How people actually become marketing leaders (the version your CMO doesn’t want you to see)
– Master the subtle art of taking credit for your team’s work while simultaneously blaming them for failures.
– Become an expert at data wizardry. When metrics are down, the data is “too recent to draw conclusions.” When they’re up, it’s “clear evidence the strategy is working.”
– Learn the skill of making simple concepts sound exceptionally complex. You didn’t run an email campaign. You orchestrated personalized digital touchpoint matrices across consumer journeys
– Master the art of CEO pushback. When asked about a competitor’s successful campaign, explain confidently why “our brand is different,” translation, “I wish I thought of doing it.”
– Repackage industry best practices to your CEO as innovative new concepts. You’re not doing boring account-based marketing, you’re orchestrating precision-targeted, multi-channel account-based experience journeys through AI-powered intent matrices.
– Master the art of metric manipulation. Present regular metrics when asking for small budgets. Switch to “brand impact multiplier metrics” when asking for millions.
– Perfect strategic team restructuring. You can’t be held accountable to the pipeline generation if you’re “rebuilding the foundation for scale.”
– Scale your career by being a strategic passenger. Everyone remembers you being “part” of that successful company. No one remembers exactly what you did. But the logo on your CV is enough.
– Champion the delegation paradox. Somehow be simultaneously “too busy to get into the weeds with team and do work” but “always available to give 50 slide presentation about the work to execs”.
– Perfect the CMO hit-and-run: Arrive, declare everything broke, rebuild team, rebrand everything that can’t be measured, leave before anyone can measure anything that matters. Start again.
What did I miss?
