''' I have never hired a Chief Marketing Officer. I never will.
After exiting my last agency for over £10M, I’ve had the capital and the opportunity. But the role is fundamentally broken. It’s an impossible job, a political hot potato, and a catastrophic waste of money for most businesses.
CEOs complain their CMOs don’t understand the numbers. CMOs complain their CEOs don’t understand the brand. The truth is, they are both right. The role is a forced, unhappy marriage between spreadsheets and storyboards. And it’s ending in a very public, very expensive divorce. The future isn't another human trying to bridge this gap. The future is an autonomous agent that makes the gap irrelevant.
The most damning statistic in the C-suite belongs to the CMO. According to Spencer Stuart, the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is now just 4.2 years. The lowest of any C-suite role. Think about that. It takes a year to get your feet under the desk and a year to plan your exit. That leaves 24 months to actually do anything.
Why the churn? Because the role is built on a foundation of sand. The CMO is expected to be a data scientist, a brand visionary, a creative genius, a sales driver, and a political operator. No human being can be all of these things. The result is a focus on the most visible, least impactful metrics. Engagement rates. Follower growth. Brand awareness surveys. The soft, fluffy stuff that feels like progress but has a near-zero correlation with P&L.
I’ve sat in boardrooms where a CMO presents a deck celebrating a 15% increase in Twitter followers, while the company’s market share is bleeding out. It’s not marketing; it’s theatre. The CEO, often a former CFO or COO, sees this and smells blood. They see a £250,000+ salary, a multi-million-pound budget, and a return measured in