Season 4 Episode 8
What AI, Trust, and Authenticity Really Mean for Marketers in 2026 | Live from the annual POSSIBLE Conference & Expo

Episode Summary

In this special edition of The Marketing Rapport, host Tim Finnigan records live from the POSSIBLE Conference in South Beach, Miami (poolside, no less) sitting down with five guests who are shaping the future of marketing technology and data strategy.

The episode features Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca; Jason Ford, VP of Alliances at InfutorData; Michelle Walker, POSSIBLE Conference ambassador; and Nola Solomon, Co-founder of Culture Hive Media Group, plus Jeff Schlitt of Arity. The single biggest idea running through every conversation: marketers who combine clean data with genuine human understanding, not just volume or automation, will win.

Each guest brings a distinct angle on the industry moment:
Gregg Johnson draws a sharp line between AI as an individual productivity tool and AI as a full business process redesign, and argues the companies seeing dramatic results are thinking in the second way, rebuilding workflows from scratch rather than layering AI on top of old habits.

Jason Ford explains how InfutorData’s identity and audience data underpins performance and agentic AI strategies that are dominating conference conversations.

Jeff Schlitt of Arity introduces the concept of mobility data, going beyond a location pin to understand behavioral context, routes, and intent, and shares how one oil change brand saw a 124% lift in store visits using this approach.

Nola Solomon rounds out the group by challenging the industry’s reliance on demographics alone, introducing a cultural methodology that scores creative assets and media placements for community relevance before campaigns go live.

The episode closes with Michelle Walker synthesizing what she heard on the ground from dozens of candid, off-stage conversations: AI is not a job killer but a strategy accelerator, and authentic storytelling is the non-negotiable differentiator in a world drowning in AI-generated content.

Across all five conversations, the same thread emerges: trust, built through relevant data, responsible outreach, and real human connection, is the foundation every modern marketing strategy needs to stand on. The message for marketers is clear: stop treating AI as a shortcut and start using it to do the work you never had time to do properly.

Guests-at-a-Glance

• NAME: Gregg Johnson
• WHAT THEY DO: CEO
• COMPANY: Invoca
• NOTEWORTHY: 10-year CEO of Invoca, a platform helping consumer brands measure, optimize, and orchestrate complex buying journeys using data and AI across every touchpoint.
• COMPANY WEBSITE: invoca.com
• LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/greggjohnson

• NAME: Jason Ford
• WHAT THEY DO: Vice President of Alliances
• COMPANY: InfutorData
• NOTEWORTHY: Leads alliance and partnership strategy at InfutorData, connecting brands, agencies, DSPs, and SaaS platforms with identity and audience data that powers audience creation and identity resolution.
• COMPANY WEBSITE: infutor.com
• LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/jason-ford

• NAME: Jeff Schlitt
• WHAT THEY DO: Solution Engineering Director
• COMPANY: Arity
• NOTEWORTHY: Leads solution engineering at Arity, an Allstate company that turns mobility behavior data, routes, intent, and context, into actionable audience intelligence for brands and agencies.
• COMPANY WEBSITE: arity.com
• LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/jeffschlitt

• NAME: Michelle Walker
• WHAT THEY DO: Creator, Host & Producer
• COMPANY: Independent / POSSIBLE Ambassador
• NOTEWORTHY: A content creator and interviewer who served as an official POSSIBLE Conference ambassador, conducting candid off-stage conversations with practitioners about the real state of marketing in 2026.
• COMPANY WEBSITE: mlwentertainmentgroup.com
• LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/michelle-walker-00059218b

• NAME: Nola Solomon
• WHAT THEY DO: Founder & CEO
• COMPANY: Renoverse AI
• NOTEWORTHY: Founder and CEO of Renoverse AI, building AI-powered cultural intelligence tools that help brands measure relevance, avoid creative missteps, and show up authentically for the communities they’re trying to reach.
• COMPANY WEBSITE: renoverse.ai
• CONTACT: [email protected]

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Key Insights

• AI impact scales when you redesign the whole process~00:15:46
  Most marketers have experimented with AI as a personal productivity tool — drafting copy, composing emails, generating briefs. That is useful, but it is also the low ceiling. The leaders who are seeing transformational results have moved to a different question entirely: if we were rebuilding this workflow from scratch today, how would we design it? That mindset shift changes everything. It forces teams to think across functions, to examine where one person’s work ends and another’s begins, and to rethink how data, creative, media execution, and measurement connect. Gregg Johnson describes this as AI-nativizing the entire business process, and argues it requires more top-down coordination than the bottoms-up productivity approach. The teams winning are not just faster — they are structurally different. For marketers still in the individual productivity phase, this is a clear signal: experimenting with tools is not a strategy. Redesigning how work flows across your organization with AI embedded throughout is.

