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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.

Prophet is a flagship sponsor of the new ANA Brand Practice. Our team was in Orlando, and here are five big themes we took away: 

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: 

  1. Understanding unique reach across platforms to reduce wasted frequency. 
  2. 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.” 

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

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. 

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How AI Synthetic Personas Create a Whole New Level of Customer Centricity

Deeper, faster, more intelligent insights at your fingertips. 

For companies, achieving uncommon growth is a challenging goal. One important element is having a fact-based and data-backed strategy about who your customers are and how to target them. In reality, many blue-chip and large organizations are still not investing sufficient time and resources into addressing these questions. This is where smart segmentation can make a tangible difference. 

In marketing, customer segmentation has long been a tried-and-tested strategy to help leaders define what we call the “where-to-play”: Which customer segments to focus on as design target (a core set of consumers whose needs perfectly match their brand promise, products, services, and offerings etc. ) and as commercial targets (a broader group of potential customers with similar needs and therefore addressable). 

Once companies define “where-to-play”, the “how-to-win” question arises: How to best address the target segments in terms of product offering, marketing and sales? 

And this is exactly the spot where AI is now taking customer centricity to the next level by offering a deeper, faster, more intelligent analysis, interpretation and understanding of customer habits and preferences. This gives companies greater visibility and confidence about how they design their go-to-market approach.   

In recent work with a number of organizations, we have been pioneering a more innovative “how-to-win” approach to segmentation, by developing and testing so-called synthetic AI personas. We believe these AI-based personas have the potential, if properly managed, to give organizations next-level customer insights at their fingertips.

Transforming Audience Insights

Simply put, an AI is trained on all the qualitative and quantitative audience data from a segmentation project. The result is a digital twin that functions like a GPT, responding to text or voice input. You can “talk” to your target audience, a persona generated by AI, and ask it questions. It answers, depending on the model setup, in real time or after a short delay.   

The outcome? Clear, nuanced answers to questions about product and service offerings, price sensitivity, communication preferences, or decision-making behavior. Even more impressive, we’re seeing results that go beyond the typical scope of market research and the data set that was originally fed into the system.  

Of course, having clear guardrails and rules are critical to success. For example:  

  • Instructions on expected response quality (e.g., “Include data points with every recommendation, always reference motivation drivers of the target group”)
  • No-go zones (e.g., “Avoid any kind of generic recommendations or mass-market tactics in marketing efforts”)
  • Quality checks (e.g., “Formulate all recommendations in a customer-ready format so they can be implemented immediately”)

Another essential factor is training the AI. In one of our recent projects, it was necessary to put in place a three-step human-machine process: first, removing obvious errors and so-called hallucinations. Then, a twofold review phase where an initial set of recommendations was deliberately compared with the deep industry expertise of our consultants.  

The results have superseded our expectations. Nothing less than “audience insights at the push of a button.” In effect, marketers can now have access to a 24/7 customer persona they can consult on brand, product, pricing, sales or marketing communication topics.  

Below are three recent examples that show how this works in real-world settings. 

Example One: Travel company 

For a leading European travel group, we defined target customer segments for its hotel brands using a unique segmentation approach that combines lifestyle and travel behavior and needs. This resulted in the creation of Travel Lifestyle Clusters.  

For these segments, we developed AI personas and used them to help the client design targeted product strategies and communications across the entire experience journey—from brand to marketing and sales. The twist: once trained (which requires deep technical and industry know-how), these personas can draw implications beyond the  initial data input.  

For example: When asked, “What would an ideal welcome sequence at a luxury boutique hotel look like for you?” the persona provides detailed product, service and communication suggestions. Or, if market research reveals that a target group enjoys “beach and garden games” during hotel stays, we could ask it to specify which games fit their lifestyle. The AI persona would deliver tailored suggestions in seconds, including full staging, materials, music, etc.  

Example Two: Education foundation 

For a large foundation active in education, we developed AI personas for teachers as part of a school development project. Unlike the travel case, there was no primary market research available. Instead, personas were conceptually defined and built as “AI avatars.” Psychological models on motivation, change readiness, and change capabilities were used as input, along with a wide range of secondary statistical data. The final boost came from interviews with real teachers, conducted to reflect different pedagogical archetypes and integrated into the AI model.  

To deepen the impact, we gave the AI avatars names and faces, making them feel very real. As with the travel example, the results marked a milestone in working with audience insights. “Which of the following slogans would you prefer for a marketing campaign surrounding new tools and offerings to aid school development?”—the AI provides clear, precise, and logical answers that hold up in A/B testing with real interviews.

Example Three: Fast Food Brand 

For a fast food brand, we helped teams translate segmentation insights into decisions aligned with brand principles and growth goals. The breakthrough? We transformed the target segment into an AI-powered assistant—one that behaves like the segment and speaks the brand’s language. It was trained on human insights (attitudes, behaviors, cultural signals), brand DNA knowledge (positioning, tone, promise), and market context (category dynamics, local norms).    

This assistant is a flexible and replicable system that can generate and filter ideas, such as menu concepts, partnerships, channel formats and more, so they’re shaped by what will truly resonate with the audience while staying on-brand.  

Crucially, this should be regarded as an inspiration tool, not a decision-maker: human judgment still assesses feasibility, risk appetite and commercial readiness. That balance between speed from AI and judgment from experts can lead to faster alignment, clearer briefs and a stronger pipeline of testable ideas. 

We would like to thank Erik Muenster, Zadkiel Yeo and Prophet’s AI team for their contributions.

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

Within just the last 12 months, AI has elevated decades of marketing practice by building upon a strong foundation of customer data and insights.  

Knowledge is becoming more immediate, direct, and usable in real time. If properly set up and trained, data and insights form a nucleus from which AI can generate recommendations and actions that go beyond what the original data might suggest. Creativity may not be AI’s strength, but logical, linear extrapolation certainly is — and that leads to a significant boost in speed and quality. This can enable firms to derive even more value from their proprietary data, providing an important competitive advantage.

The power of AI in creating more flexible and intelligent customer personas is undeniable. Against this backdrop, marketing leaders must act decisively to put themselves ahead of competitors who are not yet using AI to their benefit.  

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A Guide for New CMOs

For a crash course in what to do first, plan your listening tour and ask the right questions.

Are you in a new role as chief marketer, or perhaps new to your category? This simple guide offers straightforward ideas and insights that can help you succeed.

