AI Is Everyone’s Luxury: Premium Brands Can’t Afford a Generational Blind Spot
How adoption is increasing across all age groups.
The biggest mistake luxury brands can make in 2026 is assuming AI only matters to younger customers. In reality, AI is reshaping consumer behavior across all generations, though its influence varies by age group. Brands must therefore keep pace with these shifts to stay relevant.
Since 2018, we have been exploring the impact of AI on luxury brands as part of our bi-annual “Premium and Luxury Study.” Each wave surveys a representative sample of 1,000 German consumers, from Gen Z to Baby Boomers who regularly or occasionally purchase premium and luxury products.
Our goal is to track how generational values and attitudes influence high-end buying behavior and purchasing decisions across age groups. Here are some of our findings from this year’s study.
How Generations Like to Search
Search habits differ sharply across generations. Google is still firmly Baby Boomer territory, regarded as very important or important for 67% of respondents in this group, compared to only 41% of Gen Z. In contrast, social media belongs to Gen Z with 54%, versus only 29% of Baby Boomers.
Millennials (40%) are the strongest users of retail platforms, such as Mytheresa and Net-a-Porter, for purchase decisions, compared to Gen Z (34%) and Gen X (38%).
AI-Powered Convenience
The uptake of AI is making shopping much simpler, driven by the need for speed, simplicity, and ease of use. 78% of the total survey base actively uses AI regularly or daily, up from 73% in 2024. About 52% of all generations agree that AI will positively enrich their lives in the future.
64% of Gen X and 61% of Baby Boomers say they actively follow developments and educate themselves on AI, compared to only 51% of Gen Z. One reason behind this response may be that Gen Z uses AI more intuitively. In contrast older generations feel the need to study to keep up with the changing trends.
Convenience is a huge factor across all generations, with rapid AI adoption rates notably among older generations, being used to simplify forms and processes. Surprisingly, Baby Boomers (49.5%) value it more than Gen Z (44.5%).
AI-powered convenience also plays a major role across all stages of the buying cycle, from inspiration to search and decision-making, and it is catching up with traditional tools. While consumers still rely on familiar channels such as brand websites (54%), Google search (55%) and social media (45%), we found a growing adoption of AI: 44% regularly use Google AI and 45% turn to platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Given that search engines have dominated for over 15 years, this narrow 10% gap highlights the remarkable pace at which AI is gaining ground.
Building Trust With Buyers
Trust plays a major role in consumer behavior. When asked which channels were most important for inspiration, research and comparison, and purchasing decisions, Baby Boomers showed the highest trust in official brand websites, with more than 60% considering them important. In contrast, Gen Z is more skeptical of official channels, with less than 50%, and prefers decentralized information on social platforms.
When it comes to letting an AI agent make a purchase decision, there’s a noticeable split: Gen Z (41.5%) and Millennials (42%) are ready. Baby Boomers (32%) remain more resistant.
Likewise, 43% of respondents trust AI in decision-making, such as using AI agents. A slight increase from 41% in 2024. Whereas, younger generations show 42% approval compared to Baby Boomers (27%).
Both points signal reluctance but a growing interest among senior audiences, which has knock-on effects for brands.
Since 2024, trust and data privacy concerns in AI have fallen from 51% to 45% across age groups. When asked about concerns regarding AI ethics, Millennials are the least concerned (31%), followed by Gen Z (42%), Gen X (42%) and Baby Boomers (45%).
One important lesson: Brands must harness AI for personalized inspiration without compromising privacy. It is also important to address ethical and data concerns proactively, as trust remains a key lever in brand leadership.
Future-Proofing Luxury
Our analysis shows the real risk isn’t overlooking AI; it’s assuming its impact is limited to select customer segments, especially younger consumers. The implication for premium brands is that they can’t afford to dismiss AI’s universal impact. Likewise, they need to mitigate generational blind spots, as viewing AI adoption through a single generation’s lens creates a constrained understanding of how others think and engage with technology.
With the rapid rise of AI-based search, generative engine optimization (GEO) is becoming a key driver of traffic and brand visibility. This will impact how luxury brands show up on platforms, differentiate themselves and resonate with audiences across generations.
In practical terms, luxury brands will also need to fully commit to integrating AI into the consumer journey from inspiration to the shopping cart. This means carefully designing customer-centric AI-based workflows, including for service experiences.
The question is no longer if AI will influence consumer decisions, but how brands will integrate it to inspire, engage and build lasting loyalty.
2025’s Brand Winners and Losers: From Dr. Pepper, Gap, Skims and Google to Southwest, Target, Tesla and Fast Fashion
A look at 2025’s best and worst performing brands, offering key learnings for marketers, leaders and anyone tracking brand trends.
2025 was another year in which brands surprised, delighted, shocked and disappointed us. From major consumer brands dominating headlines to beloved institutions stumbling, the year once again reshaped the landscape of business and culture.
Major tech players continued to dominate headlines. YouTube officially became the world’s largest streaming platform, surpassing Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and every major network combined. Walmart completed its transformation into a tech-first retailer with its NASDAQ debut. Meanwhile, a crowded AI category welcomed Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity and Amazon Q — yet none matched the persistent ubiquity of ChatGPT. MSNBC quietly reintroduced itself as MS NOW, Astronomer found unexpected fame via a Coldplay KissCam mishap and the world debated whether Tilly Norwood might become the first AI-generated movie star. If 2024 was about AI acceleration, 2025 was about AI integration into mainstream business.
Legacy brands delivered some of the year’s strongest moments. Nike continued elevating women’s sports, Formula 1 solidified its status as the partnership platform every brand wanted to be part of, McDonald’s leaned into nostalgia to bring customers back, Coca-Cola returned to emotional storytelling with “Share a Coke,” while “old timers” Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie and Bed Bath and Beyond advanced their relevance reinvention efforts by courting Gen Z. Finally, streaming, again, saw historic gains as Stranger Things broke Netflix’s single day viewing record, Severance earned a historic wave of Emmy nominations for Apple and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives continued to help Hulu surge and search for more secrets!
Challenger brands shaped culture just as powerfully. Poppi became one of the year’s breakout success stories with its two-billion-dollar sale to Pepsi. Quince leaned into radical transparency, Labubu sparked a Beanie Babies style collecting craze, Owala turned hydration into a movement, and Mike’s Hot Honey became the condiment of the year across grocery carts and fast casual menus. At the same time, Raising Cane’s and Buc-ee’s continued their near mythic expansions, the Savannah Bananas redefined sports entertainment and Bluey remained the ten-minute escape adults and children alike continued to cherish.
2025 also marked a decisive shift toward health optimization and data-driven living, accelerating the rise of brands built around prevention and performance. Eli Lilly became the first trillion-dollar health company, powered by scientific credibility, deep patient insight and unprecedented demand for T2D and weight loss medications. On Running solidified its place as the lifestyle sport hybrid of the moment, Strava became the social network for movers and Oura entered the mainstream as consumers relied on sleep and recovery data to guide daily choices. With protein culture dominating grocery aisles and creatine entering mainstream longevity conversations, consumers were no longer just health conscious; they became health obsessed.
Celebrity and creator influence remained a powerful force in shaping the brand narrative. Hailey Bieber’s billion-dollar sale of Rhode to e.l.f. dominated headlines, Sydney Sweeney brought “attention” and record sales to American Eagle. Levi’s extended its cultural resurgence through a high impact collaboration with Beyoncé. Amy Poehler became a top ten podcaster in under eight months; Pope Leo went global and Sabrina Carpenter and Bad Bunny owned both charts and culture. And in true 2025 fashion, a mashup of 4 Non Blondes and Nicki Minaj, sparked by Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, became the year’s most unlikely anthem.
Looking ahead to 2026, the questions only grow more intriguing. Will HBO Max rebrand yet again if a Netflix/Paramount deal materializes? Is FIFA drifting into 2026 penalty territory amid early World Cup controversy? Will Prada and Versace manage to share power peacefully now that billions depend on it? Can Paige Bueckers out-dunk Caitlin Clark’s endorsement deals? Which Winter Olympic athletes will capture global attention? Do we actually care about another Avengers release? Why can’t we release Toy Story 5 tomorrow? And, the biggest mystery of all is whether or not Hinge’s positioning around “The Dating App Designed to be Deleted” will result in a swipe-left or a swipe-right?
As always, time will reveal the answers. For now, we turn to the brands that defined 2025 — the headlining hits, the memorable misses, and the stories that shaped the year. With perspectives from Prophet colleagues around the world, and refraining from any commentary on current Prophet clients, here are our takes on the brands that rose to the top and those that fell flat.
2025 Brand Winners
DoorDash
DoorDash reinforced its position as the dominant player in U.S. local commerce, expanding its footprint beyond food delivery into grocery, retail, convenience and alcohol. Growth in suburban and mid-sized markets remained a core competitive advantage, driving high order frequency and deep household penetration. DashPass continued to be one of the most powerful subscription products in the category, while the company’s merchant-focused model and operational tools made DoorDash a preferred partner for restaurants and retailers navigating an increasingly digital marketplace.
Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper solidified its status as one of 2025’s standout beverage brands, firmly holding the number two spot in the U.S. after surpassing Pepsi last year. Its loyal fan base and fast-growing Gen Z following fueled momentum, drawn to indulgent flavors and rising cultural relevance. When the “dirty soda” trend took off on TikTok, the brand moved quickly with its Creamy Coconut limited release, the most successful flavor launch in its history and a catalyst for nearly two million followers and over 12 million likes on the platform. Supported by continued heat from its Fansville campaign and an AI-driven Disney partnership that links beverage consumption to college football viewing for more precise targeting, Dr Pepper showed how a legacy brand can drive modern growth by pairing cultural agility with data-led innovation.
Gap
Gap regained meaningful cultural and commercial traction in 2025, driven by the viral “Better in Denim” campaign, which generated more than 8 billion impressions and reintroduced the brand to a younger audience. The company strengthened its positioning by accelerating influencer-led content, elevating its core assortment with higher-quality fabrics and modern fits and expanding its appeal to higher income shoppers. Supported by strategic partnerships and stronger digital execution, Gap demonstrated that a legacy retailer can regain relevance by aligning brand heritage with contemporary consumer behavior.
Google
Google emerged as one of 2025’s standout performers, regaining momentum in the AI race and boosting investor confidence. Alphabet’s stock climbed 77 percent in six months, becoming the third-most valuable U.S. company after launching Gemini 3, which, along with its Nano Banana model, outperformed rivals in early tests. Its pivot to AI-powered search paid off. Google Cloud revenue rose 32 percent and search grew 15 percent year over year. In a year defined by rapid innovation and fierce competition, Google didn’t just keep pace, it set a new bar.
OpenAI
OpenAI solidified its status as one of the defining technology companies of the decade, spearheading rapid global adoption of artificial intelligence through advances in models, multimodal intelligence and product applications. Tools such as ChatGPT and Sora became essential across sectors including education, healthcare, entertainment and enterprise, positioning OpenAI as both an innovation engine and a trusted partner. Its mix of technical leadership, robust safety research and accessible user experience helped the company anchor a major shift in how individuals and organizations work, communicate and create value.