• Data foundation and governance determine AI quality~00:17:31
  Every AI output is only as strong as the data behind it. That idea is widely repeated, but rarely acted on with the rigor it demands. Strong AI in marketing requires a clear data foundation: well-governed access controls, consistent data definitions, and a shared understanding across teams of which signals actually predict behavior. Without that foundation, AI amplifies noise instead of insight. Jason Ford and Gregg Johnson both made this point from different angles at POSSIBLE — Ford explaining how InfutorData’s terrestrial and digital identity data gives brands the who, what, when, and where needed to reach the right person at the right moment, and Johnson emphasizing that data governance is one of the two defining factors separating genuinely innovative AI users from everyone else. The practical implication is straightforward: before adding AI to any workflow, audit the data feeding it. Clean it, define access rights, and establish shared KPIs. Building strategy on a shaky data foundation does not get faster with AI — it just fails more efficiently.

• Cultural relevance beats demographic targeting every time~00:23:16
  Demographics are a blunt instrument. Knowing that a consumer is a 28-year-old male in a specific ZIP code tells you almost nothing about what will resonate with them creatively, where they spend their attention, or what communities they identify with. Nola Solomon built Culture Hive Media Group on exactly this problem — replacing demographic-first thinking with a cultural methodology that scores creative assets and media placements for relevance to specific communities before a campaign ever launches. The approach goes far beyond race or age to include affinities, interests, and cultural identities: sneakerheads, golf dads, hip-hop fans, first-generation immigrants. Solomon makes the case that when brands miss the cultural moment — even subtly, even without causing major backlash — they still lose. They lose brand affinity, they waste media spend, and they fail to build the long-term relationship that drives real growth. The Air Jordan example she shares illustrates it cleanly: the brand that met the sneakerhead community on its own terms thrived. The brand that led with performance specs missed the point entirely.

• Authentic storytelling is the non-negotiable differentiator now~00:23:16
  In a world where AI can generate content at scale, the scarcest and most valuable thing a brand can produce is something that feels genuinely human. Michelle Walker spent the entire POSSIBLE conference asking practitioners the same question: if you had $10,000 to spend on marketing today, where would it go? The answer kept coming back to AI-powered tools — but the theme underneath every other conversation was authenticity. People are not responding to polished, perfect content. They want to see real human connection. They want to feel something. They want to trust that the brand understands them. That is why Nola Solomon’s work on cultural relevancy scoring matters, why Dove’s real human campaigns resonate, and why Michelle Walker kept hearing from brands that authentic storytelling is the single biggest lever available right now. For marketers, this is not a soft insight — it is a strategic imperative. AI can produce volume. Authenticity requires knowing your audience well enough to say something true about their life.

Episode Highlights

Gregg Johnson on AI, Trust, and the Conference Moment
~00:02:49
Fresh off a circuit that included Medicarians, Adobe Summit, LeadsCon, and Google CloudNext, Gregg Johnson arrived at POSSIBLE with a refined read on the industry. His observation: the AI conversation is getting more nuanced. The buzzword phase is fading and being replaced by something more substantive — a growing focus on trust. Johnson sees trust operating in two directions simultaneously. On the consumer side, people are grappling with what is AI-generated versus what is a genuine human interaction. On the brand and data side, there is real worry about loss of control — can we trust AI to drive the right consumer experience? Both concerns, he argues, are deeply related to authenticity. What makes this segment stand out is Johnson’s ability to synthesize what he is hearing across five major events into a single directional signal for marketers: trust is not a soft value anymore. It is becoming the organizing principle of how the best brands are thinking about their AI and customer experience strategies heading into 2026.

“Two words that I’m hearing more and more together are AI and trust. And I think trust is a really interesting word because it has implications for the consumer.”

Jason Ford on Data as the Underpinning of Everything
~00:10:00
Jason Ford, VP of Alliances at InfutorData, brings the ground-level perspective of someone at POSSIBLE to have real commercial conversations — not just attend sessions. His team works across credit bureaus, DSPs, SSPs, and agency partners, and Ford makes clear that data is not just supporting the AI conversation at events like this — it is the foundation every other conversation depends on. He walks through what InfutorData’s identity data actually enables: terrestrial identity data covering every household and consumer in the US, combined with digital device identifiers, MAIDs, and hashed emails, connected into crosswalks that give brands identity resolution and audience creation capabilities. His framing — the who, what, when, and where — is a useful shorthand for what marketers actually need to reach the right person at the right moment. Ford’s presence at POSSIBLE underscores a practical point: partnership-driven data strategy is not a back-office function. It is a growth driver.

