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

In this episode of Frontier CMO, Vineet Mehra, Chief Growth Officer at Chime, joins Josh Spanier to unpack what it takes to lead marketing through the next platform shift. Drawing on a career that spans Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Silicon Valley, Vineet shares how CMOs must evolve from brand managers into capital allocators who drive growth by effectively managing where dollars are deployed. To do this successfully, they must become "balance sheet literate" and learn to speak the "love language" of the CFO—specifically focusing on unit economics, payback periods, and the marginal return on every incremental dollar spent. 

Vineet breaks down how Chime has restructured marketing around AI-enabled teams, in-housed creative and production, and redesigned customer support - turning automation into speed, savings into reinvestment, and execution into a competitive advantage. His thesis: perfect execution is table stakes; growth comes from strategy, taste, and how you design the system.

Whether you’re navigating the pressure of AI adoption, balancing brand with direct response, or trying to stay relevant as automation accelerates, this episode offers a practical framework for building durable growth in a world where leadership, not technology, is the real differentiator.

00:00:00 — CFO + marketing: CAC, payback, unit economics

00:01:00 — Intro: the CMO role is changing

00:02:00 — What marketers must change for the next era

00:04:00 — What stays the same: brand story + taste00:05:30 — In-housing creative with top talent

00:08:00 — AI makes creative faster (from boards to near-finished)

00:10:30 — Biggest benefits: speed, savings, bigger ideas00:12:00 — “Chief Growth Officer” and owning the full funnel

00:15:00 — Full-stack marketer + systems architect

00:19:00 — Using AI agents at Chime (customer support example)00:25:00 — How to build an AI-ready culture

00:29:00 — Advice to traditional companies

00:30:00 — Fun: AI + pizza00:33:00 — Brand vs performance = one system

00:35:00 — Handling end-of-quarter CFO pressure00:38:00 — Signal vs noise + wrap-up takeaways

Marketing is being rebuilt from the infrastructure up. Search is changing. Commerce is becoming agent-driven. Measurement is being redefined in real time. And the line between engineering and marketing is disappearing.

In this episode of Frontier CMO, host Josh Spanier sits down with Vidhya Srinivasan, Head of Ads and Commerce at Google. As the leader responsible for Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Shopping, Merchant Center, Gemini integrations, and payments, Vidhya is helping architect how the modern marketplace actually works.

The conversation explores what “agentic commerce” really means, why the Universal Commerce Protocol could reshape how brands interface with AI systems, and how Gemini is already rewiring performance, creative, and intent matching across the ad stack. Vidhya explains why CMOs don’t need to code — but must become technologically fluent — and outlines a five-part leadership blueprint for navigating AI transformation with optimism, speed, and accountability.

00:00 – The Vision: Reducing the “Commute Cost” from Desire to Purchase

00:28 – Engineering Meets Marketing: Why the Worlds Are Merging

01:31 – Inside Google Ads & Commerce: The Scale of the Role

03:13 – Agentic Commerce & the Universal Commerce Protocol Explained

04:29 – AI Search, Longer Queries & Reimagining Ads

05:05 – YouTube Creators, Culture & the Creator Partnership Hub

06:18 – How Gemini Powers Google’s Ad Systems

07:06 – Why Trust Is the Foundation of AI Advertising

07:51 – What CMOs Must Understand in the AI Era

14:19 – Measurement, First-Party Data & Cracking Attribution

21:38 – Leading AI Transformation: A 5-Point Playbook

25:32 – The Holy Grail: The Right Ad, Right Person, Right Moment

Marketing is colliding with a creator economy that looks more like television, community, and culture, rather than what we used to think of when we think of social media.

In this episode of Frontier CMO, Josh Spanier, VP of AI & Marketing Strategy at Google, sits down with Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, creators and hosts of Colin & Samir, to unpack how the creator landscape has fundamentally changed, and what CMOs can do to get creator partnerships right.

They explore why attention without connection is a dead end, how creators have become the arbiters of taste, and why brands must stop treating creator partnerships like performance ads and start building long-term, value-aligned relationships.

A practical, forward-looking discussion on creators, community, and the shift from attention to connection.