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EP67 - Confessions of a CMO with Jon Crowley and Krisi Packer
The CMO role isn't dying – it's evolving. Based on anonymous interviews with marketing leaders worldwide, Confessions of a CMO reveals five distinct archetypes built to thrive under today's pressures. Join outgoing CMA President and CEO Alison Simpson, SVP, Partner and Head of Strategy at FUSE Create Jon Crowley, and Associate Creative Director, Verbal at Monigle, Krisi Packer, as they unpack the research, apply a distinctly Canadian lens and help you discover which archetype you are.
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:14:18 Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect Live. Confessions of a CMO. With your host Alison Simpson and special guests Jon Crowley and Krisi Packer.
00:00:14:20 - 00:00:43:04 Alison I'm Alison Simpson, and welcome to our third ever live CMA connect podcast. We've had the pleasure of kicking off CMA marketing week since it was created, and it's wonderful to be back here again to do the same thing. Love sharing the energy in this room with all of you. And also a huge thank you to the hundreds of marketers who have joined us from across the country, especially our friends on the West Coast who are getting up extra early to be part of our CMA marketing week kick off.
00:00:43:06 - 00:01:11:11 Alison For years, we've been hearing that the CMO role is dying. We're seeing shorter tenures. We're seeing shifting titles. We're seeing shrinking budgets, fractured influence. The headlines right themselves. The death of the CMO has become far too common rallying cry on conference stages and in LinkedIn, thought pieces. But as Mark Twain very famously said, the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.
00:01:11:13 - 00:01:45:05 Alison And that's exactly what our data shows. When CMO's lead customer centric growth company's see 1.4 times higher performance. When that leadership is fully integrated across the organization, growth doubles again. And here in Canada, our own Kantar research tells the same story. Top Canadian brands grew 10% last year, which is significantly outperforming Canada's GDP growth over the same period of 1.3%.
00:01:45:07 - 00:02:14:19 Alison So marketing leadership absolutely is not dying. It is evolving. The species survives because we adapt, and that's what we're here to explore today. Today's conversation is based on exclusive research that asks CMOs to confess what really happens behind closed doors. It's not the polished LinkedIn version of leadership. It's the unfiltered truth, the failure of forced adaptation, and the strategies that really helped ensure survival.
00:02:14:21 - 00:02:39:09 Alison What emerges from those candid conversations is a new taxonomy of marketing leadership. We have seven distinct species picking up on the evolutionary theme that dazzle shared with us, and each of the species has evolved to thrive under very different corporate pressures. Joining me today are two people uniquely positioned to unpack these insights. Krisi Packer is the co author of confessions of a CMO.
00:02:39:11 - 00:03:08:04 Alison She's also associate creative director of Verbal at Monocle. Monocle conducted dozens of anonymous interviews with CMOs around the world, from CPG to tech, from Europe to Asia Pacific, and of course, Canada. And they really captured the honest moments when leaders could finally speak freely about what it really takes to survive in the C-suite today. Jon Crowley is a partner, senior vice president and head of strategy at Fuze Create.
00:03:08:06 - 00:03:31:07 Alison Jon works directly with Canadian CMO and marketing leaders every day, and really helps them navigate the exact pressures that this research helped unveil. He's bringing the Canadian perspective to a global conversation. Well, Krisi and Jon are going to share what they discovered, including which CMO space that they identify with. And here's what makes the research really, really powerful.
00:03:31:09 - 00:03:53:22 Alison It isn't prescriptive. It doesn't tell you which species you should become. Instead, it helps us hold up a mirror and says, here's what's working. Here's how leaders like you are thriving and adapting today. So Krisi and Jon, please join me on stage. I'm looking forward to an insightful and very fun conversation. So, Krisi, let's start by giving our audience a quick field guide.
00:03:54:00 - 00:04:03:05 Alison Can you walk us through the five dominant species and their defining traits? And we'll treat this as a bit of a nature documentary. How do we spot each species out in the wild?
00:04:03:07 - 00:04:13:20 Krisi Fun fact that this field guide does have very nature documentary style intros for all these. Just great. I'm going to spare you my David Attenborough oppression though. Jon, I think you have him right? Yes.
00:04:13:22 - 00:04:14:15 Krisi So let's first
00:04:14:15 - 00:04:33:06 Krisi start with, our chief beauty officer. So I'm going to go through these really quickly. The report is incredibly in-depth. So just know that I'm going to just hit the high notes here. So that way we can you know what your appetite. So the chief Mutiny officer this is our strategic war breaker or our disruptive mutation of the chief marketing officer.
00:04:33:07 - 00:04:53:17 Krisi And really, their job is to kind of enter a place of organizations and release, you know, controlled doses of rebellion. That can look like a lot of different things. But one of the things I love to, give an example for is they will, do anything and, take action even before alignment exists. Right? And they'll use results as proof that they were right, that they should have watched it.
00:04:53:19 - 00:05:12:06 Krisi I know a lot of you might be thinking, hell, yeah, like mutiny. Burn it down. That sounds amazing. That is so reckless. But the truth is, mutiny officers are not reckless. They are highly calculated and precise about when and where to break the rules. And I think what I love about them the most is they, don't wait for that change.
00:05:12:06 - 00:05:16:00 Krisi They provoke it. And, Alison, I know your type is Mutiny Officer.
00:05:16:02 - 00:05:35:16 Alison Yeah. So thank you for describing us as not reckless. When I did the quiz, which everyone will have an opportunity to do as well, I did identify as a Chief Mutiny Officer. And what was interesting was when we've reached out to other Canadians to get a sense for the different profiles that are emerging. Chief Mutiny Officer was one of the lowest to emerge in Canada.
00:05:35:16 - 00:05:46:21 Alison So I know a little bit later Jon will talk about why that is. Is that just us polite, humble Canadians is a political pressure. But we will dig into a little bit more of how we don't have more Chief Mutiny Officers.
00:05:46:23 - 00:06:12:11 Krisi Absolutely. All right, so next we have our Chief Missing Officer. This is our invisible operator or a master of camouflage. And I think this one has the most misleading name. When you hear missing, you probably think I'm absent. Like, do they come to meetings like, what's actually going on? But they are far from absent. They're actually just stealth. I think if the apex, Chief Marketing Officer, if you will, was sort of a show boater. They're a credit share, right?
00:06:12:13 - 00:06:34:11 Krisi They are aligning leaders before a big meeting. They are embedding marketing priorities and other business functions. And, you know, they might not be in the meeting, but their fingerprints are on every single decision. And this is something that, I typed as, as well. Next, we have our Mood Officer. This is our stabilizer. They are the people that are always thinking about the tone in the room.
00:06:34:13 - 00:07:02:11 Krisi It's very vibes coded. It's very, you know, understanding that the decisions that are made are just as important as the environment that it's in. You might spot them in the wild when they're, you know, cutting well-timed jokes to cut the tension or, you know, they're absorbing all that negativity that's in the room just to move the idea forward. So very, very vibes coded. And, honestly, one of the people that really sets the tone for, the environment for ideas to be made in.
00:07:02:15 - 00:07:31:00 Krisi Next we have our Chief Meeting Officer. This is our translator. And I think this is most, closely aligned to a marketer's traditional skill set. They are really connecting the organization through narratives, right? They're bringing together, you know, finance, customer experience, all these different things and really understanding how to talk to them about marketing. And a lot of times in really convoluted situations, too, they're just stating the obvious, which I think is a very important tactic. And something beautiful about the narratives that they create.
00:07:31:00 - 00:07:37:15 Krisi They really bring people back to the human part of the organization and the mission. And, Jon, I know you tie Disney off the right?
00:07:37:17 - 00:07:54:13 Jon Which is maybe the most stereotypical thing for an advertising strategist to type out as sort of the list of options. It's, the concept of, you know, Narrator's Translation, this idea of bringing everyone along on the story. It's kind of like when you read a horoscope and you're like, oh, yeah, I do do that a lot. Maybe I am stubborn as a Taurus.
00:07:54:15 - 00:08:14:18 Krisi All right. And finally we have our momentum officer. So this is our propeller. That's always driving progress. They were born, into the depths of red tape, and they've evolved to know how to cut through it, which I think is really interesting. They move too quickly to fall into those bureaucratic traps, and they really trade theory for action, right?
00:08:14:20 - 00:08:35:09 Krisi You won't catch them, you know, debating something. They're going to be, you know, launching not one campaign, but ten campaigns. They are, moving faster than the speed of debate, which I think is very interesting. And it's not just about speed, but it's about intention as well. So if you all are interested, scan the QR code. You can do, the typing tool right now, probably takes 30s.
00:08:35:11 - 00:08:38:06 Krisi It is not a personality quiz, but it's just as fun.
00:08:38:08 - 00:08:50:14 Alison So we're going to dig into some of the global patterns. And then also the Canadian, what emerge from a Canadian perspective. So Christy, since you've released the report and you've continue these confessionals with number of CMOs, what are you seeing?
00:08:50:16 - 00:09:12:15 Krisi I think what we're seeing is that CMOs are categorizing themselves situationally and deploying the tactics strategically. Just as Jon said, you know, we can't have our horoscope saying, you know, you're gonna have a bad day to day or you don't like bad smells or something, you know? I think what's interesting about this is they are looking at the report and saying, who am I?
00:09:12:15 - 00:09:34:09 Krisi Which traits can I use a different text situation? So we had a CMO who we interviewed. She was, great. She's like, I read the whole report, I did the typing tool. But I have to tell you, when I was reading through everything, I saw myself in every single species. Right. I'm a momentum officer with my team. I'm a meaning officer of my board. And I'm a munity officer with my peers, which I think is interesting.
