Leadership Alignment

Too many CEOs still see marketing as “advertising and sales support,” not as a strategic engine spanning all 7Ps—Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Evidence. When leadership doesn’t share a modern view of marketing, budgets, expectations, and impact all get misaligned. It’s no surprise that one in four CEOs can’t clearly state the value of marketing.

 

Marketing leaders struggle to translate their full scope of work into the language of the C-suite, especially when the organization is wired to reward short-term promotion over long-term value creation. Without shared definitions, clear metrics, and cross-functional buy-in, marketing’s role across the 7Ps gets fragmented, misunderstood, or sidelined.

 

In this hybrid peer session, you’ll learn and debate practical ways to articulate marketing’s mission and value across all 7Ps—then stress-test those ideas live with peers in the room and online. You’ll leave with conversation frameworks, alignment tools, and example narratives you can use immediately with your CEO and leadership team.

We’ll hear from Anne Norman, Chief Marketing Officer of UW Credit Union, about how they have incorporated the 7Ps to create a holistic Marketing strategy. We’ll also discuss, with a panel of Marketing leaders across industries, some of the unique challenges they face in implementing these concepts and how they overcome them. We'll then hear from three other marketing leaders across industries about some of the ways this can differ and align. We'll hear perspectives from Mary Benedum, VP of Marketing Strategy for Kohl's; Sean Rudi, Global Marketing Director for Promega; and Jennifer Stiansen, VP of Global Branding and Communications for Oshkosh.