CMO Confidential

Recent Episodes

1. Michael D'Esopo | Why CMOs are Losing Influence: The Trust Trade-Off

   Sep 15, 2026

   Michael D'Esopo, CEO of Lippincott, discusses findings from a study of 500+ senior marketing leaders that reveals a critical "trust trade-off" facing CMOs. The research shows that while short-term performance pressures are reshaping the CMO role and earning near-term credibility, they risk underinvestment in long-term brand building and customer experience. D'Esopo emphasizes that the most successful organizations prioritize alignment across the C-suite and translate marketing objectives to CEO, CFO, and board priorities rather than relying solely on marketing-specific metrics.

2. Emily Frager | Communications and PR are Having a Moment

   Sep 8, 2026

   Emily Frager, Chief Client Officer at FleishmanHillard and former CMO of Lennar Ventures, discusses why communications and PR have become critical business functions rather than downstream publicity channels. She explores how AI, social media fragmentation, and real-time reputation risks are forcing organizations to embed PR into strategic decision-making, emphasizing the importance of speed, governance, data-driven insights, and senior-level leadership in managing reputation.

3. Aneesh Dhawan | The AI Trust Gap in Research and What to Do About It

   Sep 1, 2026

   Aneesh Dhawan, Co-Founder and CEO of Knit, an AI-native research firm, discusses findings from Knit's AI Trust Survey of 150+ enterprise research leaders. The conversation explores how researcher fears have shifted from job displacement to concerns about AI outputs being used without expert judgment and proper governance. Key topics include the differences between data, insights, and storytelling; the importance of human judgment in research; and vendor selection criteria for AI research tools.

4. Rishad Tobaccowala | A Leading Futurist Takes Stock of 2026

   Aug 25, 2026

   Rishad Tobaccowala, futurist, author, and former President of Starcom and Chief Strategy & Growth Officer of Publicis, discusses five major forces reshaping business and marketing in 2026: the rise of unstoppable AI ('alien intelligence'), the uncoupling of jobs and work, widening generational divides, China's dominance in emerging technologies, and a crisis in leadership. He argues that marketing must shift from storytelling to fact-based differentiation, that most marketers have outsourced brand-building to influencers, and that AI will fundamentally dissolve organizational silos by prioritizing outcomes over structure.

5. Kristin Wozniak | Too Much Data & Not Enough Thinking - Are You Following Goodhart's Law?

   Aug 18, 2026

   Kristin Wozniak, Chief Growth Officer and Data Officer at Cosmo5, discusses the epidemic of data obsession among marketing leaders and how it stifles innovation. She explores Goodhart's Law—the principle that when a measure becomes a target, it's no longer a good measure—through examples like the cobra effect and lead generation gaming, and offers practical strategies including buddy metrics, team-based KPIs, and shifting from individual channel optimization to holistic team-based marketing measurement for 2027.

6. Maryam Banikarim | What CMO's Talk About Behind Closed Doors

   Aug 11, 2026

   Maryam Banikarim, Chair of The Wall Street Journal CMO Council and co-founder of The Longest Table, discusses the evolving state of marketing with host Mike Linton in this second appearance on CMO Confidential. She explores AI's pivot from efficiency to innovation, the rising prevalence of side hustles among marketing professionals driven by job insecurity, and the shift in how younger talent views corporate roles as higher-risk than entrepreneurship. Throughout the conversation, Banikarim shares insights from her multiple CMO tenures and her community-building work, emphasizing that successful leaders share the ability to recover from setbacks and reinvent themselves.

7. Neal Mann | AI Agents as Teammates - Are You Really Ready to Work Together?

   Aug 4, 2026

   Neal Mann, CEO and Co-Founder of NOAN (an AI-native fact layer business), discusses how to build and deploy AI agents as effective team members. He emphasizes the critical importance of business structure, semantic clarity, and a single source of truth for AI to operate effectively, and warns against "AI Slop" — inaccurate or off-brand content created when teams lack unified reference data.

8. Dr. Ed Dobbles | Research and Analytics in an AI World

   Jul 28, 2026

   Dr. Ed Dobbles, a 30+ year veteran of research and analytics across Diageo, H&R Block, and SuperValu, joins host Mike Linton to explore how research, analytics, and generative business intelligence are evolving in an AI-driven world. The episode examines why traditional BI tool adoption consistently fails (50-65% failure rate), the critical gap between data insights and human decision-making, and how generative AI is finally bridging the gap between analytics teams and business users who want answers, not complexity.

9. Brent Rivard | Why Are So Many Marketers Ignoring the $8.3 Trillion Market Hiding in Plain Sight?

   Jul 21, 2026

   Brent Rivard, CEO of Geezer Creative, discusses the massive $8.3 trillion market of consumers aged 50+ that most marketers are systematically ignoring. With a background as CMO of Internova Travel and global managing director at Anomaly, Rivard explains why ageism in the advertising industry, risk-averse marketing cultures, and misaligned KPIs prevent brands from capturing this high-disposable-income segment. He argues that marketers must shift from media-engagement metrics to purchase behavior, hire creative teams from the demographic they're targeting, and recognize that older consumers are far more adaptable and digitally savvy than stereotypes suggest.

10. Aarron Spinley | The Concept of Customering - Is Technology Overwhelming the Customer Experience?

    Jul 14, 2026