“It all comes down to the who, the what, and the when and the where — identifying when’s the right time to market to that individual and ultimately bring them into a transaction.”

Nola Solomon on Culture Hive and the Cultural Graph
~00:16:53
Nola Solomon’s conversation is one of the most distinctive in the episode — and one of the most forward-looking. She has built Culture Hive Media Group as an AI intelligence engine for cultural advertising, designing a cultural methodology that operates well beyond demographics. The system uses first-, second-, and third-party data assets — including over 100 years of cultural data from Sundial Media Group, publisher of Refinery29 and Essence — to score creative assets and media placements for relevance to specific communities before activation. Solomon is explicit about the cost of getting this wrong: culturally misaligned ads get pulled, damage brand affinity, hurt publishers, and erode trust with the very communities brands are trying to reach. Her analogy about Air Jordans versus a performance-focused competitor who missed the sneakerhead community is memorable and precise. The insight for marketers is sharp: demographic targeting will not save you. You need to understand what a community actually cares about — and it may not be the obvious thing.

“With AI and technology and culture converging, nobody wants to see these picture-perfect things. They wanna see the raw human connectivity that we have and the human connection.”

Jeff Schlitt on Mobility Data and the Oil Change Case Study
~00:23:24
Jeff Schlitt of Arity — a mobility data and analytics company wholly owned by Allstate — offers one of the episode’s most concrete data stories. He draws a clear distinction between location data, which gives you a pin on a map at a moment in time, and mobility data, which understands the full behavioral context: where someone started their journey, what routes they take, what their regular patterns are, and whether a stop was intentional or incidental. The oil change case study he shares at POSSIBLE is a strong proof point. By combining mileage accumulation signals with knowledge of commute routes, Arity was able to identify when a consumer likely needed an oil change and serve a coupon tied to a conveniently located service center along their route. The result: 13% better ad recognition versus a generic brand ad and a 124% incremental lift in store visits. It is a clean example of how behavioral context, not just location, unlocks relevance — and how relevant ads create the convenience experience that actually drives action.

“The people who are seeing really crazy impact are taking the approach of: if I could redesign this from scratch, how would I do it today?”

Michelle Walker on What Practitioners Are Really Saying
~00:13:49
Michelle Walker brings something no panel session can replicate — the unfiltered, off-stage read on what marketers are actually thinking. As a POSSIBLE ambassador, she spent the conference moving between conversations, asking practitioners pointed questions: Is AI working for you? What would you spend $10,000 on today? What trend do you wish would go away? The answers reveal a consistent undercurrent. Every conversation eventually circles back to AI, but not as a magic solution — as a tool for freeing people up to do higher-value work. The IPG Media example she references, where AI handles the mundane so employees can level up in their careers, captures exactly how the most thoughtful organizations are framing the shift. And layered underneath all of it is the authenticity conversation: in a world where everyone has access to AI-generated content, the brands that stand out are the ones that feel genuinely human. Walker’s vantage point makes this segment one of the most grounded in the episode — less about frameworks, more about what is actually happening on the ground.

“Authentic storytelling is huge. Because people don’t just look at followers and numbers. It’s how do we connect to you as a person. How authentic is this? Whatever your product is, how does it make me feel?”

Top Quotes

Gregg Johnson [~00:06:41]
“What I think people are doing where they’re seeing more dramatic impact of AI is business process redesign — how do you take AI and redefine the nature of how work gets done?”

Gregg Johnson [~00:05:48]
“You need to have a really solid data foundation, and governance, and sharing and access control — really understanding which employees can have access to which data and how they can activate it.”

Michelle Walker [~00:16:00]
“Authentic storytelling is huge. Because people don’t just look at followers and numbers. It’s how do we connect to you as a person. How authentic is this? Whatever your product is, how does it make me feel?”

Michelle Walker [~00:15:03]
“AI is freeing up space for you so you can focus somewhere else for growth and strategy.”

Nola Solomon [~00:20:00]
“We bring a lens of cultural awareness — culture in the broader sense of the term — to the entire industry, for consumers and for brands. It’s human. This is about human.”

Nola Solomon [~00:21:00]
“It’s really about whether you’re actually meeting the moment authentically for the community you’re trying to reach — and creating that long-term brand affinity as well as short-term performance against your KPIs.”

Jason Ford [~00:12:00]
“There’s a lot of talk about agentic AI and what that can mean to your business — how AI can help you with understanding audiences and connecting data. Customized audience is a big one that comes out of these conversations.”

Jeff Schlitt [~00:27:37]
“Every brand desires, at the end of the day, to have the right return on ad spend. I think we’re very quick to sell instead of ask questions — do a little more discovery, find out what their goals are, and then match your technology and data capabilities with that.”