Monica Merino Garrido

As one who interacts with CMOs all the time I can tell you this topic is at or near the top of their collective priority list. And while I am skeptical of those who espouse best practices when it comes to generative AI - only because it is so nascent - I felt compelled to share this particular piece from my fellow CMSWire scribe, Tiffany Holland Why? Glad you asked. I felt compelled for the simple fact I agree with everything Tiffany opined on, which she breaks down into four truths, which are below along with my brief commentary. Do yourself a favor and read her piece. ➡️ Truth #1: Inaction With Generative AI in Marketing Is the Greatest Risk Yes, yes and YES. If I could climb the highest mountain I would and bellow this to the masses below. This ain't the time to "sit this one out" whilst the rest of the world, AKA your competition is taking full advantage. ➡️ Truth #2: Generative AI Offers More Value Than Just Operational Efficiency Tiffany deftly writes of the "narrow view" many CMOs and marketers have of Gen AI, which "offers only short-term benefits and overlooks the true power of machine learning." Dating myself big time here but this reminded me of the late 70's campaign professing that orange juice is not just for breakfast anymore. https://lnkd.in/e95uWbex ➡️ Truth #3: Generative AI Solutions Fails in the Traditional Marketing Model "Generative AI won’t deliver its full potential if organizations try to plug it into outdated operating models." Full Stop! Read and re-read that over and over and over and then, for the love of all things Holy, do NOT blame Gen AI if you do not adhere to this sage advice. ➡️ Truth #4: Ethical Governance of Generative AI in Marketing Is Critical I love that Tiffany saved this one for last because it is THE most important truth, by far. Gen AI and AI in general, is very much akin to the wild west right now; no rules of governance other than those self-imposed. Brands MUST self-govern the way they use Gen AI if for no other reason, it is the ethical thing to do. Please share your thoughts on all of this. I love a good conversation and yes, a debate if need be. Jeanniey John Aakansha Srota Manny Shelly Lou Jeff Raja Ted Lee David Alma Dom Rhonda #ai #GenAI #cmo

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The benefits of MIT Sloan Executive Education - In my inbox this morning - Thinking Forward Microsoft chief scientist: To make the most of gen AI, use your imagination 1. Can lending standards be too tight for too long following an economic shock? New research from MIT Sloan professor Jonathan Parker and colleagues indicates that can be the case when banks go the extra mile to screen out bad borrowers. The researchers’ findings suggest that some of the persistence of tightness after a shock is self-inflicted. When banks try to protect themselves by increasing their due diligence in evaluating potential borrowers, they set off a chain reaction whereby other banks do the same and increase the credit crunch in two ways: By not funding people who are less creditworthy, tighter standards worsen the overall quality of the pool of potential borrowers, which in turn creates an even bigger incentive for banks to employ tight standards in the future. In a good market, lending standards are inefficient when they’re too tight. They amplify and prolong downturns, decrease overall lending, and increase credit spreads. If the market is in good shape, less due diligence makes more sense, said Parker, co-director of the MIT Consumer Finance Initiative. “The chances that [a loan] will fail are very small. Some of them will default and lose a little bit of money, but that will be a rare event,” he said. 2. How much will artificial intelligence affect productivity in coming years? Writing recently in the Financial Times [subscription required], columnist Soumaya Keynes observed that there have been several attempts to estimate the effects of generative AI on annual productivity growth, “with pretty varied results.” Goldman Sachs last year estimated that in rich countries, generative AI could increase productivity by about 1.5 percentage points over a decade. McKinsey predicted that generative AI could deliver an increase of 0.1 to 0.6 percentage points between 2023 and 2040. And, more recently, MIT professor Daron Acemoglu calculated a boost over the next decade of, at most, 0.2 percentage points and suggested that over the next decade, around 5% of tasks will be profitably replaced or augmented by AI. “Some uncertainty is, of course, healthy,” Acemoglu said of the change brought on by AI, since “we are at the very, very beginning of it.”   MIT Sloan Office of Communications Building E90, 9th Floor 1 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 #AI #mit #misinformation

