EP 230: Rethinking Retail Marketing Leadership: AI and the Fractional Revolution

03/14/25 • 27 min

Retail Unwrapped - from The Robin Report

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Guest: Lindsey Scheftic, CMO, Owner and Founder, The CMO Sidekick

Fractional CMOs with blue-chip experience are sources of enterprise-level talent accessible even to mid-market companies. Couple that resource with AI tools that are moving at the speed of light, these strategic co-pilots are separating marketing winners from losers. With the explosion of video channel fragmentation creating a measurement nightmare and threatening attribution accuracy, and retail media networks evolving from a "necessary evil" into precision targeting powerhouses – both demand a new level of marketing expertise. Join Shelley and Lindsey Scheftic, CMO, owner and founder of The CMO Sidekick as they explore how marketing expertise is being fundamentally redefined. The traditional career path is dead, yesterday's marketing education is obsolete, and 65 percent of future marketing roles don't even exist today. Listen in to this provocative conversation to get up to speed on the future of marketing.

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We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us!

Guest: Lindsey Scheftic, CMO, Owner and Founder, The CMO Sidekick

Previous Episode

EP 229: Consumer Boycotts: A Major C-Suite Headache

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us!

Special Guest: Warren Shoulberg, Retail Journalist and TRR Writer

Consumer spending is increasingly reflecting personal values. In a disruptive, unpredictable marketplace, the rise of grassroots activism presents unprecedented strategic challenges for retail executives. These orchestrated economic blackouts can transform individual purchasing decisions into collective action, triggering a compromised retail brand reputation with financial implications. While any immediate sales impact is difficult to quantify, brands are still vulnerable. Join Shelley and Warren Shoulberg, retail expert and TRR contributor, as they discuss whether these movements are successful and how the true power of these boycotts may lie in the symbolic expression of shifting the public discourse, particularly fueled by social media. The growing tension between consumer activists and retail brands sits at the heart of the strategic calculus of how the C-suite serves its customers and makes decisions. Now more than ever, retailers need to work harder to earn customer loyalty.

Next Episode

EP 231: Hudson’s Bay's Downfall: Why Richard Baker Failed

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us!

Guest:

Mark A. Cohen Former Director of Retail Studies at the Columbia Business School, and Former CEO Sears Canada.

Hudson’s Bay, once Canada's proud retail institution, has descended into Chapter 11 restructuring. And the blunt truth is it’s not because of recent trade tensions as the company proclaimed, but rather from years of financial neglect, unpredictable customer experiences, and questionable strategic moves. The department store's inconsistent merchandise assortments across different locations undermined The Bay’s identity, leaving customers confused about what the retailer actually stood for. Join Shelley and retail veteran Mark Cohen as they discuss how CEO Richard Baker's real estate-focused leadership and lack of retail expertise have led to catastrophic outcomes, reflecting the danger of prioritizing deal-making over operational excellence. His ineptitude doesn’t stop at Hudson’s Bay. Saks Global is at risk of long-term survival. It’s the perfect storm for Saks: The large luxe brands are not going to be bullied by Saks 90-day payment terms and Baker's financial engineering will give market share to Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s.

Retail Unwrapped - from The Robin Report - EP 230: Rethinking Retail Marketing Leadership: AI and the Fractional Revolution

Transcript

I think that the marketplace is going to drive hard to just continue to make those tools better, uh, to, to make great creative and. Um, yeah, I can't wait. We gotta, we're going to meet another year and a half and we got to be like, okay, what were we doing a year and a half ago? It's a great point in time when there's just so much technology.

Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelley Cohan from The Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest trends and developments