Key Takeaways
- Budget consolidation is pushing clients toward top-performing providers, so your quality and measurable results now decide whether you keep the account.
- The CMO role isn’t obsolete; when boards cut marketing leadership, they’re often misdiagnosing an execution gap as a structural failure.
Contacts are no longer with their company. Social media posts are appearing increasingly on your timeline from colleagues and peers looking for work due to a restructuring. You’re hearing of new roles for long-tenured employees with a younger replacement.
If you feel like there’s a churn happening in B2B marketing in who you interact with, you’re not alone. We’ve heard from industry leaders that this is increasingly common and that it points to many factors: macroeconomics, business cycles, a generational leadership shift and, of course, artificial intelligence (AI).
While there’s no one dominant factor, there’s no denying a shift is occurring that marketers need to adjust to.
Client Rosters Show Constant Movement, Not One Single Cause
“If I were to look at my top 10 clients, there’s some kind of shift happening – either an agency move, a CMO change, sometimes promoted to a corner office spot,” said Keith Turco, CEO of Madison Logic. “There’s not any one single thing happening, there’s a hodgepodge. But it all appears to be cost cutting [to put the money to the bottom line].”
For Turco, client budget consolidation is prevalent in the ABM space, as clients question why they have many providers. “They seem to be coming to the top providers based on quality now, and fortunately we recently find ourselves at the top of that,” he said. “We’re seeing some green shoots that even though spend may be down, budgets are coming back in favor of the top providers in the space because of a combination of performance and budget consolidation.”
LinkedIn’s Focus on Generational Leadership Change
The change comes at the same time that a new generation of leadership starts to take hold. Research from LinkedIn, released Sept. 2, found that nearly 90% of B2B marketers believe their company’s future growth depends on the ability to influence Gen Z and millennial decision-makers.
Davang Shah, vice president of marketing at LinkedIn, said a key takeaway from the survey is that Gen Z has raised the bar for what earns their trust.
“Today’s buyers look to their community of peers and experts to help them make decisions, and that’s why focusing on just visibility without credibility in your marketing strategies falls short,” said Shah. “Right now, there is no more valuable currency in the world than trust. The brands that win will show up creatively, through the people and channels their audiences trust most.”
Why Cutting the CMO Role Is an Operational Misdiagnosis
Docebo CMO Kyle Lacy recently wrote that the role of a CMO is being undervalued. When a company eliminates marketing leadership, it usually reads as proof that brand strategy wasn’t working. But if you look closer, a different story tends to emerge.
“The failure is operational, not structural,” said Lacy. “If product velocity outran marketing’s ability to keep messaging coherent, that’s an execution gap. Not proof the function is obsolete.”
Lacy argues that when you fold brand into product, the incentives no longer line up. Product leaders get rewarded for what they ship, not for telling a clear and consistent story.
“You don’t solve a speed problem by removing the runner. And here’s the thing that worries me most: Every board that decides it doesn’t need a CMO becomes a data point other boards cite,” said Lacy. “Whether or not they’ve done the work to confirm that it applies to them. That’s how a misdiagnosis becomes widespread. One company’s bad call turns into an industry assumption.”
How AI and Macroeconomics Are Cutting Fixed and Variable Costs at Once
Then there’s the combination of AI and macroeconomics. The usual cycle is that clients cut agency spend and bring it in-house, only for that to reverse, over time, as companies get rid of fixed costs and move them to variable costs. We have seen this cycle many times over the years.
“The anomaly now is that both things are happening,” said Turco. “They’re cutting internal staff and shifting agencies, so they’re getting rid of fixed costs in-house. They’re reducing their variable costs because, when you move to another agency, it is often expected that the agreement is more economical.”
As AI changes how buyers discover brands, investments are expected to rise over the next 12 months. In the LinkedIn survey, over half of CMOs (55%) expect their organizations to increase investment in AI search optimization, while 46% expect greater investment in content from expert voices to build brand credibility and influence AI-driven discovery.
“You’re starting to see budget shifts. The first half was a tough half for everyone in the marketing and advertising space,” he said. “But I do think there are a lot of customers and clients doing their homework on what’s working, what’s not, and who the best providers are. In the second half, we have seen some promise from our top clients, and we’re hopeful for fourth quarter.”
The #OpenForWork Era and the Rise of the Fractional Executive
On LinkedIn itself, B2B marketers’ timelines are filled daily with the #OpenForWork hashtag framing a photo that inevitably includes a career update about “organizational restructuring” that has affected their employment status. People seem to be more comfortable saying they’re looking for work, as some have discovered that there’s a better work-life balance as part of their next act.
“We’ve got some clients who have fraction workers who say, ‘I’m just here as a consultant and I really like it,'” said Turco. “Others say “I’m an accidental fractional C-suite executive now. I have a life, I can see my kids, and I can work half as much and still do pretty well.”
This is all part of an industry reinventing itself, echoing the dot-com boom era.
“From a consolidation standpoint, the talent rises to the top, which is quite promising,” said Turco. “We joke about the headline: ‘Advertising, as we know it, will be dead by 2030.’ It has got to reinvent itself, and I’m excited for the next iteration of whatever that may be.”
