Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
- Location: U.S. (Remote + travel required for retail partners)
- Reports to: CEO
- Stage: High-growth, national retail expansion
The Role
This is a commercial leadership role responsible for driving the client's national scale-up across direct-to-consumer (DTC) and retail channels. The CMO is the executive owner of the client's market presence and must ensure marketing strategies directly drive key business metrics like revenue, velocity, margin, and long-term enterprise value.
What You Own
Brand and Creative System Leadership
You are responsible for the client's brand integrity across all customer touchpoints, including packaging, digital platforms, and partnerships. This involves setting and enforcing brand and creative standards to ensure a singular, consistent look, feel, and voice nationwide.
Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy
This ownership spans all marketing efforts across DTC, retail, and wholesale. You must integrate brand, performance, lifecycle, retail, and trade marketing into one cohesive system where channels reinforce each other for maximum cumulative impact.
Retail & Trade Marketing Execution
You will lead the retail marketing strategy in partnership with Sales and Finance, viewing retail as a core growth engine. This includes building marketing plans, managing key retail performance metrics, and prioritizing trade spend and promotions based on expected sales velocity and ROI.
Financial Accountability for Marketing
As an owner of the marketing P&L, you must manage the budget, forecasts, and spend allocation. Your work will tie marketing investment to key financial outcomes like revenue, contribution margin, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and lifetime value (LTV), requiring disciplined tradeoffs for growth and efficiency.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Marketing strategy must be based on objective data, utilizing industry platforms, retailer point-of-sale (POS) data, and internal systems. You will translate sales and velocity trends into actionable marketing strategy, balancing quantitative insight with strong brand judgment.
Operational Growth Management
This involves managing growth by shaping demand to align with inventory, supply chain, and retail capacity. You must synchronize marketing calendars with production and distribution commitments, knowing when to accelerate or hold back to protect financial health.
Team Leadership and Operating Discipline
Your responsibilities include building and leading a high-performing marketing organization. You will establish clear priorities, operating rhythms, and accountability, focusing the team on high-impact work and desired outcomes.
How You’re Measured
Success is primarily gauged by brand consistency at national scale, sustained growth in key retail velocity metrics, and the effective, profitable use of trade spend and promotional dollars. Other measures include sustainable DTC growth and high organizational alignment and execution.
Requirements
- 15+ years of progressive marketing experience, including 5+ years in a senior leadership capacity.
- Experience in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) marketing is essential.
- A proven history of successfully scaling a brand into broad national retail distribution.
- Deep expertise in key retail performance metrics, including velocity, distribution, and trade spend analysis.
- Hands-on experience analyzing market data using relevant industry platforms.
- Strong financial literacy across budgets, forecasting, CAC, LTV, and margin dynamics.
- Demonstrated success in leading omni-channel marketing efforts across both DTC and retail.
- A proven ability to effectively lead senior teams and partner cross-functionally across an organization.