Yaniv Makover, CEO and cofounder of Anyword, says that no company - large or small - will end up with a one-size-fits-all AI stack for their marketing teams, Instead they will be vertical, horizontal, and native. The best marketers - and best organizations - will take that into account and think of ways for different systems to more effectively communicate with each other. Anyword is an AI writing platform made for enterprise marketing teams, and Makover explains the technology and use cases behind it. 

For Further Reading:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaniv-makover-a8590b3/

https://medium.com/authority-magazine/yaniv-makover-of-anyword-how-ai-is-disrupting-our-industry-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-167bc80e00e6

https://homebusinessmag.com/businesses/ai/why-small-businesses-disloyal-single-ai-platform/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUUzFv824Y

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Joshua Browder, CEO and Founder of DoNotPay.com, thinks one of the biggest ways AI will change marketing is in its power to help consumers advocate for themselves. While companies are finding all kinds of efficiencies and competitive advantages for themselves with AI, there’s also a huge opportunity for individual consumers. What started as an attempt to fight his own parking tickets has now grown into a major business: using AI agents to help people with everything from canceling subscriptions to getting refunds. He talks through how his technology works - and what businesses need to know. 

For Further Reading:

Joshua Browder LinkedIn

Age 27, Built a $230M AI Lawyer Business

'Multimodal is the most unappreciated AI breakthrough' says DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder

Would you let a robot lawyer defend you?

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Gopi Kallayil is the Chief Business Strategist for AI at Google, which means he has a bird’s eye view of the technology and its implications at one of the world’s largest companies - and all the partner companies they work with. Author of The Happier Human: Being Real in an Artificially Intelligent World, Gopi had spent a good portion of his professional life focused on the relationship between human authenticity and technology. In this episode he shares the ways he sees AI changing the game at the tactical and strategic level in business. 

The opinions expressed are those of the guest in his personal capacity.

For Further Information: 

https://kallayil.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2DKofnviA

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Barry Padgett is CEO of Amperity, a company using AI to solve this problem: large companies now have lots and lots of marketing data, but it is all coming from different systems and services. That means you might have info about a customer in different places across your portfolio, without the ability to integrate that data to get a more complete understanding of that customer. Especially as access to third party data diminishes, Padgett explains how the company can help big retailers and more streamline their information and ultimately improve customer experience. 

For Further Reading: 

https://amperity.com/company

https://www.attentive.com/blog/end-of-third-party-cookies#:~:text=In%20preparation%20for%20a%20cookieless,been%20a%20slow%20death%2C%20though.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-demise-of-third-party-cookies-and-identifiers

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Large retailers like Walmart are in some ways at an advantage when it comes to implementing new technology like AI that depends on data, with insights being constantly aggregated across stores, products and customers. 

But large companies also come with complexity, and complexity is exactly what Saleel Sathe deals in every day. He’s the vice president of performance marketing at Walmart and has a bird’s eye view on all the ways technology and AI are being adapted at the company. 

He shares the lessons he’s learned there and from previous roles at Uber and eBay about implementing new technology effectively for internal teams and external customers. 

We talk about the future of SEO and GenAI, the end of the cookie, the best ways to measure and predict, making a better, more addictive app for the company, and more. 

For Further Reading: 

https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/12-ad-leaders-planning-cookieless-future/2393006

https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/walmarts-saleel-sathe-explains-how-the-countrys-biggest-retailer-aims-to-get-even-bigger/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

While many are enthusiastic about AI, few companies have a smart roadmap in place for its development and implementation. Instead, many people either start from scratch and try to build the capability internally from zero, or buy up other AI companies without much of a plan.

Jim Lecinski’s approach, outlined in his book "The AI Marketing Canvas: A Five-Stage Road Map to Implementing Artificial Intelligence in Marketing," emphasizes the need for a structured and informed strategy. In this episode he elaborates on what that entails and how organizations can approach AI implementation in an informed way to ensure success for their business. Lecinski is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, he previously spent 12 years at Google.

