Thirty years in this industry and the question I get asked more than any other right now is some version of what does a modern marketing leadership role actually look like.
The honest answer is that it looks nothing like the job descriptions being written for it.
It is not about owning a function. It is about reading a system. Not about leading a team. About orchestrating an ecosystem of internal capability, external specialists, data infrastructure and commercial logic in a way that produces outcomes the business can trust and measure honestly.
The businesses getting this right do not have a CMO in the traditional sense. They have someone who sits above the channels, above the team structure, above the agency relationships, and maintains a clear view of the whole commercial machine. Someone who can tell you not just what the metrics say but what the metrics are not saying, and what that silence is costing.
That role exists. It just does not have the right name yet.
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