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Just read in the EMARKETER article: "The role of the CMO has completely shifted to be equally focused on tech, data, analytics, creative, and culture." I can fully relate to Raja Rajamannar, CMO at Mastercard, in this approach. 1️⃣ Tech Today’s CMOs must navigate a complex landscape of technology. My team, for instance, uses around 30 tools in our stack, each serving different purposes. Mastering these tools is essential to optimizing processes and driving results. It's no longer enough to be a good marketer. You need to leverage tech for efficiency and scalability. 2️⃣ Data Every marketing initiative begins with gathering data. Whether it's users' characteristics, customer behavior or market trends, data is the raw material that fuels everything else. 3️⃣ Analytics Raw data, however, means little without analytics. Understanding what you want from the data, creating correct and easy-to-use dashboards, incl. with predictive analytics, provides that 360-degree view of what’s happening. It takes time to learn tools like Power BI or Amplitude, but once mastered, you can make data-driven decisions just by glancing at a graph. Many innovative things were born and passed to the product dep thanks to analytics. 4️⃣ Creative Creativity isn’t about "let's do smth cool/expensive/AI/whatever just because we want it." It’s the key to boosting engagement, making your brand known and stand out in a crowded market and, as a result, increasing sales. This blend of analytics and creativity is what drew me to the CMO role — it’s a perfect balance of strategy and imagination, which I absolutely love. 5️⃣ Culture Culture is often overlooked by marketing heads, though it’s the foundation. While building culture is sometimes attributed to HR, I firmly believe it should be a joint effort between HR, Marketing, and, most importantly, top management. After all, marketing is about shaping or re-shaping perceptions, both internally and externally. #CMO #marketing #marketingchallenges #CMOrole #CMOinsights #strategy #CMOlife

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Pssst. Marketing leaders. Nervous to ask questions about data clean rooms? Here’s a cheat sheet for you. More of a guidebook, really. We laid out “12 essential strategies for marketers” to help wrap your head around how and why you should be using clean rooms and data collaboration. All 12 are important to understand, but here are my Top 4: 1. Build Richer Audience Profiles Leverage data clean rooms to go beyond basic demographics, combining your first-party data with retailers' email datasets and purchase histories to increase your first party data and better understand your audience. That way, you can compare match rates across channels while keeping personal data anonymous, in order to discover and refine your most relevant audiences. With these insights, you can tailor ad content and campaign strategies to specific interests and lifestyles, driving higher conversion rates. 2. Personalize at scale Now that you have increased the size and wealth of your, you have a better understanding of the specific needs and desires of different segments. That allows you to craft messages that speak directly to your customers. This level of personalization not only captures attention but also fosters a deeper connection with your brand, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. 3. Retarget high-value, in-market buyers Imagine identifying users who visited your site, downloaded your app, added a product to their cart but didn’t convert. By matching your first-party behavioral data with retailers’ audience segments, you can precisely re-target these potential buyers with a special discount or related product recommendation. Example: Mondelēz International, a large US food and beverage company, collaborated with Pinterest and Albertsons’ Media Collective to enhance their targeting for a new charcuterie board campaign. By reaching in-market consumers who had purchased other brands of crackers, they saw a 16% sales lift and a 19% lift in new buyers! 4. Verify the reach of your campaigns Keeping track of your ad campaign's reach across numerous media channels can be a real challenge. By collecting impression-level data from each media partner through a data clean room, you can get a clear view of your cross-channel delivery and start measuring the quality of your audiences. Precise targeting, with robust data, is only valuable if it's driving results. Ensure you have a solution that is providing you with robust measurements so you can quickly optimize your campaigns. Download the full guidebook and check out all 12 strategies and reach out to LiveRamp with any questions!

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The party's over for B2B CMOs who enjoyed the free-flowing budgets of the pandemic boom. Here are the top 3 concerns Mark Emond talks about in his Forbes piece: • Growth in a slowdown: How to drive results now with lean teams and tight budgets? Cutting through the noise is a major challenge. • The measurement mystique: CMOs are still wrestling with how to properly show marketing's ROI in complex B2B sales cycles. • AI anxiety: There's excitement about AI's potential, but a lack of strategy for implementation and team training. #AI #B2BMarketing #B2B

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"Long live the CMO!" This podcast is a great listen: What you’ve been hearing about the fortunes and misfortunes of CMOs is (mostly) wrong, say Forrester VPs Ian Bruce and Mike Proulx. They dig into findings from new research on this week’s #ForresterPodcast.

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Maybe measuring last click isn’t the best way. It’s actually archaic and only building growth for Big Tech, and not your company. “Our research across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that it’s possible to rigorously measure and strategically target the feelings that drive customers’ behavior.” If marketing is in the business of selling something… and we know we all buy things based off a myriad of emotions… then maybe it’s time to start measuring something else. It’s not rocket science. It’s emotional science. https://lnkd.in/euwMST4u #brand #marketing #storytelling #video #controlthenarrative #emotionsells

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Unlock Your Business Potential with a Fractional CMO: Big Results Start with a Bold Marketing Strategy https://wix.to/lEL2ZZH

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Thank you to Columbia Business School, Bernd SCHMITT, and Matthew Quint for inviting me, Joe Pantigoso, and Jeannine Shao Collins to speak at your 2024 MarkTech Conference. I really enjoyed the thought-provoking questions posed by Matthew Quint & the marketing scholars researching trends and implications at the intersection of marketing & technology.   Here were my 3 favorite questions from the session: 1. When I say the phrase “the intersection of technology & marketing,” what is the first thought that comes to mind for you? 2. How do you see technology continuing to affect consumer behavior? What has remained the same over the past 5 years, and what is new in how you think about its impact on consumer behavior? 3. How do you use technology to gain consumer insights? What are the sources and tools you rely on to better understand your customers and potential customers?   I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions. Please feel free to share your answers if you’re open to it. #PerpetualBetaMindset #Curiosity #MarTech #CBS #AI

