The CMO Journal is 5 years old!
Looking back at half a decade of writing, marketing, and growing
5 years is a long time. I started writing this newsletter in Pune in 2020, when the pandemic confined me to my flat and gave me that most elusive of things for a startup marketer: Time.
And though there has been a definite slowdown in the last couple of years in the quantity of my writing here, I have kept on, and you have kept reading. That’s half a decade of a project going on continuously, which is rare in itself. I had given it a year, two at most, after which I thought life would overtake it, and me.
But here I’m in 2025, two jobs later, deep in my third year at Atomicwork, still learning, still writing. So many things have changed in the world too. AI is transforming the world in ways that we can’t understand right now, and marketing is changing exponentially every day. The world five years later will not look like the present, and will certainly not feel like the present. Nothing will be the same in 2030.
What is the point of this newsletter then, you can ask. As I have asked myself.
The answer is that I don’t know.
Writing had already been degraded in value by the internet - lumped together with one-minute videos, and movies, and photographs - as content. With AI, this has gone even further - words are just words, after all, aren’t they? So what if a machine gives them to you, creates them for you?
This above idea is the perfect expression of a world built by engineers for engineers. This is a world where something is correct or not correct, a 0 or a 1, important or ignorable. There is no abstraction, no nuance, no way to look at, for example, a bunch of flowers in a meadow, without tagging them with value as a photograph, a part of a vlog, or as a bunch to be sold.
Is that a bit harsh? Sure it is. But it is important to acknowledge that a world built on techno-capitalism will almost always look at the world through these lenses. This is also why nation-states like homegeneity in language, culture, and thought. It makes the public easier to govern (read that as rule).
I apologise for the rather (big) digression above. I know you don’t read my newsletter for a political viewpoint. But bear with me here. I’m making the argument that this is why I (and us) need to keep writing, reading, and thinking.
This is also why a marketing newsletter with about 5000 subscribers matters. It is individual expression, niche though it is. And I think that is the point of this newsletter, and why you read it: Because I want to write it, and you want to read it.
No more of a reason should be necessary.
Thank you for five years of support, comments, learning, and friendships. We will keep this going. And as you well know, it’s because you read that I write. :)
What have I learnt in 5 years of writing? I think that’s a good question to ask too.
Let me see how I can answer that.
Writing is difficult. It still remains difficult. Because writing is thinking, and thinking clearly about something requires you to read, contemplate, and arrive at an understanding of sorts. You need time and mental space for this. This will not change. Writing also remains, for now, the best way to spread ideas around the world. The bars have been getting higher and higher, though, but you knew that.
Marketing has become more and more difficult, especially in technology. You need to do everything, and then you need to do more. Andrew Chen has more on this here. What should a marketer do then? Well, this newsletter has been my effort to figure that out too. :)
Careers are evolving rapidly. If you are not someone with demonstrable proof of work, you are in trouble. Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks, gave me my first job because I was a good writer, and I made my way up from there. That entry-level job, along with many others, doesn’t exist anymore. It has been swallowed by AI, as is that of a average analyst, or the average product marketer. If you are early in your career, you should be terrified. If you are in the middle of your career and don’t have a network or a reputation, you should be even more terrified. Start acting.
As you grow into your career, what mattered before won’t really matter anymore. For example, if you landed a role because you were a good storyteller, you have to evolve that to storytelling at scale. If you don’t, you’ll be left behind. If you were hired becaise you were good at ops, you have to think and operate at the next level, manage people, and so on. If you have gotten good at managing people and moving the needle, the next step is moving it even higher. I have long followed Satya Nadella’s career, and I love the idea of how he operates as a wartime leader. In the age of AI you are a wartime operator, or you are not one at all.
The basics are still the basics. If you don’t get positioning right, you are wasting your time with marketing. If you don’t get product right, you are wasting your time, period. Get your basics in order. This will never change. The channels will change, the methods will change. But the basics of marketing, storytelling, and branding never will. Understand them first before trying to innovate.
And finally, a phrase that is has been in my head since the beginning of this year, and seems to be not going away anytime soon: Nobody cares, work harder.
A couple of changes to the newsletter and the community.
One, I’ll be opening up the comments from now on. I was convinced that comments were a waste of time with the amount of negativity on the internet in the late 2010s. But I’m increasingly open to the idea that there is a lot of value in actually having a space to discuss the topics I write about. So please do tell me what you think about each of my pieces, or anything else, in the comments.
Two, the WhatsApp community of readers is happening. My timeline is sometime at the end of this month. If you want to be part of the community, please do send me an email at sairamkrishnan@outlook.com, and do include your phone number. Everyone who has already emailed me, please do check if you have sent your numbers across, please. Will save me an email asking for it. This will also lead into a small meetup of readers in late May/early June. I’m so looking forward to this.
And I have one thing to ask of you: Please share my newsletter with one, just one Whatsapp group of friends, colleagues, fellow readers you are part of. Just write a line about why you read it, and share it. It would mean a lot to get new readers from your recommendations.
Why am I asking you this? X doesn’t give me the reach, and Linkedin has started throttling posts with links. So please press the button below, and share it. Do it now, before you forget!
Before I let you go, I also want to restart the job board, but with a twist. Please do send me your open job positions. Include a link to the JD please. And if you are looking for a role, or your friend is, ask them to send their LinkedIn profiles, and what job roles they are looking for. Please send these to sairamkrishnan@outlook.com with clear subject lines, and we will get this going again.
And finally, if you are new to the newsletter and like what you see, please do subscribe. It’s going to be another good year!