Sometimes you don’t realise something significant has happened until five, 10 or even 150 years later.
Take renegade photographer Robert Cornelius, for example. In 1839, he propped up his camera, flipped the lens, sprinted into the frame and took the world’s first selfie.
He was a trendsetter, well ahead of his time. And, in 150 years, we might be talking about Berta de Pablos-Barbier, the incoming CEO at jewellery brand Pandora, in the same way.
Why? Because she’s about to become one of only a handful of major CEOs with a marketing background. And that’s about to become a major trend.
Why the CMO has the skills a modern business needs
De Pablos-Barbier’s career features an intimidating succession of leadership roles: senior marketing positions at Mars, CMO at Lacoste and, most recently, CMO at Pandora. She knows her craft.
Yet her appointment is still surprisingly rare. And rarer still given she’s a woman. To reach the corner office, executives have usually paid their dues in finance or operations. Among Fortune 500 businesses, 44% of current CEOs previously served as COOs. Whereas McKinsey estimates that only 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have any marketing experience at all.
Why has that been the case? My theory is that it’s a hangover from a time when building and scaling a business was far more logistically complicated and expensive than it is now. In that environment, the skills of the CFO and COO naturally outshone those of the CMO.
Let’s look at an example. Not so long ago, if you wanted to manufacture a new product at any meaningful scale, you had to physically build a factory. You had to raise external capital and protect your margins with an eagle eye on operations. Those are exactly the strengths of a CFO or COO.
But today, things look very different. In fact, right now, many major product businesses rely on on-demand manufacturing without owning a factory at all. If you’ve got an idea, it’s entirely possible to design and print your first prototype on a 3D printer in under an hour for a few pounds.
I’m not saying that finance and operations are no longer challenging and crucial functions. They are. Every business still needs to innovate on both fronts to stay competitive. You can’t run a company without them.
But the cost and complexity of many core business functions have collapsed – and will keep falling. In a world where designing, producing and distributing a product or service are increasingly commoditised, what truly sets a business apart?
The power of brand
The answer is: brand.
When competitors – often insurgent startups – can bring a rival product to market quickly and cheaply, you have to work harder to retain your customers. You need a brand that’s sticky and a marketing machine that fuels it.
Today’s business environment is something of a battlefield, where new low-cost, fast-moving competitors are constantly emerging from the trenches, trying to steal your customers with fresh logos and celebrity endorsements.
The data reflects this shift.
Brand loyalty is falling: in 2024, 69% of consumers said they remain loyal to a specific brand, down from 77% in 2022. Meanwhile, brand is more central to company value than ever. A long-running study by Ocean Tomo, an intellectual property merchant bank, found that, between 1995 and 2020, “intangibles” such as brand, IP and goodwill rose from making up 68% of market value to 90%.
This, then, is the central challenge of modern business: building a brand that sticks, stays fresh and evolves with consumer behaviour at a time when loyalty is eroding.
That challenge naturally plays to the strengths of the CMO. They understand the brand’s heartbeat. They think in terms of consumer psychology. They know which levers to pull to deepen trust and keep customers coming back.
Predictions for the future
If I were an investor in Pandora, I’d take real comfort in De Pablos-Barbier’s appointment. It signals that the company recognises its brand as its true competitive advantage and, critically, understands that future growth depends on defending and strengthening it.
But this raises a question: why aren’t more big businesses appointing their CMOs to lead?
Corporate snobbery has something to do with it. Marketing has long been seen as the softer, fluffier side of business. And habits take time to change. Boards often prefer the safe, familiar choice: the COO or CFO who “knows the numbers”.
That’s why De Pablos-Barbier’s appointment matters. It’s a small crack in the dam – one that will let others through. It makes it easier, and less intimidating, for boards to take the same leap in future.
So, I’ll make a bold prediction: within a decade, the number of listed company CEOs who come from marketing will at least triple. And that’s probably conservative, given how low the current figure is.
Like Robert Cornelius, De Pablos-Barbier may not realise she’s starting something significant. But, in time, her appointment could be seen as the moment the corporate world began to value marketing not just as a department, but as the heart of leadership itself.
Jordan Greenaway is founder & CEO at Profile, a thought leadership PR agency.
Sometimes you don't realise something significant has happened until five, 10 or even 150 years later.
Take renegade photographer Robert Cornelius, for example. In 1839, he propped up his camera, flipped the lens, sprinted into the frame and took the world's first selfie.
He was a trendsetter, well ahead of his time. And, in 150 years, we might be talking about Berta de Pablos-Barbier, the incoming CEO at jewellery brand Pandora, in the same way.
Why? Because she's about to become one of only a handful of major CEOs with a marketing background. And that's about to become a major trend.
