#825: From eTail: Zeta Global Chief Growth Officer Ed See on the expanding (and more demanding) role of the CMO

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®

Episode #825 (March 9, 2026): "From eTail: Zeta Global Chief Growth Officer Ed See on the Expanding and More Demanding Role of the CMO"

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Overview

This episode, recorded live at eTail Palm Springs, dives into the evolving and increasingly demanding role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Host Greg Kihlström sits down with Ed See, Chief Growth Officer at Zeta Global, for a deep conversation about how CMOs must move beyond traditional brand stewardship to become architects of change and accountable growth leaders. The discussion explores the impact of AI, measurement transformation, organizational adaptation, and preparing for agentic commerce—all framed in real-world insights from the bleeding edge of marketing technology and enterprise change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Evolving Role of the CMO: From Brand Steward to Architect of Change

• Board Expectations are Rising
  Ed See reflects on his advisory experience at McKinsey, observing that modern CMOs must deliver more than brand management:

  “The old job doesn’t go away. It’s a yes-and. Now, yes, you’re still a brand steward, but you’re also driving change and you’re going to change every aspect of our relationship to our customers.” (03:06 – Ed See)

• The CMO's core job is to create profitable customers, managing a “complex supply chain” that delivers the right customer at the right cost and profit level.

AI: Hype, Realities, and the Path to Value

• Enterprise AI Initiatives and the “Trough of Disillusionment”
  The team commiserates about failed AI projects and pilot purgatory, but Ed suggests the tide is beginning to turn:

  “We’re moving past pilot purgatory and we’re seeing people get results… it will build momentum.” (04:49 – Ed See)

• Four Key Marketing Tasks Enhanced by AI:
  Ed See outlines a framework for AI success:
  1. Recognize a pocket of opportunity with precision.
  2. Reach those opportunities on the journey, focusing on touchpoints, not just channels.
  3. Inform the relevance at the truly personalized level, pinpointing time, place, and intent.
  4. See the results clearly through data and analytics.

  “With AI, I can see and recognize a pocket of opportunity with incredible precision... And I can be able to do it that way. And along the way, I can drop the data to be able to see what the results are.” (06:14 – Ed See)

Measurement: Moving Away from Vanity Metrics

• From Activity to Outcome-Focused KPIs CMOs are encouraged to report metrics to boards that actually matter:

  “We’ve exposed the wrong side of our supply chain and we’re giving metrics that don’t really matter to a board...” (08:42 – Ed See) Instead, focus on:

  • Number of customers produced
  • How profitable they are

  “Think as a business executive first, as a marketing executive second.” (09:29 – Ed See)

Why AI Transformations Fail (and How to Succeed)

• Common Pitfalls:
  • Lack of clear objectives and learning mindset (“build to learn”)
  • Poor data quality; “AI is only going to be as good as what it’s learning from.”
  • Organizational resistance and failure to incentivize adoption
  • “If you’re just automating the processes you have, you’re not going to get your payback… you have to really look at what could it be?” (14:25 – Ed See)
• Learning as an Outcome:
  Boards want outcomes—learning is only valuable when it leads to tangible progress, not activity for its own sake.

  “We’ve got to move from activity to outcome. And an organization that has learned is an outcome.” (15:12 – Ed See)

Preparing for Agentic Commerce

• Brands are advised to double down on customer obsession and to harness technology in novel ways:

  “Become customer obsessed. Build on your history with your customers and understand what this means to them and how to bring it to life. Don’t take a technology and just push it forward...” (15:58 – Ed See)

• Agentic Commerce:
  Using technology to go beyond a digital personal shopper—aiming for individualized payback for customers and measurable business outcomes.

  “Learning has to demonstrate progress. If you get a bad grade, that’s okay. If you’re better prepped for the next test.” (16:55 – Ed See)

Market Sentiment and the Path Forward

• Ed notes a mood full of energy—akin to the early days of the dot-com boom:

  “There’s a huge amount of energy. There’s a huge amount of opportunity for consolidation as well… The energy is here, the excitement is here, tinged a little bit with fear... I think we are coming out of that trough of harder failures, and there’s much, much more learning out there.” (17:06 – Ed See)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Evolving CMO Role:
  “You’re managing one of the most complex supply chains out there… delivering that customer with the right cost, at the right level of profit.” (03:14 – Ed See)
• On AI Disillusionment:
  “We’re moving past pilot purgatory… but we’re moving past that, and we’re seeing people begin to get results.” (04:49 – Ed See)
• On What Boards Want:
  “At the end of the day, what does the marketing need to do? They have to be able to say how many customers did I produce and how profitable were they?” (09:09 – Ed See)
• On Failing Forward:
  “We have to approach it... have a small thesis, prove the thesis and scale. I think people are going for big things because boards are pressuring them... but the path to get there... will take experimentation.” (13:03 – Ed See)
• On Organizational Buy-In:
  “This is threatening. You have to both inspire, encourage, and really incent people to embrace this...” (14:08 – Ed See)
• On Agentic Commerce:
  “Make sure that you’ve got something there in mind that you can take above and beyond to have the payback for your customers as individuals, your customers as a whole, and your business as a whole.” (15:58 – Ed See)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Evolving Board Expectations for CMOs (02:27 – 03:59)
• AI Adoption, Failures, and Learnings (03:59 – 07:10)
• The Role of Data and Platforms in Marketing Value (07:32 – 08:11)
• KPIs Boards Care About & Measurement Shifts (08:11 – 09:29)
• Why Enterprise AI Initiatives Fail (12:13 – 14:40)
• Learning and Experimentation as Organizational Outcomes (14:40 – 15:29)
• Advice for Retailers Preparing for Agentic Commerce (15:29 – 16:55)
• Market Energy, Consolidation & Next Steps (17:06 – 18:06)
• Staying Agile as a Leader (18:06 – 18:42)

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Wrap-up

Ed See’s insights frame the CMO as both a value creator and a catalyst for organizational agility. The conversation emphasizes learning through experimentation, outcome-focused measurement, the necessity of true data quality, and the importance of adopting AI not just as an automation tool but as a foundation for customer-centered transformation. The episode is an engaging, actionable listen for marketing leaders aiming to lead their organizations through technological and cultural change.

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Transcript

[Greg Kilstrom]

The agile brand.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on

[Greg Kilstrom]

Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind

[Podcast Announcer]

the brands you know and love.

[Greg Kilstrom]

I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or Follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can

[Podcast Announcer]

find us as well.

[Greg Kilstrom]

And make sure you check out our sponsor Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in.

[Host/Interviewer]

As a marketing leader, is your primary job to persuade human customers or are you now preparing to negotiate directly with our AI agents? Agility requires marketing leaders to not only react to market changes, but to become the primary architects of that change within the enterprise. It's about transforming the marketing function from a cost center into the accountable growth engine for the entire business. Today we're recording from ETEL Palm Springs and we're going to talk about the expanding and frankly, more demanding role of the cmo. It's a topic that's front and center

[Podcast Announcer]

here at etel where many are discussing

[Host/Interviewer]

how marketing leaders must evolve beyond traditional brand stewardship to become true architects of change, driving cross functional growth, owning the P and L impact to their investments, and steering the organization through continuous transformation. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Ed Sie, Chief Growth

[Greg Kilstrom]

Officer at Zeta Global.

[Host/Interviewer]

Ed, welcome to the show.

[Ed Sie]

Thank you. Great to see you.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. Before we dive in, why don't you start with a little background on yourself and your role at Zeta.

[Ed Sie]

Absolutely. I've been at Zeta just about a year now. I came over from McKinsey where I was helping lead the CMO and marketing practice businesses. And what I'm doing at Zeta is really helping set our go to market, change our position and accelerate how we're viewed in the market and really make AI agentic and all those other pieces come together and come to life for the CMO in a way that actually makes sense, delivers value, and allows them to really transcend just the bits and the bytes and all those other things and say, how do I work with my agencies differently? How do I work with my organizations differently and what can the Zeta capabilities add to on top of that?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. And I mean, all of that is so top of mind, as you well know. Right, right. There's no one not talking about it. Right. So. So let's, let's start a little bit at the, at the, at the top, so to speak, and talk from the strategic level. And as you mentioned, you spent eight years as, as partner at McKinsey from that vantage point. How have you seen, you know, we're certainly hearing, I talk with a lot of CMOs and, and at the marketing level. What do you think from the board level, you know, board expectations of CMOs evolving from really being a brand steward to becoming this kind of architect of change that enables all these things you just mentioned?

[Ed Sie]

Absolutely. And for all the years that I've been working with marketers, advising marketers, it's really never, the old job doesn't go away. It's a yes. And so now, yes, you're still a brand steward, but you're also driving change and you're going to change every aspect of our relationship to our customers. At the end of the day, at some level, this pulls marketers back to what they originally were. What is your job as a marketer? It is to create profitable customers. You're managing one of the most complex supply chains out there, delivering that customer with the right cost, at the right level of profit and delivering that to the organization. A lot of times we've drifted to being chief advertising officers, chief comms officers, lots of those things. But at the end of the day, what we need to do is deliver profitable customers. If the customer is profitable, your ROI is good.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. And of course, a lot of this change that's happening lately, you know, you can't escape talk of AI. Of course, there's also a lot of talk about AI initiatives not being, let's just say, 100% successful to be nice. So, you know, a lot of these enterprise AI initiatives are stalling. So, you know, where do you see, what's the disconnect? Where's the biggest common misconception? And what do AI leaders need to do to kind of get over some of those things?

[Ed Sie]

That's an excellent question, and it's a very good assessment of the state of the market. But we should be a little bit kind to ourselves. This is moving incredibly rapidly. And if we go back to the dot com bubble and everything else, where things are moving what we thought super fast, then it stalled for a while.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Ed Sie]

And we're going through that same trough of disillusionment, all the different terms that you might want to say for it, but there will be that for a while. But we're moving past pilot purgatory and we're seeing people begin to get results and those will be small, they will begin to scale, and they will really, I believe, and I believe it's happening now, build momentum.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yep.

[Ed Sie]

And just as with.com, you'll see some things that we didn't expect and we'll learn from that. And we have to be willing to take the learnings when we say things stall, when we say things fail. There's a lot of learning to be taken from that, both from how you approach things organizationally, how as a cmo, you use this to really accelerate the four things that you need to do. So, you know, I was saying about profitable customers. To do that, as a marketer, I have to do two big things. I have to set preference, and I don't care whether you're selling cars, B2B, whatever set preference for your product, you also have to really be able to do it at the price point that you expect. So really, can you manage your preference and manage a premium underneath that as a marketer? And stripping away all the noise and not making it simplistic, but hopefully making it simple, You've got to be able to recognize a pocket of opportunity. You have to be able to reach that pocket of opportunity. You have to be able to inform the relevance to that pocket of opportunity, and you gotta be able to see the results.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Ed Sie]

What I see successful CMOS doing is saying, how do I get AI to help me with each of those four areas? With AI, I can see and recognize a pocket of opportunity with incredible precision. I can reach them on the journey and manage touch points as opposed to channels. I can inform the relevance, but not just based upon a soft Persona or even a quantitative segmentation. It's about being able to reach somebody at a true personalized level. The time, the place, the moment, all the things that truly signal intent. And I can be able to do it that way. And along the way, I can drop the data to be able to see what the results are. That's where I see marketers who are breaking it down that way, really becoming successful. They know they can't light it up all at once. But various companies, our own included, hopefully we're beginning to tie the red thread through that.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. And so what's the. I mean, a few components there. I mean, being able to even know the right choices to make as well as to get that feedback loop you're referring to as well. It's not just people, it's also the platforms and the data and all that. You know, what's the role of the data and the platforms in this.

[Ed Sie]

Well, it's been the promise of data forever. And I think if we look backwards, there was business intelligence, there was the first party data aspects, all of these things that really sort of prepared us for this day. And I think now we can actually get the payback of the billions and billions that was spent. I think we now have the ability to have that payback. As a marketer, we've always thought about things as being a conversation delayed over time. It doesn't have to be delayed over time any longer. Whether we're talking chatbots or other things, they're evolving and we'll be able to make this be more meaningful and more relevant because relevance, I believe, is what will actually drive the profitable customers.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. And so from that, the profitable. From the measurement angle, you've noted that boards are demanding clearer proof of contribution margin, things like this. So they're things that maybe marketers weren't always traditionally asked for. Maybe. But what are one or two maybe legacy marketing KPIs that CMOs should maybe deprioritize and to make room for some of these things that boards are expecting?

[Ed Sie]

Well, I think there's a couple of things there and it's a great question. Is it so much that they should stop paying attention to things or maybe they've been reporting the wrong things? Yeah, I think we've exposed the wrong side of our supply chain and we're giving metrics that don't really matter to a board, they matter to us, managing the supply chain. And anybody managing supply chain will have a thousand metrics that they have to look at. But at the end of the day they want to say, how many widgets did I produce and how well did I sell them? The end of the day, what does the marketing need to do? They have to be able to say how many customers did I produce and how profitable were they? And that's what you want to start with. And then if they want to see the work, if they want to see the creative, that's great. Show it to them after you show the results.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Sie]

Think as a business, business executive first, as a marketing executive second.

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[Podcast Announcer]

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[Podcast Announcer]

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[Greg Kilstrom]

so when those enterprise AI initiatives that let's say are, you know, less successful than others, let's just say they fail to some degree at least. I always have to couch that for some reason. But you know, when these initiatives fail to reach their potential, you know, is that what's to blame? I know there's a million use cases in a million different scenarios, but, you know, is it a technology fail? Is it a failure of measurement? What is typically happening here?

[Ed Sie]

So I think there's a couple of general buckets that I would look at there. I think sometimes it's not really spending enough time to say, what's the real goal and objective? And rather than just tossing it over to AI, really laying it out and saying, what was my objective? And along the way making sure that you saw where it went sideways. It's about build to learn. And I think we are rushing to it because we see the promise. We're not necessarily building to learn. As marketers, we should understand, we do understand experimentation. We still have to approach it that way, have a small thesis, prove the thesis and scale. I think people are going for big things because boards are pressuring them because there's been so much hype and there's realistic aspects to that hype. But the path to get there, to really infuse this into an organization, will take experimentation with your organization as well as with the technology as well as with the data. So I see it missing that. I see us also not really knowing how strong is our data. AI is only going to be as good as what it's earning from. And if we weren't that good at producing profitable customers, before you have to start saying, how do I supplement that data to enable the AI to power things? And the final piece is the organization. And that piece is, this is threatening.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Sie]

And you have to both inspire, encourage, and really incent people to embrace this behind that piece. Also, there's a second theme within that overall bucket, which is if you're just automating the processes you have, you're not going to get your payback.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Ed Sie]

You really have to say, what could it be with the new capabilities of AI? You know, it's the old thing. If you ask somebody who was driving a horse and buggy what they want, they want a faster horse. Yeah, yeah. We have to really look. And with this, what could it be?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, well, and you bring up a great point from the learning perspective as well, because anyone who's run an experiment knows that 100% of experiments are not successful. Right. So is learning a KPI that boards are getting more comfortable? You know, because again, you can, you can quote, unquote, fail and yet learn a ton of either what to do or not to do.

[Ed Sie]

I'm going to say something that may be unpopular as marketers on occasion, we like to show that we're splashing in the pool.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Sure, sure.

[Ed Sie]

We've got to move from activity to outcome. And an organization that has learned is an outcome. We probably don't want to show the learning. We want to say what the learning has done, what impact does it have, and what impact does it promise?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're here at Etail. Beautiful location, lots of stuff going on. Lots of lear going on as well. Looking ahead from your perspective, certainly agentic commerce is kind of the. Lots of conversations around it, lots of work to be done. Still, what is one thing that retail brands here at ETEL should be doing to prepare for this?

[Ed Sie]

Wow. One thing.

[Greg Kilstrom]

It can be two.

[Ed Sie]

Okay, thank you. Now we have a broad set. I think that one of the big things here is, and this is going to sound terribly obvious, become customer obsessed. Build on your history with your customers and understand what this means to them and how to bring it to life. Don't take a technology and just push it forward. Understand how the technology can become better than a classic personal shopware. Make sure that you've got something there in mind that you can take above and beyond to have the payback for your customers as individuals, your customers as a whole, and your business as a whole. And say, how do I create this so that the gentrification has a payoff and something that you can actually instrument to see that you're making the progress again. Going back to learning. Learning has to demonstrate progress. If you get a bad grade, that's okay. If you're better prepped for the next test.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, absolutely. So as we wrap up here, I know we're kind of early days of Etail here. Still a bit to go. But what's, what's. What are you looking forward to most here?

[Ed Sie]

Well, it's been exciting just the, you know, as people are talking about what does AI do for loyalty? What does AI. What does agentic do for agentic commerce itself? Everybody here, I think, is going back to the days that I saw back in the.com boom. They're going to be experimenting. There's a huge amount of energy. There's a huge amount of opportunity for consolidation as well. There's going to be all those movements that we've seen before, but the energy is here, the excitement is here, tinged a little bit with fear. But I think that folks are excited. I think they see the value. I think we are coming out of that trough of harder failures, and there's much, much more learning out there, and there's enough people here with diverse perspectives, diverse capabilities that I think are going to make a difference. And again, it will help every retailer be able to say, okay, how do I do this to drive my business to influence what I'm taking to market and, you know, going back to the basics, how I improve my recency, frequency, monetization.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, love it. Love it. Well, last question for you before we wrap up here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?

[Ed Sie]

I'm here.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, love it.

[Ed Sie]

Yeah. One of the things here is there's certainly, you know, understanding where the technology is going, understanding these other pieces, but looking at every touch point and channel that humans are interacting in and saying what's the evolution there and what's the evolution of the segments within that? And saying how as marketers can we continue to use that to be part of the way we communicate through a series of small nudges to create those profitable customers?

[Podcast Announcer]

Yeah.

[Ed Sie]

Love it.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Well, again, I'd like to thank Ed C, Chief Growth Officer at Zeta Global for joining the show. You can learn more about Ed, Zeta Global and ETEL by following the links in the show notes.

This episode is brought to you by Texas. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn [e-mail] and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you liked the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just just visit gregkillstrom.com that's G R E G K-I H L S T R O M.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.

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