For Further Reading: 

https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Canvas-Five-Stage-Implementing-Intelligence/dp/150361316X

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/how-generative-ai-can-boost-consumer-marketing

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-07-25-gartner-survey-reveals-growth-as-top-strategic-business-priority-shared-by-cfos-and-ceos#:~:text=Majority%20of%20CFOs%20and%20CEOs,survey%20by%20Gartner%2C%20Inc

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

What does the Empire Strikes Back and the Flux Capacitor have in common? They are both analogies that Tom Chavez uses when he talks about just how exciting and challenging this moment is in AI and marketing right now. Chavez previously sold two startups - one to Microsoft and one to Salesforce - but today is doubling down on AI as the technology to push marketing forward. He explains his work at super{set}, dealing with the deprecation of cookies, experimenting across channels, and the roles startups can play in the ecosystem. 

For Further Reading: 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90713221/im-getting-invited-to-fewer-parties-says-a-tech-insider-turned-critic

https://www.superset.com/portfolio

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/02/02/metaverse-tech-could-exacerbate-todays-privacy-problems-says-supersets-tom-chavez.html

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If everyone has access to the same powerful tools, where can marketers stand out? It comes from the inputs, and the thoughtful creative behind the assets. Alex Collmer is the founder and CEO at VidMob, a creative performance platform for marketing. In this episode, he chats with Greg and Rex about the ways they are using AI to better analyze data and adapt content to audiences. He shares insights on how his team gets the best inputs for AI, and how they can continue differentiating themselves in an infinite content market. 

For Further Reading: 

https://www.mmaglobal.com/datt/consortium-for-ai-personalization

https://www.vidmob.com/blog

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

It’s not enough to just be testing out AI on various teams and seeing what might stick. The best organizations are pulling together an AI strategy, designing careful tests across all parts of the company, and gathering data on the results to implement at scale where it makes sense. At Ally, Chief Information, Data and Digital Officer, Sathish Muthukrishnan, works closely with the company’s CMO to ensure that the right tests are being built, tracked, and scaled up - all in a tightly regulated industry.

For Further Reading:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/randybean/2023/11/27/how-ally-financial-is-delivering-business-value-from-generative-ai/?sh=30efad099a86

https://media.ally.com/2023-11-16-Do-It-Right-with-AI-Ally-creators-experiment-with-generative-AI-in-marketing-test-case

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

AI is already being used by marketers in campaigns they create, but today’s guest, Carlo Maria Ferrari, Global Content & Creators Lead at Sanofi, says the best creative will still be made by humans. Hear why he sees GenAI as a way to check your brainstorms and make sure your ideas are truly original: in a sense, making AI the new bar that great creative needs to clear. Ferrari leads the Global Content team at within a heavily regulated industry, but he’s still aiming to push the boundaries of how AI can be leveraged.

For Further Reading:

https://hbr.org/2023/07/how-generative-ai-can-augment-human-creativity

https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ai-creativity.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/03/27/the-intersection-of-ai-and-human-creativity-can-machines-really-be-creative/?sh=4c1e5cc83dbc

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Artificial intelligence has been used in both marketing and in the travel and hotel industry for years, but gen AI is a game changer in a number of ways. In this episode, we speak with Michael Menis, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at IHG Hotels & Resorts, about two trends he foresees will change the game in his industry: the ability to localize content at scale in a way never before seen, and the restructuring of the marketing function at global organizations in the travel industry and beyond. 

For Further Reading: 

https://time.com/6290940/ai-travel-industry/

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel-logistics-and-infrastructure/our-insights/what-ai-means-for-travel-now-and-in-the-future

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

It’s been a whirlwind week for Sam Altman at OpenAI - where he was removed by the board and has now been reinstated. It’s the biggest news in artificial intelligence this week, and hosts Greg Stuart and Rex Briggs give their takes and share their past experiences with boards making decisions like this.

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Marketers - and businesses overall - face a fundamental conundrum about artificial intelligence: it has an incredible power to recognize patterns, but not all patterns are reliable. Host Rex Briggs and his son Caleb Briggs set out to explore that tension in their new book, The AI Conundrum: Harnessing the Power of AI for Your Organization--Profitably and Safely. They explain what people still don’t understand about AI, and the greatest potential uses of AI for marketers in the near future to maximize both profit and effectiveness. 

For Further Reading:

Buy The AI Conundrum

MMA Global's Decoding AI for Marketers training

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What can marketers learn from digital transformations in the retail space?

Ratnakar Lavu became the first ever Global Chief Digital Information Officer at Nike - a job that he took on during the height of the pandemic. Today, he advises startups and brings in his years of experience including his time as CTO at Kohl’s to help think about the future of business - and how AI is a part of that. He shares how to think about your AI ecosystem and remain focused on the needs of customers, even in the midst of transformation. 

