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Why 2026 Will Be the Year of Agentic Commerce · C-Suite Perspectives

• 0:00
  Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by The Conference Board.
• 0:04
  I'm Steve Odland from The Conference Board and the host of this podcast series.
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  And in today's conversation, we're going to talk about The Conference
• 0:11
  Board's 2026 C-Suite Outlook survey and the specific implications for the
• 0:17
  marketing and communications areas.
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  The C-Suite Outlook survey was carried out in the end of 2025 with more than
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  1,700 C-suite executives responding, including 771 CEOs from around the world.
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  And this is the 27th annual survey that we have conducted for the C-Suite Outlook.
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  So, a longtime survey and really interesting results.
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  Joining me today is Ivan Pollard, the leader of our
• 0:44
  Marketing & Communications Center.
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  Ivan, welcome.
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  Thank you for having me, Steve.
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  Looking forward to it.
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  So Ivan, this is the survey we do every year.
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  You've been part of this for many years.
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  And there's lots of really interesting stuff that has come out of this survey.
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  We're going to focus together today on the marketing/communications areas,
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  but got a lot of CEOs and a lot of CMOs and CCOs who have taken this survey.
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  It's interesting to see where CEOs and CMOs are aligned
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  and where they are different.
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  Maybe you could just give us a top line on that.
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  Top line on that is actually globally, there is alignment,
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  in terms of the priority order.
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  And yet some of the focus points for the CEO and the CMO do start to diverge
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  a little bit, by which I mean, whilst they might rank something number
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  one, both of them rank something number one, 20% of CEOs think it's
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  the most important, but maybe 40% of CMOs think it's the most important.
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  Yeah, but better alignment than we've seen in the past.
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  And this is important cause, as you and I have talked about many times,
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  the turnover among CMOs is really high.
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  What, two every two or three years?
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  Which means that they're not meeting each other's expectations in total.
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  So getting alignment is really important here.
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  And I think, one of the key areas that we've learned in this study, as well as
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  past studies, is that CEOs are really focused on trying to drive growth.
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  How did you see the focus on growth diverge in this survey?
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  So actually I think that they are both focused on growth.
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  I think the way that the CMO has to react to that and drive
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  it is dictated by the CEO.
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  And CMOs do tend to follow it.
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  And as you said, if they don't, they don't stay around.
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  And if they do it really well, some other CEO will try and pinch them.
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  So, tenures are short.
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  But in terms of driving growth, revenue growth, brand building,
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  customer experience tend to be the same for the CMO and the CEO to focus.
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  And we do see a few regional differences from place to place, but they're pretty
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  much aligned in terms of what needs to happen to make growth come about.
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  OK.
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  Now how about profitability?
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  Yeah, profitability's an interesting question, Steve, because one of the things
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  that I think is a tension point—always has been and always will be between those
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  driving marketing and those driving the business—is proving that money spent
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  actually returns profitable growth.
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  It's easy to spend money to chase growth.
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  It's not easy to do it profitably.
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  And that's the challenge for marketers: that they have to adapt and adopt to new
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  market conditions and new opportunities, and prove that every dollar spent is
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  worth spending because it returns growth.
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  Yeah, and CEOs are focused on the outside community and their shareholders and
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  investors or owners, if they're private.
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  And they've got to be thinking about profitability at all times.
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  And sometimes I think it's kind of a view among CEOs, but also others in an
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  organization, that marketing people are, they're just spending, and they call it an
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  investment, but it never really returns.
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  That's not fair, and it's not true, necessarily, but that is the rap on this.
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  And you kind of pick that up over time, don't you?
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  Yeah.
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  And I think as I say, I think that's a really productive and creative tension.
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  A marketer wants to experiment and find new markets, areas, new segments,
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  new innovation, new routes to market.
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  That often takes investment to get there.
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  And you need to prove short-term returns in order for the CEO to have their
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  strategy and their objectives fulfilled.
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  So I think it's a creative tension, Steve, but I don't disagree.
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  It's a tension.
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  Yeah.