00:09:34:09 - 00:09:51:01 Krisi So the idea here is to, again, hold a mirror up to what we're all doing right now and really understand what our, you know, strengths are, but also where can we stretch into other species that we might not be as comfortable with? If you're a momentum officer, you're constantly in motion. Always think about the next thing. Maybe a mood officer.
00:09:51:01 - 00:09:58:02 Krisi We have to slow down and really think about the tone. That could also be something that you could be stretching into there. That's not second nature.
00:09:58:04 - 00:10:16:07 Alison Well, it's also encouraging that we as marketers are able to adapt with the environment, adapt with different business pressures as well. Now, Jon, how does the Canadian landscape differ from what Christy found globally? We talked a bit about Chief Munity Officers. Are a bit missing in action in Canada, but what other differences did you see?
00:10:16:09 - 00:10:32:05 Jon Well, a couple of things jumped out that we thought were absolutely fascinating, and we had a bit of an off the record conversation with a group of Canadian marketing leaders. One of the first ones just to call out that that lack of Chief Munity, the officers in the room, was possibly the most Canadian outcome I could have ever imagined.
00:10:32:07 - 00:10:52:23 Jon Like in in our day to day work, we work with a lot of business leaders, both within and outside Canada. And the thing that comes up consistently is people work in the Canadian marketplace are a little more conciliatory in their approach. Other markets, even ones that may be nearby, maybe a little bit more kind of aggressive and confrontational in how discussions are brought together and how things are looked at.
00:10:52:23 - 00:11:13:09 Jon But something that came through in conversations with Canadians in the overarching Canadian approach is that there is a real tendency to kind of be the right person for the room in the moment that you're in. Similar to what Krisi talked about, about that, that need for adaptability. That was very highlighted to the point where, you know, in a room of nine, Canadian CMO was talking about their role as marketing leaders and what motivated them.
00:11:13:11 - 00:11:29:22 Jon The most common point was, I can't distill my day or my work down into just one of these. I need to be all of them every day to manage the relationships internally, to manage the relationships with my customers and our partners, and to ensure that we're getting to the best outcome on a consistent basis.
00:11:30:00 - 00:11:37:11 Alison So I love the adaptability I love the Canadian politeness. What I don't love about that is does it imply risk aversion?
00:11:37:13 - 00:12:01:15 Jon So I think that's a fantastic question. I think I think the interpretation of risk aversion is one that comes up a lot in reference to Canadian marketers and really to Canadian business in general. I've heard the same criticism about Canadian manufacturing and Canadian financial institutions and so on and so forth. I don't think care about building strong relationships and keeping them steady actually implies risk aversion.
00:12:01:17 - 00:12:10:08 Jon I think it is entirely possible to have a high risk tolerance while still having a very collectivist mindset. And I think there's a tendency to confuse the two.
00:12:10:10 - 00:12:30:09 Alison Absolutely agree. And it's all about not risk for risk side. But measured risks will help our businesses go for it. So the research also reveals three really interesting paradoxes that really contribute to whether you're a successful CMO today or not. The first is adaptation beats dominant. So, Krisi, what does this mean in practical terms?
00:12:30:11 - 00:12:53:18 Krisi Annotation beats dominance means, I think, the demise of the, you know, old school command or control, you know, CMO the old days, right? It's usually about big budgets, big campaigns, owning the narrative, owning the functions, splashy things. And it's like, okay, well, that just isn't a thing anymore, right? The organizations were in a world, frankly, it's unpredictable. It's chaotic.
00:12:53:18 - 00:13:14:13 Krisi It's, you know, something you can't control. And so I think now it moves from, you know, instead of marketing owning their function, it's navigating the system in which marketing exists. Right? We had a CMO talking about, his company, and he was saying that each business unit had their own marketing department. It was part of a legacy thing with the company.
00:13:14:13 - 00:13:35:12 Krisi And as you can imagine, that is a hairy situation to be in. But what he said next really struck me, which was, this isn't a marketing problem. This is actually a change management problem. And I think that right there just incredibly stuck with me because that is the role now, right? It's not just about marketing, it's about navigating the entire system you're in.
00:13:35:14 - 00:13:40:12 Krisi And I think having that adaptability, which marketers naturally do, is a really good head start.
00:13:40:14 - 00:13:50:06 Alison Now, Jon, how are you seeing this come to life in Canada? And if I don't know if you have a specific Canadian example, you can share where that adaptability versus dominance really helped contribute to success.
00:13:50:08 - 00:14:15:18 Jon So I think this is actually a really interesting thing to look at, because I think this is actually closely tied to the be like friendly, collaborative nature that gets called out when Canadians go work in other markets. One of the discussions that actually came up in our, in our off the record room of CMOs was the success the Canadian marketing leaders have had by going elsewhere and being able to bring that collaborative collective slightly less confrontational approach to bear.
00:14:15:20 - 00:14:37:08 Jon The thing that jumped out more than anything else when, when looking at these stories about adaptability, is how many times I've seen people need to pivot from operating in an organization that's very traditionally based to one that suddenly becomes 100% digital, and something I got to see working with a lot of marketing leaders in this country over the course of Covid was just like, oh, my entire business changed last night.
00:14:37:10 - 00:15:04:15 Jon How do we continue functioning? How do we adapt to a digital first mindset to instantaneous economic instability, which really does seem like it's kind of been a watchword in Canadian marketing for the last seven years at this point. But watching people need to pick their moment to completely pivot absolutely everything they're doing while still maintaining a sense of comfort and continuity in that we're all the same in all of this together, has been something that I've seen a lot of Canadian marketers excel at over the last several years.
00:15:04:17 - 00:15:30:14 Alison Great insight. Thank you. Now the second paradox is soft about soft power builds really hard results. And everyone in this room is in marketing to advance business and to drive growth. So the report says that as the C-suite is fragmenting with more specialized roles, the person who connects it really can gain power. So, Christie, in some ways that feels a little bit counterintuitive. Shouldn't fragmentation actually dilute marketing's impact?
00:15:30:16 - 00:15:59:08 Krisi Yes, on paper it does to my fragmentation should dilute marketing's impact. But in reality it kind of creates a vacuum. Right? So today's C-suite is incredibly specialized and thus kind of fragmented, right? You have, you know, chief data officers, analytics revenues, sales growth. It's like alphabet soup up there, right? And I think it's important to understand that with each of those specialties become the silos, because they all touch a piece of the customer journey.
00:15:59:08 - 00:16:14:18 Krisi Right. But it's very fragmented. That's very splintered. So I think where marketing's power can grow is the CMO who is able to connect. That entire system is the one that gains the more power, which I think is very, very important.
00:16:14:20 - 00:16:22:20 Alison And Jon, to your earlier point, there is something uniquely Canadian about our ability to do that. So that does set off up for great success in Canada, but also globally, which is
00:16:22:20 - 00:16:23:14 Krisi great to hear.
00:16:23:16 - 00:16:44:21 Jon One of the things that we've had played back to us by multiple Canadian CMOs, because this is, you know, a smaller market from a global perspective. There are lots of hats that everyone needs to wear. And so very often that that singular marketing leader, that singular, that singular brand manager might need to be a person that is managing eight different, very distinct relationships with different partners and vendors.
00:16:44:21 - 00:17:16:00 Jon And they need to be able to shift from speaking performance marketing to speaking experiential marketing to speaking digital path to purchase and figure out how they're going to handle sales optimization, both online and in store, to having a presentation with their boss to justify what the why. The last quarter numbers played out the specific way they play. It's a lot more natural to need to speak 5 or 6 different languages in a marketing role than it is in many others, and that could often fall off the radar because It can be easy for people outside of the world of marketing to sometimes think we're the colouring things in department, rather than being the one who needs
00:17:16:00 - 00:17:22:15 Jon to figure out how everything that the brand thinks it needs to be kind of goes out into the world and connects with human beings.
00:17:22:17 - 00:17:53:00 Alison So the third paradox might actually be my favourite. Absurd friction feels traction. Now, this is the idea that when other functions don't understand marketing, when they hand us conflicting, compressed, contradictory demands that can actually lead to significantly better marketing outcomes. And I and been in a number of CMO seats myself, I absolutely had colleagues and C-suite executives that didn't understand marketing, and it can make for some painful weeks, without a doubt.
00:17:53:06 - 00:17:57:13 Alison But I love the fact that that can actually lead to better marketing. So Kristie, please elaborate.
00:17:57:15 - 00:18:20:12 Krisi Yeah, I think, you know, what's interesting about this is I'll go back to this quote that I hear from, I heard from one of the CMO, which is it's the only C-suite role where your job is kind of fielding absurdity. Right. And I think you're holding so many different contradictions. You're doing a bunch of different things. And I think, Jon, I know you want to elaborate on this a bit, too, but just the idea that sometimes our jobs are a little bit absurd and like, that's okay.
00:18:20:16 - 00:18:37:06 Krisi But kind of leaning into that actually helps you build traction instead of saying like, oh, this is this is too much, how can I then say, all right, well, I'm going to lean into this and understand that again, there's contradictions. There's all the things, but it's part of the job and I'm going to lead with it 100%.
00:18:37:06 - 00:18:59:11 Jon I think a moment that most senior marketers have ever worked with, can relate to, is needing to be the person who says the very uncomfortable thing in the room, that the average person does not care this much about brands, and therefore we need to. We need to remember that, like maybe they haven't remembered the five core pillars of our brand story when they're walking into a retail location.
