The vast majority of CMOs and communications leaders surveyed in a report from Arketi Group and executive search firm JM Search described their relationships with the C-suite as positive. And 67% said that alignment with the C-suite was a top driver of CMO tenure. Yet only 38% of those surveyed felt set up for success.

This dichotomy is a key finding of the “CMO Signals and Shifts” report. More than 110 marketing, communications and PR leaders were surveyed for the first of what is expected to be a quarterly study.

More than three-quarters (77%) of the survey respondents said their relationship with their CEO was good or very good; 82% said the same of their relationship with their CIO/CISO and 84% of their relationship with their CFO.

At the same time, 10% of respondents described their relationship with the CEO as poor or very poor. One reason, suggests Mike Neumeier, CEO of Arketi Group, could be the “new normal” of rapidly changing business environments leading to  shifting organizational and marketing priorities. If an organization hires a CMO to concentrate on generating brand awareness but after a few months directs them to focus on lead generation, for instance, “there’s going to be a disconnect,” he says.

Expectations Outpace Resources

Of the respondents who felt their role was set up for success, 17% said they had “very adequate” resources, with another 49% describing their resources as “moderately adequate,” and only 34% complaining that resources were just slightly or not at all adequate. On the flip side, 60% of the CMOs who felt unequipped to meet their objectives said their resources were only slightly or not at all adequate, with the remainder describing their resources as moderately adequate. Not one believed they had “very adequate” resources.

At the same time, marketing leaders have seen their responsibilities and objectives become more closely tied to revenue, Neumeier says. In fact, 62% of survey respondents said performance outcomes such as increased sales were a top driver of CMO tenure, second only to C-suite alignment.

Respondents’ budget decisions reflect this pressure. If faced with having to cut their budgets 20%, 45% would prioritize protecting funds for revenue marketing and demand generation, while 22% would protect talent. And if they were lucky enough to see their budgets increased 20%, 32% would expand revenue marketing and demand gen expenditures, with 16% spending more on talent.

One resource CMOs have ready access to is AI. Every survey respondent said they used it, with 79% stating they were very or moderately reliant on it to reach their goals. Four out of five respondents admitted they relied on AI for content creation, making this the technology’s top use case.

That doesn’t mean marketers are using it to replace human creatives, however. For one thing, “large language models are smart enough to recognize content created by other large language models, and they don’t value it” when it comes to search optimization and other functions, Neumeier says. Instead, marketers are more likely to wield AI to augment and amplify human-created content. Other top uses for AI among marketing leaders are research (57%), analytics and reporting (45%), and ideation (also 45%).

Taking a Pragmatic Approach to Social Issues

With social issues and the political landscape becoming increasingly volatile, some organizations are feeling pressured to take public stands. However, 70% of respondents felt a business should do so only when it had credibility in the particular area, and 69% when there was a clear business or values-based reason to do so.

Just 22% felt employee expectations was cause for publicly addressing an issue, a statistic that will no doubt disappoint many workers. But like the majority of marketing leaders, Neumeier takes a pragmatic approach: “You can’t be always driven by one base. You have to look at what your organization does and what they deliver.”