Titles, Org Charts Change to Meet Demands of Integrated Efforts and Strategic Communications

Editor’s Note: Have you noticed a rash of new titles in communications and marketing? Pret a Manger has hired a chief customer officer, Coca-Cola a chief growth officer and Mars employs chief demand officers.

As social media influences consumers to see interactions with brands as integrated adventures, more companies are minting chief experience officers, many of whom oversee communications, marketing and parts of ecommerce.

And speaking of social media, at many companies it’s no longer subsumed under marketing, communications or sales, but resides on its own in the org chart.

With communicators playing larger roles in strategy, chief communications officers are becoming ubiquitous as are chief strategy officers.

As communicators at brands and agencies are being asked to handle the many elements of integrated campaigns, org chart and title changes seem inevitable. Take Ketchum, which last month created a chief integration officer.

Into this environment PR News and the Institute for PR(IPR) will be surveying senior executives later this year about how communications departments are changing. We’ll report the results in a subsequent edition of PR News.

To introduce the topic, this month’s roundtable asks PR pros to discuss changes in titles and org charts. We also ask about other structural trends in communications departments. Their edited responses appear below.