Top World’s Most Influential CMOs according to Forbes

The challenge of every marketer today is to communicate in a very noisy world. They rely on how clearly and broadly they can distribute their brand messages – but who are the CMOs who perform the best job related to Influencer Marketing?

Third annual influence study

The Third Annual Forbes/Appinions CMO Influence Study, can surely answer this question. It features the most influential CMOs in the world based on analysis Appinions completed on the top marketing executive at leading firms from the Forbes 2000 Largest Companies list.

For the third year consecutive, Apple’s Phil Schiller was awarded as the most influential CMO in the world followed by David Lauren, EVP Advertising, Marketing, and Communications at Ralph Lauren, Tim Mahoney, Global CMO-Chevy at General Motors, Jim Farley – Ford, John Frascotti – Hasbro, Kristin Lemkau – JPMorgan Chase, Trevor Edwards – Nike, Beth Comstock – General Electric, Seth Farbman – Gap, and Alain Visser – Volvo. 

Mr. Schiller’s huge win is a tribute to both the broad media interest in Apple Computer but the fact of publishing Mr. Schiller’s name and opinions in the press continuously. Mr. Schiller was one of only 8 CMOs within the top 50 to register influential opinions and reactions more than twice a week during the period of the study. This included CMOs of one private company and other from four different ‘annual revenue’ tiers. In fact, it seems that there was no clear correlation between revenue and ranking. It appears to have more to do with the public role and marketing strategy of the CMO themselves. On the contrary, the bottom half of the top 50 CMOs registered influential opinions only three times per month or less.

The study considers the most senior marketing person at each company. Influence is ranked by extracting opinions, quotes, and other reactions from hundreds of millions of articles from news, blog, and social media sources. Industry trends also appear in the results, ranking Automotive Industry CMOs as most frequently (9 CMOs) followed by those from in Food and Beverage (7), Technology (6), Apparel (4) and Financial Services (4). In terms of gender, female CMOs earned 32% of the top 50 spots, but in terms of scores only garnered 21% of the total influence.

The complete 96 page Forbes/Appinions 2014 CMO Influence Study can be viewed and downloaded at http://dj.appinions.com/CMO-2014