This omission contradicts the consumer-centric rhetoric these same companies promote. In an age defined by data-driven personalisation; trust deficits; environmental, social and governance (ESG) imperatives; and shifting customer expectations, the absence of strategic marketing leadership at the highest level is more than a missed opportunity.
It’s a material business risk.
I come from a marketing background and today, I lead a brand strategy practice that works with CMOs who are seeking to reframe their approach and with CEOs who are focused on growth. Our work is grounded in a simple but often overlooked truth: the brand is the business. If the brand isn’t growing, neither is the business.
To embed this thinking more structurally, we began examining where key decisions are made, first within the C-suite and, more critically, at board level. If companies are to shift how they engage with the world, boards must recognise the strategic role of, and material equity in, the brand.
When we analysed the boards of the top 20 to 50 JSE-listed companies, marketers were largely absent. At the time of review, only one senior and noted marketing executive served across multiple boards.
This underrepresentation matters. CMOs bring the customer’s voice to strategic decisions. Their exclusion calls into question whether companies can truly claim to be customer-centric or future-fit.
Many South African boardrooms remain shaped by a finance- and operations-dominated worldview, often inherited from an era shaped by outdated beliefs that marketing is peripheral and business is “about the numbers”. Financial discipline is essential, but what value are you counting if your business is no longer relevant to the people it serves?
Marketers are closest to consumers. They understand their lives, frustrations, and aspirations. If you are trying to determine whether your business is solving real customer problems and, by extension, whether you are creating real value, it’s the marketer who can offer that insight. Solving real problems leads to more sales. More sales lead to growth. Excluding marketers from board-level strategy is a commercial risk. It limits a company’s ability to grow and stay relevant.
The risk of ignoring the customer at board level
The CMO is the executive most attuned to market shifts, emerging expectations, and consumer sentiment. Excluding that voice introduces several risks:
- Eroded competitiveness: Boards lacking marketing insight are slower to identify or respond to change. This leads to misaligned strategies, weakened relevance and loss of market share.
- Missed growth opportunities: Without a CMO, companies often overlook customer-led innovations in areas such as personalisation, platform strategy and experience design.
- Reputation missteps: CMOs play a critical role in brand governance and risk management. Their absence exposes the organisation to brand erosion and poorly judged decisions around ESG, black economic empowerment (BEE) and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
- Disconnected strategies: When brand and business strategy are not aligned at board level, the result is fragmented customer journeys and inconsistent messaging.
Boards must ask the question: if no one at the table represents the customer, can we truly claim to be market-driven?
The dangerous legacy of marketing as a support function
This oversight is rooted in a legacy view of marketing as tactical or secondary. Too often, marketing is still associated with campaigns, promotions, or event sponsorships. Today’s CMOs lead ROI-driven, omnichannel strategies that are both predictive and measurable. They are as focused on long-term value creation as they are on creative execution.
The persistence of outdated thinking, where marketing is seen as a cost centre and strategy is equated with spreadsheets, means board composition is out of step with modern business demands. Without challenging this bias, companies will continue to underperform in areas where customer trust, brand relevance and market insight should drive performance and financial returns.
The case for diversity of perspective
There are three key reasons CMOs should sit at the boardroom table:
1. De-risking the business
CMOs ensure the board remains close to cultural shifts and market sentiment. Irrelevance is one of the biggest risks facing established businesses today and one of the hardest to quantify until it’s too late.
2. Enhancing brand equity
Brand equity is a business asset. It builds trust, drives pricing power and directly influences valuation in mergers or acquisitions. CMOs are stewards of that value.
3. Maintaining cultural currency
Creativity and adaptability are emerging as core business skills. The World Economic Forum lists them among the most critical for future leadership. CMOs bring both to the boardroom grounded in insight, not instinct, to navigate a fast-changing landscape.
CMOs must also step up
The responsibility does not lie solely with boards. Marketers must also demonstrate strategic fluency to earn a board seat. Too many still enter boardrooms speaking the language of execution, not impact. Campaigns and awards are not the same as growth and returns.
Business grows from the thought, not just the action. CMOs must show how customer intelligence connects to commercial performance.
