Long-term growth tops every CMO's list of priorities. Short-term targets dominate what their teams actually spend their time on.That gap is one of several uncovered by the CMO Outlook 2026, a new report from Lippincott and Bloomberg Media built on conversations with more than 500 marketing leaders worldwide. Speaking at a special event organised by Bloomberg Media and Lippincott, Christine Cook, global chief commercial officer of Bloomberg Media, explained how the report groups them not by industry or title, but by what each is fighting for within their own organisation.Revenue drivers fight for accountability and measurable results. Transformation leaders fight to lead the business through technology. Institutional navigators fight organisational inertia. Credibility builders, said Cook, “are fighting for strategic standing and the money to actually be able to do something”.Greg Handrick, senior partner at Lippincott, took the findings further across five themes.The short term is winningMore than a third (35%) of today's primary marketing decision-makers now come into the role from a performance or growth marketing background rather than brand or creative disciplines, according to the report. One in five don't even have the word ‘marketing’ in their job title, instead carrying chief commercial or chief revenue titles.That shift shows up directly in where the energy goes. Ask CMOs what their priority is and most say long-term growth. Ask what their teams actually spend their time on, and short-term targets and proving marketing's value through metrics come first. “I would argue now, based on the data, the short term is winning,” said Handrick.The highest-performing CMOs in the survey refused that trade-off entirely. Handrick summed up their answer in one line: “We don't trade off the long term for the short term.”Greg Handrick, senior partner, LippincottInfluence comes from alignmentThe report found that just 29% of marketing leaders with 15 or more years of experience say they are their organisation's primary decision-maker, against 60% of those with five to 14 years. Seniority, in other words, doesn't guarantee a seat at the table.A related pattern showed up in how CMOs explain the barriers they actually face. Only 12% of respondents said their organisation’s tech enablement was ‘excellent’, yet technology barely registered when CMOs were asked what was holding them back. “Tech was nowhere near the top, nor was fragmented data,” said Handrick. “What was top? Conflicting priorities, not getting senior alignment, not getting people to trust in the role of marketing.”The best performers gave a consistent answer, according to Handrick: “They said their organisations are aligned. They regularly speak with the CEO and everybody speaks the same language. It wasn’t to do with tech or AI.”Find your internal championThat kind of access isn't something most CMOs can simply pitch their way into. For those who didn't already have it, Handrick's advice was practical: don't focus only on the chief executive, who rarely has the time or appetite to champion a marketing agenda alone. Find someone else in the business who genuinely understands the work and is willing to advocate for it.He pointed to chief operating officers as the strongest example, more consistently engaged than CFOs, who he said are “fantastic” on paper but often simply not that interested. “It has to be someone who's genuinely passionate to sit down and go, I get it,” he said. That person becomes the translator who can carry marketing's case into rooms a CMO can't always reach alone.Measure what mattersCMOs are leaning heavily on ROI, cost-per-acquisition and sales metrics. In Handrick's view, that's because those are the numbers CFOs and CEOs respond to.“I don't think that a cost-per-acquisition is the right metric to focus on if you're driving a brand,” he said. One of the report's own survey respondents put a sharper point on it, describing a widespread instinct among leadership to chase “vending-machine” ROI, where every pound is tracked and nothing is funded unless it shows up immediately.Handrick illustrated the risk with Swarovski, where every standard metric – sales, awareness and brand strength – looked healthy, but a closer look at grey-market pricing data showed customers had been trained to buy at the cheapest possible price. “I said, you're about to fall off a cliff,” he recalled. It did, and it took five years of repositioning to recover.Culture without commitmentThe report found that 41% of marketing leaders feel personally on top of culture, yet believe their own organisation lags behind. Handrick's own observation matched that gap. “They mention newsletters and they mention essentially passively staying in touch,” he said. “No one's making a concerted effort to stay on top of current culture.”Even when an idea does land, speed kills it. The report found that 35% of CMOs take three to four weeks to get a culturally relevant idea from insight to live campaign and 81% of those already investing in cultural marketing said they'd do more of it if the obstacles in their way were removed. Handrick summed up: “It takes too long to get it to market, and it takes too long to get signed off.”SpeakersChristine Cook, global chief commercial officer of Bloomberg MediaGreg Handrick, senior partner at Lippincott