The Re-emergence of Product Line Marketing

A few years ago I wrote a post called The Decomposition of Marketing. The argument was that startup CEOs were increasingly breaking marketing apart — moving product marketing under product and moving demandgen under sales — in order to get strong leadership in both product marketing and demandgen without having to find the rare CMO who's genuinely great at both.I think that trend has accelerated. And it's created a problem that nobody seems to be talking about.Mind The GapHere's what happens when you decompose marketing in a multi-product organization.In the fully decomposed organization, there is no traditional CMO. What you have instead is three distinct leaders: an SVP of Demandgen who reports to the CRO and is laser-focused on pipeline; one or more VPs of Product Marketing who report into the CPO (or product GMs) and own their individual products; and an SVP of Corporate Marketing — sometimes carrying the CMO title, sometimes not — who owns brand and communications.Each product…