Teresa Barreira | Publicis Sapient | The Case For & Against CMO's - Do Companies Really Need One?

0:00The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit IHearEverything.com. 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. Welcome marketers, advertisers, and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions, and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite.

0:54I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance, and Ancestry.com here today with my guest, Teresa Barrera. Today's topic, the case for and against CMOs. Do companies really need one? Now, Teresa is the CMO and CCO of Publicis Sapient. That's a lot of C's in there. She was previously CMO of Deloitte Consulting and held senior marketing roles at Accenture and IBM. Publicis Sapient is a digital consultancy that helps large enterprises like Goldman Sachs, Walmart and Marriott transform digitally and leverage AI. Welcome, Teresa. Thank you. Super happy to be here.

1:42And thank you for having me, Mike. Of course. All right. Well, let's just start and ground everybody in your role at Publisys Sapien. And then we'll talk about what you're hearing from marketing leaders all over the country. But tell us what, as CMO and CCO, you do. And then we'll talk about what you're seeing from marketers. I was laughing about you saying there's a lot of C's in there. So it's like every job normal wants to have a C. Yeah, a lot of C's. Well, you got three out of your six letters are C's. CMO and CCO. So that's a lot. I think I'm not starting all my C's. But I joined Sapien about seven years ago.

2:27And the reason I joined, because I was really inspired by the opportunity to reinvent and rebuild the company, a brand and a business. But most importantly, one of the reasons I came in is because I really believe that the work we do, it was really making impact, the impact that matters. And not just the impact that matters in our customers' business, but most importantly, our customers, our customers' customers. And I think that's one of the main reasons. So I've been here, like I said, for seven years. And if I look at my focus over the time that I've been here, I really believe I think has evolved.

3:08And in some ways, my job, my role has evolved as well. And when I look about the past three years, for me, it was really about foundational transformation and growth. We're doubling the company size. And this is where you all come in and you help companies, particularly big companies, catch up with all the stuff that they are behind on, right? Yes. So what we do, we help companies really help them. How did you reinvent your business for the digital world? That's fundamental what we do. And we use digital technologies to do that. But the difference what we do is that when we think about digital transformation, which many, many companies focus on that.

3:58Actually, it's a very saturated market, if you know. If you're not focused on some kind of transformation, you're probably losing. So, yeah. A lot of companies like the word transformation is very watered down in digital transformation. But one of the things I think for us, it's always been important. That's why we call it digital business transformation. And I fundamentally actually agree with that. you can't have the d without the b because having just doing digital without focusing on changing your business it's just what i call random acts of digital well you're also building a digital thing around the old model which is like absolutely you you should you should build the model around the new technology yes and it's incrementalism it's not transformation because you're just adding more technology to make like you said to an existing model they really change your ways of doing business.

4:45Right. We had a guy on the show a while ago that said, yeah, it's like when electricity was invented, if you put electricity to all the machines, they went a lot faster. But when you built the plant around electricity, you could actually reframe all the machines. That was his thing. You got to build around the technology. So as you build this technology and you talk to your customers, you get to interface with the companies and all the people doing this. And also a lot of marketing leaders, because they're usually at the front end of whatever the model is doing with customer. What are you hearing from marketing leaders as you do your job?

5:29So as I go around and talk about CMOs or colleagues, I hear a lot of mixed feelings. But if I was to summarize it, Mike, I think in one word, I would say uncertainty. All right. Uncertainty. Well, I'm certain that that's a good word to expound on. So let's talk about uncertainty and take it apart a little bit. I think people just feel very uncertain right now. Uncertain about, mostly about uncertain about the future of the function, uncertainty about the environment, what's going on in the economy, but mostly uncertainty about technology. And that's, I think, that would be what I would say. Now, the problem with, I think, that uncertainty at times, it does lead to paralysis.

