What real C-suite leaders are doing as traditional tactics collapse—and how their shifts offer a roadmap for marketers facing uncertainty, zero-click funnels, and ROI pressure.
Something’s breaking—and the smartest executives know it.
SEO isn’t delivering traffic. Paid ads cost more and convert less. AI is absorbing top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel behavior before your site ever gets touched. The old content-to-conversion playbooks are falling apart, but most marketing teams are still clinging to them, hoping performance rebounds.
Behind the scenes, however, a quiet group of C-suite leaders is already moving. Not with panic—but with precision. They’re rewriting their strategies, reallocating budgets, and letting go of outdated assumptions.
If you’re a marketing leader trying to justify budget, show ROI, or just figure out what actually works now—these five executives offer more than inspiration. They offer a path forward.
1. Raja Rajamannar — Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Mastercard
Move: Reallocated 70% of marketing budget to experiential and creator-led campaigns.
“People don’t remember the ads. They remember the experiences.”
Rajamannar has been sounding the alarm for years about the decline of traditional advertising. In 2025, he backed that philosophy with a massive budget shift—moving nearly three-quarters of Mastercard’s marketing dollars into experiential marketing, live activations, and creator collaborations.
This isn’t about abandoning digital altogether. It’s about reallocating spend to areas that build memory, emotion, and brand equity—especially in an age where digital ads are increasingly ignored, skipped, or invisible.
The lesson: If your marketing doesn’t create lasting emotional connection, it’s just noise. Stop measuring volume. Start measuring resonance.
2. Poppy Lissiman — Founder, Poppy Lissiman (Luxury Fashion)
Move: Cut digital ad spend, doubled down on organic influencer and brand storytelling.
“We just weren’t seeing a return. It was time to stop pretending that Meta would save us.”
Lissiman isn’t alone. Many emerging and mid-market DTC brands are pulling back from Meta and Google, not because of lack of belief—but because of lack of results. Rising CPMs, disappearing visibility, and unclear attribution have turned what was once a reliable engine into a money pit.
Instead, she focused on creator partnerships, customer community, and storytelling through brand-owned platforms. The goal isn’t always to scale—but to connect, differentiate, and endure.
The lesson: If your ad spend feels like a slot machine, it’s time to walk away. Build your audience—don’t rent someone else’s.
3. Jill Cress — Chief Marketing & Experience Officer, H&R Block (Formerly Mastercard & PayPal)
Move: Reframed “performance marketing” as a long-term brand-building engine.
“We realized we couldn’t performance our way into long-term trust.”
Cress brings the rare perspective of having led marketing at both financial services and fintech brands. What she’s realized, especially at H&R Block, is that short-term acquisition metrics often disguise deeper disconnects. Clicks don’t mean trust. Traffic doesn’t mean impact.
Her team shifted toward data-informed storytelling, customer experience optimization, and brand platforms that actually compound value over time.
The lesson: If your only metric is lead volume, you’ll always be chasing the next campaign. But if your focus is on strategic clarity and emotional salience, you build something worth defending.
4. Ben Jones — Director of Creative Works, Google
Move: Advocated for fewer, higher-impact creative assets that align with intent.
“We need fewer assets with more clarity, not more assets with more noise.”
Jones is helping redefine how Google supports brand marketers and agencies—especially in the AI age, where anyone can produce hundreds of variations at scale. The risk? Marketers drown in their own output, with little thought to whether it actually aligns with customer needs or funnel moments.
His stance is simple: volume isn’t strategy. And complexity doesn’t equal creativity. As marketing gets more automated, human clarity becomes the differentiator.
The lesson: Just because AI can generate it doesn’t mean your audience wants it. Quality, clarity, and timing still matter—and maybe more than ever.
5. David Edelman — Former CMO, Aetna | Marketing Transformation Advisor
Move: Helping CxOs restructure their entire marketing operation for the AI era.
“Most marketing orgs are optimized for 2015. That’s the real problem.”
Edelman’s post-CMO work focuses on internal transformation—helping executive teams bridge the massive gap between today’s buying behavior and yesterday’s org charts. His central thesis: the tools aren’t the problem. The system is.
He urges leaders to reassess how marketing integrates with product, sales, and customer success—to treat the buyer journey as an ecosystem, not a funnel.
The lesson: If your infrastructure is still built for traffic and MQLs, you’re measuring ghosts. Tear down the old funnel, and rebuild around how buyers actually behave now.
What These Executives Are Actually Doing
They’re not just pivoting campaigns.
They’re not tweaking budgets.
They’re doing what your team is afraid to do:
- Letting go of tactics that no longer deliver
- Investing in systems built for this environment, not the last one
- Focusing on clarity, not just speed
- Making hard calls about what marketing is really supposed to be
In a world of zero-click search, AI-overwritten TOFU, and escalating paid media costs, these leaders aren’t guessing—they’re acting.
The UCS Perspective: Strategy First. System Always.
What unites these CxOs isn’t a trend. It’s a mindset.
They’re building strategy from the buyer’s point of view.
They’re aligning their message, funnel, and budget to outcome, not just output.
And they’re proving what The ROI Solution™ and MSMS™ have been built for:
Struggle-driven strategy isn’t optional anymore. It’s how you survive.
At UCS, we help marketing leaders make the same shifts—without guessing, and without wasting time on legacy tactics that no longer work.
If you’re ready to rebuild your system, stop defending broken metrics, and move forward with a strategy built for the AI era—start here.