The title CMO implies that marketing is a function that needs a chief. A chief who owns it, leads it, represents it at board level, and is accountable for its performance as a discrete organisational unit.
That model made complete sense when marketing was discrete. When it had a budget, a brief, a set of channels, and a clear boundary between where it ended and where sales or product began.
In a digital business in 2026, that boundary does not exist. Marketing is running inside the product. The product is generating the marketing data. The CRM is shaping the acquisition strategy. The acquisition data is informing the product roadmap. It is a single system with a set of connected functions that cannot be led from any one of them.
The business that appoints a chief of one part of that system and asks them to optimise the whole is like a conductor who is also playing first violin. Something important is not being heard.
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