6:21And I think a lot of times... Because you're waiting to figure it out. Yeah, exactly. We're waiting to figure it out, even though no one has actually even figured most of it out. And the longer you wait, the less practice you get. Absolutely. And I talked to some of my colleagues and I talked to them, what do you think? I believe personally that we go into the most profound transformation. I think that anything I've experienced in my career. And I talked to some people, they said, well, yes, but they don't see it the same way. And I believe that I think the magnitude of change and the impact is going to make, I think it's something we've never seen before.

7:01because I tell you, like any other technology wave that we've gone through, this one is led by the enterprise, not by the consumer. Well, the other thing about this, the AI thing is it doesn't require, like when you look at mobile and you look at digital, everyone had to have a computer, everyone had to have a mobile phone, everyone had to do this. AI is going forward whether you are paying attention to it or not. and it is i mean this is why i i think it's so different yes i mean the genie is at the bottom and the difference is to you know what the other revolutions we've seen because sometimes people say well we've been through this we see this is that actually the mobile was information in our fingertips now is it skills at our fingertips that's what they're very different and this is why it's like impacts the knowledge work and the enterprise more so than i think anything we've seen before and does impact everybody's jobs.

7:59So let's now shift to you believe the days of companies needing a traditional CMO in this kind of uncertain environment may be numbered. Tell us what you think is a traditional CMO and is the species endangered or is it just evolving like Darwin's Finches? Well, that's an interesting question. First of all, I do think the days are numbered. I think that a traditional CMO, that those days have passed. I think they're behind us. And what a traditional CMO to me means is a CMO that was just focused on marketing, brand campaigns, performance, communications, all aspects of marketing, which is very linear and very functional driven and really focus on feeding the marketing machine.

8:52I think the expectation of the CMO has changed. And if you look at, I mean, we can go through all these evolutions from custodians of the brand to growth drivers, to voice of the customer, to cross-functional influencers. So I think we have evolved. So I would, back to your analogy, I wouldn't say that we've gone extinct. I think in the country, we have transformed and evolved. So maybe the analogy we like more like a butterfly. I'm sticking with Darwin and the beak of the finch and how that is evolving over time to deal with stuff. But I agree with you. I think there's tons of evolution going on, but it's also very inconsistent evolution depending on company, industry, person, board, management.

9:47When you look at this, tell us about the transformation of the job you're seeing and the types of roles that you are now looking at in the marketplace. We'll talk about all the different finches. Yeah. So if you look at CMOs today, right, what I think, that that's why i think it's a transformation and an evolution right and it's not superficial it's very structured right that's why i actually the butterfly works because you go from a caterpillar to a butterfly it's a very structured change and you know you now have wings you're not just crawling i've always wanted wings yeah well um you you've been a cmo you had your wings But I think to your question, what CMOs, I say this all the time to my team, where we no longer have to just do the business of marketing, you got to do the business of the company.

10:45And that's mindset change. That means where that means to me, shaping customer experience, influencing product, partnering across sales, operations, strategy, HR, and guiding the vision of the company. And so it's not just the marketing. I always say to my team, it's not the marketing that you just focus on running. It's the business of the company. So I believe that is really important. And that's why I think CMOs, if you think that way, in some ways, is a really good place to be. I agree with that. We've had folks on the show that have said the name marketing is a bad name. It should be market.

11:25That you are looking at the market. You're helping your company manage the market and figure out the market. and that your job is in service to the market and the company, not to marketing. So as you look at this evolution, how are companies actually, how are they metamorphosizing, if that's a word, the role? Because you get to see a lot of them. I think, like I said, the role has become more impactful and more influential. and I see three like I think about it maybe three things one CMOs are no longer a functional bond meaning they're not just like I said focused on the marketing they influence lots of things across the company and I think that what that means now is they need to build new allies they need to build new partnerships and they need to lead with influence and lead from the side so they need to learn how to bring others along and become that glue, that connector across multiple functions.