Skims
Skims strengthened its position as one of 2025’s most influential apparel brands, evolving from shapewear disruptor to multibillion-dollar lifestyle powerhouse built on comfort, inclusivity and design innovation. With a valuation above $5 billion, global retail expansion and consistent sellouts, the brand sustained exceptional momentum, becoming the fastest-growing apparel label in America and generating millions in first-week menswear sales.
Its NikeSkims collaboration underscored its reach, introducing women-first performance design and setting a new standard in activewear. As the official loungewear and underwear partner of Team USA, Skims continued to build credibility in sport. Guided by Kim Kardashian’s strategic leadership and cultural influence, the brand shifted from buzzy newcomer to long-term force in modern essentials.
2025 Brand Losers
Fast Fashion (Forever 21, H&M, Zara, Shein)
Fast-fashion leaders struggled to maintain cultural relevance in 2025 as consumers, especially Gen Z, gravitated toward sustainable alternatives and circular models. Rental platforms such as Nuuly and Rent the Runway posted double-digit subscription growth, underscoring a shift toward quality, transparency and reduced environmental impact. Against this backdrop, fast-fashion’s rapid-turnover model increasingly appeared out of sync with evolving values. For brands long fueled by speed and trend replication, 2025 revealed the limits of a strategy misaligned with the priorities of the next generation of shoppers.
Southwest Airlines
Southwest faced significant blowback in 2025 as it moved away from hallmark customer-friendly policies to drive new revenue. The decision to introduce checked-bag fees and begin phasing out open seating signaled a decisive strategic shift but also triggered a decline in customer satisfaction scores following the announcement. While the airline argued the changes would help it compete more effectively on fares and court more business travelers, the moves threatened its long-standing position as the industry’s most approachable, traveler-first brand. The tension between financial opportunity and brand identity defined Southwest’s turbulent year.
Target
Target endured a difficult year in 2025 as shifting consumer priorities and lingering operational inconsistencies weighed on performance. The retailer posted its sixth consecutive quarter of declining foot traffic, signaling waning momentum in both discretionary categories and everyday essentials. Efforts to reinvigorate its style-forward identity were overshadowed by inventory misalignment, higher shrink levels and uneven in-store execution that eroded its once-stable appeal to middle-income households. With shoppers becoming more price sensitive and less inclined toward discretionary trips, Target found itself squeezed between elevated expectations for value and a brand positioning more closely tied to lifestyle than necessity. In a year defined by cautious spending, the retailer struggled to articulate a compelling reason for consumers to visit more often.
Tesla and Elon Musk
Tesla’s once-dominant position in the EV landscape weakened significantly in 2025 as consumer sentiment cooled and competition intensified. The company’s U.S. EV market share fell to 38 percent, its lowest level in nearly a decade, while global deliveries slipped 13 percent year over year. Product recalls, mounting battery concerns and the expiration of federal EV tax credits added pressure, but the most damaging factor may have been the growing disconnect between Elon Musk’s polarizing public image and the expectations of mainstream buyers. For a brand long fueled by mythmaking and momentum, 2025 marked a rare moment where narrative could not compensate for operational and market realities.
Tylenol
Tylenol confronted one of its toughest reputational tests in decades after allegations surfaced connecting its products to autism, thrusting the brand into a crisis that demanded clarity and rapid communication. Instead, the company delivered a fragmented and slow response that contrasted sharply with the decisive crisis management approach that made Tylenol an industry gold standard in the 1980s. Public sentiment declined noticeably across social channels, and the brand’s credibility took a measurable hit in consumer trust surveys. In an era of rapid information cycles, Tylenol’s hesitation proved as damaging as the accusation itself.
One thing is clear: 2025 was one for the brand winner/loser record books. We would love to hear from you — which brands did you think were the biggest winners and losers this year?
Uncommon Growth Leaders: A Conversation with Beth Wood and Brad Kaufman of Principal Financial Group
Uncommon Growth Leaders is an article series featuring bold leaders driving faster, smarter, more sustainable, more human and more actionable growth — what we call uncommon growth.
In times defined by disruption, from market volatility and AI to geopolitical flux, growth must be designed, not assumed. For this installment of Uncommon Growth Leaders, Chiaki Nishino spoke with Beth Wood, Chief Marketing Officer, and Brad Kaufman, Head of Digital Marketing and Marketing Operations at Principal Financial Group, about what it really takes to lead with purpose, clarity and resilience.
Beth, let’s start at the top. When everything around you is changing, how do you ground leadership? What’s most important to you in those moments of uncertainty?
Beth: It starts with clarity of strategy, purpose and values. You need a strategy that recognizes the forces outside your walls and gives people something stable to hold onto. Once you’ve got that, you repeat it, over and over. I often say, communicate, communicate, communicate.
And you can’t drift from your core values. Those have to stay constant no matter how much the world changes. At Principal, we make our values visible, literally. They’re on walls, desktops and in conversations. We measure ourselves against them. If we’re not living up to them, we act.
The other piece is followership. You want to build an organization full of people who would follow you anywhere, not because they have to, but because they want to. That’s how you build trust.
Followership isn’t about hierarchy; it’s about belief. People follow leaders who are consistent, transparent, and authentic, leaders who show them the “why” behind the work, not just the “what.” When your team understands the purpose, when they see that you’ll make the hard calls and stand behind them, that’s when loyalty and engagement take root.
I tell my leaders all the time: your goal is to earn discretionary effort; the effort people give because they believe in you, not because it’s written in their job description. When you’ve built that kind of followership, alignment becomes effortless, communication becomes more direct, and performance accelerates. It’s not about charisma or being liked, it’s about credibility and care. People will follow you through ambiguity if they trust your intent and your direction.
Brad, how does that show up in your day-to-day leadership?
Brad: Consistency is everything. The best leaders don’t just communicate clearly once they keep reinforcing the same message until it sticks. Words matter, and how you use them shapes trust.
Consistency doesn’t mean being rigid; it means being reliable. When people know what to expect from you, even in uncertain times, they can move faster and make better decisions. It builds confidence. If you’re changing direction every week or framing the story differently every time you speak, people lose track of what matters most.
I remind my team that clarity compounds. Every time you repeat the same vision with the same intent, you’re reinforcing the signal in a world full of noise. Consistency gives your people something to anchor to, and that’s when influence becomes sustainable.
And when it comes to driving transformation, we always start with the problem. Teams love to jump into solutions, but I bring them back to the core question: what problem are we trying to solve? Once that’s clear, alignment and creativity happen naturally.
The past few years have been incredibly disruptive. How do you balance short-term performance with long-term vision?
Beth: You have to think with both sides of your brain. Short-term results matter, but if you only chase the urgent, you’ll never innovate. Our teams understand their role in both horizons: to solve today’s problems and to imagine tomorrow’s opportunities.
I tell my teams constantly; you have permission to think big. But people need to hear a long-term idea 10 or 20 times before they start to believe it’s real. Repetition turns aspiration into culture.
Brad: Exactly. I always say it takes a thousand one-on-ones. You can’t just say the vision once and assume people internalize it. I literally pull out our original project decks months later to remind everyone where we started.
And psychological safety is huge. If people don’t understand something — or disagree — they have to feel safe to say so. That’s how you keep people aligned and engaged for the long haul.
Beth, how do you make sure your teams stay customer-centered, especially in a large, complex organization?
Beth: We keep our finger on the pulse. We run monthly “pulse” surveys, maintain multiple customer panels, and manage the long-standing research called the Well-Being Index that tracks optimism and financial health among small and midsize business owners.
We also co-create with customers. We ask them directly: how would this work for you? They always bring perspectives we’d never think of on our own. That collaboration builds better solutions and a stronger brand.
Brad: And for people who don’t directly engage with customers, we build the mindset into the culture. Everyone should think like a student of the business, curious about what the customer is doing, and how it impacts their role. That outside-in perspective needs to be automatic, not occasional.
When budgets tighten, how do you still foster creativity and innovation?
Brad: It’s about bending the curve. Every team is asked to do more, with more complexity, at higher quality, in less time. That equation doesn’t add up unless you change how the work gets done.
“Bending the curve” means finding leverage, through process improvement, smarter workflows, and, increasingly, technology. You can’t outwork exponential complexity, but you can outthink it. That’s where automation, data and AI come in.
Our job isn’t to work harder; it’s to work smarter. That means auditing what’s manual and finding opportunities to automate, investing in skill development so the basics become second nature, and then deploying new tools to multiply impact.
Beth: Our CEO made a commitment to train all 20,000 employees on using AI to improve productivity and customer experience. And it’s working. People are realizing it’s not about replacing work; it’s about freeing up time for higher-value thinking.
The key is embracing it. The tools are here, but you have to be willing to learn, experiment, and use them to do things differently.
You’ve both talked about performance and development. How do you manage that “vital middle” of performers — those who aren’t low performers but haven’t yet hit their stride?
Beth: With clarity and courage. The top performers manage themselves. The middle is where leadership happens. I have regular “Why do you stay?” conversations because I want to understand motivation.
Once expectations and skills are clear, the question becomes: are you filling the role we need? Half the time, people rise to the occasion. The other half, we talk openly about fit. Direct, transparent conversations are how you build trust.
Brad: There’s nothing more motivating than the truth. You don’t have to be harsh, just real. People appreciate it when they know exactly where they stand.
Beth, you’ve been described as a sponsor of talent. How do you think about growing leaders?
Beth: I hire people for the job I think they’ll grow into, not just the one they’re hired for. With Brad, for instance, he came to me after 20 years at Principal and said, “I want to do something different.” That’s gold to me. I just needed to open the door, provide coaching, and get out of his way.
I ask one question constantly: how can I help? That’s it. If people need me, I’m there. If not, I move aside.
I also host something called The Orange Room, a casual, no-agenda session every few weeks where anyone in my organization can ask anything. It builds transparency, trust, and connection.
Leadership isn’t just about skills, it’s about mindset. How do you build resilience in your teams?
Brad: For me, resilience starts with perspective. I encourage my team to step outside their own viewpoint, especially in moments of tension or frustration. When conflict happens, I’ll ask, “What’s the other person thinking right now?” or “What do they see that you might not?”
It sounds simple, but that question resets everything. It slows the reaction, diffuses defensiveness, and shifts people from emotion to curiosity. When you practice that regularly, it becomes a leadership muscle. You stop seeing challenges as personal attacks and start seeing them as opportunities to understand context and improve outcomes.
Resilience isn’t about being unshakable; it’s about being adaptable. It’s the ability to take feedback, reframe setbacks and move forward with perspective. And when leaders model that it cascades through the team, people start mirroring calm instead of chaos.
Beth: I completely agree. A big part of resilience is choosing how you interpret what’s happening around you. You have to assume positive intent and that can be hard when you’re under pressure. But most people aren’t out to make your life difficult; they’re simply trying to solve their own set of problems. If you can start from that mindset, conversations become more productive and you stay in control of your own energy.
