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24 February 2025 / Essay
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Copy LinkThe relationship between the CEO and both the chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief communications officer (CCO) is crucial for business success. While the CMO role is complex, its main objective is to drive topline growth, making the CMOs’ effective collaboration with the CEO a crucial priority—particularly given the increasing strategic importance of marketing to the CEO and board. The CCO, meanwhile, safeguards corporate reputation and helps seize business opportunities. Their role includes preempting and mitigating issues that could harm the company; and managing outspoken employees, customers, and activist investors. This makes partnering closely with the CEO crucial for CCOs as well.
Overall, both CMOs and CCOs characterize their relationship with the CEO as positive and productive, according to our CMO+CCO Meter survey in September/October 2024. However, the specific characteristics they highlight for each role and its relationship with the CEO are distinct.
CMOs underscore the collaborative nature of their work with the CEO and describe it as a strategic partnership focused on business topics (Figure 1). Communications executives emphasize trust, aligning with their role as strategic advisors, which is another description they use to characterize their collaboration with the CEO (Figure 2).
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