Jason Wadler Talks CMO Tenure with Digiday

“Chief Marketing Officer” is a title that often comes with a short lifespan, especially in the digital age. Statistics from Spencer Stuart state the average CMO tenure in 2010 was just 42 months, though that’s up from 35 months in 2009.

Digiday recently conducted its own study, and found the average tenure of a CMO to be 4.5 years. To find out why, Digiday spoke with executives from top companies in a variety of industries, including Leapfrog Online EVP Jason Wadler.

As Jason explains, the modern CMO has to understand the need for hard numbers in order to be a top performer. Soft metrics simply don’t cut it anymore, and smart CMOs are increasingly impatient with agencies or partners that can’t provide impact through sales growth.

“The more CMOs can align to key business needs and true financial metrics that matter to their CEO and board, the longer their tenure will be,” Jason tells Digiday. “Otherwise, if left to subjective measures, the unfortunate short-tenured CMO trend will continue.”

In the modern digital landscape, being a top CMO means being able to prove value in hard metrics—a boost to revenue and ROI.