To start, think about what you need to do in your first 100 days. It is important to consider:

  • Do I need to develop a transformation agenda?
  • Can I create a more compelling go-to-market strategy?
  • How can I make our brand more relevant to customers?
  • Are there foundational tools to put in place, such as a documented customer journey or a marketing plan?
  • How does marketing support the organization’s business strategy?

Given the rapid change in marketing and the greater need to prove immediate impact, we help new CMOs flex the most impactful levers including content, data and digital marketing, as well as reimagine their marketing organization for the modern era of growth engine marketing.

Here’s a quick guide of what to ask, what to do and where to look in the first 100 days.

What to Ask

Asking the right questions up front can help craft the right agenda, identify potential initiatives and create an actionable roadmap. Below are six questions you should explore with your team, colleagues, and agency partners.

  1. How relevant is/are your brand(s) to your most important customers and stakeholders? How relentlessly focused on the customer are insights, strategies and tactics?
  2. Is the marketing strategy aligned to the business strategy? What is marketing’s contribution to the enterprise? How do the rest of the C-suite and the board see marketing’s role?
  3. Are brand and demand priorities clear and integrated—or in competition and at odds? Is there a portfolio marketing strategy in place or is the strategy purely product-focused?
  4. How are you going to engage and empower the sales, communications and product teams? Is there a shared end-to-end customer journey? What culture of collaboration exists or doesn’t exist?
  5. What is the maturity level within the marketing organization for key digital capabilities such as customer data, content, personalization and attribution?
  6. Is your marketing team organized in the most efficient way possible and around your business priorities? How might you set up your operating model? How can AI tools and agents help?

What to Do

Here are some recommended actions passed on from other leaders, proven to get you on solid footing and off to a smart start.

1. Schedule your listening tour

Meet with your direct reports and colleagues across the organization, and ask these questions: What do you want me to create? What do you need me to protect? What do you need me to prioritize? Be sure to share back the results and your plan.

2. Create these CMO assets

  • Introduce Yourself Presentation: Prepare a “top 10 list” presentation that addresses these questions: Who are you? Why are you here? What kind of change initiative are you leading? What do you believe about marketing? What do you value? How do you like to work with others? What are your top priorities? What are key milestones for your first six months? What do you expect from your team? What can they expect from you?
  • Vision, Agenda and Roadmap: These are often created in a workshop over a few weeks with a suite of collaborations They should include a description in which the brand can fulfill the business potential, and the springboards, or starting places, that exist now. One key artifact to create is a dashboard to help track progress.
  • Growth Era Marketing Plan: This plan is a modern replacement for the integrated marketing plan and has many of the conventional elements updated for marketing’s new role as a growth engine for the enterprise. Topics include business vision, opportunities, strategies and tactics, customer data strategy, calendar, investment, and key enablers (e.g. content, technology, people, partners).

3. Work in outcomes

Translate your priority initiatives from marketing objectives to business impact. For example:

  • Reducing cost: Investing in a content strategy that leads to search engine optimization will, for the business, reduce the cost of digital marketing that may need to be done.
  • Increasing revenue: Engaging in brand and marketing campaigns that increase customer loyalty can, for the business, increase the share of wallet and customer lifetime value.
  • Improving efficiency: Improving digital experiences can be a reason for a prospective client to work with you, therefore improving the volume of incoming leads, lead quality, conversion rates and retention.
  • Product innovation: Customer insights gleaned from marketing activities and shared with product management can optimize product performance and uncover new opportunities.

Ask your teams to quantify and report their work against broader business impact, not only marketing KPIs. A dashboard that integrates marketing KPIs and business performance can help sustain that conversation and connection.

“When asked business questions (e.g. what have you delivered for the business?), don’t give marketing answers (e.g. NPS).”

Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Mastercard

Where to Look

Prophet helps new and tenured CMOs set an agenda and transform their marketing inside and out. Talk to Scott Davis, Mat Zucker, Marisa Mulvihill, Kate Price, Alex Whittaker and our brand and marketing strategy teams. Here are some additional resources which might be helpful:

Books

  • Diary of a First-Time CMO, Alice de Courcy (2023)
  • The Next CMO: A Guide to Marketing Operational Excellence, Peter Mahoney, Scott Todaro and Dan Faulkner (2020)
  • Lies, Damned Lies and Marketing: Separating Fact from Fiction and Drive Growth, Atul Minocha (2021)
  • Chief Marketing Officers at Work, Josh Steimle (2016)
  • CMO Manifesto, John Ellett (2012)
  • Owning Game-Changing Sub-Categories, David Aaker (2020)
  • Creating Signature Stories, David Aaker (2018)

Articles & Speeches

Podcasts

Communities 

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Chief Marketing Officer is a C-suite role that can lead, shape, and help deliver uncommon growth for the organization. Marketing is evolving fast, and every leader—new or tenured—needs the mindset and toolset to stay in front.

Reach out to our brand and marketing experts for advice and support on getting started with your agenda. Have a resource we should mention?

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The New Rules of Search: Why AEO Is the Next Frontier in the Age of AI 

SEO isn’t dead—It’s evolving but now is the time for companies to build a new AEO strategy. 

Search is no longer just about clicks—it’s about conversations. With the rise of AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Bing Copilot, users are discovering information in radically new ways. These platforms summarize, synthesize and recommend content—often without users ever clicking a link. 

AI overviews are fundamentally changing user behavior, fragmenting discovery and forcing brands to rethink their web strategy. AI-generated summaries are increasingly occupying prime real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs), leaving fewer opportunities for traditional click-throughs. In fact, 74% of users now turn to AI tools instead of Google for information and 70% of B2B buyers say they’re less likely to trust a vendor if its AI-generated answers are inaccurate. 

Despite bold claims that “SEO is dead,” the truth is more nuanced. SEO is evolving. It remains foundational to how AI models understand and surface content. But to stay visible in this new landscape, brands must go beyond traditional tactics. Enter Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).  

AEO is a future-ready strategy that blends structured content, knowledge graph alignment and AI discoverability tactics to help brands appear in AI-generated responses. It’s not just about ranking anymore—it’s about being recognized, cited and trusted by AI. 

Why SEO Isn’t Dead—It’s Evolving 

Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained on the open web. That means your SEO-optimized content—structured, authoritative and well-linked—is still the raw material for AI-generated answers. 

Over the years, SEO has evolved from keyword stuffing to structured data, schema.org markup and semantic search. Now, AI is accelerating that evolution. Brands must ensure their content is not only crawlable but also interpretable by AI systems. 

In short: SEO is no longer just about ranking. It’s about being recognized and recommended by AI. 

