There's a Lot More C than M in CMO

There’s a lot more C than M in CMO.

Mark Ritson said this on the Uncensored CMO podcast, and it’s the most accurate description of the role I’ve heard.

The biggest unlock in our growth wasn’t a campaign. It was a spreadsheet.

We brought media buying in-house, built proper analytics, and restructured campaigns based on real unit economics. Over 1.5x improvement in efficiency. No new creative. No new channels. Just decisions based on what’s actually happening in the data.

Not a marketing win. A business systems win.

That’s the job. Great marketers run campaigns. Great CMOs run growth systems — P&L, data, team, product, operations. Marketing is one input.

I spend maybe 20% of my time on what most people would call “marketing.” The rest is analytics, hiring, automation, stakeholder alignment, building the machine that produces growth.

If you’re a marketer growing into a CMO role — the shift isn’t about becoming a better marketer. It’s about becoming a better chief.

And if you’re hiring one — look for a business operator who happens to know marketing. Not the other way around.