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I’m excited about what the future of retail media means for our media tech clients but also for marketing leaders in general. BCG does a great job outlining why CMOs will want to increase retail media spend—and how RMNs need to step up their game to help them justify greater investment. If we are to believe analyst projections of $100 billion in U.S. retail media spend over the next 2-3 years, it seems many of the items on BCG’s RMN “to-do” list need to happen, especially: - Offering a more seamless customer experience across online and in-store to boost performance across the full consumer journey - Providing more and more data and actionable reports to enhance transparency, insight, targeting, and personalization - Deepening relationships to deliver increasingly tailored media solutions that are unique to each advertiser and its consumers - Achieving a level of sophistication that matches—or at least approaches—the performance, scale, and precision of leading digital ad platforms like Google and Meta (e.g., as Amazon has done) https://lnkd.in/gKJ53T-x

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The role of the CMO has drastically shifted in recent years as a key driver of revenue. We're all feeling it. As someone who sees the whole chessboard—not just the immediate move—it’s essential to align marketing and brand strategies seamlessly with business goals to drive growth. By tackling the challenges we face, we can achieve a product-market fit, sales and marketing alignment, and foster an environment with space for strategy, innovation, and creativity. How are you transforming challenges into opportunities? #salesandmarketing #marketingstrategy #brandstrategy #marketing #cmo #ceo #cro

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Dumping your CMO as a scapegoat for lost sales? Think again. In many cases, they're not responsible. As the shortest tenured executive at most companies, CMOs are an easy target. But cutting them may not be the right answer if other leaders are making all the client-side decisions. Perhaps it's time for more companies to consider a Fractional CMO and reevaluate who really owns sales decisions, sales leadership, and client relationships. Often, it's not the CMO's responsibility at all. #CMO #MarketingExecutive #MarketingLeader #CreativeLeader #CreativeExecutive

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Reflecting on - Gartner Cheif Marketing Officer (CMO) Leadership Vision for 2025 A stark reality emerges from Gartner's latest CMO report: While 84% of leaders acknowledge their company needs significant identity change, only 14% of CMOs are seen as effective market shapers. Added to this, 58% of customers don't feel understood by brands, and most marketing campaigns fail to justify their investment. Here's what strikes me: We're still treating a leadership crisis as a management problem. Look at the recommended actions: we need to bridge strategy and operations. we need better customer journey mapping. we need to deliver differentiation. These are good management practices. But here's what the report is not talking about: - The risk of trying to please everyone while delighting no one - The danger of measuring everything except "what truly matters" - the "depth of connection" with those we serve - The cost of being boring in a world drowning in mediocrity IMHO, the real opportunity for CMOs in 2025 isn't to manage better - it's to lead differently. The most successful CMOs won't be those with the most sophisticated martech stacks or the cleanest strategic frameworks. They'll be the ones with: - The courage to make choices that others won't - The conviction to feel and serve audiences others ignore - The boldness to take stands that matter When 84% of companies need significant identity changes, they won't come from better processes. We need braver choices. Are your marketing challenges really about management, or are they about leadership? #CMO #Marketing #Leadership #MarketingStrategy #FutureOfMarketing

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If your customers have a pulse, then they have emotions. This article is almost 9 years old, yet it still holds the key to what’s holding a lot of companies back. “Our research across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that it’s possible to rigorously measure and strategically target the feelings that drive customers’ behavior. We call them ‘emotional motivators.’ They provide a BETTER gauge of customers’ future value to a firm than ANY OTHER metric, including brand awareness and customer satisfaction, and can be an important new source of growth and profitability.” It’s not “new” any longer. A shift is happening. #brand #creative #customerexperience #emotions #beyondthebot https://lnkd.in/euwMST4u

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I thought this was a great example of how advertising goals can align with culture and impact. Transformative approaches to leadership need to be in alignment with other strategies, and with leadership and data being so tightly intertwined, it makes sense that forward-thinking businesses are thinking about advertising in the context of their long-term organizational goals. #Culture #Advertising #Leadership

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The clean room future is no longer on the horizon – it’s here. And for leading companies in every industry, clean rooms are transforming marketing strategies. 80% of advertisers spending over $1B on media are already using them. But here's the thing – most brands are only scratching the surface. While many are using clean rooms for audience insights, only a third are leveraging advanced measurement like attribution and ROAS. And broader collaboration across partners and complementary brands offers even greater potential. Modern clean rooms are now fully interoperable, breaking down silos between brands, retailers, and media partners. In talking with companies across industries, I constantly hear their desire to get started, but also recognize that this represents unexplored territory for many. To help companies navigate the complexity, LiveRamp has put together a playbook of some of the most common tactics, and I've attached a link here. Happy reading!

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