Hastimal Jangid

expert panel

Customers don’t perceive marketing, sales, service and digital touchpoints as separate departments; they experience one company. A brand can look and sound polished in every interaction and individual channel and still feel fragmented as a whole. For some leaders, as long as everyone on a team is communicating “professionally,” this fragmentation may not seem important, but it is: A consistent, seamless experience across channels can help keep customers engaged while building trust in a brand.That makes branding much more than a creative or aesthetic concern. As more teams contribute to customer-facing messages and experiences, small differences in how a company’s representatives interpret the brand can accumulate into something customers notice—particularly when the lines between marketing and communications start to blur across an expanding range of platforms and touchpoints. For marketing leaders, the challenge is creating enough shared understanding across the organization that a brand remains recognizable without requiring every team, channel or interaction to look and sound exactly alike.Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank have extensive experience shaping brands, connecting with customers and guiding marketing across an increasingly complex mix of channels and technologies. Below, they highlight mistakes that can cause a brand to lose coherence and explain how marketing leaders can keep teams and touchpoints aligned.

expert panel

For many products and services, cost consciousness is changing what buyers need to hear before they’re willing to spend. U.S. consumers are trimming nonessential purchases and spending less on individual shopping trips as financial pressures persist, while businesses are scrutinizing purchases more closely and looking for more ways to control costs. Across consumer and B2B markets, that creates a challenge for brands: convincing buyers that their offerings are still worth making room for in a tighter budget.For marketers, the answer isn’t necessarily to make the price lower. Campaigns have to acknowledge real financial pressure while giving buyers a compelling reason to believe a purchase is worth making—and communicate value without turning discounts into the brand’s strongest selling point or giving customers a reason to hold off until the next promotion.The right campaign approach can strengthen confidence in the purchase while preserving the value customers associate with the brand over time. Drawing on expertise in brand strategy, digital advertising and customer engagement, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share strategies for reaching cost-conscious buyers without sacrificing long-term brand value.

expert panel

Marketing leaders are often urged to let data drive their decisions, particularly when budgets are tight and the stakes are high. But a new Journal of Business Research paper suggests there’s another variable that dashboards can’t capture: What’s happening in a CMO’s personal life may affect the way they approach marketing strategy, from planning and product development to communications and channel management.That doesn’t make data-driven leadership less valuable. It does, however, underscore its limits. Data still has to be interpreted, trade-offs still have to be weighed and decisions still have to be made by people whose judgment, energy and perspective don’t exist separately from the rest of their lives. Stress combined with time pressure can impair decision-making, affecting attention and making people more likely to overlook beneficial options. That makes the support surrounding senior leaders more than a matter of workplace well-being. What should companies be doing to help CMOs make sound decisions when personal pressures inevitably arise? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share their perspectives on the human limits of data-driven leadership, how organizations can build stronger support around the people making high-stakes marketing decisions, and how life experiences can expand a marketing leader’s creativity and impact.

expert panel

For years, search marketing has been built around a familiar goal: earn enough visibility to get a customer to click. AI-generated search results are changing that equation. For example, a 2025 analysis found that Google users clicked traditional search results in just 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when it didn’t—suggesting brands may have fewer opportunities to speak for themselves on their own turf.When an AI system becomes the layer between a company and a prospective customer, brand reputation isn’t shaped only by what the company publishes. The system may synthesize information from a range of sources, and that synthesis isn’t guaranteed to be accurate. Widespread problems, from speculative answers to fabricated links, have been found with the ways generative search tools retrieved and cited source material. For CMOs, that makes the broader information ecosystem surrounding a brand a more immediate marketing concern, since an incomplete, outdated or inaccurate answer can influence perception before a customer ever reaches the company’s website—if they reach it at all.As AI changes how customers discover and evaluate companies, marketing leaders need to rethink what it takes to earn authority when they may not control the first—and sometimes only—description a buyer sees. Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank, a curated group with expertise in brand storytelling, digital advertising and the rise of AI in marketing, discuss how CMOs can approach brand authority, message consistency and reputation in an AI-mediated search environment.

expert panel

Values-based marketing can create a meaningful connection between a brand and its audience, building longer-term loyalty than simple price- or product-forward messaging. But it’s not necessarily a slam-dunk strategy: Americans are evenly divided on whether companies making public statements about political or social issues is important to them. And when companies weigh in on social causes or emotionally charged issues, the message itself is only part of what people are evaluating. Audiences are also asking whether the brand’s position feels credible—and whether the company has earned the right to speak.Once a brand does choose to engage in values-based marketing, credibility becomes critical. Recent consumer research found that, across age cohorts, Americans consider honesty to be the most important brand value; simply taking a stand carries less weight. For marketing leaders, that raises an important question: Is the company expressing a value it demonstrably lives by or simply borrowing the language of a cause?So how can CMOs recognize when values-based marketing is crossing into performative compassion, and how can they ensure their messaging remains credible and ethical? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share the warning signs to watch for and how to approach cause-related marketing with greater care.

expert panel

AI has become deeply embedded in day-to-day work, but the productivity payoff isn’t automatic. A 2026 Stanford survey of global executives found that about 70% of firms are actively using AI, yet the same survey found more than 80% of firms reported no impact on productivity over the previous three years. For marketing leaders under constant pressure to leverage AI to move faster and accomplish more, that gap is troubling enough. But they also have to navigate an additional challenge: keeping AI from diluting or damaging their brand’s voice.Efficiency isn’t just about producing something faster. Especially when it comes to marketing, AI should free people to spend more time on work that benefits from human judgment, creativity and connection. That’s an outcome that aligns with what workers themselves say they want from workplace AI: a collaborative relationship where they retain agency and oversight, rather than having AI encroach on the parts of their work that require human judgment.Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are experienced marketing leaders with expertise spanning brand storytelling, digital advertising, customer engagement, influencer marketing and the growing role of AI in marketing. Here, they discuss ways marketing teams can inadvertently create more friction with AI and share practical approaches for using the technology to make work simpler, clearer and more valuable instead.