This post was created in partnership with Monks
Key takeaways
- Marketing can be more predictable when data silos are broken down across teams.
- Consumers are still researching products, but in a different way.
- Even with AI efficiencies, human judgment remains critical for brands.
Keeping pace with consumers has become a demanding assignment for marketing teams. New tools give marketers more ways to create and test, while the speed of change keeps forcing them to reconsider how they work.
During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ group chat co-hosted with Monks, industry leaders discussed how marketing and technology teams are adapting together.
Keeping up with change across tools and teams
When asked how teams are navigating changing consumer behavior, James Stephens, EVP of North America at Monks, acknowledged the strain of frequently rethinking how teams work.
Some things hold steady, like people’s natural desire to connect. But modern media consumption has accelerated “the speed at which we move on from things,” he added, which changes how brands communicate product benefits and hold consumers’ attention.
Whitney Magnuson, head of brand and media at Zoom, saw opportunity in that constant change. Zoom’s expansion beyond video conferencing into other products already required the company to reevaluate its marketing. And shifts in tools, behaviors, and discovery mechanisms now give marketers more permission to take big swings.
“I think there’s a lot more acceptance and willingness to go out and do something that would be unexpected for a brand in your specific category or industry,” Magnuson shared.
But inside organizations, change isn’t happening at the same speed everywhere, according to Eric Matisoff, principal evangelist at Adobe. Engineering teams can now build and iterate faster, while product marketing and product management often still work to catch up. That puts more pressure on colleagues to overcommunicate and proactively seek information.