For Further Reading: 

https://www.mmaglobal.com/speakers/ratnakar-lavu

https://www.sfweekly.com/marketplace/ratnakar-lavu-on-the-evolution-of-retail-and-e-commerce-post-covid/article_07f2a4a8-6941-11ee-943f-17c92fa9c126.html

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Been hearing a lot about AI but think it’s more something for the CTO to worry about? Think again.

Janet Balis is the marketing practice leader at EY Consulting. Hear why marketers, and especially marketing leaders,  are poised to play a pivotal role when it comes to how organizations integrate AI into their businesses to gain a competitive edge. It starts, she says, with clean and organized data as the foundation.

“Imagine you've got the best recipe in the world and your ingredients are stale in your refrigerator or you got them from a bad grocery store. You're not going to get the right result,” Balis says. She explains that analogy and more of what she’s seeing as she consults with some of the world’s best companies and marketing departments.

For Further Reading:

MMA Study: https://www.mmaglobal.com/documents/data-maturity-20-2023-vs-2021

MMA Study: https://www.mmaglobal.com/documents/state-ai-marketing

Generative AI’s Act Two from Sequoia Capital: https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/generative-ai-act-two/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

AI is moving fast, and one of the places it’s most quickly becoming a necessity is in the marketing space. But a lack of basic AI understanding and a lack of the necessary technical acumen is holding many marketers and organizations back. On this show, marketing and AI experts Greg Stuart and Rex Briggs help demystify the intricacies of AI, through conversations with marketing industry leaders and foremost AI experts. Tune in to learn about AI’s potential to amplify marketing’s significance and influence, and risks to watch out for.  

Decoding AI for Marketing is brought to you by MMA Global, the non-profit industry body architecting a new future of marketing for the world’s smartest CMOs. New episodes drop Tuesdays. 

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital, works with clients at the world’s largest organizations to shape the future of marketing. He’s spent his career picking the winners: deciding which technologies to invest in to help his company get an edge in the increasingly competitive marketing landscape. In the AI space, he’s partly doing that by not putting all his eggs in one basket; instead, his company has partnered with major players like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and more. He explains why you need to be all in - but also be able to pull out as things shift in the weeks and months ahead. 

For Further Reading:

Learn more about Jonathan

Jonathan Nelson, CEO, Omnicom Digital converses with Neeta Nair of IMPACT

Inside the Omnicom-Flywheel merger with John Wren, Jonathan Nelson & Duncan Painter

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Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director at Zetta, has been there since the early days of the Internet, even starting as the first summer intern at Netscape. After time at Facebook and VMWare, she entered the venture capital space with the first AI-focused VC firm, Zetta. Now, she and her partners are looking for the biggest opportunities in the startup ecosystem around AI, and she explains what some of those developments mean for the marketing world. 

For Further Reading:

What is RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)? 

Zetta Venture Partners

Weaviate

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Vikram Chalana, CEO of Pictory, says the future of marketing - and all content - is video. He looked at the ways in which AI could increase efficiency for content creators, and that was the inspiration behind the company. Pictory makes video creation easier by allowing the average business user to repurpose existing content like articles and white papers and make videos to publish across multiple channels. Chalana explains how their technology works, how it helps SMBs, and where he wants the space to go next.

For Further Reading: 

Pictory

10 “Best” AI Tools for Business (May 2024)

The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work

Inside Big Tech's underground race to buy AI training data

ElevenLabs

POSSIBLE

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Wesley ter Haar, founder of MediaMonks and Executive Director at S4 Capital Group, has always been on the cutting edge of digital first production. The company has doubled down on their AI bet, and he shares some of the latest use cases they are developing for clients with AI, including consumer proxies, scaling up personalization, retrieval-augmented generation, and streamlining workflows.

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Wesley

Wesley ter Haar, Founder, Media.Monks AI Keynote at the BI Marketing Leadership

A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled

Wesley ter Haar on the difference AI makes to creative content

AlphaGo - The Movie | Full award-winning documentary

Burger King Takes "Have It Your Way" to the Next Level, Offering Guests The Chance to Win $1 Million for Their Ultimate Whopper® Creation

The Actual Possibility of AI – Wesley ter Harr and Vinny Rinaldi, Head of Analytics, The Hershey Company, presented a case study based on real in-market AI programs to drive in-store sales effectively at POSSIBLE 2024

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Amit Shah, founder and CEO at the startup Instalily.ai, says that the age of AI agents is on the horizon and it will change commerce, marketing, and our lives in all kinds of profound ways. Shah has previously seen major digital transformations while serving as president of 1-800-FLOWERS, among other roles. He explains that the increased use of agents will fundamentally change how marketers go to market, and other ways that AI is accelerating change in the space. 

