Frontier CMO Podcast by Think with Google

Marketing is entering its most complex era yet. AI is accelerating everything—but the real challenge is making sense of a system that is fragmenting faster than ever.

In this episode of Frontier CMO, Josh Spanier sits down with Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at L’Oréal Groupe, who leads digital transformation across the world’s largest beauty company. With more than 90,000 employees and dozens of global brands, Asmita is responsible for navigating how AI, data, and creativity reshape marketing at enterprise scale.

The conversation explores why fragmentation defines modern marketing—from the consumer journey to the marketing organization itself—and how leaders must respond by building systems that scale learning. Asmita shares how L’Oréal has operationalized transformation through massive upskilling, AI-powered content creation, and a culture built around what she calls the “dual muscle” of math and magic: the balance of technology, creativity, speed, and brand building. 

For CMOs and founders navigating a moment where AI is reshaping every layer of marketing—from insight to creation to commerce—this conversation offers a practical blueprint for leading transformation while protecting the creative heart of the brand.

00:00 – The Marketer’s Dilemma: Fragmentation in the AI Era

01:00 – Meet Asmita Dubey & L’Oréal’s “Math + Magic” Philosophy

02:00 – A Global Career & How Background Shapes Leadership

03:30 – Growing Up in a Family of Teachers & Lifelong Learning

04:45 – Leading Through Influence in a Complex Organization

06:00 – Inside L’Oréal’s Massive Marketing Ecosystem

07:30 – Stakeholders Then vs. Now: The Expanding Marketing Universe

09:00 – Marketing Meets Engineering: The Rise of Beauty Tech

10:30 – Staying Ahead: Culture, Curiosity & Continuous Reinvention

11:45 – Building an Entrepreneurial Culture at Scale

13:00 – Upskilling 30,000+ Marketers & Skill-Based Organizations

15:00 – L’Oréal’s Digital Transformation: From 5% to 30% E-Commerce

17:00 – Changing Consumer Behavior & New Operating Models

19:00 – Measurement Matters: Balancing Short-Term ROI & Brand Equity

21:00 – Lessons from China: Speed, Scale & Consumer-First Thinking

23:30 – Agentic Commerce & the Future of Beauty Shopping

26:00 – Why Fragmentation Is the Biggest Marketing Challenge

29:00 – AI’s Role in Rebundling Marketing & Breaking Silos

31:00 – AI-Powered Consumer & Marketer Journeys Explained

33:00 – Inside L’Oréal’s AI Tools: Creaitech & Content at Scale

35:00 – What’s Next: The Future of Marketing in the AI Era

37:00 – Rapid Fire: Signal vs. Noise (AI, Influencers, Innovation)

40:00 – Final Takeaways: Fragmentation, Learning Systems & Dual Muscle

Marketing is no longer downstream from product. It is the operating system.

In this episode of Frontier CMO, Josh Spanier sits down with Emma Grede, founding partner and Chief Product Officer at SKIMS, Co Founder & CEO of Good American, and Co Founder of Off Season, to unpack what it really takes to build durable brands in a culture obsessed with moments. Emma shares why product discipline matters more than hype, how to operationalize cultural relevance, and why speed is the ultimate competitive advantage.

The conversation explores AI adoption inside fast-scaling companies, where automation should power the business, and where it should never touch creative. Emma also reflects on talent partnerships, decision velocity, resilience, and why the best leaders aren’t the ones who make perfect decisions, but the ones who make more of them.

For founders and CMOs navigating growth where culture, commerce, and AI collide, this is a blueprint for building brands that last.

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