A useful CMO
Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2025 3:20 pm
The CMO in the current state is pointless and more of a risk than a help.
The only reason to get one is the marketing-boost from his experience.
1. CMO aims only for brand rating, but in many cases you need brand awareness (too) to get more customers.
It makes no sense to let CMO manage anything if his management doesn't fit the needs and he is shutting down advertising while it's still needed to get higher market-share.
-> It would be great to have different sliders for these two parameters (brand-awareness & brand-rating), then CMO could be useful in his job.
2. If you let CMO handle the budgets he go's "all in" instead of making budget-oriented decisions.
While that's not much of a problem in mid-lategame, it's horrible and can kill your whole business in the early stages. If every of your 20 retail-shops kicks out 2M$ every month for advertising, instead of the 200-300k$ that could be handled, you are instantly bankrupt - thanks to your CMO (wich you can hardly afford himself at this time).
And yes: you can manage the budgets yourself, sure. But why exactly should one hire a CMO if he still has to monitor and change everything himself? That's exactly the tasks i like to give to my CMO, and he fails in everything. Totally frustrating.
You know, later in the game the budgets for advertising are easier to manage yourself anyway. No shortages in cash, the brandratings are more constant... But the early stage is the time a Manager for that kind of things could save you a lot of repetitive work while you expand to new cities and submarkets, constantly build new shops etc.
-> An option for "maximum of x $ per firm" or "max of x $ overall" in the management-policies would help with that. Finetuning can be done by CMO.
That ensures at least that he doesn't stab me in the back while i work for his salary.
3. -> Eventually you can split up the option "chooses media firms and decides budget" so you can let CMO switch media-firms even if he doesn't manage the budgets.
I never really monitor the mediafirms once chosen, but thats sounds like a perfect job for a CMO who is unable to handle budgets :)
Or maybe an option "Hand out flyers in front of retailshops"? A pretty fair deal for 8M$ per year, isn't it?
The only reason to get one is the marketing-boost from his experience.
1. CMO aims only for brand rating, but in many cases you need brand awareness (too) to get more customers.
It makes no sense to let CMO manage anything if his management doesn't fit the needs and he is shutting down advertising while it's still needed to get higher market-share.
-> It would be great to have different sliders for these two parameters (brand-awareness & brand-rating), then CMO could be useful in his job.
2. If you let CMO handle the budgets he go's "all in" instead of making budget-oriented decisions.
While that's not much of a problem in mid-lategame, it's horrible and can kill your whole business in the early stages. If every of your 20 retail-shops kicks out 2M$ every month for advertising, instead of the 200-300k$ that could be handled, you are instantly bankrupt - thanks to your CMO (wich you can hardly afford himself at this time).
And yes: you can manage the budgets yourself, sure. But why exactly should one hire a CMO if he still has to monitor and change everything himself? That's exactly the tasks i like to give to my CMO, and he fails in everything. Totally frustrating.
You know, later in the game the budgets for advertising are easier to manage yourself anyway. No shortages in cash, the brandratings are more constant... But the early stage is the time a Manager for that kind of things could save you a lot of repetitive work while you expand to new cities and submarkets, constantly build new shops etc.
-> An option for "maximum of x $ per firm" or "max of x $ overall" in the management-policies would help with that. Finetuning can be done by CMO.
That ensures at least that he doesn't stab me in the back while i work for his salary.
3. -> Eventually you can split up the option "chooses media firms and decides budget" so you can let CMO switch media-firms even if he doesn't manage the budgets.
I never really monitor the mediafirms once chosen, but thats sounds like a perfect job for a CMO who is unable to handle budgets :)
Or maybe an option "Hand out flyers in front of retailshops"? A pretty fair deal for 8M$ per year, isn't it?