Six years since creating the global CMO role for former Coke marketer Alison Lewis, Johnson & Johnson appears to have rethought its plans. Like many of the CPG heavyweights, the company has pared back marketing, cutting spend by 13% last year, according to AdWeek.  

A number of big brands have also scrapped the CMO role in recent years, most notably, Lewis’s former employer Coca-Cola, which wrapped marketing into the chief growth officer’s remit two years ago.

Asking for growth given Coke’s core product is a challenge, but there’s some evidence to suggest its organisational changes are paying off as the rate of revenue decline has slowed in the last 12 months.

But academic research (using data from 155 publicly traded companies over a 12-year period) has shown that those with a CMO at the executive table can on average expect to perform 15% better than those that do not.

It will be interesting to see whether Johnson & Johnson’s financials buck that trend over the next year or two.