00:18:59:11 - 00:19:20:11 Jon Maybe they don't have this deep understanding of the history that we're discussing. So passionately in this boardroom. Sometimes that's the most powerful moment of absurdity, the reminder that as much as our customers centric in everything we do, and we are so passionate about the work we do, lots of leaders need to be the one to remind the team around them that in the consumers lives, we are 1% of 1%.
00:19:20:11 - 00:19:36:15 Jon I mean, there was conversation earlier about the importance of going out and buying a car and the level to which we are not thinking about car brands unless we're buying a new car or unless our car is broken, can't be overstated. And that's not a statement about something being wrong with car brands. It's about any kind of deep specialization.
00:19:36:15 - 00:19:46:12 Jon There's an absurdity in loving a business and loving creating results in a space that is not top of mind for people every day. But we can't all be Beyonce, and I'm okay with that.
00:19:46:14 - 00:20:04:12 Alison So another theme that emerged from the research is positioning. Marketing really is a nervous system for an organization, which I love. So it describes us as being the nervous system. So Christie, how do we know and had a CMO what signals that marketing really is like a nervous system for the organization?
00:20:04:14 - 00:20:28:20 Krisi I think CMOs are uniquely positioned to really, you know, detect and balance, you know, pressure and change before really anybody else, especially on the C-suite. That's like an external pressure is we're always looking for understanding consumer behaviour, emerging consumer patterns, cultural shifts, and also internally, right. We can understand when an organization's risk for appetite is pretty low or a message isn't landing.
00:20:29:02 - 00:20:41:08 Krisi There's a lot of things that we're always doing, but we're not just forecasting. I think, again, we're metabolizing all of this to help the organization move forward. And I think that's why it's the nervous system of the C-suite.
00:20:41:10 - 00:20:58:20 Alison Now, Jon, you work with CMO and senior marketing leaders every day. So for the ones that you're seeing, really picking up on those signals and really acting as a nervous system for their organizations, how are they translating that to business speak and to drive engagement from their CEOs, their CFOs and their close?
00:20:58:22 - 00:21:18:07 Jon So I think this is a fascinating and important question, because even over the last five years, there's been a significant shift in what reporting structures look like in different organizations. I mean, you can no longer take it for granted that a CMO is going to be reporting directly to a CEO, and marketing is going to be treated as not a cost center, but as something that helps build the business overall.
00:21:18:10 - 00:21:35:22 Jon You're in situations where lead marketers might be reporting to a CFO that is looking at it strictly from a perspective of what are the dollars and cents going in and coming out? How do we find that? Not that attribution is the only approach, clearly, but how do we find the attribution model that justifies the expenditures we're making here?
00:21:36:00 - 00:22:01:23 Jon And so this actually led to a lot of conversation from Canadian CFOs about that need for adaptability, about that willingness to kind of change the language and the approach they're using. Because for some, it will come down to being able to show them existing research and math. Driving home the idea that x percent increase in positive brand perception should have this increase in acquisition of new customers, or in sales to existing customers or retention.
00:22:02:05 - 00:22:24:08 Jon Other people won't find those metrics meaningful unless they come specifically from your organization. And sometimes the necessity is to go into that deep modelling work to be able to show them that as much as the work that marketing does best sometimes may not be as immediately measurable as performance marketing work, it is here to grow the bottom line to generate future demand and help the business succeed.
00:22:24:09 - 00:22:54:01 Jon Unfortunately, there's no there's no magic bullet for this. Every audience is going to be slightly different in every business because they have a slightly different preexisting belief system. As to the role of marketing, the value of marketing, and how it kind of flows down the pipeline. But the one thing I've consistently never heard in any of the conversations about this is that leaning hard into the dogfight for attribution is something that's going to pay off, in that when you look across the entirety of a business, there's a lot of people claiming attribution for the same sales.
00:22:54:03 - 00:23:14:00 Jon They may not all be in the same meeting together, but I promise you that a sale being claimed based on a really fantastic performance, better ad campaign is also being claimed based on optimizations to the retail environment is also being claim based on optimizations to the user. Flow of the website is also being claimed by massive shifts in product design.
00:23:14:00 - 00:23:31:23 Jon That happened four years ago and are just now hitting market, and so leaning into those kind of a one dimensional attribution conversations does kind of make it hard to define value. Being at. You need to find a way to clearly define to leadership. The value marketing is bringing to the table that is unambiguously a benefit of marketing.
00:23:32:01 - 00:23:48:20 Alison So, Krisi, we talked a lot about and every conference you go to, you hear about how much marketing is changing, how much the role of the CMO is changing and evolving. So this might be one of the harder questions I ask you. How would you define the role of the CMO in one sentence today?
00:23:48:22 - 00:24:13:16 Krisi One sentence, might two.. can be a run on sentence. Run on sentance. I think that's helpful. CMO is our environment architects. I think despite all of the fragmentation, the chaos, the splintering, all the different things we're dealing with, they still are the people that are intentionally setting the tone for brand and marketing and ideas and teams to really thrive.
00:24:13:18 - 00:24:26:03 Alison Now, we also have there's so many misperceptions around the CMO role around marketing. So, Jon, if you could on stage today retire one misconception about a CMO role forever,
00:24:26:06 - 00:24:27:08 Krisi what would it be?
00:24:27:10 - 00:24:56:16 Jon I would have to lean into the artificial barrier between brand marketing and performance marketing, and we can use different words. AD James Herman, who works with the, the World Advertising Research Council, actually has this really great breakdown of, capturing existing demand versus creating future demand. There is a tendency to completely discount the entire value of marketing in the work of a CMO, frankly, in helping build future demand and create future customers for business.
00:24:56:18 - 00:25:16:04 Jon At times that can be completely ignored, as though it's hypothetical and not essential to future success and growth. And so I think I would basically say, like if I was going to change anything about the perception of the role, any myth and make it go away would be the idea that you are somehow choosing between brand building and moneymaking, as though there is any reason to build a brand that is not about making money.
00:25:16:06 - 00:25:41:15 Alison Let's officially retire that one, because I couldn't agree more. So, Krisi, you had the pleasure of having anonymous conversations with CMO around the world where they could be very forthcoming about the challenges, and I'm sure there were some very disarming, surprising insights that were shared. So without giving away your source, obviously, what is the most unexpectedly human confession you heard in all of your interviews?
00:25:41:17 - 00:26:02:16 Krisi Well, I think I'll just start by saying that the entire report is incredibly human and disarmingly human. Because, you know, when we set out to create this report, we could have easily made a report that said, okay, what are your 2026 priorities? What's keeping you up at night? I, you know, like all these different things, but instead we were we wanted to do this under the cloak of anonymity.
00:26:02:16 - 00:26:25:07 Krisi Right. Because we find the best conversations happen before the mic turns on an interview. And that's when you hear the coolest things and really what people are actually going through. So the way we set this up was really important in the idea of having these human answers and really empowering, close and great ways. And if I had to pick one, I would say I really resonated with this CMO who talked about the role of subjectivity.
00:26:25:07 - 00:26:41:21 Krisi Right. Subjectivity is woven into our roles, unfortunately. And so that naturally opens the door for everyone, and I mean everyone to weigh in on what we do. But instead of saying like, oh God, this sucks, how do we change this? She really just said, listen, this is not a flaw of the role. This is part of the role.
00:26:41:21 - 00:26:57:15 Krisi And this is something that CMOs have to learn how to navigate no matter what I think, especially as a person on the creative marketing side, I really loved hearing that empowerment because it's important to understand how to do this. It's not a woe is me. Why is this happening? Why is everyone wasn't the CFO, not me kind of thing.
00:26:57:20 - 00:27:02:20 Krisi It's more like this is part of the role and we have to learn how to navigate it. And this is what we do every day.
00:27:02:22 - 00:27:10:10 Alison Now, Jon, you've also had a lot of off mike conversations. So what's one insight that was shared with you that doesn't typically show up in a marketing report?
00:27:10:12 - 00:27:25:08 Jon I think maybe my favourite single thing I've heard while talking to people about this report and this research, was when someone played back to us that this is really interesting. They're not 100% sure they want to make it this explicit, how they get their boss to do what they want.
00:27:25:10 - 00:27:47:16 Alison So before we open it up for audience Q&A, there is a fascinating opportunity that comes out of this research that I wanted to share. While we've sort of typecast CMAs with this study as one species, the reality is we none of us are just one species. We are very adaptable, based on who were meeting with what we're doing, the stage of the business, the company we work with.
00:27:47:18 - 00:28:10:08 Alison So the fact that we can shift and based on market size, organizational maturity, that actually makes CMO incredibly well positioned, I would argue, the best positioned in the C-suite to help organizations manage through change. It's something we've been doing throughout our career. So how can we turn this adaptability into our superpower? And Christy, why don't you kick us off?
00:28:10:10 - 00:28:32:14 Krisi I said this before, but I think, you know, we are inherently adaptable, right? It's just really taking it to another level. It's not just being adaptable in marketing, being adaptable across the entire organization. Again, I talked about this before too, but just the idea of absorbing contradiction. There's a lot of it in the role and really being able to move through that in different ways, I think is really important piece of this.
00:28:32:16 - 00:28:33:21 Alison And Jon, what about you?
00:28:33:23 - 00:28:56:13 Jon I mean, I think the most exciting thing about adaptability and adaptability framed as a superpower is, and I'm not sure if anyone's noticed, but there's a small amount of chaos going on in the world these days. And so to me, it's really affirming that in times of uncertainty, in times of a lot of change, we've kind of seen this framing of the power of adaptability in the way it feeds into your ability to thrive in changing circumstances.
