Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo 2025: Day 2 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Day 2 of the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in Denver. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. 

On Day 2, we are highlighting how to achieve the right type of brand awareness, how to use AI to position marketing as a growth driver, and how both B2C and B2B brands with varying budget sizes can use elements of gamification to increase customer retention.

• Gartner Survey Finds Digital Channels Account for 61.1% of Total Marketing Spend
• New CMOs Must Bridge the Expectations Gap by Aligning Marketing with C-Suite Priorities
• Gartner Survey Reveals Personalization Can Triple the Likelihood of Customer Regret at Key Journey Points

Presented by Alex De Fursac Gash, VP Analyst at Gartner

In this session, Alex De Fursac Gash, VP Analyst at Gartner, explored how Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) can re-frame brand awareness and emphasize its importance amid a landscape of senior leaders holding unrealistic expectations for the impact of brand investment. 

• “Eighty-six percent of CEOs and CFOs see marketing as having ultimate accountability for brand, and 85% of CMOs feel confident that investing in brand drives business results.” 

• “According to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, over a quarter of total marketing media spend their budget on brand awareness, however funding has been more difficult recently with: 

  • Sixty-one percent of brand leaders feeling their senior-most leaders have unrealistic expectations for the impact of brand investment.

  • Seventy-three percent of brand leaders are struggling to prove the impact of brand investments to senior-leaders.”

• “To boost the effectiveness of your brand awareness efforts:

  • Prioritize only the impactful channels

  • Establish the space you want to own in your audiences’ minds

  • Design and deploy content that connects your core brand value with relevant, newsworthy events.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

Presented by Nicole Greene, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

GenAI has emerged as a game-changing technology with the potential to revolutionize marketing. The shift from using AI for productivity to driving impactful results requires new processes, tools, skills and mindsets. In her session, Nicole Greene, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, explored how CMOs can refine their strategic roadmap and use AI to position marketing as a growth driver.

• “Sixty-two percent of CEOs say growth is a top strategic priority for their organization. Marketing is uniquely positioned to use AI to help achieve that growth.”

• “AI is rapidly accelerating. Last year, it was all about GenAI. Now, we’re tracking emotion AI, machine customers, influence AI and agentic AI, too. It’s time to develop a short and long-term strategic vision that considers AI as a tool, then as an agent, and then as an influencer.” 

• “The majority of organizations are currently using AI as a tool. They’re in the early stages of AI adoption, with a limited number of use cases aimed at reducing the burden of manual tasks.”

• “In the medium term, CMOs should plan for using AI as an agent, focusing on use cases that support the delivery of better customer experiences. Agentic AI requires quality data and guardrails to succeed and mitigate risks.”

• “Beyond this, in the next 3 to 5 years, we’ll be using AI as an influencer. That means AI can lead decisions autonomously, requiring less human oversight. Marketers will need the discipline to optimize for both human and machine customers.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

Presented by Brad Jashinsky, Director Analyst at Gartner

Loyalty programs in marketing have become a crowded landscape for both B2B and B2C markets with consumers belonging to nearly 20 different loyalty programs. In this session, Brad Jashinsky, Director Analyst at Gartner, discussed how different types of gamification can connect with various types of customer motivations.

• “Gamification will elevate your program out of this sea of ‘sameness’ and into a world of its own.”

• “Seventy-nine percent of loyalty program members report not actively using all of the loyalty programs they know they belong to.”

• “Gamification is one important tool in the toolbox for improving and differentiating loyalty programs, and it is often misunderstood and overlooked by many loyalty marketers.”

• “The foundations of gamification come from customer understanding. Uncover your loyalty members’ motivations by using VoC data and personas.”

• “Successful gamification requires a consistent source of iteration using comprehensive loyalty metrics.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.