Industry Chief Marketing Officers David Marine, Wendy Forsythe and Sandra Howard share how to thoughtfully and authentically use technology.
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Marketing isn’t just about creating eye-catching logos, producing viral social media campaigns or crafting inspirational ads. According to three of the industry’s top chief marketing officers, their jobs are a masterclass in creativity and cunning strategy, where every dollar and every minute spent must lead back to a measurable outcome — a boost in agent productivity, a gain in recruitment and retention or more consumers choosing their brokerage over the competition.
David Marine | Credit: X
“When you talk about the online campaigns — the effort where we can impact recruiting at a low level, franchise sales for our franchise business and trying to see those growth metrics — the metrics side of things, to me, is really what has shown what’s working [and] what’s not,” Chief Marketing Officer David Marine of Compass International Holdings Franchise Brands told the Inman Connect New York crowd on Wednesday. “Where do we invest more time, dollars to see what’s performing at a high level or not?”
Marine said he always has metrics on hand to validate the work he does for Compass International Holdings’ franchise brands, which include Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA, and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. Each campaign and social media post has a measurable impact on the company’s revenue.
“Every dollar we spend on media drives $10 in revenue,” he said. “So when you walk into any room, and someone asks, ‘Why are you spending money on this?’ you have a picture-perfect reason why.”
Wendy Forsythe | Credit: LinkedIn
Marine, eXp Realty CMO Wendy Forsythe and Keller Williams CMO Sandra Howard said artificial intelligence has been key to bolstering their creativity and the return on investment from those efforts.
Forsythe and Howard said AI is most effective when used as a starting point for creative ideas or as a tool to reclaim time from the more menial parts of marketing. However, they said, the marketing process should never be placed solely in AI’s hands.
“From an efficiency perspective, I think of AI as a first step … It can sort of get us [on] the way, but it doesn’t get us all the way, right?” Forsythe said. “We have a similar sort of philosophy with our agents. We don’t ever recommend our agents replace their voice with AI.”
Howard highlighted KW’s enterprise partnership with Canva, noting it has streamlined agents’ daily marketing activities, allowing them to focus on what matters: helping their clients navigate the buying or selling of a home.
Sandra Howard
“I know it’s a partnership that many are familiar with, but because one of our key pillars is education and training, the adoption of Canva, utilization of it, translates to hours saved,” she said. “[That] equals more time nurturing customers, more time being human and interactive and doing the things that you do best, that you wanna do best, because I don’t think anyone got into this business to actually be a marketer.”
Marine said his team uses each Monday to discuss AI, highlight best use cases and share those insights most effectively with CIH affiliates.
“We say, ‘This is the way to use it at Century 21, but we can apply it in a different way at Coldwell Banker,” he said. “And we’ve seen from that some great use cases that help with keeping our brand standards, but serve agents as well.”
The three CMOs said they’re excited to discover new ways to leverage AI in 2026 and give themselves — and their affiliates —more time to focus on creating exhilarating in-person experiences, whether it’s organizing a brokeragewide conference or hosting intimate masterminds with leading agents and brokers.
“We’ll also continue to use AI to bring efficiencies to our brand, but then we’ll take the opportunity that those cost savings give to pour into the real-life experiences of our agents,” Forsythe said.
“When you’re working with entrepreneurs who wake up every day, reinventing the way that they approach their business, bringing on new team members of their own, and you can provide that alignment and framework for being able to sort of immerse all those things together, then you’ve hit a magic touch point. That’s the magic.”
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