Can you develop an “Excel Love Language?” Maggie Gross, head of strategy and brand practice leader at Deloitte Digital, says it’s an increasingly effective way for CMOs and senior marketers to communicate the benefits of brand building to the C-suite. By crafting a homemade Excel Love Language, marketers can meld soft metrics, such as brand awareness and brand recall, with hard metrics demanded by the company’s CFO like lead-gen revenue and new acquisitions.

Gross joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers speak the “Excel Love Language” and provide some strategic thinking for how marketers change the conversation about branding.

With consumers tuning out pretty much anything that interrupts their media flow, it’s getting harder and harder for brands to break through the noise. When it comes to the creative side, marketers must be a lot more supple and, perhaps more important, media agnostic. Kara Buckner, president and chief strategy officer at Fallon, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers are changing their approach to whipping up what they hope will be ad creative that truly resonate with their audiences and will get people talking.

Wither performance marketing? Doubtful. However, branded advertising is becoming a much bigger consideration among B2B brands that are eager to bolster their appeal to small- and medium-sized businesses and tout their values (as opposed to price points). It’s a tall order. Lydia Michael, owner of marketing agency Blended Collective, and De’Lon Dixon, team leads at CX (customer experience) at Glassbox and founder of Think Technologies, join host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how B2B marketers build relationships with SMBs and borrow a few pages from the consumer playbook to turbocharge their messaging.

Chris Oswald, EVP, head of law, ethics and government relations at the ANA, joins host Matthew Schwartz to provide some salient tips for marketers and brand managers grappling with an increasingly complicate legislative terrain at both the federal and state levels.

Jamie Gier, CMO at DexCare, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the latest trends in relationship marketing, which emphasizes customer retention, satisfaction, and lifetime customer value. One option is for B2B marketers to reclaim socializing from social media, as relationship marketing is based on getting out into the field to engage customers and cohorts and make their jobs and lives easier. Gier provides some salient examples for how B2B marketers cultivate their relationship marketing efforts without being preoccupied by the transaction.

JuHee Kim, president of ad agency MuteSix, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss some of the key questions marketers need to ask when they want to align their brand with a cultural moment (or movement) and why serendipity may play a bigger part in such activations than brand managers appreciate.

Tapping into Gen Z is at the heart of a new influencer marketing network launched by Rubix Foods, which provides food flavors and ingredients to restaurants. Shannon O’Shields, VP of marketing at Rubix Foods, and Megumi Robinson, VP at Belle Communication, join host Matthew Schwartz to talk about the network, as well as some of the larger trends swirling around influencer marketing, which is expected to reach, which is expected to reach $8.1 billion this year and $9.2 billion in 2025, per eMarketer.

Michael Farmer, chairman and CEO of strategic consultancy Farmer & Company, and author of Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and The Redefinition of the Ad Business, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss the growing schisms between client-side marketers and their advertising agencies, and how to enhance their relationships.