The watch-out for brands today isn’t that SEO is dead—it’s that outdated or inaccurate content will quietly kill your credibility in AI-driven search.

From Search to Summarization: The Rise of AEO 

AEO is the next evolution of digital visibility. It’s a strategic approach to ensure your brand shows up accurately and prominently in AI-generated answers across platforms like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity. 

A strong AEO solution requires: 

  • Brand Embedding: Measuring how close your content is to high-value topics in AI models. 
  • Entity Mapping & Schema Optimization: Ensuring your website’s content has structured data and brand’s information is correct in sources like Wikidata. 
  • Content Optimization: Creating AI-friendly content that’s concise, structured and semantically rich. 
  • Monitoring & Feedback: Tracking your brand’s presence in AI responses and correcting misinformation. Keeping that data at your fingertips through custom dashboards to showcase your brand’s visibility within LLMs and SOV against competitors.  

In a world where decisions are made without a click, AEO helps your brand stay visible, credible and competitive. 

The Rise of Multimodal Discovery 

Discovery isn’t just text-based anymore. Users now rely on: 

  • Voice search (“What’s the best HR software for small teams?”) 
  • Visual search (Google Lens, Pinterest) 
  • Conversational interfaces (AI chatbots and assistants) 

This shift means brands must optimize across formats—text, images, video and structured data. Multimodal discoverability is the new baseline. 

What Brands Need to Do Now 

Audit Your Digital Footprint

LLMs are trained on what’s already online. Outdated, inaccurate, or off-brand content can hurt your discoverability and credibility. 

Action: Audit old blogs, press releases, backlinks and landing pages. Identify and fix content that no longer reflects your brand or is factually incorrect. 

Refresh and Structure Content

Use structured data (like schema.org) and emerging formats (like LLM.txt) to help AI understand your content. 

Action: Refactor key pages with clear headings, concise answers and semantic markup. Write for both humans and machines.  

Strengthen Domain Authority

AI models prioritize content from trusted sources. Being quoted, linked, or cited by high-authority domains boosts your visibility. 

Action: Revisit your PR, editorial and influencer strategies. Build authority signals across the web. 

Understand Your Brand’s Embedding

AI models organize knowledge in vector space. Understanding your brand’s “semantic distance” from key topics reveals content gaps and opportunities. 

Action: Use tools to visualize your brand’s position in AI models and identify where to create or consolidate content. 

SEO vs. AEO: A Strategic Comparison 

AEO doesn’t replace SEO—it builds on it. But it requires a shift in mindset: from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for answers. 

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

We’re entering a new “wild west” of digital discovery—similar to the early 2010s of SEO, but moving even faster. AI is reshaping how people find, trust and act on information. 

Brands that modernize now—by embracing AEO and rethinking their content strategies—will have a significant competitive edge. Get in touch with our team to learn more about how we’re helping companies navigate the new AI-driven environment. 

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Rethinking Marketing Maturity in the Age of GenAI

How CMOs can leap forward—not just level up.

Every CMO we talk to these days knows two things:  

  1. Generative AI will change how marketing works  
  2. They don’t have time to wait and see how  

What they’re asking now isn’t why, but how.  

  • How do we start—without getting stuck?  
  • How do we scale—without fragmenting the customer experience?  
  • How do we prove ROI—without drowning in pilots?  

To answer these questions, Prophet has reimagined what a marketing maturity model should look like in the GenAI era.  

 Let’s Start With a Step Back   

In 2018, Prophet debuted our Marketing Maturity Model to help our clients understand where their companies have the opportunity to transform their approach to marketing and unlock growth. It evaluated marketing capability across key dimensions: content, customer data, channels, operating model, measurement and technology.  

Our 2018 Marketing Maturity Model  

For the most part, with some iterative updates, it has stood the test of time, and we still use it to help guide our clients.   

However, the pressure on CMOs has never been higher. Expectations around marketing-led growth continue to rise, while teams wrestle with talent gaps, disconnected data and flat or shrinking budgets. At the same time, customer expectations demand personalized, real-time experiences and traditional marketing processes can’t keep pace.   

The Opportunity for GenAI in Marketing  

GenAI—and increasingly, agentic AI systems—are reshaping how marketing operates. It’s not just about faster content or smarter segmentation. It’s about fundamentally changing how marketing teams plan, execute and optimize across the entire value chain:  

  • From content creation to campaign orchestration
  • From persona-based targeting to predictive segmentation  
  • From manual reporting to real-time optimization  

And GenAI can supercharge marketing performance:  

  • IDC Estimates that GenAI will increase Marketing productivity more than 40% by 2029.
  • The Financial Times, reporting against an analysis of 167 companies deploying level-3 LLM based agents saw revenue increases of 9-21% for sales and marketing functions.

Early adopters are rapidly out-pacing competitors by embedding GenAI. They are meeting customers’ demands for hyper-personalization and Autonomous AI agents are giving teams more agility than traditional marketing processes allow. And companies that have already started are seeing the benefits of exponentiality whereby the agents learn and become more effective and efficient with time.   

Content Creation and Creative Augmentation  

Generative AI tools act as creative partners, drastically cutting down the time to produce marketing materials and opening possibilities for mass customization. A human-in-the-loop approach ensures brand voice and factual accuracy remain on point. Generative AI supports the creative process so marketing teams can focus on high-level messaging and strategy, confident that the AI can supply a steady stream of drafts or designs to choose from.  

  • Expanded Creative Capacity: GenAI rapidly generates copy, imagery and video—multiplying creative output with fewer resources.  
  • Personalized Creative at Scale: AI enables customization of content variants tailored to segments or individuals without extra lift from teams.  
  • Faster Iteration & Testing: Content variations (headlines, formats, CTAs) are automatically generated, A/B tested and optimized in real time.  
  • Brand Governance Built-In: AI systems can be trained or prompted to comply with brand tone, voice and regulatory requirements.  
  • Creative Co-Pilot to Creator: As capabilities evolve, GenAI will shift from augmenting human creatives to autonomously producing and deploying asset-ready materials across channels.  

Dynamic Segmentation: A New Era of Customer Understanding  

Understanding your customers at a granular level is foundational to effective marketing. GenAI supercharges customer segmentation by analyzing data at a depth and scale that humans  cannot match. Marketers move from static segmentation to a responsive, intelligent system that adapts in real time to market and customer changes.  

