A new McKinsey‑backed survey has revealed an alarming and growing disconnect between CMOs and CEOs on what really matters—metrics that translate marketing into tangible business outcomes. In a study featuring matched pairs of executives from Fortune 1000 companies across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, McKinsey found that 65% of CEOs believe they understand modern marketing, yet 70% of CMOs say their CEOs do not—a 5% increase in perceived misalignment compared to last year.

As CEOs lean heavily on CFOs for financial oversight and CMOs grapple with customer-centric complexity, the urgent next step is clear: CMOs must reframe how they communicate, choosing clear, outcome-driven metrics that resonate with business leaders, and CEOs must invite marketing back into the core growth conversation.

As reported by Chief Marketer on July 1, 2025 by Kaylee Hultgren.

McKinsey Growth Survey Spotlights CMO-CEO Disconnect on Metrics Tied to Business Outcomes

McKinsey & Company’s second CMO Growth Research Survey, presented earlier this month in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, highlights the growing disconnect between CMOs and CEOs on the topics of measuring marketing’s impact, communicating KPIs across the C-suite and what roles in the organization should be responsible for customer-centric growth.

“CMOs have all these amazing customer metrics and everything’s measurable, and it’s almost overwhelming for the CEOs and the C-suite to be able to grasp it,” said McKinsey partner and report co-author Robert Tas. “Marketing is certainly trying to do the right things. And I think as we talk to CMOs, they all think they’re connecting the dots, but when it translates up top, it loses some of its applicability to the business metrics.”

The research, a follow up to a similar 2023 survey, gathered approximately 100 C-suite perspectives from Fortune 1000 companies in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the U.S. In 2024’s survey, the following data points point to a misalignment between CMOs and CEOs:

• Marketing’s complexity is in part creating misalignment. Though 65% of CEOs surveyed feel comfortable with modern marketing (a 15% increase year over year), 70% of CMOs believe their CEOs are not comfortable with modern marketing—a 5% increase.
• The metrics delivered by CMOs are not those that are preferred by CEOs. While 70% of CEO respondents measure marketing’s impact based on year-over-year revenue growth and margin, only 35% of the CMOs surveyed track this as a top metric.
• Customer-centric strategy is moving further away from the CMO’s purview. Only 50% of CMOs are involved in strategic planning with CEOs, with just 15% of CMOs consistently incorporating customer-centricity into their decisions.

We sat down with McKinsey partner Robert Tas to discuss the most important findings from the report, reasons for the CMO-CEO disconnect, how successful companies are handling customer growth and the biggest lessons for CMOs moving forward.

Chief Marketer: In your view, what are the most important takeaways from the report?

Robert Tas, Partner at McKinsey: We’ve run this report now a couple of times. It’s something that I am very passionate about as a former CMO, and I was pretty startled in the first go around. In this new report, what continues to change is the divide between the CEO and CMO, in the way they think [about] a number of the areas that we dug into.

For example, the way the CEOs think about themselves with their marketing knowledge and the way the CMOs think about it is more of a divide: 20% more CMOs think their CEOs don’t get it and don’t understand modern marketing the way they want them to, obviously, which continues to exemplify the divide between them. The other one that we see continually is that the way marketing communicates to the C-suite, to the board and so forth, it’s always a disconnect on measurement and on how they communicate the KPIs.

One of the challenges that we always talk about is that the CMOs have all these amazing customer metrics and everything’s measurable, and it’s almost overwhelming for the CEOs and the C-suite to be able to grasp it. We talk a lot about how CMOs need to connect marketing activities to business outcomes very clearly … One thing I want to point out, which I think makes our research pretty unique, is that we match the CEOs and the CMOs of the same companies together in our research. So we get to see the discrepancy between how people from the same company answer the questions, which is how we get the big divide.

The other one I hinted at is the metrics of success of marketing. We obviously have a measurement issue. We have an “are we connecting the right business outcomes” issue, and how we tie all those things together. Marketing is certainly trying to do the right things. And I think as we talk to CMOs, they all think they’re connecting the dots, but when it translates up top, it loses some of its applicability to the business metrics.

CM: Why do you think that 20% more CMOs this go around that believe their CEOs do not understand modern marketing? Does it have to do with the way marketing has evolved and its complexity?

