It's encouraging to see communications leaders expanding their influence. But what caught our attention wasn't the appointments themselves, it was the reasoning behind them.

Brands today need something more than content. They need a consistent narrative. In a world overflowing with content, the most valuable skill isn't knowing how to jump on every trend. It's knowing where north is, and staying true to it, even when every algorithm is tempting you to chase the next viral moment.

So what does this mean?

Are marketers suddenly bad at marketing?

Not at all.

The problem is that we now have millions of possibilities: channels, formats, platforms, AI tools, algorithms, trends. And it's incredibly easy to lose our way. When that happens, we start measuring what's easiest to measure instead of what matters most.

Communications professionals often have different instincts. Before asking, "How many views will this get?" they ask: "What does this say about us?", "Does this reinforce who we are?"

And perhaps those are the questions every marketer should ask first. If you want to try something today, here's a simple exercise. Take the last piece of content your brand published and ask yourself one question:

Did the person who saw it understand what you wanted them to do?

Not whether they liked it. Not whether they shared it.

Whether they understood it.

Last week, a major retail chain proudly announced that one of its TikTok videos had been shared 30,000 times.

That's an impressive number. We watched the video. Then we watched it again. Then we asked a colleague to watch it with us. None of us could figure out what we were looking at. Scrolling through the comments, we found someone who wrote:

"Maybe I'm just not the target audience, because I have no idea what's going on."

Our response? "So do we."

Soon, more people joined the conversation. Most of them had the same theory: the video had probably been shared so many times precisely because nobody understood it. People weren't sending it to their friends because it was brilliant. They were sending it with a simple message: "WTF?"

If you looked only at the marketing dashboard, though, it would seem like a huge success. High views. Strong engagement. Thousands of shares. Lots of people forwarding it to others. You can almost hear the social media manager saying, "It's working."

But if we had ever measured our own success purely by likes and shares, we probably wouldn't still have our jobs. Because businesses don't measure success in engagement. They measure outcomes.

Vanity metrics are just the surface. Sometimes they lead to real business impact. Sometimes they don't.

Last week we also learned that Chloé had appointed Valérie Leberichel as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Her background isn't in traditional marketing, it's in communications, with leadership roles at Gucci, Givenchy, Celine, and Miu Miu.

Earlier this year, Loewe made a similar move.

GO@AGENCYNOTA.COM

© NOTA, 2026