“What’s really keeping CMOs awake at night?” asked Sherilyn Shackell, founder of The Marketing Academy, as she challenged a packed room at the 2025 AANA RESET to reflect on the deeper tensions driving modern marketing leadership.
Then, as any good leader does, she went straight to the source.
Shackell put the question to 150 APAC Fellows from The Marketing Academy via their WhatsApp group, asking: “What are the top two or three things keeping you awake at night?”
The responses are clear, candid, and strikingly aligned. Across industries and markets, the same core challenges emerged, echoing a collective anxiety among marketing leaders, especially with the top three.
- Will I be fired?
- The implication of AI
- My relationship with my CEO
According to Shackell, 90% of the CMOs surveyed said their number one fear was that will lose their job, a stark reminder of how precarious they feel the role of CMO has become.
In second place, 83% cited AI as a source of major anxiety, not just in terms of tools and tech, but the profound implications AI has on talent, creativity, brand relevance, and job security.
And a surprising but powerful third concern emerged with 75% of those asked saying that the quality of their relationship with their CEO keeps them awake. This is something Shackell believes is a critical relationship.
“If you think what’s keeping your CMO up at night is whether the latest campaign performs, you’re way off,” she said.
“That’s about 3% of their brain space.”
Shackell urged CMOs to put time and energy into “walking in the shoes” of their CEO to develop their relationship, as “only 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have any marketing knowledge at all.
“So, if you are the CMO, you need to become the trusted adviser to your CEO, because you know everything; the competitor landscape, the customers’ heart rate, what the customers eat for breakfast, you’ve got data, you’ve got all of the information at your fingertips,” she said.
Shackell referred to McKinsey research study of 2023, which found that CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategies are twice as likely to achieve more than 5% annual growth when compared to businesses that do not.
‘Differentiator in growth’
“The McKinsey research proved the relationship between the CEO and the CMO was the differentiator in growth,” Ms Shackell said.
“If the CEO really values the CMO, and if the CMO can elevate the relationship with that CEO to the right level, then that company will grow way more than any organisation that doesn’t do that,” she said.
And what else is keeping CMOs awake?
Unsurprisingly, 70% are concerned about their staff and hiring and retaining talent. The macro economic environemnt keeps 62% awake while the effectiveness of marketing accounts for around 50% of CMO’s sleepless nights.
Shackell acknowledged just how tough the CMO’s role can be in any company right now, but she also had some words of hope for the assembled crowd.
“Right now, even though the world is turning to s***, there is no more exciting time to be in our industry,” she said.
“The marketers, the CMOs, and the ecosystems that support them are the only way to write the future. So when the s*** hits the fan, this is quite an exciting place to be.”