The Chief Marketing Officer role has transformed – but most organisations are still hiring as if it hasn’t. Artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones, social media, influencers, and shifting customer expectations have redefined how growth is created. Yet many organisations continue to misunderstand the evolution of the role.
The CMO Barometer 2026 makes this shift hard to question. Across 805 marketing leaders globally, 68% identify AI as the defining priority for the year ahead, far outpacing brand building at 17% and personalisation at 8%. The role has already moved, but many organisations continue to hire for an old brief – expanded on paper, yet often not enabled in reality.
What sits behind that headline is more revealing. Budgets are not expanding to match ambition. Thirty-eight percent of CMOs expect them to remain flat, while 30% anticipate cuts. Marketing is being asked to deliver transformation, efficiency, and growth – often at the same time and under increasingly constrained budgets. This is where the disparity becomes obvious.
Marketing is no longer a contained function. It spans a variety of areas that now need to be coordinated to operate as one system. The CMO is expected to connect them, turn data into direction, and ensure that customer insight-informed decisions are made at the highest level of the business.
In practice, limited access to data, partial budget control, and inconsistent influence mean that CMOs given responsibility without authority have constrained options – often resulting in missed opportunities and slower growth across the business. The Barometer suggests that this is less about capability and more about a lack of organisational support.
AI may dominate the role in the future, but its importance is functional rather than conceptual – more than half of CMOs see efficiency integration into business processes as its key application. This shift demands a different kind of leader.
Modern CMOs must be technically fluent, commercially credible, and able to operate with authority at board level. The ability to analyse data and implement technology to enhance campaigns – while understanding what AI can realistically deliver – is no longer a specialist skill, but an expectation. Similarly, the role still requires sound judgement, creativity, and the ability to lead through uncertainty.
Leadership in a South African context
CMOs face these challenges globally, but in a South African context, they are even more pronounced. Consumer-facing sectors are navigating constrained economic conditions alongside rapid digital change. Growth is harder to achieve, and marketing is expected to be more precise in its delivery. There is little margin for error, making leadership capability paramount.
Organisations that match the role to market reality – and appoint leaders who can navigate complexity – will benefit most. Those that ignore this evolution risk repeating past mistakes. These CMOs understand their customer as well as they understand the numbers. They connect brand investment to commercial outcomes, influencing decisions beyond the marketing function.
Expanding the scope of the role without adapting the conditions that support it remains a consistent challenge. Closing the gap requires more a clearer definition of the role and a more deliberate approach to how it is enabled. A clearer definition of the role, combined with a more deliberate approach as to how it is enabled. The conversation is moving beyond who can lead marketing, towards who can translate complexity into growth..
Assessment methods are adapting in response. Heidrick & Struggles recently launched Heidrick Immersive, an AI-enabled leadership assessment platform that uses simulations of strategic inflection points, market shifts, technological disruption, critical stakeholder decisions, to observe how leaders think and decide under pressure. The output is behavioural insight on decision making, adaptability, and team dynamics, applied to hiring decisions that increasingly carry commercial weight.
Organisations that hire against the brief as it stands today, and build the conditions for that brief to function, will see the difference in commercial performance. Those that hire against an outdated description will continue to get outdated results.
Written by Allen Shardelow, Senior Partner at Heidrick & Struggles