Record CMO hiring, zero mention of AI

The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI-Ready CMO

We don’t envy anyone taking a CMO job in 2025.

On the surface, the numbers in the “2025 CMO Moves Report” from Taligence look like a gold rush: 501 global CMO appointments in 2025, up a staggering 61.6% from the previous year. Companies are finally opening their wallets for marketing leadership again, with international hiring exploding by 145.8% and even conservative sectors like financial services jumping 93.3%.

But before you update your LinkedIn headline, consider the fine print. These roles are being designed as “pressure cookers”: positions that demand general-manager-level ownership of growth and enterprise operations, yet offer the political authority of a mid-level brand manager. The report calls it an “authority gap”. We call it a recipe for a very public, very expensive tenure.

While job postings wax poetic about “transformational leadership” and “cross-functional orchestration,” the actual hiring is comically risk-averse. Cross-industry mobility collapsed to just 10.2%, and a…