Why marketers are leaving and what it takes to stay

Marketing is losing people — not just to layoffs or career pivots but to disillusionment. The systems, metrics and expectations no longer make sense. For many, the cost of staying in outweighs the promise of the work.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Emanuel Cinca, founder of Stacked Marketer. We talked shop — the shifting ground under our feet, what’s working, what’s not and what feels increasingly unsustainable.

What’s driving people out of marketing

He dropped a number that hit harder than expected: One in four people who unsubscribe from his newsletter say they’ve left marketing altogether.

It stuck with me because it wasn’t surprising. It felt like something we all sense. Marketing, the profession that once promised creativity, connection, and maybe even influence, is burning people out — not because they’re soft, but because the system is broken.

We love to romanticize disruption. However, today, the most disruptive forces in marketing are not AI, privacy laws or TikTok trends. It’s the slow, grinding realization that the job doesn’t make sense as it used to.

The setup for burnout

One of the biggest reasons marketers are burning out? No one knows what’s working or why. Success gets measured in surface metrics: impressions, clicks, a few headlines and maybe an award. But ask what actually drove sales, shifted perception or built long-term mental availability, and you’ll get a lot of hand-waving. 

We’re expected to deliver results, but given KPIs that don’t align with outcomes. Over time, that disconnect becomes demoralizing. You do the work, polish the pitch, launch the thing and still feel like none of it matters.

If you studied marketing back when textbooks still mattered, you remember the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion. It was coherent. Marketing had a seat at the strategic table — maybe not the head, but close enough to have a say.

Fast-forward to now, where in many orgs, especially B2B, that seat’s been downgraded to the kids’ table. Promotion is all we get. No input on product, no say in pricing. Distribution decisions? Made elsewhere. Our job is to make it look good.

We do what we can. We wrap brittle offerings in beautiful creative. We stretch thin positioning into thick storytelling. We write confident copy, knowing the landing page might not load and sales haven’t seen the campaign. If you’re lucky, you get a fractional CMO, a well-meaning outsider with zero budget, no power and a front-row seat to the fallout.

This setup doesn’t just fail marketers. It erodes trust across the board. Customers don’t get what we promised. Product teams see marketing as spin. Leadership treats it like a cost center. And the marketer? They start to feel like a fraud.

Eventually, even the most passionate, brand-loyal, caffeine-fueled among us start asking the quiet question: What are we doing here? External pressures are one thing. But inside? The house is on fire.

Supposedly a discipline of clarity and intention, marketing is now one of the noisiest, most chaotic environments to work in. Slack pings. Tool fatigue. Fake deadlines. A parade of strategies that are repackaged tactics.

We’re hemorrhaging our attention while trying to hijack someone else’s. Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus paints a damning portrait of the attention economy. But here’s what he didn’t say: marketers aren’t just victims of that system, we’re its architects.

The cult of content

At some point, we replaced strategy with a content calendar. We started acting like the appearance of marketing was the goal: publish the post, hit the deadline, fill the feed.

As content strategist Jason Patterson said, “Content became its own product, untethered from outcomes.”

What once existed to support business goals — trust, differentiation, memory — now floats in a sea of likes and scrolls. SEO became gospel. Metrics like impressions, engagement, and bounce rate took center stage — numbers that tell you everything about behavior and almost nothing about belief.

We know it, we feel it, and yet we keep going. Like kids on a treadmill, we forget how to stop. This is what happens when content is divorced from strategy. When every team becomes a newsroom and every post has a checkbox, we lose the plot. Marketing becomes less about influence and more about inertia. 

As Marketing Accountability Council co-founder Jake Sanders said, “We’re not doing marketing. We’re performing it.” And the performance? It’s exhausting.

Dig deeper: Marketers must adapt to a changing world

Why so many are walking away

In 25+ years, I’ve seen trend after trend promise the edge: blogging booms, Facebook ad gold rushes, influencer everything, the AI arms race. Each one offered a shortcut. None fixed the fundamentals.

• The blog boom (everyone’s a media company).
• Content-as-religion (volume over value).
• The social media land grab.
• The Facebook ads gold rush.
• The YouTube-or-die video pivot.
• Brand purpose (sometimes sincere, often slogan).
• Data dashboards as strategy.
• Influencer everything.
• SaaS stack overload.
• And now, the AI feeding frenzy.

Each one promised the edge, the shortcut, the secret. And each time, we chased it. But through it all, I’ve tried to stay grounded: 

• Understand the audience.
• Follow operational logic.
• Respect how things actually work.

It’s unsexy — but it’s the only thing that hasn’t collapsed under its hype. In this industry, realism is treated like heresy. Trends sell hope: a lever, a hack, a belief that if you do this next thing — go viral, write LinkedIn threads, build a personal brand — it’ll finally work.

But when it doesn’t? When the leads ghost and the dopamine fades? We don’t question the system. We question ourselves.

Cruel optimism

Maybe we didn’t hustle hard, didn’t post at the right time or weren’t authentic enough. Lauren Berlant called it cruel optimism — the condition where the thing you’re attached to is also the thing holding you back. It’s a promise that keeps you striving in a system designed to disappoint.

People aren’t leaving because they failed. They’re leaving because they saw through it. It’s not marketing they’re quitting — it’s the performance of it.

Because I believe it can be different. That belief led to the Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) and the system we call The MAC Stack. Not a brand. Not a platform. A counterweight. A tool to keep ourselves honest.

What we use

The graveyard

Where we bury tired tactics. Loyalty programs that punish loyalty. Spray-and-pray content. Martech bloat. We grieve, learn and move on. I am the Gatekeeper of the Graveyard.

The delusion series

We name the lies:

• “It worked for Nike.”
• “The algorithm hates us.”
• “Customers want personalization.” 

Led by Sanders and we don’t pull punches.

The heuristics project

Led by Moni Oloyede. Brutal questions before we hit send:

• Is this solving a real problem? 
• Would we trust this?

The TRUST framework

Still evolving. But built on five principles:

• Transparency: No tricks. Show your work.
• Relevance: Solve real problems.
• Utility: Make it useful, even if it’s an ad.
• Storytelling: No fluff, just meaning.
• Tangible impact: Not just clicks. Outcomes.

What growth looks like

After over a year of hard work and consistent content creation, we have created hundreds of articles and meet every Friday. Our growth isn’t hockey stick. It’s slow. It’s real. And it’s working, slowly but surely. 

We’re not here to impress VCs. We’re here to build something we won’t regret later.

Dig deeper: How to move beyond performative segmentation and embrace authenticity

The point

The MAC Stack isn’t about content. It’s about conscience.

Before we send anything, we ask:

• Are we building trust — or faking confidence?
• Helping people choose — or creating urgency traps?
• Will we be proud of this later?

We don’t have all the answers. But we’ve got a standard. And each other.

A better way to do marketing that lasts

Marketing doesn’t need more frameworks; it needs more grown-ups. People who don’t confuse dashboards with meaning. Those who want to do work that matters.

If you’re still in this profession, really in it, ask yourself: Are you building something you believe in? Or are you just keeping busy in the dashboard?

You don’t have to be complicit. There’s another way. And we’re building it together.