The CMO role is being redesigned again, here's what PE-Backed businesses should do about it

CMOs have seen their role evolve more than any other C-suite member in the last 20 years. From Mad Men slick (creativity and agency management) to analytical expert (media agency and management consultancy style) with the rise of performance marketing and martech. Every few years, someone redesigns the job description and expects the same person to keep up.

So where does AI now leave the CMO?

Eugene Healey's recent excellent Brand.AI piece highlighted that 54% of CMO roles are structurally misaligned. Companies ask marketing leaders to deliver one set of outcomes while giving them the authority, teams and operating model for another.

The CMO seat is already the shortest tenured in the C-suite. AI is making the problem worse.

Often marketing is the last thing to be looked at when growth has stalled. It's seen as a necessary cost, with minimal investment, the focus narrowed to performance marketing, engagement metrics and being a tactical order taker from sales. Ticking enough boxes to keep the board off your back.

CEOs know it needs rigour and a more strategic approach but don't know where to start. Any CMO coming in to make marketing a genuine engine of growth needs to spend considerable time reviewing where the real problem is, educating what good looks like and earning trust. Starting from such a low baseline is a tough gig.  Convincing leadership it's worth the effort, budget and time is half the battle before you've even started fixing anything.

Now with AI, the tension is heightened for both the CMO and the company. The CMO needs to become part systems architect and part creative leader. Yet many have spent years focused purely on performance marketing and simply don't have the time or expertise to evolve again.

This is the barbell problem. One end: workflows, AI agents, operational architecture. The other end: brand instinct, knowing what will actually resonate with buyers. Most CMOs are strong on one side, weak on the other. Building more infrastructure doesn't give you more distinction, authority (needed more than ever with GEO and AEO changing how buyers discover vendors), or a creative edge that truly engages clients.

Here's the thing. AI makes more people capable of producing more marketing output. It doesn't make them capable of deciding what should exist. It can make them even more time poor to focus on the right strategic decisions.

Starbucks' recent Korean blunder, where an AI-generated campaign slogan went spectacularly wrong due to lack of human oversight (The Guardian), is a pertinent example. Having the ability to say something doesn't mean it's worth saying. Particularly when everyone is saying the same thing in various shades of vanilla.

The CMO who only builds systems but loses the instinct for what resonates with actual people is just an ops leader with a marketing title. The combination is what makes the role irreplaceable and increasingly difficult to hire for.

Why this matters more if you're PE-backed

Every quarter wasted on the wrong CMO hire, or no marketing leadership at all, is a quarter closer to exit with the value creation plan behind schedule. The cost of a bad hire isn't just the salary. It's the opportunity cost of 12 months of stalled pipeline while the board watches the clock.

That means PE-backed B2B businesses face a real choice: make a significant full-time CMO hire and hope they can straddle systems and creativity, or bring in a fractional leader who's already done it. For companies where the value creation plan can't afford a wrong hire, the maths increasingly favours fractional.

The fractional model gives you speed with lower risk. Diagnose first, build the engine, drive pipeline while you're doing it. When the growth engine is working and the strategy is clear, you're in a far stronger position to hire the right full-time CMO rather than hoping your first guess was correct.

What to look for in a marketing leader right now

Whether hiring full-time or fractional, Operating Partners and CEOs should be looking for someone who can give speed with rigour. Diagnostic discipline. The ability to build both commercial systems and creative judgement. Someone who's comfortable knowing that the real value comes from both the PPT and the Excel, not just producing more of either.

The worst thing you can do is hire for one end of the barbell and hope the other end takes care of itself. It won't.

The gospel according to Drucker

Drucker said marketing and innovation are a business's only two functions. Everything else is a cost. Seventy years on, the irony is that most businesses have turned marketing itself into the cost he was warning about. The companies that treat it as the function he meant it to be? They're the ones to watch.