• Ad Age, Monday, July 9, 2007 1:30 PM

CMOs on top management teams don't have any effect on a company's financial performance, according to a study to be published in the January 2008 Journal of Marketing that covers 167 companies including, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft and Apple over a five-year period.

The finding in "Chief Marketing Officers: A Study of their Presence in Firms' Top Management Team" is sure to reignite a longstanding debate: Should a CMO be judged on solid stats, such as sales, or on more amorphous concepts, such as brand equity or awareness? The authors themselves--Pravin Nath, a professor of marketing at the LeBow College of Business, and Vijay Mahajan, a professor in the department of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin--admit the study is limited because it focuses on financial metrics, such as sales growth and profitability, and not brand equity.

Still, at some fundamental level, most companies think of marketing as a sales driver, and the fact that this study shows CMOs having no impact on that key metric won't enhance their perception in the C-suite.

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