RT: I think it’s a combination of, you have type A CEOs that are obviously CEOs for a reason and are very smart and think they understand marketing and how it applies to their business. And then inversely, you have a super complex marketing ecosystem that continuously changes. There’s a lot of fragmentation, there’s a lot of new tools, there’s a lot of new channels. And all those things CMOs are trying to leverage and use. But I don’t know that the CEOs fully appreciate the complexity of what it takes. CMOs today, their remit is continuing to grow and skyrocket in terms of things they’re being asked to do, from digital transformation to AI to product to experience and all those things. I think a better understanding needs to happen between them on both sides of the fence.

CM: How do newer C-suite roles, like Chief Digital Officer, factor into the metrics that are decided upon?

RT: It’s a really good question. We’ve observed a couple things. One is that, the traditional four Ps of marketing is often fractured in companies, which means that somebody else owns pricing, somebody else owns promotion, somebody else owns the different parts of that equation. And I think that makes it challenging for the CEO to even know who owns marketing, who owns customer.

What we see is that when companies have a center person that plays what we call the “chief customer custodian” role within the organization, they’re actually growing 2.3 times faster than their peer set. And we see that when they have somebody with a clear definition of customer in their organization.

One of the things we advocate for for CMOs is [that] they’re the most knowledgeable customer insights engine in most companies. They’ve got to play that role to the CEO and be able to connect those dots for him or her and be able to take that across the enterprise. Unfortunately with all these roles, like you said, it’s created some fragmentation for CEOs and they’re not sure who owns what piece and how they think about it. And then marketers are relegated to advertising versus the entire customer journey.

CM: When you say the companies are more successful when they have one role that is responsible for growth, are you saying that’s a CMO? Or are you saying that’s a different type of role?

RT: We’re specifically not saying it’s a CMO role. There’s multiple titles that the marketing function rolls up to in companies. What we’re saying is that they have one person that’s a C-suite report to the CEO that makes them the integrator across the enterprise. We think it’s obviously marketing-led, but many companies might call it different functions. But the function of marketing is typically within that one person who’s a C-Suite report.

CM: The report mentions that there aren’t necessarily CMOs at every successful company anyway. But there’s a dedicated growth person.

RT: I’m old school, so I believe in the CMO function and role and believe that the CMO, like I said, has been fractured a little bit. I think that the traditional OG CMOs [who] used to report to the CEO used to have very clear remit on end-to-end customer experience. I don’t really care about the title—a name is but a name—but at the end of the day, having somebody that can be that unifier of the customer at that CEO level is really important to the growth engine of the CEO.

CM: Why do you think CMOs have lost their seat at the table, as the report suggests? And what is your recommendation for CMOs to get it back?

RT: Because of this massive transformation in marketing and all the different things in marketing, I think CMOs have tried to tell their CEOs about all the different things that they’re doing—on social media and social media sentiment and clicks and impressions and all those things. And I think those are all good things and the CMO should absolutely manage them. But I think what we’ve lost a little bit is connecting those marketing activities back to those business outcomes that matter to the CEO. The CEO is pretty short-term driven in terms of their objectives of driving sales and margin. And I think the CMOs need to do a better job of connecting the dots. So one of the things we advocate for is speak the business language.

Two is partner with the CFO to build a measurement system that is transparent and aligns to the company’s business priorities to make sure everybody understands how you measure the impact of marketing and how you’re going to go make marketing decisions. We think that the CFO is a natural partnership for the CMO and the CEO respects the CFO as their top financial person. So having someone like that give an endorsement is going to help the CMO’s relationship in the entire C-suite.

And then the third thing we talk a lot about is they need to be that customer insights engine. They need to be the one that fuels the customer centricity of a company across the entire enterprise, that custodian of the customer. Doing those three things are really pivotal to the modern CMO.

CM: How are they supposed to do it all?

RT: It’s hard. The CMO job has moved beyond just advertising. And it’s part of an entire strategy of how companies are thinking about it. We talk to a lot of CMOs who control some of the pieces and are frustrated they don’t control more of it and are being held accountable—when you control the demand part and you’re creating demand, but then the capture part isn’t as great because you don’t control it and you don’t quite know how to optimize. These are the modern things that our CEOs are going to have to wrestle with.

