CMO Real Talk: Growth, AI and What Gen Alpha Really Wants

Dom Nicastro: Today, we’ve got a special episode for CMOs and marketing leaders looking to sharpen their strategies for the rest of 2025. We’re pulling together five key takeaways from a fascinating conversation my colleague Michelle Hawley, Editor at VKTR.com, had with Jim Lecinski on the new rules of marketing for 2025.

Now, if you don’t know Jim, here’s a quick rundown: He’s a Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University, spent 12 years at Google and wrote Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. He’s also the author of The AI Marketing Canvas. With over 30 years in marketing, Jim’s a powerhouse of insights.

So today, we’re going to break down five essential takeaways from his interview—ideas that every chief marketing officer should be thinking about as they navigate the challenging marketing landscape of 2025.

Let’s jump right in.

Marketing Must Be a Growth Engine – Not Just a Branding Play

Dom Nicastro: Let’s start with the biggest priority for any marketing leader—growth. Jim points out that marketers can sometimes lose focus, getting too wrapped up in engagement metrics instead of real business outcomes like revenue, profit, and market share. Let’s hear how he puts it.

Jim Lecinski: Yeah, so I'm glad that you started with growth. Marketing really needs to be a growth engine and drive revenue, profit and share. I think sometimes marketers get a little tripped up and confuse the means and the ends like likes, friends, fans, download, engagement. Those are good things, but those are means to the end of growth. You know, growth is all about the users, right?

The customers, the consumers, whether you're in B2B or B2C. And so staying on top of consumer trends really you being close to your customers is a critical function of marketing. Marketers, truly believe marketing should be the closest group within the firm to the customer and be able to bring the voice of the customer back into manufacturing, R&D, sales team, etc., and represent the customer's interest internally.

Dom Nicastro: So, the big takeaway here? CMOs need to rethink their role—they’re not just brand builders, they should be the customer’s loudest voice inside the company. Every marketing decision should tie back to business growth, and engagement alone won’t cut it.

Related Article: Setting Yourself Up for Success as a Chief Marketing Officer

The 70/20/10 Rule – Balancing Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Strategy

Dom Nicastro: Now, let’s talk about one of the biggest balancing acts every CMO faces—immediate business needs vs. long-term innovation. Jim breaks this down with the 70/20/10 model—a framework for allocating marketing focus and resources.

Jim Lecinski: So we can't take credit for the base level demand. We only can take credit for the incremental lift relative to the costs of a sales marketing and customer service, fully loaded costs. So that's kind of our ultimate goal.

Now, in order to drive that, as you point out, there are near term targets. Many companies have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly targets, as well as annual targets and three to five year plans. And so, you we need to typically balance the short term versus the long term. We'll call it the core versus the adjacent versus the moonshots with a 70/20/10 model whereby 70% of your focus, your resources, your budget, your energy is focused on kind of delivering the immediacy of the business here and now.

Whereas 20 % are thinking about adjacent things, adjacent markets, adjacent customers, adjacent products and services. And 10% are some sort of full diversification, kind of 10x moonshots that make sure that, you know, we're future-proofing ourselves and the business as the landscape will be rapidly changing.

Dom Nicastro: This is gold for CMOs. If you’re spending 100% of your time on today’s business, you’re missing out on future growth opportunities. But if you’re too future-focused, you might not survive long enough to see that innovation pay off. Balance is key.

Related Article: Preparing CMOs for the Next Decade of Marketing Leadership

AI-Driven Omnichannel Marketing is the Future

Dom Nicastro: Let’s move into one of the most complex challenges for marketers today—omnichannel marketing. Jim explains how AI is revolutionizing personalization and making customer interactions seamless across all channels.

Jim Lecinski: Yeah, so omnichannel, obviously a hot topic. And omnichannel has sort of two flavors or two meanings. You referenced one of them, which is sort of the omnichannel communication. And is it an email channel versus a text channel versus a web channel versus an offline channel? And the other meaning that marketers think a lot about when it comes to omnichannel is omnichannel distribution and sales. Are we available online? Are we available in store?

Dom Nicastro: Jim highlights that modern omnichannel marketing isn’t just about being present on multiple channels—it’s about orchestrating them intelligently with AI. If your marketing messages and customer journey aren’t aligned, you’re going to lose them to brands that are getting it right.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Will Transform Search

Dom Nicastro: Alright, CMOs, take note—SEO as you know it is changing. With AI-powered search engines like Google SGE, Bing AI and Perplexity, a new era is here: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Jim breaks it down.

Jim Lecinski: The good news is some of the same things, still to be determined, this is a work in progress. But it looks like many of the same things that we had learned as an industry in order to be good at SEO and SEM will also carry over into GEO or GEM. Yet at the same time, there appears to be some new things that we'll all need to know how to do. These engines seem to work somewhat like the human brain. They look to conserve energy and not work too hard.

Dom Nicastro: This is critical for marketers—if you don’t adjust your strategy, AI-powered search engines won’t surface your brand. The future is question-based content, natural language responses, and AI-friendly formatting.

Gen Alpha is Coming—And They’re Different

Dom Nicastro: Let’s wrap up with a look ahead. Gen Alpha—the first generation to grow up entirely in the digital era—is reaching purchasing power. Jim explains what makes them unique.

Jim Lecinski: Yeah, I think 2025 would be a good homework assignment, a good year for marketers to really start to understand who is Gen Alpha, what they're all about, what makes them tick. As you said, think about Gen X, then Gen Y, then Gen Z, and many brands starting to think about how do I appeal to Gen Z, how do I appeal to millennials.

Very quietly, think it's snuck up on many of us that Gen Alpha is the oldest of them will be turning 16 in 2025. Right. So if you think about like 2010 beyond so, you know, I mean, even if you're not marketing to tweens or teens, I mean, they're reach starting to reach, you know, college age, spending power, buying power, independent decision making. And so to really start to understand what makes these folks tick, I think is super important.

Yeah, you put your finger on it. You know, if you're 12 and you spent three, four years of your life during the global pandemic in lockdown, maybe remote schooling, remote friending, those kinds of things, a third of your life was experienced that way. I mean, for many of us, was a challenging couple of years, but it was just that, a couple of years and a longer life well lived. But for these folks, it's sort of a early defining feature of their lives.

And so what does that mean? That means that they're comfortable with technology, of course, they're not the first generation to do so, but they are comfortable making human connections through technology, right? Because out of necessity, lack of alternative, many of them said, well, this is the only way I can connect with my friends. So they're actually building human connections through technology, through chats, through gaming.

Dom Nicastro: This is your early warning—Gen Alpha will rewrite the marketing rulebook. CMOs need to adapt now or risk being irrelevant when this generation becomes the dominant consumer group.

Big thanks to Jim Lecinski and Michelle Hawley for this insightful conversation. If you liked this episode, subscribe to CX Decoded. Until next time—stay customer-focused and keep innovating!