Why Marketing Will Never Be the Same Again (2026 Edition)
In this inaugural episode of Sandy Carter’s podcast, she interviews Ray Wong, chairman and founder of Constellation Research Group, and Liz Miller, former CMO Circle lead and current Constellation analyst, to explore how marketing will fundamentally change by 2026. The conversation begins with the observation that marketing has moved out of an "apology" era—where marketers were apologizing for budget spend and brand missteps—into a new AI‑driven era where speed, exponential efficiency, and agentic workflows dominate. Ray emphasizes that the human factor—authenticity, trust, and reputation—remains critical even as AI agents proliferate. Liz expands on the emerging need to market to AI agents as distinct audiences, arguing that storytelling must adapt to agent‑to‑agent communication. They discuss the rise of data marketplaces, clean‑room data exchanges, and the necessity for marketers to own and integrate previously siloed data sources such as customer‑service interactions and security insights. The guests describe how AI agents are being embedded into marketing teams, not as replacements but as “bubble‑wrap” tools that handle high‑volume, low‑value tasks, enabling marketers to focus on strategic outcomes. They also examine the tension between short‑term performance metrics and long‑term brand equity, noting that quick wins fund brand building and that many CEOs now come from CMO backgrounds. Privacy is highlighted as a future differentiator, with the “Apple effect” suggesting that brands that steward data responsibly will win loyalty. The episode closes with two mindset shifts: Ray’s call for “situational awareness”—continuous context‑driven decision making—and Liz’s “left‑of‑bang” thinking—anticipating and preventing negative customer events before they happen. Throughout, concrete examples (Walmart’s agent‑marketing team, Capital One’s auto‑navigator, a humanoid pizza‑delivery demo) illustrate the practical implications for marketers preparing for 2026.
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We have an action-packed show today around the things you must know about marketing for 2026. Surround situational awareness and left of the bang. Listen to hear more. And for our very first episode, I have two amazing people. You couldn't have asked for a better kickoff to the show. Um, we have the one, the only Ray Wong. If you know Ray, he is the chairman and founder of Constellation Research Group. Amazing group.
Hey, happy New Year. Thanks for having me. This is great. And more importantly, I mean, you know, big shoes to fill with Marc Schaefer.
I know, right? I'm so excited to see— it is like a top 1% podcast too. So, we're going to see if we can keep that energy going. And our second guest today is the one and only Liz Miller. If you know Liz, she used to run the CMO Circle, so she knows all there is to know about marketing. She's continued that, that beat or that focus as she's also now with the Constellation Research Group. And she— I have to also say, she's— I hate— Ray, I hope I don't offend you, but she is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite analysts because she— yeah, because she's so funny too. She delivers all this great content and in a fun way. So welcome, Liz.
Oh my gosh, Sandy, thank you so much. I cannot believe that I am here with your first episode. I mean, I can remember the first time we met when I was with the CMO Council. Now being with Constellation Research, it is a wild ride, but all around marketing. So thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, you are welcome. Well, happy New Year. I also do want to throw out a big thank you to our two sponsors, Brovo and SEMrush. I am actually users of both at my company. And actually, I'm going to start using them for my podcast too. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it. I'm going to throw this question out to both of you so you guys can fight for who answers first. But as you—
no, no, let's go ahead.
Go ahead.
All yours, Liz.
As you look forward to 2026, what feels fundamentally different about marketing compared to, let's say, maybe 2 years ago?
I feel like the walls are down and Stiti, I think you and I have seen this and Ray, honestly, the three of us have seen this through like generational shifts around marketing in that we've always been asked or told to stay in our box. Marketing has a lane, go stay in your lane. But in the past 10 years, we made this shift fundamentally to becoming growth drivers. We had to see the market. We had to understand where that, that opportunity and the capacity was. And we kept trying to move this really slow-moving ship known as our organization towards where that opportunity would sit. In the last 2 years, as the world has accelerated and everything has started to actually prove that velocity matters, marketing has been at the tip of that spear. And it's super exciting because I think really for the first time We are changing that space of not having to apologize for everything, right? Remember the apology tour, Sandy? That one that goes a little something like, I'm so sorry that I spent all my budget and brought in all that opportunity and made all that revenue. And I'm so sorry that I fine-tuned the brand, what the customer wanted, so that we could actually reflect what the customer wanted and what they were buying. We're off the apology tour, and I couldn't be happier.
Yeah. You know what's interesting too, Liz, based on what you just said, is that As I'm working with companies on their AI strategy, most of the companies are starting with marketing. So I think we are out of that apology era into the new era. Ray, what say you?
