The chief marketing officer used to be the rock star of the boardroom. It was the role that decided how a company showed its face to the market and carried the authority of being the customer’s voice in an executive team dominated by finance and operations.
Now, according to research by consulting firm Forrester, that authority is rapidly fading. According to a report titled “The Representation And Tenure Of Fortune 500 CMOs In 2025”, marketing heads who are members of large companies executive team’s or report to the CEO are now found at only 58% of Fortune 500 companies. That is down from 63% in 2024, which may not sound bad as a snapshot, but reflects a significant trend.
Equally concerning for marketing execs, the proportion who carry the weighty title of CMO has dropped from 55% to 49%, encapsulating their decline in status.
A key factor, according to Forrester, is that the digital age fractured the customer journey, carving marketing into countless channels. Data science promised clarity, but created silos. New titles, such as chief growth officer, customer officer, and digital officer, arrived to chip away at what had once been the CMO’s hallowed turf. Slowly, the glamour position became a precarious one.
“The representation and tenure of CMOs and senior marketing executives in the Fortune 500 have declined year over year, driven by increased business volatility,” say the authors of the report. While the study focuses on American companies, its implications are global, and are likely to resonate among South African corporations.
In a single year, says Forrester, more than a fifth of these companies changed their marketing leadership. Retail and wholesale firms led the exodus, with nearly one in three CMOs replaced. Energy and mining were far steadier, with turnover of only 7%. Industry context often decides whether the seat is secure or expendable.
The decline in companies that place their top marketer on the executive team or give them direct access to the CEO marks a profound change in how marketing is valued inside the largest corporations.
Healthcare saw among the steepest declines. Energy and mining were the outlier with a modest rise. The sector with the highest representation of CMOs, financial services and insurance, also recorded the biggest drop, from 91% to 80%.
Business models tell another story: business-to-business (B2B) firms dropped from 48% to 42%, while consumer companies slipped from 84% to 79%. These shifts confirm that the traditional CMO role is being eroded in industries where transformation and short-term pressures are greatest.
There is one bright statistic. Women now make up 55% of senior marketing leaders in the Fortune 500. In financial services they hold two-thirds of the posts, while in energy and mining they remain a minority, at one in three. However, marketing has opened its doors to female leadership even as the role itself is being diluted.
That said, gender gap in tenure has closed entirely. Male longevity in the role dropped, while the number for females edged up, leaving both at 3.9 years.
Tenure underscores the insecurity across sectors. The average CMO in Healthcare lasts more than four years, while energy and mining pull the figure closer to three. In B2B companies, the average falls to three and a half. In environments where marketing strategies need years to pay off, such brevity leaves little room for sustained impact.
In Forrester’s most recent surveys, nearly half of marketing leaders said they expect a recession in the coming year. Marketing budgets are often the first to be cut, and the threat of economic contraction sharpens the risk.
“The fortunes of Fortune 500 CMOs have declined over the past year, amid economic uncertainty and a renewed debate about the role and mandate for marketing executives,” says Forrester.
Yet marketing has never been more central to business growth. Artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and personalised engagement shape how companies reach their markets. These are marketing imperatives, but the role built to lead them is shrinking in influence and in lifespan. The paradox could not be sharper: the skills and technologies most critical to competitive success sit under a title that fewer companies see fit to maintain.
It leaves the CMO in an awkward position. More women are taking on the job than ever before, but they inherit a role with less authority. Companies demand sharper outcomes from marketing while granting its leaders less power. Tenures shorten, representation in the boardroom falls, and the CMO’s survival hangs on a title that no longer guarantees a voice at the table.
“Volatility and churn among Fortune 500 CMOs drove overall declines in tenure in the past year,” is Forrester’s simple summary that sends an ominous message.
The rock star of the boardroom still has a place on stage, but the applause is fading, and the spotlight is shifting elsewhere.
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.