The trope of moving at the speed of culture has become a fraught topic in the age of artificial intelligence, but marketers have to mediate both trends, said insiders at Brand Innovators’ Summit.
The attention economy is evolving and brands need to be bold and take risks, but all supported by stronger data and a deep understanding of the target consumer, said speakers at the Marketing Leadership Summit, held in Austin during the recent South by Southwest festival.
CMOs’ jobs haven’t changed in that they are still responsible for results, but everything around is changing, said Sofia Colucci, chief marketing officer of Molson Coors. Now marketers need to think about big, bold ideas that will influence culture and can be connected with a long-term platform for the brand.
“You have to be constant learner,” she said. “You can’t just assume the same playbook will work.”
Marketers have found being more purposeful and mindful is the way to leverage technology while remaining culturally relevant and authentic.
“The story is: fewer, bigger, better,” said Drew Ingram, U.S. media activations lead at PepsiCo. Brands have to be more intentional about activations, make them more fun and exclusive, because the market is flooded with them, he said.
Branding today is neither consumer-led nor marketer-led, but “it’s a negotiation,” said Dr. Marcus Collins, professor of marketing at the University of Michigan School of Business. Marketers own the brand, how it moves and its channels, but people ultimately decide its meaning, in a process always “ping-ponging” between the two, he said.
“It doesn’t matter what we want and how you want them to behave,” said Katelyn Zborowski, head of brand strategy & integrated marketing at Pizza Hut. “It’s 100% negotiation. And you have to be able to get comfortable with the uncomfortable nature that is releasing ownership of how that gets expressed and how it evolves over time. Because it will evolve.”
Marketers “have data up the wazoo,” but their ability to draw insights from it is limited, Collins said. Partnership with “sherpas” like influencers helps decode it, he said.
“Creators are a great opportunity to become intimate with the people because they are of the people,” he said.
Kevin Shapiro, head of Neutrogena at Kenvue
“Digital fatigue” and fearlessness
The biggest mind shift for marketers is to accept that in the attention economy, “you can’t buy share of mind,” said Kevin Shapiro, head of Neutrogena at Kenvue. Marketers must understand that buying ad volume can build reach, but “living rent free in someone’s mind – that comes from content.”
Brands have to earn their place in culture, said Karen Harris, Senior Vice President Marketing, Tequila and Mezcal, at Diageo. The role of creators has changed from being interpreters of culture to being “architects of culture,“ she said.
“You can’t chase culture,” she said. “You can’t find it, chase it, insert yourself. You have to earn it, and it takes time.”
Diageo’s 1942 tequila scored an Academy Awards activation last year, but it had been a process of many years to build the relationship with host Jimmy Kimmel so what should have been a five-second product placement turned into a significant bit. “We didn’t chase it, we earned it,” Harris said.
“The biggest missed opportunity is not doing anything – period,” said Matt Klein, head of global insights at Reddit. But he encouraged marketers to think about contentas being a good dinner party guest: Don’t make conversation all about yourself, ask questions of the fans, and don’t show up empty handed, but bring something of value to the user –exclusive content, access or discounts – he said.
“When you enter a community, it’s not your home. It’s a shared social space,” he said. “Add value, and don’t take it away.”
Fearlessness is important, said Jeff Cucinell, president, digital experience at iHeartMedia. The best content lets the creator’s voice come through, he said: “I can tell the brands that let creators have fun.”
Joel Contartese, head of international marketing at Bloom Nutrition noted an early mistake when the supplement company first entered TikTok Shop was to feed creators three- and four-page brand briefs.
“The output was terrible,” he said. “We tried to control the narrative too much.”
The brand learned to give creators guidelines, then give them space and let them be themselves. Bloom’s marketers hold regular creator calls to give them advice on regulatory issues and other topics, check in, and talk through next moves, but “for the most part we let them do what they do best,” he said.
Valerie Kubizniak, global chief marketing officer at KFC
“It’s hard making that shift from being a commander to being a conductor” but marketers need to adapt to “co-creating” with consumers, said Valerie Kubizniak, global chief marketing officer at KFC. Marketers have always discussed how to get consumers talking about their brands but “the shift we all need to make is: how do we create experiences that are actually worth talking about?” said Kubizniak. Consumers will forgive brands for missteps, she said, but “they won’t forgive you for being boring.”
