Somewhere, right now, a CEO is scrolling LinkedIn, sees someone who once scheduled 47 Instagram posts in a week, and thinks, “Yes. This is the strategic architect of our company’s future.”
And just like that, another job description is born:
“Looking for a visionary CMO. Must be proficient in Canva.”
The Confusion Isn’t Funny—Until You Look At It Closely
Let’s get something out of the way.
A Chief Marketing Officer is not a person who “does marketing.”
That’s like saying the pilot of a commercial airplane is the guy who hands out pretzels.
Technically, yes—they are both on the plane. But if one of them disappears mid-flight, you will notice very quickly which one mattered more to the outcome.
The frustration in the original post isn’t really about digital marketers applying for CMO roles. It’s about something more uncomfortable:
Most companies don’t actually know what a CMO is.
So they default to what they can see.
And what they can see is… ads, posts, campaigns, dashboards, and a guy explaining CTR like it’s a personality trait.
That’s marketing activity.
Not marketing leadership.
The Problem With Visible Work
Here’s the trap: the more visible a job is, the more people assume that’s the job.
Digital marketing is visible.
You can see the ads. You can count the likes. You can screenshot the campaign results and feel productive. It’s neat. It’s measurable. It’s comforting.
A CMO’s work?
It’s often invisible.
It lives in decisions like:
- Which markets not to enter
- Which products should never exist
- What your company should stand for when nobody’s watching
- Why your pricing makes sense—or doesn’t
You don’t screenshot those decisions. You live with them.
And if they’re wrong, no amount of “great content” is going to save you.
When Experience Lies to You
Here’s where it gets interesting—and a little humbling.
The person who wrote the original post admits something most people won’t:
They built and ran a digital marketing company.
Worked with viral brands.
Managed high-performing campaigns.
And still said, “I don’t consider myself a CMO.”
That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s pattern recognition.
Because running campaigns teaches you how to win battles.
Being a CMO means deciding which wars are worth fighting in the first place.
It’s the difference between:
- Optimizing a funnel
- And deciding if the funnel should exist at all
One is execution.
The other is judgment.
And judgment doesn’t come from dashboards—it comes from context, consequences, and a long list of things that didn’t work the first time.
The Resume Illusion
Now flip this to the hiring side.
A company posts a “CMO role,” and 59% of applicants are digital marketers.
At first glance, that looks like a candidate problem.
It’s not.
It’s a signal.
Because if nearly 6 out of 10 people misunderstand the role, it usually means the role was described in a way that invited the misunderstanding.
Santiago Díaz’s comment quietly nails it:
“Most companies have never had a real CMO so they do not know what they are hiring for.”
That’s the kind of sentence that should come with a warning label.
Because it implies something awkward:
A lot of companies are hiring a title, not a function.
They want “a CMO” the same way people want “a personal trainer”—not because they understand the system, but because they want the outcome without rethinking their habits.
So they write a job description based on what marketing looks like from the outside.
Which is how you end up with:
- Strategic leadership role
- Requiring 5+ years of Facebook Ads
That’s not a role. That’s a contradiction wearing a blazer.
Why This Keeps Happening
There’s a deeper, more human reason this confusion sticks around.
We are all biased toward what we can control.
Digital marketing feels controllable:
- Spend more → get more traffic
- Test more → improve performance
- Optimize → scale
It’s a system with knobs.
A CMO’s world doesn’t have knobs. It has trade-offs.
- Growth vs. profitability
- Brand vs. demand
- Short-term wins vs. long-term positioning
There is no dashboard that tells you, “You made the correct strategic call.”
There is only time… and results that show up later than you’d like.
So companies drift toward the controllable.
And accidentally hire someone to optimize a system that was never designed correctly in the first place.
The Quiet Divide
None of this is a knock on digital marketers.
They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: execute, test, improve, deliver.
But calling that a CMO role is like calling a brilliant surgeon a hospital CEO.
Different game. Different pressure. Different consequences.
One operates within a system.
The other is responsible for the system.
And when you confuse the two, something subtle happens:
You start measuring the wrong things.
You celebrate activity instead of direction.
You optimize tactics while the strategy quietly drifts off course like a boat with no one at the wheel—but excellent social media presence.
The Part Nobody Likes to Say Out Loud
If you really zoom out, this whole situation isn’t about job titles at all.
It’s about how we define expertise.
We tend to overvalue what’s:
- Visible
- Quantifiable
- Immediately rewarding
And undervalue what’s:
- Abstract
- Long-term
- Responsible for outcomes we can’t easily trace back
Which is why someone can be incredibly skilled, highly experienced, and still say, “That’s not my role.”
Not because they can’t do it.
But because they understand what it actually requires.
Back to That Job Description
So the next time you see a company hiring a “CMO” and listing tools like they’re building a fantasy football team…
Just remember:
They’re not necessarily looking for a Chief Marketing Officer.
They’re looking for someone to make the plane feel smoother.
Even if no one’s in the cockpit.