Magda Paslaru
Published content
expert panel
Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose; the same is true of brand authority. It can't be purchased with a bigger ad budget or manufactured through a clever campaign. The brands that earn it do so by being consistently useful, credible and clear about what they stand for. Buyers today are flooded with claims for their attention, and they’re savvy. They’ll simply tune out generic, promotional brand messaging that shows no understanding of their real needs. Conversely, a coherent narrative backed by genuine expertise and validated by real outcomes becomes something customers actively seek out. A brand that masters that kind of messaging shifts from just another seller to a trusted resource and, eventually, to the obvious choice. So what questions do businesses need to ask and answer about themselves, and how can they build brand authority systematically rather than accidentally? And how do the pieces—narrative clarity, a distinctive value proposition, subject matter expertise and proof points—fit together into a winning strategy that compounds over time? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank discuss what this kind of disciplined approach to brand building looks like in practice, sharing their expertise in establishing the kind of authority that customers trust and actively seek out.
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
Automation has a way of making marketing systems look busy—and therefore, healthy. Dashboards fill up, campaigns launch on schedule and follow-up happens at machine speed, creating the impression that marketing teams are becoming more efficient and effective. But activity isn’t the same as results. For a growing number of marketing organizations, automation has become a way to run faster in the wrong direction. Automation doesn’t fix fuzzy underlying strategies, scattered data or poorly defined handoffs between marketing, sales and product teams. It just moves them out of sight. A workflow that runs smoothly isn’t necessarily a workflow that works. Further, tool sprawl can leave teams struggling to manage and achieve ROI from an ever-growing, unchecked tech stack. That’s the uncomfortable reality many CMOs are grappling with right now. The proliferation of martech tools has made it easier than ever to automate nearly every touchpoint in the customer journey, yet in too many cases, revenue stalls, churn climbs and teams struggle to explain how—or if—automation is making a positive difference. The real job, then, isn’t just adopting better tools. It’s figuring out what the underlying problem is and whether technology will merely simply help a flawed process fail more elegantly. Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank—a curated group of marketing leaders with deep expertise in digital advertising and technology’s growing role in marketing—have been at the forefront of the AI revolution. Here, they break down the process flaws automation most commonly conceals and share practical diagnostics to help CMOs build on solid ground before adding more speed.
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
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.
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THE RAINBOWIDEA
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