For years, the headlines wrote the same story: the CMO role was dying. Shrinking budgets, shorter tenures, diminishing influence. Every analyst seemed to agree that marketing leadership was going extinct.
The data tells a different story. When CMOs lead customer-centric growth, companies see 1.4x higher performance. When that leadership is fully integrated, growth doubles again. The species survives because it evolves.
Worldwide Partners and Monigle, in collaboration with Jon Evans of the Uncensored CMO podcast, conducted anonymous interviews with 30 CMOs across 12 industries spanning every region. What they found challenges everything we thought we knew about marketing leadership.
CMOs aren’t disappearing. They’re evolving into seven distinct species—each with its own survival strategies for navigating turbulence, change and complexity.
Rie Bridges, Senior Director of Strategy & Transformation, Monigle
Dominic Leung, Executive Director of Strategy and Business Transformation, Monigle
From pressure to evolution
“So much of the discussion in this space has been about the pressures that marketing leadership faces and how we’re seeing this collapse of centralized power,” Bridges explains. “What we realized is that when we were speaking with the CMOs, the stories they were sharing revealed that they were thriving, not in spite of those pressures—it was that they were thriving because they had learned to use those frictions to create forward momentum.”
The biological metaphor helped make sense of what they were seeing. When food sources become scarce, the large apex predators struggle to survive. The smaller and nimbler you are, the more you can thrive under those conditions.
“This was no longer one role,” Bridges says. “It had turned into these different sets of adaptive traits that we were seeing individual CMOs using. Think of these not as personality types, but as skill sets and tool sets. They might walk into one meeting and be the chief missing officer. Nobody even notices they’re there. But then they walk into the next meeting and they’re the chief mutiny officer. They’re weaponizing difference. They’re bringing cultural contagion into the boardroom.”
The seven species revealed
The research identified seven distinct CMO species—five established and two emergent:
Chief Mutiny Officer – Disrupts complacent organizations from within by smuggling in cultural change the corporate immune system would otherwise reject.
Chief Missing Officer – Channels influence under the cover of alignment, attaching brand work to other initiatives so marketing moves through disguised as someone else’s strategy.
Chief Mood Officer – Regulates organizational rhythm through timing and presence. Uses humor to neutralize attacks and reset emotional temperature.
Chief Meaning Officer – Metabolizes complexity into narratives colleagues can feel. Translates brand into outcomes that matter to finance, product and sales.
Chief Momentum Officer – Stays in motion—too quick for bureaucracy to trap, too experimental for resistance to form. “I call everything a pilot.”
Chief Mosaic Officer (Emergent) – Builds meaning by wiring scattered parts into coherent wholes. Uses brand as connective tissue until strategy, culture and execution move as one system.
Chief Moments Officer (Emergent) – Specializes in timing over endurance. Strikes exactly when the market—or the board—is most vulnerable.
The camouflage principle
“There are so many nuances between the species, but one thing most of them have in common is they’re using forms of camouflage,” Bridges explains. “Where you start to slice and dice them is what is their preferred method of camouflage.”
In organizations where there’s suspicion about marketing, CMOs need to overcome that. Are they using humor and redirection? Maybe they’re the mood officer. Are they calling brand anything but brand—culture or purpose? Maybe that’s the chief missing officer.
“It’s a similar way of wielding influence without authority,” she says. “We created a field guide so you could recognize them by their tracks. Are you seeing pilots and prototypes? Maybe you have a momentum officer. Are you seeing tempo and pacing? Maybe that’s a moments officer.”
It’s cultural, not a role
Lueng points out that the only assumption anyone can make in today’s environment is that everything will change.
“The ability to get attention is increasingly fragmented. All of these are almost a singular force of pressure, which is change. If you cannot adapt, you’re not going to be able to thrive.”
What struck him in the research was the ownership and accountability. “Every story each of our CMOs gave, they were owning their premise. That’s why creating the taxonomy was actually quite easy, because there was so much ownership and passion that every single CMO had that was a reflection of not just who they are, but actually an indication that was a culture they were creating around them.”
The CMOs weren’t lone wolves. They were part of a team. Their team adopted their traits, and these traits became part of the organization itself.
“That tells you this is cultural and not a role.”
Forcing change before becoming obselete
Bridges’ favorite takeaway: “There are no carousel moments when you’re a CMO. We think that the CMO is Don Draper. But what we learned is that the ta-da—the ‘look at the creative idea I came up with’—in the new corporate savannah, that is the most dangerous moment. These CMOs are too savvy to expose themselves like that.”
And the role itself? “The CMO’s job is to force the organization to change before it becomes obsolete,” Bridges adds. “This, for me, epitomizes the study. They’re the front lines of change. They’ve got more data, less credibility, less influence than any of the other members of the C-suite, meaning they know how to adapt, and that’s what they have the opportunity to teach everyone else.”
More good stuff for marketers: No more fighting the absurdity of the CMO role
The research reveals something counterintuitive: the most successful CMOs have stopped fighting the absurdity of the role. They’ve embraced it as the job itself.
“The CMO is the only C-suite role where the job is actually fielding absurdity,” Bridges notes. “You hear a lot of complaining about the subjectivity in the role. But what we heard behind closed doors was that the leaders who are succeeding under these circumstances have set aside those frustrations. They realize that their sweet spot and their secret sauce is sitting on that border of emotion and reason and managing what happens there.”
The trick? Learn a little bit from every species. As Leung puts it: “I’m probably a little bit of a mutiny officer mixed with a mood officer mixed with a meaning officer. The magic and the power is in how you adapt, observe and adopt each of these traits in your own way of how you collaborate.”
More good stuff for indies: A collaboration blueprint in plain sight
For independent agencies, this research is a collaboration blueprint. Understanding which species your client embodies changes how you work together.
“This gives you a snapshot on the things you can pull out of your quiver to say, ‘Oh, I can just pivot slightly like this, and I can get things moving forward,'” Leung explains. “One of the quotes was, ‘I don’t ask for permission. Just get to a test.’ You want to be able to reflect back and just adjust how you might collaborate with who is in front of you and make those changes, so that the overall creative product you do when you put those brains together can actually amplify what success even looks like.”
The CMOs in this study aren’t asking agencies to understand how they operate. They’re asking agencies to let them work their dark magic. Give them room to be a little different from the other animals.
As Leung notes: “Prediction is power. The CMO’s innate ability to actually decipher what could happen, and the comfortability of dealing with that vagueness is actually what gives them the inherent ability to succeed.”
Learn more
Confessions of a CMO Report
Worldwide Partners
Monigle
Rie Bridges LinkedIn
Dominic Leung LinkedIn
Contact: in**@***************rs.com
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