For decades, marketing operated within a relatively stable model of discovery and demand creation. Most leaders understood how the system worked.
Consumers searched for products, brands invested in media to capture attention, and marketing teams built systems designed to guide prospects through a sequence of awareness, consideration, and purchase.
That structure is shifting.
Discovery is now mediated by algorithms, social communities, conversational interfaces, and digital marketplaces. Consumers now encounter brands through feeds, recommendations, creators, and AI-assisted search rather than predictable pathways.
These changes are reshaping not only how brands compete, but how marketing is valued inside the enterprise. In many organizations, a deeper question is beginning to surface: is marketing truly positioned as a driver of growth, or still treated as a cost center?
Conversations across Virtuosi League Forums and Roundtables suggest leaders are beginning to recognize just how significant this shift may be. Many describe a moment when long-standing assumptions about growth strategy are being reconsidered. Expectations around growth accountability are rising as well, pushing CMOs to connect marketing investment more directly to enterprise outcomes and business performance.
Research from McKinsey & Company similarly notes that the role of the CMO is expanding beyond traditional marketing oversight to include broader responsibility for customer experience, growth strategy, and enterprise collaboration.¹
At the same time, many organizations are still structured around models built for a very different discovery environment.
This creates a growing tension between how quickly the market is changing and how quickly internal systems can adapt. For many leaders, the challenge is not recognizing that change is happening, but deciding how quickly to move before the path forward is fully clear.
Across conversations with CMOs and senior leaders, several patterns are beginning to surface.
Discovery is becoming harder to predict
Customer journeys are becoming fragmented. Consumers may encounter a brand through creators, communities, recommendations, or AI-generated results long before they ever engage directly with the company itself.
Growth conversations are becoming more cross-functional
Marketing leaders are spending more time working alongside product, technology, data, and commerce teams to interpret changing customer behavior and respond effectively.
Signal and noise are becoming harder to distinguish
AI-driven content creation and algorithmic distribution are dramatically increasing the volume of information in the marketplace. Leaders describe spending more time separating meaningful signals from noise.
Performance pressure remains constant
Even as discovery models evolve, expectations around measurable growth have not diminished. Leaders must navigate these shifts while continuing to deliver results in the near term.
The pressure is also showing up in how CMOs are expected to communicate growth decisions internally. Gartner reports that marketing leaders face increasing expectations to demonstrate how investments connect directly to revenue outcomes while also sustaining longer-term brand and customer strategy.²
The conversation has shifted from explaining marketing performance to explaining business impact. Growth leaders are expected to show how investments translate into revenue, retention, and long-term brand strength.
Across discussions with leaders, several patterns are beginning to surface as organizations respond to these shifts.
Discovery is becoming ecosystem-drivenTraditional funnels assumed a relatively predictable progression from awareness to purchase.
Today discovery often occurs through networks of creators, marketplaces, recommendation engines, and social platforms. Consumers encounter brands through dynamic pathways rather than linear ones.
Publicis Groupe’s connected identity research highlights a related challenge: as discovery fragments across platforms, many brands struggle to recognize and understand the same customer across environments. Organizations that can unify signals across media, commerce, and data ecosystems are better positioned to translate discovery into durable growth.³
This shift is forcing leaders to rethink how demand is generated and how brands remain visible in environments where algorithms increasingly shape attention.
Speed is emerging as a structural advantageMany leaders describe competitive environments where the pace of experimentation and decision-making often determines who wins.
Organizations that test ideas quickly, learn from signals, and adapt their strategies tend to respond faster to changing customer behavior.
At the same time, many enterprise workflows were designed for certainty and polish rather than continuous learning.
AI is compressing creative and insight cyclesAI tools are beginning to reshape the production layer of marketing.
Teams are using these technologies to accelerate concept development, adapt creative assets more quickly, and generate insights at a faster pace.
These capabilities shorten the distance between idea, execution, and learning, allowing organizations to respond more rapidly to evolving consumer behavior.
Brand meaning is becoming a strategic differentiatorAs discovery becomes increasingly mediated by algorithms and agents, brands that demonstrate narrative clarity and emotional resonance stand out more clearly.
Leaders frequently describe storytelling, experience design, and cultural fluency as anchors that help brands remain relevant in crowded digital environments.
Growth systems are being reconsidered from first principlesRather than simply optimizing existing tactics, some organizations are stepping back to reconsider how the entire growth engine operates. In many cases, leaders describe revisiting assumptions that shaped growth strategy for years.
This includes rethinking how data flows across the enterprise, how content is produced and distributed, and how teams collaborate across functions to support modern discovery environments.
Gartner research suggests this shift reflects growing pressure on CMOs to align marketing investment more tightly with enterprise growth priorities while navigating increasingly complex digital ecosystems.²
Consumer expectations are acceleratingConsumers expect seamless experiences, personalized interactions, and immediate relevance.
These expectations are often shaped by the best experience available anywhere in the market rather than by the norms of a particular category.
Several signals suggest where growth leadership expectations may continue to evolve.
Navigating these shifts requires leadership capabilities that go well beyond traditional marketing expertise.
The Leadership Field Guide is grounded in the Six Pillars of Leadership, developed through Virtuosi LEAP, which help leaders interpret complex environments and guide organizations through moments of change.
Several pillars feel particularly relevant as growth systems continue to evolve.
Growth increasingly depends on reducing friction across teams and enabling faster movement from insight to action.
Modern growth systems require collaboration across marketing, product, technology, and data functions.
As the Leadership Field Guide continues to unfold, these capabilities will appear again through leadership questions, operating models, and decision frameworks that help leaders translate insight into action.
Sources
¹ McKinsey & Company
The Changing Role of the CMO and What It Means for Growth
² Gartner
CMOs’ Top Challenges and Priorities for 2026
³ Publicis Groupe
Connected Identity research