Cerys Goodall

expert panel

Companies increasingly look to their CMOs for more than brand awareness, campaign performance and lead generation. Today’s marketing leaders are often expected to influence revenue, customer loyalty and long-term growth, even as research has found that many CMOs believe their roles as designed hinder their ability to maximize marketing performance outcomes.Part of the challenge is that CMOs and their executive colleagues may define growth—and marketing’s contribution to it—differently. For example, McKinsey found that 70% of CEOs measure marketing’s impact through year-over-year revenue growth and margins, while only 35% of CMOs consider those to be top metrics. CMOs may also take a longer view of brand building and customer relationships, while CEOs and CFOs face pressure to demonstrate more immediate financial returns. But even when there’s little to no C-suite agreement on priorities, timelines and measures of success, a CMO is often held responsible for delivering growth—without the necessary shared framework.Closing that gap requires more than expanding the CMO’s job description. Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are a curated group of experts with years of experience in marketing, including brand storytelling, digital advertising and customer engagement. Here, several of them explore the mindsets and strategies that need to change if CMOs are to have the influence, alignment and operating support needed to achieve what today’s organizations expect of them.

expert panel

The modern marketing calendar can feel like an airline flight board—constantly updated, rerouted and in need of attention. When a trending conversation erupts, a platform changes its algorithm or a competitor jumps on the meme of the moment, sitting out can feel like falling behind. But a brand that’s always changing course may never give its customers a clear sense of where it stands.Timely marketing certainly has value, but speed and effectiveness aren’t the same thing. Maintaining a coherent identity across channels helps strengthen recognition, trust and loyalty. Constantly shifting a brand’s messaging, voice or presentation in response to external events can make that invaluable customer bond much harder to build.At the same time, brands can’t afford to tune out cultural shifts or emerging conversations altogether. Trends can reveal changing customer interests, new expectations and opportunities to participate in moments that matter to an audience. Brands today have many ways to engage with culture as it unfolds, but doing so effectively requires speed paired with sensitivity and sound judgment. The challenge for marketing leaders, then, isn’t to ignore what’s happening around them. It’s to recognize which moments can strengthen the brand—and which will merely pull the team off course. Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank draw on their expertise in brand storytelling and customer engagement to examine the mistakes leaders make when immediacy takes priority over long-term brand-building and explain what teams should do instead.

expert panel

Marketing teams have never had more data, automation or channels to work with. Yet the problems that stall growth, weaken trust or drain a team’s energy often aren’t technical at all. They’re rooted in people: how customers feel, how teams collaborate, how leaders handle uncertainty, and how organizations respond when old assumptions stop working.That tension is becoming harder to ignore as AI changes both the volume and nature of brand communication. Americans remain cautious about AI’s broader impact, and recent industry conversations have pointed to a related marketing reality: As AI-generated content and commerce tools multiply, brands still need real trust, relevance and direct human connection to stand out.A marketing problem may look like a messaging issue, a measurement issue or a channel issue, but to resolve it, leaders often need to look deeper. Because no matter how many campaigns launch or what dashboards say, marketing is only effective if it reaches and connects with the audience—and that requires both inward and outward focus on the humans who write and receive the story.Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank, a curated group with expertise in brand storytelling, customer engagement and the rise of AI in marketing, share and discuss examples of the human challenges that will always impact marketing and how teams can adjust their strategies once they adopt a human-centered viewpoint.