  • Granular Precision: GenAI analyzes behavioral, transactional and engagement data at scale to uncover micro-segments and hidden patterns traditional methods miss.  
  • Real-Time Adaptability: AI-driven segmentation evolves continuously based on live data across channels—adjusting targeting as preferences, signals, or behaviors shift, allowing marketing to shift on the fly.
  • AI-Generated Personas: Models can synthesize lookalike audiences and new personas, improving targeting precision and reducing waste in campaigns.  
  • Predictive Insight: GenAI strengthens segmentation with forward-looking intelligence—anticipating churn, lifetime value and conversion probability. It can predict which customers are most likely to make repeat purchases, which are at risk of churn, or which prospects are likely to convert, often with greater accuracy than traditional models, thanks to the AI’s ability to detect subtle patterns.  

Hyper-Personalization of Customer Experiences  

The holy grail of marketing is “the right offer, at the right time, via the right channel, to the right person.” Generative AI is bringing this ideal of hyper-personalization at scale closer to reality. By combining granular customer data with creative generation capabilities, GenAI can help craft experiences and messages tailored to segments of one.  

  • Dynamic Personalization: Combines real-time data and AI-generated content to create truly individualized experiences.  
  • Beyond Messaging: AI personalizes offers, journeys, pricing and digital environments—not just copy.  
  • B2C & B2B Impact: Tailors experiences across the customer lifecycle, from retail to complex B2B buying groups.  
  • Efficiency Gains: Automates content, outreach and optimization—freeing teams for strategic creative work.  
  • Business Outcomes: Increases conversion, customer satisfaction and loyalty by making customers feel understood.  

Autonomous Campaigns and Marketing Operations  

Perhaps the most transformative impact of GenAI will come from automation of marketing operations and the emergence of autonomous marketing agents. In today’s marketing, executing a campaign involves many manual and repetitive tasks. Agentic AI has the potential to choreograph many of these tasks automatically, effectively acting as an extra pair of (digital) hands – or an entire “digital marketing team” – that works 24/7 with perfect consistency  

  • From Tasks to Autonomy: Agentic AI automates campaign execution and internal workflows—acting as a 24/7 digital marketing team.  
  • Faster, Smarter Execution: AI agents optimize performance in real time—audience targeting, budget shifts, creative testing, etc.  
  • Seamless Funnel Engagement: Agents handle early-stage lead qualification, handoffs and conversational marketing.  
  • Cross-Functional Automation: Supports operations like content planning, compliance review and data integration.  
  • The Future of “Marketing Autopilot”: Phased evolution from AI-assisted tools → autonomous agents → fully automated marketing teams.  

Introducing the Prophet GenAI Marketing Maturity Model  

Many marketing leaders  are concerned – are we too far behind already? Noting “Our current marketing wasn’t up to a sophisticated level of maturity before GenAI started to take over, so how can we possibly catch up?”  

Traditional maturity models describe a journey from “ad hoc” to “optimized,” implying you must climb rung by rung. But GenAI has changed the rules. You no longer have to move in sequence—you can jump.  

  • Go from inconsistent content to scalable, brand-safe personalization in a quarter.  
  • Skip the years-long Martech roadmap and deploy agentic systems that act as 24/7marketing teams.  

The trick is not just adopting GenAI tools—it’s embedding them into the operating model.  

Our updated model maps GenAI capabilities across eight marketing functions—from customer segmentation to campaign orchestration—across three stages of maturity:  

Where are you Today—and What can you do Tomorrow?  

Whether you’re piloting your first GenAI tool or scaling autonomous agents, your path forward depends more on organizational readiness than AI capability. Here’s how to move:  

Start Small, Scale Fast  

  • Pilot in areas with low risk and high visibility (content ops, lead scoring, message testing).  
  • Use these early wins to build internal confidence and proof points.  

Design for Integration  

  • Establish a GenAI Center of Excellence or a cross-functional squad. 
  • Align with IT, legal and data to ensure brand governance, ethics and compliance.  

Map to Growth Metrics  

  • Don’t just track clicks—link GenAI to business outcomes: ROMI, CLTV, speed to value.  
  • Create a dashboard that shows GenAI’s contribution to revenue and retention.  

Shift Mindsets & Roles  

  • Upskill marketers to become orchestrators, not just executors.  
  • Redesign workflows to let AI handle the repeatable—and people handle the exceptional.  

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

Talk to Prophet about how you can embed AI in your marketing and in your marketing operating model for the uncommon growth that great strategy, creativity, innovation and culture can together provide.  

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Uncommon Creativity for Uncommon Growth 

A taste of Prophet global creative work.   

2 min

Summary

Prophet’s creative work is grounded in the belief that uncommon growth demands uncommon creativity. 

Our team has grown—bigger than ever across our four global studios—to reflect the new challenges brands face, bringing in new talent and expanding our capabilities to meet a broader range of client needs.  

From AI-driven identity systems to immersive campaigns and experiences, we aim to inspire and transform. Every project begins with brand strategy and purpose, helping us tell authentic stories that go beyond what a brand sells to show who they are. As demand grows for creative that bridges strategy and execution, we deliver bold, results-driven work that builds equity, drives growth and elevates brands and businesses in a fast-moving world. 

Work Featured in Prophet’s Design Reel

00:13
JetBlue: Redefining Airline Expectations 

JetBlue has always done things differently—its brand needed to reflect that. Prophet helped evolve JetBlue’s identity to challenge how airlines are “supposed” to act, look and speak. The result? A bold, unmistakable brand that defies convention and elevates the customer experience.

READ MORE

00:21
UBS: Energizing 60,000+ Employees Through Brand

After UBS acquired Credit Suisse in 2023, we helped management reaffirm UBS’s status as a foremost global financial institution. We created the central idea of “Craft,” and executed it through a new brand expression, customer experience initiatives and a global creative campaign.

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00:31
Abu Dhabi: A Destination Brand That Moves at Your Pace 

To position Abu Dhabi as a world-class cultural and leisure destination, Prophet developed a new brand and campaign: “Experience Abu Dhabi. Find Your Pace.” With a bespoke logotype, dynamic visuals and a human-centric image library, the brand invites the world to explore the emirate’s rich offerings.

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00:44
AEG: Challenging the Expected in Home Appliances

To help AEG stand out in a functional category, Prophet refreshed the brand with a bold new strategy: “Challenge the Expected.” We expanded its iconic red palette, introduced expressive characters and launched a 360° brand experience at IFA 2024.  

