This session sets the CMO role against a long argument about what growth is for. It runs a historical line from Alfred Marshall to shareholder primacy and back toward multi-stakeholder value, then asks what marketing leaders can do inside their own organizations.
IRG states its own role as connective rather than prescriptive: helping CMOs and other growth leaders drive more humanized growth by connecting them to peers, experts and best practices.
Key findings
- The current definition of growth is described as under challenge on two fronts: the absurdity of GDP as a metric, and business’s license to grow being questioned.
- The external markers cited for the shift are Michael Porter’s creating shared value and Larry Fink’s argument that a company must show a positive contribution to society as well as financial performance.
- COVID moved the stakeholder focus. Attention before the pandemic sat with customers and capital markets; during it, the pivot was to colleagues and community.
- The behavioral changes it names are an increase in empathy and a shift toward serving rather than standing out.
- The deck reports an increase in CMO influence on growth, at 65 percent, with an update noting that influence is up 11 percent.
Why the role came under pressure
The session acknowledges that the difficulty of the role is well documented, and links it to periods when growth is lacking and chief marketing officers are shuffled.
Three causes are named from the perspective of executive committee peers. A perceived over-focus on communication, an attraction to shiny and distracting digital toys, and a lack of alignment with the chief executive.
A fourth is about comprehension rather than behavior. The deck cites the IPA finding that half of business leaders have a low understanding of marketing’s value.
The research behind the argument
The evidence is IRG’s work on what it takes to win, expressed as seven building blocks of humanized growth: abundant markets, multiple models, evolving experiences, open culture, anticipative organization and whole-brained working.
Alongside the building blocks sits a profile of winning CMO growth leaders, described as the Da Vinci growth CMO.
What marketing actually does here
The opportunity is split into internal and external work. Internally, the CMO contributes stakeholder insights, inspires purpose, and works on the employee brand and message alignment.
Externally, marketing’s contribution is described in three moves: raising awareness and shifting mindsets, building a sense of belonging and passion, and enabling behavior change.
The exercise put to participants follows the same split, asking what each of them can do to drive more humanized growth internally and externally.
The session closes on a personal note, with the idea of a marketing ikigai and the question of when, if not now, and who, if not you.
Scope and limitations
The document is a shortened version of the session deck. Several statistics appear without their sources, and the executive committee perspective rests on named examples rather than survey data.
Source
This page summarises The role of the CMO in driving Humanized Growth, by Greg Welch, Toni Clayton-Hine, Barry Wacksman, Marc de Swaan Arons, October 25, 2022.