Kathleen Booth - Pavilion CRO Summit 2025

Good morning. Every single seat in this room is going to be filled. So if you are getting here and there is a seat in the front, take it, because every seat. This is like when you get on Southwest Airlines and they say there are now only middle seats. Fill in. All right. We are going to do our best to run on time today. And so I'm going to get started. Welcome to the CMO Summit. My name is. Thank you. My name is Kathleen Booth. I'm the SVP of marketing and growth at Pavilion. And I'm so excited to have you all here. I am a marketer by trade, a marketer by career. You are my people. I love this event. It always makes me happy to be here and see so many familiar faces and talk about the thing that I love the most and that I'm the most passionate about. And we get a whole day to do it. So I want to start out by first thanking our Atlanta host committee. So Nick Tarnoff, Jessica Garrett, and Nicole Smith, can you stand up if you are in the room? I think I saw some of you back here. So Jessica and Nicole are our Atlanta chapter heads, which another round of applause because we have a great local chapter here and Nick is actually my counterpart. He's our VP of finance, and they all live here in Atlanta. And this is something new we're doing this year with all of our events where we're asking our local leadership teams to help us welcome you and to put together their recommendations for the places they love, the things they like to do. So on the event site, hopefully you saw it. We have a welcome to Atlanta page with all of their personal recommendations, and we'll be doing this more throughout the year, leaning in more. So if you have feedback on what would make that helpful, let me know because we'd like for you to really feel a connection to the local city. So we've got more things planned, but I appreciate their help. They were the first ones to step in and do the host committee thing with me. And so it's been a nice start and we're looking forward to doing more of that. I also want to thank our sponsors. None of this is possible without them. We have some of them outside, some of them on stage. I. I do hope you'll take a moment and speak to them as they're what, again, they're the thing that makes the event possible. And we also do work with companies that we really believe in. And so we think there's some value add there for you and things that you can learn and platforms and solutions that will be helpful to you in your go to market motions. I do want to give a special shout out to Sandoso. Where's Casey? Casey, one of my big goals this year was to level up how we do swag and gifting and I needed to find a really creative partner and she stepped up and hopefully you all got your awesome swag bags. This event is a celebration of marketers and marketing and we wanted the things that we gave you to reflect that. And so hopefully you love what's in your bag and you'll wear it with pride and you'll use it. But did want to give them a special shout out and a thank you for their partnership. We are, I don't need to tell you this, we are in a time of tremendous uncertainty. I've had so many conversations in the last 24 hours where, if I could sum it up, the theme is the ground is shifting under our feet as we're speaking. You go to dinner and you think the world is in one state and you come back and you look at the news and you realize things have changed in the last two hours. And I described it lately to colleagues as the equivalent of dog years. Every hour feels like days, weeks. It's uncertain and we have to lead through it. We can't just wait to see what's going to happen. We need to lead from the front foot. And it's a crazy time where we have this pressure to be more profitable and efficient in the way we grow. We've got AI, we've got buying complexity. We have more people coming into buying cycles. Are they getting longer with what's happening in the geopolitical and macroeconomically tbd? We've done some research, we're not quite seeing it yet, but we're hearing murmurings. So there's a lot going on and CMOs have to navigate this and we have to meet the moment of the market and the time we're living in. And so how I think about this, when I think about what's going on and what's in my head as I consider Pavilion's marketing strategy, is really this move in the last few years to larger buying committees from individuals and the CFO taking a bigger role than they have in the past and scrutinizing everything and looking at roi and right now buyers starting to think I have the budget. But maybe I'm going to wait and just see what happens in the world and who knows how long they'll wait because who knows what's going to happen and is Uncertainty, the new normal. Like is that actually going to change? Are we going to go back to a time of certainty? Today our Top line newsletter is coming out and if you read it, you'll see that Asad's editorial is this. That uncertainty might be our new normal. Buyers are increasingly more sophisticated and more self reliant. Younger buyers generationally are asking for more convenience and personalization. Less time talking to sales teams. LLMs. This came up at dinner last night. How do we, how do we, what does