CMOs need to stop chasing budget to build influence

Brand has always been an engine of growth. According to Gartner research, companies with a strong brand strategy are twice as likely to exceed their growth goals. In Gartner’s definition, “strong” means three things: it is aligned with business strategy; consistently executed across functions; and recognised by executive leadership as critical to growth. However, brand is often seen by leadership as a “nice to have” when it comes to budget.

Common roadblocks include leaders who don’t understand brand value, business decisions that ignore brand principles, and CMOs who struggle to demonstrate brand impact in executive terms. The predictable response is equally familiar: if only marketing had more budget, results would follow.

The budget myth
Here’s the uncomfortable finding: according to Gartner research, brand budget size and brand budget growth show no direct effect on brand strategy performance – or on exceeding revenue and profit growth goals.

What the data does show is diminishing returns. Spend can help up to a threshold, then it plateaus, and beyond that it can decline, suggesting additional spend may be better deployed in other growth priorities once the “brand basics” are funded. The practical risk is political as much as financial: chasing brand budget beyond the threshold needed risks CMOs’ credibility if they can’t show returns.

The differentiation lever: CMO influence
If bigger budgets aren’t the differentiator, what is? CMO influence over business decisions. Gartner’s analysis shows a 14% lift in brand strategy performance when the CMO is perceived as a market shaper. Market shapers lead through strategic insight and influence, connecting brand and business strategies so brand becomes a lever for enterprise choices, not just marketing outputs.

Two moves to drive differentiation without bigger budgets
Partner differently on brand. Market shapers build a broader coalition across functions. While many CMOs default to product, sales, and CX, market shapers’ allies include leaders like finance and IT – expanding where brand principles show up in decisions and execution.

This matters because business partners want more than campaign support: 54% say CMOs should make better business recommendations based on insight, and 66% want more change-management support for brand.

Scale impact by distributing brand work. Rather than centralising everything in marketing for control, market shapers use cross-functional teams to support governance, measurement, internal activation, and messaging alignment – so the enterprise moves faster without diluting consistency. AI accelerates this model: market shapers are more likely than other CMOs to use AI across major brand activities, improving coordination and efficiency.

CMOs who want to differentiate their brands without bigger budgets should stop treating spend as the primary lever and start behaving like market shapers.

Being perceived as a market shaper delivers a measurable lift to performance, because it changes who shapes the value proposition and how fast the organisation can execute it. Practically, that means broadening cross-functional partnerships beyond the usual suspects, then providing what those partners say they most need: sharper strategic insight and stronger change-management support.

Carlos Guerrero and Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst are VP analysts in the Gartner Marketing Practice