Tom Kaneshige
- Writer, Freelance
- Chief Content Officer, The CMO Council
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Articles by Tom Kaneshige
Why the Best CMOs Aren’t Choosing Between AI and Humans
AI has a marketing problem. Companies have invested billions in AI. Marketing teams race to adopt copilots, agents and automation. Yet the business impact remains uneven at best. The CMOs getting AI right aren’t buying better technology. They’re building better marketing organizations. Our latest CMO Council report, Marketing’s Power Partner: AI and the Human Essence, found that the highest-performing marketers redesign workflows so AI and humans make each other better.
CMOs struggle with fragmented “Frankenstack” environments and integration challenges
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Despite years of digital transformation spending, many organisations continue to struggle with fragmented data, disconnected workflows, underperforming technology stacks and limited cross-functional alignment.
How CMOs can move from martech mayhem to measurable business value
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries As global martech spend races toward $215bn, most CMOs still struggle to extract value from increasingly complex stacks. Now, a real-world, data-driven framework that predicts the business value of martech investments based on company size, industry, maturity and strategic priorities has been introduced by the CMO Council, in partnership with MartechTribe.
CMOs Must Become Force Multipliers
Growth has become harder to find and easier to lose. Economic uncertainty, AI disruption and rising customer expectations are forcing organizations to move faster than ever. Yet many CMOs still spend too much time navigating internal friction instead of driving business momentum. In an AI-driven economy, this approach is becoming a competitive liability. Recent Gartner research shows marketing budgets have largely flatlined while executive expectations continue to rise.
Will SA’s next CMOs be data ethics stewards, or just growth drivers?
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries The recent World Retail Congress in Berlin gathered global retail leaders around a simple, urgent theme: how to win customers today while securing the future. And while the buzz was around AI acceleration and shifts in consumer confidence, there was one idea that stood out to me; trust is becoming retail’s most valuable differentiator.
AI Exposes Broken Marketing Workflows
If CMOs think AI transformation means adding copilots, bumping up content production or automating a few repetitive tasks, they’re in for a rude awakening. While this may create pockets of efficiency, the greater risk is magnifying already broken processes.
Consumers don't have an ad problem: Great ideas haven't changed, the industry has Original
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Despite marketing’s growing complexity, great ideas remain the industry’s most powerful currency. “Consumers don’t have a problem with advertising — they have a problem with interruption. We reject bad ads, but we share great ones," says César Vacchiano, president and CEO of Scopen.
Business Insider debuts CMO Insider newsletter Original
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Business Insider has announced the launch of CMO Insider, a new weekly newsletter aimed at senior marketing leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry. The first edition will be sent on 4 March. The launch follows the closure of Business Insider’s South African edition in 2023 after the publication decided not to renew its licensing agreement with News24.
New CMO and CFO for Brand SA Original
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Brand South Africa has announced that Mmaphuti Rankapole-Tshifularo, is the new chief marketing officer (CMO), and Sherylee Shaik is the new chief financial officer (CFO). Sherylee Shaik (left) and Mmaphuti Rankapole-Tshifularo (right).
Bizcommunity.com· 13h #BizTrends2026 | Tom Kaneshige on how CMOs seized strategy in an age of chaos 3 min read
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WPP launches world’s largest content production powerhouse
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries To help its clients reimagine growth in the AI era, WPP has launched WPP Production, which brings together all its creative producers into a single global platform.
Salesforce CEO calls for AI regulation following “suicide coaches” deaths Original
Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff has stated that he wants AI regulated before more people die, calling for Benioff has called for stringent government regulation of artificial intelligence, warning that AI models have become “suicide coaches” as he cited multiple deaths linked to chatbot interactions.
All the 2025 SA TikTok Ad Awards winners Original
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries TikTok has revealed the South African winners of the TikTok Ad Awards 2025 for the METAP (Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Pakistan and South Asia) region.
3 ways mentorship drives leadership in marketing and media Original
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Marketing and media leaders face dynamic shifts in digital transformation (AI in particular), evolving consumer behaviour, a shrinking talent pool and a volatile advertising environment. As a result, these leaders are turning to mentorship programmes which promise to develop talented, senior managers and potential leaders.
