Marketing Operations Committee

This event is over.


I. WELCOME & INTRODUCTION (11:00 – 11:10a.m. ET)

II. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: ANNUAL PLANNING VS PERPETUAL PLANNING – WHAT ACTUALLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED FOR THE YEAR? (11:10 – 11:40a.m. ET)
Many organizations plan annually but operate quarterly or continuously. In this interactive open discussion, we’ll discuss the key decisions that should be locked in during annual planning season, versus those decisions that should remain fluid with flexibility to adjust throughout the year. All attendees are encouraged to participate.

Main Discussion Topics:

  • Which decisions truly need annual commitment?
  • What planning assumptions break first over the course of the year?
  • How do you balance adaptability without creating planning fatigue?

Moderators:
Stephanie Jarstad, Vice President, Marketing Operations & Chief of Staff to the CMO – Northwestern Mutual and Marketing Operations Committee Co-Chair
Tony Robson, Head of Marketing Operations & Go-To-Market Planning – University of Phoenix and Marketing Operations Committee Co-Chair

III. NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL’S ANNUAL PLANNING PROCESS (11:40a.m. – 12:15p.m. ET) (Download the Presentation)
From roundtable discussion to real-world application, we’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the annual planning procedure that powers Northwestern Mutual’s marketing department. Learn how Northwestern Mutual organizes their strategic priorities, facilitates enterprise alignment on multi-year strategies, and enhances metric maturity for foundational and transformational initiatives. Creative operations lead, Peter Papazoglou, will explain how he brings various marketing functions together to create a well-orchestrated planning process.

Speaker:
Peter Papazoglou, Senior Director, Creative Operations – Northwestern Mutual

IV. BREAK (12:15 – 12:20p.m. ET)

V. THE ULTIMATE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO GEN AI SEARCH OPTIMIZATION (12:20 – 1:00p.m. ET) (Download the Presentation)
As consumers rapidly adopt gen AI and increasingly rely on AI agents for complex tasks, marketing leaders are being forced to rethink the search landscape — and reimagine brand visibility in a world where large language models (LLMs) summarize, recommend, and cite information differently than traditional search engines. This practical, step-by-step playbook is designed for marketing and data leaders tackling the challenges. It combines recent findings on gen AI search adoption with a deep dive into the data behind gen AI search, how it works, and how it differs from traditional search. It contains seven strategies to improve gen AI search performance — so you can move as fast as AI models evolve.

Speaker:
Joan Fitzgerald, Vice President, Data Excellence and Privacy – ANA