Two weeks ago, The New York Times convened the most consequential leaders in business, politics and culture — as it does every year — at the exclusive DealBook Summit, to examine the biggest news stories, connect the dots between what’s happening in the world and in business and provide a firsthand account of what’s motivating the people shaping our world.

If you weren’t in the audience, you could have missed all but the most sensational moments that filled the headlines emerging from the Summit, like Elon Musk’s F-bomb and Jensen Huang’s foreboding predictions about the possibility of “fairly competitive” A.I. existing in five years. You might have missed former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy discussing the future of the Republican party, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen saying she does not believe that the Chinese government will invade Taiwan, and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan defending her agency’s aggressive approach to antitrust.

But the day was so much more than a collection of sound bites. It was intense and engrossing. And it provided a macro overview of a nation and world experiencing upheavals in both geopolitics and business. This context is critically important, not just for those leading governments and businesses, but for the marketing community, too.

“The Memo”, from New York Times Advertising, delves into the most important themes from the Summit to help marketers prepare for the unpredictable year ahead that promises the twists and turns we’ve become accustomed to.

“Existential” was used repeatedly onstage. An appropriate word with a gravitas fitting the seriousness of our time and the topics being discussed.

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke of the existential crisis of climate change. Some speakers warned that A.I. is an existential threat even as others onstage grow companies on its potential. After spending millions in a legal fight with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) over claims that the PGA is a monopoly, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan spoke of the existential threat of losing control of the golf organization and his decision to prevent that by forging a controversial deal with the Saudi PIF (negotiations of which are still ongoing).

The directness of these existential conversations serves as an important reminder for marketers to ask the question, “Why does my brand exist?,” a thought shared with us by Summit attendee Linda Boff, chief marketing officer of GE, following the Summit. This question helps (re)orient your efforts, energizes your mission and provides a lens through which critical decisions can be assessed confidently and in service of your brand and consumer. Some others to consider:

What do we sell?

It would have been difficult to imagine a more A-list lineup of film and TV powerhouses than the entertainment leaders who took the Summit stage — including television creator, producer, author and C.E.O. of Shondaland, Shonda Rhimes, among others. As they face off against competitors they could not have imagined a decade ago, they all agreed the answer to this existential question, in one form or another, is great stories. They lead with the conviction that if they create good content the fans will want it.

How do I keep my business healthy and thriving?

Another entertainment powerhouse from the Summit, David Zaslav, C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery, grappled with this question. His answer? “No sacred cows.” And no matter how unpopular the decisions his answer led him to, as C.E.O. it’s what he believed was needed to keep his business healthy. Marketers, think about this in the context of your brand.

What needs reinventing in our category?

In his quest to evolve the computing industry, Jensen Huang, founder and C.E.O. of NVIDIA, realized that developing a smarter, faster computer chip was not what the world needed. The future of computing required reimagining everything that happened around the chip, from product design and production to the way software works. In answering this important question, Huang built a trillion-dollar company to reinvent the computing industry. While reinventing an entire industry may be a tall order, consider instead what is ripe for reinvention in your category or within your brand?

Speaking of existential threats . . . A.I. was a key focus of the day as many of the people onstage were asked to predict its future impact. Many responses were unsettling in their lack of absolute certainty. Even Elon Musk admitted to losing sleep over the possibility of A.I. resulting in world annihilation, which caused a lot of us to lose sleep over the possibility as well.

The vice president’s approach to A.I., one of balancing regulation with room for innovation, was a lot less scary. During lunch, an A.I. expert excused himself to answer an urgent call regarding the E.U. A.I. laws that were being drafted at that moment overseas. The legislation was most likely the A.I. Act, which became law shortly after the Summit and that offers some of the regulation everybody onstage agreed is needed.

Despite the varying opinions about what is at stake and if or when robots will take over, the reality is A.I. is growing in scope and impact, and if you’re not starting to think about how to leverage it (or survive it) you risk being left behind. Here’s how to get started:

Upskill, upskill, upskill.

