Denise Persson stood at the center of conversations that stretched from the Palais to private chalet sessions. As chief marketing officer of Snowflake, she spent much of Cannes Lions 2026 fielding the same urgent question from fellow executives. How do marketers build a new AI operating model across the entire organization?
Her answer, delivered in interviews and in a new report timed to the festival, centered on one word. Trust. “The greatest asset you have as a CMO is the trust that you have built in your organization,” Persson told Business Insider. “It’s the same thing for brands and their customers — trust is the most important brand asset.”
Short. Direct. And increasingly rare amid the hype. While many vendors pushed flashy demos, Snowflake used its return to the French Riviera to launch the fifth edition of its Modern Marketing Data Stack report. Titled “Governing the Agentic Enterprise,” the document maps a practical path forward. One that treats governance not as a brake on innovation but as the accelerator.
Persson has guided this series since its start. The first editions asked whether companies could unify customer data. Later ones examined whether AI could make better use of that data. This year’s version confronts the next reality. AI agents that act autonomously on governed information. The debate over adopting AI has ended. The harder tension lies in scaling it without losing control.
And. The forces at work have converged. AI now shapes workflows and triggers actions. Privacy rules grow stricter as enforcement sharpens. Data gravity pulls everything toward centralized, trusted platforms. Persson outlined these dynamics in the accompanying blog post on Snowflake’s site. “The more unified and complete your customer data is, connected across touchpoints, channels and interactions, the more AI can deliver,” she wrote. “But privacy and governance requirements raise the stakes.”
Marketers face competing demands. Extract maximum value from data. Maintain compliance. Move fast. Yet govern tightly enough to trust outcomes at scale. The report, available at Snowflake’s resource page, positions the data foundation as the new control plane. Scott Brinker, the longtime chiefmartec analyst, captured it neatly inside the document. “AI didn’t reshape the stack mainly by replacing tools. It reshaped it by creating a new control plane above them.”
That observation lands with force. Early AI experiments favored speed and volume of tools. Results proved uneven. Organizations now seeing traction pair targeted use cases with high-quality, governed data. They define accountability before agents start making decisions. They avoid the trap of unclear ownership that stalls many agentic projects.
Fanatics offers one concrete example. The sports and collectibles giant generates billions of fan signals daily across fragmented business units. It built FanGraph on Snowflake to create a single view of more than 100 million fans. Then it deployed Snowflake CoWork so business teams could explore data directly. No endless tickets to data analysts. Insights surfaced faster. From that base, the company began constructing enterprise agents for personalization at scale.
“We have a lot of data,” Daniel Fox, principal product manager at Fanatics, said in the report. “We need to make sense of the data. Now we have the tools to actually do that and to empower and personalize the experiences of our fans.”
Privacy receives equal weight. Persson argues companies must stop treating it as a compliance checkbox. Consent, identity and usage controls belong embedded in the systems where data lives and where agents act. Review every automated decision in real time? Impossible at scale. Policies must sit inside the data layer itself.
Consumer trust hangs in the balance. Once damaged, it proves difficult to restore. First-party data, transparent consent and clear value exchange remain durable advantages no matter how regulations evolve. Brands that demonstrate responsibility gain permission to use more data. Those that don’t face shrinking options.
The report’s evolution reflects broader industry maturation. Launched in 2022, the series first pushed unification. It then explored AI assistance. Now it addresses architectures that let agents operate under human-defined rules. Data gravity matters more than ever. Fragmented stacks with duplicated records cannot support coordinated decisioning or controlled automation. The stack must reorganize around the data. And that data must carry clear semantics and operational controls.
Persson’s own recognition underscores her influence. Ad Age placed her on its 2026 Tech Power List for guiding Snowflake’s positioning of AI around trusted enterprise data rather than chatbot hype. Her two decades in technology marketing, including prior roles at Apigee, inform a steady focus on practical outcomes over spectacle.
Snowflake’s physical presence at the festival reinforced the message. Its chalet at 4 rue des Serbes hosted a series of roundtables. Sessions covered performance CTV with PubMatic, real-time full-funnel attribution with NBCUniversal and VideoAmp, and AI innovation in media with publishers. A happy hour celebrated five years of the data stack report. Invitation-only discussions stayed candid by design. Limited seats kept conversations focused on where AI delivers real impact versus where hype still dominates.
Partners took notice. On June 22, Sigma Computing announced its recognition as a leader in the Analytics & Measurement category of the report. The company enables marketers to analyze live customer data inside Snowflake without extracts or separate layers. “The marketing teams pulling ahead in the AI era are the ones who can act on governed customer data without moving it out of the warehouse,” Persson said in Sigma’s release.
RudderStack, Piano, Iterable, Blend360 and ZoomInfo earned similar mentions across categories including customer data platforms, identity and measurement. Each highlighted integration with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to support governed, real-time activation. These designations stem from Snowflake’s 12-month analysis of actual customer usage patterns. Not marketing slides.
Yet the report avoids promising easy answers. It stresses composable thinking. Companies need not adopt every tool cataloged. Success comes from deliberate assembly. Choose solutions that operate on data where it already lives. Extend or replace components without fracturing governance. In a technology environment that shifts constantly, this flexibility determines who adapts.
Persson drives home the central thesis. No AI strategy exists without a data strategy. No data strategy works without governance. Organizations advancing fastest built their foundation first. Unified. Consistent. With explicit rules for access, sharing and action. Governance does not slow progress. It enables accountable scale.
But challenges remain. Many marketing teams still wrestle with fragmented data. Others treat AI as a collection of point solutions rather than a coordinated system. Accountability questions linger when agents recommend or execute campaigns. Measurement becomes harder when actions span channels and time.
Snowflake’s approach leans on its core strength. The AI Data Cloud lets organizations keep data in one governed place while connecting best-of-breed applications. No constant copying. No synchronization headaches. Agents query live information under strict policies. Marketers gain speed. Compliance teams gain visibility. Finance sees clearer returns.
The Cannes timing carried symbolism. Creativity’s biggest stage has embraced technology more each year. AI sessions filled the schedule. Yet many discussions stayed abstract. Snowflake chose specificity. Launch a report. Host structured conversations. Share customer stories. Position trust and governance as competitive advantages.
Persson has earned the platform to deliver this message. Her LinkedIn posts from the event drew praise from peers who called her a titan in the industry. The Ad Age honor in May 2026 added external validation. She continues to emphasize alignment. CMOs must grasp company-wide priorities. Identify areas where marketing can deliver quick, visible impact. Build credibility through consistent execution.
That credibility matters. In an environment where AI can amplify both successes and mistakes, trust becomes the currency that allows bolder bets. Brands earn it with customers through transparent practices. CMOs earn it internally by demonstrating control amid complexity.
The fifth report concludes with a clear directive. Marketing leaders who thrive will treat governance and innovation as allies. They will stay closest to their data. They will define rules deliberately. When agents arrive in full force, those organizations will act fastest and with greatest confidence.
Persson put it plainly in her blog. “The marketing leaders who will thrive in the agentic era are the ones who understand that governance and innovation are not opposites.”
Simple words. Yet they capture the tension many executives feel this year in Cannes and beyond. The technology exists. The data grows. The expectations rise. What separates winners is the discipline to govern wisely while moving decisively. Snowflake, through Persson’s voice and the company’s products, aims to provide both the platform and the playbook.
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