1:13
Invesco: Editorial Thinking for a Client-Centric Brand

Prophet helped Invesco evolve its brand with an editorial mindset by introducing expressive typography, CGI-enhanced visuals and a distinctive tone of voice: “The Intelligent Conversationalist.” A global employee campaign and new EVP brought the transformation to life.

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1:18
MB Bank: A Bold Identity for a Digital-First Future

To mark its 25th anniversary and transformation into a digital-first bank, MB partnered with Prophet to launch a new brand: “Intelligent Banking. Enriching Your Future.” The refreshed identity fueled growth, earned industry accolades and attracted over 8 million new customers.

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Integrating Brand and Demand Marketing for Maximum Impact in Healthcare

Chief Marketing Officers who engage strategically, advocate for patients and demonstrate marketing’s value can help unleash growth even in uncertain times.  

It seems that every CMO, in every sector, faces increasing pressure to demonstrate value for every dollar in their budgets. It’s the classic brand-demand tension, where CFOs and other senior business leaders seem to prefer the clear and tangible metrics (e.g., lead generation, conversion) associated with demand or performance marketing over the softer measures of brand value (e.g., awareness, propensity to buy).  

Senior marketers know this tension. Prophet recently conducted interviews with senior marketing leaders from health systems and hospitals and their input was clear: effectively integrating brand-building with demand generation campaigns has never been more challenging. Partly that’s a function of cost pressures and resource constraints. Partly it’s due to the unique dynamics of healthcare marketing (where consumers don’t necessarily want to buy your products).  

But healthcare organizations that get brand and demand working in sync see clear and compelling benefits: stronger brands, more satisfying patient experiences, higher customer lifetime value and – most importantly – better health outcomes.  

Prophet’s extensive research, Brand and Demand: Marketing’s Greatest Love Story, shows how top-performing marketing organizations are 3X more likely to fully integrate brand and demand. And the research, The Multiplier Effect, we conducted in partnership with WARC, Analytic Partners and BERA.ai and System1 shows how a balanced approach can lift overall revenue returns by 25% or more.     

So how do marketing leaders successfully integrate brand and demand to optimize results? From our research and market engagement, we see three proven practices. 

1. Engaging senior leaders to align marketing strategies to business priorities and outcomes. 

Too often, marketing in healthcare is seen as a service function, activated only in response to external pressures or internal requests. But the most effective CMOs reposition marketing as a strategic lever for growth, leveraging brand and demand investments to drive measurable business results. 

Strategic engagement with boards, the C-suite, clinical leaders and other stakeholders is essential to shift the perception of marketing as a PR or communications function. When marketing is tied to system objectives—whether that’s growing a service line, expanding reach in a rural market or strengthening reputation with policymakers—it becomes easier to make disciplined choices and avoid reactive spending. 

Take the “billboard dilemma,” for instance. Many CMOs face pressure from internal stakeholders who ask, “Why don’t we have a billboard like our competitors?” But this isn’t really a question about outdoor advertising. It’s a proxy for a larger issue: Are we doing enough to be visible and competitive in the market? When CMOs have already built alignment around business goals and shared metrics, these conversations become strategic rather than reactive. It’s no longer about appeasing concerns, it’s about showing how brand investment fits into an integrated marketing mix designed to drive outcomes. 

“The best decisions are made collaboratively, with everyone looking at the same data,” said Jason Vandiver, a senior marketing and communications officer. “Because we all understand and agree on the most important activities, there’s no competition for resources.” This alignment allows marketing leaders to advocate for the right choice at the right time—explaining when and how brand investments will pay dividends in the long term and when performance marketing should take the lead to deliver short-term results. And when trade-offs are unavoidable, CMOs who are aligned on strategy are best positioned to guide the successful integration of brand and demand. 

20%: minimum proportion of the marketing budget that should be allocated to brand-building

40-60%: the “best practice” range for branding spend of marketing budget

Source: The Multiplier Effect report 

2. Embracing patient centricity and advocacy as a North Star for disparate investments and activities.  

CMOs should ensure all marketing activities and investments link directly to the organization’s mission: helping people lead healthy lives. CMOs can be advocates for patient needs, which can—and should—be a unifying force for the entire organization and essential to the brand vision. “We try very hard to focus on the consumer, rather than going to market with a product orientation,” said David Hook, executive director, marketing & consumer experience, John Muir Health. “Yes, we need to sell services, but in our marketing, we invite customers to come to us for their overall health, not for a specific surgery or procedure.” 

Delivering on patient centricity requires deeper customer insights, another area where healthcare CMOs can make meaningful contributions. For instance, core insights can be used to articulate a clear brand promise that guides all marketing activities and focuses on patient needs, according to Hook: “When it’s clear to the organization what patients care about, it becomes less about the advertising and more about how we deliver better healthcare.”  

In this sense, demand campaigns don’t just produce revenue; they also help people access the care they need. Marketing delivers on their mission when consumer targeting drives people to preventive screenings and procedures.  

What leading marketers do:

  • 87%: use customer insights for brand positioning and value propositions vs. 66% of all marketers 
  • 86%: apply customer insights to all parts of the marketing discipline, vs. 63%  
  • 82%: tie customer data and insights to measurable business outcomes, vs. 59%  

Source: Prophet Brand & Demand research 

Several CMOs highlighted the value of detailed patient journeys across service lines, which can help support consistent branding and promote “right-time/right-channel” messaging. Mapping these journeys also ensures marketing efforts align with patient needs at each stage of care, which increases relevance, enhances experience and strengthens trust. “We have defined some amazing patient journeys that guide our engagement and retention teams,” said Kim Reed, senior marketing manager at a large pediatric health system.

3. Demonstrating both short- and long-term results via data-driven modeling and analytical rigor  

As with their peers in other sectors, healthcare CMOs must balance short- and long-term objectives and be data-driven and analytics-led in sharing results. The pressure to carefully measure value will only intensify given the challenging financial situations of most organizations today. 

What leading marketers do:

84%: confidently measure and management long- and short-term performance simultaneously, vs. 57% of all marketers 

Source: Prophet Brand & Demand research 

“The need to show hard dollar-impacts lead us to do more performance marketing,” said Hook of Muir Health. He also highlighted the importance of showing leadership what different types of media can deliver. “We bring estimated numbers to the leadership group and say, ‘if we do this, our awareness and preference will go up this much and it will cost this much.” Such efforts are necessary, because “there’s still a disconnect between what we can show actually works and what leaders think works,” according to Vandiver.  

