Can you develop an “Excel Love Language?” Maggie Gross, head of strategy and brand practice leader at Deloitte Digital, says it’s an increasingly effective way for CMOs and senior marketers to communicate the benefits of brand building to the C-suite. By crafting a homemade Excel Love Language, marketers can meld soft metrics, such as brand awareness and brand recall, with hard metrics demanded by the company’s CFO like lead-gen revenue and new acquisitions.

Gross joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers speak the “Excel Love Language” and provide some strategic thinking for how marketers change the conversation about branding.

With consumers tuning out pretty much anything that interrupts their media flow, it’s getting harder and harder for brands to break through the noise. When it comes to the creative side, marketers must be a lot more supple and, perhaps more important, media agnostic. Kara Buckner, president and chief strategy officer at Fallon, joins host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how marketers are changing their approach to whipping up what they hope will be ad creative that truly resonate with their audiences and will get people talking.

Wither performance marketing? Doubtful. However, branded advertising is becoming a much bigger consideration among B2B brands that are eager to bolster their appeal to small- and medium-sized businesses and tout their values (as opposed to price points). It’s a tall order. Lydia Michael, owner of marketing agency Blended Collective, and De’Lon Dixon, team leads at CX (customer experience) at Glassbox and founder of Think Technologies, join host Matthew Schwartz to discuss how B2B marketers build relationships with SMBs and borrow a few pages from the consumer playbook to turbocharge their messaging.