BusinessWeek has a great article that talks about the short lifespan of people who end up in the Chief Marketing Officer role. It seems that the world of marketing is moving a little too fast for many traditionally minded marketing chiefs to keep up, and the pressures of knowing what to do with new media and old media are overwhelming.

There was one bit of the article I have to point out that seems to really show what today's CMOs are going through...

Marc Lefar, who was chief marketing officer at Cingular (now AT&T (T)) until leaving for personal reasons in April, knew he needed to get his head around a geeky marketing tool called search engine optimization (SEO). Now more important than Nielsen ratings, SEO is used to make sure a company's site shows up as high as possible on search results. Getting this right can mean the difference between capturing a potential cell phone customer or losing him to a rival.

Pretty crazy, eh? I'm glad I got my start in the new media world...trying to catch up later would be really tough.