You know, I'll jump in. Liz is right. It begins and ends with marketing today. We're also entering an era of what we call exponential efficiency and infinite possibilities. The scaling that we can achieve at a machine level is something we've never seen before. And your ability to iterate, your ability to change things, your ability to try, and that digitization gives us so many possibilities that we are going to have to figure out from creativity to commerce what we actually need to do in what order. And that's gonna be much more important. So how we prioritize our time and focus on efficient order of operations is gonna drive almost everything we do because anything is possible. And that means we've gotta be really good with how we actually execute.
It, it's so true. You know, it's really interesting. Everybody I talk to, but in particular CMOs now, are just telling me they have so much on their plate and prioritization has risen to the top of how they lead. Are those the type of things that you guys are seeing?
100%. 100%. And to Ray's point, in a world where everything is possible, it kind of feels like we're back. OK, let's get in the Wayback Machine just real quick. Remember back in the days when the web felt completely unknown? We were like, what is this URL thing? You know, like, we all like, do we have to go buy one? URL. And it feels a little bit like that. Where everyone got fired for not doing it. Remember those days? But I think what's really, really happening here is as all of that speed and all of that infinite possibility is happening, you are really seeing those CMOs rise to the top who are ready to manage complexity. And it's because they're thinking about their AI strategy, they're thinking about their data strategy on top of that, and they're looking at it with this one element that has been missing oftentimes.
Courage.
Courage.
So, Ray, you not only do you advise CMOs, but I know for a fact that you advise a ton of CEOs. We were just at re:Invent together. I guess that was last year. And you came into this party we were at together and you were like, I just met with the CEO, the CEO, the CEO, and boards. I know we've been talking a lot about boards too. So what is the single biggest marketing shifts that you think leaders are still underestimating for 2026 from that board CEO vantage point?
Well, you know, I'm a technologist at heart and I love what you can do with technology, but the problem is the human factors in AI stands out, right? At the end of the day, we still have to sell to each other and we still actually have to work with each other. We still have to get people to make things happen. And so it comes down to authenticity, it comes down to trust, it comes down to reputation. That's everything more than ever. And at the speed and the iterations we're working at, that means you can't make a mistake. It's one of the things that Liz talks a lot. I'll let her talk about that piece around brand and reputation and reputational security and where that comes into play. But that human factor and change management, that makes a big difference. And the companies that are going to do really well are the ones that know how to motivate the people that they're working with. And it's gonna be a different group of folks. We often say that this is the last generation of managers to only manage humans. And it's true because you're gonna be managing agents, you're gonna be managing other agencies in agency bots and other factors like that. And it's gonna change what we do. And so we have to get really good at being clear on focus, being clear on what we're trying to achieve in our objectives, and more importantly, becoming even more outcomes-based as we go forward. And we underestimate how hard that is. Uh, we always think think the technology will solve everything, and that's our hopefulness. But the reality is you've got to come back to the people. So authenticity, trust, and reputation.
Do you see— and either one of you can answer this— but I mean, do you guys see boards now talking about agent-to-agent, or how do we market to agents? I just read the article about Walmart. Now they have a team for marketing to humans. They just kicked up a team to market to agents. What?
Let's jump in.
Okay, Liz, tell me, tell me about it.
Oh my gosh, it is so absolutely critical because you can't market, you can't create, you can't write in the same way to agents if you're also then writing to humans. It is two very, very different modes, but it's still all about storytelling. And I think that's a very hard thing to try to wrap your head around because how do you tell a story to an agent? Like, what's that structure? What does that foundationally look like? And I think we're starting to learn that. And every day we get a new piece of news, like, okay, now they're gonna have sponsored responses. And that, like, we're, we're getting all of that. I mean, it feels very familiar, but it also feels very, very new. So I think really what we're talking about here is being able to stay on your toes, being able to shift and move. But as Ray just said, understanding that managing people, managing agents, very much the same if you have your business outcomes and goals in mind. And the hardest thing for any executive, no matter what role they're in right now, if you are dealing with AI, the biggest thing that's going to mess you up is if you mistake an output for an outcome. Hey, Liz.
AI—
go ahead. AI has an output, and we congratulate it for just having an output that doesn't sound insane.
Mm-hmm.
But then there's a business outcome and we have to stay laser focused on that outcome as Ray had mentioned.
Hey, Liz, Sandy, I'm waiting for the book, Marketing Copy for Agents or Dummies for Dummies.
It's all gonna be in questions with bullet points.
Like, it's just, I don't know, it's like, gee, it was, gee, it was gonna be hilarious on this thing.
Well, I, I, I was really curious about that. So Liz, you really think that marketing to agents will still be storytelling, And not like I'm writing code or I'm writing, you know, a set of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right? Like, we all know that today most of the LLMs, they're going after, you know, answers to questions or bulleted lists or that sort of thing, right? From Reddit or Wikipedia. You really believe it's gonna be storytelling?
