The marketing variable no dashboard can measure

Marketers spend a lot of time talking about AI, customer data, and analytics. A new study suggests another factor shaping marketing strategy: what’s happening in your CMO’s life.

According to a paper in the Journal of Business Research, major life events like getting married, going through a divorce, becoming a parent, losing a loved one, or recovering from a serious illness can influence everything from campaign strategy to product development. 

Author Cong Feng, Johnson Family Foundation Chair of Business at the University of Mississippi, focused on CMOs because their decisions are front and center with customers. Unlike finance or operations executives, CMOs shape the products, campaigns, and brand stories people experience every day. When their perspective changes, marketing often changes with it.

Feng organizes 34 life events into four broad categories that influence how CMOs allocate attention, assess risk, and connect with customers. The framework is conceptual, but it offers a different way to think about leadership and marketing performance.

Life experiences shape marketing decisions

The first category centers on stress. Events like divorce, the death of a loved one, financial setbacks, or serious illness can make leaders more cautious. Feng says CMOs in those situations are more likely to shorten planning horizons, stick with familiar tactics, and delay bold campaigns or major agency changes.

The next category is events that change how people see the world. Becoming a caregiver or recovering from a serious illness, for example, can deepen empathy. Those experiences often translate into greater emphasis on accessibility, inclusive design, and products that better serve overlooked audiences.

Positive milestones matter, too. Marriage, childbirth, and adoption can encourage longer-term thinking, making investments in brand purpose, sustainability, and community building more appealing than campaigns designed around the next quarterly report.

The final category focuses on stability and reputation. During periods when public perception carries extra weight, CMOs tend to lean toward trusted partners, consistent messaging, and lower-risk media strategies that minimize disruption.

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The takeaway

The study raises a broader question about leadership. Marketing organizations invest heavily in data, forecasting models, and AI to improve decision-making. Those tools can support strategy, but they can’t measure the experiences of the people interpreting the data.

Feng’s framework doesn’t claim that every life event produces a predictable business outcome. Instead, it challenges the assumption that executives leave their personal lives at the office door.

That has practical implications for marketing leaders and boards. Executive coaching, temporary workload adjustments during major life events, and stronger deputy leadership can help organizations maintain momentum while easing the pressure on a single executive.

That shouldn’t stop with the C-suite. The same life events that influence a CMO affect copywriters, designers, analysts, campaign managers, and everyone else on the marketing team. The difference is that senior executives often receive coaching, flexibility, and organizational support, while everyone else is expected to keep producing as though nothing has changed.

Companies spend billions on improving performance through better data, better technology, and now AI. Getting the most from them requires investing in the people who use them.

“When life shapes marketing: a conceptual framework linking chief marketing officers’ private life events to marketing performance,” by Cong Feng, in Journal of Business Research, can be downloaded here. (No registration required.)