For Further Reading: 

8 Research Papers That Set Off the AI Boom

My, Myself and AI

Instalily.ai 

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Marty Kihn, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Salesforce, explains some of the biggest ways that AI has impacted their business in recent years. Salesforce now centers around a Customer Data Platform, or CDP, and Kihn talks through some of the key decisions around data, vendors, and layers of AI models that can change the game for all marketers. 

For Further Reading: 

Attention is All You Need

Paleo Ad Tech (Marty’s Podcast)

House of Lies (Marty’s Book)

The Salesforce 360 Blog

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Lu Cotterill is Global Senior Director, Full Funnel Marketing AI / ML at Kellanova (which spun out of legendary brand Kellogg). As a marketer in the CPG space, she’s always searching for the best data available to inform business decisions. In her current role, she focuses on how AI can help them better reach customers. CPG has its own set of challenges, but Lu has found the best way to test use cases for AI and ML is by starting with a business problem - not the technology - first. 

For Further Reading: 

https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2024/02/29/kellogg-spinoff-kellanova-doubles-down-on-digital-transformation-and-commerce/

https://www.adexchanger.com/content-studio/ais-impact-on-cpg-advertising-a-game-changer-for-achieving-business-goals/

https://www.iab.com/blog/how-retailers-are-using-data-clean-rooms/

https://www.mmaglobal.com/datt/consortium-for-ai-personalization

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Omar Rodriguez-Vilá is a professor of marketing at Emory University and a partner at MarCaps, and was previously a practitioner at Coca-Cola. He’s looked at the ways some of the best marketing organizations out there have changed their structure and habits in the wake of the AI revolution, and he has data to share. He argues that great marketing leaders in today’s environment need to both explore and exploit for strategic advantages, and other ways to change your marketing culture to see real results. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Omar here: https://www.mmaglobal.com/speakers/omar-rodriguez-vila-phd

Is Your Marketing Organization Ready for What’s Next? (HBR): https://hbr.org/2020/11/is-your-marketing-organization-ready-for-whats-next

Omar’s Presentation at POSSIBLE 2024: Organizing for New Growth – How do You Prepare the Organization to Leverage the Potential of GenAI

https://youtu.be/Y2sOhGSO0FY?si=FlZtcXGibHeb3-0H

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Adam Brotman, co-founder and co-CEO at Forum3, an AI lab, has spent his whole career helping brands embrace technologies to lead them into the future. Now, with his co-founder Andy Sack, he’s taking what he’s learned about places like Starbucks and J. Crew and building and testing tools around artificial intelligence that can help marketers at every size organization. In this episode, he talks about their AI marketer product for SMBs, Spok, lessons he learned from getting Starbucks to embrace mobile pay, and how he thinks organizations can and should change in the coming years to become AI-first companies. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Spok, an AI marketer product: spok.app

Learn more about Forum3: 

forum3.com

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Jeremy Fain, CEO and Co-founder at Cognitiv, is on a mission to better predict consumer behavior with the help of artificial intelligence. The deep-learning advertising platform was founded in 2015 and has since built tools to help brands connect with their customers in a more precise way - a necessary capability for marketers now and into the future. He walks us through the use cases that are most effective for them now and what the next few years might look like. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fainjeremy/

Tech-Savvy Marketing: How to Stay Ahead of the Curve (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2021/08/30/tech-savvy-marketing-how-to-stay-ahead-of-the-curve/

AI Is Giving Advertisers a Chance to Reclaim Their Brains (AdWeek): 

https://www.adweek.com/sponsored/ai-is-giving-advertisers-a-chance-to-reclaim-their-brains/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Jacqueline Woods is the Chief Marketing Officer at the software company Teradata. She has a unique vantage point as both a CMO herself and as someone who works with other companies every day to better leverage technology, data, and artificial intelligence. She explains how companies can think more strategically about their AI implementation, where personalization is heading next, and the most effective use cases for impacting customers. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Jacqueline: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-woods-361477/

Trust Me I’m a Robot: How AI Can Improve Brand Stickiness (Fast Company): https://www.fastcompany.com/91194920/trust-me-im-a-robot-how-ai-can-improve-brand-stickiness

Customer Complaint Analyzer Demo Video: https://www.teradata.com/insights/videos/customer-complaint-analyzer

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Shelly Palmer, Professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and CEO of The Palmer Group, reports on the AI marketing trends he is most excited about coming out of this year’s Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas. He talks about what’s over and underhyped - from superautomation and agents to content creation and beyond. And we’ll hear predictions as to how AI in marketing is evolving in 2025. 

