New buzzword: Fractional CMO

CMOs aren’t exactly known for planting roots—many leave after just a year or so on the job.

More and more, some are choosing to leave behind full-time employment altogether, instead taking on “fractional” CMO roles that let them temporarily take on the top marketing role.

🌱Growing, growing, gone: Chief Outsiders, a firm that specializes in placing fractional CMOs at companies, increased its revenue by 50% last year, according to Ad Age.

🚢 Jumping ship: There are a few reasons why this way of working seems to be picking up stream.

• For starters, there’s not exactly a lot of clarity around what a CMO does these days. “When I talk to founders who are looking for a CMO, the first thing I ask is, ‘What does a CMO do?’ None of the answers are exactly the same,” Khosla Ventures CMO Shernaz Daver told the Wall Street Journal last month.
• CMO tenure is falling; a 2021 analysis from corporate headhunting group Spencer Stuart found that, on average, they stay on the job for a little more than three years, the lowest level since 2009. “The turnover rate for CMOs is pretty high. The marketing leader is the one that gets the blame for slow or no growth—whether it’s a marketing problem or not, they get the blame,” Metaforce co-founder and partner David Camp recently told Digiday.
• Working as a fractional CMO can alleviate some of the pressures and headaches that can come with full-time employment. For instance, these executives typically work remotely, per the WSJ, and can pick and choose which companies they want to help.

🔮Looking ahead: The rise of fractional CMOs could be part of the industry’s larger shift to freelance and temp work. “We expect to see brands and agencies using freelance more, whether or not the economy goes into a recession,” Holly Wasson, chief community and marketing officer at We Are Rosie, told Marketing Brew in June.—MS