I, I absolutely do, because every single one of those bullets is a story. Every single one of those questions is a story. And for us as marketers, we're the ones that have to think through who the listener is, who's receiving that story. This is transmedia storytelling at its absolute best, right? Fundamentally, transmedia storytelling has always been about the capacity to tell different parts of a story through any presentation layer, whether I'm reading it in a book, whether I am looking at it in a movie, whether I'm seeing it in a television episode. I should be able to see and understand that bigger story. But me, me, the reader, the listener, the viewer, I get to jump into the story at any point or any place that I choose. And if it's my agent doing it for me because I've decided I want to tell a different story through a different sweater, you better believe that the brand I'm gonna go with has the agent that knows how to tell my story the best to my agent in the moment and the place that I decided to go receive that story. Every thing is a story.
We got a new South by session here, Liz.
So, uh, I was just in Silicon Valley and I experienced a humanoid. It's in alpha beta stage right now, and it was delivering pizza to someone's house. And we went with the humanoid, and the humanoid not only delivers the pizza, takes the money, but goes inside and sets the table and pours the drink. And the question that came up that the founder was talking to me about is, okay, so now Pepsi and Coke, are they marketing to the human family that's sitting at the table, or are they marketing to that humanoid that's pouring the Pepsi or the Coke? Have you guys thought about that? Is that coming up and as questions for boards or CEOs, or is it too far away?
I don't think the boards are there yet, but I think the operators are definitely thinking about that. And what's actually happening is, the question is, you're actually marketing to the consumer and via the humanoid. The question is, if the humanoid pushes Pepsi or Coke in this case, for example, that's not going to fly. We actually think it's going to be the customer asking for it. But the humanoid might say, but we also have Pepsi, or we also have Coke. And that could start the question. But yes, you're going to see a lot more choices. Not that we can— not that we're not drowning in choices today, but you're going to see a lot more choices and a lot more options. And back to what Liz was saying, everything is a choose-your-own-adventure book. I mean, it doesn't matter where you begin or end. It's a question of, are you beginning or ending in my situation, in my context? And that's going to be even more important. And I think that's going to be a word we're going to be hearing a lot next year, back to context.
And I also think there's going to be a different point to that marketing, right? It's not just going to be, do you want Coke or Pepsi? If the human said, I want a drink, the humanoid is going to be able to say, would you like Coke? Would you like Pepsi? Would you like this exotic drink you've never heard of, but you would love to try and buy, right? You're going to have that situation. But if the customer says, I want a Coke, it's going to do the ultimate thing that we marketers have always wanted something to do. It's going to have the capacity to understand that selling volume is just as important as selling introduction. So it's going to say, you know what, you could actually buy 2 Cokes today if you wanted to have a little bit more for later. It's going to understand that in a minute, less than a minute. And to Ray's point, it's going to be able to make all of those calculations so fast, faster than we as the human operator would be able to do that. Because how many times do we try to get creepy with people and be like, you know, you know, Hey, Sandy. Sandy, we know you like a Coke. Come on, drink a Coke. Have a Coke. Come on, Sandy. Like, that's creepy. Yeah. But the, you know, and back to the storytelling concept, it's not even just the human and the humanoid. It's gonna be the person that is programming the humanoid that gets all of those signals in from their customers who then need to put that into that programming chain. Because, you know, unlike everyone who wants us to believe Hollywood AI theory, where suddenly this humanoid delivering pizza is going to be like, and then I'd like to kill the family. That's not going to happen, right? That's not what I'm talking about. So I think it's about influencing everyone along that value chain. And it comes back to the word that Ray brought up in the very beginning, outputs, right? What are those business outputs? And to be able to have that influence over that humanoid, to go in and toggle from what to drink to how much volume can I sell, to what do I sell afterwards? Because we all know that if you ate something really salty, you want something sweet. Yep. How do I do that in a second?
Interesting. I have to tell you guys a funny story. I was just flying to, to Atlanta. We were on a plane and I can't remember, maybe it was Delta, but I said, hey, they offered me, they said, hey, would you like a Pepsi? And I said, no, I only drink Coke. This and this is true. I only drink Coke. Pepsi is too sweet for me. And the guy sitting in front of me whipped around and said, I work for Coke. I want to find out why you only do Coke. And so I was like, talking about creepy, it was a little creepy. I was like, okay, I'm just flying to Atlanta. I don't really want to be a focus group.
Yeah, yeah.
But, but anyway, but I, but I'll do it. So this is all, you know, it's so interesting. Our marketers structurally ready and are they mindset ready for these changes that are coming?
