The CMO Hot Seat

At Cannes Lions 2026, Claritas hosted a live panel unlike any other. CMO Kim Storin of Zoom put her toughest real-world growth challenges on the table. Then five expert leaders solved them in real time. No slides. No scripts. Just sharp thinking and collaborative problem-solving in action.

Kim framed the challenge directly: AI has changed how buyers start their discovery process, especially in B2B. Prospects now begin with LLMs and often avoid talking to a vendor until they are nearly at a shortlist. That shift changes everything about how marketers prove value to a CFO and board. The session brought together perspectives from The Weather Company, Databricks, Oxford Road, Acast, Basis, and Claritas to work through those challenges in real time.

What the Panel Covered

First, the group tackled how to prove incremental lift with a limited budget. Grace Briscoe of Basis pushed back on jumping straight to tactics. She argued that understanding the objective, whether that is acquiring new customers or improving lifetime value, must come first. Don Sklenka of Claritas added a three-phase framework: establish a baseline, get measurement out of the native platforms that grade their own homework, then run a clean control group to isolate AI’s true impact.

In addition, the conversation went deep on audio attribution. Dan Granger of Oxford Road explained that podcast measurement is more achievable than most marketers think. He recommended hold-out groups, redundant surveys, and show-by-show measurement over media mix modeling. Michael Bayston of Acast built on that by describing how technology can marry contextual and deterministic signals to scale campaigns responsibly. Both agreed: either commit to the channel or stay out. Checking the box does not work.

Furthermore, Liz Dobbs of Databricks made the case that the most valuable data set is the one sales actually cares about. Getting marketing and sales aligned on shared metrics, and letting the CRO champion marketing investment to the board, unlocks more credibility than any dashboard. Dani Feore of The Weather Company then showed how temperature deviation from the norm consistently moves conversion rates 25 to 40 percent across categories. For Zoom specifically, extreme weather drives virtual meeting usage within 24 to 48 hours. The panel closed on creative courage, with Kim noting that Zoom’s own brand campaign, built with real comedic talent and a one-sentence influencer brief, drove demand efficiency in ways that were easy to take to the board. AI-powered media optimization matters most when it amplifies bold creative, not when it automates safe decisions faster.