New research reveals a concerning disconnect between improved CEO-CMO relationships and declining business impact ratings. The fourth annual CEO Study on Marketing and the CMO from Boathouse show a paradoxical shift in how chief executives perceive their marketing leaders.

The good news: Chief executive officers trust their chief marketing officers more than they did in the past. The bad: This change in relationship hasn’t necessarily resulted in more credibility for marketing as a function.

This year’s installment took more time to understand the CEO’s position as it relates to leadership as well as marketing. One troubling insight in this era of drastic transformation brought on by the after-effects of the pandemic as well as the onslaught of AI: 87% of CEOs say they have yet to fully realize their transformation strategy — in fact, averaged out they’re only about halfway there.

While the results of the CEO study reveal some improvements in the ways CEOs view their top marketers, there are also several “areas of concern and disconnects” when it comes to how CEOs think of CMOs and marketing in general, according to Boathouse’s CEO study.

While the average tenure for CMOs at Fortune 500 companies is trending in a positive direction, it still lags behind the overall C-suite average. Chief marketers are surely aware of that fact, but chief executives are not: only 52% of CEOs are aware that CMOs have the shortest tenure in the C-suite.

Some 26% of CEOs surveyed from top US companies gave their CMO a “grade A” for their overall performance, up from 16% who said the same last year.

Driven by technology and a more informed consumer, CMOs are expanding their digital prowess into advanced analytics and tracking, generative AI, and consumer intelligence tools to adapt, execute, and measure their return on resources. This new evolution of Marketing is more foreign to CEOs, given that few come from a marketing background.

CMOs must become data-driven storytellers who speak the language of the CEO and CFO