Watch: WFA Global Marketer of the Year nominee Syl Saller

You can also read The Drum's interview with Saller where she discussed the CMO role’s evolution within the boardroom.

After a year in which global chief marketers at fellow businesses have seen their roles drastically change – or cut altogether – as boards question the value of a CMO position, Saller admits that she has “concern” over the future of the job.

Uber, Johnson & Johnson, Beam Suntory, McDonald’s, Kellogg's, Taco Bell, Netflix, Walmart and Coca-Cola (though it later reversed that move) have all come to the conclusion at some point in the past year that ‘chief marketing officers’ are no longer a business necessity. Responsibilities have instead been baked into broader ‘customer’ or ‘growth’ remits, or simply been spread across a team.

“It's up to us as CMOs and as an industry to address it. But not by talking about it,” Saller says.

“By talking about how to get credibility in the boardroom all the time we were perpetuating this problem of ‘do we have credibility?’. It’s like, ‘thou doth protest too much’ when in fact what we all need to do is get out there and talk the language of ROI and stop looking at things from a marketing perspective. I look at things from the perspective of our CEO and say okay, what do we need to do as an enterprise? What is our growth agenda? And then what do I need to do to deliver the growth agenda? Credibility is not automatic.”

You have until the 31 January to vote for Saller and the other nominees on the WFA website.