Why are we still talking about CMOs as expendable at exactly the moment marketing is becoming more important to the business? Today's CMO is being asked to understand all of that plus digital, performance, customer experience, e-commerce, data, technology, AI, attribution, conversion and increasingly, the P&L. That's not a shrinking role. That's an expanding one. And perhaps that's part of the problem.

I've been noticing something in a lot of my conversations with founders lately. Marketing is making a comeback. Not brand marketing. Not performance marketing. Marketing. For a while, marketing became synonymous with brand. Then performance took over and suddenly everything was CAC, ROAS, conversion and attribution. I think the pendulum is swinging back.