it mean for us and how we're discovered? And communities and networks. I've observed, I've been saying for years, community is the new Google because I see it in Pavilion. People instead of going to Google and saying what's the best intent data solution, they just go into the CMO channel and say, what are you all using? What do you like? Why do you like it? Who do you recommend I work with? That's the new middle of the funnel and there's a lot of data to back this up. So I'm going to go through this kind of quickly. But buying behavior has changed again and buyers are now doing more research and talking to peers as I just described. And that's manifesting as smaller shortlists. So new G2 data is showing that instead of four to seven vendors on shortlist, it's now one to three. And that is partly because of these conversations that people are having in walled gardens like Pavilion where they're narrowing down their field. Gartner has a lot of data out around how marketing needs to prove its value through fast. 47% of CMOs are saying marketing is seen as a cost center. 24% say they. Only 24% say they have enough budget. That's the whole doing more with less. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Pavilion member David Kirchdorfer, who sent me this hat. If you can't read it, it says I'm doing more with less. We surveyed our marketing members recently and that was the phrase that came out the most. Like if there was a word cloud, that would have been the biggest words. Marketing budgets have shrunk from a percentage of total revenue from 11% to 7.7%. So it's not just a vibe, it's real and AI is looming over all of it. This is from Salesforce. They did a survey of marketing leaders and the takeaway here is that Salesforce's CMO had this quote, AI is our biggest opportunity and our biggest challenge. And I think that really Sums it up. At the same time, that same Salesforce study showed that 75% of marketers have experimented with AI, but only 32% are really happy with what's happening as a result of those experiments. Come in, don't wait. Come on in. There's plenty of seats. They're all down this way. There's plenty of them. All of us, all of this chaos. This change is leading to burnout. And so Gardner has some additional data that the number of changes. The more change that's happening in companies, the more likely it is that marketers and marketing leaders will feel a sense of burnout. And that makes sense because we are positioned to lead the change, to be the storytellers. But it's a lot of pressure on us when we're being told, lead the change, and there's a lot of change and and yet do it with less. So as a result, the data from Gartner points to this phenomenon that CMOs are not really fully fulfilling their growth potential, which it's hard to read and see this as a headline. And I took this right from the Gartner report. This is not me saying it, this is Gartner. And I know people have mixed feelings about Gartner. We can talk about that later over strong drinks. But the message here is that CMOs play, they do play, we do play a key role in shaping the market. But when we don't do that effectively, or when we are not able to because of the conditions in which we work, the growth of the company stalls. That's what this data is telling us. So what that says to me is that the moment we're living in, it is more important than ever that we as marketers combine our skills and as commercial leaders and creative leaders, that's what it's going to take to succeed as a modern CMO. And you see this, by the way, all over LinkedIn. I know a lot of you are really active there, and there's a big debate over the role of brand and have we forsaken it? And should we get back to the four P's? And I think that that's a natural backlash against a feeling that we've skewed overly commercial and we've ignored brand too much. And I think it's a nuanced discussion and we're going to get into that a little bit today. But this mix is what's needed for us to be successful. So how is Pavilion think about this? How are we responding to this? We have three themes for this year, and we Set these themes in early January and I'm really happy to say that they are still true today despite all this crazy stuff happening in the world. And those themes are profitable, efficient growth. We still need to master this. The second is AI for go to market and how we're going to adopt it and embrace it and make it work within and also set guardrails. What should be AI driven, what should be human? And last, this one I think was important at the beginning of the year, perhaps even more important today, which is personal transformation and resiliency. And it can sound woo woo, I realize, but it is critical. Resiliency right now with all that is happening in the world is essential. How are you going to stick it out? It goes back to that slide about burnout. How are you going to deal with the burnout? Hopefully manage it, ameliorate it and be able to move forward. So what does this all mean? It means that efficiency is the new growth. And we have later today a talk with BenchmarkIT where they're going to release some of their data that shows that the top marketing performers are increasing inbound leads, driving