The Business Hat Every CMO Needs in the Boardroom with Jessica Shapiro, CMO at LiveRamp

Jessica Shapiro is the Chief Marketing Officer of LiveRamp, where she has led the company into the data collaboration category since joining in 2022. Before LiveRamp, she ran marketing at SAP Concur, held marketing leadership roles at Icertis, launched Starbucks VIA at Starbucks, and spent eight years at Microsoft.

In this episode, Jessica joins Sydney Sloan and Jon Miller to share how she earned the right to reposition the LiveRamp brand by fixing the demand waterfall first and cutting cost per opportunity in half. She explains what it takes for a new category to stick, and why she sees governance and agent autonomy as additive instead of in conflict.

Jessica also walks through the offsite where her whole team built their own AI agents, and how LiveRamp now brings one combined brand number to every board meeting.

Jump Into the Conversation

(00:00) Jessica’s path from pre-med to marketing

(03:51) Curiosity and perseverance as marketing superpowers

(05:36) Wearing the business hat as a strategic CMO

(07:29) Why the CRO relationship comes first

(09:11) Earning credibility before repositioning the brand

(13:03) Building the data collaboration category at LiveRamp

(16:56) Setting expectations for category creation with the board

(19:20) Balancing data governance with agent autonomy

(22:49) The ups and downs of LiveRamp’s AI transformation

(27:05) Measuring brand with a composite score

(29:15) What brand metrics to bring into the boardroom

(30:23) Gratitude, mentors, and key takeaways

Episode Takeaways

• Earn the brand conversation with pipeline first. When her CEO told her not to start with a repositioning, Jessica rebuilt the demand waterfall, put attribution on everything, and took cost per opportunity from $6,000 to $3,000. That credibility is what got her back to the brand.
• Build the category story from what customers actually say. Customer interviews showed people knew the LiveRamp name but each described the company differently, and that gap became the case for the data collaboration story.
• Tell one category story in different versions. Customers hear time savings and protection, and the board hears a bigger TAM. Every version has to ladder up to the same place.
• Treat governance as what lets agents move faster. Jessica sees autonomy and governance as additive. When the right data and governance are built in, agents have guardrails and can do their work with less friction.
• Give the board one brand number they can follow. LiveRamp blends share of voice, message pull-through, AI visibility, web traffic, and AEO/GEO into a single trend line, introduced as a spotlight topic and reported at every board meeting.

Standout Quote

• “I feel like the CRO and CMO need to be locked at the hip. If we do not share the same goals and the same vision, everything falls apart.” — Jessica Shapiro

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamshapiro/
• LiveRamp Website: https://liveramp.com/

Mentioned in this Episode

• RampUp by LiveRamp: https://www.rampedup.us/
• Play Bigger: https://www.playbigger.com/
• Icertis: https://www.icertis.com/
• SAP Concur: https://www.concur.com/
• Brady Brewer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brady-brewer-64a2034 
• Elena Donio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenadonio/ 
• Scott Howe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schowe/ 

More from The B2B CMO Project

• Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2bcmoproject/ 
• Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ 
• Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ 
• More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts