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Six months ago, I wrote about the need for marketing teams to develop computational thinking, data interpretation, and cross-cultural fluency. Today, I’m watching those concepts play out in real time. And Ive been seeing and hearing about which teams are actually making the transition versus those still talking about it. The difference is stark. The marketers who are succeeding arent just learning new skills; theyre fundamentally rewiring how they approach problems, make decisions, and execute campaigns. FROM COMPUTATIONAL THINKING TO SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE Thinking like a programmer was just the beginning. Now, the most effective marketing leaders are thinking like systems architects. Theyre designing entire systems that can adapt, scale, and self-optimize on a recurring basis. Take personalization. A year ago, teams were excited about dynamic email content. Today, sophisticated players are building attribution models that connect a customer’s podcast listening habits to their in-store purchase behavior, then automatically adjusting creative messaging across seven different touchpoints in real time. This isnt about technological sophistication; it’s about systems thinking. It requires that marketing professionals visualize how every customer interaction feeds into a larger decision-making framework. Rather than just mapping customer journeys, theyre designing feedback loops. Its a bigger advancement than it sounds. All of this is playing out most clearly in retail media. The brands that are winning on Amazon, Walmart, and Target are going beyond optimizing individual campaigns. They’re building integrated systems where search performance informs creative testing, which influences inventory decisions, which shapes promotional strategy. And theyre doing it all simultaneously across multiple platforms. THE DEATH OF DASHBOARD MARKETING Marketing teams data interpretation programs have evolved from assumption challenging into something we can call signal detection. This is such an essential skill. The ability to spot meaningful patterns in noise before they become obvious to everyone else is something that has always separated market movers from those just keeping pace. McKinsey & Co. research on AI in the workplace reveals something crucial: While 94% of employees claim familiarity with AI tools, only 1% of companies have reached AI maturity. In marketing, this gap is even more pronounced. Teams are drowning in AI-generated insights but starving for strategic clarity. The solution isn’t better dashboards or more sophisticated analytics. It’s developing what military strategists call “battlefield awareness”the capacity to synthesize disparate information sources into actionable intelligence while conditions are constantly changing. CULTURAL FLUENCY AS COMPETITIVE MOAT Cross-cultural communication has become a differentiating capability. This is something that was once considered a nice-to-have. But here’s what’s changed: Its no longer about understanding different markets, its about understanding different information ecosystems. Gen Z consumers in Texas get their product information from TikTok and Discord. Gen X consumers in the same ZIP code rely on Google reviews and local Facebook groups. Millennials in New York City trust Instagram influencers. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Minneapolis might prefer podcast recommendations. The varying values of those media channels reflect the need to be more than culturally fluent. Marketing teams need to be informationally fluent. They understand not just what different audiences want to hear, but where they go to hear it, how they process it, and what formats they trust. THE INTEGRATION IMPERATIVE Here’s what I didn’t anticipate six months ago: how quickly these skills would need to work together. The best campaigns I’m seeing integrate computational thinking, signal detection, and cultural fluency into single execution frameworks. It matters that teams arent just good at one thing, but that theyre building hybrid capabilities that combine all three. Heres how I imagine a campaign that uses systems thinking to design a multi-platform attribution model by bringing all these disparate elements together. Signal detection can identify microtrends in consumer behavior, while cultural fluency can adapt messaging for over a dozen different audience segments. Its all managed through a single creative brief that gets updated in real-time based on performance data. This kind of integration is becoming table stakes. All clients are actively demanding less fragmentation within their agency setup. This demand is especially intense from mid-sized brands with tighter and tighter budgets over the last two years. They expect agencies to deliver fully-integrated and data-informed campaign creative as well as activation. Agencies like ours are winning these accounts for three simple reasons. One, a combined offering is now possible. Two, clients are calling out for greater efficiency on vendor cost. Lastly, better cross-trade data is here. And AI helps to decipher it more and more quickly every day. In the end, flexibility is the premium here. Specialized marketing teams are a luxury no one can afford. You need people who can toggle between strategic thinking and tactical execution, between data analysis and cultural interpretation, between human insight and technological optimization. THE NEW MARKETING OPERATING SYSTEM What were really talking about is the emergence of a new marketing operating system. Its one that treats adaptability as a core competency rather than a response to crisis. The most effective marketing leaders I know have stopped thinking about skills as things you learn once and then apply. Instead, they’ve built learning into their operational rhythm. They’re constantly experimenting with new tools, testing different approaches, and updating their frameworks based on what they discover. This isn’t about being early adopters or technology enthusiasts. It’s about recognizing that the pace of change has accelerated to the point where static expertise becomes obsolete faster than you can develop it. The marketing departments that will thrive in 2025, 2026, and in the years to come are those that have rebuilt themselves around continuous adaptation. Teams that view the reset not as a one-time event but as a permanent feature of how modern marketing works. The fundamentals haven’t just shifted. They’ve become fluid. The question isn’t what skills you need to learn, but how quickly you can learn to learn differenty. Tim Ringel is global CEO of Meet The People
Category:
E-Commerce
