The CMO pay debate: Are marketers underpaid?
Are marketing chiefs just gaining power and not pay? Find out.
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While CEO salaries often make headlines, CMO earnings are rarely publicized. Recently, it was revealed that Ola Elelctric's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Anshul Khandelwal's annual remuneration stood at Rs 79.5 lakh in the last fiscal year.
Storyboard18 has put the spotlight on marketing leadership salaries as the complexity of marketing and media grows and the function's importance becomes increasingly apparent to progressive C-suite and CEOs with marketing and sales background, across industries. Still according to most industry experts evaluations marketing leaders in the C-suite are typically paid less than their CXO peers.
"CMOs are not paid as handsomely as the tech guys. There's a very simple, very easy reason for that. It's very difficult to show the ROI of marketing unless it's a B2B company like ours, where you are generating revenue through leads as well. But in most cases, there would be a growth hacking guy who would be directly reporting to the CEO," says Vineet Chugh, Head of Marketing QueueBuster POS.
Chugh emphasizes that demonstrating immediate ROI can be challenging, adding that marketing builds brands over a long period of time. It's very difficult to show the immediate ROI of marketing through, say, ad and social media campaigns.
"That's why it is very important for marketing guys to eventually get into the business role because the moment you start getting into the into the business or partnership role, you are being paid. If you are getting ten times that for the company, your salary will automatically increase," he says.
When Storyboard18 reached out to Rahul Talwar, Chief Marketing Officer, Max Life Insurance, for a comment on whether CMOs are paid as handsomely as other CXOs, he quips and says, "Let's make salaries unisex first! Why A marketing budget should never be a constraint for a marketer. Good talent always finds good money. As long as the CMOs and marketing leaders are able to contribute to growth, they will attract investment from business leaders and CEOs."
Talwar also added that competitive compensation packages are crucial for recruiting top marketing talent."
Sectoral Divide in CMO Salaries
According to Naukri.com, the average CTC of CMOs has grown 13 percent year-on-year, at Rs 60.57 lakh in 2024 from Rs 52.89 lakh in 2023.
In traditional Indian firms, the median fixed pay for marketing heads and CMOs has reduced by 5 percent, as per the Deloitte India Executive Performance & Rewards Survey, 2023 and 2024 reports. In 2023, the fixed pay of a CMO was around Rs 1.26 crore, which has been reduced to Rs 1.20 crore now in 2024. The data analyzed by Deloitte was sourced from more than 400 companies across the manufacturing, IT/ITes, financial services, life science, and consumer goods sectors.
Notably, the average minimum CTC of a CMO in the retail sector is Rs 2,824,022, while the average maximum CTC is Rs 14,688,295. In the IT sector, the average maximum CTC of the CMO is Rs 1.24 crore; in the banking sector, it is Rs 1.54 crore; and in telecom, it is Rs 1.38 crore, as per the data by talent platform Foundit.
However, the median total compensation, including long-term incentives, has increased by 8 percent this year in 2024 as companies focus on retaining key executives, according to the report. The total cost to company (CTC) of CMOs, along with long-term incentives (LTI), stood at Rs 1.96 crore this year in 2024, compared to Rs 1.81 crore in 2023. Without LTI, the CMO's median CTC stood at Rs 1.58 crore this year, against Rs 1.52 crore in 2023.
Breaking the Hierarchy?
Some marketers think that the trend of lower compensation for marketing heads is changing, even though there is a long way to go. "I honestly think that the tide is turning. Earlier, there used to be a traditional sort of hierarchy where there was a functional head and then there was a CEO. Today, brands, companies, CEOs, and COOs recognize that marketing, products, and technology are the three things that are the backbones of any business today, and they are all very closely interlinked," says Surabhi Sharma, Senior Director of Marketing, Hero Vired.
"The acknowledgement of these pillars being important on their own to help drive the overall agenda of the business is definitely being recognized, and the compensation is commensurate with the change that is being seen. I wouldn't say we have reached there, but I definitely noticed that there is more recognition of that change, and salaries and compensations are commensurate with this trajectory that we have seen," says Sharma.