Oh God. Some are, some like, some are leading the charge. And I think you're seeing some experimenting and trying and testing. I mean, I think the early implementations of generative AI in places like quick serve restaurants are such a great example of those brands and marketers who led with experience to try to understand how they could make the drive-thru teller's experience better along with the customer who was ordering. It didn't work. They pulled it quickly. So those are the marketers that I keep having my eyes on, right? Those are the CMOs that I have my eye on because what that tells me is they're willing to implement, they are experimenting like heck, and they are pulling quickly as to not destroy an experience at either end of that. Structurally, I think that's where we've got a challenge because we're gonna have a challenge in data. And it comes back to that age-old beast that always trips us up. The thing we all have to remember about AI is that AI is like the hungriest beast we've ever dealt with when it comes to data. Oh, she's hungry. She is belly up to the table and she wants thirds. And we don't have enough data, nor do we have the structures that allow the most important data that can allow her to feed constantly and on constantly new. We're just— we're giving her the same meal every day and she's going to get mad.
Data is where it's at for sure. So let's go back to structure again, if you don't mind, Liz. So one of my friends is CMO. I won't give her company, but it's a Fortune 50 company. And she now has AI agents in her marketing teams. So they're not cutting people, but they're adding agents instead of adding people. And so she has agents that are part of her human teams, like, uh, an agent to do market research, an agent to optimize a landing page. So I'm curious, do you see that happening? New roles, new org charts. Um, how are you seeing that shaping up today in a marketing function? Is she way ahead or is this now common?
I think that for 2025, she was way ahead. I think for 2026, she's going to be the norm, and that's going to accelerate very, very quickly. I think the thing that people are doing is they're anthropomorphizing AI agents probably a little too much, and they're beginning to think of, like, team member for agent, agent for team member, when what we're really doing is putting bubble wrap around every single one of our people. And that is what we absolutely should be doing. We should be looking at our teams and saying, what is that high-value program? What is that high-value action or activity that you want to be able to do so that you are spectacular at your job? And then all the other stuff that's not around that high-volume activity, that high-value activity, put an agent on it, right? Agents become everyone's like massive horde of interns, and they will get smarter and they will get better and they will continue to grow. But we can't think of them as like tit for tat for everything we're going to do. I think being able to bubble wrap our people with these amazing process monsters, absolutely the right way to go. And it sounds like that's what she's done, which is terrific.
Yeah, because she was trying to make them reusable across the org because she's— yes, she's in a big company. So like her market intelligence or market research agent, what the CEO has asked her to do because she did it so successfully is now, can I take the same agent and can I use it for product 1 and product 2 and category?
Yes.
And I do. Is that what you're—
Function 1 and Function 2. Like, I want to see that market research agent dip into customer service and find out what customers are actually saying in the minute that they're saying it and bring that back to marketing and everything that's happening from marketing's event data and take that into the contact center. Like, yes, absolutely. Because it's fundamentally what we're looking at. It's just people get really tripped up because people like to play corporate don't touch my button. Right where we sit there, we're like, ah, this is what— yeah, my data.
I've been there.
No, no, no, don't touch my button. Uh, agents don't do that. Agents kind of like tromp through that. Uh, and I think it becomes one of the— I mean, Ray, how many times have we heard people say, you know what I'd really love for the new year? I'd really love to do some silo busting. Maybe this gets us there.
What do you think, Ray? Do you want to jump in on this one?
Yeah, I think what's going to happen is, I mean, as Liz mentioned, right, you don't have an agent per role. You're going to have end-to-end business processes and workflows that are going to be covered by an agent. I think the other piece is we're going to see agents don't live within just one application or one department. They're cross-functional. And so look for cross-functional, cross-platform, multi-agentic AI to take hold. Your ability to actually use an agent to go over the top, that's going to be the most important thing you can do is keep that flexibility so that all your legacy systems don't come back and haunt you. What you're going to be able to do is traverse all those legacy systems with the agent and keep the data in one place where you want to, as Liz says. That data is so important. You can't digitize without data. You can't do AI without data. The bottom line is your data efforts still don't change. In fact, they're even more critical. But what you want to do is make sure that you start building workflows, you start building end-to-end processes that you could care less about where the data or the application and what team it sits in.
Wow, I have so many follow-ups here. So one, should marketeers— sorry, should marketeers buy data, synthesize data? Oh yeah, what do you think?
I actually think— and then Liz, jump in here too as well because we've never really talked about this— but I actually think that we're getting in a marketplace for data. There was a book, I think you were at this meeting where we once had this, where he decided that I'd write this book on Data Inc. And I think this was at South by, about 3 years ago. And the point is, we actually think there's a marketplace for buy-side data, sell-side data, and then there's a data broker at some point, and then some other business model. So if you're, for example, in the insurance market, there's a buy-side, a sell-side, a buy-side insurance premium, insurance premium, and a sell-side. All these things are coming together. And so you're going to be— some places you're going to barter for data. Some places you're going to augment and buy data. Some places You're going to be like— you're going to have a data surplus where you're then going to sell that data to someone else. And so that gets more important than ever, just like what we saw with ad networks and programmatic ads. The same thing is going to happen with what we sell in terms of our data and our context that we're doing in almost every engagement. You're starting to see that, right? You can see from, for example, like Walmart's ad network works that way. You can see other companies that are trying to build similar types of data brokerage kind of efforts. So that first part party data, third-party data where we're trying to sell that information and augment first-party data. It's gonna happen all over again, but this time it's around the context of an offer. And, and that's really where commerce comes to life, uh, in the age of AI. Hmm.