Kevin McCarthy, former speaker of the House of Representatives, required members of Congress to take an A.I. workshop so they would be better prepared to legislate it. Consider doing the same. Learn everything you can about A.I., right now. Research the current limits of the technology, find out when those limits are expected to lift, and understand what will be unleashed when those limits are gone.

Be deliberate and selective when implementing A.I.

A.I. has seemingly endless use cases, and it could be tempting to apply it everywhere. That is not the answer. Focus your team’s energy in the places where A.I. can directly solve a marketing challenge and have the greatest impact.

There were many conversations about the alarming polarization seen around the world, in American politics and among activist consumers. Jamie Dimon, chairman and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase & Co., urged the audience to try to understand where the people across the aisle are coming from rather than dismiss them. This polarity makes a marketer’s job even more challenging because brands can easily fall prey to the tensions that exist in our world and the detrimental outcomes they can lead to.

The best ways to market your brand amidst growing fractionalism and consumer activism? Find inspiration from Shonda Rhimes who said, “My job is to entertain everybody.” Great content can undermine the divide. Make it so compelling that everyone — those on both sides of the aisle — want to engage with it.

Another suggestion, from Summit attendee Domenic DiMeglio, E.V.P., C.M.O. of Paramount Streaming: find a way to attach to fandom. He likens Rhimes’s conversation about only creating content she is obsessed with to the privilege he feels working with fandom franchises like “Star Trek” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” where obsession is the driving force. When you attach your brand to a passionate fan base, not only do you attach to the urgency the fan base feels about engaging with the content, you also engage with the community they build around that content online and off. Connect your brand to a community so obsessed with the object of their fandom that their passion supersedes any political division that might exist.

So many who took the stage admitted to feeling anxious. We already know A.I. keeps Musk up at night. He stopped using another social platform when he “felt the A.I. probing his mind.” Jensen Huang confessed to waking up every morning worried and concerned. Jamie Dimon feels that the chance of something going wrong in the face of global challenges is high. Anxiety is — for all intents and purposes — an epidemic. So how are marketers supposed to sell grated cheese or gold watches to a nation of consumers too anxious to sleep? Especially when that anxiety is so tightly connected to their wallets? (Deloitte found the percentage of U.S. respondents feeling anxious about their personal finances reached 45 percent, up 13 percentage points since July 2023).

In this anxiety-fueled world, the brands that win are the ones who create anxiety-proof content.

Think upbeat, useful, purposeful, distracting, entertaining or inspiring brand interactions. Take The Times’s daily game of Wordle or Connections for example, or the age-old small indulgence from a typically inaccessible brand, or a way for consumers to spread or share positivity and light.

In his interview, David Zaslav said that everybody knows who their friends are. While he was speaking of Hollywood, success in any business — including Madison Avenue — comes down to relationships built on trust and the promise of consistency. And so many relationships in brand building come down to who you trust with your content. Is the media platform reliable? Will it remain as high quality as your brand and its content is? Will it be and do the same thing tomorrow that it was and did today?

While you can’t control F.T.C. rulings or geopolitical conflicts, you can and must control the brand, media and technology partners with whom you align your brand. In this unpredictable world, the most important characteristic for working together will be predictability, so choose wisely. Stability is sexy, trust is the currency and consistency is the most valuable partner trait.

When the leaders took the stage at the DealBook Summit the burden of leading through this volatile landscape was often palpable.

Many of the marketers in attendance shared with us their appreciation for that vulnerability; it was a frankness you don’t expect from people of their stature at a public event that reaches millions of people.

There is value in bringing great minds together to be honest and open about what they see in the future, even if the picture they paint is at times a scary one. In a day with a lot of foreboding conversations, there was also a shared commitment to work toward a happier and more peaceful future on display. As Vice President Harris said, “We are all in the same place in wanting — deeply, deeply wanting a better future.”

The New York Times DealBook Summit connects what’s happening in the world to what’s happening in business. We hope “The Memo” took the day a step further for you and connected what happened onstage, and the openness of the leaders, to your brand and whatever the future may bring.