higher marketing CAC ratios and shifting budgets towards program overhead count. Which is related to what we're going to talk about with AI. And what that means really for us is that we need to build a shared language around marketing ROI with our CFOs so that we're all on the same page. We need to consider reallocating some of our spending towards more scalable growth drivers, the things that have lower CAC at a time like this. It also means that AI is going to continue fueling the future of go to market. And this is Salesforce data that the marketers who are leaning in more to AI are seeing better performance. And this means we have to invest. We have to invest in the AI literacy of our teams and ourselves. We have to audit our Martech stack and look for duplicative tools. We have to start measuring AI's impact beyond simply content velocity and look at how it impacts CAC and pipeline resiliency. I talked about how important this is. We are as a profession pretty burned out. If you look on LinkedIn, you hear it all the time. Turnover is high. A lot of CMOs have gone fractional, left the profession. Some have become CROs. But it's crazy because that's happening at a time that marketing has never actually mattered more. So it's not all doom and gloom. I'm not here to say to you that this is a bad time to be in marketing. I'm here to say to you that it's never been more important for you to be in marketing. And it means we have to invest in our team's capacity, not just their efficiency. We have to build time for strategic planning and cross functional work and rest so that we can make it through the challenges and really thrive. And we are, if we do these things, we will be positioned to lead the change. And 84% of leaders right now are saying their company's identity has to significantly change in the next five years. It's no surprise with what's happening with AI. I talk to people all day long and they're saying we have to reinvent our product and our company. And it goes right back to what I said earlier. Marketers are great change leaders. So for us to be able to step in and lead this, it means we have to lead cross functionally and have a first team approach. We need to be prepared to shape the market, to guide the customer experience and to operationalize brand trust because that's what's going to move the needle in the age of AI. So to me, the cmo, the reason we're here today, what gets me fired up and excited is that the CMO is, is the connective tissue of the go to market engine and we are here to help you do that. We are no longer just the storytellers, we are strategic growth architects. That's what marketing is. So welcome to the new era of marketing community is how we're going to do this. I really believe this. It's why I'm at Pavilion. I was a member for two years before I joined this company and I joined because I believe in it. I, I believe that the best way to grow fast and successfully is together. And that's why we're coming together here today. And that is why I am very excited to welcome to the stage my counterpart on the member experience side of the business, Carlee Palace. And while we're transitioning, if you don't have a seat, there are a ton of them down here. Please come down, fill them in. Please welcome Carly to the stage.

Thank you everyone. Hi. It's great to, great to see many of you who I know but also great to see lots of, lots of new faces before I dive into what's upcoming for Pavilion in 2025. I would be remiss to not. There are a lot of people, a lot of hours that have gone into making CMO Summit possible from our HQ team, the team here at the hotel, our plan, well team, the AV team But especially Kathleen Booth has put so much time and energy and thought into this, so it would be great to just give them a round of applause just for all that they've done. So, as Kathleen shared, being a CMO right now means doing a little bit of everything and delivering more than ever before. I love the doing more with less hat. And before we dive in, I do want to just take a quick step back and share how I got here at Pavilion. So a few years ago, I was director of Demand Generation at a company called Aircall, and this was, you know, SaaS heyday, fast growth, big teams like Hyperscale, Unicorn, all the things. And I had hit that moment in my career where I knew that I wanted to level up and wanted to become an executive, but didn't really know how. And that leap to the exec level for me felt really unclear. And it honestly felt pretty lonely. So my boss at the time, his name is Jeff Rekers, and I know he's going to be here today, but there's a lot of people in here, and I don't see him. He's around. But he introduced me to Pavilion, which back at that time was Revenue Collective. And he invested in me and wanted to support me in my journey and leveling up. And I joined, at the time, what was called the Revenue Collective Associate Program. I was one of the first classes. And this is my cohort that I joined with. And many of you might recognize one of the people out there, Andrea Kahl, who's our CMO School dean. And in that cohort, I learned. I learned the things that I had been looking to learn and the things that really you don't learn anywhere else. I