the whole brand trust thing is maybe not as heavy as it used to be, or at least I think that's what I read.

27:05Am I getting that right? Yeah, no, I think you are. I mean, this was public news, so I'm not telling you anything you haven't seen, but already we are seeing some pushback against AI-first advertising. I think it was last year there was a report that's actually in Europe. I think McDonald's in the Netherlands had launched an AI-generated Christmas or seasonal ad that had a lot of pushback. And because of the backlash, that ad was removed from YouTube within days. I mean, there's no doubt that there's some real concerns around brand trust. I mean, there is a sense that privacy, security, inclusivity, for example, will remain really important.