Key Takeaways
- Monzo’s first CMO appointment highlights how growth leadership has evolved beyond traditional marketing.
- The right leadership structure depends on business needs, not organisational convention.
- Before hiring for a title, businesses should first identify the growth constraint they need to solve.
When Monzo announced the appointment of AJ Coyne as its first-ever Chief Marketing Officer earlier this week, I found myself doing a double take. Not because the promotion itself was surprising. AJ had already been serving as VP of Marketing since 2024 and, from the outside looking in, the move seemed like a natural progression.
What caught my attention was something much simpler – Monzo has never had a CMO before. For a company that has become one of the most recognisable names in digital banking, that is quite remarkable.
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Like many people who work in growth and marketing, I have spent a fair amount of time around organisational charts. I have seen companies appoint CMOs early in their journey, I’ve also seen businesses with significant scale operate successfully without one.
So when I saw the announcement, it got me thinking again – at what point does a business actually need a CMO? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the answer is far less obvious than many of us assume.
The Traditional Marketing Playbook Doesn’t Always Apply Anymore
For a long time, the path seemed fairly predictable – a company grows; its marketing becomes more sophisticated; a senior marketing leader is appointed; eventually, a CMO takes a seat at the executive table.
But modern growth businesses don’t always follow that script.
Over the last decade, some of the most successful technology companies have grown through a combination of product experience, customer advocacy, community, data, partnerships, referrals and operational excellence. Marketing remains important, of course, but it often becomes deeply intertwined with several other functions. In those environments, growth can be owned by multiple teams rather than sitting neatly within one department.
That’s one of the reasons I found Monzo’s announcement so interesting. It serves as a reminder that there is no universal organisational blueprint for growth. What matters is not whether a particular title exists, but whether the capability exists.
Is Growth Still a Simple Marketing Challenge?
Simple answer – no, not anymore.
One of the more interesting aspects of working in a fractional capacity as I am is that you are often brought into situations where growth is no longer a simple marketing challenge. The conversation may begin with customer acquisition, but it rarely stays there for long.
From my role as Content Manager at Xapo Bank to supporting content marketing strategy for SaaS company Nurp, and my current client engagements as Fractional CMO/Growth Consultant, I have been heavily involved discussing onboarding journeys, customer retention, product adoption, conversion bottlenecks, team alignment, reporting gaps, data quality, customer value, or operational processes.
The reality is that growth in today’s technology-driven world tends to sit at the intersection of many functions. That’s why I find the “Do we need a CMO?” question slightly less useful than the other one – “what problem are we actually trying to solve?”
Sometimes the answer genuinely is stronger marketing leadership, at other times, it isn’t. In fact, sometimes the biggest growth constraint has very little to do with marketing at all.
Why The Timing Matters
What I find particularly interesting about Monzo’s decision is the timing.
This isn’t a young company trying to establish itself, it’s a business that has already achieved significant scale. Which suggests to me that the CMO appointment is less about marketing becoming important and more about the business entering a new stage of maturity.
The challenges facing a company at scale are different from those faced during earlier growth phases. Instead of asking how to acquire more customers, attention increasingly turns towards how to deepen relationships, strengthen the brand, increase customer value, coordinate multiple growth initiatives and support longer-term business objectives.
Those are complex matters that require coordination across functions and clarity around priorities. Viewed through that lens, the appointment makes a great deal of sense.
What Smaller Businesses Can Learn
Whenever a high-profile company makes a leadership appointment, it can be tempting to assume there is a lesson everyone should immediately copy. Not in all cases.
For me, the lesson isn’t that every growing business needs a CMO.Nor is it that businesses should wait until they reach Monzo’s scale before appointing one. In my honest opinion, the more useful lesson is that leadership structures should evolve in response to business needs, not assumptions.
Rather than hire on the basis of titles, business should focus on capabilities. They should be clear what problem need solving, in what order, before asking who should get hired. Strong organisations identify the constraint first, then build the leadership capability needed to address it. And for anyone involved in building growth organisations, that’s a far more interesting conversation than job titles alone.