Another dimension is discernment. I always remind my leaders that not every battle is worth fighting. Every hill isn’t a hill to die on. Part of resilience is knowing when to engage deeply and when to let something go. Leaders who can focus on what truly matters, who can separate the noise from the signal, move faster and inspire confidence in others.
I also think resilience grows from community. People are more resilient when they feel seen and supported. When leaders create space for honesty, vulnerability and reflection when they normalize saying, “This week was hard” that’s when resilience becomes collective, not just individual.
Brad: Yes, and it’s contagious. When you model composure and curiosity under pressure, it gives everyone permission to do the same. That’s how you create a culture that bends without breaking.
Personally, how do you both stay inspired and balanced as leaders?
Beth: Watching my daughter play hockey grounds me, its joy, pure and simple. I also read constantly, mostly business books and blogs like Seth Godin and Simon Sinek. I pull one or two takeaways from each and apply them. If they work, I keep them; if not, I move on.
Brad: I’ve tried to make my job about what I love: technology, data, process. When you align your work with what energizes you, you don’t burn out.
And I protect my time. Nights and weekends are sacred. I tell my team the same; rest isn’t a luxury, it’s a performance strategy.
Before we wrap, anything we didn’t cover that feels essential to uncommon leadership?
Brad: We don’t talk enough about leading humans. There’s no playbook for when someone’s parent is sick or their kid’s struggling. You can’t lead effectively if your relationship is purely transactional.
Beth: Yes, and that care has to be real. People can tell when it’s performative. Be authentic, be vulnerable and let people see who you are. That’s how you build trust.
And remember: every person on the team has a role. As John Wooden said, everyone must know their role and trust that others will perform theirs. When you have that trust, everything else flows.
Chiaki: Beautifully said. Thank you both for sharing so openly. What stands out to me from this conversation is how practical and human great leadership really is. It’s not about having all the answers about building trust, showing care and helping people find clarity in complexity. The way you balance both purpose, performance and empathy is exactly the kind of leadership that fuels uncommon growth.
Beth Wood is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Principal Financial Group®, where she leads the Global Brand & Experience team in shaping and stewarding the Principal brand worldwide. With more than 30 years of experience spanning financial services, healthcare and consumer goods, Beth is known for aligning global organizations around customer-leveraging data, analytics and technology to create meaningful, measurable experiences that drive growth. She also serves as Chair of both the company’s Sustainability Task Force and the Principal Foundation. Before joining Principal in 2019, Beth held senior marketing leadership roles at Guardian Life, Frito-Lay, Johnson & Johnson and MassMutual.
Brad Kaufman is an accomplished digital transformation executive with nearly 25 years of experience driving enterprise-scale change at Principal Financial Group. As Head of Digital Marketing and Marketing Operations, he leads initiatives that connect strategy, operations and technology to modernize marketing and enable data-driven, connected customer experiences across global and U.S. markets. Known for aligning complex organizations, Brad advances marketing capabilities and operational excellence to accelerate outcomes, elevate digital maturity and deliver measurable business impact at scale.
This conversation is part of our ongoing Uncommon Growth series, where we explore what’s possible when senior leadership aligns not just on strategy, but on how to achieve uncommon growth. Personify Health’s journey — powered by a strong CEO-CMO partnership, a new brand and bold thinking — offers a blueprint for driving performance through clarity, trust and creative disruption.
Uncommon Growth Leader: How to Lead with Creativity and Collaboration
Uncommon Growth Leaders is an article series featuring bold leaders driving faster, smarter, more sustainable, more human and more actionable growth — what we call uncommon growth.
Chiaki Nishino, President of Prophet, sat down with Michelle Froah, a global marketing and innovation leader, to explore the leadership traits needed to drive impact in a world that’s anything but ordinary. In a conversation packed with insight and real-world examples, Michelle opens up about challenging legacy thinking, co-creating across silos, and why slowing down can sometimes help you move faster.
In today’s high-pressure environment, there’s constant pressure to deliver growth. How do you push boundaries when it’s often easier or expected to do things the way they’ve always been done?
Michelle Froah: One of the most powerful skills I lean on is co-creative problem solving. It’s not about having all the answers, it’s about bringing together brilliant people from across the business, especially those who’ve been working in silos and building solutions together. When teams feel ownership and safety to challenge norms, innovation happens.
A great example is when I was working at CoverGirl. At the time, the “eyes” category — mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner — was seen as a small piece of the business. But when we dug into the data, we found that eyes had higher velocity and margin than any other category. That insight reframed how we approached strategy and led to innovations like LashBlast, which ultimately elevated the entire brand. It was a team effort powered by data, creativity and cross-functional collaboration.
That’s a perfect example of disruptive thinking. What leadership trait do you rely on to drive that kind of disruptive change?
MF: Hands down: collaboration. It’s often called a “soft skill,” but in reality, it’s one of the most durable leadership capabilities. At ETS, we tackled a full transformation: business strategy, brand and innovation. But we couldn’t do it alone. ETS is a 75-year-old nonprofit with a deep research legacy, so we had to bring everyone along from researchers to business units, to functions including marketers. Only by co-creating together did we launch a new brand and strategy in under nine months.
People think rebranding is about logos and colors. It’s not. It’s about aligning everyone around a shared mission. When we unveiled the new brand, everyone walked out as a brand ambassador. That only happens when transformation is co-owned.
Sounds like leading change requires both vision and execution. How do you balance the two?
MF: You absolutely need both. When you set a bold vision, and then break it into tangible building blocks, you make big change feel possible and doable. Leaders need to set a future that feels bold, even a little scary, but also provide clear steps so teams see how to get there.
I’ve seen this in practice at both Samsung and ETS. At Samsung, we rebuilt customer trust after the Note7 crisis by directly engaging our most loyal customers and partnering our marketing with customer service, something that hadn’t been done before. At ETS, we ensured that transformation wasn’t just a marketing initiative, but something embedded across business units, research and operations.
In both cases, it was about setting a vision and then collaborating across silos to make it real.
How do you stay inspired to lead through all this complexity and pressure?
MF: Two things: First, I stay close to the work. I host working sessions, not just decision meetings. I want my teams to feel like we’re in it together not just presenting for my approval. It builds trust, encourages team development and gets better solutions faster.
Second, I look outside the walls of the organization. I stay active with groups like the ANA and The Marketing Society, sit on advisory boards and take the opportunity to mentor and be mentored.It keeps me curious, humble and open to ideas from completely different industries and perspectives.
Collaboration clearly plays a big role in your leadership style. How do you build a team culture that supports creativity and experimentation?
Michelle: You’ve got to embed it in the culture. It starts with accountability and investment in talent. At P&G, where I spent 18 years, 50% of your performance rating was based on results and the other 50% on organizational capability — how you developed your teams and others across the organization. That instilled in me a responsibility to grow talent that delivers outcomes, not just deliver outcomes.
So I always ensure that my teams have personal development objectives. Growth can mean deepening expertise or stepping into new, uncomfortable spaces to expand capabilities. Either way, it forces collaboration, mentoring and continuous learning.
What’s been one of your biggest leadership challenges to drive growth?
MF: The biggest challenge is often inertia, the resistance to new ways of thinking. But if you can tap into people’s sense of purpose and show them the value they’re creating, you turn skeptics into lifelong partners.
Transformation is hard and can invoke skepticism. At Samsung, during the Note 7 crisis, we had to rebuild trust. And we did this by engaging our most loyal customers and working hand-in-hand with the customer service team to create new experiences like white-glove service. It pushed us to innovate in ways we hadn’t before.
At ETS, launching a new business unit and workforce solution was an investment that required significant buy in across the organization. But when you tap into people’s desire to make a difference, you gain an opportunity to build relationships that may turn into lifelong partnerships.
Final question: What’s the anchor point of your leadership — something you rely on no matter where you’ve worked?
MF: I’m naturally driven, fast-paced and not afraid of change or risk. One of my favorite poems is The Road Not Taken, because I’ve always chosen the less-traveled path.
But I’ve learned that sometimes slowing down helps you go faster. When you give others time to catch up emotionally and strategically you get stronger buy-in, better ideas and faster momentum in the long run.
So yes, I still love a good sprint. But I now know when to pause and bring people along. That’s how you turn a big idea into a movement.
Michelle Froah is an accomplished global executive recognized for driving business transformation, modernizing brands, and leading digital and AI-enabled growth across complex global organizations. She most recently served as Global Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer and SVP of Corporate Solutions at ETS, where she helped return the company to profitable performance and built new growth pathways through enterprise innovation, AI strategy and the launch of Futurenav, a workforce solutions venture.
Across senior roles at MetLife, Samsung, Kimberly-Clark, and Procter & Gamble, Michelle has shaped global brands, guided digital transformation, strengthened customer-centric strategy, and scaled organizational capability across diverse, regulated, and high-growth industries. Her leadership has been recognized with industry honors including AdWeek’s AI Trailblazer Power 100, Campaign’s 40 Over 40, Business Insider’s CMO to Watch and multiple Brand Innovators Top 100 Women distinctions.
This conversation is part of our ongoing Uncommon Growth series, where we explore what’s possible when senior leadership aligns not just on strategy, but on how to achieve uncommon growth. Personify Health’s journey — powered by a strong CEO-CMO partnership, a new brand and bold thinking — offers a blueprint for driving performance through clarity, trust and creative disruption.
Brand as a Strategic Growth Engine: A Conversation with Piedmont Healthcare’s CMO
How Piedmont CMO Douwe Bergsma is turning brand into a strategic growth engine.
In healthcare, few organizations have redefined the role of Brand Growth as boldly as Piedmont. Under CMO Douwe Bergsma’s leadership, marketing, communications, and patient experience have evolved from often undervalued functions into Brand Growth, a measurable business growth engine; accountable for driving demand, shaping brand health and improving patient experience.
In this conversation with Scott Davis, Prophet’s Chief Growth Officer, Bergsma shares how he’s reframed Brand Growth at Piedmont around patient-centered, financial rigor, data-driven accountability, and the courage to simplify. Together, they explore how brand and demand disciplines combine to power sustainable growth in one of the nation’s most complex industries.
Douwe, you’ve had quite a year. Piedmont’s performance has been exceptional. How would you describe where the organization stands today and how that influences your Brand Growth priorities?
Douwe Bergsma: It’s been a record year across many dimensions. Ten years ago, Piedmont’s total revenue was around $1.5 billion. This year, we’re tracking toward $9 billion. We now serve ~4.5 million patients across ~50,000 employees and offer services close to about 85% of Georgia. Piedmont is among the best performing systems in the U.S when it comes to quality, safety, cost management and overall financial performance.
For me, the real story is how Brand Growth is now directly accountable for a significant part of our total revenue.That’s based on our internal Brand Growth Mix Model (MMM), which quantifies the contribution to patient acquisition and office visits. That level of measurable impact is rare in healthcare.
We measure success across three pillars:
Demand: How many office visits and appointments Brand Growth directly drives, and at what ROI?
