As the world of business looks to go back about it's business CEOs will no doubt be expecting yesterday's CMO to be the "silver bullet" - someone that can revive sales, grow market share, and inspire customers. 

These many and varied demands will no doubt be often impossible for CMOs to meet, especially with reduced resource and without the availability of the bloated fraud ridden advertising budget - something that will inevitably lead to increasingly shorter tenures as results become nigh on impossible to deliver against.

Throughout this crisis we continue to see brands promoting their latest 'Award Win' for the fastest boiling kettle, or images of leadership teams featuring on 'Video Podcast' sponsored by one of their suppliers - all very much an internalised mindset of course.

Today's Senior Marketing CV's are littered with descriptions of 'paid media' digital communications expertise and the awesome results they've delivered - seems very few have ever had shit results BTW!.

This is as a result of years of internal promotions from senior marketing people who  today know nothing about brand marketing other than deploying  'paid media' bullhorn campaigns, believing that this is 'marketing' - its an echo chamber of what they have always done, and simply stifles growth and innovation. 

It certainly seems like business has lost sight of the wider role of the CMO's ability and expertise in leveraging research and data to identify changes in consumer behaviour, organic growth opportunities, untapped consumers, along with opening up new  product opportunities in different sectors and markets. 

This is something that when I sat in the CMO chair would be done in a collaborative way with the product development teams along with my counterparts in the C-Suite as part of an internally aligned strategy.

Findings suggest that CMOs will have to significantly adapt to hold onto their positions, which is now opening up opportunities for the CMOs of yesterday to embrace the role of "CGO" (Chief Growth Officer) and look beyond typical brand advertising and digital communications. 

The reason to hire a CMO is usually because you’ve got a big strategic problem to solve, you need to drive growth and become more innovative, or reposition the brand. That’s what the connotation would be in the CMO interview process.

What often happens in reality is ‘Deliver me a Q1 plan that drives growth of 3%’. The trap is that you’re hired for your thinking and strategy, but very quickly you discover what you are being asked to do is execute an existing sales and growth plan that post Covid is nigh on impossible.

So, I would assume we can agree that as a result Covid-19' has forced us to rethink how we might better work for the benefit of the planet and operate a more efficient business by taking action now rather than just cogitate and debate?

If you're in retail in any sector no amount of quantitative easing is going to get customers back to the high street or shopping mall, in particular when the overriding message from government and health officials is to create a mood of physical social isolation that 'could' last for another 12 months (possibly longer) at the very least.

Had your leadership team looked at one of the other global changes in human behaviour maybe they would be able to ride out this commercial storm better than most. 

They didn't, and now you and them are sat at home trying to do their job but without your companies ability to continue to remain front of mind with huge spend on advertising - so how's that going to build confidence that you're all going to come out the other side with a company to work for?

So, does this crisis now set the scene for the C-Suite to let the CMO get back to what they're supposed to do which is to focus on growth, innovation, and product development - not just the corporate 'paid' bullhorn?