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  So, and where does marketing rank, relative to business model changes,
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  as a driver of that profitability?
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  So it is interesting, as you say, we've been doing this for several years.
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  We always see marketing and promotional spending in the top two or three
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  objectives and strategies to drive growth.
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  So they come near the top of the list.
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  This year, marketing's ranked third by CEOs from the selections that are offered.
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  It was fifth last year, but was tied together with promotional spending.
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  And that's what the CEO thinks.
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  Relative to business model changes, business model changes are first:
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  51% of CEOs globally are seeing that as their top priority.
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  And it's the constant choice, actually, across all C-suite leaders,
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  by the way, including the CMOs.
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  So how we find business model changes is going to be an
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  interesting challenge for 2026.
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  The second ranked for CEOs was price rises, so increasing prices, and that's
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  a big change since last year, where price rises were ranked seventh on the list.
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  So, marketing and promotional spending is going to be important to drive growth.
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  Business model change is going to be even more important.
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  And some places, we are going to see people having to put prices up.
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  Inflation's an issue, in many cases driving prices, but it's also a market
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  in which there are opportunities to create more revenue by increasing.
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  Yeah, this whole pricing area, though, is a real slippery slope because
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  you've got a lot of political pressure out there and consumer pressure.
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  And politicians just don't think the companies should be raising prices.
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  When your supply chain costs are going up and your input costs are going
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  up, you have to do something to raise productivity and raise profitability.
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  So it a real tough tension that companies face.
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  It is, Steve.
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  And we've been through it before, and those with experience of
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  having dealt with it can apply that experience to what's going on now.
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  But what is going on now, I think, is different in terms of its speed
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  and its scale and its implications.
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  So all around the world, actually, price rises was a top three choice for CEOs,
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  with one exception, which is Asia, where it was the seventh-ranked choice, with
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  only 15% of executives prioritizing this.
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  With that uncertainty that is being generated by economic and geopolitical,
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  but also technological and societal shifts, there's both opportunity and risk.
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  And the truth is, prices are going up.
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  And if businesses are expected to grow profitably, at some stage, you're
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  going to have to play that card.
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  And it's going to differ, industry by industry, of course, about what the
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  dynamics are and what the elasticity is.
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  That means that your customer is willing to accept a price rise if it's
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  explained sensibly and they understand it, and more importantly, if they still
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  see value created on their behalf.
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  Yeah.
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  You mentioned these tensions that are global, and of course, there are these
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  exogenous tensions, like geopolitical tensions and wars and that kind of thing.
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  But AI is a huge thing.
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  It's disrupted everybody's thinking, it's disrupted views of investment.
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  Talk about the priorities around AI.
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  Well, AI is, we've talked about this before on this podcast, it is an
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  inflection point, not just in how we get things done, but what business even means.
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  I don't know if you've noticed, Steve, but I still watch television, and I saw
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  some good old-fashioned TV ads from IBM.
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  And their end line is IBM will help you change how AI helps you do business.
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  So, the idea that business is going to change is a real big thing.
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  AI as a priority is pretty much up there in the top three for everybody.
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  And in fact, when we get to marketing, many CEOs put AI and marketing
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  in the top three priorities.
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  In fact, CEOs rank it fifth of the 10 priorities for marketers,
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  and marketers rank it fourth.
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  But the telling factor inside of that is when you ask them, well,
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  what are your priorities within AI, rather than AI for business?
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  What are your priorities in ai?
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  It is actually, for both the CEO and the CMO, proving that the investments in
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  AI are changing business productively.
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  It's not just about productivity gains and efficiencies.
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  It's now about effectiveness and proving that the money I spend is generating
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  more money on the revenue growth.
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  And so those ideas are coming here, and I think there's more to come in
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  this space than perhaps we realize.
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  It's a really interesting thing because two or three years ago, CEOs couldn't
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  spell AI, and then all of a sudden they're spending crazy amounts on AI.
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  And last year, we were told by CEOs that their biggest fear was that
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  they were going to fall behind and their competitors were going to
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  spend more and get ahead of them.
