Thought Leadership and Changing an Industry
- Ira Frankel
- Feb 4
- 2 min read
Thought Leadership and Changing an Industry
Being a CMO in an old industry feels a lot like being Marty McFly stepping out of the DeLorean and realizing you’ve accidentally landed in 1955, right out of Back to the Future. You’re holding cutting-edge social media strategies, explaining AI algorithms, and everyone around you thinks TikTok is a new wristwatch.
You show up with thought leadership and ways to change the industry, but in legacy industries, being the futuristic thinker often means playing Doc Brown to a room full of Biffs. You are reminding them that the future is coming, whether they like it or not. We don’t want to erase 1955; we love history and the people who were a part of it. We want people to hop in, buckle up, and hit 88 mph, because as Doc Brown said, “…roads, where we are going, we don’t need roads.”
Old industries run on tradition, habit, and the famous phrase, “But we’ve always done it this way.” Changing that mindset isn’t simply a marketing challenge; it’s a cultural one. As a CMO, you’re not just selling a product; you’re selling a new way of thinking. You’re introducing unfamiliar concepts to teams that have thrived for decades without them, and you’re doing it while delivering measurable results, building trust, and reassuring people that you’re not here to burn the rulebook; you’re here to upgrade it.
The key is realizing that transformation isn’t forced from the outside; it’s sparked from within. You win people over not by shouting louder, but by showing smarter. By pairing data with narrative. By spotlighting early adopters inside the industry who prove the model works. By turning skeptics into champions one conversation, one insight, one small win at a time. Change looks big and intimidating from a distance, but up close it’s just a series of well-designed steps.
So yes, being a CMO in a legacy industry is hard. It’s messy. It’s slow. It’s uphill. But it’s also one of the most rewarding opportunities a marketer can have. Because when you finally break through, when people begin repeating your language, adopting your tools, and seeing the industry through a new lens, you realize you didn’t just market a product. You shifted a mindset. You moved an industry forward. And that’s the kind of work worth showing up for every single day.
