How to Get 100% of Your Company Focused on Consumers 100% of the Time.

Today, it’s trickier than ever to “get” and stay in step with your consumers. The new, complicating factor is that consumers are more in tune with themselves and each other than at any other time in human history. Companies are left on the outside looking in, puzzling out how to insert themselves into a meaningful relationship. Compounded by the loss of serendipity in our online discoveries, and the rise of the personal “algorithmic bubble,” a critical challenge for brands is reaching individuals at an authentic level.

The key to winning big and staying at the top in business, is empathy. The capacity to recognize and respond to emotions and aspirations experienced by consumers. Without empathy, a leader will falter. A brand will decline. Strategy can lose focus, and the company become isolated from the very people on whom it depends for success.

In this conversation, MARTHA PEASE explores the concepts present in her book, Think Round. She shares why and how the challenge for CEOs and companies is scaling empathy to the enterprise level so it can be a sustainable advantage in creating long-term value.

One of MARTHA PEASE’s favorite topics is the connection between legendary brands and the secret to relevance. When you dare to build legendary businesses and brands – and really go for it – the byproduct of that aspiration is often learning how to manage transformation. And transformation is the key to relevance.

Pease has sat in a lot of very special rooms where transformation happens. Reshaping some of the world’s most iconic brands. She has worked side by side with legendary founders, leaders, innovators and advertising geniuses, including Steve Jobs, John Sculley, Bill Campbell, David Novak, Phil Dusenberry and Jean-Paul Agon. And sat in many seats at the table including C-suite, Board Member, agency partner, consultant and advisor.

In this conversation, she zooms into some of those legendary moments, takes you into the rooms and offers key lessons that you can take into your work.

Virtually every brand MARTHA PEASE has touched has succeeded by recovering from high visibility stumbles in sustaining broad cultural relevance. Throughout her career, she has been linked with brand building that fuels culture as well as commerce for IBM, Apple, Pizza Hut, Neutrogena, Dominos, Lifetime TV, L’Oreal, Victoria’s Secret.

This includes helping Apple relaunch its first, failed Macintosh computer with a stunning campaign aimed at business which never showed or mentioned the product name, to reframing Victoria’s Secret for a modern world of diverse female identity. Pease draws on this operating experience to speak to leadership teams about how to recover and regain their currency.

In this conversation, Pease maps the playbook of strategies and approaches that can redefine culture, brands and their legacies.

In an era of AI acceleration, corporate scrutiny, and customer activism, trust has become the ultimate competitive differentiator—but most companies still treat it like a soft metric. In this provocative and data-driven session, Martha Pease reveals why trust is now a measurable, strategic asset—and how legendary brands invest in trust not just as reputation management, but as a system for growth.

From ethical AI to supply chain transparency, from brand safety to cultural credibility, trust today is built in invisible moments, not ad campaigns. Drawing on behavioral science, brand valuation data, and real-world case studies (from Microsoft to Patagonia to LVMH), this talk reframes trust as a form of capital that compounds over time—and shows how to measure, build, and convert it into enterprise value.

Audiences walk away with a strategic framework for building brand trust across digital, operational, and leadership touchpoints—and a clear understanding of how AI can help scale transparency, predict risk, and future-proof reputation.

Audiences will learn how to:

• Measure trust as a strategic KPI
• Build systems that scale trust across customer, employee, and investor touchpoints
• Use AI to anticipate trust risks and future-proof reputation
• Strengthen alignment between brand, leadership, and operational truth

Who’s this for?

• C-suite leaders in brand, marketing, or corporate communications
• Digital and AI transformation executives
• ESG, governance, or reputation teams
• Private equity operating partners and portfolio leadership
• Leaders seeking to differentiate through enduring brand credibility

CMO Code: A View from the C-suite” offers executive leaders a rare insider perspective on the modern CMO’s agenda—and why marketing is pivotal to enterprise growth. Martha Pease cuts through the noise to reveal what CEOs, CFOs, and other C-suite leaders often miss: that the most effective CMOs act not just as brand stewards but as enterprise strategists driving innovation and customer value. The session challenges leaders to rethink how they partner with and empower CMOs to unlock cross-functional impact.
Drawing on deep experience at the intersection of marketing and the C-suite, Martha unpacks the rigor it takes to build high-trust, high-value partnerships between CMOs and external partners. Audiences gain clear insight into the strategic diligence and shared accountability required to translate marketing into measurable business outcomes—strengthening competitive advantage across the enterprise.

Who’s this for?
This topic resonates especially with leadership teams and the C-suite in:

• Sales, strategy and insights for large tech and social media platforms
• Professional services (consulting, analytics, brand strategy, agencies)
• Martech, ecommerce, and omnichannel providers
• Private equity-owned companies aiming to strengthen CMO-facing teams