What do you think, Liz?
And you're for, you're for sure seeing it right now. I mean, I think you're also seeing it on the vendor side where you're starting to see, um, offers of data clean rooms where you can strip away any of that personal information. You can really create your own network of fully anonymized but multi-partner data coming in through your own organization. And I think that that is largely coming out of those places and spaces where advertising has already been perfected because we've been able to do that for many, many years. We got a little foolish and thought that we could just do it on our own and put on, oh, keep the anonymous data in there. You know, so we've learned our lessons. We've been able to structure that a whole lot better. I think the reality is, is that there are— okay, if I'm just gonna be super blunt about our people for just a second with marketers, these networks sound amazing. And I think that Ray is 100% per usual, right? That, that is where we're seeing really smart organizations who have had the courage to get their legacy systems in check, who have had the courage to get their data in check, who are in a posture to be able to even strategize what it means to be a data inc, right? They are, they are there and they're going to reap those rewards so fast, especially in this age of AI. It's going to be those of us that are just sitting around being like, I'm still dealing with dirty data. Oh no, do I have to get a master data management program? Like there's— we still have those people, right? Like we still have those teams out there. And I think those teams are really going to hurt. And we did a bit of research at Constellation where we went and asked very specifically CX executives, were they ready for this kind of age of agentic AI? And those who had already deployed agentic AI within their organization weren't just thinking about it, weren't asking questions. They had gone in and done it. The number one thing that's holding them back is, of course, data. But the reason why is that data being held back was legacy systems that actually couldn't connect and couldn't have their data go into a central repository for AI to be able to use in a meaningful way. So I, I think that, you know, when you talk about structure, it's not just gonna be org chart structure, it's gonna be tech stack structure. And we gotta get, we gotta get over this. Like, my martech stack is so special, I can't touch anything else. Done. Those days are over.
That's exactly, excuse me, one of the questions I was gonna ask you, Liz. So if I'm a marketeer, you know, and I've like done branding and demand gen, how much should I get my hands dirty in the data. I know—
Oh, God, get muddy. Yeah, get like filthy. Like, I want to see you just get so dirty it hurts. Like, go do it, but not in the ways we used to think of it, right? I think it's very different. Go get dirty with the questions that you always wanted answered. Dive in. Like, this age of AI and data opens the door for curiosity without that kickback and without that consequence. We're not gonna break a model. We're not gonna, you know, poke a hole through the dam and the data lake. We're good. Ask the question and ask new questions and ask connected questions that aren't rooted in the data you know you have. Ask about things that you wish you could have asked when you knew you had all the data for all the customer across your organization. You know, I, I think that we've always been worried about getting into the data because marketers have always been told there's this big fiery hellscape of a consequence if we do something wrong with the data. Like, don't touch that cell. And we, we get really nervous about it. I mean, Sandy, let's think back like 20 years, right? Even though I've only been a marketer for 10.
But I was going to say I've only been a marketer for 2. So there you go.
Yeah, exactly. Like, let's think back like 20 years. Remember, we were the ones, we were that first wave of marketer that got told data was dark, it was dirty. It was like, remember my favorite—
and not your job.
And not your job. Hey, you marketer, go stay over there with your coloring in department. Zip it. And then we over-articulated, right? Like we went way into the data that we only had. We're in an age where we can ask anything. And for marketers, that should be exciting because it also means we get to go back to being those brand-centric folks because we get to do demand gen, we get to do brand, we get to do all of it, like paint with all the colors, but understand all the colors made out of data.
Mm-hmm. I love it. So I do have another question too. And Ray and Liz, both of you touched on this. So upfront, you talked about, you know, humans, the importance of humans. And Ray, I think you even said something like the human factor is what's really gonna stand out. I was just at a conference where I got to meet with Capital One, and they have a new car buying process, and it's about 300 agents that can help you buy a car from checking out the title to has the car ever been wrecked to help me get the best price. And they told me something I thought was very interesting. They have removed the human in the loop. And I was talking to some of their marketing team and I said, are you nervous about that? Like, are you nervous having agents do all this work with your customer? I'm curious what you guys think about that. Are you seeing a lot more of that where there's no more human in the loop, allowing an agent to directly do almost everything from start to finish of a customer's journey? Or is that, you know, is that Capital One being ahead of the game again?