Jennifer Horton, associate vice president of marketing, communications and media at UT Health San Antonio, embraces a model that balances brand, engagement, reputation and growth, which she finds resonates well. “These are things that are top of mind for our boards, senior leadership, and our physicians.” 

Sophisticated propensity, attribution and marketing mix models, as well as more powerful analytical tools, are becoming more common. Some marketing teams build their own; others rely on external partners, though smaller institutions may be challenged to find the budget for advanced tooling. At Corewell Health, the brand analytics team uses proprietary models to “triangulate the different data sets and go beyond linear reads and gain multi-dimensional visibility into our performance and how to improve it,” according to Holly Sullivan, vice president, system brand and marketing.  

Corewell tracks fairly closely to the classic brand-demand budget allocation and aims to be “thoughtful in building long-term brand strength for top-of-the-funnel awareness.”  To track brand strength the organization uses a variety of metrics like unaided awareness and system of first choice.  Some measures are more specific to healthcare to understand feelings of trust. 

Healthcare by its nature creates unique tracking challenges. Vandiver noted that it’s not just the clicks or someone calling a number that shows ROI. “Because the average consumer isn’t looking for healthcare at any time, but only when they or a family member has a need, it’s hard to figure out how we get from interest to conversion to the financial output,” he noted.  

In this sense, the brand advertising that creates awareness may be the difference maker when the actual medical need arises as a demand signal. Disconnects between CRM platforms and back-office financial systems also make attribution trickier than in, say, consumer goods or financial services. 

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

Healthcare marketers have always faced unique challenges due to the complexities of the industry. And the perennial tension between brand and demand adds an extra dimension for CMOs facing budget cuts and intense pressure to demonstrate value.  

Still, strong marketing teams are critical to keep hospitals and health systems financially stable and individuals and communities healthy. And the more effective CMOs are at integrating intentional, data-driven tactics to drive near-term demand with long-term brand-building programs the more successful they’ll be in helping their organizations fulfill their mission and meet their objectives.  

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How to Build a Resilient Marketing Strategy with Scenario Planning

No one knows the future. But the best marketing leaders don’t hide–they plan for multiple outcomes. 

Why Scenario Planning Is Essential for Modern Marketers in 2025

Today’s marketers often feel like they’re operating in patchy fog. Is a recession looming, or will the economy stabilize into a soft landing? Will “do more with less” be the corporate mantra for just a few quarters, or indefinitely? And what about emerging disruptions—from AI advancements and geopolitical shifts to volatile consumer behaviors?

The practical answer remains: modern marketers must embrace scenario planning to build agile, resilient strategies.

Scenario planning works. While marketing leaders and CMOs can’t predict the future, they can, and must, prepare for a range of potential outcomes.

The disruptions of the early 2020s underscored the importance of scenario planning. While few could have precisely forecasted events like a global pandemic or today’s rapid technology shifts, the companies that pivoted quickly—whether in media channels, messaging strategies, or customer experiences—came out ahead. For example, at Prophet, we advised a client to shift from out-of-home advertising to digital channels almost overnight, and counseled another to pivot from in-person incentives to free shipping and virtual experiences. Scenario planning workshops gave our clients the ability to anticipate these shifts and act nimbly, not reactively.

Today, uncertainty is a given, not a glitch. Markets, technologies, customer expectations, and competitive landscapes are evolving faster than ever. Scenario planning has evolved into a crucial strategic muscle that can mean the difference between surviving and thriving when new curveballs come.

Scenario Planning 3.0: A Modern Approach 

No one has a crystal ball. That’s why scenario planning has been around for ages. But marketing leaders who regularly scenario plan are better equipped to face ever-changing circumstances and drive more effective, efficient and resilient marketing plans.    

We used this approach to help Scoperta! launch its brand into the market with a buzz-worthy digital strategy. Our team brainstormed, deliberated and developed proactive solutions to ensure the business was prepared for scenarios as diverse as low site traffic, site traffic that didn’t convert, and even traffic that was converting but perhaps needed to spend more per transaction.    

We knew what we would do for each of these scenarios, even if we didn’t need to do it. And because we prepared for these potential outcomes from the onset, we were also better positioned to optimize the campaign for success.    

Modern scenario planning allows companies to proactively address scenarios that may jeopardize the ability to reach any prioritized goal. And each step of the scenario-planning approach leads to strategic outcomes that will help the marketing strategy thrive despite uncertainty.  

Three Steps to Take When Scenario Planning Your Next Marketing Strategy 

Think of scenario planning as a game. We developed a game board to help our clients develop effective scenario plans to help workshop specific scenarios and prepare for potential outcomes.

Here are three steps to take when scenario planning your next marketing initiative: 

1. Draft possible Scenarios for an Initial Discussion 

We recommend defining a short list of critical priorities for a specific marketing initiative rather than trying to scenario plan for every single objective. To ensure you are tapping into the right preferences, you should collaborate with a cross-disciplinary team of stakeholders across marketing, sales, customer experience, operations and product.   

Some common considerations include:    

  • Low site traffic or site traffic declining    
  • Site traffic is not converting to sales   
  • Sales are resulting in low revenue    
  • Slow velocity to conversion    
  • Low customer engagement    
  • Lack of return customers    
  • Smaller size or value in shopping carts    

2. Add and Prioritize ideas Across Levers to Address Scenarios 

Once you have identified your key priorities, address the potential levers you can pull. Some examples for marketers include:    

  • What would happen if we increased or shifted media spending?   
  • If we changed the messaging, would that improve customer engagement?  
  • Might we offer audiences different or more personalized incentives and offers?  
  • Would a shift in loyalty and rewards make a difference?   
  • Could we consider other channels, working with new influencers or product aggregators?  
  • How about new content and social strategies?   
  • Would increasing the number of touchpoints improve lead nurturing? 

3. Codify and Socialize the Contingency Plan 

How these initial plans are shared throughout the organization is essential. But it doesn’t stop there.  Additional sessions are often needed to follow up on hot topics and assign owners to chosen levers.   

Next, you should schedule a contingency planning session at the end of an agreed-upon time frame to evaluate performance data to date. Leaders might integrate the scenario decision process into regular performance reporting sessions, similar to how leaders integrate optimization sessions in conventional campaign management.   

During this phase of the scenario planning process, internal communication channels become critical tools. It’s essential to ensure all stakeholders, from supply chain partners to investors, are current on pivot-ready strategies.   