00:28:56:13 - 00:29:10:13 Jon And so I think the fact that that's so baked into the role, and from what we've heard from Canadian marketing leaders so baked into their understanding of the role, it's very interesting to talk to a large group of people and come away with the feeling that they're just really well built for chaos.
00:29:10:15 - 00:29:31:01 Alison Well built for chaos is officially our superpower. So we're now going to open it up for an audience Q&A. We have members of the CMA with mics that are with us in the room today. So raise your hand if you have a question. And for the hundreds of marketers joining us virtually across the country, please post your question in the chat and we will share it here.
00:29:31:03 - 00:29:44:14 Alison So it's always the first brave soul to raise their hand and ask a question. Now we have a very brave soul at the back. Thank you Dean. So I'm curious about, this the species. Could your species be based on your organization? Could you change as a
00:29:44:14 - 00:30:06:07 Krisi CMO depending on where you land? So I think, the species and the traits within it, really depend on where you're at your organization, who you are, who you're talking to. You know, who your team is. Again, we're not typecasting, as, you know, one species or, you know, like, Jon's a Taurus, right? It's like, what are your sun, moon and rising right.
00:30:06:09 - 00:30:07:15 Krisi Bring it back to astrology.
00:30:07:17 - 00:30:24:04 Jon I love it. I will say that was actually one of the things that came up from a lot of people that we spoke to in the Canadian market specifically that, well, you know what? My last job, I really operated more in this way, but in my current role, the environment and the tone of where I'm working really leans me more in this direction.
00:30:24:04 - 00:30:34:05 Jon So I do think that's yet another example of that adaptability we were talking about. But definitely much like evolution, the constraints of your environment will determine what specific attributes help the next generation thrive.
00:30:34:07 - 00:30:37:09 Alison Thanks for kicking off for Q&A. I'll open it up for the next question.
00:30:37:13 - 00:30:47:03 Krisi I'm also curious, while we're waiting, if you did the typing tool, who did they type as a mutiny officer? Oh love it. Missing meaning.
00:30:47:05 - 00:30:48:08 Alison Mood.
00:30:48:10 - 00:30:53:00 Krisi Ooh, I like the vibes. All right. Momentum.
00:30:53:02 - 00:30:53:18 Alison Interesting.
00:30:53:21 - 00:30:56:18 Jon Were not telling us because their direct manager is.
00:30:56:18 - 00:31:01:09 Krisi Yeah. No no no no no no. Well we'll talk afterwards.
00:31:01:11 - 00:31:05:13 Alison Now, Krisi, how typical was that compared to when you do the same thing globally?
00:31:05:18 - 00:31:27:12 Krisi Yeah, I mean, we we see a lot of meaning officers right now, which is again, like the traditional skill set. And it really is taking it to a new level. And I will say, you know, you mentioned in Canada there's not a lot of muting officers. And we're not we're not seeing a ton either in general. But I think the more and more people dig into the report and the more they think about the different situations they're in and they're like, oh yeah, this is where I mutiny.
00:31:27:12 - 00:31:28:15 Krisi You know?
00:31:28:17 - 00:31:40:10 Alison Now we have our first question from online. So, Krisi, you're sharing this research in a rapidly changing market. How are you seeing the findings evolve as the role and landscape continue to shift?
00:31:40:12 - 00:31:55:01 Krisi Yeah, it was the hope of the report. This is not just an artifact. In time, we're going to be we're in a second phase of interviews and trying to you know, open up the research a bit more. And I'm honestly curious. We we didn't cover this, but there's two emerging species that are in this as well. And one of them is the mosaic officer
00:31:55:01 - 00:32:19:10 Krisi And this one's all about if the meaning officer is about, connecting organizations through narratives, this one is actually connecting them, you know, physically. Right. Especially with emerging technology like AI, different martech stacks, all these different things. It can cause a lot of tech silos, actually, in, organizations. So the mosaic officer, is the red thread for that.
00:32:19:10 - 00:32:32:11 Krisi And it's really great in a post-merger environment, too. So now that we're seeing a lot more of, you know, people, typing themselves and also saying, okay, this is something I'm interested in, and this is also something that's emerging, I think in the market, I'm curious to see how those emerging species, evolve over the year.
00:32:32:15 - 00:32:49:07 Alison And the other questions from our in-person audience. Okay, so we have a braver virtual audience. So they've come back with another question. And this one is for both of you. If a marketer listening today wants to consciously develop traits from a species that they don't naturally embody, where should they start?
00:32:49:09 - 00:33:08:16 Jon Well, I obviously would start by reading the report in extreme detail and trying to internalize all the different learnings, because we do think it's frankly a valuable and really kind of fascinating look at the role. But I would say that, from what I've seen, from what I've experienced personally, this is an industry that has really thrived on a lot of direct mentorship.
00:33:08:18 - 00:33:30:12 Jon And broadening your influences can be a deeply valuable thing. Similar to broadening, I mean, this is this is a little bit more game advice, but broadening where you've actually worked in that direct experience, the environments you connect with, the people you work with will shape the toolkit you have, inevitably. And so there's a certain level of actively trying to learn new skills and import them into different situations.
00:33:30:12 - 00:33:40:19 Jon That's plausible, but I do find that people who most naturally shift between different approaches and patterns of behavior do have hands on experience operating in environments where those are the norms.
00:33:40:21 - 00:33:42:10 Alison And Kristy, I'd love your thoughts on that too.
00:33:42:16 - 00:34:03:03 Krisi Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it's also just, you know, understanding that, like Jon said, this is a very detailed report. You don't have to use every single tactic. But perhaps, you know, you're looking again to be, you know, say a momentum officer. See like think about the situations that that could be useful and. Right? And then also think about the people you're working with and you know, try out a couple tactics every now and then.
00:34:03:03 - 00:34:21:07 Krisi You know, you never know when it can work or land, and you never know when you can be like, that's just not me. I'm not doing that, you know? And that's okay. Right? It's important to understand, again, this is sort of a collective report to kind of showcase all the different types of behaviors that CMAs are exhibiting right now to really thrive in the C-suite.
00:34:21:09 - 00:34:23:19 Krisi So I think, you know, just try it out.
00:34:23:21 - 00:34:39:00 Jon It's going to make a ton of sense that the the report kind of calls out signature moves for each group. There's two great exercises, which is the one would be a great time for the signature move. And then the second one, be one would be a time I should never, for career limiting reasons, consider using this signature move.
00:34:39:02 - 00:35:03:16 Alison So open it up one last time for our in-person audience to see if there's any question. So we will wrap with one more question from our virtual audience. So, Christy, the report talks about how the pressures that once hunted only CMO and now stalk the entire C-suite. So which of these adaptive traits, translation timing, emotional acuity do you think other C-suite executives need in order to develop?
00:35:03:18 - 00:35:17:13 Krisi I would say translating, for sure. I think CMOs are naturally good at this. We are constantly doing it all the time across the C-suite and across the organization. And, you know, soon, I think the rest of the C-suite is going to have to catch up and do that as well. Jon, what do you think?
00:35:17:15 - 00:35:43:07 Jon I'm actually 100% aligned on translation being really essential. One of the things that I think is kind of fascinating is we've, from a professionalization standpoint, gone from businesses being primarily led by experts in those specific businesses to being primarily led by experts in business. And so suddenly translation is actually a core part of understanding what it is your business does to make money beyond operational efficiency and smart financial management.
00:35:43:09 - 00:35:49:12 Jon And so the more that skill set becomes universal, I think the better businesses are going to be in everything they do, not just marketing.
00:35:49:14 - 00:36:05:19 Alison Thank you both. Now, before I let you go, I and I may connect podcast by asking my very talented guests to share one piece of advice that you would share for our audience, joining us today who aspire to follow in your footsteps. And, Jon, why don't you kick us off?
00:36:05:21 - 00:36:27:10 Jon Ooh. If I had to offer a single piece of advice, it would be working very hard on finding the correct balance between arrogance and insecurity. Very often, people lean too far in one direction and start thinking, I can't do this, and this is impossible for me, and that's terrible for you. Or they lean too far in the other direction, and they think I am naturally brilliant and more capable than anyone else.
00:36:27:12 - 00:36:43:15 Jon And why would I not just go do whatever I want to do? And both of those paths lead to disaster. But if you can find the right point of, I may not know how to do this, but, you know, there's no reason anyone is naturally better than me being able to figure it out. You can get there pretty much anything.
00:36:43:17 - 00:36:55:22 Alison I couldn't agree more, especially in today's reality. If we are not constantly learning, not just as marketers, but as business people, we are going to be left behind at remarkable speed. So, Christy, what advice for you sharing today?
00:36:56:00 - 00:37:15:07 Krisi I think for me and also just, the CMO that we talked to in the report, I mean, the way everyone gets to marketing is not linear whatsoever. It's just important to think about what fuels you. Right? Like I started my career in journalism and public radio. Then I moved into communications, PR, digital marketing and now branding.
00:37:15:07 - 00:37:21:10 Krisi And so the red thread for that for me is storytelling. So I think it's just really important to think about what makes you, you know, tick and what fuels you.
00:37:21:12 - 00:37:37:18 Alison Great advice to you both. And thank you very much for being here in person today. Thoroughly enjoyed with the conversation, and I want to thank everyone for joining us in our audience today. And hundreds of marketers from across the country who are joining us in making our third ever CMA Connect Live podcast a success. With that, I will turn it back to Esther.
00:37:37:19 - 00:37:42:21 Alison Thank you
00:37:42:23 - 00:37:55:13 Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CM Makkah and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing, thought leadership, news and industry trends.