Brand: Awareness and favorability, tracked through independent third-party research.
Experience: How well do patients adopt our digital tools and how satisfied they are.
Those three lenses together represent the full brand journey – from the first awareness moment to a lifetime of patient loyalty.
That’s an extraordinary shift, from Brand Growth as a service function to a growth engine. What sparked that transformation?
DB: When I joined Piedmont,marketing and communications were respected but mostly undervalued, and patient experience was even a separate team. My goal was to reframe it into Brand Growth and become a strategic driver of growth, a quality and patient-centered revenue engine.
I came from the CPG world, where you live and die by metrics like household penetration and sales velocity. In healthcare, the equivalents are patient appointments and office visits. So, I started with that: proving that Brand Growth could measurably drive patient volume.
Once we had data to show how communications, physician outreach, campaigns and digital investments translated into patient growth, the conversation with leadership shifted. Over time, Brand Growth was not only visible, but it was essential.
I tell my team all the time: Marketing is math, with creativity to make the math work better. That mindset changed a lot.
You’ve often said your mantra is “Think like a CFO, act like a CMO.” What does that mean in practice?
DB: It means that marketers must understand and speak the language of the balance sheet. The fastest way to earn credibility in the C-suite is to tie your work directly to patient satisfaction and financial performance.
When I came in, I brought data tables to almost every meeting, not creative storyboards. I walked the CEO, EVP and CFO through how Brand Growth metrics can translate into patient preference, conversion and financial outcomes.
Over time, we built a full Brand Growth Mix Model to validate those linkages. It’s not just correlation, but also attribution and causation. We can now forecast how much incremental patients and revenue a certain campaign, media channel, or experience improvement will generate, approximately
Once you can do that, Brand Growth earns a more permanent seat at the table not the “kids table,” as I like to say.
That level of financial discipline feels rare, especially in healthcare marketing. What other changes made it possible?
DB: A big one was patient-driven simplification. Like many large systems, we had accumulated too many vendors, tools, and disconnected digital experiences. There were multiple patient portals and apps, each with their own logins, designs, and data silos.
We now aim to simplify almost everything down to one patient-preferred platform: Piedmont MyChart. It’s now the single digital front door for the majority of our patients. That decision was somewhat controversial; it meant consolidating walking away from several vendors. But simplification delivered an easier patient experience, clarity, consistency, and cost efficiency.
The result is not only a better experience for patients, but a more streamlined, measurable, and scalable Brand Growth ecosystem.
Once you had the demand engine humming, how did you elevate brand building within that mix?
DB: Once we proved Brand Growth’s impact on office visits, the next step was to embrace its role in shaping brand awareness and preference.
We were the #1 system operationally in Georgia but ranked only #2 in brand health. That gap was unacceptable. I used the science of marketing to help other executives understand that awareness drives patient consideration, and consideration drives choice.
Once that clicked, support followed. Our brand building efforts grew exponentially within a few years. Today, our CEO is personally involved and presents Brand Growth results to our leadership and board. When the CEO takes pride in Brand Growth, you know it’s embedded in the enterprise strategy.
That’s a powerful evolution and it mirrors what we see across industries: marketing leaders earning credibility through measurable results. How do you think about the intersection of brand and demand today?
DB: They’re not separate disciplines; they’re symbiotic. Demand gives you patient choice, results and short-term value. Brand gives you the long-term ability to grow.
The first phase of our transformation was all about driving demand: measurable, patient-centered transactional growth. But once we proved that engine, brand became the next multiplier. Brand health amplifies everything else: patient preference, physician partnerships, patient loyalty, even recruiting.
We no longer debate “brand vs. demand.” We build both in concert, guided by a unified Brand Growth Flywheel that connects awareness to consideration to conversion.
Scott Davis: That’s exactly what we call Brand & Demand at Prophet — the idea that sustainable growth happens when both sides of the Brand Growth equation reinforce each other.
Let’s talk about experience, the final frontier of Brand Growth ownership. You’ve brought CX, marketing, and analytics under one roof. What prompted that integration?
DB: The patient experience is the brand experience. You can’t separate them.
We merged communications, community affairs, marketing, sales and patient experience into one organization with centralized insights and analytics. That was a major reorganization. It was a bit painful, but necessary.
We rebuilt our organization and now we have a single, integrated view of the patient: from first awareness to appointment booking, to post-visit feedback.
Brand Growth now is also accountable for digital tool adoption and patient satisfaction. It’s a closed loop. When patients have better digital and in-person experiences, loyalty and volume follow.
Healthcare is facing capacity constraints and policy headwinds. How do those external dynamics shape your Brand Growth agenda?
DB: Demand for healthcare in Georgia continues to grow, but access needs to increase as well.
Our focus is on balancing patient demand growth with available capacity across our footprint. It’s about connecting patients to the right services, at the right place and time, managing expectations, and ensuring alignment with operations.
We’re increasing access to quality care through capital investments in new and expanded facilities, hiring more physicians and staff and expanding virtual care, but Brand Growth also plays a crucial role in optimizing patient demand. Relentless focus on quality and building a strong brand helps attract patients, but also physicians, nurses, and partners who want to work with the best.
You’ve also been candid about cutting “vanity spend” and reinvesting for impact. What did that process look like?
DB: We had a zero-based budgeting mentality – every program, vendor, and sponsorship had to justify its investments and show it was patient-preferred, driving value.
I literally asked almost each partner to present their own value creation. Some could prove it instantly. Others, like certain sponsorships, technology partners or promotional programs, couldn’t.
One example: we walked away from a high-profile sponsorship. It was a tough call; they were great partners, it had visibility but no measurable patient preference or impact. We reallocated that money to further upgrade our digital patient experience.
That decision earned credibility with the other executives and freed resources for initiatives that drive true patient-centered and measurable growth.
Many CMOs right now are under pressure to reorganize and to reimagine Brand Growth for greater agility and accountability. What guidance would you give them?
DB: Transformation is never one-and-done. We’ve gone through multiple reorganizations to centralize analytics, insights, and patient experience l under unified leadership. Each time, it’s disruptive but clarity always follows. My advice?
Start with what matters. Define the few patient-centered metrics that connect directly to overall business performance
Invest in insights. The most underleveraged asset in most organizations is understanding the customer, or in our case, the patient, better than anyone else.
Reinvest for growth. Don’t cut costs to just hit a number; reallocate investments toward what drives measurable patient-centered outcomes.
Transformation is uncomfortable. We lost people along the way — some I wanted to keep. But we gained an organization built for the future: patient-focused, agile, data-fluent, and growth-oriented.
When it comes to AI, what’s your perspective on its real potential within marketing?
DB: AI is a promising tool, not a strategy. I expect that the real AI-driven value in healthcare will come from clinical and operational applications like diagnostics, imaging, ambient listening to aid in documentation, or operating room optimization, and less from marketing automation.
Within Brand Growth, AI will absolutely streamline workforce effectiveness and efficiency and enable us to focus on upside opportunities that might currently be under-resourced.
Our priority is still patient-focused life-saving or improving AI before marketing AI. We’ll automate where it makes sense, but not at the expense of authenticity, creativity or empathy. Brand Growth still needs a human heartbeat, especially in healthcare!
Finally, as we look toward 2026, what’s top of mind for you as a CMO?
Bergsma: Three things.
First, sustaining growth responsibly, ensuring patient demand aligns with available capacity and that our efforts keep patient needs at the center of all we do.
Second, continuing to integrate brand, demand, and experience into one team, one set of metrics, one North Star, driven by one Brand Growth Flywheel.
And third, building future capabilities, remaining patient-centered, applying automation thoughtfully, elevating data literacy, empowering teams to think strategically and fostering a culture that embraces it all.
Douwe Bergsma is the Chief Marketing Officer of Piedmont, where he leads the organization’s brand, demand, and experience strategy across its rapidly expanding network of hospitals and clinics. With more than 27 years of Brand Growth and business leadership experience, Bergsma joined Piedmont in 2020 after serving as Chief Marketing Officer of Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products, where he was instrumental in driving brand value growth through innovation, design, and consumer experience transformation. Before that, he spent nearly two decades at Procter & Gamble. A global marketing and communications thought leader, Bergsma serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), was the Dean of the Brand Marketers Academy at the Cannes Lions School and co-leads the Global CMO Growth Council’s Talent Pillar.
What Douwe and his team have accomplished at Piedmont is a masterclass in modern Brand Growth leadership. It’s proof that when you unite brand, demand, and experience under a shared purpose and back it with data discipline and financial fluency, Brand Growth doesn’t just tell the story of growth. It drives it.
This interview is part of Prophet’s ongoing “Brand & Demand” CMO series, exploring how marketing leaders are transforming their organizations into engines of growth through data, creativity, and strategic courage.
We often see companies consistently outperform because they share one defining trait: they operate with clarity. This allows them to turn insights into sharp strategies, distinctive experiences and to align their cultures behind a shared direction.
Of all the factors that fuel business growth, clarity is one of the most critical—and sometimes the most overlooked. Without clarity, blind spots multiply, decisions falter and growth slows.
When Prophet published Uncommon Growth for Uncommon Times, one message stood out: the winners don’t rely on slogans; they build purposeful systems that clearly connect strategy, people and performance.
Clarity is about having the right lens to understand your key issues. Below are four examples of how we partnered with leadership teams to help them stop guessing and pursue a clear plan towards growth.
Finding Clarity Through Customer Insights
Clarity starts with understanding customers. Without meaningful insights, executives often struggle to prioritize effectively and pick the best growth trajectory.
A leading consumer goods company was faced with a fragmented market and uncertainty about future growth. We delivered clarity by building a demand landscape that combined research, segmentation and cultural trends analysis. This pinpointed distinct growth territories and aligned leadership on where to play, and how to win.
Similarly, a premium pet nutrition brand needed to scale without losing authenticity. By uncovering the motivations behind pet owner choices and mapping the most valuable demand spaces, we created a unified strategy that guided innovation, channel priorities and experience design.
Through our work, their leadership team was able to understand the real story of what was happening in their markets and to develop clear, actionable insights that turned complexity into confidence.
Making Innovation Clear—and Profitable
For many leaders, the real challenge isn’t sparking innovation; it’s sustaining it and proving its value. Clarity means building a system where creativity consistently translates into measurable business success.
A global industrial manufacturer wanted to move beyond incremental product development and create a durable source of differentiation. We helped design an innovation engine that identified unmet customer needs, defined a portfolio of growth bets and established a framework for testing and scaling ideas.
By embedding innovation as a core capability, the organization was able to fund, build and launch new offers faster.
Clarity in Brand Portfolios: Making Every Brand Work Harder
When categories blur and portfolios expand, it can lead to a lack of awareness of which brands create real value and for whom. Without that knowledge, investments scatter and experiences fragment.
We helped a hospitality group overcome brand overlap and inconsistent customer experiences by defining high-value guest segments, clarifying brand roles and creating a loyalty roadmap that guided investment and experience design across the portfolio.
