WSJ CMO Council Summit 2026: Where Marketing Leaders Turn Participation into Brand Power
The WSJ CMO Council Summit 2026 is built around a marketing problem that is becoming harder to solve with reach, frequency and campaigns alone. Consumers are not simply choosing brands. They are choosing communities, creators, cultural moments, social platforms and causes that mean something to them. For marketers, the challenge is shifting from getting attention to earning participation.
Taking place on November 17 and 18, 2026 in New York City, the summit brings together senior marketing leaders to examine how brands can build stronger connections with audiences across culture, communities and the platforms where people already gather. The event is presented by the WSJ Leadership Institute and the CMO Council, with the 2026 program centered on the power of participation.
Where CMO Conversations Get Beyond the Campaign
Marketing has spent years becoming better at reaching people.
The harder question now is whether people actually want to participate in what brands are creating.
That is the territory the WSJ CMO Council Summit is entering in 2026. The event will explore participation across cultural events, social platforms, professional communities and other spaces where passionate consumers gather.
It is a subtle but important change in perspective.
A campaign can buy attention.
Participation has to be earned.
That makes culture, community and consumer identity much more important to the modern marketing equation. It also puts greater pressure on CMOs to understand not just where audiences are spending time, but why they care about the spaces they choose to enter.
The result is a conversation that goes beyond media strategy.
It is about relevance, belonging and influence.
Also Read: The Martech Playbook for Turning Messaging Channels into Commerce Journeys
What to Expect at the WSJ CMO Council Summit 2026?
Two days with senior marketing leaders
The summit brings together CMOs and senior marketing executives in New York for conversations around the changing marketing landscape. The 2026 gathering is expected to combine perspectives from major consumer brands, technology companies, sports organizations and other businesses operating where marketing intersects with culture and consumer behavior.
A closer look at the power of participation
At the center of the 2026 program is a question that increasingly matters to every brand. What happens when consumers move from being an audience to becoming participants?
The summit will explore that shift across cultural events, social platforms, professional communities and other environments where passionate audiences already gather.
Senior voices from across industries
The speaker lineup brings together marketers who operate in very different categories, from beauty and beverages to payments, technology, travel, sports and entertainment. That variety matters because participation looks different depending on what the brand represents and where its communities naturally form.
Conversation shaped by real market pressure
The event sits within a broader period of change for marketing leadership. CMOs are being asked to understand new consumer behaviors, navigate rapidly changing technology and connect brand activity more clearly to business value. The summit's cross-industry format creates room for those pressures to be examined from multiple angles rather than through a single category lens.
Key Themes Driving the 2026 Program
Participation as a new form of influence
For years, marketers focused on impressions, engagement and reach.
The summit's central idea pushes beyond that framework.
Participation suggests a deeper relationship between people and brands. Consumers may attend an event, join a community, interact with creators, follow a cultural movement or actively contribute to a brand conversation. The opportunity for marketers is to become part of those behaviors rather than continually interrupting them.
That requires a different mindset.
The best brands may not always be the loudest ones in the room.
They may be the ones that give people a reason to enter the room in the first place.
Culture as a strategic marketing environment
Culture is no longer something brands can simply observe from the outside.
Whether through sports, entertainment, creators or other cultural spaces, brands increasingly have to understand the communities they want to engage before deciding how to show up. The 2026 summit places cultural participation directly within the marketing leadership conversation.
The implication is straightforward.
A logo placed inside a cultural moment does not automatically make the brand culturally relevant.
Participation has to feel earned.
Social platforms as communities, not just channels
Social media has often been treated as a distribution mechanism.
That view is becoming increasingly incomplete.
The summit's focus on participation across social platforms points toward a model where marketers have to understand interaction, identity and community alongside reach. The opportunity is not simply to publish more content, but to create reasons for audiences to respond, contribute and return.
That is a tougher job.
But it is also where durable brand relationships can begin.
Professional communities and shared identity
Participation does not stop with consumer culture.
Professional communities can become powerful environments for connection, trust and influence, particularly when audiences are united by expertise, ambition or a shared industry identity. By putting those communities alongside cultural events and social platforms, the summit broadens the idea of where meaningful brand relationships can develop.
For CMOs, that means thinking beyond conventional audience segmentation.
The stronger question becomes what people believe they are part of.
Consumer connection in an AI-shaped market
AI is changing how marketing work gets produced, distributed and optimized. It can make creation faster and execution more scalable, but that creates another problem. When production becomes easier for everyone, differentiation becomes harder.
That makes human connection more valuable, not less.
The summit's emphasis on participation sits neatly inside that tension. Technology can help brands reach more people, but it cannot automatically create belonging or genuine interest. That still has to come from what the brand means to the audience.
Featured Speakers and Industry Voices
The 2026 summit brings together marketing leaders from some of the world's most recognizable brands and organizations. Confirmed speakers highlighted by WSJ CMO Today include:
- Frank Cooper III - Chief Marketing Officer, Visa
- Gülen Bengi - Lead Global Chief Marketing Officer, Mars and Global Chief Growth Officer, Mars Snacking
- Jonathan Adashek - Senior Vice President and Chief Global Affairs Officer, IBM
- Mark Kirkham - Chief Marketing Officer, PepsiCo Beverages US
- Oshiya Savur - Chief Marketing Officer, E.L.F. Brands
- Rachel Epstein - Chief Marketing Officer, National Women's Soccer League
View the full speaker lineup here.
The WSJ CMO Council Summit Experience
The value of a C-suite summit is rarely limited to what happens on stage.
The stronger value comes from putting senior marketers with very different businesses into the same conversation. A marketing leader from payments may see participation through sponsorship and culture. A sports marketer may see it through fan communities. A beauty CMO may see it through creators and social identity. A technology marketer may approach it through professional communities and digital ecosystems.
Those differences create useful friction.
The summit is designed around that kind of executive exchange, bringing together leaders who are dealing with the same fundamental challenge from different directions. The 2026 program's focus on cultural events, social platforms and professional communities makes the cross-industry mix particularly relevant.
That is important because marketing's toughest problems rarely sit neatly inside one channel anymore.
The audience moves.
Culture moves.
Technology moves.
The brand has to move with them without losing what makes it recognizable in the first place.
Why the WSJ CMO Council Summit 2026 Matters
Marketing is becoming easier to execute and harder to make meaningful.
AI can accelerate production. Platforms can expand distribution. Data can sharpen targeting. But none of those things guarantee that people will care.
That is why the WSJ CMO Council Summit 2026 matters.
Its focus on participation gets closer to the real issue facing modern brands. The goal is no longer just to put a message in front of an audience. It is to create something people want to be part of, whether that happens through culture, community, social interaction or shared passion.
The question is no longer whether brands can capture attention.
They can.
The harder question is whether they can give consumers a reason to participate.
That may be the difference between being seen and actually being remembered.
Discover more at https://leadershipinstitute.wsj.com/cmo/event/cmo-council-summit-november-2026/
