Podcast: CEO Blindspot with Richard O’Connor
For the fourth episode of the Wildfire Podcast, I sat down with Richard O'Connor, CEO of B2B Marketing and Propolis, to discuss the findings from The CEO Blind Spot report.
Based on research with 150 CEOs and business leaders, the study explores how marketing is perceived at board level, why so many CEOs still see it as a support function, and what marketers can do to strengthen their commercial credibility.
Podcast Highlights
What was the key finding from The CEO Blind Spot research?
Alex: What was the key finding? Was there a key stat or big reveal that really stood out for you?
Richard: I’ve got to be honest, it was uncomfortable reading.
The headline finding was that around nine in ten CEOs see marketing as a support function rather than a growth driver.
We had an inkling that the figure would be reasonably high, but it’s still pretty hard to read.
Marketing’s position in B2B organisations isn’t being seen correctly. Part of that comes from a misunderstanding of the role marketing plays, but there is also some responsibility on the marketing side.
Marketers have some agency here. We can do something about the corner the function has been painted into.
What does “ghost revenue” mean?
Alex: There was a term used in the report around “ghost revenue”, where marketing creates commercial value but doesn’t get the credit for it. Is that what we’re talking about here?
Richard: Ghost revenue is really just a way of framing the fact that CEOs tend to overweight the last mile of the sale.
They see sales as the tangible growth driver — strategic and crucial to delivering results — but often miss the point that the last mile is the product of a whole series of activities.
That can include brand, PR, demand generation and nurturing.
None of this is new. You would hope that smart CEOs recognise that the engine for growth is a combination of marketing and sales.
But marketing still seems to be stuck in this corner where it’s viewed as an optional support function that can be cut year on year.
What is the credibility issue for marketers?
Alex: There are a lot of stats in the report around CEOs not seeing marketers as commercially credible and wanting marketers to have more business-focused conversations. Is that something where perceptions need to change, or do marketers need to get better?
Richard: There are a few things going on.
If you go back 20 or 30 years, marketing was a much more strategic role. Think about the four Ps: product, place, price and promotion.
Marketers were helping shape strategy and value propositions. They were involved in pricing. A lot of that has eroded over time.
MarTech has been brilliant for marketing in many ways, but it has also helped box marketers into a corner.
We encouraged CEOs and CFOs to focus on the MQL because it gave them something tangible and measurable. The problem is that it then became the metric that mattered.
Marketing clearly has a much bigger impact on commercial value and business performance than MQLs alone can show.
How can marketers build more commercial credibility?
Alex: So how do marketers change that perception and become more commercially credible?
Richard: Marketing can do more by becoming the voice of the business strategy.
Can you articulate the business strategy? Can you explain the measures that drive shareholder value? And can you demonstrate how the work you do connects directly to those goals?
That’s where commercial fluency comes from.
It’s not about speaking in an esoteric marketing language that the rest of the business doesn’t understand or care about.
The best marketers are still able to demonstrate awareness, impact and reach, but they can also show harder metrics such as pipeline, closed business, lifetime value and growth.
That demonstrates that marketing understands how its activity leads to tangible commercial outcomes.
Is being more commercial a trade-off for creativity?
Alex: We’ve talked a lot about creativity in B2B marketing. Does becoming more commercially focused mean sacrificing that creativity?
Richard: No. In fact, I think we’ve got increasingly strong evidence that creativity leads to commercial success.
Looking across hundreds of B2B Marketing Awards entries, the leading work connects creativity, brand activity, and strong ideas to hard commercial outcomes.
That might be pipeline generation, closed business, lifetime value or growth rates.
And creativity becomes even more important when you think about AI.
If AI is essentially boiling human intelligence down into an average, where does competitive advantage come from?
It comes from cut-through.
It comes from positioning your brand as something different to what everybody else is doing.
Creativity has never been more important in marketing.
Is AI making it easier for marketers to prove their value, or is it undermining marketing?
Alex: Is AI making it easier for marketers to justify their work and prove they’re delivering commercially? Or is it undermining marketing because businesses think AI can just do the work instead?
Richard: Both, depending on the organisation.
The leading organisations are using AI as a multiplier, not the player.
Everyone is using AI for operational efficiency and to work faster. That’s becoming a hygiene factor.
The businesses making a real difference are using it to make better decisions, generate better insight, improve attribution and demonstrate commercial impact.
But AI should also free up the work where human judgement is vital.
I think we’re going to move from a knowledge economy into a judgement economy.
The human value in organisations will increasingly be judgement — strategic thinking, knowing what works and what doesn’t, and understanding where to focus.
If you cut people in favour of AI in the areas where thinking and strategy happen, you risk underinvesting in the thing that will become your competitive advantage.
What would your number one piece of advice be to CEOs?
Alex: What would your number one piece of advice be to CEOs? They’ve read the report — what should they take away and what should they do differently?
Richard: It’s a very simple answer:
Where is value coming from two to five years from now?
That’s the question CEOs should be asking.
If you’re underinvesting in the function generating medium- to long-term demand, there’s going to be nothing for sales to close in two to five years’ time.
Sales is getting harder too. Sales cycles are longer, buying groups are more complicated, and younger buyers increasingly want to do their own research rather than speak to salespeople.
So where is that demand going to come from?
It’s also perfectly reasonable for CEOs to expect marketers to become more commercially literate and demonstrate how they’re connected to business strategy.
But don’t make it marketing’s problem to solve alone.
Help them.
Invite marketers into finance meetings. Help them understand the metrics. Coach them, encourage them and train them.
If marketing lacks commercial capability, that isn’t simply a marketing weakness. It’s a business weakness — and ultimately the CEO has responsibility for addressing it.
What advice would you give to marketers?
Alex: If you were speaking directly to the marketers reading the report, what should they take away from it?
Richard: You have to lean into business strategy and recognise that marketing is a function that delivers growth.
You need enough financial and commercial acumen to understand how the business makes money and what your role is within that.
But I’d also encourage marketers to bring customer insight to the board.
And by customer insight, I mean real customers.
Not personas, synthetic audiences or abstract definitions.
Understand how the business is going to deliver its growth goals through specific customer groups.
How much new business will come from different sectors? Which target customers matter? How much revenue will come from cross-sell, upsell and retention?
If you can bring a deep understanding of where next year’s budget is coming from and connect it to real customers, that alone builds commercial credibility.
Read The CEO Blind Spot report
The podcast explores some of the biggest themes from The CEO Blind Spot, but the full report goes deeper into how CEOs perceive marketing and what needs to change.
Download the report to explore the research in full and learn how B2B organisations can build a stronger relationship between marketing and the boardroom.
FAQs
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The research suggests many CEOs still associate marketing more closely with support and lead generation than long-term commercial growth. Short-term pressure and an emphasis on easily measured outcomes have contributed to that perception.
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Ghost revenue describes commercial value created by marketing that doesn’t receive direct credit when a sale closes. Brand, PR, content and demand generation may all influence a deal long before the sales team closes it.
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Marketers can strengthen their credibility by understanding business strategy, speaking in commercial terms and connecting marketing activity to outcomes such as growth, pipeline, customer value and future demand.
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AI is most valuable when it acts as a multiplier: handling repetitive work, improving insight and supporting better decisions while freeing marketers to spend more time on creativity, judgement and strategy.