#BizTrends2026 | Tom Kaneshige on how CMOs seized strategy in an age of chaos
2 days7 days30 daysBy Industry Show more Advertise your job vacancies Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries Marketing Trends sponsored by Every few years, talking heads lament the chief marketing officer role as too tactical, too soft, too replaceable. Yet marketing leadership keeps reappearing, albeit under more pressure and more scrutiny. The truth is that the CMO role is being rewritten in real time to match a world that no longer behaves predictably.
Smart Brands Seek Fans Among 3.6 Billion Global Gamers
Some 24 million gamers in the United Arab Emirates — more than 67% of the region’s population — and millions upon millions more around the world await the first ever Olympic Esports Games (produced by the IOC) to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2027. If the idea of gaming fanatics, fans and followers of all ages and gender, from every country and culture, tuning in to watch professional gamers compete on a screen sounds strange to you, you’re not alone. But it’s happening.
Chat Commerce Connects Customers Where They Are
A billion people, mostly millennials and Gen Zers, message businesses across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram every week. It’s an order of magnitude hard to wrap your head around. The question is, Are you one of those businesses? Probably not, or at least not on the scale you’d like. The shift to chat commerce as a primary channel is long overdue.
Navigating MarTech Landscape Amid AI Tremors
The coming months will be more daunting than most as AI transforms and disrupts the MarTech landscape. Perhaps more than ever, marketing leaders need to know their strengths and weaknesses to navigate this landscape successfully. Earlier this month, Scott Brinker dropped the 2025 version of his uber popular Marketing Technology Landscape, where “AI sparkles everywhere.” The landscape has 15,384 solutions, up 9% from 2024, with some consolidation and failures to offset the number of new entrants.
Marketing Vitality Index Forecasts Waves of Vitality, Volatility and Velocity
The CMO Council’s Marketing Vitality Index shows CMOs under pressure to grow revenue, meet rising customer expectations, create operational efficiencies, improve campaign performance, rein in costs, and address challenges in MarTech. The good news is the expansive CMO remit underscores marketing’s rising influence on the enterprise.
How Security Helps Marketers Protect Your Brand
A stronger connection is evolving between CMOs and CISOs, especially in regard to current and future regulations related to customer consent and preference management. Regulations impact everything from incident response plans and data privacy policies to cookieless websites and social media platforms. Marketing and security should be collaborating on these and other initiatives — and they should do so early and often. Yet this is often not the case.
The Ambition of ABM
Companies are investing a significant percentage of their revenues in activities directed at lead acquisition, but most do not optimize those investments by developing formal processes for qualifying, certifying and validating new business opportunities. Companies surveyed by the CMO Council say they are wasting time, money and valuable business leads – leaving big money on the table every quarter.
Measuring Marketing Performance Propulsion
The CMO Council’s new report Marketing & Finance: Fueling Innovation Or Falling Behind? examines how economic adversity will test the marketing-finance relationship’s resolve for collaboration and innovation. This is an extract from an Executive Perspective in the report… Retail marketing has always been accountable to results because it’s a much more nuanced role, says Nadina Guglielmetti, vice president, general manager of marketing at The Vitamin Shoppe.
Overview - Expert Views - CMO Council™
Get to Know CMO: Enterprise Clients & Innovation, AON The acceleration of technology, specifically AI and Generative AI, is a challenge for marketers. More
Customer Relationship Rescue
The CMO Council’s new report Sales & Marketing: Driving Revenue Through Collaboration found that more than 70% of marketers don't feel very confident in their sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalized customer journey and to the self-reliant buyer.
Keeping Up With Media In Motion
Much is riding on your media marketing and advertising strategy. Driving sales, mostly. Brand loyalty and customer experience, too. CMOs really need to get this right. The problem is that the media landscape has become wildly unpredictable. Digital channels rise and fall with the mercurialness of human behavior. All of this makes achieving campaign desired outcomes elusive.
AI unleashes hyper-personalisation, hyper-relevance
By Tom Kaneshige, CMO Council Chief Content Officer. Can AI and machine learning bring about the promise of one-to-one marketing at scale? The short answer: It’s already happening for a lot of brands. Every day, every minute, every second, millions upon millions of customers receive super relevant messages, individually crafted, over the right channel and in their moment of need.
Where Does Your Brand Stand?
Shortly after Russia’s largest foreign investor, BP, pulled out of Russia to protest Vladimir Putin’s predatory invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of global brands began to bravely face off the belligerent bear. One notable exception at the time was Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo. “There should never be war; every country should oppose it,” Tadashi Yanai, founder of Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo, told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper. “Clothing is a necessity of life.