learned how to advocate for myself. I learned how to prep for a board meeting. I learned how to shift from execution to leadership. And I think the biggest thing was I realized that I wasn't alone, that I had a group of peers who were trying to accomplish the same things I wanted to accomplish, who were invested in growing and who were there to support one another. And that really changed everything. And I've been lucky enough now in my role as SVP member experience here at Pavilion, to see thousands of members, like many of you here, grow and level up. And I think through my journey, getting to this point and being on this stage through Pavilion, but through what we've seen with many of you here, there are three key things that we know, folks who. Who want to achieve their professional potential, who want to see that personal transformation Kathleen mentioned, there are three things that they need to do. The first is commit, the second is give back, and the third is lean in. So what does it mean to commit? Committing is not just signing up, right? It's not like swiping your credit card and saying, all right, I'm sitting back and I'm now going to grow. Right? This is where transformation comes from. And the analogy I always like to use is, when I lived in New York, back when that picture was from, we loved happy hours. We were having fun. This was pre pandemic. And at the time, there was this new gym called Equinox. And I don't know if many of you know that, but Equinox was this elite gym. It was where you could go. It was like very spa. Like, all the models went there. They were growing like crazy, and it was very expensive. And I signed up because. Because that's what all the cool people were doing. And I was like, amazing, Amazing locker room. Terrible ROI for me. And the reason for it is that I didn't commit to showing up. I said, I want to go do it, and that's where it ended. And I think commitment is the thing that changed with me with Pavilion. I committed, I made the time, and that's what changed everything. Now, a big fan of Orange Theory. For anyone who is an Orange Theory girl. So that's my commitment now. Then there's giving back. So the members that I've learned the most from are, hands down, the members who show up for others the most. They're the ones who are answering questions on Slack. They're the ones who are taking the calls. They're giving back, they're mentoring. And it doesn't have to be flashy. All it has to be is consistent. And giving back has fueled my growth just as much as anything that I've received from others. If you're a Pavilion member, you hear us say give to get a lot. And this is giving back is how you get in return, and it's what will fuel your growth. And then lastly, leaning in. Leaning in means taking advantage of the opportunity. It means saying yes to the thing that maybe you don't think you have time for, but you know is going to be good for you. It's saying yes to the thing that maybe makes you a little nervous, like being up on stage here, raising your hand for the stretch roll. Growth doesn't happen when you're comfortable and you have to lean in to achieve the potential that you know you can achieve and that you've committed to wanting to achieve. So this framework, commit, give back, and Lean in is the formula that we have seen, like I said, thousands of members across the globe be successful with. It's not just my story, but it is. This is something that, that has truly transformed my career. And I'm so grateful for people like Jeff who have invested in me, people like Sam who have invested in me here at Pavilion. And this is the foundation of everything that we're building for Pavilion in 2025 and beyond. So what is that going to look like? We're gonna. Who I'm not gonna stand because we're very tight in here. Raise your hand if you've taken CMO school. Amazing. So look around if you wanna learn more about CMO school. These are the people you should talk with. If you've taken CMO school more than once, raise your hand. That's what we love to see. So if you've taken CMO school, once the content has been refreshed, we highly recommend you re enroll. Our next semester of that launches on May 21 and we are now accepting students. As I said, Andrea Kahle is the dean of that program. It's tactical, it's no fluff. It is really an incredible program. And for the uncertainty that we're all navigating today, this is something that I would absolutely recommend you all invest in. If you took the AI and Automation for Go to Market Leaders course, raise your hand. Love that. So Tom Andrews, who led that session, is actually back there in the corner. That was the first course of our AI and Go to Market Mastery program. And the next program we have is the AI Augmented Go to Market team, which is led by Ryan Staley, who is here somewhere. I think I saw him, maybe not. That begins on June 17, so keep a lookout for that. We are very excited. So this big part of the formula is giving back. One of the best ways you can give back is be a mentor to the next generation of Go to Market Leaders. And we are very excited to be launching a 12 week program that's going to begin on June 1st. It opens for applications to become a mentor on May 1st. This is a