I recently sat down with Tina Beaty, Chief Marketing & Experience Officer at SHRM, and our conversation was a concise blueprint for modern marketing leadership.
SHRM’s mandate is vast: serving the entire world of work, from CEOs and CROs to HR teams and employees. As Tina explained, SHRM isn’t just marketing a brand; it’s translating one mission across many cultures, legal environments, and economies. The challenge is staying relevant and personal across every geography and channel while still sounding like one coherent brand.
A dominant theme was AI with accountability. Across industries and countries, leaders are no longer focused only on how to implement AI. The real questions are: How do we measure productivity? How do we preserve trust, culture, and control? That accountability focus is quickly becoming the defining issue for 2026.
For CMOs, Tina underscored that data must demonstrate impact, not just activity. It’s not enough to track campaigns; marketing must speak the C-suite’s language: pipeline, conversion, risk reduction, and revenue. Her advice: align shared KPIs with the CRO, head of sales, and CFO, and report holistically on how marketing contributes to revenue, from MQLs and SQLs through to closed deals.
On audience strategy, SHRM manages eight audiences with a few primaries, yet maintains a single, clear narrative. The takeaway: tailor your messaging by segment and channel, but ensure your brand stands for something simple and consistent: your elevator pitch should travel everywhere.
Finally, Tina advocates a hybrid model (in-house teams owning strategy and story, agencies providing scale and fresh thinking) and a bias toward experimentation. “Start by starting,” she suggests, accepting that some tests will fail but will still move your marketing forward.
Discussion points include:
- AI in the workplace and why accountability matters more than simple adoption
- Using data to prove impact (pipeline, conversion, risk reduction) vs. just reporting activity
- Aligning shared KPIs between marketing, sales, and finance
- Balancing in-house and agency resources for story, scale, and fresh thinking
- Audience segmentation at SHRM (eight key audiences) and keeping one consistent brand narrative
- Testing new channels and formats, and why a little failure should be part of the plan