Human nature abhors a vacuum, too. Agency experts suggest ways to support the big picture.

As an increasing number of CMOs have stepped down without a replacement, all eyes are on what a study from Forrester calls the CMO’s "desperate fight for survival." But what happens to the brands after they’re CMO-free? 

After seeing CMO tenure shortened in recent years, at such brands as McDonald's, J&J, Taco Bell and Uber, the position of CMO is starting to disappear altogether.

Without a CMO providing oversight, it can be easy for marketing teams to lose track of key aspects of their business. Without a single person at the top, performance and brand marketing teams can start to pull apart. As brands look for new ways to cover the responsibilities CMOs once filled, some are turning to their agency partners for a much-needed perspective.

So what issues are keeping marketers awake at night, and what advice do agencies have for them? Whether they’re re-configuring the CMO role or trying to pioneer what might be next, outside perspectives can save brands a few lessons they might otherwise learn the hard way.

We’d like to offer advice from a number of agency leaders to the CMO-less brands out there.

BILL DURRANT, PRESIDENT AT EXVERUS MEDIA

The Challenge: Without a CMO overseeing the work, teams can get off target.

The Solution: Codify your processes. Whether you are assigning budgets, implementing campaigns, or reporting and creating insights, having a set of clearly defined processes prevents team members from managing steps inefficiently, or worse, building two completely different consumer experiences or sending misaligned work to the CEO. 

The Challenge: One of the roles of the CMO is to incite collaboration between teams, and this often goes away when the role does.

The Solution: "Force" collaboration. Whether incentivizing collaboration by making it part of the annual review/bonus structure, or building collaboration into the company process as mandatory steps, don't just talk about or hope for collaboration. Build it in. 

The Challenge: As CMO-less organizations come together on projects, a leadership vacuum is one of the easiest outcomes to predict. 

The Solution: Assign a leader. Rather than the "leader" becoming the Type-A personality no one wants to speak up to, rotate leadership of important projects and require ample floor time for dissent and discussion. Your organization's decisions should come down to the best ideas, not the biggest personalities.

Create a marketing leadership team. To add more discipline, "Frankenstein" the CMO role by assigning a task force of team leads from each discipline: sales, communications, product, data, innovation, etc. These people should collaborate and make decisions together by jury and assign a "foreman" to report to the CEO.

JAE GOODMAN, CEO, OBSERVATORY

The Challenge: Marketers are looking for someone to fill the leadership vacuum created by a CMO's departure. Some are inclined to bring in their agency partners as interim CEOs. But that has to be handled carefully because marketing organizations don't always want to take cues from an agency.

The Solution: Putting anyone in place as interim CMO is a huge vote of trust. Make sure you're getting buy-in from the senior marketing people already in place. They have institutional knowledge and the motivation to keep the brand on track. Junior client executives wait to hear strategies and tactics directly from their senior client colleagues before acting on guidance from the interim CMO, so getting everyone aligned at the start will make a big difference.

A version of this article appeared in Campaign US.