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● “Marketing measures ROI [return on investment] in terms of marketing, such as customer satisfaction and brand value instead of the most relevant relationship, the one between spending and the gross profit generated from these investments…brand value! What in God's name is this anyway? It's not as if our shareholders care.” (CEO of a Spanish telecommunications firm)

● “There is a disconnect between our overall strategy and what marketing understands to be our customers.” (CEO of an Austrian retailer)

● “Marketers are, simply put, often disconnected from the financial realities of the business.” (CEO of a German financial institution)

● “Marketers make decisions based upon gut feelings rather than a solid ROI analysis.” (CEO of a U.S. professional services firm)10

CEOs around the world have stopped trusting their chief marketing officers (CMOs). Our research proves it.11 The findings are sobering. The majority of CEOs can't bring themselves to say that marketing is strategically relevant.12 Oh my God!

This is a major problem. Marketing's job is to bring the voice of the customer to the company. Customers are the only reason companies exist, and marketing is charged with overseeing the customer experience. In fact, 90 percent of CMOs are personally responsible for the overall customer experience management efforts of their firms.13

Unfortunately, for many corporate leaders marketing has become, to quote the CEO of an Italian telecom, a “function not on the top of my everyday priority list.”14 Or worse! CEOs often view marketing as a money pit. To quote the CEO of one U.S. retailer, “Marketing [has] great ideas but no clue how to measure its impact on what really counts How can I allocate them a budget that disappears into a black box while others can deliver me an ROI for every dollar I give them?”15

Marketing's detractors likely don't see a problem at all – and to be sure, there are lots of detractors. Ironically, for a management science charged with managing the reputation of their companies, marketing has a terrible reputation among consumers and business professionals.16 Only 10 percent of the population has a positive impression of marketing. By contrast, 62 percent have a negative opinion of marketing. Moreover, detractors can rightfully point out that companies still exist and that companies must, by definition, have customers. So companies can exist just fine without much help from marketing. What difference does it make that marketing has lost strategic relevance with CEOs?

The reason is best summed up in the words of Peter Drucker, the father of modern management.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: To create a customer Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. They are the entrepreneurial functions. Marketing is the distinguishing, the unique function of the business. Any organization in which marketing is either absent or incidental is not a business and should never be run as if it were one.17

Marketing's failure will ultimately be reflected in the customer experience. In fact, it already is. Given the current CEO-CMO breakdown, it's not surprising to find a corresponding breakdown between the way senior executives view their companies and the way their customers do. After all, it's marketing's job to be the champion of the customer for the CEO. What is surprising, however, is the enormity of the gap. A study reported in the Harvard Management Update finds that 80 percent of company executives believe that their companies provide a “superior” customer experience. Only 8 percent of their customers agree.18 This finding is confirmed in the Temkin Group report, “The State of Customer Experience Management, 2014,” which found that only 10 percent of firms are customer centric.19

Of course, positive change for customers will happen only when CEOs view their companies from their customers' perspective. After all, there's no need to change things when you believe you are already doing a superior job.

It is easy to blame CEOs for being shortsighted. The sad truth is that CEOs' complaints about marketing are valid. Marketers do a terrible job of linking their efforts to tangible business outcomes. To be fair to CMOs, it isn't for lack of desire or effort. The problem is more pernicious. All too often, the expected linkage isn't there – and it never was! The underlying assumptions CMOs use to justify most of their investments in improving the customer experience are wrong.