Much has been written about chief marketing officers and how they are toiling to come up with unique ways to make themselves useful and productive in their respective organizations. Much less has been written about the fact that the average Chief Marketing Officer’s tenure is quite short. In fact, the last time-span I saw put that tenure at less than two years. But nothing has been written as to why this can be both a difficult and, in some cases, an almost impossible job? All right, here’s the answer in three letters: The CEO. Let me explain why this is the case.

First, let’s start with the internal structural problems with this job. First and foremost, a CMO is in the middle of a lot of people with their own agendas as how to succeed in their organizations. A good CMO will always make enemies if they try to point out the problems with any ill-conceived brand manager’s marketing plan.

Being brutally honest can be an enormous problem in a land of egos, especially high-level egos. I was once asked by a marketing executive to help kill a top management executive's bad idea about his brand. I did this in the form of a detailed analysis that did indeed point out problems with this bad idea. Unfortunately, this analysis was videotaped and sent up into the upper reaches of this company for all to see. I'm not sure what happened to that young executive but he was never heard from again.

Next, there is always the danger of a competing function in the business. Quite often that function is the Chief Financial Officer. Many of these types are very suspicious of the marketing money being spent. It goes back to that old saw once uttered by a retail chief executive, “I know half of my advertising budget is wasted. My problem is that I don’t know which half.” The Chief Financial Officer’s solution is often to kill both halves thus increasing earnings. In my experience, the CFO is more highly placed than the CMO. Justifying marketing expenditures is never an easy task.