The Rise of the Frankenstein Marketer:
How Businesses Are Killing Marketing Before It Even Begins
There was a time when hiring a marketer made sense. You needed a brand expert, so you hired one. You needed someone to run performance marketing, so you hired one - a simple, logical process, one would think.
Well, that time is gone.
Today, companies aren’t hiring marketers. They’re searching for unicorns, wizards, and, more often than not, Frankenstein marketers; stitched together from five different job descriptions, asked to do everything, and then blamed when marketing doesn’t deliver the results leadership expected.
Somewhere along the way, the job description stopped being a job description and became a wishlist. A ‘Head of Marketing’ role that somehow requires deep expertise in brand, demand generation, product marketing, PR, content, SEO, social, and, just for good measure, a complete marketing strategy before they even get the job. Oh, and by the way, there’s no budget, team, or resources.
But please, transform the business.
It’s madness. And yet, when this fails (which it inevitably does), the conclusion isn’t that the business structured marketing wrongly. The conclusion is that maybe marketing isn’t that valuable after all.
This is precisely how we’ve ended up where we are today. CMO tenures are at an all-time low, and marketing is being absorbed under sales, finance, or product. More and more companies are scrapping the role altogether because they’ve convinced themselves they don’t need it.
And yet, the real problem isn’t marketing. It’s how companies are hiring for it.
Why Job Descriptions Are Broken
You’ve seen them.
The "Head of Marketing" role that expects one person to drive demand gen, lead performance marketing, build a brand, own content strategy, manage PR, run events, launch ABM, oversee social, and create sales collateral. All in one job.
This isn’t just happening in startups trying to stretch resources. This is happening at the mid-size and enterprise levels, too. Companies with multi-million-pound budgets are still refusing to build real marketing teams. Instead, they consolidate everything into one role, slap a fancy title on it, and hope for the best.
It’s not surprising that the results are underwhelming. But why does this keep happening?
Some of it comes down to cost-cutting. Hiring one senior marketer to do everything feels cheaper than hiring three or four specialists. But the real issue runs deeper.
Too many businesses still don’t understand what marketing actually is.
They know they need it but don’t know how to structure it, so they write a wishlist rather than a real job spec. The Spencer Stuart CMO Tenure Study (2023) highlighted that many companies view marketing as an executional function rather than a strategic driver. This is why CMOs get sidelined and why, when the role isn’t delivering, businesses don’t fix the structure, they just remove marketing from the C-suite altogether.
The Impact on Business: Why This Approach Fails
When you hire a Frankenstein marketer, you don’t get a superhuman.
You get burnout. You get shallow execution across too many areas. You get a marketing function that looks busy, but isn’t driving growth.
The Transmission CMO-CFO Study (2023) found that many CFOs don’t believe in marketing’s ability to drive revenue. But look at how these roles are being structured. If marketing is being designed to fail, how is it meant to prove its value?
Strategy is the first thing sacrificed when marketing is stretched across too many responsibilities. Without a clear strategy, marketing becomes reactive, chasing tactics, filling in the gaps, doing “bits and pieces” rather than moving the business forward.
This leads to a second problem: customer experience suffers. What happens to the messaging if your Head of Marketing is running social campaigns, drafting emails, briefing designers, tweaking SEO, and trying to align with sales all at once? The brand positioning? The deep work required to build trust with customers? It gets diluted.
Then there’s the talent issue. Overloaded marketers burn out and leave - turnover skyrockets. New hires walk into the same broken role and either burn out as well - or get fired when they don’t magically turn things around.
The marketing function weakens. The CFO starts asking why results aren’t better. And before long, marketing gets absorbed under the CRO or COO.
This is how marketing is disappearing. And it’s happening in real-time.
The Impact on Marketers: Burnout, Career Regression, and Exit Strategies
The people in these roles are the ones paying the price.
Marketers who should be thriving in senior roles are being forced into career regression. Many former CMOs and Heads of Marketing are stepping down into product marketing or growth roles just to stay employed. Others are taking massive pay cuts, sometimes as much as 30%, because the market is so saturated with talent that companies can get away with it.
Even for those who stick it out, career progression is completely broken. Some marketers are being promoted too early, without the needed experience, while others are stagnating because they don’t fit the impossible job spec.
Then there’s ageism. The belief that marketing has a shelf life. One senior marketer summed it up perfectly:
"Oh, you’re 50 plus? Surely you don’t know anything about digital."
Marketing is one of the only functions where experience works against you. It doesn’t happen in finance. It doesn’t happen in product development. Yet somehow, companies assume that after a certain point, marketers can’t possibly keep up.
The WFA Global CMO Survey (2024) backs this up. Many CMOs struggle to maintain influence in the boardroom because they haven’t been trained for leadership. But how can they when businesses aren’t investing in structured development?
This has become an existential crisis for marketing.
How to Fix the Broken Hiring Process
The fix isn’t complicated, but it does require businesses to stop making the same mistakes repeatedly.
Stop hiring one person to do five different jobs. If your job description includes brand, demand gen, content, SEO, PR, and events, you don't need one person; you need a team.
