Why Your Creative Director Cannot Be Your CMO

If you follow the fashion news, you know that 2024 and 2025 have been a bloodbath for Creative Directors.

We have seen a game of musical chairs at the top of the biggest houses. Peter Do left Helmut Lang after less than two years. Rhuigi Villaseñor exited Bally after just over a year. Even at the giants like Gucci and Valentino, the tenure of top creatives is getting shorter and shorter.

Why is this happening?

It is easy to blame "culture" or "creative differences" but the reality is usually simple math.

Founders and boards are hiring Creative Directors to solve a Commercial Problem.

They see sales flatlining. They see customer acquisition costs rising. They panic. So they hire a visionary designer. They hope that if the product just looks 10% cooler, or if the campaign is shot by a trendier photographer, the revenue will fix itself.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a business grows.

Desire vs. Demand

There are two distinct engines in a luxury business.

Engine 1 is Desire. This is the domain of the Creative Director. Their job is to create the dream. They build the world, the aesthetic, and the product that makes people feel something. They are responsible for the "brand heat."

Engine 2 is Demand. This is the domain of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Their job is to capture that heat and turn it into money. They build the distribution pipes, the ad structures, the retention flows, and the pricing strategies that convert a "like" into a transaction.

The crisis we are seeing in the luxury market right now happens when brands expect Engine 1 to do the work of Engine 2.

You can have the most beautiful campaign in the world, shot on film in Lake Como. But if you don't have a signal-based media buying strategy to put that campaign in front of high-intent buyers, it is just expensive art. It is not marketing.

The "Commercial Brain" You Actually Need

If you are a founder doing between $5M and $50M, you probably don't need a more famous Creative Director. You likely have a great product already.

What you need is a Commercial Director or a Fractional CMO who understands the mechanics of modern growth.

You need someone who looks at your P&L statement, not just your mood board. You need someone who understands that Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for luxury fashion has hit upwards of $616 in some categories. That is a terrifying number. A Creative Director cannot fix that number with a better logo. Only a strategist can fix that number by fixing your unit economics and your retention loops.

The Winning Structure

The brands that are actually growing in 2025, the ones quietly taking market share while the big heritage houses panic—have a very specific leadership structure.

They keep Creative and Commercial separate, but equal.

They let the Creative Director dream. But they have a strong CMO who provides the guardrails. The CMO says "Yes, let's shoot that campaign, but we need to shoot 20 variations of the hook so we can test them on Meta."

Stop asking your creative team to be math geniuses. Stop asking your math guys to be artists. Respect the difference.

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