Kathleen Lucente

expert panel

Is your marketing team producing more content than ever, yet still failing to convert customers or align employees around a single story? The problem might not be content at all; it's clarity. Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank break down the specific signals that separate a content gap from a clarity gap, and the first, often counterintuitive, steps to close it.Ask five people inside the same company what it actually does, and you might get five different answers: The VP of sales talks about solving one problem. Marketing's slide deck talks about another. The newest hire on the support team simply repeats whatever's on the website. Customers notice the mismatch even when they can't name it, and the result is hesitation, not conversion.It's tempting to solve that hesitation with more content: another landing page, another explainer video, another round of ads. But volume rarely fixes what's actually broken. According to a Forbes Agency Council analysis of e-commerce checkouts, a Baymard Institute study found that the average cart-abandonment rate is more than 70%, driven largely by confusion and surprises at checkout—not by a lack of information. The same pattern shows up well before checkout: when a brand's story shifts depending on who's telling it, messaging confusion sends buyers straight to a competitor, no matter how much content sits behind it.So how does a leadership team tell the difference between a company that needs better content and one that needs a clearer story altogether? And once that diagnosis is made, where's the right place to start? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank, whose backgrounds span brand strategy, performance marketing and high-stakes corporate communications, share the signals they watch for and the first moves they'd make to turn a fuzzy narrative into one everyone in the building can repeat with confidence.

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.

expert panel

A CFO scanning a marketing report sees it through a completely different lens than a CIO or a CCO. And if a CMO doesn’t address each C-suite member’s priorities and perspective when reporting results, it’s unlikely they’ll effectively pitch their vision for ongoing marketing strategy. For a CMO, building trust across C-suite relationships isn’t just a soft skill; it’s a core competency that separates leaders who drive brand momentum and bottom-line growth from those who simply draft and schedule routine marketing content. A CMO who falls back on industry jargon and data points instead of learning the language of finance, technology or customer operations undercuts and undersells their team’s impact. Marketing comes to be seen as a cost center rather than a strategic driver: perpetually on defense, justifying spend instead of shaping decisions. But CMOs who learn to translate their work into terms that resonate with their C-suite peers don’t just earn goodwill; they earn a seat at the table when it matters most. That balancing act is especially important in a digital age, when CMOs need input from peers and cross-functional collaboration to optimize customer experience and trust. So what does effective C-suite relationship management actually look like in practice, and where do well-intentioned CMOs most often get it wrong? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank weigh in. With deep expertise spanning brand strategy, digital marketing, customer engagement and executive leadership, these industry leaders offer hard-won perspective on how CMOs can translate marketing’s business value in terms the whole C-suite understands and build the cross-functional trust that turns alignment from aspiration into advantage.

expert panel

Many marketing campaigns are built to grab attention—the scroll-stopper, the headline, the viral hit—with little planning for what comes after. Global ad spending is expected to reach unprecedented levels in 2026—topping $1 trillion—but a viral video, clever headline or packed webinar won’t translate to revenue if follow-through is an afterthought. The problem isn’t the creative; it’s the system.  Marketing campaigns designed as moments in time rather than journeys can’t sustain buyers’ interest, achieve conversions or build customer loyalty on their own. Keeping customers engaged throughout every stage of the buyer journey is essential. Yet, in too many organizations, marketing hands off a lead, sales chases it down, and somewhere in the middle, the momentum built by that clever creative quietly dies.  Marketing teams who focus solely on maximizing clicks, impressions and traffic often celebrate winning before the game is actually over. Tackling the harder work of conversion and retention requires rethinking how campaigns are planned, how teams are structured, and how success gets defined. The question, “Will this get their attention?” must be followed by, “Do we have a plan for what comes next?” Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank—a curated group of marketing leaders with expertise in brand storytelling, digital advertising, customer engagement and the rise of AI in marketing—have seen this challenge from every angle. Below, several of them share how to design marketing campaigns that are just as intentional about follow-through as they are about reach.

expert panel

Content marketing is supposed to be the engine that drives brand authority and demand generation long before a sales call. On average, B2B buyers engage with 13 pieces of content at the beginning of the purchasing journey, highlighting the importance of high-quality, authentic and authoritative content. However, many marketing teams continue to crank out blogs, videos, white papers and posts to feed algorithms and fill calendars, hoping something will spark engagement. The result? Often, it’s a lot more noise with a lot less bottom-line impact. Research consistently shows that consumers value trust as highly as price and quality when making purchasing decisions—especially in B2B, where stakes for buyers can be high and strong relationships matter. With content playing an outsized role in discovery and credibility in AI-driven search, it can’t remain a supporting tactic measured by impressions and downloads. It has to connect directly to pipeline velocity, deal progression and long-term customer trust.  The members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are experts in brand storytelling, digital advertising and customer engagement. Below, a group of them shares practical insights on how CMOs can transform content into a true strategic asset—one that compounds over time to drive revenue, strengthen pipeline and build durable trust.

expert panel

In B2B sales, there’s rarely just one person to convince—and neglecting that insight is where many marketing strategies start to break down. In reality, most B2B deals wind their way through a maze of stakeholders, side conversations and internal trade-offs. A proposal that resonates with one executive can fall flat in a meeting your team doesn’t even get to attend.  When marketing teams don’t fully understand how B2B buying decisions are actually made, messaging gets watered down. And when sales teams don’t fully understand how to speak—and listen—to prospects, they can’t build the trust that’s foundational to both new and lasting client relationships. Marketing and sales must work together to build an effective outreach strategy—and an essential first step is uncovering the real internal decision structure.  From there, the challenge shifts from mapping the maze to moving through it. Impressing a primary contact is just the first step. You must then equip that champion with the clear messaging they need to confidently advocate for your product or service and arm them with answers to inevitable questions. Experts in brand storytelling and customer engagement, the members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank have navigated their share of client organizational structures. Here, three of them share practical strategies for uncovering the true decision map within a prospect organization and crafting messaging that fully resonates inside even the most complex B2B organizations.