Most companies define themselves by the products they sell or the categories they compete in. That definition can narrow where they look for growth. Drawing on the experience of Victoria Lozano, former CMO of Crayola, this article examines how brands can identify new business opportunities by understanding the broader needs they serve. From differentiating Dentyne and Trident at Cadbury to extending Crayola into experiences and licensing, Victoria offers lessons for executives deciding where to invest and how to take a brand into new markets.

At the first Phrase Summits in San Francisco and London, enterprise leaders showed how AI is expanding their teams’ contribution to the business. Automation results are helping them earn a more strategic role, with growing responsibility for AI governance and process design. Hands-on sessions turned ideas into working solutions, while conversations with peers gave attendees new approaches to take back to their organizations.

Sean Hopwood built his company’s own AI translation model to meet specific client needs. He also credits platforms such as Phrase with helping him grow Day Translations, and believes adopting those tools earlier would have helped the business grow further. His experience raises a question for leaders investing in AI. Which capabilities justify the ongoing commitment of building and maintaining them? This article explores the obligations behind internal AI builds and offers a framework for deciding where to build and where to buy.

Are customers committed to your brand, or would leaving be too much effort? Insights from Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow and Former CMCO, challenge what repeat purchases tell us about loyalty and where global businesses should invest to give customers a reason to stay. Some customers love your brand. Others would leave if it didn’t mean moving their data or learning another system. They keep buying, so it is easy to mistake the inconvenience of leaving for loyalty. You could be spending a fortune on rewards for customers who stay because switching is a hassle. What happens when a competitor offers to handle the move for them?

How much of your brand investment still works when customers encounter your business through an interface you do not control? Wordless logos offer a revealing test of recognition, with wider implications for how global brands preserve meaning across markets. Insights from Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow and Former CMCO, inform an examination of how global brands build recognition and preserve meaning across markets.

Companies can enter a new market with a strong growth plan and still leave customers with an experience shaped somewhere else. Drawing on new research and insights from leaders at AWS, Monzo and The Culture Factor Group, this article examines why customer experience is becoming the clearest measure of successful expansion.

International growth does not make the content challenge broader. It makes it more specific. From eight countries to 65 languages to hundreds of thousands of hyperlocal marketplaces, every stage of growth demands a content operation capable of serving customers with greater precision.

Nearly a third of consumers now use AI in their purchase journeys, and in more than half of those journeys, AI introduces a brand the consumer has never considered. When commerce moves inside an AI conversation, a brand's content becomes one of its most important routes into consideration.

AI has made content abundant and easier to produce. Credibility has replaced attention as the scarce resource. The organizations that invested in editorial discipline when everyone else was chasing volume are now collecting the dividend.