To shift from performance to brand marketing, SAS's CMO built a strategic alliance with the CFO. This involved mutual literacy training (marketing for finance, finance for marketing) and embedding a finance business partner directly into the marketing leadership team, turning finance into a powerful advocate.
To justify brand advertising beyond awareness metrics, SAS partnered with LinkedIn. They used a clean room to connect ad exposure directly to won revenue. This data demonstrated that customers exposed to the brand campaign were five times more likely to convert, providing hard ROI data for a traditionally soft metric.
To sell a massive Liverpool FC sponsorship internally, the CMO created a video explaining the 18-month strategic journey. It featured partners and the CFO discussing the business case. This preempted doubt and built company-wide ownership, framing it as a 'SAS partnership,' not just a marketing initiative.
Moving beyond using AI for simple content generation, SAS applies it to enhance marketing quality. They built an AI agent that scores creative briefs against effectiveness criteria. This forces teams to create better inputs, leading to better creative outputs and reframing AI's role from cost-saver to quality-enhancer.
The rise of generative AI search fundamentally changes content strategy. SAS's CMO explains marketers must win the "hearts and minds" of both people and the AI itself. This requires creating content that is emotionally resonant on-site while also being structured to be favorably indexed and interpreted by Large Language Models.
SAS CMO Jen Kay Boss shared a key insight from Brené Brown: effective leaders must evolve from being a "Get Shit Done" person to a "GSSD" (Get Strategic Shit Done) person. This means ruthlessly prioritizing time and energy on high-impact initiatives that only they are uniquely equipped to handle.
SAS found its well-oiled demand generation marketing was hitting a ceiling of effectiveness. Investing in brand advertising was not just a long-term strategy but a necessary intervention to unlock further short-term growth. The brand halo effect increased the efficiency of all their performance channels, breaking the plateau.
To foster a culture of lifelong learning, SAS's CMO implemented "My Focus Friday" for upskilling. Crucially, she led by example, transparently sharing her own learning goals with her team—like needing to get "into the weeds" on AI search. This vulnerability makes it safe for others to admit gaps and prioritize learning.