For years, the chief marketing officer (CMO) has been one of the most scrutinized roles in the C-suite, and that scrutiny isn’t easing, according to Forrester’s third annual analysis of CMOs in the Fortune 500. But the data suggests the prevailing narrative of CMO decline masks the real story – reinvention. That reinvention is being shaped by increasing pressure to drive growth, to foster customer engagement, and to demonstrate marketing’s commercial accountability.

Fewer CMOs, Bigger Expectations

The number of CMOs and senior marketing executives at Fortune 500 companies declined for the third consecutive year, as the role and mandate of marketing continue to be debated by CEOs and boards. Marketing executives who are members of the company’s executive team and/or report to the CEO are now found at just 52% of Fortune 500 companies (down from 58% in 2025). While some of this decline can be attributed to the shifting roster of F500 companies, the trend is clear: CMO representation is falling.

At the same time, the title itself is losing ground. Only 36% of companies now use “Chief Marketing Officer,” down from 49% a year ago. A broader set of c-suite titles is emerging – such as chief growth officer, chief commercial officer, and chief customer officer – suggesting that traditionally separate marketing, sales, and customer success functions for many businesses may be combining under a single leader accountable for growth outcomes across the customer lifecycle.

A Role Under Pressure — And in Motion

The pace of change is also evident in marketing leadership turnover. In the past year alone, 23% of Fortune 500 companies changed their senior marketing leader.

And yet, amid this churn, one metric has remained steady: average tenure. Marketing leaders now hold their roles for an average of 3.9 years — unchanged from prior years. Taken together, these data tell a more nuanced story: Companies are rethinking who leads and how the role is defined, but once in place, leaders are being given several years to drive change — with the expectation that they deliver against a broader, more integrated mandate.

Our analysis also shows that the professional lives of CMOs and marketing leaders vary considerably across industries and business models, making broad generalizations often misleading. For example, CMO representation in the energy and mining industry is less than half that in the financial services industry, while CMO tenure varies by more than 20% across business models – B2B, B2C, or B2B2C.

The CMO Reinvention Opportunity

It would be easy to interpret these trends as a weakening of the CMO role. That would be a mistake. What we are seeing instead is a period of reinvention, in which companies are more actively experimenting with how best to structure and name the role, as well as its relationship to other commercial functions. What is clear is that many large companies are searching for the right model to connect marketing more directly to business performance. This reinvention of the CMO role presents opportunities for marketing leaders to assume more responsibility for commercial outcomes at their companies.

Forrester clients can read the full report for a more detailed breakdown of Fortune 500 CMO representation and tenure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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