Frontier CMO Podcast by Think with Google

Marketing leadership today is defined by pressure: AI disruption, declining trust in institutions, cultural fragmentation, and relentless growth expectations. In this episode of Frontier CMO, Josh Spanier sits down with Carla Hassan, Chief Marketing Officer of JPMorganChase, who leads more than 3,000 marketers across one of the world’s most recognized financial brands. From her early life shaped by displacement to stewarding a 200+ year-old institution, Carla shares how resilience and clarity shape her leadership. The conversation explores why “you don’t build trust with a tagline,” how trust is earned locally at scale, and what it really takes to modernize a marketing organization. Carla unpacks how AI is transforming roles from writers to editors, why layering AI onto broken processes fails, and how CMOs must rethink org design, workflows, and decision rights. For leaders navigating complexity inside large systems, this episode is a candid look at transformation, operational discipline, and building durable brands in uncertain times. 00:00 – Training Teams in the AI Era 01:00 – The Pressure of Being a Modern CMO 02:00 – Carla Hassan’s Journey & Resilience 04:30 – Global vs Local Marketing: Getting It Right 06:30 – Why Brand Consistency is Non-Negotiable 08:30 – Cultural Differences in Money & Messaging 10:30 – Building a Purpose-Driven Global Brand 11:30 – Trust, Transparency & Big Institutions 13:30 – What Modern Marketing Looks Like Today 17:00 – How AI is Reshaping Marketing Teams 20:30 – Speed, Testing & Real-Time Content Feedback 40:30 – Final Takeaways: Trust, AI & Local Relevance

Marketing is being reshaped by forces far bigger than any single campaign: AI, geopolitical fragmentation, economic pressure, and collapsing agency business models. In this episode of Frontier CMO, host Josh Spanier sits down with a legend of the advertising world: Sir Martin Sorrell. As an architect of the industry over the last 50 years, Sir Martin shares his unvarnished perspective on where marketing power is shifting now and what CMOs must do to stay relevant. The conversation breaks down why traditional agency holding companies are struggling, why AI adoption is being driven more by CFOs than CMOs, and where true transformation is already happening at scale. 00:00 – The Power of Branding in a Changing World 01:19 – “Two Drunks and a Lamppost”: On Agency Consolidation 03:34 – What CMOs Can Learn from Ogilvy & the Saatchis 07:42 – Who’s Building the New Marketing Paradigm? 10:13 – Why Agencies Are Falling Behind in the AI Era 13:41 – Why the CFO Is Driving AI Adoption 16:53 – Creativity’s AI Golden Age? 18:45 – The GM Model: AI at Scale in Action 22:43 – The Skills the Next CMO Must Master 28:53 – Is the Long-Term Brand Era Over? 35:00 – Rapid Fire: AI, Agencies & Overcapacity 37:44 – The Most Exciting Market in the World Right Now

Vineet Mehra, Chief Growth Officer at Chime and veteran marketer across CPG and tech, explains how CMOs must become capital allocators fluent in unit economics. He discusses in-housing creative, using AI to speed production and scale teams, and redesigning support with agents. Short, strategic, and systems-minded ideas about balancing taste, automation, and financial rigor.

Vidhya Srinivasan, Head of Ads and Commerce at Google, who builds AI-driven ad and commerce systems. She unpacks agentic commerce and the Universal Commerce Protocol. She explains how Gemini reshapes intent, creative, and performance. She stresses tech fluency for marketers, the role of first-party data, and leadership principles for AI transformation.

Samir Chaudry, creator and advisor known for creator-focused commentary and community-first strategies, and Colin Rosenblum, creator-analyst behind long-form creator coverage and Publish Press, discuss how marketing must shift from attention to connection. They explore creators as taste makers, AI in production, packaging long-term brand partnerships, community co-creation, and measuring deep engagement.

Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerMedia known for attention-driven marketing and creative-led agencies. He argues creative, not media, is the bottleneck. Short takes cover day-to-day attention trading, merging production with media, platform-native creative, and how AI reshapes who wins in marketing.

Norm de Greve, Chief Growth Officer at General Motors, shares insights from his transformative career in major brands. He discusses GM’s resurgence post-bankruptcy, emphasizing the need for both short-term sales and long-term brand building. Norm reveals how removing $2 billion in tobacco revenue at CVS allowed for brand reinvention and aligns marketing with corporate strategy. He stresses the importance of creativity in the AI era and highlights the launch of Metropolis, an AI platform designed to generate brand-aware content.

Shelly Palmer, CEO of The Palmer Group and expert in AI and marketing, joins to discuss the evolving role of CMOs amid technological transformations. She emphasizes that AI is a leadership challenge rather than a mere tech shift, urging marketers to reorganize around human-agent partnerships. The podcast dives into the identity threat posed by automation, differentiates between human-inspired creativity and AI production, and stresses the importance of continuous adaptation in marketing strategies. Palmer also predicts a future where CMOs transition from tactical roles to strategic leaders.

In the AI era, marketing should be unstoppable, and its future is being written in real time. Frontier CMO talks to the leaders shaping it. Join Joshua Spanier, Google's VP of AI and Marketing Strategy, in his deep-dives with the leaders, marketers, technologists who are rewriting the playbook. Welcome to the Frontier. New episodes drop January 2026. We’re asking the questions others won’t: How do marketing leaders prove ROI to executives? What does a modern marketing strategy look like when AI and analytics are reshaping the rules every day? Each episode of Frontier CMO explores the real-world playbooks leaders are using to navigate the AI-powered landscape.  From marketing trends and branding breakthroughs to advancements in digital marketing, social media, content marketing, and B2B marketing, Frontier CMO breaks down what’s working and what’s not to help you navigate this new landscape. Subscribe to Frontier CMO on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to get alerted when the first episode drops in January.

This week on Modern Marketers, Tombras president Dooley Tombras joins Google's Joshua Spanier and Bethany Poole to discuss being the third generation to lead the family business, what it means to be an independent agency focusing on data and creativity, and the partnership with PODS and Google to create an impossible ad campaign using generative AI. Dooley shares a few favorite campaigns from his 20 years at Tombras, how he balances classic marketing metrics with modern approaches, and what the next five years look like for the agency.