FINAL THOUGHTS

While uncertainty is a given, modern marketing leaders are not leaving their success to luck. By using thoughtful scenario planning, they’re constructing more resilient marketing plans with various responses to meet multiple realities. And if and when rapid changes come, they’ll know what to do–or at least what to try–to deliver on marketing goals. 

Are you looking for an expert to help you develop your organization’s scenario plans? Contact us today. 

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The Brand and Demand Love Story: Unlocking 2025 Growth in Southeast Asia

Strong relationships rely on both types of marketing to power exceptional growth.

Consumers in Southeast Asia (SEA) are changing daily, requiring brands to undergo rapid transformation to stay relevant. Leading companies are using data and AI to deliver hyper-personalized experiences to the region’s young, tech-savvy consumers. They are embracing sustainability to reflect consumer values.  

In this dynamic interplay between consumer expectations and tech innovation, these innovative companies are setting the stage for a new era of marketing. Exceptional marketing teams know they must integrate brand and demand throughout the entire customer journey in ways that mutually reinforce one another to drive growth.  

(Enlarge)

Brand-led experiences encourage exploration and advocacy, creating long-term relationships. Demand-led initiatives help customers use products and services most fully and keep the brand voice and promise front and center. In short, brand changes perceptions. And demand alters behavior. Both are vital. And when they are interwoven at each stage of the customer’s journey—from consideration, purchase and onboarding—organizations are more likely to find success. 

Prophet’s latest research has unveiled the key actions that winning companies across the world have in common, from which we identified four core principles that are especially important in SEA.  

Adapt Quickly: Embrace Experimentation with a Growth Mindset 

The digital savviness of SEA’s young consumers is growing and changing so fast that marketers can barely keep up. Companies are exploring new technologies more quickly, scaling what works and discarding what doesn’t.  

Companies know it’s not enough to be an early adopter – they want to be ahead of the curve. They need to codify an experimental approach to new channels and tactics.  

While not all marketers do this well, Prophet’s latest research has found clear trends among the most successful marketing organizations. Compared to companies that lag the average, these higher-achieving CMOs are courageous, lifelong learners, with 82% saying they are willing to try new processes, compared to 61% of CMOs from less successful firms. They are at ease leading teams with people with more expertise, at 80% versus 64%. And they are far more likely—71% versus 48%—to say they support their teams in experimentation, even through failures. 

Shopee is one of the region’s best examples of adaptability. This innovative e-commerce online platform provides customers easy, secure and fast online shopping. It keeps up with young people by consistently adapting to the region’s evolving e-commerce landscape by swiftly incorporating gamification and fintech services. For instance, Shopee has effectively integrated social commerce features like Shopee Live which allows sellers to showcase products in livestreams and enables direct interaction with buyers, creating an immersive shopping experience and accelerating purchasing decisions. Shopee Live played a crucial role in Malaysia and Thailand’s 9.9 Super Shopping Day, boosting sales by over 6x. 

However, this growth couldn’t happen without a concerted integration of brand and demand. Long-term brand visions are built with consistent brand-building activities in its memorable marketing campaigns. Shopee’s annual 9.9 Super Shopping Day campaign embodies its core values of simplicity, joy and community, building strong brand recognition and excitement. With a brand DNA that is centred on fun, Shopee is able to deliver engaging experiences to continuously drive demand, foster loyalty and sustain growth.  

Increase Customer-Centricity: Data is the Engine 

Many organizations are rich in data. But who “owns” it and how efficiently that data is shared and used makes all the difference. In the most successful organizations, the marketing team is also the most customer-obsessed. They are responsible for customer insights and data, utilizing them to better inform brand and demand efforts – from reinforcing positioning and value propositions, targeting and segmentation, to building a robust loyalty program. 

In companies that most effectively balance brand and demand, customer data and insights are tied to measurable business outcomes.  

DBS Bank, based in Singapore and operating in 19 markets across Asia, blends a customer-centric approach with data-driven personalization and seamless brand-demand integration. Its latest brand campaign, “Trust your spark,” is a brand effort that humanizes banking through real-life stories, evoking emotion and strengthening connections. Using YouTube Instant Reserve, DBS Bank personalizes content with audience interests—food lovers see ads on reducing food waste—enhancing engagement. Using first-party data from Google’s Analytics 360, the bank tracks customer journeys, optimizing ad spend and re-engaging audiences effectively. This data-driven strategy fuels measurable impact, with 15% of new business-related loans and SME products originating from Sparks viewers. With these insights, DBS Bank can make data-driven decisions to optimize future brand campaigns, ensuring its marketing efforts resonates emotionally while driving tangible business results. 

Integrate Short-Term Tech Wins with Long-Term Brand Building 

The rise of tech-enabled demand-generation tactics is reshaping marketing across the region. From predictive analytics and automation to real-time personalization, companies are leveraging technology to drive immediate customer acquisition and conversion at unprecedented speed. According to the e-Conomy SEA 2024 report, most organizations in the region can transition from an initial idea to execution in just six months, with 70% reporting a favourable return on investment (ROI) attributable to GenAI workflows within a year of implementation. 

While these tools accelerate short-term wins, brands must resist the temptation to prioritize quick gains at the expense of long-term brand building. Brand and demand cannot be seen as trade-offs, but as complementary forces. Prophet’s research found that the most successful leaders are those who confidently measure and manage the long and short-term simultaneously. In our study, 84% of marketers who are top performers can manage short-term and long-term KPIs effectively, compared to only 57% of all respondents. The key is “bothism”—embracing the power of tech-driven growth while making sustained investments in brand building. 

POSB Bank, a subsidiary of DBS Bank in Singapore, exemplifies the “bothism” approach by integrating tech-enabled demand generation with brand building in its recent “Treat Yourself Right” campaign. Using AI-powered age-morphing visuals, POSB Bank crafted deeply personal and relatable narratives that illustrate the evolving financial needs of Singaporeans over time. This reinforces POSB Bank’s position as a lifelong financial partner, fostering stronger brand affinity.  

Shangri-La Circle, a five-star luxury hotel brand’s loyalty program in Asia, is pioneering the future of hospitality with its technology by driving immediate operational efficiencies while simultaneously investing in initiatives that enhance the guest experience and build long-term brand loyalty. Shangri-La leverages advanced technology, including NeXRobot for contactless in-room service, a WeChat Mini Program for seamless guest requests and a smart check-in system to reduce staff workload. At the same time, a user-centric booking experience and an AI-powered local marketing platform help personalize guest interactions, optimize customer journeys, and strengthen brand loyalty across its global network. These show that brands can integrate technology seamlessly with the brand experience, ensuring that short-term wins and long-term brand equity coexist in a modern marketing strategy. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

True integration of brand and demand is more than a budget split—it’s about weaving both strategies into a seamless customer journey. By balancing logic and creativity, and fostering a culture of respect and trust, businesses in SEA can unlock exceptional growth and long-term relevance. 

