Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are under growing pressure to drive profitability and revenue growth, even as they navigate the complex demands of AI integration, ecosystem leadership, and talent transformation, reveals the IBM CMO Study 2025.
The findings from the global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) show that 63% of Indian CMOs are now accountable for delivering profitability, closely aligned with their global counterparts (64%). Additionally, 53% are directly responsible for driving revenue growth, underscoring the CMO’s expanding role beyond traditional brand stewardship.
Additionally, Indian CMOs are prioritising customer experience, tech modernization, and business model innovation to future-proof their organizations, alongside scaling service delivery and marketing, and sales effectiveness. Yet, they face critical gaps in responsible AI, talent readiness, and data utilisation. The findings highlight a growing disconnect between ambition and execution in the age of generative AI.
“As AI radically transforms how businesses engage, operate, and grow, Indian CMOs are uniquely positioned to lead this shift by harnessing AI responsibly,” said Tuhina Pandey, Director – APAC Communications & Marketing, India and South Asia, IBM. She added, “While the potential of AI is clear, what’s needed now is a bold new playbook, one powered by trusted data, skilled talent, cultural reset, and AI augmentation.”
Key India Findings:
- Business Transformation Priorities: CMOs are focusing on Customer Experience (41%), scalability of delivery of services (37%), technology modernization (37%), marketing & sales effectiveness (34%), and business model innovation (32%) to drive future readiness.
- Responsible AI Gap: Only 26% of Indian CMOs have established responsible AI guidelines to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability in automated decision-making.
- Skills Paradox: While 44% of CMOs believe their function is ready to integrate Agentic AI, only 26% believe they have the necessary talent to achieve their goals over the next two years. In India, just 23% of CMOs have prepared their teams for the cultural and operational shifts AI agents will bring.
- Untapped data: 63% agree that generative AI’s value lies in proprietary data, yet only 1% of enterprise data is being tapped.
- Cross-functional silos: Only one-third of organizations have cross-functional view of the customer journey. CMOs estimate that fully aligning marketing, sales, and operations could unlock up to a 20% increase in revenue.
- Ecosystem focus: 62% of Indian CMOs prioritize partnerships, well above the global average of 47%.
The IBM Institute for Business Value, in cooperation with Oxford Economics, surveyed 1,800 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) across 33 geographies and 24 industries between March and May 2025. For simplicity and audience relevance, findings in this report are attributed to “CMOs,” though data are aggregated across these roles and not segmented by title. As such, references to “CMOs” represent the combined insights of these demand leadership roles, unless otherwise specified.
Survey topics include executive priorities, growth objectives, customer experience initiatives, technology adoption, collaboration and talent.
