Tilt’s Joseph George thinks digital-first CMOs are squeezed between platforms and VCs

New Delhi: Joseph George, Founder and CEO of Tilt Brand Solutions, has said CMOs at digital-first and primarily online businesses are operating under intensifying pressure from both ad platforms and investors, leaving little room for sustained brand building.

In a LinkedIn post, George wrote that the role becomes even harder when the business is venture-backed or owned, as marketing leaders are forced to navigate two competing sets of demands that both skew toward short-term outcomes.

On one side, George said, platforms are pushing marketers toward ever-higher performance spends while simultaneously preaching a narrow view of creative effectiveness. He described a steady stream of guidance that prioritises shorter formats, upfront messaging and “respect the skip button”, coupled with the fear that under-investing could “anger the algorithm”.

On the other side, he said, sit VCs who were pitched a “rocket ship” and now, by design, push for hypergrowth, immediate proof of traction and an exit path early in the brand’s life cycle. George argued that this investor urgency often arrives before the brand has had time to develop a distinct voice, point of view or longer-term equity.

Caught between platform incentives and venture timelines, George said CMOs are left with limited “space, rope or support” to plan beyond the near term. He added that the outcomes that underpin brand building, such as trust, consistency, advocacy and authenticity, do not translate cleanly into weekly performance reviews and therefore lose internal priority.

As a result, he wrote, brand building is “politely acknowledged” but “strategically deprioritised”, with longer-term assets like trust, memory, culture and community treated as slow, unscalable or difficult to defend in fast review cycles.

George noted there are exceptions but described them as few and “hard-won”.

He closed with a warning framed as a possibility: that disillusioned CMOs may eventually step aside and be replaced by an “AI CMO”, a shift he suggested could be welcomed by stakeholders who prefer optimisation-led decision-making and clearer short-term accountability.