At DMexco 2026 in Cologne, the central-stage conversations kept returning to the same tension: marketing teams are being pushed to move faster with AI, yet the thing they are most at risk of losing is trust. Digiday, the conference media partner, hosted two panels that mapped the operational and leadership implications.
Scale AI by tightening governance before chasing speed
The first panel brought together Meta’s Tino Krause, regional director for Germany, Austria and Switzerland; Gamma chief growth officer Kristin Fracchia; Taxfix CMO and chief growth officer Alexander Beresford; and IBM design director Asil Yilmaz. Their focus was how to turn AI into a competitive advantage at scale, and the starting point was not a bigger model budget.
Yilmaz said companies have a responsibility to apply AI safely and compliantly, and that often means checking internal governance for loopholes before launching the latest model. “Sometimes it’s a good idea to put additional security checks in place, perhaps before launching the latest model,” she said.
The panel also acknowledged the pace problem. Fracchia said AI tools can feel different from one month to the next, which makes experimentation essential but exhausting. The upside, she noted, is that work which once took a year or more can now happen in about three months.
Trust, capability mapping and the human loop
Krause framed the broader risk as a trust economy. “We’re operating in a trust economy. The challenge often isn’t the technology; it’s whether I can trust the company and the way its technology is designed,” he said. He warned that removing the human element would be one of the biggest mistakes because it weakens confidence in governance and in how users perceive AI.
For Beresford, the practical answer is role-level clarity. Organisations need an end-to-end understanding of the capabilities required for executive and individual-contributor roles, then focus on specific tasks and objectives rather than trying to do everything at once.
Yilmaz added that younger consumers are becoming more sceptical of AI-generated content and can often tell the difference. That pushes brands to ask what they can uniquely create rather than simply producing more content.
The CMO playbook: clarity, courage and culture
Day two shifted to marketing leadership, with Mini global CMO Jenny Treiber-Ruckenbrod, Decathlon CDO and CMO Patrick Müller, and Lorenz Snacks marketing director Andrea Spielmann. Across performance and brand-building tensions, the panel pointed to clarity of vision and openness to change as the defining traits of the next-generation CMO.
Treiber-Ruckenbrod said teams now need to be clear, courageous and ready to transform on both the technology and human sides. Spielmann argued marketers should question everything because the modern world no longer works the way it used to. Müller framed AI as an efficiency opportunity that could leave more room for human leadership and interaction.
The most concrete examples were community-led. Lorenz has tied into rap culture, Mini works with surfer communities, and Decathlon engages runners and outdoor enthusiasts. Spielmann put it plainly: “Culture doesn’t need brands, but brands need culture.”
What to take back to your team
The panels leave marketing teams with a short operating list:
- Add governance and safety checkpoints before deploying new AI models, not after a misstep.
- Map capabilities for each role before scaling use cases, so AI efforts stay focused.
- Keep human judgement in the loop for trust, distinctiveness and community-building.
The audience figures underline why these signals matter: DMexco 2026 drew 40,000-plus visitors, with 65 percent having purchasing power and 27 percent in C-suite roles, according to conference figures. For marketers, the message from Cologne is that AI scale and brand trust are not opposites; they have to be built together.
Source: Digiday