For Further Reading:

Read Shelly’s blog from CES: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/01/ces-2025-ai-everywhere-all-at-once/?mc_cid=9308fe7c89&mc_eid=6a852a63e9

Subscribe to Shelly’s newsletter: https://shellypalmer.com/subscribe/

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Ashok Kalidas, Chief AI Scientist at Kantar, helps Fortune 500 companies think about the cutting-edge technologies they need now and the best ways to implement new AI and ML tools into their organizations to take their marketing strategies to the next level. He explains the technology behind some of Kantar’s latest use cases and where he thinks the industry is going next. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Ashok: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashokkalidas/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2F&originalSubdomain=in

AI at Kantar: AI at Kantar

Kantar’s AI Innovators Summit: https://www.kantar.com/campaigns/ai-innovators-summit

A webinar on Kantar’s research revealing the strong correlation between brand penetration and consumer attitude: Unlocking Brand Growth: New Insights from the Fusion of Attitudes and Behaviors

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Sadie Thoma, director of US B2B marketing at Google, and Derek Rodenhausen, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, say that artificial intelligence is having a major impact on marketing - especially when it comes to the consumer journey. They partnered on new research that shows that the four main consumer behaviors today are streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping - and that they are often done in tandem. Thoma and Rodenhausen share more insights from their research that can influence marketers across industries as they reshape their organizations in a world of AI. 

For Further Reading:

The Blueprint for AI-Powered Marketing

It’s Time for Marketers to Move Beyond the Linear Funnel

How Tombras used Google’s Gemini to create over 6,000 hyperlocal ads for PODS

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Michael Lacorazza, CMO of US Bank, and Mike Barrett, Founder and CSO at Supernatural AI, set out to break the mold: to partner together on an advertising campaign for the large financial institution using innovative AI methods and achieving fast results. If you’re interested in how to partner with AI agencies to take your work to the next level, listen to this case study about “The Power of Us” campaign, and walk away with lessons for your own organization. 

For Further Reading:

U.S. Bank CMO: Relationships Fuel Marketing Transformation

Inside the Campaign: How US Bank Used Artificial Intelligence to Fast-Track Its Latest Ads

Nate B Jones Substack

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Shiv Singh, co-founder of AI Trailblazers and the author of Marketing with AI For Dummies, knows that there’s still a huge range of adoption in the marketing space when it comes to artificial intelligence. He shares tips for those still early in their journey, and predictions for 2025 when it comes to how the marketing industry will be further upended by the technology. 

For Further Reading:

Check out Shiv’s substack

2025 AI Predictions You Can’t Afford to Miss

Marketing With AI for Dummies

Consortium for AI Personalization

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Abhay Parasnis, founder of Typeface, is making a big bet on where artificial intelligence will truly reshape the marketing industry. After experience at Adobe and other large organizations, Parasnis ventured out on his own in 2022 to work on a tool to solve the fundamental problem in marketing today, the “content paradox.” He explains why there’s a gap between data and cloud technologies, and the ability to use those to effectively make and distribute content. He walks Greg and Rex through some of the cutting-edge functionality that Typeface offers its partners. 

For Further Reading:

Abhay Parasnis showcases Typeface on CNN “De-coded” w/Host Anna Stewart

Adobe Alum takes AI-enables marketing beyond the prompt

Transition from solo acts to a complete symphony with AI

Abhay Parasnis Keynote at VivaTech 2024

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute and Smarter X, left his agency world behind and now spends his days training marketers on how to better use AI to move their organization forward. When it comes to AI adoption at marketing organizations, there’s still a wide range of adoption - and Roetzer shares what he’s seen in terms of what trips people up, and where they should be putting their resources. Plus, how the agency model is changing, and some of his favorite tools and tricks. 