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  It was almost like they were blindly throwing money at it before they
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  really understood what it is.
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  I feel like it's more focused here, and marketers in particular are
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  using AI as a tool, more like apps and, more like software tools than
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  just this blind, undefined thing.
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  Yeah, I think that's a really insightful comment, Steve, and the
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  data kind of hints at it, doesn't tell it exactly, but hints at it.
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  So both the CEO and the CMO and actually the CFO are all focused on
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  proving and improving the ROI on AI.
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  And, of course, other expenditures such as marketing.
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  So the data inputs and the outputs, improving the quality
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  of that to try and see how this is working, is really important.
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  When you dive into the priorities for CMOs, you are exactly right.
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  I think the CMOs are seeing this now not as a task to be done—where are
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  you on AI?—but as a tool to be used to deliver on the expectations of marketing:
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  growth, new ideas, customer experience.
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  So we're seeing that happen.
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  For instance, 25% of CEOs rank "leverage the most effective AI
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  tools" as one of their top two AI priorities for growing the business.
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  But 34% of CMOs say the same thing: I'm after leveraging
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  the tools to grow the business.
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  About a half a dozen years ago, the human capital area started talking
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  their use of ai and it was really large language models and quantitative stuff.
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  Really, marketing has begun to use and leapfrog those uses in agentic AI and
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  also creative AI and content production.
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  Those two areas have really vaulted marketing.
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  I mean, the speed at which people can create campaigns and understand
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  their customers, analyze and do one-to-one marketing, all the
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  things that we used to dream about.
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  It's really affected that, and marketers are demonstrating that around the world.
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  Yeah, I think you're right.
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  We do see some regional differences, actually, in where AI is and where
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  companies are around the world.
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  But I remember us asking AI, " Hey, which business unit should adopt AI first?"
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  And even AI told you marketing should, because that ambition to do marketing at
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  the right moment, to the right person, in the right way, but to do it at a
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  cost that was affordable—AI has unlocked that through the digital ecosystem.
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  So I do think we were very fast in marketing to get to content
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  creation, to scenario planning, to predictive analytics.
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  We're seeing the rise of things like synthetic data to test scenarios
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  and to look at, for instance, pricing models and see how they're
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  not always going to be right, but they're better, faster, and smarter.
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  And now with agentic AI, they're much more adaptable and can
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  work end-to-end processes.
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  But I think we're also at a pivot area here.
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  So one of the things I thought was interesting in the C-Suite Outlook survey
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  was: One of the top priorities for a CEO is enhancing AI expertise, and yet
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  that's lower down the list for the CMO.
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  And I hope this isn't a moment of hubris where the marketers
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  believe and the communicators believe that they've worked AI out.
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  Cause AI is going to change again with agentic.
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  And as you and I were discussing the other day, we think there's going to be a shift
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  from e-commerce, which was coined in the '80s, electronic commerce, to "aCommerce."
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  So agentic commerce, where AI search and AI agents start to do all of the work that
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  we used to do ourselves to find which is our new supplier in our supply chain, or
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  which are the new pair of running shoes I'm going to buy to finally do a marathon.
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  So all of that sort of stuff is going to change.
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  Agentic will change everything from the customer journey, the funnel, the
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  pipeline, the conversion, pricing, transactions, payments, customer service,
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  innovation—almost everything marketing has to do will have to adapt to agentic.
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  And my proposition is, I think actually a lot of what businesses have to
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  do will have to adjust to agentic.
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  So marketing might lead, everybody else is going to do their thing, too.
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  I just want to point out to our listeners, first time you've heard the term
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  aCommerce, and you're listening to the guy who created it, Ivan Pollard, head
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  of our Marketing & Communications Center.
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  Brilliant term, Ivan.
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  Thank you.
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  Again, we'll have to learn how to spell it properly, Steve.
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  Yeah, I think it starts with an A, but who knows.
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  Listen, we're talking about our C-Suite challenge and our survey
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  that we do every year and its impact on marketing and communications.
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  We're going to take a short break and be right back.