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By Canadian Marketing AssociationThe CMO role isn't dying – it's evolving. Based on anonymous interviews with marketing leaders worldwide, Confessions of a CMO reveals five distinct archetypes built to thrive under today's pressures. Join outgoing CMA President and CEO Alison Simpson, SVP, Partner and Head of Strategy at FUSE Create Jon Crowley, and Associate Creative Director, Verbal at Monigle, Krisi Packer, as they unpack the research, apply a distinctly Canadian lens and help you discover which archetype you are.
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:14:18 Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect Live. Confessions of a CMO. With your host Alison Simpson and special guests Jon Crowley and Krisi Packer.
00:00:14:20 - 00:00:43:04 Alison I'm Alison Simpson, and welcome to our third ever live CMA connect podcast. We've had the pleasure of kicking off CMA marketing week since it was created, and it's wonderful to be back here again to do the same thing. Love sharing the energy in this room with all of you. And also a huge thank you to the hundreds of marketers who have joined us from across the country, especially our friends on the West Coast who are getting up extra early to be part of our CMA marketing week kick off.
00:00:43:06 - 00:01:11:11 Alison For years, we've been hearing that the CMO role is dying. We're seeing shorter tenures. We're seeing shifting titles. We're seeing shrinking budgets, fractured influence. The headlines right themselves. The death of the CMO has become far too common rallying cry on conference stages and in LinkedIn, thought pieces. But as Mark Twain very famously said, the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.
00:01:11:13 - 00:01:45:05 Alison And that's exactly what our data shows. When CMO's lead customer centric growth company's see 1.4 times higher performance. When that leadership is fully integrated across the organization, growth doubles again. And here in Canada, our own Kantar research tells the same story. Top Canadian brands grew 10% last year, which is significantly outperforming Canada's GDP growth over the same period of 1.3%.
00:01:45:07 - 00:02:14:19 Alison So marketing leadership absolutely is not dying. It is evolving. The species survives because we adapt, and that's what we're here to explore today. Today's conversation is based on exclusive research that asks CMOs to confess what really happens behind closed doors. It's not the polished LinkedIn version of leadership. It's the unfiltered truth, the failure of forced adaptation, and the strategies that really helped ensure survival.
00:02:14:21 - 00:02:39:09 Alison What emerges from those candid conversations is a new taxonomy of marketing leadership. We have seven distinct species picking up on the evolutionary theme that dazzle shared with us, and each of the species has evolved to thrive under very different corporate pressures. Joining me today are two people uniquely positioned to unpack these insights. Krisi Packer is the co author of confessions of a CMO.
00:02:39:11 - 00:03:08:04 Alison She's also associate creative director of Verbal at Monocle. Monocle conducted dozens of anonymous interviews with CMOs around the world, from CPG to tech, from Europe to Asia Pacific, and of course, Canada. And they really captured the honest moments when leaders could finally speak freely about what it really takes to survive in the C-suite today. Jon Crowley is a partner, senior vice president and head of strategy at Fuze Create.
00:03:08:06 - 00:03:31:07 Alison Jon works directly with Canadian CMO and marketing leaders every day, and really helps them navigate the exact pressures that this research helped unveil. He's bringing the Canadian perspective to a global conversation. Well, Krisi and Jon are going to share what they discovered, including which CMO space that they identify with. And here's what makes the research really, really powerful.
00:03:31:09 - 00:03:53:22 Alison It isn't prescriptive. It doesn't tell you which species you should become. Instead, it helps us hold up a mirror and says, here's what's working. Here's how leaders like you are thriving and adapting today. So Krisi and Jon, please join me on stage. I'm looking forward to an insightful and very fun conversation. So, Krisi, let's start by giving our audience a quick field guide.
00:03:54:00 - 00:04:03:05 Alison Can you walk us through the five dominant species and their defining traits? And we'll treat this as a bit of a nature documentary. How do we spot each species out in the wild?
00:04:03:07 - 00:04:13:20 Krisi Fun fact that this field guide does have very nature documentary style intros for all these. Just great. I'm going to spare you my David Attenborough oppression though. Jon, I think you have him right? Yes.
00:04:13:22 - 00:04:14:15 Krisi So let's first
00:04:14:15 - 00:04:33:06 Krisi start with, our chief beauty officer. So I'm going to go through these really quickly. The report is incredibly in-depth. So just know that I'm going to just hit the high notes here. So that way we can you know what your appetite. So the chief Mutiny officer this is our strategic war breaker or our disruptive mutation of the chief marketing officer.
00:04:33:07 - 00:04:53:17 Krisi And really, their job is to kind of enter a place of organizations and release, you know, controlled doses of rebellion. That can look like a lot of different things. But one of the things I love to, give an example for is they will, do anything and, take action even before alignment exists. Right? And they'll use results as proof that they were right, that they should have watched it.
00:04:53:19 - 00:05:12:06 Krisi I know a lot of you might be thinking, hell, yeah, like mutiny. Burn it down. That sounds amazing. That is so reckless. But the truth is, mutiny officers are not reckless. They are highly calculated and precise about when and where to break the rules. And I think what I love about them the most is they, don't wait for that change.
00:05:12:06 - 00:05:16:00 Krisi They provoke it. And, Alison, I know your type is Mutiny Officer.
00:05:16:02 - 00:05:35:16 Alison Yeah. So thank you for describing us as not reckless. When I did the quiz, which everyone will have an opportunity to do as well, I did identify as a Chief Mutiny Officer. And what was interesting was when we've reached out to other Canadians to get a sense for the different profiles that are emerging. Chief Mutiny Officer was one of the lowest to emerge in Canada.
00:05:35:16 - 00:05:46:21 Alison So I know a little bit later Jon will talk about why that is. Is that just us polite, humble Canadians is a political pressure. But we will dig into a little bit more of how we don't have more Chief Mutiny Officers.
00:05:46:23 - 00:06:12:11 Krisi Absolutely. All right, so next we have our Chief Missing Officer. This is our invisible operator or a master of camouflage. And I think this one has the most misleading name. When you hear missing, you probably think I'm absent. Like, do they come to meetings like, what's actually going on? But they are far from absent. They're actually just stealth. I think if the apex, Chief Marketing Officer, if you will, was sort of a show boater. They're a credit share, right?
00:06:12:13 - 00:06:34:11 Krisi They are aligning leaders before a big meeting. They are embedding marketing priorities and other business functions. And, you know, they might not be in the meeting, but their fingerprints are on every single decision. And this is something that, I typed as, as well. Next, we have our Mood Officer. This is our stabilizer. They are the people that are always thinking about the tone in the room.
00:06:34:13 - 00:07:02:11 Krisi It's very vibes coded. It's very, you know, understanding that the decisions that are made are just as important as the environment that it's in. You might spot them in the wild when they're, you know, cutting well-timed jokes to cut the tension or, you know, they're absorbing all that negativity that's in the room just to move the idea forward. So very, very vibes coded. And, honestly, one of the people that really sets the tone for, the environment for ideas to be made in.
00:07:02:15 - 00:07:31:00 Krisi Next we have our Chief Meeting Officer. This is our translator. And I think this is most, closely aligned to a marketer's traditional skill set. They are really connecting the organization through narratives, right? They're bringing together, you know, finance, customer experience, all these different things and really understanding how to talk to them about marketing. And a lot of times in really convoluted situations, too, they're just stating the obvious, which I think is a very important tactic. And something beautiful about the narratives that they create.
00:07:31:00 - 00:07:37:15 Krisi They really bring people back to the human part of the organization and the mission. And, Jon, I know you tie Disney off the right?
00:07:37:17 - 00:07:54:13 Jon Which is maybe the most stereotypical thing for an advertising strategist to type out as sort of the list of options. It's, the concept of, you know, Narrator's Translation, this idea of bringing everyone along on the story. It's kind of like when you read a horoscope and you're like, oh, yeah, I do do that a lot. Maybe I am stubborn as a Taurus.
00:07:54:15 - 00:08:14:18 Krisi All right. And finally we have our momentum officer. So this is our propeller. That's always driving progress. They were born, into the depths of red tape, and they've evolved to know how to cut through it, which I think is really interesting. They move too quickly to fall into those bureaucratic traps, and they really trade theory for action, right?
00:08:14:20 - 00:08:35:09 Krisi You won't catch them, you know, debating something. They're going to be, you know, launching not one campaign, but ten campaigns. They are, moving faster than the speed of debate, which I think is very interesting. And it's not just about speed, but it's about intention as well. So if you all are interested, scan the QR code. You can do, the typing tool right now, probably takes 30s.
00:08:35:11 - 00:08:38:06 Krisi It is not a personality quiz, but it's just as fun.
00:08:38:08 - 00:08:50:14 Alison So we're going to dig into some of the global patterns. And then also the Canadian, what emerge from a Canadian perspective. So Christy, since you've released the report and you've continue these confessionals with number of CMOs, what are you seeing?
00:08:50:16 - 00:09:12:15 Krisi I think what we're seeing is that CMOs are categorizing themselves situationally and deploying the tactics strategically. Just as Jon said, you know, we can't have our horoscope saying, you know, you're gonna have a bad day to day or you don't like bad smells or something, you know? I think what's interesting about this is they are looking at the report and saying, who am I?
00:09:12:15 - 00:09:34:09 Krisi Which traits can I use a different text situation? So we had a CMO who we interviewed. She was, great. She's like, I read the whole report, I did the typing tool. But I have to tell you, when I was reading through everything, I saw myself in every single species. Right. I'm a momentum officer with my team. I'm a meaning officer of my board. And I'm a munity officer with my peers, which I think is interesting.
