Today’s chief marketing officers (CMOs) are more likely than their predecessors to be highly educated, and more likely than fellow executives to be born and raised in their native country, an investigation by marketing automation software developer Act-On Software has found.
They’re also, in the U.S. at least, more likely than their C-suite counterparts to be women: in its CMO Index report, released on Sept. 20, Act-On found that 56 per cent of CMOs in the U.S. are women.
The study, which was conducted by Act-On researchers in the company’s Portland, Ore. and Reading, U.K. offices, surveyed publicly available data on 80 CMOs or their equivalents from the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index (FTSE100), including LinkedIn profiles, and 70 CMOs or their equivalents from the Inc. 5000 list of mid-sized companies in the U.S. and North America.
In addition to the growing prominence of women as CMOs, other trends that emerged included the growing importance of education, with 30 per cent of CMOs in the U.K. and U.S. now possessing Master’s certifications or higher, and the appointing of more veteran employees to the position: In the U.S., the average CMO had served their company for at least five years before earning the coveted position (U.K. CMOs had served even longer – between eight and nine years on average).
The company also found that the majority of CMOs were born and raised in their native countries – 70 per cent in the UK, 100 per cent in the US – and had been promoted from within.
Act-On released a summary of its findings in a handy infographic, which you can check out below (click for a larger version), or for more information you can visit the company’s CMO Index Hub.