Well, for 80% of the market, that is a great thing. For the 20% of us who love to haggle on the car deal, it's a horrible thing.
You did not.
You did not. I mean, I love car buying. I mean, I have bought more cars for more friends than I can remember. It's just the art of actually having that, you know, trying to actually make the deal. And it's just kind of fun, right? So, It's kind of like it takes you back to the negotiation roots. You know, you think about like what you have to negotiate against and what you do. And, and Capital One's probably right that Auto Navigator is the way to go. Everything's set, you're ready to go, let's go play this, you know. But, but for me, it's just like it wouldn't work for me. But I know 80% of the market would love this ability because everything's set into play. You don't have to deal with all the weird paperwork. You don't have to deal with all the stuff around your credit score being X. They've made the process so easy that basically, instead of spending 4 hours haggling, you could buy a car in 10 seconds. I mean, it's probably a little bit longer than that. But the point being is you could do it in 40 minutes. And that's what makes it work because we're ultimately dealing with speed. The one thing we can't change is how much time something takes. And if you can do it faster than anyone else, then you actually have more steps, more advantages, and more at-bats. And that's really what I meant by order of operations earlier. Everyone's competing for speed. They're competing for relevance and context, and they're competing to get something to someone more quickly, a better offer at the right time, the right place. And that's where we're going to start to see things like, you know, what Capital One's doing. It's going to happen at scale almost everywhere.
Mm. So no human in the loop. I mean, as a marketer, I'm a little worried about that. No human in the loop. What, what are you—
My agent's going to negotiate with their agent. Agent, and we'll see what happens.
I don't like— I'm just going to— I love the team at Capital One, so I'm not saying this to be like critical of them. I do not think it's accurate to say that they pulled humans from the loop. They pulled human-generated friction from the loop because let's be honest, that 30 minutes that you wait in the manager's office because he's going to go back like when, you know, when the loan officer comes in, it's like, I'm going to go and I'm going to fight for you. I'm going to the manager, I'm going to go into the owner's office and I'm going to tell him that he's got to give you those floor mats. Like that nonsense has been removed.
So like, let's get the coffee and a donut while you're like, yeah, let's be honest.
I mean, if you want to talk about like experience and car dealership, like remember when we were all like, oh, they put in a barista. Oh, like we got all excited about that. But that was just more friction, right? We wanted more points where we slowed down the journey so that the customer could really think about what they're winning. Because we all haggled for the rain mat at the bottom of the car, but we also took the premium on the car itself. So not like Ray went in and haggled for the car. Yeah, like Ray haggled for the car, but the rest of us are like, ooh, you're going to give us a branded stuffed animal and the rain mats? Ooh, like we thought we were doing great.
Free Rain-X coating, man. Free Rain-X coating.
We thought we were there, right? But I think when you remove the human friction from the loop, you still have the good friction that's there, right? Because there is good friction and you are still protecting yourself because of your credit score from— as a business, you are protecting the consumer from fraud. There are those points and those mechanisms and those guardrails that are in place that actually protect both the business and the customer. I think it's a misnomer to say that you've removed the human because the human has been the one testing that loop and running like a crazed hamster on that loop to perfect that. Yes, a customer can actually pick their car, buy it, have all of their paperwork done. We can bring all that information in. That's the stuff that people wanted removed. But you know what? You know what humans are always going to do? And I do not care how great AI gets, we're always going to know how to rage scream. You know that one, right? Like when you call the phone, like, and you're like, it's taking a little too long. And Ray then just hits when he has that moment of the rage scream. Yeah, it's still gonna happen. It's still gonna happen with agents. And did we train our agent to be able to deal with the rage scream? Or do we know that Ray is a customer who's not only just come in and bought one car from us, he's influenced 10 other car deals down the road from us, and he's just about to come in and buy a new car because we've seen all of his intent signals across every single one of our properties and back to Ray's comment about that data, you know, collective we're going to have. We've also seen him checking out competitive pricing. We've seen him checking out what— we've seen all the signals that point to Ray's ready for a new car. Now, Ray has been really good to us. He's driven a lot of business to us. Do I really want him to have an experience that isn't white glove? Do I want him to have an experience where he doesn't get what he wants and what he needs, which is the haggle? Heck no, I'm putting them right in front of a person. I am like, here you go, here's our most argumentative individual in our entire organization. Because my AI, my Liz, the CMO's AI, my marketing team's AI, my customer services AI knows so much about Ray because they are these super agents that I as the human have already created an algorithm that says you take that high value individual and you bring them right to me because we're going to argue all day over what those tires are.
They also know my friend Jeff, who basically takes a car from one dealer, drives it to the other dealer, and says, you two decide. So he's banned.
Oh, oh, oh, no, Jeff. No, Jeff. No, thank you.
