CMO Council Releases CMO Compensation Report, Top Earners Report to CEOs

According to a new “CMO Compensation Report” study, chief marketing officers (CMO) who report directly to CEOs are likely to earn more than their peers.

The study is a part of the soon-to-be-released eighth “State of Marketing” audit by the CMO Council—a comprehensive audit that serves as a valuable resource and reference for the CMO Council’s 7,000 members in 110 countries, who collectively control more than $400 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures.

CMO Council Executive Director, Donovan Neale-May, said that the CMO Compensation Report “will become an annual benchmarking tool to help CEOs, executive recruiters, chief HR officers, board members, academics and senior marketers better understand CMO compensation from a variety of dimensions (e.g., geography, type of business, responsibilities, etc.).

“As such, this is the first comprehensive report regarding CMO compensation and provides significant insight into CMO salaries, incentives, benefits, as well as CMO expectations and perceptions of compensation fairness and value to the organization.”

Key findings highlighted in the report include:

•  CMO compensation is directly related to reporting structure, i.e. those earning a salary of more than $500,000 annually are more likely to report directly to the CEO.

• CMO base compensation also correlates with firm size. The larger the company, the more likely that the CMO will make more in base compensation and bonus compensation.

• CMOs earning the highest levels of base compensation tend to be focused on driving business performance (e.g., top-line growth, market share, efficiencies, etc.).

• B2C (business to consumer) CMOs have a higher base salary than B2B (business-to-business)/hybrid-company CMOs.

• Eighty-five percent of CMOs receive bonuses with large company CMOs being more likely to have bonus-based compensation.

To download the full report, click here.