The Last 500

Marketing has always been storm work. Never calm. Never stable. Always on the edge of collapse.

In one career, we’ve already buried print, eulogized television, lived through the social media revolution, rebuilt for mobile, and I haven't even mentioned the coming and going of other trends. And now, we are facing you know what…

Every wave promised opportunity. Every wave left ruins. Somehow, through it all, we were expected to keep steering. To keep going forward. We were the flexible ones, anyway, weren’t we? Also, we were substitutable. These days, if you have had a chair for more than a year, you are considered lucky.

Most of us went through this journey alone. Because leadership is isolation.

We sit between our teams and our boards, carrying the weight from both sides.

Our work is built on the immeasurable. The magic, how they call it. Persuasion, taste, emotion, narrative, storytelling. The fragile alchemy that actually moves people.

And yet, there was never a dashboard for it. No neat KPI for intuition. No spreadsheet for judgment. Yet, we were expected to measure everything. So, of course, we became very good at coming up with numbers even if they meant nothing.

We patched things together in the dark, often ashamed to admit how much of it was instinct, how usually we were making something out of nothing. We created things out of thin air.

That’s the curse of creative leadership: the wins are loud, but the loneliness is silent.

And when we finally do talk, it’s usually in rooms where nobody else has borne the same scars. Rooms filled with advice from people who never once carried the pressure of leading a team through chaos. All those courses, communities, and groups? Created and managed by people who have never done what we did.

But sometimes, you find a place where scars aren’t shame, but proof. Where resourcefulness isn’t treated as “making do,” but as the highest skill a leader can have. That’s what we need now more than ever.

Because for the first time, this storm feels existential. The job itself is on the line.

I felt the same during every disruption. Social media, Web 2.0, mobile, all of that, same hunch: “This will be big, we should be first to do something with it.” I feel the same about AI now. But there is this crackling at the back of my head. Angst. Nervousness. This is the first time I am a bit afraid, to be honest. And I know I am not alone.

We may not be replaced by machines. Though some will be, at least some workflows will be. But I am sure we will be replaced by humans who wield the machines better than we do. This is not just another disruption. It is the end of the line for complacency. The end of mediocre creativity. The end of volume. The end of the middle ground.

What should we do then?

We can’t stay silent. We can’t fight private battles when the entire profession is changing. We shouldn’t dive into the noise or the hype. We need to stay together.

So, we have built a circle.

A community where we can speak plainly. Frank. Honest. Where battle scars stand as proof of wisdom, not weakness. Where experience, intuition, taste, and judgement stay alive and sharp. Because these things won’t be automated by machines, ever.

Inside this circle, it is only us, leaders of creative teams. This closed-knit exclusivity allows us to be open and safe. Sharing our failures. And wins. We prepare together for what comes next. We confront the hardest problems together.

This is a community. Not a course. Not a free-for-all Slack. You stay here only if you give as much as you take. If you put something on the table, not just eat from it. This is the headquarters for the 1% of us who choose to move forward.

The community opens on September 1. Only a few will enter first.

We will never grow beyond 500. Intimacy requires edges. Trust doesn’t scale infinitely. This community is not for everyone. And not everyone can get in. We filter everyone manually.

Storms forge leaders. But you can’t regroup at the eye of the storm. You need some shelter.

Get yours and apply to join the AI Ready CMO community.

If you are accepted, you are part of the committed. The ones who back each other. Ready to face the storm.

You are part of the last 500.

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