Marketing 7.0 and leading through disruption

In episode 120 of the CIM Marketing Podcast, host Ben Walker is joined by the legendary Professor Hermawan Kartajaya, father of Asian marketing and co-author of the Marketing 3.0 - 7.0 series, and CIM’s chief executive, Chris Daly, to explore how marketing and leadership need to evolve in the age of AI.

Together, they unpack what Marketing 7.0 really means in practice: shifting from influencing customer behaviour to leading customer cognition, balancing human creativity with machine intelligence, and ensuring marketing remains an engine for growth, as well as the moral compass of the organisation.

Across the conversation, they discuss how AI is reshaping customer decision-making, why differentiation is at risk in an AI-first world, and how leaders can build trust, avoid burnout, and create safe “sandboxes” for experimentation, all whilst keeping marketing’s human soul at the centre.

Listen in to the full episode to discover:

• Why modern marketing leadership must move beyond nudging behaviour and begin “leading the customer’s mind” and how understanding the attention, social, and reward “brains” is key to driving decisions in an AI-shaped world.
• How to treat AI as a coworker that handles the heavy lifting while humans focus on creativity, differentiation, empathy, and trust, avoiding the twin pitfalls of ignoring tech or over-relying on it.
• A glimpse of what comes next: using technology responsibly to drive impact across the 5Ps – People, Prosperity, Planet, Peace, and Partnership—positioning marketing as both top-line growth engine and force for societal good.

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