Polywood’s Chief Digital Officer Ben Spiegel wants shoppers to know the retailer is more than just a place to buy a great chair. He wants the outdoor furniture brand to stand for a lifestyle of living well outside.

After joining the company in March he has doubled the in-house creative team, invested in a tech stack and shifted focus toward targeting and personalization. We spoke with Spiegel about the brand’s transformation — from tapping customer input for design to using weather targeting for tailored messaging to executing scale through in-house creative.

Sunscreen brand Supergoop launched its biggest integrated campaign yet this summer — and CMO Lauren Weinberg, who joined the brand in Q1 2026 after CMO stints at Peloton and Square, built the timing deliberately around Amazon Prime Day.

The "Summer of Play" push spans retail, creator and experiential channels, with a Target end cap and Amazon Premium Beauty storefront both debuting the same week the campaign went live. In a chat with CM she explains how her team optimizes spend and creative mid-campaign and why shorter videos are driving the brand's marketing strategy.

Lastly, most martech failures aren't execution failures. They're architecture failures, driven by data fragmentation, integration debt and capabilities that outpace operational maturity, according to CMO Council’s Chief Content Officer Tom Kaneshige. New research from the CMO Council and Martechtribe suggests that top-performing organizations focus on alignment rather than accumulation — and prioritize how quickly technology investments will translate into measurable business outcomes.

Until next week,