CMOs are under pressure to prove their value, and many are struggling to do it. Much of marketing’s impact is difficult to measure in the way finance evaluates performance. While CMOs focus on long-term brand building, CFOs prioritize short-term, on-paper financial results. That disconnect shapes how marketing is judged. The core issue is not measurement failure but misattribution bias — treating what is easiest to measure as what matters most. CMOs have long had the shortest tenure in the C-suite. We’ve heard it for over 20 years, and it’s been shown as recently as a 2025 Spencer Stuart study, which found an average tenure of 4.3 years. It isn’t all bad news. Spencer Stuart reports that two-thirds of CMOs leave due to promotion or a more attractive lateral offer. There’s clearly a lot of potential for CMOs who get it right, but the data show that many don’t. What stands out in the study is that one-third of Fortune 500 companies don’t even have a CMO.…