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  Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
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  I'm your host, Steve Odland, from The Conference Board, and I'm joined
• 14:06
  by Ivan Pollard, leader of our Marketing & Communications Center.
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  So, Ivan, in the first half, we were talking at length about the CMO
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  and their responses to our surveys.
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  Let's shift for a moment to the CCO, the chief communications officer,
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  and talk about what some of the key insights were from CCOs in this survey.
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  It's interesting, and I think when you look at the expectations, as we said,
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  the CEO wants the CMO and their team to drive growth and to build short-term
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  revenue, returns, profitability.
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  But also actually, we saw brand building come up the list for a little bit more of
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  building long-term value into the brand.
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  The CEO, for communications, actually thinks much more long term.
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  They're top, by far, the top priority for communications in the eyes of
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  the CEO is much more strategic.
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  It's about the long-term expectations of all of the shareholders and all
• 15:02
  of the stakeholders and all of the investors, including employees and
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  customers, of course, and it's about their expectations and how you meet those.
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  So, 41% of CEOs pick corporate strategy as their number one priority.
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  And the second priority for corporate communications is.
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  at 28%.
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  is internal communications, which is both a short-term thing,
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  responding to crises, but is more important to the CEO as a long-term,
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  "How do I engage the workforce?"
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  Yeah, the CCO title and area is a little more complex.
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  Everybody knows what a CMO does.
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  The CCOs sometimes report to the CEO, sometimes report to the CMO,
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  sometimes report to the CHRO.
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  So there are internal and external communications priorities
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  depending on what the firm is.
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  Sometimes there are multi-stakeholder priorities, including investor relations.
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  So all of this is a little bit under the umbrella of CCO.
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  As you look at the priorities for communications in total, how are CEOs
• 16:03
  talking about it differently today than they may have in past years?
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  Well, I think we've seen a flip that started, I think, with COVID, which
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  was the comms team used to be there for taking the order and telling the
• 16:15
  story that the executives wanted to put across to any given set of stakeholders.
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  And then occasionally, they would be asked for their input to strategy.
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  I think we saw that flip during COVID and beyond that, which is the really smart CEO
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  and the really smart CCO work together.
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  Because actually, the communications team tend to be, from what you said,
• 16:37
  Steve, it doesn't matter how or who they report to, but they have to cover
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  all of those stakeholders, and they have to understand what's on their
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  mind and how that might shape strategy.
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  So the CCO, the corporate communications leaders, and their team have
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  become more of an input to strategy perhaps than they were before.
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  And this doesn't get them off the hook for still doing that immediate
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  response to issues that arise.
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  So we have to do both of those.
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  But actually, in today's tumultuous environment, with constant change and
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  uncertainty, that input loop is a constant ongoing thing, where what stakeholders
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  say and what they expect should affect your strategy and your tactics for
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  what you're going to do tomorrow.
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  I think the comms role has changed.
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  I think the marketing role has changed just as much, by the way.
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  So, ask a CMO what they do, and if they're not connected to the CCO, they're going
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  to, they're going to run out of steam.
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  I think you make an important point here because the comms team used
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  to put out press releases, announce what was going on, basically take
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  what was given to them and go.
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  What you're saying now is it's kind of a loop, and they need to feed what they're
• 17:46
  hearing from the constituents back in.
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  But the constituents are multi here.
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  You've got customers, employees, owners.
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  You've got community, you've got environmentalists.
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  So it's all of that.
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  And they've got to balance that.
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  So it used to be thought of as internal and external communications, but when
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  you're thinking about it strategically, it all kind of comes together and is a
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  way of packaging the story and really affecting the strategic implementation.
• 18:13
  That's different, isn't it?
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  It is.
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  I mean, it affects strategy formulation, strategy implementation,
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  the narrative around the strategy that gets people aligned to it.
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  We have a corporate communications event every year at The Conference Board
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  that's been going on for many years.
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  And a few years ago, they coined the term "mixternal." There was no such thing
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  anymore as internal comms and external.
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  There was no such thing as investor relations that your
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  employees did not hear about.