00:09:34:09 - 00:09:51:01 Krisi So the idea here is to, again, hold a mirror up to what we're all doing right now and really understand what our, you know, strengths are, but also where can we stretch into other species that we might not be as comfortable with? If you're a momentum officer, you're constantly in motion. Always think about the next thing. Maybe a mood officer.
00:09:51:01 - 00:09:58:02 Krisi We have to slow down and really think about the tone. That could also be something that you could be stretching into there. That's not second nature.
00:09:58:04 - 00:10:16:07 Alison Well, it's also encouraging that we as marketers are able to adapt with the environment, adapt with different business pressures as well. Now, Jon, how does the Canadian landscape differ from what Christy found globally? We talked a bit about Chief Munity Officers. Are a bit missing in action in Canada, but what other differences did you see?
00:10:16:09 - 00:10:32:05 Jon Well, a couple of things jumped out that we thought were absolutely fascinating, and we had a bit of an off the record conversation with a group of Canadian marketing leaders. One of the first ones just to call out that that lack of Chief Munity, the officers in the room, was possibly the most Canadian outcome I could have ever imagined.
00:10:32:07 - 00:10:52:23 Jon Like in in our day to day work, we work with a lot of business leaders, both within and outside Canada. And the thing that comes up consistently is people work in the Canadian marketplace are a little more conciliatory in their approach. Other markets, even ones that may be nearby, maybe a little bit more kind of aggressive and confrontational in how discussions are brought together and how things are looked at.
00:10:52:23 - 00:11:13:09 Jon But something that came through in conversations with Canadians in the overarching Canadian approach is that there is a real tendency to kind of be the right person for the room in the moment that you're in. Similar to what Krisi talked about, about that, that need for adaptability. That was very highlighted to the point where, you know, in a room of nine, Canadian CMO was talking about their role as marketing leaders and what motivated them.
00:11:13:11 - 00:11:29:22 Jon The most common point was, I can't distill my day or my work down into just one of these. I need to be all of them every day to manage the relationships internally, to manage the relationships with my customers and our partners, and to ensure that we're getting to the best outcome on a consistent basis.
00:11:30:00 - 00:11:37:11 Alison So I love the adaptability I love the Canadian politeness. What I don't love about that is does it imply risk aversion?
00:11:37:13 - 00:12:01:15 Jon So I think that's a fantastic question. I think I think the interpretation of risk aversion is one that comes up a lot in reference to Canadian marketers and really to Canadian business in general. I've heard the same criticism about Canadian manufacturing and Canadian financial institutions and so on and so forth. I don't think care about building strong relationships and keeping them steady actually implies risk aversion.
00:12:01:17 - 00:12:10:08 Jon I think it is entirely possible to have a high risk tolerance while still having a very collectivist mindset. And I think there's a tendency to confuse the two.
00:12:10:10 - 00:12:30:09 Alison Absolutely agree. And it's all about not risk for risk side. But measured risks will help our businesses go for it. So the research also reveals three really interesting paradoxes that really contribute to whether you're a successful CMO today or not. The first is adaptation beats dominant. So, Krisi, what does this mean in practical terms?
00:12:30:11 - 00:12:53:18 Krisi Annotation beats dominance means, I think, the demise of the, you know, old school command or control, you know, CMO the old days, right? It's usually about big budgets, big campaigns, owning the narrative, owning the functions, splashy things. And it's like, okay, well, that just isn't a thing anymore, right? The organizations were in a world, frankly, it's unpredictable. It's chaotic.
00:12:53:18 - 00:13:14:13 Krisi It's, you know, something you can't control. And so I think now it moves from, you know, instead of marketing owning their function, it's navigating the system in which marketing exists. Right? We had a CMO talking about, his company, and he was saying that each business unit had their own marketing department. It was part of a legacy thing with the company.
00:13:14:13 - 00:13:35:12 Krisi And as you can imagine, that is a hairy situation to be in. But what he said next really struck me, which was, this isn't a marketing problem. This is actually a change management problem. And I think that right there just incredibly stuck with me because that is the role now, right? It's not just about marketing, it's about navigating the entire system you're in.
00:13:35:14 - 00:13:40:12 Krisi And I think having that adaptability, which marketers naturally do, is a really good head start.
00:13:40:14 - 00:13:50:06 Alison Now, Jon, how are you seeing this come to life in Canada? And if I don't know if you have a specific Canadian example, you can share where that adaptability versus dominance really helped contribute to success.
00:13:50:08 - 00:14:15:18 Jon So I think this is actually a really interesting thing to look at, because I think this is actually closely tied to the be like friendly, collaborative nature that gets called out when Canadians go work in other markets. One of the discussions that actually came up in our, in our off the record room of CMOs was the success the Canadian marketing leaders have had by going elsewhere and being able to bring that collaborative collective slightly less confrontational approach to bear.
00:14:15:20 - 00:14:37:08 Jon The thing that jumped out more than anything else when, when looking at these stories about adaptability, is how many times I've seen people need to pivot from operating in an organization that's very traditionally based to one that suddenly becomes 100% digital, and something I got to see working with a lot of marketing leaders in this country over the course of Covid was just like, oh, my entire business changed last night.
00:14:37:10 - 00:15:04:15 Jon How do we continue functioning? How do we adapt to a digital first mindset to instantaneous economic instability, which really does seem like it's kind of been a watchword in Canadian marketing for the last seven years at this point. But watching people need to pick their moment to completely pivot absolutely everything they're doing while still maintaining a sense of comfort and continuity in that we're all the same in all of this together, has been something that I've seen a lot of Canadian marketers excel at over the last several years.
00:15:04:17 - 00:15:30:14 Alison Great insight. Thank you. Now the second paradox is soft about soft power builds really hard results. And everyone in this room is in marketing to advance business and to drive growth. So the report says that as the C-suite is fragmenting with more specialized roles, the person who connects it really can gain power. So, Christie, in some ways that feels a little bit counterintuitive. Shouldn't fragmentation actually dilute marketing's impact?
00:15:30:16 - 00:15:59:08 Krisi Yes, on paper it does to my fragmentation should dilute marketing's impact. But in reality it kind of creates a vacuum. Right? So today's C-suite is incredibly specialized and thus kind of fragmented, right? You have, you know, chief data officers, analytics revenues, sales growth. It's like alphabet soup up there, right? And I think it's important to understand that with each of those specialties become the silos, because they all touch a piece of the customer journey.
00:15:59:08 - 00:16:14:18 Krisi Right. But it's very fragmented. That's very splintered. So I think where marketing's power can grow is the CMO who is able to connect. That entire system is the one that gains the more power, which I think is very, very important.
00:16:14:20 - 00:16:22:20 Alison And Jon, to your earlier point, there is something uniquely Canadian about our ability to do that. So that does set off up for great success in Canada, but also globally, which is
00:16:22:20 - 00:16:23:14 Krisi great to hear.
00:16:23:16 - 00:16:44:21 Jon One of the things that we've had played back to us by multiple Canadian CMOs, because this is, you know, a smaller market from a global perspective. There are lots of hats that everyone needs to wear. And so very often that that singular marketing leader, that singular, that singular brand manager might need to be a person that is managing eight different, very distinct relationships with different partners and vendors.
00:16:44:21 - 00:17:16:00 Jon And they need to be able to shift from speaking performance marketing to speaking experiential marketing to speaking digital path to purchase and figure out how they're going to handle sales optimization, both online and in store, to having a presentation with their boss to justify what the why. The last quarter numbers played out the specific way they play. It's a lot more natural to need to speak 5 or 6 different languages in a marketing role than it is in many others, and that could often fall off the radar because It can be easy for people outside of the world of marketing to sometimes think we're the colouring things in department, rather than being the one who needs
00:17:16:00 - 00:17:22:15 Jon to figure out how everything that the brand thinks it needs to be kind of goes out into the world and connects with human beings.
00:17:22:17 - 00:17:53:00 Alison So the third paradox might actually be my favourite. Absurd friction feels traction. Now, this is the idea that when other functions don't understand marketing, when they hand us conflicting, compressed, contradictory demands that can actually lead to significantly better marketing outcomes. And I and been in a number of CMO seats myself, I absolutely had colleagues and C-suite executives that didn't understand marketing, and it can make for some painful weeks, without a doubt.
00:17:53:06 - 00:17:57:13 Alison But I love the fact that that can actually lead to better marketing. So Kristie, please elaborate.
00:17:57:15 - 00:18:20:12 Krisi Yeah, I think, you know, what's interesting about this is I'll go back to this quote that I hear from, I heard from one of the CMO, which is it's the only C-suite role where your job is kind of fielding absurdity. Right. And I think you're holding so many different contradictions. You're doing a bunch of different things. And I think, Jon, I know you want to elaborate on this a bit, too, but just the idea that sometimes our jobs are a little bit absurd and like, that's okay.
00:18:20:16 - 00:18:37:06 Krisi But kind of leaning into that actually helps you build traction instead of saying like, oh, this is this is too much, how can I then say, all right, well, I'm going to lean into this and understand that again, there's contradictions. There's all the things, but it's part of the job and I'm going to lead with it 100%.
00:18:37:06 - 00:18:59:11 Jon I think a moment that most senior marketers have ever worked with, can relate to, is needing to be the person who says the very uncomfortable thing in the room, that the average person does not care this much about brands, and therefore we need to. We need to remember that, like maybe they haven't remembered the five core pillars of our brand story when they're walking into a retail location.