12:36So they have, and I think they're in a position, I see that with my job, you're in the position to break down silos across the company, which is a fantastic position to be. So you have to become a non-marketing transformation, but a business transformation leader. I think this, and you have to not just look at brand, but translate like market signals into company strategy, not just into marketing messages. And I think that means you have to become more like a system thinker, a growth architect, and orchestrate it. So these are very different skills, but these are leadership skills, not just - And you have to bring real data to the company.

13:18You can't just say, I'm the marketing person, so I know what consumers would want. But the company has to join your story, and they're not going to join your story because you're the marketing person. They're going to join your story because you convinced them. A hundred percent. But I think that's why I didn't really, the reason I didn't even brought up marketing data and tech, Mike, because to me, those now have become a table stakes. no matter what kind of marketing leader, CMO, non-CMO, you can't be a marketing leader without being data informed and having tech. You just couldn't do your job today.

13:58To me, those will become actually like table stakes. Yes, I agree. I think they have been. And I think the proportion of data and analytics is growing super fast. But let me flip around and go a little deeper. We have all these new titles, fractional CMOs, VPs of acquisition, heads of brand, customer officers, growth officers. Tell us kind of when you look at all these titles, are they really different titles for the same relative thing? Or are companies actually splintering how they think about marketing? I think a bit of both. I think somebody's titles doing the same thing. Sometimes he's expanding the function.

14:48And sometimes is I think some of these like fractional CMO addressing a specific company need. But I think sometimes I think companies need to be right. Forget the title. What I think we're still missing a lot of companies and when they hire is what type of transformation they want to do it. If any, if any, right away, because I talked a lot of sometimes companies that they think they wanted to transform, but they actually they don't. they want to say they're transferring but they don't want to do any of the work they want to do the work they want to transform in place absolutely and then say what expectations you have and then after that you have to know okay based on that what do I want do I want it a lead gen person or do I really want a CMO because a lot of the times I then they don't need a CMO a lot of you could do a VP of marketing could do that job right and and I think sometimes people, they like to call it CMOs because they think they want to attract a more talented group of people.

15:52But then when you look at the role to say, look, that's not a CMO role. Think of the CMO I just described. That not every company, depending on the size of the company, needs that, right? So I think that's why I think it's very clear. And I feel like that sometimes the role of the CMO is the shorter tenure because the expectation is wrong. You have an expectation. And when you get to the job, it doesn't match. And then people love to blame marketing for everything. Well, yeah, that's the easiest thing to change and often a big line item. Is there a difference you see here in, well, one, I know there is a big difference between size of company because smaller companies, you don't need a big time CMO.

16:33A lot of times you need a head of acquisition. But when you look across B2B and B2C, are those two coming closer together or further apart? and any trends you see across those two types of businesses? I think they come in closer together. Actually, they both have learned from each other. I think what B2C brought to B2B is the focus on the customer, the focus on the end user. That's, I think, what B2B has learned from B2C. I think what B2C has learned from B2B is less focus on the product and focus on the issue. B2C loves to start with a product. And I think B2C, because a lot of times they don't have products, focus more on the problem.

17:21What is the problem I'm trying to solve? And so I actually think those two have, in some ways, I think they have merged. And that's why you see a lot of now folks, marketing folks, or CMOs that work in B2C, go to work in B2B, and likewise. Because at the end of the day, the fundamentals are the same. Yeah. right what we don't do is create value that's what i actually believe mike that you asked the question early he's this species in danger i don't think it is i think the title is and we started this conversation talking about the titles yeah hard the titles i actually think that in my opinion that what it needs to the the function has evolved but the title hasn't evolved The scope has increased, but the title is still the same.

