In an industry where fast fashion dominates the landscape and trend cycles are a moving target, staying in business for almost 100 years means you’re doing something right. For American footwear and accessories brand Cole Haan, it seems rolling with the punches is at least one avenue to longevity.

“The key word is versatility, trying to really adapt the brand. Cultural relevance plays a big part of that,” said Cole Haan’s CMO Krissie Millan.

Acquired by Nike in 1988 to help diversify its business, the brand was sold to private equity firm Apax Partners in 2012, and has gradually evolved from a 1920s brown shoe seller to a burgeoning lifestyle brand (one which almost went public but scrapped plans for an IPO in 2021).

Finding a muse

Millan says that since she joined the brand, it has embarked on refreshing its “key tenets.” A major part of this is building out “muses,” which she describes as holistic customer profiles based on more than what basic demographic information can provide.

The next step is making sure everyone is aligned around the same goal: the target consumer. Millan says that knowing what the consumers desire means being “plugged in.” At Cole Haan this takes shape in a consumer insights group that not only conducts surveys, but engages in “social listening” and utilizing “external partners who are plugged into culture.”

Millan says it’s important to visually tip your hat to a brand’s heritage and create a sense of familiarity between the designs. The next step is to make all of that relevant to today’s consumer.

“If you continue to deliver on that promise from a product side and the brand side, then I think that delivers longevity,” she said.

Read how Cole Haan’s sneaker segment has become its largest growing category.—LI

Here’s a dream scenario: salespeople spend less time on data entry and more time honing the craft of selling. Sounds good, right? AI is the (not so) secret weapon to achieving this and a key beneficiary of the saved time should, in theory, be the human-centric side of sales. Revenue Brew sat down with Clari + Salesloft international SVP Steve Harding to discuss the role AI is playing in sales organizations, and how to strike the right balance between human and agent.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What role does AI play in today’s revenue organization?

We spent the last 25 years asking sellers to serve software, and now for the first time, AI presents the opportunity for software to serve the sellers. The extent to which productivity gains can be derived from AI is just kind of off the charts.

The extent to which AI is offering potential to drive productivity, but also precision and personalization within sales, I think we’re seeing unprecedented capability there. The trick is to make sure that everybody can embrace this technology consistently.

What are some best practices for adopting AI into day-to-day functions?

It’s really important that as revenue leaders we think about using AI to remove friction from the sales approach. It has to start with the customer first. It has to really start with mapping how customers buy, how they engage with you, and how they turn up.

Keep reading for advice for sellers on using AI tools.—LI

Check your blind spots…and we aren’t talking about the ones in your car.

Old vulnerabilities continue to create new dangers for organizations as cybercriminals exploit code that’s never been fixed. That’s according to a recent TrendAI report, which found 70% of requested exploits between January 2023 and January 2026 leveraged vulnerabilities that were more than two years old. About 8% were for vulnerabilities between 10 and 15 years old.

The AI twist. There’s nothing novel about cybercriminals eyeing dated vulnerabilities. This January, for example, CISA added a 17-year-old PowerPoint bug to its list of actively exploited common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

However, like so many other aspects of cybersecurity, AI is changing the game: TrendAI researchers claim the technology has expanded the “potential blast radius of exploits” as it bleeds into business-critical workflows. “Because large language models (LLMs) are trained on extensive public datasets that include unsecure coding practices, their outputs frequently replicate well-known vulnerabilities and unsafe design patterns. This increases the likelihood that exploitable flaws are introduced into applications at scale,” the researchers wrote.

This vulnerability is just right! In TrendAI’s analysis, it found that malicious actors had refined taste when it came to the vulnerabilities purchased on underground markets.

Read on for how you can reduce the risk.—BM

CVS introduces agentic AI platform, new health tech subsidiary (Healthcare Brew)

CVS Health is throwing its hat into the agentic AI ring.

The retail pharmacy giant announced a partnership with Google Cloud on March 5 to create an agentic AI platform meant to boost consumer engagement in healthcare. The platform will fall under a new health tech services subsidiary called Health100.

How Oklahoma Department of Transportation got 30 years of inspection records ready for AI (IT Brew)

Oklahoma has almost 23,000 bridges, which means it would take a mere human quite a while to answer questions like:

• How many bridges have been considered structurally deficient in the last five years?
• Which county has the most bridges?
• Which bridges have shown the biggest decline in structural integrity over the last decade?

How middle market leaders are navigating uncertainty (CFO Brew)

Let’s check in on our middle market pals.

We recently got a glimpse of how middle market leaders navigate continuous uncertainty, thanks to a study of 400 US middle market CEOs, CFOs, and COOs from CBIZ, a professional services advisory firm, in partnership with Ohio State University and the National Center for the Middle Market.