Marketing Profs

A company's chief communications officer (CCO) and its chief marketing officer (CMO) play vital roles that are very different from each other but can intersect in powerful ways.

By understanding what your firm's CCO does, you can gain insights into how to build a relationship that benefits not only the two of you but also your company overall.

With that intriguing image in mind, I spoke with two experts: George H. Jamison III, corporate communications practice leader in Spencer Stuart's Stamford, CT office and a member of the firm's Consumer Goods & Services, Marketing Officer, and Diversity practices; and Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at global public relations consultancy Weber Shandwick.

They recently completed a research project, The Rising CCO, that examined several aspects of the CCO role in global Fortune 500 companies. Below is an excerpt from our conversation.

Roy Young: Can you tell us how the CCO and CMO roles inter-relate?

George Jamison: A company's CCO is often a peer of the CMO, though occasionally corporate communications will be a function within the marketing organization. Regardless of the structure, these two professionals must always operate hand-in-glove. That's because the company needs a consistent message and voice and brand—which is shorthand for how a firm chooses to communicate about itself. Corporate communications and classic marketing techniques are very influential in all this, but they're accessed through different skill sets.

Leslie Gaines-Ross: In some companies, we've seen one officer (CMCO) who's responsible for both corporate communications and marketing. It's a hybrid role that's rare but may be evidence that the two functions are coming closer together.

RY: Among many other things, your study examined the average tenure of CCOs, and you found that it's longer than CMO tenure. Can you offer your thoughts about why this might be?

LGR: As our research indicated, CCOs' performance tends to be judged primarily by qualitative criteria, such as their CEOs' gut sense of their value and how positive a company's media coverage is. CMOs are judged by more immediate quantitative means, such as sales or revenue growth. If a marketing strategy (such as a big advertising campaign) doesn't generate the intended results, a CMO may be out the door quickly.

Also, CCOs have a particularly complex portfolio of stakeholders, including legislators, investors, nongovernmental organizations, community organizations (such as the local Parent-Teacher Association), and the trade media. By contrast, CMOs focus on one or two large audiences. So measuring a CCO's effectiveness is a more complex task and may take longer.