Will a ‘rebrand’ of the CMO create a better balance between brand and performance marketing?

That overall shift may be part of the thinking for some companies as they reorganize their marketing departments. Last week, for example, Kimberly Clark announced a new addition to its roster of marketing professionals: Luis Sanches joined as the company’s first global chief creative and design officer working under the company’s chief growth officer, Patricia Corsi. The company has moved away from the traditional CMO model with Corsi replacing its previous CMO Alison Lewis last spring. 

Kimberly Clark is “building a new model centered on market-leading creative,” said Corsi in the company’s release, which also noted that as chief growth officer Corsi “positions creativity at the center of all stages of the process.” (The company declined to comment beyond its release.) 

The company’s addition of a chief creative and design officer is another signal that the pendulum is swinging back to brand, explained marketers, agency execs and consultants. 

“The elevation of creativity in a marketing C-level title shows new demand for a senior leader focused on outcomes like loyalty, relevance, and authenticity in the age of AI,” said Dory Ellis Garfinkle, chief marketing officer at brand consultancy Siegel+Gale. “The separation of performance and design in instances like Kimberly-Clark may mean we will see a ‘rebrand’ for the brand departments of yesterday.” 

Ellis Garfinkle continued: “Any stigma of being a cost center could be reformed, and mature businesses have an enlightened awareness of performance marketing as one lever within the mix. The marketers and brand leaders of tomorrow will drive value through effective creative content and brand governance, multichannel efficiency and enduring customer trust and loyalty.” 

The remit of the CMO role has only continued to expand so finding a way to divide duties and recognize the importance of brand while continuing to manage performance makes sense to consultants. The expectation is that the CMO role will continue to evolve with the potential for more brands to reorganize like Kimberly Clark with a chief growth officer and chief creative and design officer. Or chart out their own path to divide the labor in a way that makes sense for their organization. 

“As the scope of marketing continues to expand to include capabilities in relatively new — and specialized — areas like AI and retail media networks, some brands find it a challenge to centralize all that into one role,” said Greg Paull, president of growth at search consultancy R3. “How a brand addresses the CMO model tells us what they perceive are key growth drivers. The leadership roles and titles tell us where they want to define themselves and the lens that their marketing is being viewed through. We will definitely see more variation in the future.” 

The hope is that the variation will allow marketers — CMOs or whatever the title may be — to continue to swing the pendulum back to brand and ultimately balance brand and performance. “They’ve always been seen as combative forces between the magical and the measurable,” said Chris Plating, chief strategy officer at ad agency EP+Co. “Neither is going away. The humanity of marketing is essential as is the measurability of impact to shareholders, to internal audiences.” Finding a balance for both to work together will only better serve marketing organizations in the future, explained Plating. 

The focus on performance marketing that has been common in recent years wasn’t surprising to marketers, agency execs or consultants who say that the volatile market had companies zeroing in on profit, performance and driving whatever efficiencies they could for their brands. Doing so likely helped them in conversations with chief financial officers and other C-Suite executives who still view marketing as a cost center. 

“CMOs have had a really tough path of doing more with less,” said Kate Watts, CEO of brand consultancy 50,000feet. “That meant emphasizing product marketing, performance marketing. That’s a short-term focus that they’re now seeing isn’t always beneficial. Now that we’re in a less volatile market, we’re realizing the power of good creative, design, brand and experiences.” 

This push for CMOs to do more with less that’s been on-going can lead to short-term thinking that can ultimately be damaging for brands in the long run. Marketers are having to relearn patience, as Digiday previously reported, as they see examples of brand behemoths like Nike who may have gone too far into performance and neglected the brand for short-term gain. Recently there seems to be “more of an emphasis on the need for full funnel marketers and storytellers,” noted Michael Miraflor, marketing and venture consultant at Third City Advisory. 

“Marketers lost sight of what differentiates them inside the board room from the COO or the CFO in many ways,” said Dave Snyder, partner and head of design at innovation consultancy Siberia. “It has felt like there’s a redundancy on the number side and a vacuum where the customer should be. Creativity builds brands and that’s what resonates with consumers.”

As marketing organizations rebalance the scales between performance and brand, that will likely help them build their brands for the long run.