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The Multiplier Effect: How Brands Unleash Full-Funnel Growth

New research shows how integrating brand and performance marketing drives better outcomes.

For more than a decade, performance marketing has claimed an outsized share of CMO attention—and budget. But new research from The Multiplier Effect: A CMO’s Guide to Brand Building in the Performance Era reveals a deeper truth: the most powerful results come not from performance or brand alone, but from a smart, integrated approach that connects the two. 

Developed in collaboration with WARC, Analytic Partners, BERA and System1, this landmark report offers one of the clearest cases yet for full-funnel marketing—Prophet is proud to have played a central role in bringing it to life. Through our work designing and executing brand and demand strategies that deliver measurable business impact for our clients, we know that when brand and performance work together, growth multiplies. 

The Myth of the Performance-Only Playbook 

The research confronts a long-standing myth: that brand marketing can’t deliver provable business results. The data tells a different story: 

  • Brand marketing alone outperforms performance marketing in ROI. 
  • When brand and performance efforts are combined, the return on investment increases by an extraordinary 90%. 
  • High brand awareness makes performance campaigns more effective at the bottom of the funnel. 
  • Stronger brands enjoy greater pricing power—improving profitability, not just reach. In fact, a 1% increase in brand differentiation and relevance drives a 0.6% lift in pricing power. 

These insights are particularly important in categories where consideration cycles are long. In B2B, for example, just 5% of buyers are in-market at any given time. Performance tactics focused only on in-market buyers will always miss the majority of the audience. Investing in brand ensures you’re influencing choice long before a prospect raises their hand. 

Why CMOs Need a New Approach 

The distinction between brand and performance marketing is increasingly outdated—and, as the report shows, costly. Over-prioritizing performance at the expense of brand leads to a “performance penalty,” where revenue returns can drop between 20% and 50%. The solution? A more balanced and integrated investment strategy: 

  • CMOs should allocate at least 30% of marketing spend to equity-driving work, with 40–60% considered best practice. 
  • Marketers need to shift from siloed brand and performance teams to integrated planning, aligning campaigns around full-funnel creative platforms. 
  • Budgets should account for the “media multiplier”—the longer-term value of media investments—which can range from 1.1x to 2x, depending on the channel. 
  •  Have patience—but not that much… while performance marketing might show an initial bump in sales, within 90 days, 50% of the brand impact will be realized 

Finally, marketers need the tools to measure what really matters. The report encourages building a “measurement stack” that tracks both short- and long-term impact—from immediate campaign returns to effects on pricing, preference, and brand equity. 

How to Win Across the Funnel 

At Prophet, we’ve long believed that sustainable, uncommon growth comes from integrating brand and demand. That’s why we help CMOs and marketing teams not only define their brand’s purpose and positioning—but also bring it to market through strategies that drive awareness, conversion, and loyalty. 

Our work with clients like PENN Entertainment, FM, Inspira Financial and Curative demonstrates how a full-funnel approach pays off: 

  • For Inspira Financial, we led a full rebrand from Millennium Trust, delivering everything from strategic foundations to campaign creative and media execution. 
  • For Curative, an innovative health insurance challenger, we partnered across two phases: building the brand and go-to-market story, then developing a high-performance ABM demand strategy. The result? Record-breaking mid- and lower-funnel engagement and rapid customer growth. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Multiplier Effect is more than a research study—it’s a roadmap for how modern marketing leaders can unlock the next wave of growth. At Prophet, we help our clients build strong, distinctive brands and connect them to performance strategies that convert. 

If you’re ready to rethink your marketing model and activate a strategy that delivers strong brands and connects that to growth across the funnel—we’re here to help. 

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RESEARCH

The Multiplier Effect: A CMO’s Guide to Brand-Building in the Performance Era

Research from WARC, Prophet, Bera.ai, System1 and Analytic Partners reveals how advertisers are missing significant revenue-generating opportunities.

We are excited to introduce a new WARC research report, “The Multiplier Effect: A CMO’s Guide to Brand-Building in the Performance Era” that Prophet contributed to in partnership with experts from Analytic Partners, BERA.ai and System1. The report is based on data and insights from this first-of-its kind coalition to highlight why it’s critical to get balance between brand and performance marketing investment right – or risk leaving revenue-generating opportunities on the table. Download a free copy today.  

Infused with data and insights from our report “Brand and Demand: Marketing’s Greatest Love Story” this research explores the gap in how companies approach advertising: the silos between brand and performance across creative, media, budgeting and measurement. 

Through our data and analysis, we found that the strongest returns from advertising investment come from using brand equity as an accelerant for commercial performance. By fully integrating this investment in brand equity with performance tactics, you can unlock growth and maximize the return on your spend. 

Read this report if you are a marketing or business leader looking to build brand equity and turn your performance marketing into a high-impact growth driver.  

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Today’s marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver measurable value from their investments. We empower CMOs to build marketing organizations that not only meet these demands but also drive uncommon growth. Get in touch with our team for help developing holistic marketing strategies that integrate sustained brand and demand investment to create and deliver value.  

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REPORT

Bridging Brand and Demand: How to Unlock Competitive Advantage in Commercial Banking

The commercial banking industry is facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. From rising client expectations to rapid technological shifts, staying relevant demands more than just keeping up—it requires a bold, client-first approach to growth.

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Part 1 of our exclusive 3-part series on driving growth and relevance in commercial banking.

This first installment uncovers the critical strategies to align brand-building and demand generation efforts, unlocking sustainable growth in an era of constant change.  

Key Learnings: 

  • Why the gap between brand-building and demand generation limits growth—and how commercial banks can bridge it.  
  • Actionable insights to enhance client engagement and position your bank for sustainable growth.  
  • Key strategies to differentiate your organization in an increasingly crowded market.  

What’s Next?

Future articles in this series will dive deeper into reimagining client experiences, rethinking product architectures, and fostering cultural alignment to position commercial banks for long-term success. 

Download Now

Get started today by downloading this report and take the first step toward driving meaningful growth and relevance in commercial banking. Contact our team to learn how we can help you successfully integrated brand and demand marketing strategies that lead to uncommon growth. 

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Bridging Brand and Demand in Commercial Banking

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