FOBO Is the New FOMO

Forget FOMO. The real monster under your ergonomic desk in 2025 is FOBO: Fear of Being Obsolete.

You know what I’m talking about. You walk into a meeting, and the 28-year-old with the ironic tote bag and AI-powered deck says something like “Let’s train a custom GPT on micro-conversion intent signals and build a dynamic content stack.” You nod. You smile. You scribble “ask someone what that means” on your Moleskine. Welcome to the club.

The uncomfortable truth? Marketing is evolving faster than most CMOs are willing to admit.

It’s not your fault. For years, marketing leadership meant mastering brand purpose, building loyalty ecosystems, and dropping just enough jargon to make consultants blush. You nailed it. But now? The game has changed—and so has the scoreboard.

Today, success belongs to those who:

• Understand how AI is rewriting the creative brief
• Don’t panic when the intern says “we should test this in Midjourney”
• Know the difference between a funnel and a flywheel
• Can spot a content gap analysis before the algorithm does

Meanwhile, FOBO lurks in your inbox. Every unread whitepaper, every "innovation lab" you politely declined, every meeting where you pretended to know what a vector database is? That’s FOBO tightening its grip.

Why should you care?

Because the CMO role is no longer safe. It’s under scrutiny, questioned by CFOs, picked apart by AI-savvy competitors, and—let’s be honest—easily scapegoated when quarterly results go flat.

In fact, ask yourself: If your team were replaced tomorrow by a growth hacker, a performance media wizard, and an LLM prompt engineer… would the results actually suffer?

If the answer isn’t a confident “hell yes,” FOBO isn’t a fear. It’s your reality.

So, what now?

You don’t need to code. You don’t need to become a TikTok star. But you do need to stop hiding behind PowerPoints and brand pyramids. It’s time to:

• Get your hands dirty with tools your team uses daily (yes, even ChatGPT)
• Learn the logic behind the dashboard (no, not just the filters)
• Challenge your agency when they throw in “AI” to justify a bloated retainer
• Rethink creativity in an era where machines can write, draw, and optimise faster than your Thursday brainstorms

Final word?

The next-gen CMO doesn’t fear being obsolete—they make sure everything else becomes obsolete before they do.

So sharpen your skills. Raise your standards. And please, the next time someone says “programmatic creative intelligence,” don’t nod. Ask. Challenge. Learn. Lead.

Or FOBO will eat you alive.