VAST Partners — Board-level AI strategy for marketing organizations

The pressure at the top

“We’re experimenting” has a shelf life. Yours is expiring.

The pilots are running. The vendor spend is climbing. And every quarter, the board gets better at asking the question you’d rather defer: what does it all add up to?

Every function has a tool. Every agency has a deck. Every vendor has a case study. Many organizations have already spent seven figures and have nothing decidable to show for it. What almost no marketing organization has is a position — a defensible answer on which bets are real, which spend is theater, and what the organization actually believes about AI in marketing.

That answer doesn’t come from another round of pilots. It comes from treating AI in marketing as what it is: a board-level decision about operating model, data, measurement, and brand. Someone has to make it. VAST exists to make sure it’s made well — and made by you.

What we believe

Positions we’ll defend in your boardroom.

Most AI pilots in marketing are designed to be presentable, not decidable.

They succeed at the all-hands and die in the operating plan — because they were never built to force a decision about money, headcount, or workflow.

“Experimenting” is not a strategy. It’s a deferral with a budget line.

It buys a quarter or two of cover. Then the board starts comparing your deferral to a competitor’s position.

Your AI vendor stack is a portfolio nobody is managing.

Spend accumulated tool by tool, champion by champion. Nobody owns the conviction levels, the overlaps, or the kill criteria — which means nobody owns the returns.

Your agency cannot tell you which of its AI claims are real. Its margin depends on you not asking.

Said by someone who ran nine-figure accounts inside the holding companies. The economics haven’t changed; the slideware has.

The hardest AI decisions in marketing are stop decisions. That’s why almost nobody makes them.

Backing something new is cheap and popular. Stopping something visible takes a sharper case — and air cover. That’s what senior counsel is for.

What VAST is engaged to do

Diagnosis, not AI enthusiasm.

VAST is the senior advisory layer upstream of execution. The engagement is decision support for leadership — not implementation, not vendor evaluation theater, not enthusiasm workshops. Four questions sit at the center of the work:

Back

Which AI investments in marketing deserve more capital, headcount, and executive air cover — and on what evidence.

Stop

Which pilots, vendors, and internal efforts are expensive theater — and how to wind them down without political damage.

Decide

What actually matters strategically: where AI changes the marketing operating model, and where it’s just a faster version of the old one.

Defend

How to present a credible AI-in-marketing position at executive and board level — one that holds up to scrutiny next quarter.

The core mandates

Where VAST is brought in.

Defining the AI mandate for marketing

Clarifying what AI is for inside the marketing organization — scope, ownership, investment logic, and the line between marketing’s mandate and IT’s.

Shaping the portfolio of AI bets

Structuring investments across media, creative, CX, and measurement as a portfolio with explicit conviction levels and kill criteria — not a pile of pilots.

Vendor and spend triage

A clear-eyed read on the vendor stack and agency commitments: what’s differentiated, what’s commodity, what’s about to be obsolete — and what gets stopped.

The executive narrative

Helping leadership articulate a position on AI in marketing that stands up in the boardroom — to the CEO, the CFO, and the directors who read the same headlines you do.

Mandates are scoped, senior-only, and time-boxed. VAST takes a small number each year — priced as decisions, not hours.

The first session

Five questions we’ll ask before you hire us.

Which three AI line items would you defend to the CFO tomorrow — and which would you quietly cut tonight?

ii.

If every pilot you’re running succeeded, what would actually change about how marketing operates?

iii.

Who owns the AI mandate in marketing — by decision rights, not by org chart?

iv.

What does your agency know about your AI spend that you don’t?

What position would you state to the board in one sentence — today, unrehearsed?

If two or more of these are uncomfortable, that’s the engagement. If all five are easy, you don’t need us — and we’ll tell you so in the first thirty minutes.

Vik Sharma, Founder & Managing Partner, VAST Partners

Vik SharmaFounder & Managing Partner · Greater New York City Area

Why Vik

Engineer. Brand strategist. 20-year P&L operator. Shipped an AI product into production with a Fortune 500.

Most AI consultants have never managed nine-figure marketing accounts for the world’s most demanding brands. Most marketing veterans have never shipped an AI product. Vik has done both — and in 2026, that combination doesn’t just differentiate. It’s the difference between transformation and expensive theater.

Vik Sharma has spent 20+ years operating at the intersection of marketing, data, and technology — as an SVP at Essence (WPP) running nine-figure accounts, SVP at Kantar Media North America owning a $50M P&L, and a builder of Nielsen’s digital data practice. He holds an MBA from Berkeley Haas.

He is currently founder & CEO of siAi, an agentic marketing platform live with mid-market brands and a Fortune 500 client — and the author of “The Brief Is the Trust Gap: Why 95% of Marketing AI Never Ships.”

Most advisors have read about AI in marketing. VAST is built on the experience of shipping it.

Nine-figure

Essence / WPP — SVP

Ran marketing accounts for some of the world’s most demanding advertisers inside WPP’s flagship digital agency.

$50M P&L

Kantar Media NA — SVP

Owned the P&L and delivered $10M in new business across the largest media and tech clients in North America.

3.5×

Nielsen / eXelate

Grew the digital data business 3.5×, reaching 45% of platform revenues; 2× growth at eXelate pre-acquisition.

$100K+

VAST Partners — Founder

Built the advisory practice from zero to six-figure revenue in under a year, fully bootstrapped.

Shipped

siAi — Founder & CEO

Left the C-suite to build the AI-native version of the agency — live in production with a Fortune 500 brand.

Haas

UC Berkeley — MBA

MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

Brands served across operating roles

NBCUniversal · Meta · Amazon · Apple · Google · Home Depot

Advisory record

Selected VAST engagements.

The Washington Post

Measurement audit and analytics operations overhaul, working directly with the CRO and CEO.

theHive.ai

Built the go-to-market for a media practice on top of the company’s computer-vision assets — product, sales, and GTM strategy.

Tyroo

US market-entry strategy for CTV, working directly with the CEO.

Affinity Answers

Ad-tech partnership strategy positioning the company as the bridge between social signal and CTV targeting, working with the CEO.

Who VAST is for

A small number of high-conviction engagements.

VAST is engaged when

You’re a CMO, CDO, or CTO at a brand around $100M+ ARR
Pilots, vendor spend, and board pressure are already in motion
An earlier AI investment underdelivered — and the recovery needs a credible plan, not a quieter burial
A stop decision needs a sharper case — and air cover
The AI-in-marketing position has to hold up in the boardroom

VAST is not

A tool-selection RFP participant
An execution or production retainer
An AI enthusiasm workshop
Another round of generic transformation language

How engagement starts

One email. No intake forms.

Email Vik directly

Two lines on the situation is enough. Every inquiry is read and answered by Vik — there is no SDR layer.

A working session

The five questions above, applied to your situation. You’ll leave with a sharper read whether or not an engagement follows.

III

The Position Audit

A 30-day diagnostic of your pilots, vendor stack, and operating model — graded, with an explicit back / stop / defend recommendation for each line. It ends with the position you’ll take to the board, and the evidence behind it.

The mandate

Where the audit surfaces decisions worth senior counsel, VAST proposes a scoped advisory mandate — clear deliverables, executive access, a defined endpoint.

You don’t have an AI problem. AI exposed a marketing problem.