THE FUTURE CMO WILL BE BOTH A STRATEGIST AND A CONNECTOR

KUNAL AMAN
Regional Marketing Director – India, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, SAS

“Over the years, my role at SAS has evolved from executing marketing activities to driving strategic impact by getting an ‘outside in view’, uncovering white spaces for our business to grow, engaging leaders, shaping business direction, influencing priorities, and mentoring future talent. A key shift has been building cross-functional collaboration with sales, presales, customer success and finance to contribute to as well as shape and guide organizational priorities together.

Today, marketing is not just about visibility, it’s about enabling growth. By crafting compelling narratives, accelerating opportunities and fueling the pipeline, marketing plays a central role in shaping long-term business levers. My focus at SAS has been on ensuring relevance, creating efficiency, and local market impact. Being part of SAS, a data and AI leader, has also transformed our marketing operations to be agile, data-driven and tech-enabled.

The changing Role of CMOs

The expectations from marketing leaders are only set to increase in the times to come. I see the CMO evolving into a growth orchestrator, a strategic partner who is deeply embedded in business strategy, not just marketing execution. The marketing leaders of tomorrow will need to be great collaborators, aligning cross-functional teams, marrying data and insights with creativity to create impact.

With the infusion of gen AI and agentic AI, marketing is entering a new era, supercharged with enhanced creativity, productivity and speed to market. Yet, the Modern CMO has to continue to bridge storytelling with analytics, integrating marketing with technology to make smarter decisions. In essence, the future CMO is both a strategist and a connector, bringing people, processes, and platforms together to fuel sustainable growth.”