Marketing leaders aren't just building pipeline today. They're building trust, velocity, and resilience. Short-term revenue targets are table stakes. Long-term brand equity is the multiplier.
The most effective CMOs know that brand and demand are not competing priorities. Together, they form a unified strategy for sustainable growth.
To uncover how leading executives are navigating this balance, we asked Pavilion’s 50 CMOs to Watch:
- Why is brand important to your marketing strategy?
- How are you using AI in your marketing efforts today?
- How are you measuring the impact of AI?
Their answers reveal a simple truth: Leaders who invest intentionally in brand and demand (and who harness AI to move faster and smarter) outperform the rest.
Additional resource: Looking to accelerate your impact in a new CMO role? Explore Pavilion’s 90-day onboarding framework for new CMOs to build early momentum with confidence.
Building a Brand that Fuels Growth
Brand isn't a nice-to-have. It's a competitive moat. A strong brand builds trust, shortens sales cycles, lifts conversion rates, and drives expansion. Without it, every lead is harder to win, and every deal takes longer to close.
Amanda McGuckin Hager, CMO of TrueDialog, put it simply:
“If we don't continue to invest in those brand-building initiatives, then no one will know we exist.”
Yet many marketing teams still underinvest in brand, focusing only on the bottom of the funnel. Top CMOs think differently. They know brand and revenue are not separate priorities. Without consistent brand-building efforts, from market presence to customer advocacy, the pipeline eventually dries up.
Investing in brand is an investment in future revenue. It is how organizations move from scrambling for leads to commanding their market space. Joan Jenkins, CMO of Mindtickle, believes that brand is what gives demand generation its power. She explains that “a strong brand not only builds trust, but it also improves conversion rates and increases win rates.”
The best CMOs know that building brand isn’t about guesswork. It starts with listening.
For a deeper dive into the tension between brand and demand, check out the Topline episode “The B2B Marketing Identity Crisis.” In it, Sam Jacobs, Asad Zaman, and AJ Bruno unpack how short-term pipeline pressure is reshaping the CMO role, and what leaders can do to make brand central to go-to-market strategy.
The Hidden Power of Brand Differentiation
True differentiation does not come from internal assumptions. It comes from your customers. Savvy marketing leaders regularly ask their customers why they choose them.
Nataly Kelly, CMO of Zappi, advises:
“Ask your customers what makes you different. They will give you your brand differentiation.”
The answers — whether mission, service, or values — become the brand’s authentic edge. When your differentiation comes from the market, it sticks. It also fuels demand generation, creates defensibility, and makes price less of a battleground.
Short-term lead generation without strategic brand investment is a treadmill. Natasha Geldard, CMO of Avolve Software, explains that “if you focus only on short-term lead generation, you’ll always be chasing rather than leading the market.” Brand differentiation is how you step off and pull ahead.
Brand differentiation is more than a messaging exercise—it’s a leadership mandate. It shapes how you show up in the boardroom, how you align your teams, and how you drive long-term growth. But owning that mandate takes more than instinct.
That’s where CMO School comes in. From building CEO trust and proving marketing’s ROI to leading brand and demand as one strategy, CMO School equips modern marketing leaders with the tools to scale smarter and lead with confidence.
How Pavilion’s CMOs to Watch Are Using AI to Accelerate Brand and Demand
AI is not replacing marketers. It is helping them move faster and focus on higher-value work, such as strategic planning, creative development, and market insights.
Amanda McGuckin Hager, CMO of TrueDialog, shared that they are “using AI to build our ABM account lists, drive highly personalized email at scale, and gather competitive intelligence.” The result is faster execution, better targeting, and more time for strategic growth work.
Marketing leaders are also thoughtful about how they use AI. It is not about chasing trends, but about enhancing their teams’ impact without diluting brand voice or customer connection.
Christine Royston, CMO of Wrike, explained:
“Our focus is really on reclaiming time. It is not about doing more work. It is about empowering your teams to focus on the right things and deliver better work.”
The best marketing organizations are not just experimenting with AI. They are building smarter, more focused teams around it.
For an additional resource, dive deep into how 5,000 B2B and B2C marketers are investing and implementing AI with Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report.
Measuring AI's Real Impact
Adopting AI is straightforward. Proving its value is where the real challenge lies.
The best marketing leaders are not chasing shiny tools. They focus on how AI improves time-to-market, drives pipeline, and accelerates revenue. As Nataly Kelly, CMO of Zappi, puts it, “The number one metric I look at for AI impact is daily active usage.” For her, usage, integration into workflows, and ongoing learning are what signal real value.
Christine Royston, CMO of Wrike, also shared:
“We focus on time reclaimed. AI allows team members to offload repetitive work and spend more energy on strategic, high-impact projects.”
When AI is embedded into the way teams work and consistently drives better outcomes, it stops being a tool and starts becoming a competitive advantage.
Takeaways
- Brand builds velocity: A trusted brand shortens the path from awareness to revenue.
- Customer insight drives differentiation: Authentic feedback shapes unbeatable positioning.
- AI accelerates execution: But only when measured wisely. True impact is evident in speed, efficiency, and pipeline growth.
- Balance matters: Top leaders invest equally in fueling near-term revenue and compounding long-term brand equity.
Thank you
This blog was made possible by Pavilion’s 50 CMOs to Watch. Special thanks to these contributors for sharing their insights:
Pavilion’s 2025 CMOs to Watch
Today’s marketing leaders are operating in a fast-changing environment where short-term pipeline pressure often overshadows long-term brand building. The CMO’s influence is under scrutiny, and proving marketing’s true impact has never been more complex.
Yet the most forward-thinking CMOs are rewriting the playbook.
These 50 leaders are balancing brand and demand, elevating marketing beyond sales enablement, and showing that real marketing drives growth—not just leads.
Meet 2025’s CMOs to Watch