He's banned.
Yeah. Mm-mm.
So Liz, as you're chatting about this, I'm just thinking if I'm a CMO, I'm probably torn right now, right? Because there's all these cool things I can be doing, like this super agent that you talked about, but then I've got short-term performance I have to meet, you know, for my brand to survive, for me to survive in my job. How do I balance that against some of these long-term brand equity plays? How do I balance that short-term performance to this long-term equity that I need to be thinking about?
I think it's a great question, Sandy, and I think it goes back to how the great marketeers that we both know, those CMOs, look at what those CMOs did to become CEOs, because like never before, we see so many CEOs that are former CMOs. And what did they all do? They leveraged quick wins. They leveraged those wins and the things that you needed to do to fund the equity and the patience for that long-term brand play, that corporate strategy, that thinking, and that navigating. Doesn't change in the age of AI. It gets a heck of a lot faster. It gives you lots of different ways that you get there. But that fundamental understanding that you need those quick wins, you need to be tied up to what that business strategy is, but you also have to be able to define your wins in the language of the business. So a win is not a like, a win is not an output, a win is not I got you that billboard that's on your drive CEO that you love to go to the golf course. No, that's, that's not the win. That's always been the loss, right? We, we've mistook it for a win a long time, but it's about using those short-term wins and continuously reminding the business of the little wins because that's the equity that gets you the long runway so that you get to have that long brand equity play.
Yeah. I mean, when you create abundance in an era of scarcity, that's really how you win. And that's where the CEOs come from. They have a certain mindset. That is just better. And the CMOs that can tell the story and actually execute, they're the ones that actually become really, really successful in terms of the C-suite and in terms of the CEO role.
Have you guys done research on how many CEOs now came from the CMO spot?
I try to keep a mental note of it. We haven't done formal research on it, but it's a good one to do. I, but I, I, Sandy, as you well know, I mean, gosh, even dating back to my days with the CMO Council, I can remember people saying, like, I remember those early conversations in 2006, right? Like, wow, remember those conversations where it's like, when's marketing going to get a seat at the table? If only, right? Like, remember that?
Yeah, I do.
We don't have those conversations anymore because marketing is actually building the table. We're making it bigger for everyone else to come sit around. And I think that's what's really exciting about the role. And I think that that path to CEO is 100% fueled by exactly what Ray said, that capacity to make those decisions and to make those precision decisions, like, at all times of the day. But it also is about understanding the customer in a way that is so unique and is only really pulled together through the eyes and the mindset of a marketer, because we are the ones that define the brand through the eyes of the customer. I got everybody else in the organization telling me what the company does, what the company sells, what the product does, what we are, what's our vision, our mission, why the CEO founded us, blah, blah, blah. I got all of that in my head. But as the CMO, I'm the organization. Marketing is the organization that can tell you how the customer defines and what the customer values about doing business with the brand. And that, that mindset.
And it's definitely CMOs that have P&L experience. Like, you've seen it at Starbucks, you've seen it at Avon, you've seen it at, um, JP Morgan Wealth Management. These were CMOs that became CEOs. So I think the number is somewhere between 8% and 10% have ever pulled it off. And it's not a big number, but it's not a small number.
Well, you said zero.
So 10% is high. I think that's awesome.
But Starbucks is a great example. I mean, Brian Key was— I mean, Taco Bell, he came up, right? Taco Bell, Chipotle. And now Starbucks, a brand that went and spent millions, millions on a CEO because they thought a management consultant could change their future.
Interesting.
They needed a CMO to do that.
Kristen Levenkow, JPMorgan Chase CMO, became CEO of US Wealth Management. She's a good one. I think Andrea Jung was CMO of Avon and became CEO. There's a couple of others like that.
So Hannah Anderson also has a CMO that's now her CEO.
I mean, that's right.
So many great examples.
Yeah, I love those examples. And that should be very aspirational for a lot of chief marketing officers out there or even marketeers who want to someday run the business. I love that. So Liz, right now, if a marketing leader came to you and said, Liz, what do I need to start doing now to be completely relevant in 2026? So it's Happy New Year. Great. Now let's get going. What is something that you would say, do this and do it fast and do it now. So that you will be relevant this year?
I want you to pick up the phone and have two conversations. The first conversation is going to be with whoever runs your customer service strategy and your customer service motion, because that's going to be your richest pool of data that you are not pulling into your systems right now. Guaranteed you are not pulling all of that into your CDPs. You're not pulling that all of the data. So I want you to go— that's the first conversation I want you to have. The second conversation I want you to have is with whoever runs your security. Because I need you to go in and ask them a very, very critical question. What do I do that pisses you off and how do I help?
Interesting.
