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I spent two days in Chicago at this year’s Ad Age’s Business of Brands, listening to CMOs, founders, search consultants, and agency leaders talk openly about the state of marketing. Since then, I’ve been asked the same handful of questions by peers and clients, so I’ve collected my thoughts here.
CMOs are held accountable for business growth now more than ever. Lisa Mann, Managing Director and CMO at Raines International, described the shift as moving from brand steward to “chief growth architect.” CMOs are measured on revenue, retention, lifetime value, and profitability, while share of voice and follower counts carry less weight in the boardroom. When asked what she’d add to a CMO job description today, Mann said revenue growth management.
Agencies need to understand the client’s business before they pitch ideas. Patricia Pieretti, Global CMO at Culligan, said too many agencies come in with big concepts before they understand how the company works. Lisa Colantuono of Agency Search Kaizen (ASK) shared a story about a major airline’s agency review, revealing that an agency won on a Friday and lost the next Monday because the client realized the runner-up had a better grasp of its business problems and how to solve them.
At VSA, we align KPIs with clients before the work starts. Those KPIs shape the work as we create it and help us track how it performs once it’s live.
Yes, and several speakers added a word of caution. Jackie Woodward, a fractional CMO, said she aims to present her assessment and plan within 30 days—and 20 is even better. A creative leader from a Chicago agency said moving too fast without a strong insight leads to messy work, so the brief still matters. One of my favorite lines of the conference came out of that discussion: “Get speeding tickets, not parking tickets.”
Speed problems often come from how a company is organized. AI can accelerate production, but plenty of companies still send work through rounds and rounds of approvals. Getting key stakeholders aligned at the start does more for speed than any tool.
Most of the brands I heard onstage use AI to handle high-volume work faster and at lower cost. They’re more careful about using it for original creative. Chad Waetzig, CMO at Crunch Fitness, said AI helps his media planning, but he’s cautious about using it for creative because his brand depends on authenticity.
Expedia Group involves people at every step, said its CMO, Jochen Koedijk. “Team members now spend more of their time directing the work than producing it,” he added.
It puts pressure on certain kinds of agency work. Pieretti was blunt about where the risk sits. She expects some creative roles and some agency roles managed by third parties to disappear, and she said the middle layer will feel it most. Execution still has to happen. Strategy still has to happen. The layer in between has to work harder to prove its value.
AI also creates a new problem. Donna Kirkland, SVP of Marketing and Communications at Tarte Cosmetics, pointed out that when every brand uses the same prompts and the same tools, they end up with the same output. Brands that know exactly who they are have the best protection against that sameness.
Clients notice when agencies oversell their AI capabilities, too. One search consultant described an agency that got cut from a casino review for leaning too hard on its AI story. The client told her they weren’t shopping for technology—“they wanted the HI behind the AI.”
I don’t know how quickly AI’s creative ability will improve, and I’m skeptical of anyone who says they know for certain. For now, we use AI where speed and cost matter most. Our people spend their time on the ideas that need to do the hard work for our clients.
Koedijk said that a strong brand gives people a shortcut when they make decisions. AI agents weigh far more information at once, so Expedia built a team focused on marketing to agents as well as people. He also said he’s seeing smaller companies show up in AI answers even when they don’t rank well in traditional search. A clear, credible brand helps a company stand out to both people and machines.
Farhan Ali of Coca-Cola said Mr. Pibb hadn’t been on air in decades, but the brand still had loyal fans. So his team gave it a sharper edge by focusing on a bold cherry flavor, adding more caffeine, and changing nearly everything else while protecting the brand’s core identity. Ali also said Coca-Cola expects to invest in this challenger brand for six to eight years. Legacy brands need patience and a long-term plan as much as a strong relaunch.
Three things came up repeatedly: senior people, business fluency, and a genuine relationship.
Start with senior people—clients are tired of joining calls with a wall of junior faces and no answers. One CMO described it as sitting in on a college group project, with cameras off and no one in the room carrying senior-level experience. Colantuono made a related point about why independent agencies are winning work right now: They put senior people on the business and keep them there.
Clients will pay for that. One agency leader described a client focused on driving down its blended rate. Her team made the case that four particular senior people were worth more, and the client agreed because those were the people delivering the value.
Then there’s how agencies charge. Several people onstage said they’d like to see hours and staff allocations disappear from pricing in favor of deliverables. No one on either side really knows what a 10% or 20% allocation means anymore.
Waetzig doesn’t like traditional pitches at all. A pitch shows him one campaign idea at one moment in time, and he’s hiring for years—not for a single campaign. He’d rather sit down, walk a partner through his business goals, and together determine who’s right for the work. He also pays attention to the small signals: Did they visit a Crunch gym? Have they spent time on the website? Do they know the business? And he was honest that the relationship runs both ways. An agency is only as good as the client, so when a partnership goes sideways, part of it usually traces back to how the client set things up.
The last thing is how agencies show up before any of that starts. What CMOs and brand leaders want is a clear understanding of why you want to work with that specific brand. One search consultant told a story about an agency that wanted to work with a top motorcycle brand. They reached out, said what the brand was getting right, pointed to an opportunity the brand was missing with women, and offered an idea. They got the meeting, and they got the project.
We’re focusing on deeper conversations around delivering on business outcomes and future-proofing solutions with prospective clients. Colantuono said agencies should know why they want to work with a specific brand beyond needing another client in that category. And we take that very seriously.
At VSA, we like to say data is the compass and creative is currency. After these two days, I’d add that both depend on trust. CMOs are under more pressure than ever, and they need partners who understand the business, move quickly without cutting corners, and are honest about what AI can and can’t do.
If you were at Business of Brands or are a marketer who would like to dive further into these topics, let’s talk.
