The inaugural CMO50 list is revealed

When IDG launched CMO as a brand in early 2013, marketers globally were already in the midst of significant change. Every which way you looked at it, marketing was experiencing a shake-up - in opportunity, in complexity and in executive expectation.

Faced with such a huge amount of transformation, our ambition with CMO was twofold: Firstly, assist CMOs and aspiring marketing leaders to understand their changing role in corporate leadership and as custodians of the customer; and secondly, help marketers navigate and harness the growing array of technology, digital and data capabilities available to them.

It’s this same ambition that has led us to our inaugural CMO50 list, which I’m delighted to reveal to our readers online.

You can find the full list of CMO50 for 2015 in our dedicated CMO50 portal

The CMO50 is about recognising those who are taking on all the trappings of modern marketing leadership, and who are being rewarded with a more strategic and innovation business leadership position as a result.

Having spent so much time reading their submissions as well as profiling our top 50, I also think the list is a reflection of just how willing Australian marketers are to change. Every one of them has been brave enough to test new ideas, build their knowledge in non-traditional marketing areas, invest in technology, data and digital capabilities and challenge their organisations to do something different. And each of them is aware of the need to balance science with art, data with insight, and technology with human ingenuity.

You simply can’t do the job of CMO without being adaptable, resilient, and willing to take on new skills and functions. You also can’t do it alone, and as much as we’ve highlighted individuals in this list today, they in turn have pointed to their teams, executive peers and corporate cultures as core to their impact and success.

In our CMO50 section, you’ll find profiles of all of our top 50 for 2015, including excerpts from their submissions. You’ll also find details on our judging panel, the criteria used for selecting the order of the list, as well as a wealth of insights on what modern marketing is all about today and what it takes to be a CMO.

I know the results of the CMO50 are going to please many, and annoy others, and there’ll be plenty of conjecture about how our judges made their decisions.

At the very least, I hope this initiative generates healthy debate about what it takes to be a great marketing leader now and into the future.

*And now you can vote for your favourite CMO from this year's CMO50 list and have the chance to win a GoPro Hero3. To submit a vote, simply click on the list on any of the articles in our CMO50 portal.