Marketers Embrace AI’s Promise While Confronting Its Trust Problem
From left to right: Tifany Pedersen, David Baum, Cindy Zhou and Jesse Comart
At the 2025 Mid-Atlantic MarComm Summit in Arlington, Va., AI wasn’t just a sidebar topic — it threaded through more than 20 sessions, from paid media to crisis communications to internal brand storytelling.
“AI is everything,” said Tifany Pedersen, Head of Global Employer Brand Marketing, Alexa, Devices & Services at Amazon. “We can take a job description on our website and turn it into a social media post in two seconds.” Pedersen described how her teams now treat AI as a “teammate,” building tools that scale global content creation, translate marketing into multiple languages, and accelerate recruiting for Amazon’s next generation of AI scientists.
For David Baum, Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Affairs at Zeno Group, AI’s rise demands balance. “Leadership acts equal humanity times technology,” he said, defining Zeno’s new “leadership equation.” He urged communicators to pair empathy and judgment with automation. “You have to treat your AI as a teammate, not a tool,” he added. “We’re the ones that feed it and shape it.”
