Marketing Vanguard continues its Cannes Lions 2026 series as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Jill Kramer, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard.
In this conversation, Jill reveals the false binaries marketing keeps boxing itself into: AI vs. creativity, brand vs. performance, strategy vs. execution, “what’s in” vs. what’s “dead.”
Her point is clear: the strongest marketing does not live at the extremes. It lives in the gray area where accountability, emotion, creativity, and business outcomes all have to work together.
What you’ll learn:
- Why AI should sharpen creative focus, not replace the human craft
- How brand and performance marketing became a false choice
- Why the best marketing happens in the “soft emotional middle”
- How prioritization can become a creative act for a new CMO
- Why leaders now need to go high and deep at the same time
- How to shift from doing everything yourself to enabling the team
- Why the industry needs to stop arguing in extremes and talk more about the work
This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes Lions 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.
About our guest:
Jill Kramer is the chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, bringing deep experience across brand strategy, creative leadership and enterprise marketing transformation. Before joining Mastercard, she held senior leadership roles at Accenture, where she progressed from head of advertising, to brand, and finally, to chief marketing and communications officer.
Earlier, she also built her foundation on the agency side at BBDO. At Mastercard, Jill brings a perspective shaped by both sides of the table: the agency instinct for creative craft and the brand-side understanding of business complexity, accountability, and internal alignment.
Her leadership is rooted in balance: brand and performance, creativity and AI, strategic vision and hands-on involvement.
Episode Highlights:
[02:30] Why AI Can Make Creativity Better — Jill pushes back on the idea that AI and creativity are in opposition. Creativity is still a human craft, but AI can help sharpen focus on the core idea, the insight and the customer understanding behind the work. The smartest use of AI is not to bypass the art. It is to clear space for the art to get stronger. For CMOs, that means using the tool where it serves the work, without pretending the tool is the work.
