By Bronwyn Heys, CEO, Australian Marketing Institute | Fractional CMO, The CMO Syndicate

It’s time we confronted the uncomfortable truth: marketing has lost its seat at the table in far too many organisations.

The latest McKinsey research from “The CMO’s Comeback” (June 2025) and their earlier 2023 paper “The Power of Partnership” paints a picture I see every day from Australian boardrooms to global brands. The marketing function, once the champion of growth and customer connection, has been relegated to campaign execution and brand metrics, while sales falter, market share drops, and customers walk away feeling unheard.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just a marketing problem. It’s a C-suite alignment failure.

What went wrong?

Over the last few years, the proliferation of new executive roles CDOs, CXOs, CROs, growth officers has created fragmentation, not focus. Marketing’s role is often reduced to tactical outputs. The CFO looks for commercial proof and gets performance theatre instead. The CEO, seeking growth, doesn’t hear a compelling case from their CMO, so investment goes elsewhere.

McKinsey’s data says it plainly: only 30% of CMOs believe their organisations have a clearly defined view of what marketing ROI actually is. And only half of CMOs are involved in strategic planning. It’s no wonder CEOs feel adrift on the customer front.

My view? It’s time for marketing to take its rightful place again as the integrator of customer insight, commercial strategy, and brand experience.

This isn’t about giving CMOs more power for its own sake. It’s about growth. Companies with a single, empowered customer-facing executive role (typically the CMO) grow up to 2.3x faster than those that spread responsibility across the org chart.

But it’s not enough to just put marketing back in the spotlight. The CEO, CMO, and CFO must move in lockstep.

This means:
• Giving CMOs custody of the customer, with accountability for the full journey, not just acquisition.
• Aligning marketing metrics with business outcomes (yes, we’re talking about linking brand and ROAS to EBITDA and CLV).
• Educating the C-suite to understand that modern marketing is no longer “arts and crafts” it’s data-driven, AI-enabled, and commercially potent.
• And critically, CMOs must evolve. As McKinsey says, they need a general manager mindset not just marketing leadership, but business leadership.

What does this mean for Australian marketers?

As CEO of AMI, I know we’re at a turning point. Our AMI Marketing Competency Framework now includes AI, data literacy, and commercial acumen because we see what the next generation of marketing leadership requires. I work every day with CEOs and CMOs who are reshaping how their teams show up, think, and lead.

Marketing can’t just be ‘aligned’ with strategy it must create it. The modern CMO isn’t a function head. They’re a customer architect. A growth engine. A trusted partner to the CEO and CFO. That’s the comeback story we should all be writing.

Read the full McKinsey article here: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-power-of-partnership-how-the-ceo-cmo-relationship-can-drive-outsize-growth.

AMI Marketing Competencies for you and your team here: The AMI Competency Framework & Assessment Tool – AMI

Contact membership@ami.org.au for more information.

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