Marketing Vanguard continues its Cannes Lions 2026 series as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Jill Kramer, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard.
In this conversation, Jill reveals the false binaries marketing keeps boxing itself into: AI vs. creativity, brand vs. performance, strategy vs. execution, “what’s in” vs. what’s “dead.”
Her point is clear: the strongest marketing does not live at the extremes. It lives in the gray area where accountability, emotion, creativity, and business outcomes all have to work together.
What you’ll learn:
- Why AI should sharpen creative focus, not replace the human craft
- How brand and performance marketing became a false choice
- Why the best marketing happens in the “soft emotional middle”
- How prioritization can become a creative act for a new CMO
- Why leaders now need to go high and deep at the same time
- How to shift from doing everything yourself to enabling the team
- Why the industry needs to stop arguing in extremes and talk more about the work
This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes Lions 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.
About our guest:
Jill Kramer is the chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, bringing deep experience across brand strategy, creative leadership and enterprise marketing transformation. Before joining Mastercard, she held senior leadership roles at Accenture, where she progressed from head of advertising, to brand, and finally, to chief marketing and communications officer.
Earlier, she also built her foundation on the agency side at BBDO. At Mastercard, Jill brings a perspective shaped by both sides of the table: the agency instinct for creative craft and the brand-side understanding of business complexity, accountability, and internal alignment.
Her leadership is rooted in balance: brand and performance, creativity and AI, strategic vision and hands-on involvement.
**Episode Highlights: **
[02:30] Why AI Can Make Creativity Better — Jill pushes back on the idea that AI and creativity are in opposition. Creativity is still a human craft, but AI can help sharpen focus on the core idea, the insight and the customer understanding behind the work. The smartest use of AI is not to bypass the art. It is to clear space for the art to get stronger. For CMOs, that means using the tool where it serves the work, without pretending the tool is the work.
[04:34] Brand and Performance Are Not Opposites — Jill reflects on the industry’s pendulum swing from brand to performance and argues that the answer was never one or the other. At Mastercard, brand has always been deeply valued, but the wider marketing conversation often forces itself into extremes. Performance brought useful accountability and transparency, but overcorrecting into performance-only thinking can flatten the emotional power of marketing. The future is in integration.
[05:48] The Gray Area Is Where Real Marketing Happens — Jill calls out how strange it is that marketing, a craft built on emotion, culture and persuasion, keeps talking about itself in exacting binaries. Her point is sharper: real marketing lives in the gray area, in the soft emotional middle where data, creativity, accountability and consumer feeling all collide. That nuance is the work.
[09:24] Why Modern CMOs Need to Go High and Deep — Jill argues that marketing leadership cannot sit at a distance anymore. Technology is changing too fast, decisions are moving too quickly, and accountability is too high. The leaders who will thrive are the ones who can hold the 30,000-foot view and still get close to the work when needed. This is not micromanagement; it is business fluency. CMOs cannot lead transformation if they are waiting for someone else to explain the tools, the tradeoffs or the decisions.
[12:40] Stop Speaking in Extremes — Jill’s provocation for the industry is simple: stop talking in extremes. Stop declaring what is in, what is out, what is dead, and what is the next miracle. These polar-opposite arguments keep distracting the industry from the harder, more useful conversation. Because the work and ideas matter, and the ability to be inspired by what other teams are making matters. Marketing does not need another binary. It needs better attention.