The Executive Dinner Series: What top marketers would build with unlimited budgets

Whether you’re writing a check in NYC, signing a cheque in London, or doing a bit of both in Singapore, the dream remains the same: to make investments that are simply guaranteed to drive growth within your organization.

For senior marketing leaders, the pressure can feel relentless. At distillery, we wanted to change that - at least for one evening.

We hosted a private dinner series across San Francisco, Seattle, New York, London, and Singapore, bringing together a talented group of senior marketing leaders.

From Google, Okta, Visa, LinkedIn, Meta, Samsung, Granola, Gradual, Hera Media and more - our guests were asked one simple question: If you had a blank check to drive growth in your organization, what’s the one project you'd green light immediately?

The Marketing Society kicked off our New York Event with their blank check:

“Build the Playbook for Senior Marketing Leaders to Drive Transformative Growth… Growth today requires new muscles and a different kind of leadership: systems thinking, cultural navigation, behavioral insight, AI fluency, and the ability to influence power structures inside the organization.  We’d create a playbook for marketing leaders that includes the global practices, principles, and frameworks that consistently unlock growth”

Of course it would be impossible to host a B2B marketing event in 2026 without AI dominating the menu. But the conversation consistently shifted from the technology itself to the people and data behind it.

Our co-host for our San Francisco dinner, Kristen Talley-Marshall, chief strategist at Mumura wrote a check to:

“Invest in a proper AI-powered enablement platform demo. I would build a proof of concept to demonstrate AI-powered enablement as a differentiator — or partner with a tech vendor to have something tangible clients can see and buy. “

What united our guests was a hunger for unique use cases that go beyond off-the-shelf tooling. As Gen, a former Samsung consultant, put it:

"If I had a blank check, I would invest in the customer data layer... The real advantage comes from combining AI tools with proprietary customer data that reflects how your business actually works."

In short: AI is only as powerful as the data feeding it. Without a proprietary strategy, you’re just running the same offensive playbook as everyone else with a subscription. At distillery, we use creativity to unlock the value in that data, driving meaningful behavior change rather than just following the pack.

Rosie Allimonos, founder of Hera Media’s blank check shone a light on a very relevant challenge with LLMs:

"We’re investing in original stories to power the HERA LLM. If we want AI that truly understands the female perspective, we have to build the foundation ourselves. Better data, better model."

One senior leader in financial services made a compelling case: B2B marketing has been playing it too safe for too long. With a blank check, they’d go all-in on cinematic storytelling—treating B2B audiences with the same creative ambition usually reserved for consumer brands.

The insight is simple: In a category where most brands look and sound the same, the ones willing to invest in distinctive creative and authentic human advocacy are the ones people actually remember. We’re here to make things happen, not just stay busy, by crafting ideas that actually speak to what makes your audience tick.

David Keene, CRO & Co-Founder Agentive wrote one of the biggest cheques of all in London:

“I'd want to run The Truman Show for AI. I'd use the money to find a special person, a person with the latent talent and drive, and then I'd document and film every stage of the journey from scrappy one-person startup to polished one-person unicorn.”

Throughout this series, we connected with leaders managing massive global remits and deep local nuances. The through-line was consistent: find a genuine customer insight, use global scale to expedite it, but keep the relevance local.

As one senior technology marketing executive shared:

“Global scale is powerful, but true regional growth comes from local relevance.”

We couldn’t have distilled it better ourselves. Our communication always aims to balance that global consistency with regional heart.

In a world where budget cuts and restructures create constant chaos, pushing through bold ideas can feel like an uphill battle. But our conversations this quarter prove that your heads are in the right place.

Success isn't about who can buy the most eyeballs. It’s about the willingness to make a case for something that matters, building the proof, and bringing people with you.

At distillery, we’re built for exactly that: turning ambitious ideas into measurable business value. We don’t just love the numbers; we look for the real shifts in behavior and attitude that show we’re on the right track.

So, whether you’ve got a blank check, a blank cheque, or a very fixed budget, we’re ready to help you find the gap while the rest of the market follows the herd.

Drop us a line, send us a text, or simply send us a blank check (or cheque) with instructions on how to spend it. We promise you won’t regret it…