10 Things CMOs Finally Admitted This Year
Top 10 Things We Learned From CMOs on Marketing Mischief & Mayhem
After a year of conversations with CMOs in the trenches—scaling companies, launching categories, fighting sameness, and occasionally ignoring perfectly reasonable advice—we noticed something:
The smartest marketers are all breaking the same rules.
Here are the ten biggest lessons that kept showing up, whether the guest ran cybersecurity, data infrastructure, SaaS, or brands that refuse to sound like everyone else.
1. Brand and Demand Gen Are Not Separate Jobs
Every CMO who’s winning said some version of the same thing:
Brand is the story. Demand gen is the distribution system.
If your demand engine isn’t amplifying a clear, differentiated brand story, you’re just doing marketing cardio—lots of movement, no progress.
2. “Just Doing Stuff” Is the Fastest Path to Mediocrity
Webinars. Whitepapers. Campaigns without a point of view.
The best CMOs were ruthless about killing orphan tactics.
If it didn’t ladder up to a clear narrative, it died—even if it had decent CTRs.
3. Differentiation Beats Optimization (Every Time)
The guests who broke through didn’t out-optimize competitors.
They out-positioned them.
In crowded markets, the goal isn’t to be better.
It’s to be meaningfully different before anyone even asks for a demo.
4. You Can Measure Brand—If You Actually Try
Aided awareness. Recall. Language adoption. Sales conversations.
One of the most repeated lessons:
If you claim brand “can’t be measured,” what you really mean is you didn’t set it up to be measured.
5. The First Sales Call Is the Real Brand Test
Forget ads. Forget decks.
CMOs obsess over the moment when a prospect says:
“So… help me understand how you’re different.”
If your story collapses on slide three, your brand work isn’t done.
6. B2B Is Actually B2H (Business to Humans)
Every strong marketer we talked to rejected the idea that B2B buyers are purely rational.
People buy:
confidence
clarity
risk reduction
relief
The checkbox logic comes later.
7. Big Bets Win—If You Can Explain Them Like an Engineer
The CMOs making bold moves weren’t reckless.
They sold creativity using math, logic, and funnel economics.
Not vibes. Not awards.
Clear trade-offs, clear upside, clear consequences.
That’s how wild ideas get funded.
8. Category Language Matters More Than Features
The winners weren’t listing capabilities.
They were naming the enemy—complexity, chaos, waste, friction.
Once you define the problem in human terms, the product suddenly makes sense.
9. If You’re Not Willing to Kill Things, You’ll Never Win
Every strong CMO talked about killing campaigns, messaging, or channels that weren’t working—even if they once did.
Momentum isn’t loyalty.
And “we’ve always done it this way” is not a strategy.
10. The Best CMOs Aren’t Marketers—They’re Translators
They translate:
complexity into clarity
technology into relevance
creativity into business outcomes
Their real superpower isn’t messaging.
It’s making the company make sense to the outside world.
Final Thought
If there was one unifying theme across every MMM conversation, it’s this:
Safe marketing is the riskiest strategy left.
The CMOs who stood out weren’t louder.
They were clearer.
They weren’t busier.
They were braver.
And yes—there was a little mischief involved.