Forrester research found this year that only 58% of Fortune 500 chief marketing officers report directly to the CEO or sit in the C-suite. And CMO membership on boards is down more than 7% between 2023 and 2024. But in todays unpredictable cultural and political climate, we need marketing leaders at the table who can navigate complexity and change. I have always advocated for the inclusion of CMOs on company boards, on the grounds that CMOs bring a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and cultural context. In the past, Ive seen that the biggest challenge preventing broader representation of marketing leaders on board was the limited turnover of board seats. In this new reality, the question isnt just access to the boardroom, but how CMOs lead in complex times. That leadership in this moment can be broken down into three main ideas: practice discernment, prioritizing trust, and embracing breadth and depth. Lets discuss them in more depth. 1. Practice discernment Right now, its important to remember that not every cultural or political moment needs a branded response. Discernment means understanding timing, relevance, and deeply understanding your audience. CMOs can be leaders guiding internal debates on when not to engage publicly, just as much as when to act. Understanding that sometimes inaction is an action itself, is essential to public affairs leadership. More broadly, effective CMO engagement in public affairs is about knowing when and how to cut through the noise and maintain long-term strategic relevance. In my organization, weve developed response protocols that provide internal guidance on when a response is necessary. Our decision process on when and how we respond starts with the shared understanding of our organizations values. We discuss our values, our teams needs, and how recent news may impact them personally. From there we make decisions about how we respond internally, and if an external response is necessary. 2. Prioritize trust Trust is the cornerstone of any marketer’s role. CMOs should focus on long-term trust with staff, board members, and external audiences. It is here where marketing and communications alignment on trust is critical. CMOs who lead with clarity and consistency earn the trust that drives long-term success. 3. Embrace breadth and depth Especially right now, CMOs cant afford to specialize too narrowly. They must understand stakeholder engagement, public affairs, issues, and reputation management, among all the other pieces of their day-to-day work. This breadth, and the skills that come out of being an effective marketer, enable effective internal partnerships, especially with communications and government relations teams. This key idea makes the CMO indispensable at the leadership table. At my current organization, our stakeholders include staff, a broadly impacted patient community, healthcare providers, researchers, institutional and individual supporters. These stakeholders represent a myriad of backgrounds; socioeconomic, political, social, and geographical. That means we spend a lot of time thinking about the impact of our marketing campaigns as well as our communications and government relations strategies. MARKETING LEADERSHIP AS A NONPROFIT IMPERATIVE In the nonprofit world, the stakes for relevance, impact, and trust are even higher. With leaner budgets and heightened scrutiny, every message matters. CMOs in nonprofits must bridge fundraising, advocacy, and audience engagement, making them indispensable to long-term strategy and sustainability. Being a CMO is as much about strategy and strategic thinking as it is about any other piece of the job. Their proximity to audiences and grasp of evolving culture gives them a unique advantage, but only if they can lean in. As marketers and CMOs, we should work to reframe the role as a connector between brand, purpose, audience, and leadership. Simone Grapini-Goodman is chief marketing and digital officer of American Diabetes Association.
Category:
E-Commerce
Female entrepreneurs are on equal footing with their male counterparts in creating businesses with a societal impact. But there is still a colossal gap in startup funding between women and men who prioritize social issues alongside corporate profit. That is in danger of growing even larger as DEI policies are increasingly removed. The Schwab Foundations Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship report, The State of Social Enterprise 20132023, notes that there are 10 million social enterprises around the globe, accounting for $2 trillion in annual revenue, and providing 200 million jobs. Half of those businesses are led by women. This number corresponds with business startups in general. In fact, 49% of new startups in 2024 were woman-led. The need for funding Behind that seeming equality, however, is the devastating reality that solely owned women-led companies get a meager 3% of available venture capital funding. You read that right, 3%. To work around that wall, women often must be more creative and innovative to secure funding. They often turn to less traditional funding sourcesorganizations such as ours, Boundless Futures Foundation (BFF), and Kiva. BFF provides financial support and leadership resources to female founders whose businesses also address a societal issue. Kiva is a global nonprofit that supplies much-needed capital to social entrepreneurs through crowdfunded loans. Our organizations recently partnered to establish a revolving loan fund, produce an impact study on the effects of women social entrepreneurs, and collaborate on strategic approaches to reduce barriers facing female founders. Organizations like ours are making an impact in a world that desperately needs businesses to stand up and do the right thing. Women are addressing social causes Even with one or more financial arms tied behind their backs, women founders who envision a better world are hanging out the open signs. So, what are these innovatively financed women-led businesses accomplishing? They are fostering economic opportunities while tackling some of the worlds most pressing issues like poverty and hunger, climate change, financial inclusion, and much more. For example, Quipu is a female-founded socially responsible digital bank. Its on a mission to empower informal entrepreneurs in Latin America by providing easy and fair access to credit and other financial services. Quipu has served over 23,000 microentrepreneurs, 60% of whom are women. Their crowdfunded loan from Kiva allowed them to scale financial access to an additional 1,800 informal small businesses whose average loan request was $55. Bake Me Healthy is a business founded by Kimberle Lau that received a grant from BFF. The company produces easy-to-make plant-based baking mixes that are gluten-free, vegan, and avoid the top nine allergens. Bake Me Healthy ingredients are not only clean, but they also tackle the problem of food waste by including upcycled ingredientsfood that typically goes to waste and creates greenhouse gasessuch as ugly bananas and flour made from the byproduct of sunflower oil production. Diaspora Co. couldnt sit idly by as the commodity spice trade severely undercompensated farmers and produced low-quality final products. This woman-led social enterprise circumvented the status quo and began working directly with small sustainable farm partners in India and Sri Lanka. They strive for quality products and, in the process, greatly increased the farm laborers wages. Their Kiva crowdfunded loan enabled Diaspora Co. to bring on more farms and buy more produce. The path forward Stories like these are endless. Social enterprises are good for the world and women stand shoulder to shoulder with men trying to make the world a better place. And while we have some measure of equality in terms of the number of businesses, we are a long way from any sort of equity in the ability for women to attain financial support. Its time we understand the financial barriers that women business founders face and take the necessary steps toward institutional change. Vishal Ghotge is CEO of Kiva. Soon Hagerty is cofounder and president of Boundless Futures Foundation.
Category:
E-Commerce
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