In another case, a global consumer company needed sharper focus for its growing portfolio. Our demand-space analysis defined each brand’s role and target, providing a roadmap that unified marketing, innovation and commercial teams.
Clarity in Culture: Connecting Organizations
Behind every successful transformation sits one constant: clarity on the behaviors and beliefs that unite people behind a common culture.
A fast-growing pharmaceutical services organization was expanding globally and needed to preserve its entrepreneurial energy while scaling effectively. Prophet worked with the leadership team to codify a culture framework that defined the values, behaviors and rituals connecting employees to the company’s purpose.
Through co-creation and leadership activation, these behaviors were embedded into daily work—turning culture into a catalyst for performance and growth.
Despite ongoing disruption, the CEO agenda is sharper than ever. Leaders are zeroing in on several priorities: understanding customers in richer ways, embedding innovation into everyday work, maximizing brand value and building cultures that move with intent.
Our experience shows clarity isn’t just a leadership skill; it’s a deeply connected growth system that turns ambition into sustained performance.
To find out more about how to take the guesswork out of your strategic leadership, please get in touch.
Speed AND Soul: Why AI Transformation Needs Humanity, Not Just Algorithms
Protecting your culture from AI transformation will require human-centered change.
The Illusion of Speed and Simplicity
We live in an age of AI hype: infinite value, instant transformation, and algorithms that solve all types of problems. But as Paul Hlivko warns in Harvard Business Review, those headlines often mask a much slower, more friction-filled reality: “AI will transform industries … but on enterprise time: longer, slower, and with far more friction than most expect.” According to the article, corporate leaders routinely make six core mistakes, including underestimating the time needed, overestimating adoption, and obsessing over the models instead of the real, sustainable systems.
This aligns with what we see in practice: many AI transformation programs default to a standard consulting playbook — assess, reengineer, select technology, train, integrate, roll out. That is not wrong — but it’s insufficient. The promise of rapid returns often collides with legacy systems, cultural resistance, risk-averse governance, and organizational inertia. When execution lags, stakeholders grow impatient. Business cases underdeliver. Trust erodes. And the opportunity to capture exponential value slips away.
The Two Risks That Leaders Rarely Face Head-on
1. Underperformance: The Gap Between Expectation and Delivery
Even with strong investment, many AI programs will land somewhere in the “incremental improvement” zone rather than delivering dramatic transformation. According to KMPG’s 2025 Global CEO Outlook, leaders are betting big on AI — but they’re acutely aware that culture, adoption, and trust are real constraints:
71% of CEOs say AI is a top investment priority.
69% plan to allocate 10–20% of budgets to AI.
Yet 63% of CEOs express concern about AI’s impact on culture.
33% see employee resistance to change as a serious barrier.
To HBR’s point: the world believes in rapid adoption, but in reality, enterprise adoption is often slow, uneven, and delayed by legacy constraints.
The result? Many organizations operate under a “speed illusion” thinking they’re moving fast, but really lagging in impact, adoption, and value captured. While CEOs are aware of the issues, they are not necessarily addressing them head on.
2. Cultural Erosion: The Risk of Becoming Soulless
Even when AI “works,” it can hollow out what makes organizations human.
HBR refers to fact that “We are automating work without really understanding it.” Many tasks involve “connective labor”, the human act of seeing others and reflecting understanding; something no algorithm can replicate. When machines take over more of what people used to do, employees start questioning their role and relevance. What remains if your unique ideas, judgment, or moral instincts are replaced by algorithmic suggestions?
Worse still, cutting out swathes of humans to be replaced by machines, like recent Amazon and UPS announcements to lay off 14,000 and 48,000 people respectively, spreads fear like wildfire. Remaining employees will be looking over their shoulder every day while they try to learn new processes/tools all while silently second guessing their own identity/worth/value as knowledge workers and experiencing survivor guilt over their departed peers.
Organizations are inherently social and human. Unchecked, AI transformation can erode purpose, identity, and distinctiveness—leaving behind a high-efficiency shell that feels no different from any other. In the worst case, leaders may wake up in a faster, but hollow firm, bleeding any talent that remains.
The Leadership Challenge: Balancing Technology with Humanity
The paradox is stark: you need both speed and soul. You need technology execution and human-centered change. Too much reliance on process and systems, ignoring identity, narrative and belief, and you risk cultural collapse. Too much focus on people without execution rigor, and you risk underwhelming returns.
The leaders who win in this era embrace a third path: integrative transformation, where machines and humans are co-designers of the future.
What does that require?
A change narrative that connects AI to purpose, identity, and meaning — not just efficiency.
Leadership that can manage emotional truth, change fatigue, and scepticism, not just process rollout.
Investment in a culture of experimentation, trust, and iteration — so AI adapts with you, not against you.
What it Looks Like in Practice
Start small, learn fast: Use early AI pilots to test the interplay of tech and culture before scaling.
Layer on change ignition: Don’t just train — it matters how you engage, narrate, and embed belief in your people.
Protect the “connective labor” parts: Recognize where human judgment, empathy, and identity still matter (and always will).
Design for endurance, not demos: Move beyond one-off AI initiatives to sustained systems, governance, and cultural habits.
At Prophet, our core offer sits here: we amplify AI transformations by ensuring that it is not just delivered — but believed, felt and owned by the organization. This is human-centered change. We don’t just help change processes. We help you become the transformed organization.
There Has Never Been a More Important Time for Organizations to be Human
AI transformation is no longer optional — it’s happening, whether you lead it or are swept up by it. But most will not achieve it in the way that they imagine it. The most likely scenario is that change will be executed slowly, overbudget, and without meaning. You have choices; deliver speed but lose your identity, protect your culture but lag behind in impact or integrate both — becoming faster, more distinct, more human.
In a world racing toward automation, the greatest prize isn’t just efficiency — it’s being more human than ever.
Prophet was proud to be recognized in Forrester’s Organizational Change Management (OCM) Services Landscape, Q4 2025 report. Learn more in Forrester’s full report, available to Forrester subscribers and for purchase.
Our work at Prophet helps leaders align culture with purpose, strategy and brand to catalyze rapid, sustainable and profitable growth. We believe Forrester’s landscape affirms what we see every day: organizations that take a human-centered, data-driven approach are able to unlock the shifts that drive uncommon growth. Learn more about our solutions.
Balancing Brand and Demand: A Growth Leader’s Perspective
Uncommon Growth Leaders is an article series featuring bold leaders driving faster, smarter, more sustainable, more human and more actionable growth — what we call uncommon growth.
Fred Ehle is no stranger to big brands, bold ideas and transformational growth. With leadership roles at McDonald’s, Redbox, Pulte and Rocket Mortgage, he has lived the tension between long-term brand building and short-term performance and has strong views on how marketing must evolve to truly drive enterprise value.
In this candid conversation with Scott Davis, Chief Growth Officer at Prophet, Fred shares insights on the CMO’s changing role, aligning the C-suite around brand, the real impact of AI and how Rocket’s “Own the Dream” campaign came to life at the Super Bowl.
Let’s start with your journey. What led you to Rocket Mortgage?
Fred Ehle: I’ve had a great run across both agency and client-side roles. When the opportunity with Rocket Mortgage came up, it was a compelling moment. The company was already a major player in the category, but they were looking to evolve from a high-volume lead-gen machine to a modern, full-funnel marketing organization.
Jonathan Mildenhall had recently joined as CMO, and he was setting out to build a marketing function that could drive both brand and business results. The chance to help shape that transformation — and to bring together brand, creative and growth under one roof — was too exciting to pass up.
Many reports suggest that CMOs are losing influence — shrinking budgets, short tenures and fading confidence in the role. What’s your take? Is this cyclical or something deeper?
FE: It’s something deeper. Marketing’s been losing ground in the C-suite for a while — and in some cases, we’ve done it to ourselves. As I often say, Marketing has a marketing problem.
First, we’ve allowed the definition of marketing to get fuzzy. The function has blurred into areas like digital and IT, making it harder to define our value clearly. Then there’s our own jargon — terms like “growth marketer.” What does that even mean? Shouldn’t we all be growth marketers?
Second, many CMOs don’t control all the levers of growth – pricing, product, distribution — and yet we’re still held accountable for outcomes we can’t fully drive. That disconnect erodes credibility.
Third, there’s often a lack of alignment between business strategy and marketing KPIs. Too often, we’re measuring activity, not outcomes.
And finally, some CMOs lean too heavily into communications without commercial sensibility. CEOs want profitable growth. If the CMO doesn’t understand how the business makes money, or doesn’t speak the language of finance, then the seat at the table becomes very fragile.
So, what does good look like? What’s the silver lining?
FE: It comes down to alignment. At Rocket, we had that rare moment where business strategy, brand strategy and marketing execution were completely in sync — from the CEO to the board to every team member. We had real clarity around who we were targeting, what our value proposition was and the resources to bring it to life.
The “Own the Dream” platform we launched at the Super Bowl wasn’t just a campaign. It was the manifestation of that alignment. We built it from segmentation up: deep customer understanding, clear value prop and a singular creative idea that laddered all the way to business impact.
And we proved it. Our brand health metrics tied directly to lead generation and revenue. When the brand score moved, leads followed — six months later.
Brand marketing often struggles to win over CFOs. How do you make the case for investment to build trust?
FE: Data and testing. We ran small-scale full-funnel experiments that demonstrated clear efficiency gains. At Rocket, nothing got funded unless it tied to measurable KPIs — brand health, leads, conversions, or share growth.
By connecting brand health scores to downstream business results (like share gains six months later), we created a line of sight from brand to revenue. That kind of evidence earned CFO support and unlocked real investment.
Let’s talk brand and demand marketing. That debate is louder than ever. How do you approach it?
FE: It’s not either/or — it’s both/and. That sounds simple, but the execution is hard.
The reality in our business is, up to 95% of your potential customers aren’t in-market at any given time. If you spend all your dollars chasing the 5% who are, you’re ignoring tomorrow’s demand.
The key is balance. In some businesses, it’s 60/40 brand-to-performance; in others, 40/60. But leaning too far into performance just drives up customer acquisition costs as competitors bid on the same eyeballs. That was happening at Rocket before we pivoted to a more balanced approach. Full-funnel marketing ultimately proved more efficient, not less. When people recognize your brand and trust you, the funnel gets more efficient. But you have to prove that with data, especially to the CFO
Let’s rewind to the Super Bowl campaign. “Own the Dream” was a big swing. What made it work?
FE: We had a powerful emotional insight: 91% of people want to own a home, but 53% of first-time buyers cry during the process, and not tears of joy.
That insight drove everything. Our creative agency brought us “Own the Dream,” and it clicked. It honored that tension—between aspiration and frustration — and gave us a rallying cry.
The Super Bowl spot itself was powerful, but the in-stadium activation was the magic. Fans singing along to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” created this emotional, collective moment. It generated over a billion earned impressions. Social sentiment was 90% positive, cutting across demographics and political lines. And it felt like Rocket — authentic, optimistic, human.
What role does AI play in all of this?
FE: AI is an enabler, not a strategy. But it’s a powerful one.