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  So that's a connected loop, especially with social media and with all of
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  the voice of the employee being out there, but also the activists
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  and the commentators and the media.
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  Those things now interconnect, and you have to be on top of
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  that, feeding that machine, but also feeding off that machine.
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  Our world is shrinking, Ivan.
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  And even if companies and listeners are focused on one country, call it
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  the United States, you really can't get away from the geopolitical influence
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  on everything that's going on.
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  And yeah, there's been war before.
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  Yeah, there's been trade issues before, but it just seems that we are in one
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  tightly interconnected world today.
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  And social media is one aspect of that.
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  How do you see priorities changing here for 2026, given all of
• 19:33
  these geopolitical tensions and interactions coming into play?
• 19:38
  Well, we had a little bit of a lesson in 2025, in the last few months.
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  And I think it's not slowing down.
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  And we're not getting that much better at handling it.
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  So we have to be prepared for rapid, agile response to things that go on.
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  So, the priorities are staying pretty much the same.
• 19:59
  Those external factors that will shape the way businesses are doing business, they
• 20:04
  are the same, but they are, to your point, Steve, that world is getting smaller.
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  It's also getting smarter, and it's definitely getting faster.
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  So something happens in place A, and suddenly businesses have to
• 20:15
  adapt to it in place B through Z.
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  So that those things are happening and I think what.
• 20:22
  Companies have come to realize what the 2026 outlook is telling us is:
• 20:27
  Listen, sure there are threats, and there is always the parameters
• 20:31
  outside, like shifting behaviors, that often present threats, but more
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  importantly, present opportunities.
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  And when everything's settled down, if you are in business, you have to
• 20:40
  shake the tree to get a customer.
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  Now the ground is shaking, and the fruit is falling.
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  So you've got to work out where you can best take advantage of this.
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  And so, for instance, shifting consumer buying behaviors as an external factor.
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  It's up five points from last year for where it is in terms of the
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  CMO priorities around the world.
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  And has stayed roughly the same up a little bit for CEOs.
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  So, it's the number two priority for CMOs around the world—shifting consumer
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  behaviors and how can I capitalize on that to add value and drive growth?
• 21:11
  Yeah, and I think what we're hearing from CCOs and CMOs around the world really is
• 21:16
  that, when stuff happens somewhere, the old model was, marketers and CCOs looked
• 21:23
  at that and go, does that affect me?
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  No.
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  OK, check, move on.
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  But in fact, you have to almost assume it's going to affect you, and you have to
• 21:31
  therefore say, "OK, something, something just happened in the South China Sea.
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  Now how is that going to affect me, and what do I need to do about it?"
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  So you need to game this out even though it may seem irrelevant.
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  So this is the point, that you can no longer assume that these
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  faraway events are isolated.
• 21:50
  No, and I think we're seeing a rise in the power of agentic systems
• 21:54
  to actually help us do that.
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  The "what if?" scenario.
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  The Conference Board for instance, has a Gray Swans Tool you can
• 22:00
  put into things like that.
• 22:02
  The "What if this happened, what should I do?" But more importantly
• 22:06
  now with synthetic data, then plan out "What will be the implications
• 22:10
  and outcomes if I do X instead of Y?"
• 22:14
  So, yeah, the world is connected, and it moves fast, and if you
• 22:17
  don't move as fast as the world moves, you will get left behind.
• 22:21
  One of the key things that we saw in this survey for 2026 is the
• 22:26
  priority for customer experience.
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  What does that mean?
• 22:30
  This was a really interesting point.
• 22:33
  Last year, it was pretty high, as well, and we saw enhancing the
• 22:36
  customer experience coming up.
• 22:38
  It was number two or number three priority for almost everybody
• 22:41
  for affecting business growth.
• 22:43
  And I think what this means is that the expectations of your
• 22:47
  customers—irrespective of what business you're in—the expectations of
• 22:52
  customers for quality, value, service, responsiveness, value for money,
• 22:58
  ethical behavior, societal behavior, those expectations will continue
• 23:04
  to rise as we get more transparency into how business is conducted.
