I stumbled into some word salad “content” accidentally the other day and was so enraged by the complete and utter lack of meaningful information that I did something crazy. I looked at the bio of the writer. Turns out, it was a CMO that had many years of experience in something called the “marketing leadership industry.”

Please note this. The point in the bio was not about selling more goods and services to customers, nor building brand equity, nor any of the other things we as trained marketers traditionally get paid for.

It seems that “marketing leadership” today means talking at conferences and writing gibberish opinion pieces. Worse, there’s an industry of this, mostly practiced by charlatans. Who knew?

I’d much rather label somebody as a  “leader” who has a track record of practicing proper marketing science and selling more goods and services. As a marketing manager, you’ll learn from that type of person. As a CEO, you have a duty to employ actual marketers in the role of CMO.

Let’s hold “marketing leadership” to a higher standard in 2017, shall we?