david c. edelman

Harvard Business School Lecturer | Former CMO of Aetna | Co-Author of 'Personalized'

David C. Edelman helps organizations harness the power of artificial intelligence and personalization to re-engineer customer decision journeys, build agile marketing structures, and capture sustainable growth.

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Keynote Topics:

Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI
Based on his bestselling book, Edelman maps the next frontier of customer experience. He explains how companies can transition from generic, segment-based campaigns to hyper-individualized customer relationships using generative AI. He shares a clear, actionable playbook—built around his "Five Promises of Personalization"—to help brands anticipate customer needs, deliver real-time value, and foster deep brand loyalty.
Re-Engineering the Customer Decision Journey
The traditional sales funnel is dead. As the pioneer behind the "Customer Decision Journey" (CDJ) framework, Edelman details how digital technology and AI permanently reorganize how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase products. He provides corporate boards with a strategic roadmap to align marketing, product design, and customer service into a single, seamless, and high-performance revenue engine.
AI-Powered Marketing: Structuring the Modern Agile Enterprise
Most personalization and AI initiatives fail because organizations rely on rigid, industrial-era operating models. Edelman shares practical insights from his time transforming the global marketing engine of Aetna and consulting for McKinsey. He provides senior executives with a clear blueprint to build agile, interdisciplinary marketing teams, navigate data-privacy regulations, and measure the real ROI of digital investments.

speaker Bio:

David C. Edelman is an internationally recognized authority on digital marketing strategy, customer experience, and business transformation who serves as a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Harvard Business School. He has spent over thirty years helping global brands, asset managers, and start-ups navigate the complexities of digitization and organizational change. Edelman has been recognized by Forbes as one of the "Most Influential CMOs in the World" and by AdWeek as one of the "Top 20 Marketing and Technology Executives" for his transformative contribution to the advertising and technology sectors.

Edelman’s deep strategic authority is anchored in both corporate leadership and elite advisory roles. He served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of the Fortune 50 healthcare giant Aetna, where he directed a radical, digital-first transformation of the enterprise's customer engagement and brand footprint. Prior to his corporate officer role, he co-led the Global Digital Marketing and Marketing Technology practices at McKinsey & Company, and held senior executive positions at Digitas and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He is the co-author of the groundbreaking work Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI (HBR Press, 2024), a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and a sought-after board advisor on AI scaling and agile operations.

Summary (Core Conviction):

Edelman’s core conviction is that artificial intelligence represents a permanent, structural shift in how organizations must relate to their customers. He rejects passive, tech-driven automation in favor of a proactive "Personalization Economy," where customer strategy dictates technological deployment. His signature concept—the Customer Decision Journey—challenges traditional corporate siloes, showing leaders how to unify data infrastructure, brand storytelling, and agile operations to deliver hyper-relevant experiences. Delivering high-energy, content-rich, and senior practitioner-focused presentations, he provides corporate boards and senior management with absolute clarity on how to scale digital marketing successfully.