Attribution remains one of the most persistent paradoxes in modern marketing. While it provides critical data to help marketing leaders make informed decisions, an over-reliance on easily measurable metrics can simultaneously undermine a brand’s long-term strategy. This delicate tension between immediate measurability and sustainable growth took center stage at Brandweek 2026 during a live session on the Marketing Vanguard stage.
Jenny Rooney sat down with Amanda Teder, Chief Marketing Officer of Generac, to unpack the hidden dangers of focusing exclusively on what is easiest to measure. Their conversation offered a deep dive into the realities of marketing in a high-consideration category where purchase journeys routinely span months or even years. Teder shared insights from her extensive career across global consumer and industrial brands, detailing how she built a comprehensive, full-funnel operating model at Generac designed to turn initial interest into lasting revenue.
Presented in partnership with Tatari as part of a special vidcast series recorded live during Brandweek 2026, the discussion addressed the fundamental mechanics of modern growth, leadership philosophy, artificial intelligence, and the pitfalls of flawed attribution models.
Understanding the Generac Journey
Amanda Teder serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Generac, a prominent energy solutions company providing power products and systems for both residential and industrial customers. Before taking the helm at Generac, Teder spent roughly two decades at Procter & Gamble, where she managed powerhouse brands including Oral-B and Febreze, before eventually transitioning to Michelin.
Across these vastly different categories—ranging from fast-moving consumer goods to high-involvement industrial and automotive products—one core theme has remained consistent throughout her career: a CMO must first understand what truly drives the business, and then build the operational systems required to turn customer insight into repeatable growth. At Generac, that philosophy has translated into connecting demand generation, customer nurturing, sales enablement, and post-purchase support into a seamless, end-to-end customer journey.
Lead Generation Isn’t Your Finish Line
During the live Brandweek session, Teder challenged the narrow industry obsession with top-of-funnel lead generation, arguing that demand generation alone is never enough for a considered purchase. When consumers or businesses are evaluating major energy solutions, a quick click or a single downloaded resource does not represent the end of the marketing roadmap.
Generac’s operational model deliberately follows the customer across every phase of the lifecycle, moving fluidly through awareness, sophisticated nurturing, targeted sales support, and the post-purchase experience. The overarching aim is to construct a resilient system capable of systematically converting initial interest into long-term revenue. Because high-consideration purchases involve significant financial investment and deep evaluation, Teder emphasizes that brands cannot afford to abandon the customer once an initial lead is captured. Some purchase journeys require careful, strategic nurturing for months or even years before a transaction occurs, demanding patience and structural alignment across marketing and sales teams.
Great CMOs Know What Kind of Marketer They Are
Reflecting on leadership and career progression, Teder offered valuable perspective on what makes an effective chief marketing officer. Rather than chasing brands simply because they appear glamorous or exciting from the outside, she describes herself fundamentally as a builder.
For Teder, the true professional fulfillment and the greatest business opportunities lie in entering a company, identifying the critical growth levers that are underperforming or missing, and putting the necessary systems in place to make those levers work repeatedly. Self-awareness regarding one’s management style and operational strengths matters far more than external brand prestige. By focusing on structural execution and foundational growth mechanisms, marketing leaders can create lasting value regardless of industry sector.
The AI Debate Is Starting With the Wrong Question
As the industry grapples with the rapid integration of artificial intelligence, Teder used the Brandweek 2026 stage to push past the familiar, binary framing of "AI versus humans."
In her view, before marketing teams decide which tasks should be handed over to artificial intelligence and which responsibilities should remain strictly human, they must ask a more fundamental question: why does the work exist in the first place? Strategy, priority setting, human judgment, and refined taste must come first in any organization. Without a clear strategic anchor and human discernment, automation simply helps a company execute the wrong initiatives faster and more efficiently, magnifying strategic errors rather than solving them.
Attribution Can Make Marketing Worse
Perhaps the most provocative portion of the conversation centered on Teder’s unpopular marketing opinion—an insight well worth careful consideration by industry leadership.
Too often, organizations fall into the trap of over-indexing on attribution models simply because certain metrics are convenient to track. This heavy focus on easily measurable outcomes naturally drags marketing investment toward the bottom of the funnel, where conversions are immediate and attribution paths appear clear-cut.
The profound risk of this approach is that marketers gradually sacrifice the vital brand-building and demand-generation work that establishes future opportunity and long-term enterprise value. Teder cautions that measurement should always serve to sharpen and inform strategy rather than shrink its scope, ensuring that brands do not starve their upper-funnel efforts in pursuit of short-term, easily countable wins.
