ROAS Does Not Equal Marketing Success, Says Ex-Outrigger VP

By James Calloway

Jason Pirock says he will argue one marketing opinion "until I'm blue in the face": ROAS does not equal marketing success. The former vice president of global brand marketing at Outrigger Resorts and Hotels made the claim live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, in a vidcast conversation with Jenny Rooney presented in partnership with Tatari.

Pirock, who spent nearly 20 years across retail, commercial real estate and hospitality — including roles at Hyatt, Aparium Hotel Group, Springboard and Outrigger — treats ROAS as a useful directional indicator, not a complete scoreboard. In hospitality, long-term brand value, loyalty and guest experience cannot always be reduced to a single short-term efficiency metric. The danger, he says, is letting the easiest number to report become the only number leadership cares about.

In short: one metric can steer you, but it can't drive for you.

Is hospitality finally catching up on AI?

Hospitality has traditionally run well behind industries like retail on technology adoption. That gap is narrowing fast. Over the past year or two, Pirock has seen a wave of new technology companies enter the sector and AI adoption accelerate across it.

Much of that work remains behind the scenes for now. Pirock expects more guest-facing applications to emerge, which raises the stakes for brands deciding where technology genuinely improves the experience rather than just automating it.

The takeaway: hotels are moving from tech laggards to fast followers, and the window for a comfortable lead is closing.

Why doesn't creator reach guarantee results?

Pirock doesn't believe the biggest creator is automatically the best creator. The real question, he argues, is whether that person already likes the brand, understands what it stands for and can create something that feels natural.

He treats creator marketing like any other serious partnership: do the homework, look for mutual fit, and make sure the relationship makes sense both ways. A large audience means very little if the partnership itself feels random.

This isn't theory for him. Pirock put content creators into local markets before "creator" became standard marketing language.

Do CXO titles actually matter?

CMO. CGO. CXO. Chief experience officer. Chief revenue officer. Pirock thinks marketers spend too much energy debating titles and too little on the thing that matters: alignment. If the CEO, the board and the marketing leader agree on the objectives and what success looks like, the label on the org chart becomes secondary.

His Brandweek 2026 point is simple: clarity of mandate beats title inflation.

What happens to differentiation when AI makes execution easy?

Pirock's broader argument ties it all together. As AI makes generic execution easier, differentiation becomes more important, not less. He calls it one of marketing's most underhyped priorities right now.

That belief runs through his career. He has consistently gravitated toward building and rebuilding — from rethinking an early business at Target to reshaping brand strategy at Outrigger — combining brand strategy and experiential marketing along the way.

It also connects to his read on consumers: people are gravitating back toward real-world experiences and human interaction, which favors hospitality brands that can offer both.

For marketers watching the ROAS dashboard, Pirock's message lands where he left it: efficiency metrics can point you in a direction, but in hospitality, the brands that win will be the ones leadership agreed were worth building.

Episode timestamps

• [04:03] Hospitality's AI catch-up is happening fast
• [09:10] Stop choosing creators for reach alone
• [11:17] The CMO title debate is missing the point
• [12:01] ROAS is directional, not definitive

The episode is part of a special vidcast series recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.