No CMO is an island: Why collaboration is more important than ever to marketing leadership
In an increasingly complex landscape, the role of the CMO is expanding fast. Andrea Martens, CEO of ADMA, unpacks how collaboration, capability, and clarity are redefining what it means to lead in marketing today.
Talk to any marketing leader right now and the message is the same — things are changing fast and the ambiguity is here to stay. Fragmentation across technology, regulation and consumer behaviour is reshaping every part of our industry and no-one is immune.
It’s a similar story across the whole marketing function, but CMOs are definitely at the tip of the spear. Contending with pressure from all sides, they’re told to deliver growth, embed AI, manage compliance, build trust — all while budgets stay flat and teams get leaner.
It’s a complex landscape. But in that complexity lies the opportunity to find the turning point.
What we’re seeing emerge, and what I believe will define the next era of marketing leadership, is a faster, more deliberate pace of collaboration.
Why now? Because the challenges facing CMOs are no longer confined to the marketing department. As business expectations expand, so too does the scope of the CMO. What began as brand and campaign oversight has now extended to cover everything from performance, privacy, capability, customer strategy and risk.
The function is being redefined in real time — and leaders are realising they can’t solve this alone.
This pressure has been building for some time. Growth targets increased but budgets haven’t. Teams are being asked to transform but still deliver results quarter-by-quarter. Planning cycles have tightened and the ‘next big thing’ is arriving faster than teams can rewire.
In this environment, efficiency was the early fix — and we’ve seen this with the eager adoption of generative AI across our industry. Over the past two years, AI tools offered a welcome reprieve for time-poor marketers, streamlining executional tasks, automating outputs and helping overextended teams stay afloat.
For many, it was the operational crutch that helped balance competing demands.
But we’re now seeing the era of experimentation giving way to something else: accountability. And that responsibility has fallen squarely on the CMOs lap.
Boards are no longer satisfied with “we’re testing AI”. They want to know how it’s being governed. They’re asking how it affects customer strategy, brand integrity, compliance risk and cost structures.
What was once a promising tool is now a risk surface and CMOs are being tasked with owning it.
AI is one example of the growing role of the CMO but privacy is another. It’s become clear over recent years that privacy is fundamentally a brand and trust issue, and marketing leaders are responsible for much more than just ensuring their businesses are compliant.
From data usage and consent management to martech integration and brand safety, the responsibilities now falling within marketing’s remit are substantial and still growing.
That’s why the most progressive CMOs are not just reacting to this pressure — they’re reshaping how marketing operates. They’re embedding marketing into the operating system of the business.
That means tighter collaboration with product, technology, data, finance and legal teams. Not to seek approval but to co-own solutions and make informed decisions. Collaboration isn’t just a posture — it’s now a structural requirement. The complexity of today’s challenges demands shared accountability and coordinated action.
But collaboration without capability doesn’t scale. That’s the next piece of the shift we’re seeing. CMOs know where they need to go but many are unsure whether their teams have the skills to get there.
This isn’t a resourcing issue — it’s a capability issue. And increasingly, capability is being recognised not as a support function but as a growth lever.
The CMOs that will be best placed to succeed will be those who shift away from traditional role structures and instead towards building capability-led teams — teams that are agile, commercially fluent and embedded in decision-making, not just execution.
We built the ADMA Capability Compass precisely because we wanted to support this shift and create a system that helps teams benchmark against strategic goals and build the skills that matter most. Structure is strategy – we shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to build teams with data-backed precision.
Andrea Martens
Capability development in particular should no longer be seen as a ‘nice to have’ or a training initiative to roll out later. The strongest businesses will be those that treat learning and development as infrastructure — it’s on CMOs to embed this into the way their teams work.
And here’s the payoff: As marketing becomes more integrated and capability-led, the connection between marketing activity and business outcomes is becoming clearer. Increasing capability will mean increasing the capacity of marketing teams being able to prove, without a doubt, the value of their work.
We’re already seeing stronger links between marketing and revenue, between consent and trust, between customer experience and lifetime value. CMOs who are building structure, clarity and shared accountability into their teams are beginning to influence not just communications, but enterprise-wide priorities.
Ambiguity isn’t going anywhere. But CMOs don’t need to wait for the dust to settle. The time to lead is now — and that means embracing a new leadership model. One built on capability, clarity, and collaboration.
The CMOs who will define this next chapter won’t just react to change — they’ll lead it. Not as isolated operators, but as systemic leaders, driving growth, trust and transformation across the business.
That’s not a marketing ambition. It’s a leadership one.
Andrea Martens is CEO of the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA).
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Have your say