Why is mid-tier CMO tenure collapsing to a three-year low?
Average mid-tier CMO tenure fell below 18 months, from 31 months three years ago, and three operators are running marketing without a seated leader this quarter. Exit interviews and trade coverage repeat the same pattern: boards demanding short-term acquisition numbers, marketing leaders arguing for brand and retention investment, and the impasse resolving through departure. Leader-tier operators show no equivalent churn.
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg tenure | 31 | 26 | 21 | 17 |
Every leadership reset restarts positioning, agencies, media strategy, and CRM roadmaps, the compounding engine stops while the spend continues. That is brand capital leaking on a schedule, and it explains a measurable share of the leader/laggard gap: the leaders’ advantage is partly just continuity. The EVA lens reads CMO churn as a governance failure priced as a marketing failure.
Revolving-door marketing guarantees random acts of marketing. These companies leak brand capital weekly, and they are precisely where structured value systems land hardest, because the board problem (no commercial framework connecting marketing to enterprise value) is the actual vacancy. The role being hired for is the system more than the person.