The divide between brand and data is gone. Today’s marketers can’t just pick a lane, they need to blend creative instincts with analytical chops. The currents have collided, and there’s no swimming back.

Carolyn Bao is Chief Marketing Officer at Edge, a modern talent solutions platform providing pre-vetted, pre-trained global talent to fill in essential back office jobs while ensuring ongoing compliance, security, and quality of the employment. With two decades in go-to-market strategy at Intuit, Meta, and a slew of other tech leaders, she calls it what it is: a foundational reset.

Currents collide: "Some marketers are deeply data-driven, others are not. But the truth is, to navigate today's landscape, every marketer must become data-driven," says Bao. "I often think of it like two rivers meeting, they merge, but the colors of the water remain distinct." That merging is no longer optional. As foundational assumptions erode, the very definition of success is shifting. "In the past, we knew that SEO was all about optimizing for Google's algorithm. That's no longer true," she says. Across brand, SEO, and paid, once-reliable strategies are faltering, accelerated by data gaps from cookie loss and platform changes.

No empty output: The disruption demands more than just adaptability. It calls for entirely new skill sets. "It’s incredibly critical for marketers to be AI-comfortable and AI-savvy," Bao says. And it’s not just about ChatGPT. Mastery of a broad range of AI tools is becoming essential, not only to boost productivity, but to lead with ideas and create standout content at speed. "It’s beyond just output," she says. "It’s about becoming a thought leader."

Reality check: When it comes to AI-powered personalization, Bao doesn’t sugarcoat it. "The amount of execution in personalization is less than 30%, people talk more than they’re able to execute," she says. The biggest barrier, Bao says, is that "most of us struggle with murky data to begin with." Her team adopts a "crawl, walk, run" approach, applying automation only where data is clean and controlled. As for the broader market? "The vision is great, but not even 50% of organizations can truly do it, especially in B2B, where our data is just much smaller."