All eyes are on CMOs in the AI era. With the future of companies dependent on the success of AI investments, getting change management right is a defining task and a massive opportunity. Wayfair CMO Paul Toms has combined risk with rigor to make bold, data-driven moves across customer experience, measurement, and creative performance. Here’s a look at those bets and their critical lessons for marketing leaders.
Reimagining the customer journey with AI-driven curation
Wayfair, known for its massive online store, looked to elevate its customer experience to help inspire customers on their home shopping journey. That meant deploying advanced AI solutions to create a more personalized journey.
In June, the brand introduced the Discover tab, a generative AI feature, to its app. The custom-built tool allows customers to generate photo-realistic room designs to find inspiration and ideas for their homes. Wayfair then recommends matching products, creating a seamless shopping experience.
To further enhance personalization, Wayfair used Gemini to refine its massive product catalog of over 30 million items. Toms worked with his C-suite counterpart, Chief Technology Officer Fiona Tan, to support her team’s innovations through marketing leadership.
- The takeaway: AI-driven personalization can help address various customer pain points and create a more holistic, personalized experience. To do it right, ensure alignment between marketing and other departments eager to deploy AI across public surfaces.
Embracing the next big thing — and measuring its success
Toms anticipates that, in the future, purchases will occur through a range of devices, including headphones and lenses. Wearables will necessitate alternatives to the buy button.
“Wayfair is a company built on the leading edge of consumer technology. That’s how we started, and that’s where our muscle is,” he reflected. “Now, we’re talking about LLMs and agentic AI. That’s us saying, how can we be a first mover? That, strategically, is who we want to be.”
But being first doesn’t mean being reckless. Before he became CMO, Toms led Wayfair’s specialty brands, a time he describes as a “growth hacking” era. Today, the challenge is different, more complex. With the customer journey touching countless emerging channels, Toms calls the task of defining a measurement strategy the “billion dollar question.”
If the creative is the most important thing, then that team should have their hands on the steering wheel.
- The takeaway: Historic first-mover instincts must be paired with modern, data-driven rigor. In a complex marketing landscape, AI is not just a tool for customer experience; it’s a critical component for bringing together fragmented data and identifying drivers of business growth.
Breaking down silos and empowering creative teams
Making good on his growth-hacking reputation, Toms tackled a traditional marketing problem head-on: the separation between creative and media teams. He saw this silo as a major obstacle, arguing that creatives were too far removed from the actual performance of their work.
Toms’ solution was to empower the creative team by making them responsible for reporting on how their assets performed.
“We had come from a place where creatives were abstracted behind a layer of briefs,” he explains, and success was measured by stakeholder satisfaction. “If the creative is the most important thing, accounting for up to 70% of the effectiveness of an ad, then that team should be sitting right there with their hands on the steering wheel.”
Initially apprehensive, the creative team quickly embraced their new responsibility as they saw their direct impact on business results. They used AI to identify product trends and generate imagery, enabling faster and more frequent rounds of testing.
I’d much rather be walking things back than not moving forward because I’m afraid of what might happen.
The new model created a constant feedback loop for daily iterations, allowing Wayfair to invest more confidently in media. Toms intends to apply the model to a broader set of services in the future.
- The takeaway: To maximize ad effectiveness, tear down the wall between creative and media teams. Making creatives accountable for performance fosters a culture of ownership and creates a feedback loop that leads to daily improvements, not just after-the-fact analysis.
Toms’ risk-taking approach, validated by rigorous testing, highlights the innovative mindset required of CMOs today. His core philosophy? “I’d much rather be walking things back than not moving forward because I’m afraid of what might happen.”
Taken from: Think with Google