#NEXT2022: 7 things shaking up marketing
by Tom Kaneshige. In its Global Marketing Trends Report, Deloitte called out seven trends upending marketing right now. There’s no question marketing is undergoing incredible disruption. Emerging tech such as AI has opened the doors to unimaginable possibilities, as well as dangers. The pandemic has also radically (and perhaps permanently) changed consumer buying behaviour. We’re taking a look at each of Deloitte’s seven trends and weighing in… 1.
Business is personal - CMO Council
by Tom Kaneshige. Let’s face it. People are sick and tired of being treated as part of a generalised customer segment. After all, we’re individuals with different values and interests. We want to take a stand on important issues and will choose companies that reflect and support them. We don’t want to receive boneheaded marketing messages that expose a brand’s cluelessness about us. Most importantly, we want to feel special.
How CMOs Can Grab The Reins
Dear CMO, do you want to raise your profile at your company? Do you want to take on the biggest responsibilities — digital transformation, customer experience and revenue growth — and reap the highest rewards? Well, the good news is that they’re all tied to MarTech, as the CMO Council has learned in its report Making MarTech Pay Off.
CPG CMOs on the Hot Seat
More than most, CMOs of consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies are on the hot seat. CPG companies are in dire need of a rebound after absorbing a chunk of the pandemic’s crushing blow on business. For more than a year, consumers hunkered down in their homes and shut their wallets. Now the job of driving revenue growth has landed on marketing’s shoulders.
Can Biometrics Solve the Password Problem?
Digital booming Can marketing fix CX? Frustration abounds This is my attempt at a haiku about the global pandemic’s impact on consumers and marketing.Digital business is indeed booming, but the customer experience isn’t where it needs to be. This can lead to frustrated consumers and brand abandonment as they click away to a competitor. What is the source of their frustration? Many things can set them off, and one of the most upsetting is identity theft.
If CMOs lead CX, who will follow?
by Tom Kaneshige. Is the job of leading the customer experience, or CX, a fool’s errand? In many ways, it’s an impossible mandate chock full of technology complexity and political quagmire. CX leadership is also increasingly falling into the lap of the CMO. Companies, especially large ones, are gaining confidence in the CMO as the customer authority.
Off The Record: Masked Marketer
Editor's Note: “Off The Record: Masked Marketer” is a new series where we peek behind the scenes thanks to an anonymous marketing leader to gain insight into real-world best practices. The following story comes from a former CMO of a large Asian electronics company who learned the hard way about the importance of vetting a foreign company before joining its ranks. It has been edited for length and clarity. The Asian electronics giant relentlessly came after me over and over again.
Customer Experience, and the 'Human Experience
Marketers love to talk about the customer experience, but maybe this sort of thinking needs to change—or at least, expanded, argues Tom Kaneshige, Chief Content Officer at the CMO Council. In its view, “They should be delivering a human experience.” By Tom Kaneshige Today’s customer wants to be treated as a person, not just a customer.
Retailer Insights: Imbibing Increases, Panic Buying Eases
Spirits are up across the country, just not those spirits. People are stocking their shelves with booze and often imbibing while Zooming with others. Reports show alcohol consumption up 42 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area last week. Daily users of the video chat app Zoom have also reportedly increased twentyfold since December. It’s a lifestyle change no one saw coming, at least not until the coronavirus pandemic.
Mass Migration to Multi-Cloud
In 2016, Maria Roat took over the CIO post at the US Small Business Administration (SBA) and quickly issued an aggressive mandate. "Nothing new goes into our data center," she said. Roat kickstarted plans to close SBA's deficient primary data center and move everything to the cloud. She adopted a multi-cloud strategy that called for leveraging both a private cloud, GovCloud, and many public clouds. Now her big bet is about to pay off.
Apple Innovation: 10 Future Tech Ideas
How will Apple fare in the post-Steve Jobs era? Everyone is wondering whether or not Apple can deliver amazing technology in the future. From the wacky to the reasonable, here's a list of innovation ideas. By Tom Kaneshige Senior Writer, CIO | Tech innovation often takes its cue from science fiction movies. Or is it the other way around?
