Employment and Jobs Blog » Fast Company: The Most Dangerous Job in Business?

Fast Company: The Most Dangerous Job in Business?

By: Mick, May 24th, 2007

In the most recent issue of Fast Company, there is an article about the position of Chief Marketing Officer, which Fast Company is declaring the most dangerous job in business. They are referring, of course, to job security, which seems to be practically non-existent among CMOs. The article notes that the average employment-span of CMOs at the top 100 consumer-branded companies is only 23 months. That’s barely long enough to piss off management, let alone get removed from your position. But the visibility of the high-profile marketing campaigns that many of these CMOs oversee makes it impossible for the bid decision-makers to sit idly by while their companies and products lose market-share to more cleverly branded competitors.

And with marketing campaigns, there are an endless supply of Monday Morning Quarterbacks just waiting to hammer away at any lackluster efforts:

One recent casualty was Michael Linton, who was pushed out at Best Buy last year with barely a warning after nearly five years. Linton, now a senior VP at eBay, notes that CMOs are tempting targets. Because marketing is such a public function, and everyone has an opinion on what works, “people will come up to you and say anything, like, ‘Your advertising blows,’” he says. “No one comes up to the CIO and says, ‘Hey I was just thinking about your data architecture and how much better things are somewhere else.’”

For those in the marketing world, that scenario must be all too familiar. And because the high-profile world of marketing is so dynamic, the best marketers are well-prepared to venture out in search of a new job - they have no choice but to be.

Kerri Martin, former CMO at BMW and Volkswagen, offers the following advice to other marketers searching for a job: