Senior Executive’s CMO Think Tank features Erin Lentz on the essential balance behind marketing new and complex ideas.
ArtVersion Executive Director of Design Erin Lentz was featured in Senior Executive’s CMO Think Tank article, “Marketing New or Complex Products: How To Build Trust And Demand.” The feature brings together marketing leaders to examine how organizations can build trust and demand for products, technologies, and categories that audiences may not fully understand yet.
The article explores a central challenge facing innovative companies: communicating where the market is heading without allowing the promise of the future to move beyond what customers can understand or the company can credibly deliver today. Messaging that looks too far ahead can feel abstract, while messaging focused only on current capabilities can miss the larger change taking place.
WHY IT MATTERS
CLARITY BEFORE COMPLEXITY
Vision earns attention.
Relevance earns trust.
New categories rarely stall because they lack ambition. They stall when audiences cannot connect that ambition to a need they recognize now.
Erin’s perspective reframes marketing as a bridge between two moments: what a company can credibly deliver today and the direction its market is moving. That bridge makes unfamiliar ideas easier to understand without flattening their potential.
For brands introducing emerging products, this balance prevents two common failures—future-focused messaging that feels abstract and product-focused messaging that misses the larger shift. Connect both, and the story becomes timely, tangible and trustworthy.
The strongest marketing connects the two. It makes the future feel relevant through present-day problems, real customer needs and a clear point of view.
Erin Lentz — Executive Director of Design · ArtVersion
01
Start with now
Ground the story in a customer need people already feel.
02
Show direction
Give the audience a clear view of where the category is heading.
03
Build belief
Use the connection between both to create credibility without hype.
A point of view shaped by human-centered design.
As Executive Director of Design at ArtVersion, Erin guides creative strategy and digital experiences that connect brand, design and user engagement. Her contribution to Senior Executive extends that practice into a clear mandate for marketing leaders: help people see the future through what already matters to them.