At Rocket, we used AI to remove friction from the mortgage process. We already allow customers to refinance without talking to a human if they choose. That’s real transformation.
From a marketing lens, AI helped us get to insights faster, segment smarter and personalize at scale. But again, it’s not about the tool — it’s about what you do with it.
But AI doesn’t replace critical thinking. AI can surface a trend. It can write the first draft. But it can’t feel what will resonate. That’s still the human job.
Last question. What advice do you have for fellow CMOs trying to lead through this complexity?
FE: Three things:
Don’t abandon fundamentals. Segmentation, positioning, emotional resonance, they matter more than ever.
Get close to your CFO. Tie brand health to business outcomes. Don’t just show marketing metrics — show impact.
Be the Voice of the Customer. Bring the outside in. Share insight with your peers. Help the business make better bets.
And one bonus: Run small tests. When you’re at odds with your CEO or CFO, don’t argue — test. Let the market decide.
Fred Ehle is a senior marketing leader recognized for driving business and brand success through major inflection points from turnarounds and rebrands to scalable growth. With a career spanning Fortune 500, private equity and privately held companies including Rocket, Jockey International, Redbox, McDonald’s and PulteGroup, Fred consistently delivers top- and bottom-line impact. His approach blends deep consumer focus with fearless, data-driven decision-making and strong cross-functional leadership. A Gold Effie and Cannes Gold Lion winner and three-time OnCon Top 100 Marketer, has shaped strategy, innovation and omni-channel execution for more than twenty brands — launching breakthrough products, redefining business models and building high-performance teams that drive lasting growth.
Fred’s perspective underscores a fundamental truth: growth leaders must master the balance between brand and demand. The CMOs who win today are those who blend commercial rigor with creative courage, aligning business, brand and customer strategy to deliver measurable impact. Whether leveraging AI to accelerate insight, building trust with the C-suite through data, or creating emotionally resonant campaigns like Rocket Mortgage’s “Own the Dream,” success comes from discipline and balance. The message is clear — great marketing doesn’t just build brands; it builds businesses.
Expanding on our Uncommon Growth research, we examined how top performers are leveraging AI to accelerate growth.
Nearly every leader has AI at the top of their agenda, with resources deployed to understand how to utilize it for efficiency gains. We’ve all heard the promises: AI has the potential to deliver massive business efficiencies from automating administrative tasks to managing customer service channels, to drafting copy for SEO, ads and product pages. But beyond efficiencies, AI can deepen customer engagement, surface strategic insights and shorten the time it takes to bring new products to market.
We call this speed to impact — a critical component of achieving uncommon growth. Growth that is sustained and outsized versus category peers.
In a world where AI has the potential to impact everything, leaders face the choice of where to invest to maximize value creation. As the adage goes, “we can do anything, but we can’t do everything.” Successful AI strategies require a sharpened strategic focus, with investments deployed toward growth use-cases.
Prophet’s Uncommon Growth research shows that companies achieving growth share three core traits: Customer Obsession, Pervasive Innovation and Strong Cultures. Investing behind these pillars is key to achieving business success. Deploying AI across the pillars, done right, has the potential to supercharge growth.
We explored how AI is accelerating impact across these three pillars in 179 companies that achieved uncommon growth.
Customer Obsession
Companies achieving uncommon growth are relentlessly focused on understanding and engaging their customers — often outspending peers in sales and marketing. GenAI has introduced new channels of engagement, from influencing how consumers research products to driving deeper personalization and connection.
In Prophet’s study, The Rise of the AI-Powered Consumer, 45% of consumers reported using Gen AI in the past six months to inform purchase decisions. Highly considered purchases, like technology, automotive and beauty, are seeing the most disruption. To remain competitive means optimizing your brand, marketing and media strategy for LLM awareness and sentiment.
Tailor content to the processing style of dominant LLMs for their target audience
Retailers and marketplaces are taking this one step further, collapsing the “choose-use journey” within GPTs. Etsy recently announced a partnership with OpenAI, enabling in-chat purchases, with Walmart just following suit. More will undoubtfully follow.
AI allows brands to get even closer to their customers, driving engagement and winning with personalization, leading to increased purchase likelihood and CLTV.
Example: Crocs
Crocs has long proven that personalization fuels growth. The success of Jibbitz, the individual charms for crocs, has lifted average order values, driven repeat purchases and built deeper brand affinity. With 75% of customers purchasing Jibbitz and $271M in 2024 sales (18% of total revenue). With the launch of the ABLO AI co-design tool, Crocs is doubling down on personalization, enabling customers to design their own Jibbitz through AI-prompts and image uploads. AI prompt indicators point to greater personalization and conversion, showing how AI can deepen brand affinity and accelerate growth at scale.
“We have Jibbitz for everyone — from teachers to gamers to healthcare workers — and we are now giving our fans the option to design one-of-a-kind charms using ABLO’s AI technology, taking customization to the next level.”
Crocs Brand President Anne Mehlman, Fast Company
Example: L’Oreal
L’Oréal has long positioned itself as a beauty tech pioneer. Through acquisitions like ModiFace, L‘Oreal offers virtual try-ons and diagnostics that reduce hesitation in digital shopping. Its new venture Noli uses over one million skin data points to generate hyper-personalized product recommendations. Internally, its CreAItech content lab produces up to 50,000 images and 500 videos per month, allowing marketers to rapidly adapt creative assets across markets and cultures without sacrificing brand essence. AI is enabling L’Oreal to expand personalization and inclusivity at scale by strengthening emotional connection while accelerating growth.
In January 2024, L’Oréal was the first-ever beauty company to deliver the keynote speech at the world’s most important tech event – the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was a highly visible stage to showcase our pioneering and leadership role in Beauty Tech and our next-generation innovations for more sustainable, personalized and inclusive beauty. These innovations included… Beauty Genius – a Gen AI-powered personal beauty assistant and HAPTA – the world’s first AI-powered makeup applicator for people with limited hand, wrist and arm mobility.
L’Oréal 2024 Annual Report
Pervasive Innovation
Market leaders view innovation as an always-on, critical business muscle. They consistency over-invest in R&D, maintaining that discipline even in turbulent economic times. AI is accelerating the innovation process — from aggregating and synthesizing customer insights, identifying opportunities faster, to rapid concepting and prototyping and offering consumer validation through digital twins. With AI developing higher-quality innovation concepts, businesses can focus on critical routes to market activities, like securing the right distribution and getting through regulatory processes.
Example: Moderna
Legacy biopharma R&D is notoriously slow and capital intensive, but Moderna is proving that AI can reset the pace of innovation. Through its partnership with OpenAI, Moderna has deployed ChatGPT Enterprise across functions – from R&D to manufacturing — creating thousands of custom GPTs to trial handle trial data review, anomaly detection and documentation. These tools remove bottlenecks in data-heavy processes and allow scientists to focus on higher-order interpretation, resulting in a richer innovation pipeline. The result is compression of discovery-to-development cycles and Moderna plans to bring 15 new mRNA products to market in the next five years — from RSV vaccines to individualized cancer therapies.
Culture as a Catalyst
Culture is critical to achieving uncommon growth. Purpose-driven, intentionally designed cultures to enable enterprise-wide adoption of innovation, AI included. When AI adoption is fragmented across silos, momentum stalls. Prophet’s research, “Human-Centered AI: Culture as the Catalyst for AI-enabled Growth,” identified several imperatives for enterprise-scale AI adoption:
A shared AI vision aligned company purpose, values and strategy
CEO and CHRO alignment on the AI vision
Clear expectations for AI fluency and the role of humans
Systems and training that enable AI adoption at scale
Example: JPMorgan & Chase
JPMorgan approaches AI adoption as both technological and cultural transformation. In under a year, it deployed its LLM Suite to more than 200,000 employees -embedding AI in daily workflows and building organizational fluency at scale. Tools like EEVEE and Smart Monitor (two of over 400 use cases at the firm) free teams from low-value manual work, redirecting energy toward higher-order problem-solving. The result is a workforce that sees AI not as a threat but as a partner: one that’s projected to fuel $1.5B in AI impact by 2030. JPMorgan’s bet is clear: AI will augment every role and drive growth — cultivating a culture where AI is trusted and widely used will compound in value, turning efficiency gains into a sustained competitive advantage.
“We are setting very clear goals of success and KPIs for each one of these rollouts. We also have very good experimentation, so we can actually measure the incremental benefits by giving the tool to some agents and setting up test and control groups. We compare these results with clear metrics of success, and it helps us learn what’s working and what’s not working and what we need to do to drive adoption.”
Katie Hainsey, Managing Director and Head of AI/ML and Data & Analytics for Digital, Marketing and Operations at JP Morgan
Example: Moderna
Moderna recognized early that the barrier to AI adoption wasn’t just technology, but shared expectations of fluency. In 2021, it partnered with Carnegie Mellow to launch its AI Academy to drive AI fluency across the workforce, preparing employees long before generative AI went mainstream. That groundwork paid off when ChatGPT Enterprise rolled out in 2023: adoption was immediate, with nearly half of weekly active users creating their own GPTs and averaging over 100 interactions per week. By aligning purpose, values and training, Moderna turned potential resistance into active engagement, making AI a natural part of how work gets done.
Category leaders are already leveraging AI as a top-line growth-accelerator, and not just as a bottom-line optimizer. We expect the revenue growth disparity will only deepen as AI maturity amongst leading companies continues. So, if you’re not using AI to grow your top-line, now is the time to start experimenting.
Prophet Impact has been part of who we are for years; a reflection of our purpose in action. Over the past five years, we’ve turned that purpose into measurable impact, mobilizing our people, expertise, and creativity to help move society forward. What began as a grassroots initiative has evolved into a firmwide commitment to equity, social mobility, and sustainability. This report celebrates the measurable progress, meaningful partnerships, and human stories behind that journey.
Prophet Impact has been part of who we are for years; a reflection of our purpose in action. Over the past five years, we’ve turned that purpose into measurable impact, mobilizing our people, expertise, and creativity to help move society forward. What began as a grassroots initiative has evolved into a firmwide commitment to equity, social mobility, and sustainability. This report celebrates the measurable progress, meaningful partnerships, and human stories behind that journey.
Since 2021, we’ve committed to 1% of firm revenues annually to do pro-bono and low-bono work.
28K+
hours donated
44+
projects completed across 34+ nonprofits
$73.5K
raised and donated through firm-wide initiatives
11K
volunteer hours given to communities worldwide
“Our 1% commitment is one of the most powerful ways we bring our purpose to life – creating meaningful impact for nonprofits and deep connection for our people.”
Michael Dunn, CEO and Chairman
Across five continents, Prophet teams have helped mission-driven organizations elevate their brands, strengthen operations, and deepen impact.
01
International Esperanza Project (Guatemala)
New brand identity helped expand from 2 to 6 clinics and 1 to 2 surgical teams, delivering 73 major surgeries and care for 800+ patients.
02
Resilience Education (U.S.)
Human-centered brand strategy and mentorship model supporting 93% non-recidivism among program graduates.
