Why Marketers Must Learn to Speak the Language of the CFO
While 67% of marketers say creativity is an extremely valuable competitive advantage, only 12% are highly confident they can justify that investment to their CFO. CFO’s want assurance that major investments (e.g. Super Bowl campaigns) will deliver financial return and that spend is efficiently allocated.
A 2025 Gartner study found that only 34% of CEOs and CFOs “see eye to eye with CMOs on marketing’s role in supporting growth.” Closing this gap is critical, as a a BCG study revealed that when CFOs and CMOs work closely, they can unlock 20-40% more financial upside.
1. Communicate marketings impact on growth:
Central to this point is prioritizing profit, revenue, and market share over media metrics that carry limited financial meaning. System1 and Effie’s book, The Creative Dividend, found that marketing teams with lower confidence in advertising effectiveness rely significantly more (+49%) on metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions, and less on business outcomes like profit, penetration, pricing power and share growth. Revenue without profit is not growth.
The research also explored Effie cases alongside System1 creative effectiveness metrics. Most campaigns report revenue gains and far fewer report profit or market share growth. But profit is a powerful word to the CFO. They want to understand where pricing power exists and how marketing drives incremental customers and growth. Profitable growth is key – increasing revenue means little if it doesn’t equate to higher profit.
2. Bring the voice of the customer into the room:
The best marketing departments put the embed customer insights into decision-marking. They have incredible insight into their target audience(s) and understand what does and doesn’t resonate with them. CMOs must translate customer insight into commercial decisions, support product development and innovation. In turn, this should improve the overall customer experience.
3. Bring the data
Have clear and concise metrics and summaries to demonstrate how strategy drives financial outcomes and support business priorities.
When seeking buy-in for a large investment, lead with evidence at the outset to give the CFO and the wider C-suite confidence that this is the right approach. This could be metrics predicting creativity’s potential, research backing up an increase in brand marketing or learnings from ongoing campaigns to show exactly where budget is allocated and what it returns.
4. Be a custodian of the brand:
Double down on the brand assets and campaigns that have long been successful. After all, great creative wears in. While there is the temptation to constantly create something new and exciting, that should be balanced with what is working for the brand to build familiarity, trust and long-term effectiveness. Even with new creative the marketing should continue to feel on brand.
Create with Confidence®
Pre-testing with real consumers enables teams to predict performance, improve creative quality and validate impact. System1’s Test Your Ad platform measures consumers’ emotional response to creative and gives you clear, decision-ready metrics for the C-Suite, giving them confidence you are making the right creative and media decisions. Want to unlock greater creative effectiveness? Reach out to our team today.