The CMO CIO Gap

Global corporate communications executives are gaining an increasingly important seat in the boardroom. As a matter of fact, 40% these CCO’s now consider the CEO to be their biggest ally in the organization. Research also indicates the CCO’s average tenure is up to 65 months in 2008 compared to 54 months in 2007 thanks in large part the increasing importance of corporate reputation which is anticipated to be the number one communications priority in 2009. One has to imagine that technology plays a critical part of the CCO’s daily activity as social media monitoring and online engagement is often "owned" by the CCO.

The news isn’t quite as good for the Chief Marketing Officer whose average tenure is 28 months. Does this suggest that the CMO’s aren’t getting their technology infrastructure right? The relationship between the CMO and the CIO is one of the most interesting in business today. For a number of reasons there is a natural struggle between the two; a distrust if you will. Some will chalk this up to simply left side-of-the-brain versus right side-of-the-brain. I think it goes a little deeper to the following beliefs:

• CMOs don’t trust the CIO to understand branding and the value of advertising to the larger corporate goals
• CIOs think the CMO is only capable of creative thought and don’t trust them to understand process and logic

The issue though is that marketing needs to embrace technology more that ever. When you know your customer really well, you have the opportunity to change your whole managerial approach. One of the best ways to achieve this is to harness the true power of the Internet to develop superior customer knowledge and drive growth. To accommodate, the CIO and CMO need to collaborate in a more meaningful way. Aligning growth strategies with technical solutions is a great way to kick-start your marketing technology development.