There’s never been a better time for the CMO to step into the CEO role. Right now most companies are scoring points by how much they reduce. You see the headlines every week. AI comes in, thousands of people go out, and it gets called value creation. The companies cutting their way forward are hiring the wrong kind of leader in my opinion. Brand building has never mattered more. New brands are launching faster than ever, AI is pushing everything toward the "sea of sameness". A real point of view is one of the only things left that separates you and that's a marketer's job. Over the last few years there's been a wave of CMOs like Lawrence Kim, Kory Marchisotto, Soyoung Kang and others, moving into President and CEO roles. Because of how dynamic the CMO role is and how much they've had to adjust, they're the ones best placed to be the bridge into the other leadership roles and guide the company to work as one. I find it interesting that the brands that are in a crisis and are being asked to turn around lean on marketing pedigreed leaders to run their companies. I've seen this more than once. This perception that marketing is a function within the greater thing and not the folks that might step up into the CEO and President roles is ironic when we see that when s**t hits the fan, they normally lean on an ex CMO to come in and run the business overall. Marketing's role in my mind has always been to drive commercial success. But the way we went about it only ever took into account marketing's levers, and never really ops or finance or the rest of the business. It's a more single minded way to think about the job than it should be, but that's what's changing.
The future CEO may need to understand customers just as deeply as they understand costs.
Marketing built in its own lane, working only its own levers, is a function. The moment you start seeing the whole system: ops, finance, how decisions actually get made, that's when you stop being a function head and start being a business leader. The CMOs making it to CEO aren't the ones who got better at marketing. They're the ones who stopped thinking of it as a separate thing.
The best CMOs today aren't just marketers, they're business operators who understand customers, revenue, brand, product, and growth. In a market where differentiation is becoming harder, leaders who can connect strategy, execution, and customer insight are increasingly well-positioned to lead from the CEO seat.
Brands are built from the inside out. A brand is, at its core, the people who stand behind it and steer it in service of the people it exists for. CMOs live at that intersection of culture, customer, and commercial outcomes every day. Profit isn’t the purpose; it’s the outcome. When you fuel people to build brands that genuinely serve their communities, sustainable growth follows.
The crisis moment is clarifying something that was always true. Differentiation was always the job. It just got deprioritized every quarter when the performance numbers looked fine. Now the sea of sameness is expensive enough to feel and the CMO is suddenly the most important person in the room. That's not a new role. It's the original one finally getting taken seriously.
Nick Tran I would take it a step further. The CMO has always been the only executive in the room who has to hold the customer, the culture, the brand, and the commercial reality at the same time. That is not a marketing skill set. That is a CEO skill set. We just never called it that. What has changed is that the rest of the business is finally catching up to what good marketing leadership actually requires. The CMOs who have moved into CEO roles did not succeed because they were great at campaigns. They succeeded because they were systems thinkers who happened to sit in the marketing seat. They understood how culture becomes brand becomes customer experience becomes revenue. That is an end-to-end business view, not a functional one. When you cut your way to margin, you are often cutting the people closest to the customer. Marketing teams. Community managers. Brand storytellers. The people who actually know why someone chose you over the alternative. You can rebuild a cost structure. You cannot easily rebuild that institutional knowledge or the trust that took years to earn. The CMOs who are ready to step into CEO roles stopped thinking of marketing as a function and started thinking of it as the operating system of the business.
how do you feel about how marketing works with sales teams in this landscape? Should Chief Rev Officer lead marketing? Vice versa or equal and up to CEO to navigate decisions?
I think CMO transitioning to CEO are more primed to transition brand thinking from living in the marketing in the marketing department to the total company, employees, supply chain, etc.
Nick, the irony is hard to miss. Seemed for a while there, constant reporting on short CMO life spans, now few years later, the CEO role has actually become more volatile (CEO tenure has been steadily decreasing since 2021, I googled!). Funny how the role everyone was questioning is probably now producing some of the leaders AND best equipped to run entire companies. 🤷♂️
Agreed. You need people who truly understand brand. The internet has already made brands homogeneous. Same social media UI. Similar-looking websites. AI will exacerbate this, like you said. Even more profoundly, because it shapes what the consumer sees and how things get made on the backend. If you are not investing in distinct brand assets that make you stand out and give consumers easier access to your brand, you risk getting lost in that sea of sameness.