The reality is that if you have an insight-led CMO, they’re going to add substantial value to your enterprise. If you have a measurement system that the company agrees on, it’s going to open up the pathways to innovation, the pathways to really drive that customer impact with the right customers in the right way and prioritize and be able to drive economic impact that way. As you figure out how to support the CMO and be that integrator in the C-suite, it’s going to empower the rest of the team to play the right role in that customer experience.

CM: In terms of metrics, your advice is agreeing upon them within the entire C-suite ahead of time. Does that mean metrics should be more simplified?

RT: Simplify is a good word. Here’s where I would advise any CMO and CEO today: You need to agree on how you’re going to drive marketing effectiveness to your business. You need to agree on all of the inputs to do that. So that could mean brand scores, that could mean bottom of the funnel performance metrics, that could mean CLV [customer lifetime value]. You need to agree on the methodology, a media mix model, all of those things. And then the most important thing that we tell all our CMOs and CEOs is that you need to test the big hypotheses that are going to drive your business. So you need to do big holdouts to really understand, is the brand spend really delivering like we think it is? Is the omnichannel experience carrying its weight? Are the customers that we’re driving on X channel really driving the value?

And I think that pre-prescribed methodology is the most important thing to start with by getting everybody to align. And then as you get those inputs, you have a set of KPIs that you are going to manage the business by. And again, different businesses have different types of KPIs. If I’m in CPG, my brand score, my brand favorability, things like that, are going to be much bigger. If I’m in the financial services, it’s much more about conversion. But I think the point is that it’s not one metric. Everybody asks me that. It’s a series of metrics that are material to the business decision-making of your leadership team and the strategies that matter to your company.

Sadly, many don’t get that right. I hate to say it. Because they’re all looking for the holy grail of one metric to answer all their problems. And I think one of the things that I always point out to CEOs is that measurement tells you what you did backwards. It doesn’t tell you what you should do forward. You’ve got to make other tools in there to figure out where you want to go, what your strategy is. [For example,] did we do a promotion and did my competitors do a better one? There’s so many other factors. And this is where CMOs need to partner with that CFO to really have clarity on how we’re going to use each of these inputs to make better decisions.

CM: So there’s a lot of a lot of advanced work that needs to happen beforehand, and then the metrics will tell the story afterwards.

RT: Yeah. And you just need to really buy into the process. This was one of the mistakes I think that CMOs have made: They come into the C-suite room with a ton of metrics that don’t sometimes correlate to the revenue metrics. And I think you’ve got to be able to tie both of those things together to, again, make informed decisions. CMOs need to be general managers. We heard that quote over and over again, and I think that’s very fair. They need to treat it as a business function economically. That’s why they need to test. They need to earn the right to spend the money appropriately, but earn the right to make changes and optimize where appropriate.

CM: That’s coming from the CEOs?

RT: Yeah. They want them to be business executives. I think the marketing community has sometimes over-indexed on the creative side of the house, which we absolutely think is important. But CEOs want to know how their marketing investment is driving business outcomes. I want to know, am I driving incremental customer growth? Where are the key segments? I want to understand what levers my marketing team is turning and the implications if I turn them off or I turn them down, or I have to make other hard choices. We want to be able to connect marketing dollars, marketing spend, back to those business strategies that the CEO has in a much more granular way. And that’s where we think the CFO is really going to play a great partnership role.

CM: And AI’s role in marketing?

RT: I do think it’s an amazing opportunity to help companies reimagine how they focus on the customer and how they use gen AI to unify their experience and be a lot more precise in how they deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time in a significant way. We don’t have to bombard people with millions of emails anymore. We can be a lot more thoughtful in that experience. And I think this is an opportunity for the CMO to work with the C-suite and the CEO to reimagine their customer centricity.

And you’re going to be more efficient just inherently. You’re going to get better at it. You’re going to be able to know that Robert likes blue instead of red and it’s going to work for him this way, time of day and things like that, that today are capabilities, but they’re clunky and hard. I think gen AI is going to reimagine the operating model, not just the individual tactics, but the whole system and how it does it, and how it does it at velocity and at scale for the customers.