B2B Marketing / Brand Strategy Market: Lisa Maxwell: Organizations Struggle to Align, Not to Answer

Lisa Maxwell, vice president of B2B marketing at Mastercard and juror on The Drum B2B Awards Industry jury, argues that organizational failure in marketing stems from misalignment between teams solving different problems rather than a lack of answers. She advocates starting marketing work by identifying what audiences need to understand to act, building shared understanding across stakeholders, and investing in stakeholder insight before platform or channel choices. Maxwell says AI can generate information quickly but cannot observe or interpret human behaviour, so the human advantage lies in judgment and interpretation. She also emphasizes that B2B marketing must account for human decision‑making within organisations and highlights curiosity and discernment as key leadership traits for the next generation of marketers.