CMOs, Shareholder Value and the Decline of Marketing Risk-Taking

You'd have to be older than a Millennial to remember a time when corporate CEOs were heavily involved in marketing decisions, like increased spend on media, the development of new Big Idea ads, the launching of new consumer products (rather than the spitting out of line extensions) and the formulation of strategies designed to outsmart competitors. That was a time before "shareholder value" became the universal corporate objective -- the value to be delivered to shareholders because of management's ability to grow earnings, dividends and share price.