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The Lead Summit has ended – but the buzz is still going.

This year, The Lead Summit 2025 convened over 3,000 brand, retail, and tech leaders in NYC to shape the future of commerce and marketing. We’ve pulled together the six dominant themes discussed across keynotes, panels, and hallway chats – the real signals that brand and marketing leaders should pay attention to now.

AI was a hot topic, but the tone was pragmatic: use AI intentionally or not at all. Multiple speakers urged separating hype from real utility. For example, Ricardo Lajoie of Vans challenged the audience to distinguish “flash from function” in emerging tech – focusing on innovation that actually delivers business results.

In other words, AI initiatives must be grounded in purpose. Leaders shared case studies of AI powering personalization and inventory optimization, but always with a clear ROI in sight. The forward-looking mandate is clear: invest in AI that tangibly improves the customer experience or bottom line, and skip the gimmicks.

A recurring theme was leveraging physical retail not just as a sales channel, but as a brand-building engine. The summit’s opening keynote highlighted how Printemps launched its new NYC flagship without an eCommerce site – a bold “tech strategy” designed to drive shoppers into the store for an immersive brand experience.

Macy’s similarly described its in-store activations (from flower shows to holiday parades) as extensions of its brand identity, aimed at being part of customers’ life moments. As one Macy’s executive put it, “You can drive value in a lot of ways for the consumer,” not just through transactions.

The takeaway for brands: double down on experiential retail and flagship stores as living embodiments of your brand – make stores places where customers join your story, not just points of sale.

Social media isn’t a side channel anymore – it’s central. Speakers noted that social platforms have become the #1 discovery channel for retail products, with TikTok leading the charge.

In practical terms, that means brands must be creative and active on social to capture attention and convert it to sales. One case in point: Poppi, a prebiotic soda startup, built an empire on TikTok by mastering community-driven, authentic storytelling – growing from a kitchen concoction to a $2 billion acquisition thanks to viral engagement.

This summit made it clear that community is the new moat: brands that cultivate passionate fan communities and social commerce (through live shopping, UGC campaigns, influencer partnerships) are reaping outsized rewards.

For marketing leaders, the mandate is to treat social and community as core to your go-to-market, not an afterthought.

Amid the excitement over new tech, a note of realism rang out: simplify your stack and focus on actionable data. Panelists lamented the trap of chasing every new tool or metric while losing sight of what drives real results. “ROAS is out. Clarity is in,” as one CMO bluntly put it.

In other words, vanity metrics and fragmented dashboards won’t cut it in 2025 – what matters is a unified view of the customer and the business. Achieving this may require breaking down silos: for instance, Belkin’s CEO spoke about linking product usage data with marketing data to inform strategy, bridging gaps between teams.

The consensus playbook: audit your technology and analytics stack, cut the bloat, and double down on integrations that give clear, decision-grade insights (e.g. true ROI attribution across channels). In an era of tight budgets, tech investments must earn their keep by driving efficiency and customer intelligence.

Another headline theme was the evolution of the CMO role into a cross-functional growth driver. Summit sessions featured marketing chiefs who now act more like COOs of the revenue engine. They stressed that in an environment where “every dollar counts”, CMOs must elevate beyond brand-building alone and own tangible business outcomes.

Today’s CMO is expected to optimize marketing mix for incremental growth and profitability. Speakers from brands like My/Mochi and Every Man Jack shared how they’re rewriting the marketing playbook to prioritize incrementality, cohesive customer narratives, and disciplined experimentation over easy, short-term wins.

The implicit call-to-action: CMOs need to be true growth operators – fluent in finance and data, willing to kill underperforming tactics, and able to rally their organizations around both creative vision and measurable results.

Finally, much discussion centered on building brands that endure, not just spike. For legacy brands, extending the franchise came up as crucial for longevity: “Licensing is the route to growth… a way to increase exposure and keep your brand growing,” noted one executive, underscoring that partnerships and brand extensions (done right) can fuel relevance over time.

The through-line in these playbooks: brand equity and customer trust are long-term assets. Retail leaders were urged to resist the pressure for unsustainable growth hacks and instead invest in strategies – from product innovation to collaborations – that build cultural resonance and customer lifetime value year after year.

The Unofficially Lead Summit Team

ClickZ is a ClickZ Media publication in the Events division