Marketing Week

Most, if not all, marketers are being asked to use AI effectively and efficiently, but what does that look like in practice? In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, recorded live at Festival of Marketing, Matt Bushby, CMO at Rightmove, joins host Molly Innes, work and careers editor and podcast lead, to share why the property platform is investing £60m in AI and innovation to propel it forward. “We're in the early stages, but we've really focused on how we solve problems for both sides of our marketplace using AI, and really coming up first with what's the business problem, what's the challenge we're trying to solve for, and then how does technology help us to solve that?” he explains. He also shares his thoughts on marketing leadership and what it means to be a CMO today. “There's so much change going on at the moment that part of our job is to try to navigate that and to help people get comfortable with ambiguity,” he says.

The business landscape is ever changing, and "marketing has a really unique advantage to be at the heart of it," says Naomi Walkland, CMO at Motorway.In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, recorded at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing, Walkland shares her approach to being a CMO during times of evolution, and how change is "exciting" rather than something to be feared.She also tells host Molly Innes, Marketing Week's work and careers editor and podcast lead, about how her early career in PR and advertising has influenced her path to the C-suite, why she decided to jump brand-side with a role at Bumble when it had less than 50 people, and how she builds unified marketing teams."What I'm really motivated by and has been the red thread [in my career] has been transformation and really working with businesses at key inflection points," she says.

Are you feeling stuck in your career? With 69% of marketers reporting a lack of career progression in the last year, according to Marketing Week’s 2026 Career & Salary Survey, many are feeling stagnated, stuck and searching for something new. Lauren Spearman is the co-founder of Careering, a careers platform “for people who feel like their careers have gone a little bit adrift” and was named a Marketing Week Changemaker in 2024. Her career began in marketing, with senior roles at the likes of Made.com, Benefit Cosmetics and Many Pets. In 2023, she began posting online about her experiences navigating the jobs market, and has since become an advocate for better hiring practises in the industry.In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, she joins host Molly Innes, work and careers editor & podcast lead, to discuss whether marketing is in a careers crisis, and what marketers and employers can do to fix it. “We should always look at what we can do ourselves to support our own progression. Absolutely, your employer has a role within your own career development, but they can't be the custodian of your career,” she says, suggesting marketers try and be “a bit more experimental” in how they approach progression to negate feeling stagnated.Spearman will be speaking at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing 2026, taking place on 14 October.

Stanley 1913 is a brand with more than 100 years of heritage, but it's the last few years which has seen the drinkware business achieve mammoth growth.In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, work and careers editor & podcast lead Molly Innes is joined by Stanley's chief brand officer Kate Ridley to find out how the business is driving growth after achieving mega viral success online.She joined the brand last year as a consultant to build out its global marketing function, before taking on the role on a permanent basis. Before Stanley, Ridley spent more than 20 years at Adidas and in the episode shares the lessons she picked up at the sportswear giant, and how she's carrying them through, as she looks to maintain growth at Stanley.The business is now entering new categories of sports and fashion, eyeing up welcoming new consumers to the brand. Ridley explains Stanley is doing this without alienating its longstanding fans.

Carwow's chief marketing officer Ben Carter is a marketer on a mission to help put marketing back at the centre of brands' growth efforts.In the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, host and editor-in-chief Russell Parsons, digs into why Carter believes marketing is in a "confidence crisis" and how the profession can re-route itself to be seen "not as a cost centre" but as a growth engine.Carter began his career as a journalist, reporting on the marketing industry, before making the switch to marketing during the internet boom. Previously CMO at the likes of Dunelm and Purple Bricks, he believes marketing is struggling with confidence because its practitioners are "not able to tell the right story" of what they are doing.In the episode, he also discusses his own career journey, the false divide between brand and performance, how Carwow is building out its content and storytelling and more. His message to marketers? "Never stop learning."

What drives founders forward? For Ben Branson, who launched Seedlip in 2015, it is twofold: a “fear of failure” and “being dissatisfied about something" and wanting to change it. In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, Branson, who sold Seedlip to Diageo in 2019 before launching Pollen Projects - a venture studio dedicated to building non-alcoholic spirit brands - is joined by host editor-in-chief Russell Parsons to lift the lid on what motivates him when it comes to building brands. Branson details how his early struggles with mental health, addiction and anxiety propelled him to “solve problems” and “make things better”. Ultimately, he explains, he doesn’t “want to let good ideas down”. He also shares his journey of an adult diagnosis of ADHD and autism, and how this led him to found The Hidden 20%, a charity, podcast and movement campaigning for neurodiversity. “We need a society that can include all minds now more than ever. We need the creativity, the skills, the innovation, the pattern spotting, all of the great things that can come from working with different brains.” Branson will be speaking at Marketing Week's Festival of Marketing 2026, taking place on 14 October.

Have marketers invented a language to describe performance no one else in the business understands?The latest Language of Effectiveness data reveals over 70% of respondents see a disconnect between the way marketing interprets effectiveness and the rest of the business. In fact, 11% of marketers don’t discuss effectiveness with the wider business at all. Are they missing a trick?To unpick the data, Marketing Week deputy editor and intelligence editor, Charlotte Rogers, is joined by TUI group head of international marketing Rachel Moss and Brian Macreadie, head of marketing at law firm Addleshaw Goddard.We ask whether marketers have lost sight of the metrics that really matter to their boards and if now is the time to urgently address the disconnect.Moss and Macreadie discuss the merits of treating effectiveness as a two-way conversation rooted in trust, exploring the power storytelling has to make these discussions easier.

In this episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, news editor Niamh Carroll is joined by Unilever's beauty and wellbeing division global vice president of digital, social and AI transformation Selina Sykes.She explains how Unilever's approach to brand building has changed - and what's remained - as well as how to effectively manage a team through constant transformation in a world where how people shop and consume media is rapidly changing."The fundamentals are exactly the same," says Sykes, who will be sharing more about Unilever's transformation at Festival of Marketing 2026. "But what we've seen is that how you achieve those things is radically different, and it continues to change."This episode of The Marketing Week Podcast is sponsored by Kantar. Its LINK AI creator content insights turn influencer ads into predictive insight you can act on. Discover how you can invest with confidence, not guesswork with LINK AI by Kantar.

Creator marketing is everywhere. But for many CMOs it still feels messy, inconsistent and driven by instinct. Is it just advertising with a friendlier face, or a fundamentally different channel? And can it genuinely build brands while still delivering performance?In the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, sponsored by Kantar, global creative thought leadership director Vera Šídlová joins editor-in-chief Russell Parsons to explore what the data actually says.Drawing on Kantar’s latest creator effectiveness research: The creator game plan – based on large-scale analysis of content across 15,000 pieces of creator content on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram – she separates hype from hard evidence.The conversation focuses on what drives impact and how brands can make sharper, more confident decisions in creator marketing.You’ll hear:Why creator marketing works differently from traditional advertising… and how it actually builds brandsHow authenticity and brand consistency can reinforce each other, not competeThe patterns behind high-performing creator content – and what strong briefs consistently get rightHow CMOs should measure creator marketing to make better investment decisions at scaleHost: Russell Parsons, editor-in-chief, Marketing WeekGuest: Věra Šídlová, global creative thought leadership director, Kantar