18:12And so I think that's what it is. You know, I think like, it feels like, think about an iPhone. And you would never call an iPhone a telephone today, would you? No. But you make calls, but you never call it that because it does much more than that. And I feel like it's a little bit where we are with marketing. Hear that out there, CMOs? You're more than a CMO. You're like an iPhone CMO. I want to, I want to, I can't put the Darwin analogy down. So if you go out like 10 years after AI has become electricity and everything else, what is your prediction on what the CMO job will have evolved into?

19:03I'd like to call, will become more like what I call a cheap value officer. Okay, tell us more. And I like that. Actually, I was thinking about that yesterday. Because if you think about it, we really focus on growth. But at the end of the day, all we want to drive is value. Value for the customer, value for the company, value for the employees, and value for the shareholders. And if you drive growth, you're driving value. Now, I think that's what I think probably will evolve and focus because that's more encompassing. and it's not like growth sometimes can be short term where value can be short term and long term and i also think value applies to different size of a company if you're a small company or a large company we all want us to drive value right and you can you can put growth under a subset of value but maybe absolutely the other way because sometimes growth like you say like you like to start the conversation say there's different types chief customer officer chief growth officer.

20:09But those things are still a bit narrow, right? Because when growth, when we think about growth, we're thinking about sales. And a customer, everybody should own the customer, just like everybody should own the brand. It shouldn't just be the marketing lead. I totally agree with that. The idea that all the functions stay in their lanes is crazy in a marketplace like this. Hey, I want to shift over to, if I am sitting there as a young person, I'm looking at AI wiping out a lot of jobs. I want to be a chief value officer 10 or 15 years from now. What should I be doing with my career to make sure I am ready?

20:49And I know, yes, you have to be working with AI, so that's a given. But what should I be doing on the job front to be ready to get promoted in the long run? So I got asked actually this question a lot, young people, what should I be studying and what should I be doing, right? First of all, I tell people, you should study the things you like because I think what you should love is go to school to learn how to learn and become constant learners. And I know we say this as like, oh, it's something cool to say, but it's actually in the world that we live in. Like I learn every day. Every day I got to get up and learn.

21:33And I think that's a muscle you got to use. You can never go away. So study something that teaches you how to do that. Most importantly, I do think I tell people, like do internships even for free. Learn on the job. Experience is everything because, I mean, I don't know what they teach in business school now. I was there many years ago. Probably they still teach in their four Ps. But the theory at the end of the day, it's like, you know, it's nice, but it really doesn't, when you come to the job, it doesn't really, you don't know much. I built this internship now for, I hire a student. I have an internship for first-generation college students.

22:16And then we offer roles two to three at the end of the summer. And then when they come back, I put them to an 18-month training program. Every six months, they work in a different function of marketing. And then after the 18 months, we said, okay, what would you like to do now? That's a gift to a lot of people because a lot of companies have stopped doing that. But what I hear you saying is, look, you've got to get the experience is the differentiator in the long run. and however you can get it, you should get it and you should never waste a chance to get it. And you should learn on your own too.

23:00Like if you're not be given that experience, right? Like you talked about AI. I tell people like take courses. If you're studying marketing or whatever you're studying at school and you're not doing that, you're not studying that, take a course, take a certification, take initiative. I find also, too, when I hire young people, is their attitude is everything, their mindset. I agree. I am teaching at a local business school. And that mindset of I want to learn or I want to get through this is very different. And the kids that want to learn are taking a lot more out of the class. A hundred percent.

23:47Can I just say one more thing? because the other thing I tell people about is the curiosity. Curiosity is so important. And when I say, look, curiosity is not coming to a meeting and ask a lot of questions, unnecessary questions. That's not what it is. It's the questioning things like the assumptions. Question the way we are doing things. Ask why five times. I always say to my team, why? When you get to the fifth why, you don't know. Yeah, the five whys. The five whys, the why. That's what I mean by curiosity. You know, a long time ago, I read this book. And it was, and I paraphrase it now, but it was a quote to say, and this was about 10 years ago, that in the age of AI, what's going to determine an intelligence is not the things you know, it's the questions you ask.