03
International Health Partners (UK)
Brand and platform redesign driving 1,000+ new web visits and 40+ product demos, earning Best Use of Technology recognition.
“Prophet’s belief in our mission helped us step boldly into the future. Their investment in our brand didn’t just evolve our identity, it amplified our impact.”
Michelle Hollaender, Founder and CEO, International Esperanza Project
Across five continents, Prophet teams have helped mission-driven organizations elevate their brands, strengthen operations, and deepen impact.
01
International Esperanza Project
New brand identity helped expand from 2 to 6 clinics and 1 to 2 surgical teams, delivering 73 major surgeries and care for 800+ patients.
02
Resilience Education (U.S.)
Human-centered brand strategy and mentorship model supporting 93% non-recidivism among program graduates.
03
International Health Partners (UK)
Brand and platform redesign driving 1,000+ new web visits and 40+ product demos, earning Best Use of Technology recognition.
“Prophet’s belief in our mission helped us step boldly into the future. Their investment in our brand didn’t just evolve our identity, it amplified our impact.”
Michelle Hollaender, Founder and CEO, International Esperanza Project
Engaging Communities, Together
Prophet Impact is about building community. It’s about creating meaningful opportunities for our people to give back both individually and collectively. From fundraising and volunteering to firmwide service days, our people continue to make purpose personal.
PROPHET IMPACT DAY
108+
nonprofit partnerships and 6,800+ volunteer hours donated across 5 years.
PROPHET IMPACT AUCTION
$115,000+
raised for causes like Partners in Health and the International Esperanza Project.
VOLUNTEER TIME OFF
590+
days taken globally, empowering employees to give back where it matters most.
Engaging Communities, Together
Prophet Impact is about building community. It’s about creating meaningful opportunities for our people to give back both individually and collectively. From fundraising and volunteering to firmwide service days, our people continue to make purpose personal.
PROPHET IMPACT DAY
108+
nonprofit partnerships and 6,800+ volunteer hours donated across 5 years.
PROPHET IMPACT AUCTION
$115,000+
raised for causes like Partners in Health and the International Esperanza Project.
VOLUNTEER TIME OFF
590+
days taken globally, empowering employees to give back where it matters most.
“Impact Day is when I get to see Propheteers at their best: rolling up sleeves, tackling real needs, and making a tangible difference together.”
Sonia Molenda, Culture & Engagement Manager
Meet the Team
The Prophet Impact programs are powered by our people; strategists, designers, marketers, and consultants who bring our purpose to life every day.
REPORT AUTHORS:
Jill Steele SVP, Corporate Strategy
Carmel Lee Senior Associate
Sonia Molenda Culture and Engagement Manager
Monica Mussack Engagement Manager
PROGRAM LEADERSHIP AND EXCO SPONSORS:
Michael Dunn CEO and Chairman
Alix Hahn Chief People Officer
Amy Silverstein Chief Financial Officer
Scott Davis Chief Growth Officer
Jill Steele SVP, Corporate Strategy
PROPHET IMPACT CONSULTING LEADS:
Monica Mussack Engagement Manager
Bracken Woolley Engagement Manager
Francesca Pietrantonio Engagement Manager
PROPHET IMPACT LEAD:
Sonia Molenda Culture and Engagement Manager
Acknowledgments
A special thank you for the following individuals and their collective efforts to create this report: Minh Nguyen and Vansuka Chindavijak for design. Mary Kovacs for content support. Dency Cheng for supporting our client cases. There are many others (too many to name individually) but a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has helped in their own way, big and small, to grow our program from the ground up.
Be Part of What’s Next
Our next five years are about scaling what works, expanding partnerships, empowering more Propheteers, and harnessing new tools like AI to accelerate impact.
Join us. Nominate a nonprofit. Partner with us for change.
Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity: 5 Takeaways from the 2025 ANA Masters of Marketing
How leading CMOs are transforming uncertainty into a catalyst for growth, creativity, and human connection.
This year’s ANA Masters of Marketing Conference felt a little different. As Adweek put it, “The Masters of Marketing conference is trying to pivot away from case studies toward forward-looking action.”
That shift — from looking back to moving forward — was palpable across the main stage. And it resonated deeply with us at Prophet, where our purpose is to help clients unlock uncommon growth — growth that is faster, smarter, more human, actionable and sustainable. There are many ingredients which marketers can turn to— customer insights, brand, creativity, data, human-centered use of technology like A.I.
Image: Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, Global Brand Officer at LVMH
1. Uncertainty is Opportunity in Its Rawest Form
The Excitement of AI Spills Into Our Everyday
Author and innovation expert Peter Hinssen opened the week with a challenge: “Innovate when you can, not when you need to. If you wait, you’ll be too late.”
In his keynote on the never normal, Hinssen reminded marketers that innovation follows a familiar rhythm — slow, fast, then normal again — but today’s cycle due to advances in AI is accelerating. His advice: make the “never normal” your friend.
His formula for thriving amid uncertainty felt tailor-made for today’s leaders: Anticipate. Adapt. Build resilience.
Because uncertainty, he said, isn’t chaos — it’s opportunity in its rawest form.
The next day, Shelly Palmer, founder of Palmer.ai, offered a complementary — and more provocative — take. His talk framed AI not as a technology problem, but a leadership challenge.
He walked the audience through the evolution from AI to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), warning that machines are already outpacing humans in narrow domains. But the bigger story, he said, isn’t fear — it’s focus.
“The language of code is English,” he quipped. “And every morning, you wake up in a world where technology is a little better than it was yesterday.”
As automation continues to eat away at operational and executional work, leaders must reclaim what is uniquely human: strategy, storytelling and systems thinking. Palmer’s point was clear — the power is not in the algorithm, but in how we choose to direct it.
Then he ended with a deceptively simple question that hung in the air: “In the future — who gets this email?”
Together, Hinssen and Palmer reframed the week’s mood: this is not a moment to fear disruption; it’s one to design for it.
2. Humanity Is the Antidote to AI
Why Emotional Connection Still Reigns
Despite the relentless pace of AI talk, the most powerful stories in Orlando were deeply human. Time and again, the brands that stood out were the ones that built intimacy, trust and meaning — not just efficiency.
Timothy Ellis, CMO of the NFL, reminded everyone that even the biggest brands need to stay personal. With access to massive budgets and cultural reach, Ellis could easily lean on spectacle. Instead, his focus is on humanizing the league — literally by “unhelmeting” players to show who they are and what they care about.
By spotlighting their personalities, passions and causes, Ellis has deepened emotional connection between fans and players — and even more strategically, between new generations of fans and the sport itself. “Our sweet spot,” he said, “is reaching people before they turn 18.”
He also took a refreshingly mature stance on brand voice in a divided culture: “I have 200 million fans,” he said. “I’m not going to make them all happy all the time.”
Hernan Tantardini, CMO at Pepsi, brought a similarly human lens to scale. He spoke about creating intimacy with consumers by knowing “every cluster” of them — across needs, moods and micro-occasions. It’s not about one big brand story, but a mosaic of connections built from deep empathy and insight.
From the B2B world, Mimi Turner and Jann Schwartz from the LinkedIn B2B Institute made the case that “radical humanity” is just as critical in business marketing. Their research on buyability revealed a surprising truth: 40% of B2B deals get stuck not because of weak propositions, but because the buying team can’t agree. Fear of messing up outweighs fear of missing out.
Their point: understanding human emotion — even in committee — is as vital to conversion as any feature or benefit.
And then there was Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, Global Brand Officer at LVMH, who took the crowd on a visual journey through The Art of Crafting Dreams. Through stories from LOEWE, Hennessy, Tiffany and Belvedere, she shared LVMH’s “4Cs of Luxury”:
Exceptional Craft
Elated Customer
Extraordinary Creativity
Elevated Culture
Her message was elegantly simple: “In luxury, you can’t simply meet customer needs — you must surprise and elate them.”
Her presentation was a love letter to imagination, proving that even in a data-saturated world, aspiration and artistry still matter most.
Finally the theme echoed in Todd Kaplan’s session from Kraft Heinz, The Case for Brand Building in a Data-Driven World. His rallying cry: “There’s a human behind every click.”
Kaplan warned against mistaking precision for persuasion. “Data can tell us who we reached,” he said, “but not whether we truly connected.”
Together, these leaders reinforced a truth marketers sometimes forget in their pursuit of optimization: the more digital marketing becomes, the more human it needs to feel.
3. Move Fast — and Don’t Break Things
Culture, Creators and the New Rules of Agility
If there was one theme that had both energy and laughter, it came from Maggie Schmerin, CMO of United Airlines. Her talk, “Move Fast and Don’t Break Things”, was a masterclass in how to balance speed with integrity.
“We can’t break things,” she said, flashing the now-legendary “United Breaks Guitars” video to a knowing audience. “We learned that the hard way.”
Since then, United has rebuilt its brand around the mantra Good Leads the Way. Schmerin shared how that philosophy informs every creative and cultural decision. “Post-pandemic,” she said, “we came back like Michael Jordan returning to basketball — different.”
United now operates with an internal model that embeds legal, creative and communications together — allowing the team to move quickly and stay aligned. The results speak for themselves: contextual, culture-driven work like “Mean Girls” Day activations and collaborations with Travis Kelce’s podcast that feel both timely and true to brand.
The power of cultural fluency also came through in Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits’ story. CMO Dan Kleinman described the challenge of connecting with Gen Z and millennial drinkers who view wine as either intimidating or irrelevant. Their solution: start with deep insight, then innovate with both rigor and playfulness.
They launched Josh’s Seaswept, a light, accessible wine designed for casual, small-group moments. Then they went all-in on creators — embedding their message inside micro-communities rather than broadcasting from above. The payoff? Authenticity, reach and even a viral moment: a limited-edition Josh wine backpack that sold out in six hours.
Meanwhile, the creator economy itself is exploding. Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group at Meta, stunned the crowd with numbers: creators now generate 2 trillion minutes of content across Meta platforms every year, and the sector is projected to grow by $500 billion over the next four.
She was joined by top creator Hailey Bailey (Kalil), who gave an insider’s perspective on the new creative ecosystem. “Every brand is different,” she said. “How we work together depends on what you’re trying to achieve.”
Her advice for marketers learning the new rules of the game?
“Scroll.”
Spend time in the ecosystem you’re trying to influence. Observe how people talk, behave and share. The key to cultural marketing is participation, not prescription.
And yes, Meta also provided a little magic. During Thursday’s lunch, Christy Cooper demoed the new Ray-Ban Gen 2 AI glasses — and lucky attendees found golden tickets under their seats to take home a pair.
4. Transformation Demands IQ, EQ and CQ
Reimagining How Marketing Gets Done
Transformation was a constant refrain throughout the week — not just as a buzzword, but as a lived experience. Marketers shared stories not about adopting new tools, but about changing how the work happens.
Norm de Greve, Global CMO of General Motors, described GM’s creative rebirth as both operational and emotional. Once “the Apple of its time,” GM had lost some of its swagger. Its comeback began not with data, but with rediscovering its soul.
