Inside a No-Bullshit CMO Roundtable on the Future of Marketing

Author

Carlo Palomino
January 23, 2026

Welcome to The Friday Fortune! If your calendar says “meetings” but your brain says “bleh,” you’re in the right place. Somewhere between Q1 planning decks and pretending 2026 isn’t moving at breakneck speeds, marketing leaders are craving something real…less posturing, more honesty, and zero buzzwords per minute.

Each week, we bring you unfiltered conversations, smart brand moves, and the kind of marketing insight that actually makes you stop scrolling (or at least save it for later and feel productive).

But this week’s edition is special, and a lot more honest.

A few months ago, we had an idea:

What if marketing leaders had their own version of LeBron’s The Shop?

Instead of talking hoops, they’d talk about the "ugly" side of the marketing craft —what’s actually working, what’s completely broken, and the stuff nobody wants to admit when the cameras are on.

So, we skipped the conference center and rented out a restaurant in NYC. No stages, no teleprompters, and absolutely no canned talking points.

We brought together leaders from WeWork, Hard Rock Digital, Blue Apron, Wonder, Metafide, The Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, Air, and more, and let the conversation go where it needed to go. Strategy debates. Channel fatigue, brand vs. performance, what “authentic” even means in 2026. The stuff that usually gets edited out or never said at all.

By the end of the night, it stopped feeling like a business dinner. It felt like a group of friends who actually give a damn about this industry, finally saying the quiet parts out loud.

That conversation is now live as the first OpenFortune 🥠 x CMO Weekly Roundtable video, available on YouTube and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Huge thanks to this crew for bringing the honesty: Raina Enand, Petula Lucey, Jeffrey Tousignant, Joshua Egan, Becky Wang, Woozae K., Joseph Sancio, Hayley Clover, and more.

And don’t worry, we’re just getting started.

NYC was the first stop, but we’re taking the table to other cities soon :)

Crack open a handful of the week’s best marketing links—because good fortune favors the curious.

That’s a wrap for this week’s Friday fortune.

If you enjoyed the read, pass it along to your favorite marketer who could use a little extra inspo in their inbox.

Until next time, may your marketing be memorable and your cookies always be fortunate!

— The OpenFortune team