• 23:08
  And I think there is another aspect of it for me, which is the more
• 23:12
  automated transactions and interactions between a company and its customer,
• 23:18
  the more automated they get, I think the more advantageous it will
• 23:22
  be to have a human interaction.
• 23:25
  Our customer experience will change over time.
• 23:28
  I think it's going to be an issue that the marketing teams and, in fact, the entire
• 23:33
  business leadership team will have to think about the human nature mixed with
• 23:38
  the automated nature of interactions.
• 23:41
  And that experience needs to constantly improve.
• 23:45
  It's an interesting thing because now, with all of the input of AI and
• 23:49
  the implementation around the world, human beings become differentiating.
• 23:55
  And at the end of the day, we do business with people, and we make
• 23:59
  friendships with people, social things.
• 24:01
  So B2B and B2C are affected by this.
• 24:03
  It's a really important point going forward.
• 24:07
  That doesn't just go away.
• 24:08
  You hear all these companies talk about, well, we're going to use AI and
• 24:11
  do away with customer service jobs.
• 24:12
  Yeah.
• 24:13
  And they're also doing away with customer service, period.
• 24:16
  It's just really awful.
• 24:18
  Even the best ones are just not the same.
• 24:20
  It's a really important point that people have to think about this.
• 24:23
  Customer experience used to be a retail focus because you deal
• 24:27
  with your customers directly.
• 24:29
  It was never a focus for, say, consumer products marketers, But increasingly,
• 24:34
  as there is direct communication, social media, interaction on the
• 24:38
  website, even if you're not directly selling to the consumer, that customer
• 24:42
  experience with them is something people should be thinking about.
• 24:46
  That experience is going to get reshaped.
• 24:47
  I used to go on a website to read about a company and what its mission was, and
• 24:52
  then I'd look at its employees, I'd see what they were saying on Glassdoor and
• 24:57
  then I would say, OK, I'm going to get you to come and build my roof, or I'll
• 25:01
  buy a car from you, or this is where I'm going to buy my favorite ice cream.
• 25:05
  Increasingly, that's getting shortcut by AI, just by the AI search and the
• 25:10
  AI Overview, and I think, whilst that has advantages for efficiency and
• 25:16
  effectiveness and speed, I do think it's got question marks over where
• 25:21
  the human factor, like you said Steve.
• 25:24
  How do I learn to trust and value what it is you say you're going to do, and what
• 25:29
  are the implications if it goes wrong?
• 25:30
  So customer service, I think, and the end-to-end customer experience
• 25:34
  from the first time I meet you to the last time I interacted
• 25:39
  with you and bought your product.
• 25:41
  Those things are getting more connected.
• 25:43
  And of course, if my experience is bad, like Winston Churchill said, a
• 25:46
  bad story will get halfway around the world before you've had your time to
• 25:50
  put your trousers on in the morning.
• 25:51
  So that speed, if he thought that in 1940, the speed of that today is
• 25:57
  the backlash, the things that happen with a bad customer experience,
• 26:01
  they can get amplified very quickly.
• 26:04
  And the key insight from that is, wear your trousers at night to bed.
• 26:09
  Listen, any final thoughts, insights from this survey?
• 26:13
  I would urge everybody to have a look at it cause, as you said,
• 26:16
  Steve, we saw the transition to a bit of a tumultuous world last year.
• 26:20
  This is now businesses thinking, OK, how do we move forward
• 26:24
  within this uncertainty?
• 26:26
  And for the marketing and communications teams, they have to get better at
• 26:30
  marketing, and they have to get better at communications, without a doubt.
• 26:33
  But this survey will help you get better at doing business.
• 26:37
  And they can find the results of this survey and our analytics at TCB—that's
• 26:43
  initials of The Conference Board—dot org.
• 26:47
  Ivan Pollard, thanks for being with us today and sharing your insights.
• 26:50
  Thank you very much for having me, Steve.
• 26:52
  And thanks to all of you for listening to C-Suite Perspectives.
• 26:56
  I'm Steve Odland, and this series has been brought to you by The Conference Board.