Latest / The CMO Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Leadership, Budgets, and Executive Strategy / How CMOs Are Banning The Word Marketing
Transcript
- Lucas: If you look at the latest organizational charts leaking out of major tech firms this quarter, there is one thing that has completely vanished: the word marketing. It used to be in every title, every department header, every slide deck. Now? It is being systematically replaced by terms like Growth, Demand, Customer Success, or simply Revenue. Luna: It feels less like a rebrand and more like a defensive maneuver. When you strip the label off, do you actually get more influence with the CFO, or do you just lose your identity? Lucas: That is the central question I keep running into with my sources who are currently restructuring their teams ahead of the Q4 push. The argument from the C-suite is that 'Marketing' sounds like an expense center, a cost of doing business that sits downstream of product and sales. By calling themselves 'Growth Partners' or 'Customer Experience Leads,' they are trying to align linguistically with the P&L drivers. But linguistics rarely solve structural power dynamics. Luna: Exactly. And historically, when marketing tries to sound like sales, it tends to cannibalize its own long-term brand equity. You start optimizing for the immediate click rather than the ten-year narrative. Lucas: We saw this wave start with Salesforce under Marc Benioff, who pushed hard for 'Customer Success' as a standalone revenue driver. Then Adobe followed suit, flattening their marketing hierarchy into broad 'Experience Cloud' buckets. Now, in October twenty twenty-six, we are seeing mid-market companies copycatting this because they are terrified of budget scrutiny. If your department is called 'Brand Awareness,' and inflation is still pressuring margins, you are an easy cut. If you are called 'Direct Response Lead,' you have a defensible metric. Luna: But isn't that just gaming the system? You are changing the name tag but keeping the same team doing the same work. Does the CEO actually believe the new title changes the outcome? Lucas: Some do. And some don't care. What matters is the reporting line. In these new structures, the former VP of Brand often now reports directly to the Chief Revenue Officer instead of the CEO. That is the real story here. It is not about the word; it is about the org chart. When marketing moves under revenue, the creative instinct gets squeezed by the sales quota. Luna: So you end up with marketers who are essentially sophisticated sales development reps wearing blazers. Is that really better for the company's overall health? Lucas: It creates a massive blind spot. We have seen cases where companies eliminated 'Brand Strategy' roles entirely, folding them into 'Content Marketing.' The result is a flood of tactical content that drives short-term leads but does nothing to differentiate the product in a crowded market. Without a dedicated brand voice, you become commoditized faster. And in today's economy, where trust is the only real moat left, that is dangerous. Luna: I see this in my network too. Junior talent is flocking to 'Growth' roles because the salary bands are higher, but the senior strategists are leaving because they feel stripped of their craft. Lucas: Precisely. You are getting a brain drain of the very people who understand how to build lasting equity. What remains is a team optimized for efficiency, not effectiveness. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. If you remove the 'Marketing' label, you risk confusing the two. Luna: It reminds me of the dot-com era when everyone added '.com' to their name. They thought the suffix would magically make investors take them seriously. This feels like the corporate equivalent. Lucas: A perfect analogy. Except this time, there is no bubble to pop. The pressure is real. Budgets are tight. Every dollar has to justify its existence against a hard ROI number. So if 'Marketing' doesn't show a direct path to pipeline, it dies. Or at least, it gets renamed until it looks like it does. Luna: But doesn't the best marketing eventually show up in the numbers? Why can't they prove that a strong brand lowers customer acquisition costs over time? Lucas: They can, but it takes longer than a quarterly earnings cycle. Attribution models are getting worse, not better, with the death of third-party cookies and stricter privacy laws. It is harder to trace a sale back to a TV ad or a brand podcast episode. So leaders default to what they can measure immediately: clicks, calls, demos. It is a rational response to imperfect data, but it is still a flawed strategy. Luna: So the solution isn't to rename the department, but to fix the measurement tools? Or is the tool part of the problem? Lucas: The tool is part of the problem, but so is the timeline. Most CEOs want to see results in ninety days. Brand building is a ten-year game. If you force a ten-year discipline into a ninety-day sprint, you break the mechanism. Renaming the department doesn't fix the timeline mismatch. Luna: It sounds like the friction is less about language and more about patience. Do you think any CMOs are pushing back against this trend? Lucas: A few holdouts. Especially in consumer goods and luxury sectors, where the brand IS the product. Apple doesn't call its divisions 'Demand Generation.' They call them 'iPhone' and 'Services.' The specificity of the product name carries the weight. But for B2B software and services, the pressure to generalize is immense. Luna: Because in B2B, the buyer wants to know exactly what problem you solve before they care about your soul. Brand feels like fluff until the contract is signed. Lucas: Right. And once the contract is signed, Customer Success takes over. So Marketing becomes purely a top of funnel acquisition engine. It reduces the entire function to lead gen. Which is terrifyingly narrow. Luna: If you reduce marketing to lead gen, you are just paying for access to prospects. You aren't building loyalty. That feels like renting customers instead of owning them. Lucas: Exactly. And rental markets are volatile. When interest rates shift or a competitor drops a price, those renters leave. Owners stay. We need to stop pretending that renaming a role creates ownership. It just changes the invoice. Luna: This conversation has been intense. If you've found value in these deep dives into executive strategy, consider supporting the show directly. Your contributions help us keep this research rigorous and ad-free. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Thanks for helping us keep going. Lucas: Back to the org chart issue. There is one more layer to this. When Marketing folds into Revenue, it often absorbs Sales Enablement. So now the same team is writing the sales scripts AND buying the ads. That is a conflict of interest waiting to happen. Luna: Who audits whom? If the person creating the message also controls the sales process, where is the accountability for the actual customer experience? Lucas: There isn't one. Until someone complains. And by then, the damage to the brand reputation is done. We are seeing this in fintech especially, where aggressive growth tactics are clashing with regulatory compliance. If Marketing and Compliance aren't separate voices, you get products that sell well but fail legally. Luna: So the consolidation creates risk. But separating them again requires political capital that many CMOs don't have left. Lucas: Correct. They have spent years proving their worth through metrics, and now they are trapped in the metric treadmill. To break free, they would have to argue for investment in something intangible, which is a hard sell in October twenty twenty-six. Luna: Is there a middle ground? Maybe a hybrid title that acknowledges both the revenue need and the brand responsibility? Lucas: Some are trying 'Brand Growth' or 'Market Development.' But these titles are becoming so diluted that they mean nothing. A candidate sees 'Market Development' and wonders if they are doing PR, sales, or product management. Ambiguity is the enemy of clarity. Luna: Clarity might be the most valuable thing a CMO can offer right now. Defining exactly what they do, rather than hiding behind vague jargon. Lucas: I agree. The smartest CMOs I know are refusing to change their titles. They are doubling down on 'Chief Marketing Officer' and using that authority to protect their brand budgets. They are arguing that without brand, the revenue engine runs out of fuel. It is a brave stance in a climate that rewards short-termism. Luna: And if the CEO agrees? Then the title stays, the function survives, and the company builds something durable. Lucas: Then they win. The rest are just playing musical chairs with their department names, hoping the music stops at a table that hasn't been taken yet. Luna: A fitting image. We will see which chairs remain standing by the end of the fiscal year. Lucas: Let's hope the survivors are the ones who understood the game all along.