00:18:59:11 - 00:19:20:11 Jon Maybe they don't have this deep understanding of the history that we're discussing. So passionately in this boardroom. Sometimes that's the most powerful moment of absurdity, the reminder that as much as our customers centric in everything we do, and we are so passionate about the work we do, lots of leaders need to be the one to remind the team around them that in the consumers lives, we are 1% of 1%.
00:19:20:11 - 00:19:36:15 Jon I mean, there was conversation earlier about the importance of going out and buying a car and the level to which we are not thinking about car brands unless we're buying a new car or unless our car is broken, can't be overstated. And that's not a statement about something being wrong with car brands. It's about any kind of deep specialization.
00:19:36:15 - 00:19:46:12 Jon There's an absurdity in loving a business and loving creating results in a space that is not top of mind for people every day. But we can't all be Beyonce, and I'm okay with that.
00:19:46:14 - 00:20:04:12 Alison So another theme that emerged from the research is positioning. Marketing really is a nervous system for an organization, which I love. So it describes us as being the nervous system. So Christie, how do we know and had a CMO what signals that marketing really is like a nervous system for the organization?
00:20:04:14 - 00:20:28:20 Krisi I think CMOs are uniquely positioned to really, you know, detect and balance, you know, pressure and change before really anybody else, especially on the C-suite. That's like an external pressure is we're always looking for understanding consumer behaviour, emerging consumer patterns, cultural shifts, and also internally, right. We can understand when an organization's risk for appetite is pretty low or a message isn't landing.
00:20:29:02 - 00:20:41:08 Krisi There's a lot of things that we're always doing, but we're not just forecasting. I think, again, we're metabolizing all of this to help the organization move forward. And I think that's why it's the nervous system of the C-suite.
00:20:41:10 - 00:20:58:20 Alison Now, Jon, you work with CMO and senior marketing leaders every day. So for the ones that you're seeing, really picking up on those signals and really acting as a nervous system for their organizations, how are they translating that to business speak and to drive engagement from their CEOs, their CFOs and their close?
00:20:58:22 - 00:21:18:07 Jon So I think this is a fascinating and important question, because even over the last five years, there's been a significant shift in what reporting structures look like in different organizations. I mean, you can no longer take it for granted that a CMO is going to be reporting directly to a CEO, and marketing is going to be treated as not a cost center, but as something that helps build the business overall.
00:21:18:10 - 00:21:35:22 Jon You're in situations where lead marketers might be reporting to a CFO that is looking at it strictly from a perspective of what are the dollars and cents going in and coming out? How do we find that? Not that attribution is the only approach, clearly, but how do we find the attribution model that justifies the expenditures we're making here?
00:21:36:00 - 00:22:01:23 Jon And so this actually led to a lot of conversation from Canadian CFOs about that need for adaptability, about that willingness to kind of change the language and the approach they're using. Because for some, it will come down to being able to show them existing research and math. Driving home the idea that x percent increase in positive brand perception should have this increase in acquisition of new customers, or in sales to existing customers or retention.
00:22:02:05 - 00:22:24:08 Jon Other people won't find those metrics meaningful unless they come specifically from your organization. And sometimes the necessity is to go into that deep modelling work to be able to show them that as much as the work that marketing does best sometimes may not be as immediately measurable as performance marketing work, it is here to grow the bottom line to generate future demand and help the business succeed.
00:22:24:09 - 00:22:54:01 Jon Unfortunately, there's no there's no magic bullet for this. Every audience is going to be slightly different in every business because they have a slightly different preexisting belief system. As to the role of marketing, the value of marketing, and how it kind of flows down the pipeline. But the one thing I've consistently never heard in any of the conversations about this is that leaning hard into the dogfight for attribution is something that's going to pay off, in that when you look across the entirety of a business, there's a lot of people claiming attribution for the same sales.
00:22:54:03 - 00:23:14:00 Jon They may not all be in the same meeting together, but I promise you that a sale being claimed based on a really fantastic performance, better ad campaign is also being claimed based on optimizations to the retail environment is also being claim based on optimizations to the user. Flow of the website is also being claimed by massive shifts in product design.
00:23:14:00 - 00:23:31:23 Jon That happened four years ago and are just now hitting market, and so leaning into those kind of a one dimensional attribution conversations does kind of make it hard to define value. Being at. You need to find a way to clearly define to leadership. The value marketing is bringing to the table that is unambiguously a benefit of marketing.
00:23:32:01 - 00:23:48:20 Alison So, Krisi, we talked a lot about and every conference you go to, you hear about how much marketing is changing, how much the role of the CMO is changing and evolving. So this might be one of the harder questions I ask you. How would you define the role of the CMO in one sentence today?
00:23:48:22 - 00:24:13:16 Krisi One sentence, might two.. can be a run on sentence. Run on sentance. I think that's helpful. CMO is our environment architects. I think despite all of the fragmentation, the chaos, the splintering, all the different things we're dealing with, they still are the people that are intentionally setting the tone for brand and marketing and ideas and teams to really thrive.
00:24:13:18 - 00:24:26:03 Alison Now, we also have there's so many misperceptions around the CMO role around marketing. So, Jon, if you could on stage today retire one misconception about a CMO role forever,
00:24:26:06 - 00:24:27:08 Krisi what would it be?
00:24:27:10 - 00:24:56:16 Jon I would have to lean into the artificial barrier between brand marketing and performance marketing, and we can use different words. AD James Herman, who works with the, the World Advertising Research Council, actually has this really great breakdown of, capturing existing demand versus creating future demand. There is a tendency to completely discount the entire value of marketing in the work of a CMO, frankly, in helping build future demand and create future customers for business.
00:24:56:18 - 00:25:16:04 Jon At times that can be completely ignored, as though it's hypothetical and not essential to future success and growth. And so I think I would basically say, like if I was going to change anything about the perception of the role, any myth and make it go away would be the idea that you are somehow choosing between brand building and moneymaking, as though there is any reason to build a brand that is not about making money.
00:25:16:06 - 00:25:41:15 Alison Let's officially retire that one, because I couldn't agree more. So, Krisi, you had the pleasure of having anonymous conversations with CMO around the world where they could be very forthcoming about the challenges, and I'm sure there were some very disarming, surprising insights that were shared. So without giving away your source, obviously, what is the most unexpectedly human confession you heard in all of your interviews?
00:25:41:17 - 00:26:02:16 Krisi Well, I think I'll just start by saying that the entire report is incredibly human and disarmingly human. Because, you know, when we set out to create this report, we could have easily made a report that said, okay, what are your 2026 priorities? What's keeping you up at night? I, you know, like all these different things, but instead we were we wanted to do this under the cloak of anonymity.
00:26:02:16 - 00:26:25:07 Krisi Right. Because we find the best conversations happen before the mic turns on an interview. And that's when you hear the coolest things and really what people are actually going through. So the way we set this up was really important in the idea of having these human answers and really empowering, close and great ways. And if I had to pick one, I would say I really resonated with this CMO who talked about the role of subjectivity.
00:26:25:07 - 00:26:41:21 Krisi Right. Subjectivity is woven into our roles, unfortunately. And so that naturally opens the door for everyone, and I mean everyone to weigh in on what we do. But instead of saying like, oh God, this sucks, how do we change this? She really just said, listen, this is not a flaw of the role. This is part of the role.
00:26:41:21 - 00:26:57:15 Krisi And this is something that CMOs have to learn how to navigate no matter what I think, especially as a person on the creative marketing side, I really loved hearing that empowerment because it's important to understand how to do this. It's not a woe is me. Why is this happening? Why is everyone wasn't the CFO, not me kind of thing.
00:26:57:20 - 00:27:02:20 Krisi It's more like this is part of the role and we have to learn how to navigate it. And this is what we do every day.
00:27:02:22 - 00:27:10:10 Alison Now, Jon, you've also had a lot of off mike conversations. So what's one insight that was shared with you that doesn't typically show up in a marketing report?
00:27:10:12 - 00:27:25:08 Jon I think maybe my favourite single thing I've heard while talking to people about this report and this research, was when someone played back to us that this is really interesting. They're not 100% sure they want to make it this explicit, how they get their boss to do what they want.
00:27:25:10 - 00:27:47:16 Alison So before we open it up for audience Q&A, there is a fascinating opportunity that comes out of this research that I wanted to share. While we've sort of typecast CMAs with this study as one species, the reality is we none of us are just one species. We are very adaptable, based on who were meeting with what we're doing, the stage of the business, the company we work with.
00:27:47:18 - 00:28:10:08 Alison So the fact that we can shift and based on market size, organizational maturity, that actually makes CMO incredibly well positioned, I would argue, the best positioned in the C-suite to help organizations manage through change. It's something we've been doing throughout our career. So how can we turn this adaptability into our superpower? And Christy, why don't you kick us off?
00:28:10:10 - 00:28:32:14 Krisi I said this before, but I think, you know, we are inherently adaptable, right? It's just really taking it to another level. It's not just being adaptable in marketing, being adaptable across the entire organization. Again, I talked about this before too, but just the idea of absorbing contradiction. There's a lot of it in the role and really being able to move through that in different ways, I think is really important piece of this.
00:28:32:16 - 00:28:33:21 Alison And Jon, what about you?
00:28:33:23 - 00:28:56:13 Jon I mean, I think the most exciting thing about adaptability and adaptability framed as a superpower is, and I'm not sure if anyone's noticed, but there's a small amount of chaos going on in the world these days. And so to me, it's really affirming that in times of uncertainty, in times of a lot of change, we've kind of seen this framing of the power of adaptability in the way it feeds into your ability to thrive in changing circumstances.