How Airlines Can Reimagine Their Brand with IoT and Mobile
https://www.iotworldtoday.com/wp-content/themes/ioti_child/assets/images/logo/footer-logo.png How Airlines Can Reimagine Their Brand with IoT and Mobile Everyone has suffered waiting to board a flight or rushing to make one and dealing with luggage. It’s just a horrible experience. But help may be on the way. Written by Tom Kaneshige 19th August 2016
2017 IoT Salary Guide
Internet of Things initiatives require hard-to-find and costly technical skills and leadership. Newly released 2017 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide is chock full of IoT-related jobs boasting some of the biggest salary gains. Quick, why can’t B2B companies launch Internet of Things initiatives? You’re probably thinking security and privacy, or maybe legacy tech isn’t up to snuff. But the dirty little secret of IoT is a lack of technical skills.
Make the Call on Sales Technologies: Experiment, Invest, Maintain, & Divest to Empower Your Digital Sales Team
Digital salespeople need new tools to engage more knowledgeable and empowered prospects or risk looking like dolts. In the age of the customer, wooing prospects and crushing quota has never been harder. What new tools help digital salespeople? Which ones are no longer important? The Forrester Tech Tide™: Sales Technologies, Q4 2018 helps enterprises prioritize investments.
2019 Is the Year to Invest in Humans as Backlash Against Chatbots and AI Begins
For some time, the burning question has been: Will robots replace humans? While the proliferation of robotic process automation (RPA) has reduced headcount in the back office, it’s a different story for customer service and sales. In a Forrester survey, 46 percent of companies said sales and marketing are leading the investment in and adoption of AI systems, followed by customer support (40 percent).
This Is The Year To Invest In Humans, As Backlash Against Chatbots And AI Begins
Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin Technical support concept, business person touching helpdesk icon on screen, hotline assistance service available by phone, chat, email or online to solve incident with computer software, smartphoneGetty By Tom Kaneshige, Senior Analyst, and Daniel Hong, Vice President, Research Director To understand the seismic shifts that firms will face in 2019, download Forrester’s Predictions 2019 guide.
Predictions 2019: This Is The Year to Invest in Humans, As Backlash Against Chatbots and AI Begins
For some time, the burning question has been: Will robots replace humans? While the proliferation of robotic process automation (RPA) has reduced headcount in the back office, it’s a different story for customer service and sales. In a Forrester survey, 46% of companies said sales and marketing are leading the investment in and adoption of AI systems, followed by customer support (40%).
Avoid The Upcoming AI Backlash With Your Sales Teams, Get Them On Board
The rise of AI in sales technology only makes it easier for sales managers to keep tabs on salespeople—salespeople say. AI gives sales managers more visibility into a sales rep’s daily activities and control into the sales process, potentially subverting the spirited sales culture. It’s unfortunate, really, because AI carries lots of promise to help salespeople become more productive.
What Do Customers Really Think About You?
Ask most channel partners, and they’ll tell you they deliver stellar digital-transformation services. Customers love them. Or do they? When it comes to the customer relationship, there’s a huge gap between perception and reality, says DevBridge Group, a custom software developer serving manufacturing and financial-services industries. The reason for this gap has everything to do with failure to meet customer expectations.
AI in Business Raises Ethical Questions
Earlier this month, a workforce rebellion involving artificial intelligence (AI) happened in the hallways of one of Silicon Valley’s greatest companies. No, it wasn’t humans against machines. It was angry employees railing against management for letting the Pentagon tap Google’s AI technology to potentially improve drone strike targeting. The Pentagon’s program, called Project Maven, has become a flashpoint for the ethical use of AI.
Can Contact Centers Improve the Customer Experience?
If you’ve called customer support recently, it’s a good bet the experience wasn’t pleasant. Frustrating phone trees. Dropped calls. Repeated explanations. You’d think new technologies and a focus on the customer would have fixed this by now. They haven’t — so what’s going on?
Artificial Intelligence Takes Aim at Legal Industry
Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t going to start giving out legal advice — that is, it won’t replace your attorney — but it might help you receive better legal service. At least this is a key finding in a survey from HBR Consulting, an advisory, managed services and software solutions firm. HBR Consulting interviewed law department executives from more than 50 companies, many in the Fortune 500, to understand AI trends.
Data, Sales Intelligence and the Rise of the Chief Data Officer
Like money stuffed under bed mattresses, data is the new digital currency trapped deep inside silos of an enterprise. This has led to the rise of the chief data officer (CDO) charged with unlocking and unleashing data that will fuel the growth of the business. No one stands to benefit more from the CDO’s arrival than the sales organization.
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