As artificial intelligence (AI) penetrates practically every facet of the marketing and advertising industry, marketers could be forgiven for thinking whether AI is a threat to their jobs. Matt Miller, SVP of strategy and analytics at Level Agency, says that while it’s still early in the game,  there’s a growing onus on CMOs and marketing teams to figure out how to make sure that  AI will enhance marketing jobs rather than replace them. Miller, whose clients include Better Mortgage, Pathstone, and Sphera, joins host Matthew Schwartz to answer some burning questions about where things go from here and if marketers’ concerns are justified.

Jose Villa, president of marketing agency Sensis, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers increase their appeal with the Hispanic market, the fastest growing contributor to the U.S. economy. Villa, whose worked with such clients as Anthem, One West Bank, and Cal State LA, says that brands that are eager to boost engagement with Hispanics must deploy an integrated marketing strategy that blends social media, paid media, and earned media. Perhaps most important for brand managers to realize is that the Hispanic market is not a monolith, but a community rich in diversity.

Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the consumer privacy landscape following Google’s decision last summer that it is no longer deprecating third-party cookies and will keep them operational within its chrome browsers next year and beyond. While marketers may consider Google’s move a reprieve, Barnard stresses that forward-thinking brands are putting third-party cookies to pasture and cultivating both zero-party data, or information provided by users through feedback forms and surveys, and first-party data, or information collected directly from consumers.

Can you develop an “Excel Love Language?” Maggie Gross, head of strategy and brand practice leader at Deloitte Digital, says it’s an increasingly effective way for CMOs and senior marketers to communicate the benefits of brand building to the C-suite. By crafting a homemade Excel Love Language, marketers can meld soft metrics, such as brand awareness and brand recall, with hard metrics demanded by the company’s CFO like lead-gen revenue and new acquisitions.Gross joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers speak the “Excel Love Language” and provide some strategic thinking for how marketers change the conversation about branding.

With consumers tuning out pretty much anything that interrupts their media flow, it’s getting harder and harder for brands to break through the noise. When it comes to the creative side, marketers must be a lot more supple and, perhaps more important, media agnostic. Kara Buckner, president and chief strategy officer at Fallon, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers are changing their approach to whipping up what they hope will be ad creative that truly resonate with their audiences and will get people talking.

Wither performance marketing? Doubtful. However, branded advertising is becoming a much bigger consideration among B2B brands that are eager to bolster their appeal to small- and medium-sized businesses and tout their values (as opposed to price points). It’s a tall order. Lydia Michael, owner of marketing agency Blended Collective, and De’Lon Dixon, team leads at CX (customer experience) at Glassbox and founder of Think Technologies, join host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how B2B marketers build relationships with SMBs and borrow a few pages from the consumer playbook to turbocharge their messaging.

Chris Oswald, EVP, head of law, ethics and government relations at the ANA, joins host Matthew Schwartz to provide some salient tips for marketers and brand managers grappling with an increasingly complicate legislative terrain at both the federal and state levels.

Jamie Gier, CMO at DexCare, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the latest trends in relationship marketing, which emphasizes customer retention, satisfaction, and lifetime customer value. One option is for B2B marketers to reclaim socializing from social media, as relationship marketing is based on getting out into the field to engage customers and cohorts and make their jobs and lives easier. Gier provides some salient examples for how B2B marketers cultivate their relationship marketing efforts without being preoccupied by the transaction.

JuHee Kim, president of ad agency MuteSix, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss some of the key questions marketers need to ask when they want to align their brand with a cultural moment (or movement) and why serendipity may play a bigger part in such activations than brand managers appreciate.

Tapping into Gen Z is at the heart of a new influencer marketing network launched by Rubix Foods, which provides food flavors and ingredients to restaurants. Shannon O’Shields, VP of marketing at Rubix Foods, and Megumi Robinson, VP at Belle Communication, join host Matthew Schwartz to talk about the network, as well as some of the larger trends swirling around influencer marketing, which is expected to reach, which is expected to reach $8.1 billion this year and $9.2 billion in 2025, per eMarketer.

Michael Farmer, chairman and CEO of strategic consultancy Farmer & Company, and author of Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and The Redefinition of the Ad Business, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the growing schisms between client-side marketers and their advertising agencies, and how to enhance their relationships.

Marketers who fail to make their voices heard in the growing debate regarding data privacy (https://www.ana.net/magazines/show/id/ana-2023-12-the-need-for-national-privacy-law?st3=blubrrycogdata) could be in for a rude wakening if they don’t step up to the plate. That’s according to Arun Kumar, author of the recently released book The Data Deluge: Making Marketing Work for Brands and People, and former chief data and marketing technology officer at The Interpublic Group of Cos. Kumar joins how Matthew Schwartz to discuss why the marketing field is may be making a grave mistake deferring to Big Tech when it comes to influencing the conversation about fostering online privacy.

June marks “Pride Month,” which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and provides an opportunity for brands to boost engagement with gay and trans people. However, Todd Sears, CEO of Out Leadership, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ equality, says it’s crucial that marketers go beyond “Pride Month” and engage the community for the long term rather than a moment in time.

Randi Stipes, CMO of The Weather Company, joins host Matthew Schwartz to talk about how marketers sharpen their weather strategy, the growing relationship between weather and consumer trust, and how marketers leverage weather-related data that can be deployed across the organization.

Lou Aversano, CMO of The Cigna Group, joins host Matthew Schwartz, to discuss the performance marketing versus branded advertising debate heating up throughout B2B precincts, why there’s a growing onus on B2B firms to thread more emotional elements throughout their messaging architecture, and taking a more realistic approach toward breaking down the silos between sales and marketing.

Sally Percy, journalist and author of “21st Century Business Icons: The Leaders Who Are Changing Our World,” joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how senior marketers bolster their leadership skills, why remote work is changing the so-called “70/20/10” rule of communications, and the increasingly key role empathy plays among successful leaders. 

Chris Comstock, chief growth officer at software firm Claravine, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers bolster their data standards, why embracing failure is a path to success, and what the pending demise of third-party cookies means for brand advertisers and consumer engagement. 

Greg Boosin, EVP of global B2B and product marketing at Mastercard, joins host Matthew Schwartz to break down the ANA’s 2023 Marketing Capabilities Framework. The document provides a roadmap for how marketers navigate an increasingly complicated terrain as well as how to sharpen their career path. “It’s not a Monopoly Board,” Boosin says, referring to the Framework “It’s a template to shoehorn into your [company’s] marketing capabilities.”

Ryan Kutscher, founder and CEO of ad agency Launch Party, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how B2B marketers recalibrate their ad-creative strategy, why less is more when it comes to quality content, and the marketing benefits of listening to the Broken Record Podcast (https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/broken-record) hosted by legendary music producer Rick Rubin.

Bill Duggan, group EVP at the ANA, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the results of the “ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study.” The report (https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/83522), which was released in December 2023, shows that marketers incur an awful lot of waste in programmatic ad buying, and could save $22 billion in efficiency gains. Indeed, just 36 percent of every dollar invested by an advertiser that enters a DSP (digital signal processing) effectively reaches the targeted consumer. Duggan offers several tips to help marketers optimize their investments in programmatic media and provides the key questions that marketers need to ask sellers, so they don’t get burned.