By shifting from buyers of marketing to makers of marketing — building in-house capabilities across brand, creative, and analytics — GM has regained control of its story. The results:
+20% brand consideration for GMC in under a year
Cadillac now the fastest-growing luxury brand in the U.S. and #1 in luxury EVs
At Newell Brands, Melanie Huet, President of Home, showcased a different angle: their AI-powered iHub innovation center has tripled their innovation funnel while saving hundreds of thousands in research costs.
Huet explained how Newell uses synthetic personas and generative design tools to test and refine ideas faster — proving that automation and creativity can coexist beautifully. “AI doesn’t replace imagination,” she said. “It accelerates it.”
Rahul Malhotra of Shell and Kayall Mai of Esquire Bank added another layer, emphasizing that transformation is also a human journey. Both leaders spoke about hiring and development practices shifting away from “what people know” to “how people work.”
They underscored the importance of soft skills — influencing, collaboration, resilience — and argued that as AI automates rote marketing tasks, the premium will increasingly be on empathy and orchestration.
As Malhotra put it, “AI can teach skills. Leaders must nurture behavior.”
Across industries, a new equation for capability is emerging:
IQ for data and systems
EQ for leadership skills, empathy, resilience
CQ for creativity and cultural intelligence
Mastering that balance, the speakers agreed, is what will define tomorrow’s marketing organizations.
5. Think Like a Superhero: The Brand Multiverse
Building Interconnected Ecosystems That Grow Stronger Together
One of the week’s most imaginative metaphors came from Bill Leiser, CEO of WPP Media, who suggested that brands should start thinking more like Marvel.
“Brands need to move from tactical activation to interconnected ecosystems of stories,” he said. “Not a campaign — but a universe.”
It’s a metaphor that works on multiple levels. Like Marvel, great brands have consistent characters, recognizable voices and clear codes — but they evolve through fresh, interconnected stories that reflect the culture around them.
Marc Pritchard of P&G reinforced that lesson. He urged marketers to resist the temptation to constantly change direction, pointing to enduring platforms like Charmin and Old Spice that have expanded their worlds over time without losing their core.
The takeaway: brand consistency isn’t about staying the same — it’s about staying true.
And for the first time, measurement may finally enable this vision. Bill Tucker, CEO of Aquila, unveiled the ANA’s ambitious Cross-Media Measurement (CMM) initiative — an advertiser-owned platform backed by Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok and others.
The new solution aims to fix two chronic blind spots in the industry:
Understanding unique reach across platforms to reduce wasted frequency.
Measuring true impact across walled gardens.
“When the industry measures together,” Tucker said, “the industry moves forward.”
Why it matters? Because better measurement unlocks better growth — through more efficient media spend, improved ad experiences and superior outcome data.
As Tucker put it, “When the industry measures together, the industry moves forward.”
This year’s Masters of Marketing wasn’t about incremental improvements — it was about transformation and the idea that uncertainty and transformation are two sides of the same coin.
From LVMH’s dream-making to GM’s soul-searching to United’s agility, the brands that will lead are those who can combine clarity and creativity, rigor and imagination, and above all, the courage to act before they have to.
In the “never normal,” that balance may be marketing’s greatest superpower.
From Programs to Platforms: Modernizing Loyalty to Unlock Growth
How to design loyalty programs as growth platforms that retain customers, attract new ones, and maximize value.
In a time of economic uncertainty, ruthless competition and ongoing transformation, companies of all types look to loyalty programs to protect share and fuel growth. The most effective programs no longer act like isolated “earn-and-burn” schemes. They operate as integrated platforms and fully connected ecosystems that deepen emotional ties with customers, unlock richer data, and open new revenue streams
As history shows, loyalty programs are not “set-and-forget” endeavors. Ongoing investment and continuous improvement are required to stand out from the pack and maximize bottom-line impact over the long term. But recent research and market experience show that companies can modernize and optimize their loyalty programs by applying the principles of platform businesses (e.g., connecting consumers with richer offerings, leveraging network effects) to generate uncommon growth.
The Evolution of Loyalty Programs: From Purchase-Driven Schemes to Differentiating Experiences
In the early days, loyalty programs were narrow in scope and operated in simple, straightforward fashion: customers earned points for purchases and then redeemed those points for discounts or special offers. Typically, the goal was to drive repeat purchases though monetary rewards and recognition. These programs worked well enough that they became standard in some industries, though there was a common downside to their transactional approach: increased pressure on margins that sometimes sparked a race to the bottom.
Today, loyalty programs have become commoditized because of intense competition and the dominance of co-branded credit cards. There is an entire sub-culture of “points experts” and consumers who make a hobby of maximizing their rewards. Rising customer expectations for rewards and benefits make any modifications to loyalty programs a sensitive matter.
Over time, forward-looking brands began to see loyalty as a platform for growth, not just a retention tactic. Today, the most effective programs function like connected ecosystems, going beyond the foundation of rewards and recognition to build communities, foster long-term engagement and even attract new customers. Instead of rigid tiers of rewards, benefits are more flexible and can be customized to customer needs. Most recently, paid membership models have added another dimension of opportunity for deeper engagement and differentiation.
The big insight is that emotional loyalty — built through connection, community, and relevance — is more powerful and sustainable than more traditional approaches focused exclusively on transactional rewards. Though they can be difficult to create, emotional connections turn loyalty programs from marketing cost centers into drivers of scalable growth and multipliers of brand value.
A Brief History of Loyalty Programs
The first loyalty programs date back centuries and trading stamp programs were common in the early 1900s. But the modern era began in the early 1980s, when major airlines started frequent flier programs.
Though the benefits of loyalty programs are self-evident to executives in many sectors, research reveals the full depth and breadth of the value proposition.
Increased Revenue and Profitability
At a time when marketers are being asked to simultaneously reduce overall spend and grow revenue, loyalty programs help them do more with less. According to Antavo’s annual Global Customer Loyalty Report, 83% of loyalty program owners report positive ROI with an average return on investment of 5.2x.
Other research shows that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95%. Retained customers are also more likely to try new products and spend more than new customers because they are familiar with the brand. Given pervasive economic uncertainty, CMOs can’t afford to overlook such huge potential upside.
Well-designed loyalty programs offer a clear incentive to choose one brand over another. Programs oriented around exclusive experiences (e.g., early product drops, dedicated store hours, members-only perks, access to exclusive restaurants) can attract even the most demanding (and highest net-worth) customers. Further, they can drive word-of-mouth referrals by encouraging loyal customers to share the program with others.
The ROI of loyalty programs should also account for customer lifetime value (CLV) and reduced churn, which are especially important in times of cautious consumer spending. One study found that loyal customers spend more than 30% more and that emotional connections to brands can lead to a CLV that is more than 300% higher.
Data as Differentiator
Modern loyalty programs generate rich, first-party data about customer behavior, preferences and intent that power more relevant offers and richer customer journeys from day one. This is perhaps the most valuable information a company can get, particularly in the post-cookie world.
Further, the insights and data assets produced by loyalty programs are especially important for companies that are not digital natives but want to build or adopt elements of platform businesses. No longer just for tech companies, digital platforms provide visibility across the customer journey, enabling the company to watch customers make choices, use what they acquire and interact with partners.
The insights companies generate at every interaction offer opportunities for companies to add value. Loyalty data can also be used for strategic purposes, informing decisions about product development, service design, transformation initiatives, and even M&A strategy.
The New Era: Loyalty as a Platform
Treating loyalty programs as a platform lets companies:
Own customer relationships and data
Drive consistent engagement across channels
Experiment with monetization, personalization and service delivery
Build long-term differentiation, not just short-term reward loops
Winning With Modernized Loyalty Strategies
So, what does it take to be able to leverage loyalty programs as platforms for growth? And what leading practices can firms embrace to optimize the impact of their loyalty programs? In our market experience, we’ve identified a few attributes that characterize the most successful strategies.
Integration and personalization are the keys to creating engaging experiences across channels and for making loyalty programs essential vehicles for content, community, gamification, and ongoing interaction, not just transactions. They can even lead to major business model enhancements. And they are required for any firm that wants to develop paid loyalty options, with customers purchasing direct access to enhanced services (e.g., free delivery, members-only offers) or exclusive status tiers.
Fully Integrated and Data-driven:
First and foremost, loyalty strategies must be fully embedded in all interactions, including digital and physical environments and with every part of the organization (e.g., sales, service, billing). Modernized loyalty programs avoid restricting offerings to a card, app, or location. Such cross-platform and omni-channel connectivity has emerged as a leading practice.
The data generated by loyalty programs can — and must — be operationalized to personalize the entire customer journey in line with individual preferences. For example, Sephora analyzes purchase history and applies AI tools to recommend products and personalize offers for members of its Beauty Insider program. The results are impressive:
A 30% increase in customer engagement via personalized offers
3x higher annual spend among top members
15-25% higher annual revenue from active users
Purposefully Engaging
In fashion and apparel, the emphasis has shifted from solely monetary driven (e.g., points) to meaningful engagement around passion points. The North Face has advanced its loyalty program, XPLR Pass, by connecting rewards to outdoor exploration, sustainability, and social connection. By emphasizing community, shared values, and experience, the company has embedded the brand more deeply into customers’ lifestyles.
Similarly, H&M’s membership program rewards recycling and sustainable choices, with direct alignment between its loyalty strategy and ESG goals. The result? More than 120 million members across 26 markets now contribute 35% of overall revenues, with Plus members spending 3x more than non-members.
Gamified and Fun
Giving customers extra reasons to engage helps foster growth. KFC enhanced its loyalty program with a gamified arcade offering spin-to-win features and in-app challenges. This content and entertainment hub led to a 53% increase in app downloads and a 40% rise in reward redemptions. Same-store sales jumped 12% thanks to 25% of customers increasing their visit frequency.
High-value and Revenue-generating
CMOs should ensure they measure the effectiveness of loyalty programs based on tangible commercial metrics. That may be especially important for B2B organizations, given that there’s a common misconception that loyalty programs are largely for B2C industries. Miele’s B2B Dealer Loyalty Program features tiers based on sales volume and has moved the needle on critical metrics including 19% sales growth and a 62% rise in average appliances sold per order.
Many prominent tech companies offer expert training, advanced technical support, networking opportunities, referral bonuses, and marketing support to their most loyal corporate customers. The most effective of these programs have seen engagement and customer retention rise by 40%, as well as 10%-20% gains in annual revenue.
Loyalty programs are proven drivers of customer engagement, retention and growth. As important as those benefits are, the rich data and insights they provide are strategically invaluable. Modernized programs aren’t just about keeping the customers you have, they’re a strategic way to attract the customers you want and drive growth and stronger bottom-line performance, even amid economic uncertainty.
But just as customers are always looking for more value, loyalty programs must be designed and managed to foster ongoing innovation and ever-richer value propositions. Like any powerful growth drivers, loyalty programs must be By measuring and refining their loyalty programs over time, all types of firms can strengthen their existing relationship and build new ones, even as customer expectations for value continually rise.
