‘Chief Growth Officer’ Title Catches On as a Way to Battle Growth Challenges

It isn’t clear how many companies currently have the position, but there has been a steady trickle. A search on LinkedIn of the title generated more than 2,000 results, while a search on a couple of national job sites showed no available positions; but some, such as SVP of Communications, were written as reporting directly to the CGO.

What’s driving the new title and what does it mean? CEOs and business owners in general are faced with a tougher revenue-generation environment than during other economic recoveries, as capital and psychological constraints rein in companies as well as consumers, so they’ve got to try new ideas for increasing the bottom line.

Another factor is that the democratization of digital media—across business verticals as well as up and down company hierarchies—tends to create opportunities for growth that might go unseen in the day-to-day routine of growing the business. Dozens of major brands, in fact, have created initiatives to fund and borrow ideas from digital-technology startups.

The reasoning and approach taken by, for example, Mondelez International CEO Irene Rosenfeld, is typical of why big companies are creating the position these days. A confectionary, food and beverage company, Mondelez was spun off from Kraft Foods a couple of years ago with an investor mission to maximize revenue growth and profitability for the predecessor company’s fastest-growing and most profitable business lines, mostly snack brands including Oreo and Cadbury. So growth is its raison d’etre.

“The creation of the chief growth officer role ensures that growth remains at the forefront of our company strategy,” Rosenfeld said in a statement about the promotion of 18-year company veteran Mark Clouse to the role. “It will bring the same focus and discipline to driving sustained, profitable growth that we have brought to improving our cost structure and expanding margins.”

In view of that, she said, Clouse “is the ideal leader for this new position, with proven success across global categories as well as in regional and country-operating roles in both emerging and developed markets.”

Among other places, the new C-level position seemed to catch on first in the advertising-agency world. That’s not surprising given that marketing agencies tend to press the creative edge in everything they do; that the Great Recession really whacked advertising spending and the ad industry; and that many advertisers are continuing to look for ways to disintermediate agencies in various ways. All of those factors create conditions that favor new ideas such as charging a single C-level officer with sparking and overseeing all business-growth initiatives.

Lowe and Partners recently created the new role of global chief growth officer and filled it with Naomi Troni, poaching her from Havas Worldwide after 10 years. The hiring of the senior marketing and business-development executive came after Lowe and Partners, owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., merged with Campbell Ewald and then acquired a digital-marketing shop.

“Now [that] we’ve got our act together, I felt we needed someone who could drive business development and with a particular focus on America for Lowe,” Michael Wall, global CEO of Lowe and Partners, said about Troni and her new job.

Have you or would you consider a chief growth officer? We’d be interested in hearing whether this is an idea that would work for your company. Add your comments below.