C Space at CES is a series of panel discussions featuring marketing, advertising, and media executives tackling topics such as AI, data, personalization, content creation, and creator-led marketing. Below are the insights and strategies six brand-side CMOs shared on the official first day of CES.
Molly Battin
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
home depot
On building your brand by evolving with your consumers:
“The key is to really evolve the brand to meet changing consumer needs. One of our biggest brand challenges One is that every person that comes into a home improvement store has a problem that they’re trying to solve, and it shows how our brand is different based on all the tools that we have now. We need to think about whether we can support the projects they are working on. Whether it’s personalized content to help them, or apps and all the (other) experiences we have, it’s about the content we do at scale to really connect with them and help them. How you think is important when you get stuck.
“Rather than us telling consumers what to do, it’s now a conversation with consumers. We’re now having a two-way dialogue…that means co-creating So what’s really important is to ground yourself. And I think it’s the core problem that you’re trying to help your customers solve, not the product that you solve, and the media landscape and how it really makes sense for them today. It’s about understanding the tools at your disposal to solve that problem.”
glenn bengi
Lead Global Chief Marketing Officer, Mars Inc.
Mars Snacking, Global Chief Growth Officer, Mars
About brand building through co-creation with consumers:
“Consumers increasingly want personalization, or dead-end engagement. They want co-creation opportunities. In fact, two-thirds of consumers want meaningful, customized relationships. and more than 80% of Gen Z want brands to allow them to co-create.
“Today, when we talk about brand building, we’re talking about what a brand stands for, not just defining itself through products and experiences. And we’re talking about two-way engagement without dead ends. and experiences. Each experience leads to another experience or a buy button. And we invite our fans, communities, and consumers to co-create the world of our brand with us. I’ll go.
“We do this not only to ensure that everyone in the world has the right engagement at the right time and the right offer at every relevant touchpoint, but also to Because we want to be able to offer something personalized to people. That’s how we define the evolving way we build brands in this new era.”
randy stripes
CMO
weather company
Learn how to upskill your team to make it more AI-ready:
“I think we need to give our teams time and space and encourage them to experiment at The Weather Company. We encourage people to experiment with both. Also, what inspires someone in the marketing department might work for someone in another department, or vice versa. Therefore, we also encourage working across departments.
“And talking about successes and failures… that’s a big part of the culture. How do we share the wins and… (failures) along the way?” But if we don’t take the time to… It will feel more like just a plus one to the team, rather than a necessity. ”
Drew Panayiotou
chief marketing officer
Keurig Dr Pepper
About the most exciting thing about Creator Space:
“Ad units aren’t inherently great. I mean, as a CMO, I want to say this, but the magic happens when content called ‘ads’ intersects with the creative platform or content associated with it.” .
“What’s interesting to us is that when you look at how content creators are producing content that ties into products and what you’re looking at, it becomes very powerful… As a big brand, the further you move away from this concept, the more you have to buy ad units as an emerging brand.”
Emily Ketchen
Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President
Intelligent Device Group and International Market
lenovo
About creating cross-functional AI teams:
“One of the early things we did was develop an internal committee council on AI and the responsible use of AI in marketing organizations. We convened our security team, communications team, and legal team. , we’ve formed an organization completely based on understanding AI and using it properly. So what we did was to understand what marketing organizations wanted to know more about in the context of AI. , a survey of marketing organizations.
“We took it a step further and bought a license. We hired phenomenal trainers and are taking the 7th of 11 courses that marketers take. So the bottom line is: We want to democratize information about AI, establish a responsible way to market within AI, and teach marketers the right way to do it, how to get in, and how to get a license.
“We’re moving towards things like instant engineering and curation and eventually libraries, right? Because if someone else understands the prompt, why should I understand the prompt?” Is there? We’re not in the single-source realm of personalization, but our experience here leads us to this.”
mark weinstein
chief marketing officer
hilton
On the need for brands to focus on creativity:
“What’s distracting is that we see a rush of brands trying to create the next AI thing, but the truth is that most of us won’t be able to create something like that. We’re going to use the tools effectively to tell our story. So my biggest focus right now is… What is the creative collective that we need to share with the world?
“Last year (in the industry) Is it a good idea or a bad idea? That’s what happened. What’s the next waste of time? It’s about debating which tool will win it. It doesn’t matter at this point. What matters is that this wave is coming, and the features are coming… We’re doing the right thing to provide the right information to our customers. You have to tell the story in a way and be prepared for it.”