You're not going to get to any of that data. You're not going to get to any of these new experiences if you're not working, not with your CIO, with your CISO too, because the dynamic we have to remember is the CIO and the CISO are not always bound at the hip. We like to assume they are, but they aren't necessarily. But as the CMO, I guarantee you we are doing something. We did something that pissed the CISO off so bad. We went off and bought our own database. We went off and bought our own thingamajig that did something to the system. And so those are the two conversations immediately at the start of the new year. Like, stop watching this podcast when Sandy's done and has released you to your work. Go pick up the phone, contact who runs customer service, contact who runs security, and figure out a new partnership there.
I'm rarely surprised in a podcast, but those two surprised me. So thank you, Liz. Ray, what's one marketing belief that will sound obvious in 2026, but is, you know, super controversial here in first quarter, but by the end of the year, people will be like, oh my gosh, this is so obvious.
I think there's this belief that no one cares about privacy. And I think the companies that do are going to win. Right now, there's this belief that, you know, f privacy. No one cares. You know, we're going to give them exactly what they want. But it's going to come down to how you're treated with your data. If you take a look and you said, who do you trust with your healthcare data? Is it going to be, I don't know, Amazon? Is it going to be Facebook? Is it going to be a healthcare insurance company? The answer is none of those. You actually trust Apple with your healthcare data more than anyone else. And, and those who are acting as your steward, those who give you agency for your data, those who seek your permission, those who give true value exchange, those are the ones that are going to win. Especially when we get to loyalty programs, which are going to be more important than ever going into 2026, because loyalty programs are manifestation of value exchange for data and personalization at the same time. So people are like, if you don't care about privacy, I think you're going to be in a lot of trouble because there's a lot of marketing belief that, ah, nobody Who cares? We'll take the short-term win on this one. But it comes down to, it's the Apple effect.
Fascinating. OK, I know we could chat all day long. We're down to the last minutes of the podcast. So, I'd like to give each of you a final word. Ray, I'm going to start with you and then Liz, we're going to close it out with you. So, the big bang.
Oh, man.
So, Ray, kind of final word. Mindset shift should every marketer carry forward for this year 2026 and beyond?
All right, build towards situational awareness. I know that's a really big word, but the point being is context is everything, and the resulting, result— the resulting set of decision velocity in context is you've got to know what's happening at all times. And it's not going to be 100% accurate, but if you're close at 80% accuracy you're going to be able to get to a point where you can make the next set of guesses. Um, the data that we're sitting in and data pools like Liz mentioned that you typically didn't tap, like in the service side, right, are going to be very valuable. So every piece of data that you can to use to actually make the next prediction is what you want to be able to get to. So start designing for situational awareness. There's not going to be a budget for situational awareness, but you're going to build incremental steps to get there, and that's how you're going to fund your ability to actually, um, deliver on that.
Okay, interesting. Again, another surprise for me. Situational awareness, that's a great one, Ray. Thank you. Liz, what's yours? Like, what mindset shift, what thing do you think every marketer needs to carry through for this year and beyond?
Yeah, I, I, I pull from the security space once again on this one, and because it's is gonna pull off of what Ray just said, right? So you're gonna have that situational awareness. You're gonna see this whole new landscape. Marketers will always have a tendency to view and to look right. We wanna see what's coming ahead. We wanna see to the right of that timeline of that situation. If our customer is in the dead center, we always tend to look right. Where are they going? What's happening? What's it— what I want marketers to start doing is a concept that the military often thinks about and military strategists will often talk about is I want you to start thinking left of bang. I want you to start thinking about what happened before the incident happened. So when you think about bang, right, the bad ugly thing you don't wanna talk about. But if we think of, if we think left of bang, we could put anything in this bang. Our customer left. They decided to close their account and they ended their subscription. They went and bought from someone else. When we start to think left of bang, we start to think about all of the pieces of intelligence that all of the pieces of the action situational awareness that we now have and what Ray just talked about to be able to act proactively to create a new brand future for ourselves. And I think in an age where brand is going to be more important than ever, we need to start understanding of what are, what are all those new bangs that happen across that situation and how do we think left of it so that we can act differently and avoid the bang. And that really becomes all what we're doing with both brand and demand under one roof so that we think about it differently. It's not, oh, I'm, I'm gonna be a brander, I'm gonna be a performance marketer. No, I'm gonna think left of bang so I understand how performance, demand, and brand can change the narrative so that bang never happens.
Those are two great ones. Situational awareness and left of the bang. Great, great, great. Thank you.
Left of the bang thinking.
Thank you guys so much for being here. I couldn't have asked for two better guests to have on the show for the very first show. And again, I do want to thank Simrush and Breveo. Breveo, but if you think about both of them, they can both help you with situational awareness and thinking left of the bang, both of those. So check them out as well. Thank you for listening, and we'll have many, many more more great discussions. Thank you, guys.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Thank you.
Happy New Year.
