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"Do more with less."

If you've been a CMO for more than five minutes, you've heard this phrase. Usually from a CFO. Usually right before a budget cut.

But here's what I'm seeing: the best CMOs aren't doing more with less because they have to. They're doing it because it works. They've figured out something the others haven't. And the gap between them and everyone else is getting wider.

Picture a K. Two lines starting from the same point, then diverging. One arm rises. One arm falls. Same starting conditions. Opposite trajectories.

That's what's happening to CMOs right now. Same title. Same budgets. Completely different outcomes.

I've talked to dozens of marketing leaders over the past few months. The pattern is unmistakable.

Some CMOs are thriving. They're getting promoted. Their budgets are growing. Their CEOs trust them. When the board asks about marketing, the CFO backs them up.

Others are drowning. Every budget cycle is a fight. Their teams are bloated but somehow still underwater. They can't explain what's working. The CEO has started asking pointed questions about "marketing efficiency."

Both groups work hard. Both groups are smart. Both groups have the same tools available to them.

So what's the difference?

After enough conversations, the pattern becomes clear. The CMOs on the rising arm of the K share three traits. The ones on the falling arm are missing at least one.

The rising CMOs use tools pragmatically. They're not chasing every new AI announcement or building "innovation labs" to experiment with the latest shiny object. They're asking a simpler question: what can I stop staffing?

One CMO I know automated her entire reporting workflow last year. What used to take a full-time analyst now takes fifteen minutes and a dashboard. She didn't eliminate the role to cut costs. She redeployed that person to work on incrementality modeling. More leverage, same headcount.

The falling CMOs are still hiring analysts to build PowerPoints. They're staffing problems that software solved two years ago. Every new initiative means a new hire. Their teams grow linearly while their output stays flat.

This isn't about being a tech bro or turning your marketing org into an AI lab. It's about recognizing that the tools have changed and your operating model should too.

The rising CMOs can explain exactly what their spend produces. Not in marketing jargon. In numbers the CFO believes.

They own incrementality, not just attribution. They know the difference between "this campaign touched a conversion" and "this campaign caused a conversion." When the CEO asks if marketing is working, they don't say "brand awareness is up 12%." They say "we generated $4.2M in pipeline last quarter at a 3.2x return."

The falling CMOs hide behind "brand is hard to measure." They report on impressions and reach and sentiment scores. They talk about the funnel without knowing what falls out at each stage. When budget cuts come, they can't defend their spend because they can't prove what it does.

The CMO who survives the next budget cycle is the one who can answer, in one sentence, how marketing drives revenue. If you can't do that today, you're on the wrong arm of the K.

The rising CMOs own a number the CEO cares about. Pipeline. Revenue. Customer acquisition cost. Something that shows up on the P&L.

They're not running brand campaigns and hoping someone downstream converts. They're accountable for outcomes, not activities. When revenue is up, they can take credit. When revenue is down, they're in the room figuring out why.

The falling CMOs are cost centers. They spend money and produce "awareness." They're three steps removed from the P&L and it shows. The CEO doesn't think of them as growth drivers. The CFO sees them as an expense to manage.

The CMOs getting fired right now aren't the ones missing brand metrics. They're the ones who can't draw a line from their work to revenue. In 2026, that line is the job.

If this sounds dramatic, look at history. Every major technological shift creates this same K-shape.

In the 1990s, the companies that embraced the internet pulled ahead while the skeptics dismissed it as a fad. Amazon built a business on it. Borders thought their stores were enough.

In the 2000s, the brands that went all-in on search and digital marketing created new categories. The ones that kept buying TV spots and hoped for the best got left behind.

In the 2010s, the CMOs who mastered programmatic, mobile, and attribution built machines that scaled. The ones who relied on gut feel and creative instinct found their budgets shrinking.

Each wave looked different on the surface. But the pattern was the same. The leaders who built leverage won. The ones who scaled linearly lost. The K-shaped divergence happened every time.

We're in another wave now. The tools are different. The pattern isn't.

The K-shape is dangerous because it compounds.

The CMO who automates reporting frees up time to work on strategy. Better strategy leads to better results. Better results mean more budget. More budget means more resources to invest in the next round of leverage.

The CMO who staffs every problem hires more people. More people means more management overhead. More overhead means less time for strategy. Worse strategy leads to worse results. Worse results mean budget cuts. The cycle reverses.

Same starting point. Opposite directions. And the gap widens every quarter.

In three years, these won't look like the same job. The rising CMOs will be running growth engines. The falling CMOs will be managing cost centers. Both will still have "CMO" on their business cards.

This is the part where I'm supposed to give you a framework for moving from the falling arm to the rising arm. But I'll be honest: most CMOs think they're on the rising arm already. Most aren't.

So let's start with an honest assessment.

When's the last time you automated something instead of hiring for it? Not delegated. Automated. Removed the human from the loop entirely.

Can you explain your incrementality model to the CFO in one sentence? Not your attribution model. Your incrementality model. The one that proves causation, not correlation.

Do you own a revenue number? Not influenced revenue. Not marketing-sourced pipeline that someone else closes. A number you're accountable for that shows up in the earnings report.

If you hesitated on any of those, you know which arm you're on.

The good news: you can switch arms. The traits that separate the rising CMOs from the falling ones are learnable. They're not about being smarter or working harder. They're about operating differently.

But you won't switch by accident. And the window is closing.

The K is diverging. Which way are you headed?