Good morning. Welcome to the first edition of Scaling Greatness, a newsletter from Integreon focusing on amplifying global business excellence and innovation.

The large corporations that push the world economy forward are in most cases highly complex. While there are obvious advantages to size and sophistication, there are also certain drawbacks. In especially vast organizations, senior staff can have a hard time gathering and implementing the best ideas from employees across their businesses. But companies who want to position themselves for long term growth are often most successful when they nurture innovation and strategically capitalize on the best ideas.

In this newsletter, we’ll unpack how successful businesses navigate the range of challenges that accompany size and complexity. Every few weeks, we’ll discuss the ways the world’s leading firms seek out and recognize greatness in their staff, and how they develop and grow exciting ideas, discoveries and techniques. Expect bite-sized news on the plans, procedures and people driving the modern business landscape, with a focus on what happens under the hood.

“Companies want to spend as much time as possible on the things that make them unique,” explains Murray Joslin, Integreon’s EVP of Creative and Business Solutions. “They don’t want friction in their logistics, they want smooth processes that allow ideas to thrive. And they want great ideas to be amplified and saturate their whole organization.”

⧉ The CEO-CMO Divide: We’re better when we work together

Recent research from McKinsey and the Association of National Advertisers suggests that chief marketing officers often find themselves at odds with their CEOs. Firms which invest in marketing are far more likely to outperform competitors, the survey shows, but CMOs often feel undervalued and excluded from strategic decision-making.

“Less than 40% of Fortune 500 companies have a CMO or even a customer officer at the C-suite table,” said McKinsey’s Robert Tas. “That’s a worrying sign.”

In the study, 90% of CEOs reported feeling that they understood the benefits of marketing. But only 50% of CMOs shared the same view on the primary roles of marketing – revealing a significant disjunct in priorities.

The CEO, in fact, may have less marketing “pedigree” than ever, Tas added, pointing to estimates that just 10% of Fortune 250 chief execs have marketing experience. As marketing becomes increasingly digitally focused, there are a wider array of metrics and channels to keep up with and company heads will need to become familiar with these tools.

“There’s a slew of different components to think through – we need to reimagine how we engage with consumers on platforms including YouTube, TikTok, X and Meta,” Tas said. “That means learning. You’ve got to become data-curious.”

Complex CMO-CEO relationships aren’t new – the phenomenon was memorably described by the Harvard Business Review in a 2017 epic by Kimberly Whitler and Neil Morgan, punchily entitled ‘Why CMOs Never Last’. The piece laid bare the competing priorities in top-level marketing, and proved popular among followers of business news upon publication.

“There’s something going very wrong in the relationships between CEOs and CMOs,” Whitler and Morgan wrote, pointing to research showing that a surprising 80% of chief executives polled were unimpressed by their CMOs, or felt them to be untrustworthy. CMOs have a high turnover rate, the authors continued, eclipsing that of other C-suite roles, and are often saddled with uniquely challenging tasks. CMOs frequently lack the authority to perform their role effectively, they added, despite being expected to meet a “mind-boggling” array of objectives.

So how can firms make better use of their marketing leaders?

The ‘fractional CMO’ trend is touted as one solution, though skepticism abounds. Marketing agency Creativebrief recently published a critique of the practice, where temporary or ‘fractional’ high-level marketing execs join firms to oversee a specific marketing campaign. While parachuting experienced practitioners into your marketing department might seem like a smart and nimble way to limit costs, the article argues, the approach is fundamentally short-termist and can lead to confusing, incoherent campaigns. On the other hand, the on-demand CMO role might reduce company turnover statistics by helping marketing managers avoid burnout. In cases where firms opt for a permanent marketing lead, Whitler and Morgan proposed improving job design, carefully defining the CMO’s responsibilities and providing them with the authority to fulfil their objectives effectively.

“Companies that invest in marketing are the ones that pull ahead of the pack,” said McKinsey’s Robert Tas. “CMOs need to be at the table, and they need to have a voice in shaping strategy.”