Maura Ginty

This Martechvibe report put words to a lot of conversations I’m having with CMOs right now. Most teams are not trying to chase the next shiny tool. They’re trying to make what they already have actually work together. Too many platforms, too many handoffs, and not enough shared data. When marketing shifts from experimentation to execution, those gaps show up fast. Progress depends less on adding technology and more on simplifying how it’s run and measured. I highly recommend reading! https://lnkd.in/eZTES875

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The best way for internal comms to get a strategic seat at the table? It’s not data (though that helps), or connecting to business goals (should be a given), or lamenting about how you don’t have a seat (doesn’t work, in my experience). In my opinion, the answer is really simple. It’s executive communications. Connect your role to theirs in a way that directly benefits them. For me, the answer is really practical: we recommend that every internal comms manager sends their weekly or biweekly or monthly CEO letters out of Workshop, or whatever email platform you’re using. After the send, come back with a bunch of qualitative and quantitative analytics for those emails. Open rates, click through rates, read time, device type, all of that broken down by department/role/location, a mini listening tour just to get quick feedback, you name it. It doesn’t matter what the open rate is, really. (Our CEO’s emails get a 90% open rate, but that’s a story for a different day.) Typically, with CEOs, you’ll find that they always want it to be higher (no surprise there), and they will often be genuinely surprised by the result. If it’s a high open rate, they might be surprised that their words have that much impact. And if it’s low, they might be surprised that not every employee is receiving the message the way they thought. Either way, that CEO is going to talk to you about that data. They’re going to ask you how to improve their open rate, how to think about the success of that email, and how to reliably reach every employee with these messages. And that’s how you get the chair pulled out! So take a seat. 🪑✨

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Age of Potency - I am completely blow away by Jasmine Bina’s presentation for Amazon. Having just navigated layoffs to change their culture - their decision was all about being able to optimize at the top of the S curve while navigating the bottom. Why? There are three important trends driving our collective need to feel more deeply than ever. Time Trust Work Three things we don’t feel connected to anymore. Work used to define us - how many people are just larping from 9-5? That disconnect + AI is throwing a lot of challenges at culturally led orgs - which is most orgs. The last two decades we were at the top of the S curve - optimizing. It makes sense, many of us are optimized professionals. We reported based on certainty, we chased clear ROI, we built five year plans. The past 20 years we navigated the internet. Now we are navigating AI - we have to re-think everything. AI is re-thinking itself! Now that we are at the bottom of the S curve - we are messy, experimental, creative.. which isn’t our normal way of working. Most plans are one year versus five. In crypto you don’t know what the next six months might bring. As someone scaling a brand in a lower S curve sector - this entire presentation rang true. Navigating ambiguity is with us for another decade. We might as well get used to it. It’s very good. Link to the full video below.

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Most brands don’t have a testing problem, they have a testing structure problem. This article on improving A/B testing for ad copy reinforces something I see often in accounts: teams change too many variables at once, declare a winner, then can’t replicate the result when spend scales. https://lnkd.in/gsUGgtpA If you change the message, hook, format, and audience at the same time, you’re not testing, you’re guessing. I’ve made that mistake before. It usually creates more questions than answers and forces you to retest from scratch. What’s worked best for me: • Isolate one variable at a time • Evaluate stability across placements and spend, not just averages • Build reliable baseline ads before chasing outliers Scaling becomes much easier when you understand why something is working. If a winning ad stopped working tomorrow, would you know why it worked in the first place?

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A heartfelt Screendragon thank you to Emma Turner and Julia Arenson, Co-Founders of IHAR In House Agency Review, for joining our recent webinar “Transform Your In-House Agency: From Execution Mode to Strategic Leadership.” Emma and Julia shared powerful insights on what it really takes to evolve your in-house team into a strategic business partner. Here the Top 10 take aways: 1. Reframe your team’s purpose – from delivery to strategic impact 2. Redesign your operating model for today’s pace and complexity 3. Earn your seat at the table by shaping the brief, not just fulfilling it 4. Operational rigor enables creativity – clear workflows = creative headspace 5. Use AI intentionally to eliminate friction, not add complexity 6. Fix fragmented asset management to unlock global ROI 7. Evolve your KPIs to focus on business outcomes, not output volume 8.Build business acumen within creative teams 9. Start change on the ground, not just in leadership decks 10. Prove your value with data – anecdotal wins aren’t enough To listen to the recording - https://lnkd.in/eXmxUkEt And if you want a written summary - https://lnkd.in/eK_3URUH

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Product Marketing is one of the hardest roles to get useful feedback in. The work sits in the connective tissue of the company between Product, Sales, Marketing, and the market. Which means feedback conversations often default to vague comments like “Great launch” or “Sales isn't using the deck.” In one of my current fractional engagements, we’ve been talking about what PMM feedback should actually look like, the kind that helps product marketers sharpen their judgment, influence, and impact. So I wrote about the PMM review you actually want and the questions you should ask to narrow your reviewer's imagination. https://lnkd.in/ggEb8zgU #productmarketing #gtm #b2bmarketing #marketingleadership

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Substack publication 'The Free Press,' a blog started in 2022, has grown to around 15M a year in revenue, and is now in talks to be acquired by Paramount for $200M (and founder Bari Weiss given an exec role at CBS News). I've predicted blogging is back for several years - thanks mostly to email and the fact that Substack and Beehiiv got distribution right. It turns out independent media can thrive in an environment even when social platforms like this one, Meta and Twitter/X throttle our hyperlinks. I honestly think it's a loss for these products to not show them as often as they do. As many users here are simply less informed, less educated and stuck in algo-generated filter bubbles. Of course, this isn't everyone. The smartest internet users are looking to things like email where there's less algo interference. You hope the big tech platforms catch on and remember hyperlinks are important again, at some point this will be a liability for them jamming the plumbing of the web. Anyway - if you want to start a blog, it's never been a better time. We have so much validation all around us. You can even be well-compensated for your work this time. The internet is great if you play the right games.

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If you read one business book this year -- it should be this one. I watched the thinking behind "Be a Sequoia, Not a Bonsai" develop over years of client work with Nic Darveau. In meeting after meeting, when teams felt stuck despite being disciplined and well run, Nic consistently surfaced the real issue: they were optimizing for control instead of creating conditions for growth. The constraints weren’t usually the market—they were internal habits that felt responsible but quietly capped ambition. This book reflects those conversations. It’s clear, grounded, and experience-driven, and it offers a powerful reminder that meaningful growth comes from space and trust, not constant pruning.

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I’ve always found Joshua Spanier's perspective on the marketing industry incredibly inspiring, so I’m thrilled to see him launching the new "Frontier CMO" podcast by Think with Google. In this series, Josh explores the "frontier" we are currently navigating—a time where we are collectively redefining the future of business and reimagining how marketing works in the era of AI. I'm particularly excited to hear him share his own insights alongside those of other leading CMOs as they discuss how to elevate humanity and create truly helpful experiences for users. If you're looking to understand how the world of marketing is being reshaped, this is a must-listen. Check out the latest episodes at https://lnkd.in/eDFqBgW8 #FrontierCMO #ThinkWithGoogle #MarketingLeadership #AI #GoogleMarketing

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