Q&A: Critical Mass Chief Creative Officer on Brand Building

Do marketing and creative leaders need to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable?

According to Valerie Carlson, Global Chief Creative Officer of Critical Mass, looking at things in new ways is essential for today's marketing leaders.

Ahead of her panel ‘The CMO Summit’ at the CXO Summit, Valerie explores the unique ways CMOs can approach brand building – and how marketing teams and skill sets are evolving with new technologies.

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Please introduce yourself and your role:

Hello! I’m Valerie Carlson, Global Chief Creative Officer of Critical Mass, a global digital marketing agency that is about to celebrate its 30th birthday. 

I have been in this role for six years now and have helped the agency grow from approximately 800 people to nearly four times that size today. That growth has come from deeply understanding our CMOs’ businesses and having truthful, sometimes hard conversations that help them choose the right path vs just the next one. 

We partner with some of the world’s biggest and most innovative brands, like Adobe, BMW, AT&T and Diageo to name a few. I have been doing this kind of work for over 20 years, and the thing that keeps me energised and passionate in this time of massive technological change is the people. 

I think we forget that CMOs and brand leaders have the same challenges that we have on the agency side, and when there is empathy and optimism, many of our biggest challenges become shared opportunities.

How can CMOs and creative leaders demonstrate the commercial value of building a brand?

Get comfortable with unique approaches to brand building and recognise that commercial success comes from long-term engagement. 

Short-term planning and performance-only activation will be the death of brands in the very near future. Connected agentic experiences and DTC off-domain are here, and they will permeate the web as we know it very quickly. 

When the majority of traffic to your brand is coming through Google and Amazon, you have already lost control. Subscriptions and one-click buy/reserve will happen in these layers. 

Brands that want to be seen and loved need to do the planning now and choose to live in the layers that matter to people – on platforms like Substack and Reddit, in the real world (pop-ups and activations), and in communities – healthcare, TikTok, gaming, etc. 

Demonstrating these new engagement metrics against a custom roadmap for long-term brand value is 100% the only way to do this.

What are the ways CMOs and marketing leaders can build stronger relationships with other members of the C-suite?

One-on-one, in-person, educational conversations about what is actually happening in marketing. The COO needs to be just as motivated by the success of the CMO, and that takes education about the value that marketing brings to the business longer term. 

Reject the talk track around AI making everything faster, eliminating jobs and creating content volume for efficiency. 

Reject the short-term performance lifts measured in fractions of a percent. 

Refocus on an ecosystem that builds brand loyalty over time, and work with your CEO and CIO to share a new metrics model that includes a projection for quarters and years vs weeks and months.

How are the required skill sets for marketing and creative teams changing?

When a team is purpose-built for success, AI creates a more collaborative, exciting environment. 

Creatives can kill ideas that have already been done, create prototypes in hours vs days and play with a new volume of options in the storyboard and concept phases. 

When the client and agency are aligned and we have a clear, ownable brief, it can be the underpinning for a smoother process and a foundation for teams to have the data and insights they need to make breakthrough work that delivers for the brand and the business. 

When a creative team has the time and space they need to create unique, ownable concepts and brand platforms, everyone wins. 

I am investing in individual people and building a team of creative technologists (for lack of a better term) who have what I call “Venn skills”. I'm using a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles to help everyone in my discipline celebrate their key skills. 

Writers on my team are now vibe coding, directors are creating storyboards and technologists are concepting. 

The team of the future is a small, tight pod of people with unique Venns who toss work back and forth, ultimately creating the best possible work for each brief.

What is the most important piece of advice you would give to marketing leaders?

I have two pieces of advice.

Reject the current narrative that content volume and speed are the focus for CMOs. That is simply not true. 

We have all seen Nike lose commercial value by trying to push a performance and owned-property-only approach. 

Slow down, use your roadmap and think longer term in order to create custom experiences in the places and spaces where your audiences are.

Move away from the standard media plan. It is shocking how many brands still accept a cut-and-paste paid media model. 

Ask yourself, “What will being only on Meta really do for my brand long term?” You have to reach people where they are, in context, now. 

If you're a B2B brand that is specifically trying to reach C-suite buyers, you need to create a comms plan that recognises where they are when they are researching, addresses their specific needs and delivers the information in context. 

This will feel uncomfortable because it means you have to think about things like the whisper network they engage with, new ways of creating confidence through unique case studies, and yes, the highest-level brand film, which still works incredibly hard when paired with the right channel mix.

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