Thank you for joining us today. Our guest is at the sharp end of what makes a successful PR campaign tick in 2025: data and insight. She is the managing director of Censuswide, a respected international market research consultancy, who help agencies and brands write the headlines that drive media coverage.
For years, PR has known that original research can fuel earned media coverage, but in the post-AI era, the need for credible, first-party data has never been more critical.
And on the show today we're going to dive into the Censuswide’s Voice of the CMO 2025 Report. The report is a crucial temperature check of how marketing leaders' roles and priorities are changing for 2026.
This research zeroes in on the biggest tension facing the C-suite today: the massive adoption of Generative AI and the concurrent consumer skepticism about it.
Nicky will help us dissect the findings that show 100% of CMOs are using AI, yet many are still struggling to connect their digital spend directly to long-term brand equity and sales growth.
If you’re an agency or an in-house leader looking to benchmark your strategy, understand the future of budget allocation, and learn how to navigate the complex world of brand activism, this report - and this conversation - are essential listening.
What’s great about this report is that it takes its research results from 500 CMOs and 2000 consumers, so you get perspectives on the same issues from both sides. The data was collected in June 2025.
Before we start, our PR Masterclass the Agency Growth Forum is now live. Virtual and face to face tickets are now available.
Check out PRmasterclasses.com or the homepage of PRmoment for the full speaker lineup.
Also, do check out PRmoment’s TikTok content, it’ll keep you up to date with the best creative campaigns in PR, interviews with interesting PR folks and our weekly Good and Bad PR content with Andy Barr.
Also, thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.
Here’s a summary of what PRmoment founder Ben Smith and managing director of Censuswide, Nicky Marks discussed on the PRmoment Podcast:
Nicky talks us through the current AI challenges CMOs are facing?
What do CMOs report are the top 5 benefits of using AI?
What concerns do CMOs have about using AI?
Is there a disconnect between the extent to which CMOs use Generative AI and how comfortable consumers are with it?
Nicky discusses the brand discovery and consumer backlash concerns of CMOs.
Why has social media become the most important brand discovery channel for CMOs?
50% of consumers want brands to be proactive around issues of sustainability and purpose but 50% of consumers want brands to be neutral
What are the issues that consumers think brands should have a voice on? And do these match the CMO perceptions?
Why are customer expectations higher than ever? Ben and Nicky have a discussion on whether this is a symptom of the increasingly angry society we live in, fuelled by keyboard warriors answerable to no-one but the social media algorithms.
Budget and Measurement are forever problems for CMOs, but what is different in 2025?
What are the top 5 risks for CMOs right now?
What are the top five priorities for CMOs at the moment? Are these different for B2B or B2C?
What are the most popular KPIs that CMOs use in 2025?
What are the 2025 budgetary trends for CMOs? Are PR budgets increasing, decreasing or remaining the same?