Marketers must demonstrate that they understand and contribute to business strategy. This mirrors the broader diversity conversation. As with gender equity, one part of the solution is making space, the other is proving capability. CMOs must meet the moment by aligning their expertise with strategic levers that drive competitiveness and returns.
They must position themselves not just as creative leaders, but as future CEOs with the customer insight, digital fluency, ESG sensitivity, and adaptive leadership today’s boards require.
Beyond “Mandela Day” marketing
Transactional marketing, defined by annual budgets, one-off campaigns and symbolic gestures, fails to move the needle. For example, consider a bank promising that “Your Story Matters”. That perspective should influence how credit decisions are made, not just how brand messages are crafted.
Operationalising the brand promise means thinking differently. For example, if branches are closed in a push toward digitisation, could those spaces be reimagined as training hubs or enterprise centres? Doing so would drive societal value, deepen customer relationships, and grow brand equity. That’s marketing at its most strategic.
The future belongs to human-centric brands, those that see beyond transactions to relationships. After all, we are customers some of the time, but human all the time.
International lessons
The dominance of finance professionals on boards is not unique to South Africa, it’s a global trend. If you examined FTSE 100 or NYSE-listed boards, you would find the same over-indexing on accountants, with very few brand custodians in the mix.
However, we are seeing some international boards recognising the strategic value of CMOs. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo with a marketing background, is a notable example of how marketing expertise enhances board contribution.
This must change. South Africa has the opportunity to lead, not lag, by rethinking its boardroom composition in line with global best practice.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Creating a new corporate reality
For CMOs
- Learn to speak the language of business.
- Understand strategic levers and how marketing connects to revenue and relevance.
- Don’t just demand a seat, demonstrate why you belong there.
For CEOs
- Reassess your executive composition and create pathways for CMOs to rise to executive roles.
- Ensure the voice of the customer is present at the decision-making table.
- Recognise that businesses must move at the pace of culture to thrive.
For board chairs
- Expand your definition of diversity to include functional expertise and perspective.
- Assess whether your board truly reflects your market and mission.
- Reconfigure board composition to CMOs: these are customer custodians, driving sustainable growth.
- Balance decision-making by factoring in customer impact and brand implications alongside financial metrics.
- Promote direct engagement with customers through site visits, call centre sessions, and branch walk-throughs to ground strategy in real-world experience.
A call to business schools
If CMOs are to claim their rightful place in the boardroom, business schools must play a leading role in shifting both mindset and curriculum. They have a responsibility to challenge the traditional silos of finance and operations and reimagine leadership development in a way that reflects the evolving demands of modern business.
What business schools can do:
- Integrate disciplines: Blend strategic, operational, and communication thinking across MBA and executive programmes.
- Encourage cross-functional learning: CMOs should study strategy, CFOs should take brand-building courses, for example. Growth begins with curiosity.
- Design board-readiness programmes: Develop early-career pathways, not retirement plans, for board participation.
- Create “board-track” leadership streams: Equip senior marketers with governance credentials and fiduciary insight.
- Reframe marketing education: End the outdated separation of brand and business and position marketing as central to strategic growth.
- Embed real-world board exposure: Prepare marketers to engage at governance level through case studies, simulations, and mentoring.
- Drive cultural change: Challenge the perception of marketing as a support function, recast CMOs as value creators and strategic leaders.
- Ensure curriculum relevance: Align course content with the trajectory and demands of modern marketing leadership.
- Foster interdisciplinary executive education: Bridge the gap between brand leadership and boardroom competence.
Business schools shape the future leaders of industry. By rethinking how they train and position marketing professionals, they can help close the leadership gap. This ensures that customer insight, brand stewardship, and strategic creativity have a lasting seat at the table.
Dr. Sizakele Marutlulle is an intersectional creative strategist, leadership guide, brand strategist, international speaker, and diversity and inclusivity scholar. Through her strategy and ideation practice (www.sizakelemarutlulle.com), she works with executives of blue-chip companies across sectors and geographies to build high-influence brands that inspire people, grow companies and transform society. She advocates for human-centric creativism as the sustainable path to inclusive future. She is also the director of global engagement at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
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