Why Marketers Need Community More Than Ever
Marketing has never been more connected, and yet, marketers have never had more reasons to feel isolated.
The job now stretches across brand, media, technology, analytics, customer experience, AI, creators, commerce, culture, and business strategy. Expectations are rising, teams are lean, and the pace of change is relentless. Ad Age recently described 2026 marketing leaders as operating with tighter teams, pressure to prove ROI, AI adoption, creator fatigue, and rapidly changing consumer behavior all at once.
No marketer can realistically keep up with all of that alone.
That is why the professional community matters more now than another newsletter, another webinar, or another saved article… Marketers need places where they can compare notes, hear how other people are solving similar problems, test their own thinking, and build relationships with people outside of their normal circles. Especially when some of those circles include only one or two marketing team members.
Marketers Should Not Operate in Isolation
Forbes’ 2026 World’s Most Influential CMOs research analyzed 10 billion data points across nearly 3,000 companies to identify the 50 leaders having the greatest impact on business, brand, and growth. Among the themes Forbes identified were real-time brand management, the growing role of entertainment in brand relevance, and AI changing how marketers work without replacing human judgment.
Those trends all showcase that these tasks do not stand alone as one marketing discipline.
Marketing incorporates people working across disciplines like creative, media, technology, customer experience, analytics, brand strategy, and culture.
Marketing publications are investing more heavily in professional communities.
In 2026, Forbes appointed former GE CMO Linda Boff to lead its CMO Network, describing it as a platform spanning live events, content, and community designed to keep marketing leaders at the forefront of the business of marketing.
ADWEEK has taken a similar approach with Marketing Vanguard, its CMO community built around meaningful connections, curated introductions, peer cohorts, roundtables, learning, and personal growth.
And Ad Age’s 2026 CMO Exchange is deliberately structured around peer-to-peer conversation rather than passive conference programming. Senior marketing leaders gather for facilitated workshops and roundtables to exchange ideas, benchmark against peers, and openly discuss the challenges reshaping the profession.
Access to information matters and makes us all better as we navigate challenges. This is why we love connecting people. At Setup, we believe that everyone is better together.
Marketers Need Places to Compare Notes
One of the biggest benefits of community is something deceptively simple: finding out how other people are approaching the same problem.
Ad Age framed its 2026 NextGen Marketing Summit around this idea as marketers approach limited budgets, lean teams, and high expectations, the event was positioned as an opportunity for marketers to “compare what’s actually working” across areas such as community building, creators, fandom, culture, loyalty, and AI.
ADWEEK’s 2026 Brandweek messaging makes a similar promise: marketers should leave with not only new ideas and expertise, but meaningful networking with industry-defining leaders.
There is real value in being able to ask another marketer:
How are you measuring this?
What happened when you tried that?
How is your team actually using AI?
How are you handling agency relationships?
What are you seeing from customers?
What would you do differently?
Those conversations rarely happen in a polished case study, so we are creating opportunities to ask these questions and have these conversations at events like AIMS.
In-Person Connection Is Becoming More Valuable, Not Less
In a world that is increasingly more digital and isolating, people are actively looking for more meaningful in-person experiences.
Eventbrite’s 2026 Social Study found that 79% of Gen Z and Millennials expect to attend more events in the year ahead. The research describes a broader “Reset to Real,” where people are gravitating toward experiences that feel more personal, participatory, local, and authentic rather than highly choreographed.The same study found 69% prefer discovering events through personal networks, reinforcing just how much trust still flows through real relationships and communities.
Marketers still want rooms where they can talk to people who understand the work.
ADWEEK’s newest communities emphasize curated introductions and purposeful peer connection. Ad Age has expanded leadership communities built around people sharing ideas and solving common problems together.
Technology is giving marketers more information than ever and has not eliminated the need for trusted people who can help make sense of it. The value of a network becomes especially obvious when the industry is changing quickly.
Indeed’s CMO survey data shows marketing roles themselves are evolving: employers increasingly need marketers who combine technology fluency with data literacy, business understanding, adaptability, and human judgment.
You can learn many of those skills through courses and content, but some of the most useful learning comes from sitting across from someone who has already faced the problem you are facing now.
A marketer at a heritage brand may have lessons for someone working at a startup. An agency leader may see a challenge differently than an in-house marketer. Someone in media may recognize an opportunity that a brand strategist misses. Community exposes marketers to those perspectives before they become trapped inside their own organizations, disciplines, or assumptions.
Atlanta Has the Talent + Needs to be Brought Together
Atlanta already has an unusually strong marketing ecosystem. The city is home to global brands, agencies, creative talent, technology companies, nonprofits, media organizations, and active professional communities. AIMS is built to bring these circles together.
On October 8 at SCADshow, the Atlanta Integrated Marketing Summit will bring brand leaders, agency partners, professional organizations, sponsors, and rising marketers together for one focused afternoon of useful ideas and meaningful relationships.
Attendees will hear from senior leaders at Georgia-Pacific, Hertz, Cricket Wireless, and Chick-fil-A, with sessions focused on brand modernization, transformation, growth, customer experience, and storytelling.
But the sessions are only part of the value because the other part is being in the room to meet, network, and connect with like-minded peers.
The Marketing Match Lounge Makes Networking More Intentional
Traditional conference networking can be uncomfortable. You walk into a room. Everyone has a drink. People naturally find coworkers or friends they already know. You exchange a few business cards. Maybe you happen to meet someone useful. Maybe you do not.
The Marketing Match Lounge was created to make that experience easier and more valuable.
Introduced at AIMS in 2025 and inspired by Setup’s speed-dating #MarketersBreakfast format, the Lounge creates topic-driven conversations that help attendees meet people around shared interests and marketing challenges. Last year, attendees reported leaving AIMS with connections to new collaborators, prospective employers, agency partners, mentors, and peers.
Instead of asking, “Who should I go talk to?,” the environment gives people a place to effortlessly connect with topics that guide the conversation.
That might mean meeting someone who is tackling the same issues as you, or simply meeting someone in Atlanta’s marketing community whom you would never have encountered in your normal professional routine.
The goal is not networking for the sake of collecting contacts, but to actually make meaningful connections across our community.
Your Network Is Part of Your Marketing Toolkit
Marketers spend significant time building their technology stacks, measurement frameworks, agency rosters, and professional skill sets forgetting that their network is just as important as any skill. The people you know can become sources of perspective, collaborators, hires, mentors, agency partners, sounding boards, customers, and future opportunities.
More importantly, they can help you make better decisions before you know exactly what question you need to ask. The strongest marketers are building communities of people they can learn from.
For Atlanta marketers, AIMS is an opportunity to do this in one afternoon.
Spend time in the Marketing Match Lounge and leave with more perspectives and more people in your corner.