As the leading marketing executive search firm, with about half of our work being Chief Marketing Officers, over the past 20+ years, approximately thirty percent of our searches have been confidential.
What Is a Confidential CMO Search and Why Do Companies Use It?
A confidential search is when the CEO decides to replace their Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), but they want the new person hired before they notify the previous CMO, so the business does not experience a time between marketing executives. At MarketPro, we utilize best practices from our industry to keep the search confidential while engaging top talent on behalf of our client. This occurs when the current CMO is not performing up to expectations to create organizational growth, and they are being let go.
What is interesting about our confidential searches is that sometimes they are much lower, and at times like we are in right now, they are much higher. Rarely do we ever see them around thirty percent, even though that is the average. What causes this?
How Economic Cycles Impact the Demand for Confidential Searches
If we look at recent history, from 2021 to 2024, we were living in a time of extreme government spending with large deficits. Lots of this spending ends up being wasted, but as the government buys stuff, money finds its way into our economy, and we have propped up economic growth or a time that is relatively easy for corporations to win. While this made life temporarily easier for many businesses, the policy is not sustainable without extremely negative consequences for our country due to the debt being incurred and the long-term effects of money printing.
During this time of extreme government spending, the number of confidential searches we conducted was around fifteen percent or half of our average over the past 25 years as the leading CMO executive search firm. Basically, it was a time of less pressure on C-Suite executives, due to easy money.
Now, as we are in early 2025, and under a new administration, the easy government money spicket is being turned way down. We are entering a time where corporations have to compete on merit, and marketing is being looked at more closely for its ability to drive competitive advantage and profitable growth.
This has led organizations to take a much harder look at the current state of their marketing. Do they believe they are positioned properly relative to the competition? Are they getting the best possible ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend)? Do they have the right data, analytics, and marketing technology in place to allow them to glean insights and improve decisions? Do we properly understand our customer,s and are we exceeding their expectations?
Some of these questions were unlikely to be asked in the era of easy money. Now they are mission-critical to success.
Why More CEOs Are Replacing CMOs in 2025
Currently, eighty percent of our CMO executive searches are confidential, including the last four in a row we have taken in. Messaging from the CEO’s we are working with is relatively similar. Our marketing has been good, but now we need it to be great. Or I would give our marketing a B grade and now that is no longer acceptable, we need to be performing at an A level. Or our marketing team is still doing the same things we were doing five years ago, our marketing has not grown or evolved and now it is really showing in our results.
Having been through multiple cycles like this one before, what we have learned is that organizations that have an A-player for a CMO and a top-notch marketing team will outperform and outgrow their competition. A-players are only the top fifteen percent of all CMOs. Most organizations do not have an A-player CMO and possibly never have.
If you are a CEO, who are you going to battle with?
In today’s competitive landscape, the right CMO can drive growth or hold a company back. As CEOs demand stronger marketing performance, confidential searches are becoming essential. MarketPro specializes in securing top-tier marketing leaders—if your organization needs an upgrade, now is the time to act.