In 2025, the marketing landscape isn’t just evolving, it’s being fundamentally rewritten. The rise of retail media networks, AI-fueled discovery, and increasingly complex consumer journeys demand that Chief Marketing Officers rethink not only how they reach audiences, but how they build long-term relevance and value.
The traditional marketing playbook rooted in static funnels, siloed media, and lagging measurement no longer applies. Retail CMOs must now lead with agility, data fluency, and a clear view of how every impression can drive both culture and commerce.
Drawing on insights from dentsu agencies dentsu X, iProspect, and Carat, this article outlines a strategic and tactical blueprint to help retail brands stay ahead in this new era.
1. Connected Journeys Start with Consumer Intent, not Channels
The RECMA 2025 Diagnostics Report highlights how dentsu X has built its global reputation by crafting connected consumer journeys, not just buying impressions. The agency’s strength lies in uniting data, creativity, and cultural nuance to engage consumers across platforms and touchpoints.
For CMOs, this means moving beyond isolated media campaigns to holistic experience planning. Retail consumers today expect brand interactions that anticipate their needs and reflect their values. That requires more than media buying, it calls for orchestration across paid, earned, and owned media that is consistent, personal, and purpose-driven.
Strategic takeaway: Reframe your media strategy as a customer experience engine. Map the full journey from discovery to advocacy and align cross-functional teams to deliver seamless touchpoints at every stage.
2. Adopt the Commerce Success Framework to Drive Short- and Long-Term Growth
In a world where every brand is now a commerce brand, iProspect’s Commerce Success Framework (CSF) provides a critical lens through which CMOs can assess readiness and optimize outcomes. The framework breaks down into five dimensions: Desirability, Availability, Findability, Buyability, and Repeatability.
Each of these is essential but most retail brands over-invest in bottom-funnel tactics and underinvest in building long-term value. For instance:
- Desirability requires emotional resonance and brand equity. Without it, performance media won’t convert.
- Availability means being where your customers are, 24/7 across direct-to-consumer sites, marketplaces, social commerce, and more.
- Findability is about visibility in moments of intent, whether via search, livestreaming, or in-store displays.
- Buyability hinges on seamless purchase paths and reducing friction.
- Repeatability is where the most value is unlocked, fostering loyalty through meaningful post-purchase engagement.
Tactical move: Audit your commerce touchpoints using the CSF lens. Then reallocate budget and resources not just to conversion, but to experience layers that drive lasting differentiation.
3. Build Equal Opportunity Across All Touchpoints
Carat’s latest content in its CPG Marketing at the Algorithmic Crossroads series speaks directly to an urgent reality: the media environment is now algorithmic, dynamic, and omnipresent. Every touchpoint from a TikTok scroll to a voice assistant prompt is an opportunity to inspire action or build affinity.
Yet most budgeting models are still rooted in legacy structures: strict allocations between brand and performance, with disconnected media silos and KPIs. That model doesn’t serve today’s consumer or today’s data-rich landscape.
CMOs need to build fluid, responsive, and evidence-based budget frameworks that treat media as a connected system, not a fragmented set of tactics. That means investing where impact is proven, adapting quickly to new consumer behaviors, and treating insights as the currency of modern media planning.
Strategic imperative: Break down walls between shopper, brand, and performance marketing. Align your investment model with how your consumers actually move, fluidly between discovery, engagement, and purchase.
4. Use AI and Automation to Personalize at Scale
Across dentsu X and iProspect’s work, one thing is clear: retail brands must leverage AI not just for targeting, but for experience orchestration. From intelligent chat to predictive personalization and automated media optimization, AI enables retail CMOs to move from reactive marketing to proactive relationship-building.
But success depends on more than just tools, it requires data integrity, agile workflows, and a culture of experimentation. AI can help identify which content, format, or platform will perform best for each consumer but only if your systems and teams are ready to act on those insights in real time.
Tactical move: Build or refine your martech stack with modular, AI-enabled components. Prioritize platforms that integrate customer identity, behavior signals, and commerce activity to support adaptive engagement.
5. Think Global, Act Local With Cultural Relevance at the Core
One of dentsu X’s differentiators, as showcased in its RECMA performance, is the ability to marry global capabilities with local cultural fluency. In Southeast Asia and the Nordics, the agency’s high rankings reflect deep market understanding paired with shared strategic infrastructure.
For CMOs, this means recognizing that omnichannel excellence must reflect regional nuance. A campaign that works in Melbourne may not resonate in Manila. Personalization doesn’t just mean using someone’s name, it means aligning with their values, preferences, and cultural context.
Strategic takeaway: Co-create campaigns with local market leads, and empower them with shared data and creative tools. Local insight, informed by global intelligence, is your edge.
6. Measure Relationships, Not Just Reach
In the algorithmic era, performance marketing is no longer the exclusive domain of conversions. It’s about momentum, how each interaction contributes to lifetime value and brand affinity.
CMOs must champion a new measurement paradigm that evaluates customer relationships, not just media metrics. This means tracking engagement across time, platform, stage and aligning internal teams to care about the same outcomes.
Tactical shift: Incorporate metrics like Customer Lifetime Value, Engagement Momentum, and Conversion Velocity into your dashboards. Use these to inform budget decisions and campaign optimization, not just CTRs and CPMs.
Final Word: The New Mandate for CMOs
Today’s Chief Marketing Officers aren’t just brand stewards, they’re growth architects, customer advocates, and transformation leaders. To lead in this new retail era, CMOs must blend creativity with data, long-term vision with short-term agility, and local nuance with global scale.
It’s no longer enough to be present, your brand must be findable, desirable, buyable, and repeatable across every touchpoint, every time.
Sources:
- https://www.dxglobal.com/insights/crafting-connected-consumer-journeys-recma-report-2025/
- https://www.iprospect.com/en-gb/insights/drive-your-commerce-strategy-with-the-commerce-success-framework/
- https://www.carat.com/en-gb/thoughts-and-views/create-equal-opportunity-across-all-touch-points-cpg-marketing-2025