Brandweek 2026: Democratized Marketing Won’t Differentiate Your Brand. ft. Cheryl Guerin of Mastercard

About this episode

AI gives every marketer access to similar tools. So, how’s that going to help your brand stand out? Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with MasterCard’s Executive Vice President of Global Brand Strategy and Innovation, Cheryl Guerin, to talk about how brands can differentiate themselves when technology becomes table stakes. Cheryl gets into how MasterCard uses AI to eliminate routine brand work and free its people for higher-order thinking, why Priceless has survived nearly three decades of cultural change, and why real agility sometimes looks like saying no. Cheryl Guerin is Executive Vice President, Global Brand Strategy and Innovation at MasterCard. She has spent nearly 26 years at the company across a wide range of roles, including regional marketing leadership, products and services, P&L responsibility and global credit before returning to the area she describes as her heart: marketing. Over that time, Cheryl has helped evolve the Priceless platform through major shifts in culture, technology and the business itself, leading initiatives such as the True Name card and Touch Card. Her perspective is grounded in a simple chal