Too much reliance on AI for creative execution can be “a fast way to becoming mediocre,” once all content starts to look the same, warned Katka Renckens, head of brand at Rituals.
“You still need a tastemaker,” said Kate Ruda, head of marketing at Blenders. Marketers can provide that connection to the customer and knowledge of the community, she said.
A lot of human intervention
Insiders noted consumers are both more skeptical of AI content and needing more human contact in the post COVID world. Marketers are seeing “digital fatigue” surface after the pandemic, said Jonathan Briskman, Director, Market Insights at Sensor Tower. He noted time spent on social media dropped for the first time in 2024 and though it increased again in 2025, it appears to be “leveling out,” he said.
“That human connection will be the topic for the next 10 years,” said Andy Stone, chief marketing officer of Bluestone.
While marketers have embraced AI as a tool for operating more effectively, the technology is still a work in progress, affecting everything from media to creative execution.
Brands used to worry about showing up in organic and paid search, but with the rise of agentic search they need to coordinate and be consistent in appearing at all stages of the journey, said AJ Magali, head of performance marketing at Cadillac. Brand and communications teams now have to work together more to make sure the information LLMs draw from is consistent, said Joseph Saia, director of performance marketing, Chevrolet at General Motors.
Product detail pages are “where a lot of decisions are made” now, said Kenvue’s Shapiro. Brands need to pay more attention to those pages, Pepsi’s Ingram said. If a shopper is standing in the store aisle wondering what an item tastes like “that’s my fault,” he said.
The role of websites is also challenged by agentic commerce. AI models will change the media mix, said Ed Wild, vice president of media at Zillow. Eighty percent of Zillow’s traffic today comes directly to its site but “we’d be naïve to think they’re not growing and they’re not going to transform,” he said. “It’s really important for us to get ahead of that.”
Agents are also making inroads in marketing departments and agencies, speakers noted. Joseph Saia, director of performance marketing, Chevrolet at General Motors forecast that eventually the process of creating a marketing campaign will include a briefing agent talking to a strategy agent, a creative agent and a deployment agent. The challenge will be “how to make sure that a human has oversight over the whole process,” he said.
Trust is the biggest asset for a car brand, Saia said. “In order to shepherd in that brave AI future, we have to retain a pretty good amount of control over those tools in that data,” he said
AI is helpful to get things started when facing a blank page, and to bring efforts together in the end, but people are needed for the “messy middle,” said Marie Langhout-Franklin, vice president of marketing of Nordstrom.
“I think the headline is: As marketers we have to be really responsible with that. We also have to be a little bit patient with ourselves because it’s not perfect,” she said. AI may never be perfect, but it can keep getting better and more useful, she said. However, she added, “there’s still a lot of human intervention to make sure things are brand-right.”
“Restless optimism”
Many speakers noted that marketing departments will need to change how they work to accommodate all these evolutions. The biggest obstacle to some marketing organizations is often the organization itself, said Collins. Many marketers have great ideas but stumble in executing them, he said: “Chili’s is crushing it right now, but it’s not because of the talent in the building, but because of how the talent is engaging in the production of work.”
Chili’s breakthrough moment, leading to 19 straight quarters of growth, came from social listening, said vice president of marketing Jesse Johnson. “Casual dining was dying five years ago,” when consumers started posting their fast food receipts online, complaining about the cost. Observing that, Chili’s found its footing as a fast-casual alternative that was competitive on price, he explained.
Marketing and operations often have different goals, so Chili’s aligned both functions so the brand could deliver on the restaurant experience, said Johnson. “We’re actually listening to consumers,” he said.
Marketing departments need to create an environment of “restless optimism,” to encourage innovation, said Paul Woolmington, CEO of Canvas Worldwide.
“We are in a period of utter disintermediation, chaos and all of the above,” said Woolmington. “You have to adapt, but not over decades. Very quickly.”
Organizations need to invest in training to underpin culture as intensively as in technology. “Technology for technology’s sake is redundant,” he said. “Build a strong culture first, second and last. Then sandwich in between all the skill sets you’re going to need.”