structured program, so if you've done mentoring with us before, this is new, so please check it out. It's going to be structured, you're going to have lots of support from our team and it's designed to create better outcomes for the mentors and also the mentees. So this is one of the easiest, fastest and best ways that you can give back. Our marketing functional group, they are the folks up here, they meet monthly and they have a very active Slack channel. I personally think that the I'm not picking sides, but the functional channel on Slack for the CMO functional group is the best of all the functional groups. So if you're not engaged there yet, I do highly recommend getting engaged. Lots of incredible conversation, people being very vulnerable, sharing their challenges. If you have a question that is a great place for you to go to get advice from folks around the globe. 247 we also have our Leading Through Uncertainty series. This is a series that is rolling out or rolled out last week. As Kathleen said, this is a very volatile time. Things are changing week to week. Dog Years is like the favorite thing that she said that I heard recently. And the series that we're launching, we have a weekly Pulse survey that's going out to all members. If you have not yet completed that this week, please do. It's going to give us the pulse on how marketers and how all go to market leaders are feeling about their growth, their forecast, their ability to hit their targets for 2025. And we're going to have weekly webinars every Friday talking through all different topics related to this. We have one this Friday tomorrow that Kathleen is going to be leading with SBI on what tariffs mean for tech, because I think that's a big question. We've been hearing from a lot of members, very excited to announce Pavilion Summit Clubs in partnership with WeWork. So if you were able to attend our coworking day yesterday, raise your hand. I saw some folks there.

Amazing.

So conferences, you know, this isn't a huge conference. This is just one day. But big conferences like assaster, asasdoc, they can be a lot and they can be overwhelming. And it can be really hard to find a quiet space to just sit down and take a call, take a break, take a breather. And we're very excited to be partnering with WeWork to offer curated environments for you to come to relax, to take calls. We'll have some light sessions. We have Trinity from UserGems who we're partnering with on one of them and we're really excited to be partnering with them. Our first ones are May 12th and May 13th. These are free. We just ask that you register and you can feel free to bring a friend as well. Okay. GTM if sorry, I know you're like, we're getting our elbow or our shoulder workouts in here. If you're at GTM 2023 or 2024, raise your hand. Love it. And if you went to the Women's Summit last year, raise your hand. Awesome. So GTM 2025, it's September 23rd to 25th in Washington, DC. Here's a code, if you're interested in attending. Highly, highly recommend you do. For the women in the room, we have the Women's Summit again on September 23rd. We have Lindsay Chepkuma right here, who's our Women in Pavilion functional group leader who's leading that with us. Kathleen plays a big role in it as well. It's an incredible day. Think about, like the energy you feel in this room, though. Yeah, the energy here. I will say it is a little warm. We did ask them to cool down. So it's energy, it's heat, it's all the things. But we are think about this. But on a much larger scale. We have 1,000 go to market leaders there. We're going to have some really incredible speakers, some incredible women at the Women's Summer Summit and really great programming. Highly recommend folks attend that. So what's your next move? This is, I guess the question to everyone I would pose is what are you committing to this year? How are you going to give back? And where can you lean in? And here's a, you know, Pavilion. Our goal is to offer those pathways for you to do, to be able to commit, to be able to give back and to be able to lean in. So if you're looking for ways to get started, you're not sure the easiest thing to do is sign up for CMO School, become a mentor and answer a question on Slack. For those of you who are members, when you're sitting in the meals room, maybe taking a break, taking a breather, hop on Slack, find a question, send an answer. That's one of the easiest ways you can both lean in and give back. And if you're not yet a Pavilion member, we do have an offer valid through Sunday. You can save 20% on your pavilion membership. We have some folks at the Pavilion Genius Bar out there who would be happy to talk with you about what it means to be a member and all that you get with your membership. I'm also happy to chat with you about that as well. So let's get started. I'm going to be around all day. Please feel free to come say hi, find me on LinkedIn on Slack. And if nothing else, I would love to hear what you're committing to this year, how we can help you give back at Pavilion and where you're going to lean in just a little bit more. So let's have a great day. I'm going to welcome Kathleen Booth back up onto the stage, and she's going to get us started, so thank you.