Expert Mode: Building Belief in Marketing at Scale
This article was based on the interview with Sangeeta Prasad, Chief Marketing Officer, Slalom by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
Sangeeta Prasad has had the rare experience of launching the Chief Marketing Officer role at not one, but two global organizations. That gives her a unique vantage point: she hasn’t just built marketing campaigns—she’s built the case for why marketing matters in the first place. In her current role as CMO of Slalom, a $3B global consulting firm with a presence in 53 offices and 12 countries, Prasad leads with equal parts strategy and heart.
Her approach underscores a central tension for many enterprise marketing leaders: driving alignment and performance across distributed teams while also championing the credibility and value of marketing within the broader organization. For Prasad, marketing isn’t just about storytelling—it’s about creating belief. This article explores her philosophy, practical lessons, and candid reflections on being a marketing evangelist in a complex, high-growth environment.
Marketing Misconceptions: The Evangelist’s First Battle
Prasad doesn’t mince words when asked about the misconceptions that plague the CMO role—particularly when stepping in as the first person to ever hold that title.
“The first one is that once you’ve hired a marketing team, your investment is done,” she said. “In marketing, people are less than half of the investment. The rest comes in the campaigns and the work you do”.
In other words, building a high-performing marketing function isn’t just about headcount. It requires ongoing, strategic investment in tools, campaigns, content, and—critically—the ability to execute across multiple channels. Another recurring misconception? That marketing should only be brought in at the end to execute someone else’s vision. “Tell us what your problem is and let us help solve it,” she emphasized, pushing back against the old-school idea that marketing is just a service desk for brochures.
Perhaps the most amusing (and persistent) misunderstanding is the idea that building a website means you’re done. “No, no, you have to bring people to the website,” Prasad said. “The website is the foundational element for marketing. It is not the outcome of marketing”.
Going Global Without Going Generic
Slalom’s unique business model—built on local consultants embedded in their communities—offers both an opportunity and a challenge for global marketing. Prasad sees her role as one of amplification, not replacement.
“We think of it as enhancing the local context as we expand our global reach,” she said. “Our company has been built on the premise that our consultants work in the locations where they live. So they’re really part of the community.”
At a time when many organizations prioritize centralization for efficiency, Prasad takes a different view: that humanity and localization are not only compatible with global scale, but essential to it. “Even when we have global campaigns for marketing, we always customize it, personalize it at a local level,” she explained.
This “fiercely human” orientation—as Slalom calls it—has helped the organization maintain authenticity while scaling rapidly. But getting to that place took more than a brand guideline. It took years of relationship-building, patience, and results.
Internal Cohesion: From Silos to Shared Success
For many enterprise CMOs, the internal marketing team is a distributed patchwork of talent, often born from organic growth or legacy structures. That was certainly the case at Slalom.
“When I first joined, there were marketers in each office doing exactly what they wanted with no connection,” Prasad recalled. “It’s been great for our local soul, but it’s not been great for marketing, which is all about cohesion.”
The solution wasn’t a heavy-handed mandate—it was communication, education, and trust. “My first year I was not successful doing that because you have to build trust, show some short-term results, show the quality of your work,” she said.
Her formula is simple but powerful: communicate often (even when it feels repetitive), educate stakeholders on the why behind marketing’s evolving role, and foster connection across geographies. “We call ourselves ‘local soul and global reach,’” she noted. And over time, those previously isolated teams began to collaborate more naturally, driven by the realization that cohesion leads to greater impactf.
Building Sales Partnerships Through Education and Enablement
Enterprise B2B marketers often face another uphill climb: aligning with sales in environments where the default culture is “sell first, ask questions later.” Prasad tackled this challenge head-on with a practical mindset: bring data, and bring help.
“Everything we’re doing, we’re showing ROI or measuring ROI behind that,” she said. “We have campaigns we can show the marketing lift of sales motions. So when marketing is involved, you get X percent more than when marketing is not involved.”
But she didn’t stop at the data. Her team also filled critical gaps—such as building sales enablement materials—where sales lacked resources. “Even though we know it’s not part of what marketing typically does,” she said, “we’re raising our hands.” That willingness to step in, deliver value, and stay focused on shared goals has helped shift perceptions of marketing from ‘support’ to ‘strategic partner’.
Leading Through Learning (and Letting Go)
To stay agile in a fast-moving discipline like marketing, Prasad emphasizes a “learner’s mindset” and a leadership approach that prioritizes expertise over ego.
“I have a very strong leadership team, passionate about their specific areas of marketing,” she said. “They are keeping up on all the evolution that’s happening around gen AI and ABM.”
Interestingly, she points out that marketers—despite being in the business of promotion—aren’t always great at marketing themselves. “How do we create this motion where we can actually speak to our stakeholders in their language, not marketing speak?”
It’s a humbling insight that many marketing leaders will recognize. Fluency in executive-speak—and tying efforts to business outcomes—is often more important than flash.
GenAI: A Tool, Not a Magic Wand
On the topic of generative AI, Prasad offers a grounded, strategic take. “GenAI is not the solution. It’s the tool to get to the solution,” she said. Her focus is on integration—not adoption for adoption’s sake—and on upskilling her team to work alongside the technology.
“Adapting an organization to use AI is much more difficult than just bringing AI in,” she said. “There are so many people who just are not comfortable using it.”
Her team is tackling that discomfort head-on, using apprenticeships, hands-on training, and prompt experimentation to build AI fluency. “Training people and removing the fear is really the big, big win,” she noted.
Conclusion: Turning Skeptics Into Champions
Throughout the conversation, Prasad returned again and again to the theme of belief. Not belief in brand myths or slogans—but belief in marketing’s ability to drive real, measurable, human-centric value.
From launching global marketing functions from scratch to guiding a deeply distributed team into alignment, her approach is thoughtful, rigorous, and refreshingly devoid of buzzwords. It’s about relationships, results, and relentless learning.
And while there’s no single playbook for marketing evangelism, Prasad leaves us with a simple truth that’s easy to forget amid quarterly goals and campaign calendars: “Great marketing doesn’t just tell stories. It creates believers.”en in the age of AI, sometimes staying sharp means unplugging. Just for a little while.
