Kurt Uhlir

expert panel

It’s undoubtedly rewarding to see your company’s name on a prestigious industry list. The badge looks sharp on the website, and the LinkedIn posts practically draft themselves. But beyond the glow of recognition, many executives are asking a harder question: Is applying for lists like the Inc. 5000 actually worth it? The investment required to attract high-profile attention isn’t trivial. There’s time spent pulling financials and coordinating submissions. There may be fees tied to promotion, events or licensing the badge. Polishing your award application so it stands out requires even more effort. And for marketing teams with slim resources or budgets that are under a microscope, every line item needs to prove its value. As with most strategic marketing decisions, the value of garnering an industry award depends on intent and execution. Industry lists can function as powerful trust accelerators. They can influence how quickly prospects take meetings, how confidently candidates accept offers, and how seriously partners view your brand. But recognition alone doesn’t close deals. It has to be activated, integrated and aligned with a broader growth strategy. The members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are a vetted group of marketing leaders with deep expertise in brand storytelling and customer engagement. Here, they discuss the real ROI from garnering a coveted spot on an industry recognition list and share how to translate the award into enhanced credibility, deal velocity, talent acquisition and long-term brand authority.

expert panel

Marketing has never moved faster—or felt more crowded. Trends flare up and fade out in days, algorithms shift without warning, and brands are under constant pressure to stay relevant at scale. In that rush, it’s easy for marketing to become louder, broader and more automated, even as audiences are growing ever more selective about what they actually notice, remember and trust. As an investor and spokesperson for brands Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile, actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds says his North Star is simple: He’s trying to create a feeling, because “everything that’s intimate is memorable.” But in a supercharged digital marketplace, how do agencies and branding teams create messaging that feels personal and human without sacrificing speed, consistency and reach? It’s a difficult balance to attain—sacrificing authenticity for velocity can veer into manipulation, and manipulation can have negative effects not only on brands but also on consumers.  The members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are seasoned experts in brand storytelling, digital advertising and customer engagement. Here, they share their perspectives on how to balance genuine emotional connection with scalability to create marketing that’s honest, helpful, emotionally resonant—and remembered.

expert panel

Customers rarely announce their intention to break ties with a business or abandon a product. Companies must learn to spot and interpret both loyalty and churn signals. Subtle behavioral changes in areas like logins, usage, support interactions and payment activity often show up weeks or months before a customer cancels, but only if teams know where to look and how to interpret what they’re seeing.  As services are increasingly digitized, the problem isn’t a lack of data. It’s knowing which data points actually reveal customer stickiness and which ones are just noise. AI-driven predictive models can help businesses pinpoint and better understand subtle churn signals. But even when leaders know what to look at and where, raw observations don’t move the needle on their own. Turning behavioral cues into measurable retention gains requires discipline, context and a willingness to design proactive interventions that center on real human emotions and reactions. Here, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank tap into their experience and expertise in customer engagement to explain how to separate meaningful loyalty and churn signals from metric clutter, as well as how to translate those insights into action. Their practical strategies can help leaders identify churn risk early, prioritize the right data sources, and build initiatives that don’t just gauge loyalty but actively create it.

expert panel

Marketing teams track clicks, conversions, sentiment scores and customer journeys with precision, yet many brands still struggle to convey their unique value. Standard marketing metrics reveal whether a message is being seen and heard by audiences, but not why it is (or isn’t) inspiring customers to take the next step. Marketing teams must learn to surface not just quantitative data but also qualitative insights—that is, they must go beyond vanity marketing metrics to understand and measure persuasion. But that’s just the first challenge. At the November 2025 MarTech conference, Eric Mayhew stressed that a competitive edge comes from combining unique data with a compelling narrative. That observation builds on an insight recognized across disciplines, from education to sales: A well-told story helps audiences learn and retain information far better than a list of facts.  So how can brands pinpoint meaningful insights and weave them into noteworthy narratives? The members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank have deep experience in brand storytelling, digital advertising, customer engagement and the growing role of AI in marketing. Below, a group of them draws on their years of frontline experience to share how marketing teams can uncover differentiating data competitors overlook and transform it into stories customers recognize, repeat and rally around.