00:28:56:13 - 00:29:10:13 Jon And so I think the fact that that's so baked into the role, and from what we've heard from Canadian marketing leaders so baked into their understanding of the role, it's very interesting to talk to a large group of people and come away with the feeling that they're just really well built for chaos.
00:29:10:15 - 00:29:31:01 Alison Well built for chaos is officially our superpower. So we're now going to open it up for an audience Q&A. We have members of the CMA with mics that are with us in the room today. So raise your hand if you have a question. And for the hundreds of marketers joining us virtually across the country, please post your question in the chat and we will share it here.
00:29:31:03 - 00:29:44:14 Alison So it's always the first brave soul to raise their hand and ask a question. Now we have a very brave soul at the back. Thank you Dean. So I'm curious about, this the species. Could your species be based on your organization? Could you change as a
00:29:44:14 - 00:30:06:07 Krisi CMO depending on where you land? So I think, the species and the traits within it, really depend on where you're at your organization, who you are, who you're talking to. You know, who your team is. Again, we're not typecasting, as, you know, one species or, you know, like, Jon's a Taurus, right? It's like, what are your sun, moon and rising right.
00:30:06:09 - 00:30:07:15 Krisi Bring it back to astrology.
00:30:07:17 - 00:30:24:04 Jon I love it. I will say that was actually one of the things that came up from a lot of people that we spoke to in the Canadian market specifically that, well, you know what? My last job, I really operated more in this way, but in my current role, the environment and the tone of where I'm working really leans me more in this direction.
00:30:24:04 - 00:30:34:05 Jon So I do think that's yet another example of that adaptability we were talking about. But definitely much like evolution, the constraints of your environment will determine what specific attributes help the next generation thrive.
00:30:34:07 - 00:30:37:09 Alison Thanks for kicking off for Q&A. I'll open it up for the next question.
00:30:37:13 - 00:30:47:03 Krisi I'm also curious, while we're waiting, if you did the typing tool, who did they type as a mutiny officer? Oh love it. Missing meaning.
00:30:47:05 - 00:30:48:08 Alison Mood.
00:30:48:10 - 00:30:53:00 Krisi Ooh, I like the vibes. All right. Momentum.
00:30:53:02 - 00:30:53:18 Alison Interesting.
00:30:53:21 - 00:30:56:18 Jon Were not telling us because their direct manager is.
00:30:56:18 - 00:31:01:09 Krisi Yeah. No no no no no no. Well we'll talk afterwards.
00:31:01:11 - 00:31:05:13 Alison Now, Krisi, how typical was that compared to when you do the same thing globally?
00:31:05:18 - 00:31:27:12 Krisi Yeah, I mean, we we see a lot of meaning officers right now, which is again, like the traditional skill set. And it really is taking it to a new level. And I will say, you know, you mentioned in Canada there's not a lot of muting officers. And we're not we're not seeing a ton either in general. But I think the more and more people dig into the report and the more they think about the different situations they're in and they're like, oh yeah, this is where I mutiny.
00:31:27:12 - 00:31:28:15 Krisi You know?
00:31:28:17 - 00:31:40:10 Alison Now we have our first question from online. So, Krisi, you're sharing this research in a rapidly changing market. How are you seeing the findings evolve as the role and landscape continue to shift?
00:31:40:12 - 00:31:55:01 Krisi Yeah, it was the hope of the report. This is not just an artifact. In time, we're going to be we're in a second phase of interviews and trying to you know, open up the research a bit more. And I'm honestly curious. We we didn't cover this, but there's two emerging species that are in this as well. And one of them is the mosaic officer
00:31:55:01 - 00:32:19:10 Krisi And this one's all about if the meaning officer is about, connecting organizations through narratives, this one is actually connecting them, you know, physically. Right. Especially with emerging technology like AI, different martech stacks, all these different things. It can cause a lot of tech silos, actually, in, organizations. So the mosaic officer, is the red thread for that.
00:32:19:10 - 00:32:32:11 Krisi And it's really great in a post-merger environment, too. So now that we're seeing a lot more of, you know, people, typing themselves and also saying, okay, this is something I'm interested in, and this is also something that's emerging, I think in the market, I'm curious to see how those emerging species, evolve over the year.
00:32:32:15 - 00:32:49:07 Alison And the other questions from our in-person audience. Okay, so we have a braver virtual audience. So they've come back with another question. And this one is for both of you. If a marketer listening today wants to consciously develop traits from a species that they don't naturally embody, where should they start?
00:32:49:09 - 00:33:08:16 Jon Well, I obviously would start by reading the report in extreme detail and trying to internalize all the different learnings, because we do think it's frankly a valuable and really kind of fascinating look at the role. But I would say that, from what I've seen, from what I've experienced personally, this is an industry that has really thrived on a lot of direct mentorship.
00:33:08:18 - 00:33:30:12 Jon And broadening your influences can be a deeply valuable thing. Similar to broadening, I mean, this is this is a little bit more game advice, but broadening where you've actually worked in that direct experience, the environments you connect with, the people you work with will shape the toolkit you have, inevitably. And so there's a certain level of actively trying to learn new skills and import them into different situations.
00:33:30:12 - 00:33:40:19 Jon That's plausible, but I do find that people who most naturally shift between different approaches and patterns of behavior do have hands on experience operating in environments where those are the norms.
00:33:40:21 - 00:33:42:10 Alison And Kristy, I'd love your thoughts on that too.
00:33:42:16 - 00:34:03:03 Krisi Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it's also just, you know, understanding that, like Jon said, this is a very detailed report. You don't have to use every single tactic. But perhaps, you know, you're looking again to be, you know, say a momentum officer. See like think about the situations that that could be useful and. Right? And then also think about the people you're working with and you know, try out a couple tactics every now and then.
00:34:03:03 - 00:34:21:07 Krisi You know, you never know when it can work or land, and you never know when you can be like, that's just not me. I'm not doing that, you know? And that's okay. Right? It's important to understand, again, this is sort of a collective report to kind of showcase all the different types of behaviors that CMAs are exhibiting right now to really thrive in the C-suite.
00:34:21:09 - 00:34:23:19 Krisi So I think, you know, just try it out.
00:34:23:21 - 00:34:39:00 Jon It's going to make a ton of sense that the the report kind of calls out signature moves for each group. There's two great exercises, which is the one would be a great time for the signature move. And then the second one, be one would be a time I should never, for career limiting reasons, consider using this signature move.
00:34:39:02 - 00:35:03:16 Alison So open it up one last time for our in-person audience to see if there's any question. So we will wrap with one more question from our virtual audience. So, Christy, the report talks about how the pressures that once hunted only CMO and now stalk the entire C-suite. So which of these adaptive traits, translation timing, emotional acuity do you think other C-suite executives need in order to develop?
00:35:03:18 - 00:35:17:13 Krisi I would say translating, for sure. I think CMOs are naturally good at this. We are constantly doing it all the time across the C-suite and across the organization. And, you know, soon, I think the rest of the C-suite is going to have to catch up and do that as well. Jon, what do you think?
00:35:17:15 - 00:35:43:07 Jon I'm actually 100% aligned on translation being really essential. One of the things that I think is kind of fascinating is we've, from a professionalization standpoint, gone from businesses being primarily led by experts in those specific businesses to being primarily led by experts in business. And so suddenly translation is actually a core part of understanding what it is your business does to make money beyond operational efficiency and smart financial management.
00:35:43:09 - 00:35:49:12 Jon And so the more that skill set becomes universal, I think the better businesses are going to be in everything they do, not just marketing.
00:35:49:14 - 00:36:05:19 Alison Thank you both. Now, before I let you go, I and I may connect podcast by asking my very talented guests to share one piece of advice that you would share for our audience, joining us today who aspire to follow in your footsteps. And, Jon, why don't you kick us off?
00:36:05:21 - 00:36:27:10 Jon Ooh. If I had to offer a single piece of advice, it would be working very hard on finding the correct balance between arrogance and insecurity. Very often, people lean too far in one direction and start thinking, I can't do this, and this is impossible for me, and that's terrible for you. Or they lean too far in the other direction, and they think I am naturally brilliant and more capable than anyone else.
00:36:27:12 - 00:36:43:15 Jon And why would I not just go do whatever I want to do? And both of those paths lead to disaster. But if you can find the right point of, I may not know how to do this, but, you know, there's no reason anyone is naturally better than me being able to figure it out. You can get there pretty much anything.
00:36:43:17 - 00:36:55:22 Alison I couldn't agree more, especially in today's reality. If we are not constantly learning, not just as marketers, but as business people, we are going to be left behind at remarkable speed. So, Christy, what advice for you sharing today?
00:36:56:00 - 00:37:15:07 Krisi I think for me and also just, the CMO that we talked to in the report, I mean, the way everyone gets to marketing is not linear whatsoever. It's just important to think about what fuels you. Right? Like I started my career in journalism and public radio. Then I moved into communications, PR, digital marketing and now branding.
00:37:15:07 - 00:37:21:10 Krisi And so the red thread for that for me is storytelling. So I think it's just really important to think about what makes you, you know, tick and what fuels you.
00:37:21:12 - 00:37:37:18 Alison Great advice to you both. And thank you very much for being here in person today. Thoroughly enjoyed with the conversation, and I want to thank everyone for joining us in our audience today. And hundreds of marketers from across the country who are joining us in making our third ever CMA Connect Live podcast a success. With that, I will turn it back to Esther.
00:37:37:19 - 00:37:42:21 Alison Thank you
00:37:42:23 - 00:37:55:13 Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CM Makkah and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing, thought leadership, news and industry trends.
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