As a relatively new role in pharma — and one that not all pharma companies have — chief marketing officers (CMOs) are tasked with raising the profile of marketing within their companies and driving efforts to match the creativity and impact seen in consumer advertising.

At its foundation, the chief marketing officer role is designed to spur the pharma company’s growth, but the ways of doing so have transformed significantly in recent years.

Five CMOs interviewed pinpointed key aspects of their role in 2025, including how they foster creativity that’s as innovative as that of consumer marketing, build trust in science, and stay abreast of the rapidly changing marketing landscape.

Most leaders interviewed agreed that the CMO role, at its core, is increasingly becoming about flipping the script and focusing on “what people want from us, rather than what we want to tell people,” says Gail Horwood, CMO at Novartis.

Lina Polimeni, chief corporate brand officer at Eli Lilly, refers to this concept as the head of marketing’s “North Star.”

“The beauty and the role of marketing has always been communicating the ‘North Star’ — the ‘So what?’ — for patients,” Polimeni says. “Marketing has, over the years, created a strong credibility within the rest of the company — and the reason is we’ve always tied that ‘North Star’ to business results.”

In the first of a three-part series based on conversations with five pharma leaders with CMO or similar titles, MM+M breaks down how they view their roles, what other stakeholders want from their CMOs and how to build consumer trust. 

CMOs in a changing healthcare landscape

Today’s pharma CMO must maintain a bird’s-eye view of a very different healthcare landscape than pharma marketers have previously navigated. For one, the complexity of decision-making in healthcare has increased.

The traditional pharma model largely revolved around focusing sales reps and resources on doctor’s offices, with the physician as the primary decisionmaker. Now, patients and caregivers are more curious, as well as willing to engage with and understand the treatments they’re receiving, according to Erica Taylor, who joined Genentech three years ago as its first CMO. 

“It’s much more of a dialogue and a discussion about overall treatment goals, and it’s made the landscape for marketing all the more complex,” Taylor says. “Now we have to use all of the tools available in consumer spaces to make sure we aren’t missing patients who have the chance to benefit from our medicines.”

In relation to their organizations, CMOs are now expected to move beyond just brand management and drive company-wide growth strategies or even shape portfolio positioning. That mirrors the shift from CMOs being solely product-centric to more stakeholder-centric, as marketing now spans beyond HCPs and patients and across payers, policy, advocacy and tech partners.

As a result, messaging has shifted from product features to holistic value outcomes, digital ecosystem building and patient experience, says Kate Cronin, CMO at Medtronic Diabetes.

“Digital health wearables, remote care and personalized therapies require CMOs to think more like a tech product leader — building these ongoing engagement journeys rather than episodic campaigns,” adds Cronin, who previously held the chief brand officer role at Moderna. 

Why should CMOs care about digitization and transformation? Consumer decisions are now made quickly, often in multiple different environments, and in more fluid and connected ways. They’re also increasingly expecting more from healthcare providers and pharma: People want the convenience of DoorDash, Netflix and Amazon for their medicines and healthcare experiences.

“To me the burning platform is: If I can order boba tea from halfway across the country to my children, I should be able to get my medicine just about that easily,” Taylor explains. “If you think about which one’s more important, ordering boba is less important than making sure I get my medicines. There’s something very obvious in that.”

To stay on top of the ever-changing healthcare landscape, Horwood emphasizes that pharma CMOs must serve as a “dot connector” and a bridge — and always maintain a sharp focus on the external landscape, identifying how messaging is received, digested and acted upon. While there are other roles within pharma that are customer-focused, like patient advocacy, Horwood sees the CMO role as uniquely positioned to be 100% focused on the data behind the consumer’s needs.

“I have that bird’s-eye view, particularly because of the data and the ecosystem we’ve put in place to automate our marketing and personalize it,” Horwood says. “I have the ability to see patterns and trends. I see my job as connecting the dots — not necessarily coming up with all the solutions — but reflecting on what could be early warning signals, or just signals from our users out there.”

CMO goals in 2025

Most CMOs interviewed agree that the primary demand placed on the role is financial: Marketing must demonstrate impact and boost sales. “Everything that we’re doing has to move the needle with reputation and sales,” Cronin says. 

Communicating the story of how you’re creating impact internally is also important, especially given the latest challenges of a volatile market, uncertain economy and geopolitical environment — which can all impact consumer behaviors.

“You have to have the numbers to show it, but your partners in the company need to understand it as well, so that everyone aligns and says, ‘Yes, we should be doing this marketing. We believe in this campaign,’” Cronin says.

That’s where measurement and analytics come into play, something CMOs pinpointed as another demand placed on them. While marketers are able to measure outcomes across digital channels better than ever before, there’s still an opportunity to gather more real-world outcome data, leverage predictive analytics more, and know where to shift marketing dollars in advance.

“We need to demonstrate real-world value and constantly show in-real time that the marketing is working,” Cronin says. “These are the things that are an ongoing opportunity and a challenge.”

Among other demands and goals, CMOs identified constant adaptability as market and technology cycles move faster than regulatory cycles; data fluency; and multichannel fluency.

Finally, there’s more of a focus on developing trust with consumers — and trust in science, according to Katie Williams, CMO at Haleon, GSK’s spin-off consumer health unit.

Twenty years ago, consumers may have been getting most of their health information from traditional experts like doctors or dentists. As the healthcare landscape has become more complex, so has sources of consumer information, ranging from Google to TikTok to ChatGPT. Lifestyle influencers and creators now hold more power than traditional experts in many cases.

“In the past, the trust equation might have been a bit simpler: Science plus expertise equals trust, right?” Williams notes. “But now, because consumers have access to so much information and data, that simple equation doesn’t always necessarily equate to trust.”

Amid growing misinformation, people are often having challenges sifting through and identifying what’s valuable— an issue that will only accelerate as AI powers more data. The questions CMOs grapple with include how consumers are getting their information and whether they can trust the sources, even if it’s an AI platform like ChatGPT spitting the content out.

The trust equation will become more complex — pairing physicians with TikTok creators with AI platforms, for example — but the focus on translating accurate science will stay the same, Williams stressed.

“Our definition of expertise has evolved, but our commitment to science hasn’t,” Williams says. “We have to take that science and package it up in different ways so it’s more relatable, understandable and accessible, and meets consumers where they are. It requires you to change your thinking, because trust is more important than ever before.”