6 CMOs Dish on AI, Content Creation and Brand Building at CES – Chief Marketer

C Space at CES is a collection of panel discussions that includes advertising and marketing, promoting and media executives who sort out matters like AI, knowledge, personalization, content material creation and creator-led advertising and marketing. Following are insights and techniques shared by six brand-side CMOs throughout the first official day of CES.

Molly Battin
SVP & CMO
The Home Depot

On model constructing by evolving with shoppers:

“The key’s actually evolving your model to fulfill the wants of the buyer… as they’re altering. One of our greatest model challenges is that everyone who walks right into a Home Depot has an issue that they’re attempting to unravel. We want to consider, how does our model present up otherwise primarily based on the entire instruments that we now have? Whether it’s customized content material to assist them with a challenge that they’re engaged on, or whether or not it’s the app and each [other] expertise that now we have, [it’s about] how we take into consideration content material at scale to actually join and assist them get unstuck.

“It’s a conversation now with our consumers, as opposed to us telling them what to do. We’re now in a two-way dialogue… that co-creation, listening and responding. So I think that it really is grounding yourself and not the products that you solve, but the core problems that you’re trying to help your customers solve. And then understanding the media landscape and the tools at your disposal to help solve that problem in a way that’s really meaningful for them today.”

Gulen Bengi
Lead Global Chief Marketing Officer, Mars Inc
Global Chief Growth Officer Mars Snacking, Mars

On model constructing by co-creation with shoppers:

“Consumers need an increasing number of personalization—engagements that haven’t any useless finish. They need co-creation alternatives. In truth, two thirds of shoppers need significant custom-made relationships, and greater than 80% of Gen Zers need manufacturers to permit co-creation.

“So after we speak about model constructing right this moment, we speak about [how] manufacturers don’t simply outline themselves with their merchandise or experiences, however what they stand for. And with that, they supply two-way engagements and experiences that haven’t any useless ends. Each expertise is main to a different expertise or purchase button. And we’re inviting our followers and communities, our shoppers, to co-create our model worlds with us.

“We’re doing this because we want to be able to provide the right engagement at the right time and right offer for every relevant touchpoint for everyone in the world, but also personalized for everyone. That’s how we define our evolving way of building brands in this new era.”

Randi Stipes
CMO
The Weather Company

On upskilling groups to be extra AI-ready:

“I feel now we have to present our groups the time and the house and the encouragement to experiment at The Weather Company. We’ve created our personal AI sandbox the place we encourage folks to experiment each with our inside AI that we’re utilizing in addition to exterior AI. We’re additionally encouraging folks to work cross-functionally, as a result of what may encourage somebody in advertising and marketing—you by no means know—that could possibly be helpful to somebody in one other operate or vice versa.

“And talking about successes and failures… that’s a big part of the culture: how are we sharing the wins and… our [missteps] along the way? But if we don’t carve out the time, it’s just going to feel like a plus-one to our teams versus a necessity.”

Drew Panayiotou
Chief Marketing Officer
Keurig Dr Pepper

On what’s most enjoyable concerning the creator house:

“An ad unit inherently isn’t a great thing. I mean, I’ll say it as a CMO: where magic happens is when a piece of content that you call “advertising” intersects with the inventive platform or a bit of content material that it’s related to.

“What’s exciting for us is when we look at content creators and how they are producing content that’s tied to the product and the thing that you’re watching, it becomes really powerful… The farther we move away from this notion that as these big brands, emerging brands, we have to buy an ad unit, the better it is for brand magic.”

Emily Ketchen
Chief Marketing Officer & VP
Intelligent Devices Group & International Markets
Lenovo

On making a cross-functional AI staff:

“One of the things that we did early on is we developed an internal committee council, if you will, on AI and the responsible use of AI in the marketing organization. We had brought in our security team, we brought in the comms team, we brought in our legal team, and we formed an organization that is fully based on understanding AI, the appropriate use of AI. And then what we did is we went out and surveyed our marketing organization to understand what is it that they wanted to learn more about in the context of AI.”

“We took it a step additional and went out and acquired licenses. We employed an exceptional coach, and we’re heading in the right direction quantity seven of 11 programs that we’re taking our entrepreneurs by. So the purpose being, you need to democratize the data round AI, accountable methods to market inside AI, educating your entrepreneurs learn how to do it the precise approach, get in there, have the license. Experiment.

“We’re moving on to things like prompt engineering and curation and ultimately a library, right? Because if somebody else has figured out the prompt, why do I need to go figure out the prompt? We’re not in the single source area of personalization, but experiences here will lead to this.”

Mark Weinstein
Chief Marketing Officer
Hilton

On the necessity for manufacturers to give attention to inventive:

“The distraction is, you noticed this flurry of manufacturers attempting to create the following AI no matter, and truly most of us can’t create that factor. We’ll use the instruments to be efficient. We’ll inform our tales. And so my greatest focus in the mean time is… What is the corpus of inventive I must put into the world?

“Last year we were debating: is AI a good idea or a bad idea? That’s kind of a waste of time. That’s happened. The next waste of time is debating what thing we’re going to create next, or what tool’s going to win that. That’s not important at the second. What’s important is this wave is coming, the capabilities are coming… We need to be ready for it by telling our stories in relevant ways that put the right information by the customer.”