Define marketing roles around business goals, not outputs. Most marketing job descriptions are task-based, rather than outcome-based. Instead of writing a laundry list of things to execute, companies need to define what they actually want marketing to achieve.
Fix the hiring process. If you need a strategy, pay someone to build it. Before signing a contract, don’t expect candidates to produce a complete strategic plan, content roadmap, or social audit.
Invest in marketing leadership. Marketing is a strategic function. If companies want results, they need to hire and structure marketing properly, not as an afterthought, a junior function, or a department that “sits under sales.”
Final Thought: Marketing Needs to Take Back Control
Right now, marketing is at a breaking point. And unless businesses wake up and fix this, marketing will continue to lose influence, lose leadership roles, and eventually disappear entirely.
Marketers need to push back. Stop accepting Frankenstein roles. Stop working for free during the hiring process. Demand structured career development and push back when companies refuse to build marketing teams that actually make sense.
Because if marketing leaders don’t take control of this narrative, someone else will. And if history has shown us anything, it won’t end well.
If that article hit a nerve, you’re not alone. But insight without action changes nothing. Below are practical tools to help you regain control, redesign your role, and protect your career from the chaos of Frankenstein marketing.
Audit Your Current Responsibilities
Tick all the boxes that are part of your current role:
Strategy & Planning
☐ Develop brand strategy
☐ Create a marketing strategy
☐ Align marketing to business goals
☐ Own go-to-market plans
☐ Forecast marketing impact (ROI, pipeline, revenue)
Brand & Content
☐ Develop brand identity/messaging
☐ Write or oversee content strategy
☐ Own tone of voice and creative direction
☐ Manage content production (writing, design, video)
Performance & Demand Gen
☐ Manage paid media (Google, Meta, LinkedIn)
☐ Run ABM or lead generation campaigns
☐ Optimise conversion rates and landing pages
☐ Own analytics and reporting
Product & Customer Marketing
☐ Develop product positioning and messaging
☐ Run product launches
☐ Create sales enablement tools
☐ Conduct market research and customer insight
Channels & Community
☐ Manage social media
☐ Run events/webinars
☐ Manage PR and media relations
☐ Oversee SEO and website optimisation
☐ Build and manage a community
Operations & Team
☐ Manage budgets and agency relationships
☐ Hire and lead team members
☐ Build marketing workflows and systems
☐ Align cross-functionally with sales, product, etc.
☐ Present to board / C-Suite
How many boxes did you tick?
0–10: You’re likely in a focused role (nice).
11–15: You’re stretching—this may be manageable with support.
16–20+: You’re a Frankenstein Marketer. Time to take action.
Map Impact vs. Effort
Pick 5–10 of your key responsibilities and place them in the matrix below.
Focus your energy on High Impact, Low Effort tasks—and start delegating or deprioritising the rest.
Reframe Your Role Around Outcomes
Replace your task list with 3–5 core outcomes your role should deliver:
Strategic Outcomes
1. e.g. Position the brand for future growth
2. e.g. Drive qualified pipeline through campaigns
3. e.g. Build a high-performing marketing team
Use these to reframe conversations with your boss, HR, or recruiter. Marketing is a strategic lever, not a laundry list.
Start the Role Reset Conversation
Use this script to open the door:
“I’ve been reviewing the scope of my role vs. what’s needed to drive results. Right now, we’re trying to deliver strategy, brand, content, demand gen, and operations with one pair of hands. I’d love to propose a structure that sets us up for long-term success, starting with clearer strategic outcomes, and a support model that lets me deliver on them.”
Looking for a new role? Reframe the Job Spec Before It Buries You
When reviewing an overloaded marketing job description, don’t panic. Get strategic.
Step 1: Break Down the Wishlist
Copy the job description into a doc.
Highlight and group responsibilities into buckets (e.g. Brand, Demand Gen, Product Marketing, Content, Ops).
Count how many distinct roles are being asked for. If it’s more than 2–3, you're not looking at a role, you’re looking at an entire department.
Step 2: Align to Your Zone of Genius
For each bucket, ask yourself:
Does this play to my core strengths?
Can I lead this area effectively?
Would I need to hire, outsource, or deprioritise it to succeed?
Use your answers to map out:
What you’ll own
What you’ll influence
What needs support (and therefore team or budget)
Step 3: Shape the Conversation
In interviews, don’t try to pretend you’re a unicorn. Instead, say:
“I noticed the role spans a wide set of responsibilities (brand, performance, content, ops) which usually require distinct skill sets. My strength is [e.g. positioning and go-to-market execution], so I’d love to explore how the role could focus there, while ensuring we build the right support around the other areas.”
“I’ve seen how trying to do everything dilutes impact. I’d rather go deep where I can drive the most value, and help the business structure for growth over time.”
Hiring managers are often overwhelmed or have delegated the JD writing to our friend ChatGPT. By showing that you’ve thought strategically about the role, you position yourself as a marketing leader who sees the bigger picture and understand how marketing works.
Let me know how you get on in the comments below.
See you next week!
Emma