24:40And that is so true. I like that. So before we get to our traditional last question, we know AI is going to have a massive impact on marketing. Is there a second trend or technology that you, you know, it could be a marketplace trend, a consumer trend, or a tech that is not AI that you think will be the biggest impact on marketing going forward in addition to AI? oh i cannot think anything in addition i think ai is it is that it i that's fundamentally i think that's what's going to change it but what i'm i'm going to slightly revise it's ai but it's what is going to be the most impact is as building a hybrid workforce i see that happening next year I'm already doing that with my team.

25:38So it's the technology, but it's not the technology itself. It's what the technology does. So the technology itself isn't enabled, but what's the biggest change is how you're going to use the technology. And I predict by next year, we're all going to start managing digital agents. We're going to have workers that are digital agents. So we're going to have a hybrid workforce. There is humans and there's agents. I think that is upon us. And what I learned the last two years with my team, we are using AI the first two years as a co-pilot, an assistant. that's great but that is not when we started the conversation about talking we talked about digital transformation and transform transform and being really transformative not incrementalism is again changing the process changing the business and the operating model and what i learned is that to do that you have to start with an agent first approach and that sounds counterintuitive, but if you do that, it actually leads you to a human-first approach.

26:52And I'll explain what I mean by that. Most people today, we started with human-first approach, meaning here's how I do my job. I use AI as my assistant, my co-pilot, right? Helps me do my job. And I realized that you get probably 10 % incremental in efficiencies. But if I say, I am going to break down my job into some tasks, and then I'm going to start, what are the tasks than an agent can do. And then I start with that. And then I said, what are left for the human to do? And if we do that, you're going to realize that what the human is going to do are the things that only humans can do, which is actually elevating creativity and elevating humanity.

27:34I agree with that. I think creativity will be in great demand because everyone will have agentic AI, which brings us to our last question. it's a two-parter you can take one or both but you have to take at least one part practical advice we haven't discussed yet that you want to share with the audience and or the funniest story you can share on the air you can take one or both of those you just have to take at least one well I can maybe do both um let's start with advice um you know let's okay so you asked me about what you tell young people. I'll continue with that. What I, the advice I tell people is have a strong point of view.

28:21Have an opinion. Your podcast is a great example. Come in with an opinion. Have, be your own opinion. Be authentic. Because the world we live in with AI, AI is going to democratize access, information, content, even inspiration, believe it or not. but the only thing that's going to set us apart is how we see the world from our unique lens so i always tell people and my team have an opinion stick by your opinion form one so that's what i always that's one advice i gave you um i to people okay funniest story funny story because i'm obsessed with ai um i'll tell you that a funny story um I, you know, I use, I really use Chachi VT like every single day of my life.

29:13So this Christmas, I, my sister was over to spend Christmas with us. And I've known for a long time what I was going to get, which was an experience. I was going to take her for a weekend. We're going to go to New York City for the week and see a play. And that would be my Christmas gift to her. Thank you. Thank you. but you know time goes by because it's an experience all I have to do is write it down give it to her I you know I ran out of time and now it's Christmas morning I didn't write it down so what do I do I go to chat CVT and I said okay help me I have this card help me write this in a really nice a beautiful way for my sister so chat CVT did I'm running out of time I write it down I gave it to her at Christmas we're sitting around the table the Christmas tree I have two teenage boys and I give it to her my sister's reading it out loud and she's like really like oh my god this is so beautiful and she's very emotional and then my 19 year old turns to me he goes mom that is so chat GPT

30:21so yes I was totally found out I like it well I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you, Teresa. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. Look for our other shows on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, which include the top five mistakes CEOs and boards make when hiring CMOs, a rapid evolution in the marketplace, the Spencer Stewart 2025 CMO study, lessons learned from the 2024 presidential election, parts one and two, and the Omnicom IPG merger, what it means and what's next. Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.