For Further Reading:

Check out Paul’s podcast: 

https://youtu.be/qu74v4zBDjQ?si=69DTuXfVUapXHnsI

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Jen Kattula, CMO at Microsoft Advertising, has been testing out ways to improve the jobs of marketers through AI - while at the same time trying to improve organizational effectiveness. She shares use cases from Microsoft, how she thinks about agents and human intervention, and the hurdles around getting people trained up and in the habit of using AI. 

For Further Reading:

More about the AI Agents Hackathon from Microsoft: https://microsoft.github.io/AI_Agents_Hackathon/

Navigating AI and Marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKvEZCW_V0

3 Ways Marketers Can Accelerate Their Creativity with AI: 

https://www.adweek.com/sponsored/3-ways-marketers-can-accelerate-their-creativity-with-generative-ai/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Mark Polyak, Chief Product and Technology Officer at MINT.ai, says that embedding agents is transforming every step of the advertising resource management process. He explains how his background in counterterrorism helps shape his approach to AI and data integration today. Plus, he shares how MINT.ai is using multi-agent systems, synthetic data, and emerging protocols like MCP to help marketers do their jobs better. 

For Further Reading:

Learn more about MINT.ai: https://www.mint.ai/

Building Effective Agents (Anthropic): 

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-agents

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Doug McColgin, Director of Marketing Strategy at UScellular, says that AI tools aren't enough to build an effective marketing strategy. As more and more companies adopt AI, the playing field will be leveled when it comes to productivity gains. But McColgin thinks AI can be used in more creative ways to differentiate from your competitors. He explains the tests his organization has done, and how two foundational frameworks—Clay Christensen’s Jobs-to-be-Done and Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints—can shape smarter, more strategic AI adoption - focusing on problems, not products. 

For Further Reading:

Jobs to Be Done Theory: https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done/

Theory of Constraints: 

https://www.tocinstitute.org/theory-of-constraints.html#:~:text=Eliyahu%20Goldratt,with%20infinite%20sales%20or%20profit

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Vikrant Batra, cofounder of Maximon.ai and former CMO at HP, says that if you aren’t already well on your way in your AI journey, your marketing organization is in serious trouble. He details why he left his former corporate employer to strike out in an AI business, how fast change is coming, and why the financial side of companies will be coming for the marketing department - if they haven’t already. And he shares why traditional marketing organizations and artificial intelligence are on a collision course. 

For Further Reading:

Learn more about Vikrant Batra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikrant-batra/

Maximon:  https://www.maximon.ai/

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Steve Erbentraut, Managing Director at Marketbridge, works with clients every day in highly regulated industries who are caught in a tug of war: innovate with AI enough to beat out the competition, but minimize risks so as not to break down the trust of customers. It’s a delicate dance, and Erbentraut spells out what it means for implementing AI solutions in the marketing arms of organizations in the financial services, healthcare, and other regulated sectors. 

For Further Reading:

Marketing AI Implementation Checklist

More from Steve

The AI Conundrum

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Sandeep Menon, cofounder at Auxia, says AI is quickly enabling the marketing industry to enter the age of “supermarketers” - where individuals can do the jobs of all different kinds of specialized marketers with the help of AI tools. He unpacks how agentic AI is changing the game by creating tools to compress roles, accelerate experimentation, and drive deeper personalization at scale. From lifecycle decisioning to AI-powered analyst agents, Sandeep shares real-world applications and explains how marketers can set guardrails, gain explainability, and finally unlock the value of first-party data - and avoid the AI marketing content that feels overly spammy. 

For Further Reading: 

The Anthropic Vending Machine Test: https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/an-ai-ran-a-vending-machine-for-a-month-and-proved-it-couldnt-even-handle-passive-income/91207636

More about Auxia: https://www.auxia.io/en

The One to One Future (book): 

https://www.amazon.com/One-Future-Don-Peppers/dp/0385485662

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Paul Yacoubian, founder and CEO at Copy.ai, is on a mission to cut down go-to-market bloat. One big way that AI can help marketers, especially at larger organizations, is in creating standardized content creation processes - and integrating those outputs into existing companies at the organization. It can mean efficiency and scale that saves thousands of employees time, and can increase the satisfaction of thousands of customers. Paul chats with Greg and Rex about how Copy.ai generates marketing and sales content, the importance of workflow-based solutions over isolated AI tools, and how to enhance customer experience. 

For Further Reading:

Learn more about Copy.ai: https://www.copy.ai/

Learn more about Paul: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulyacoubian/

NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com/

AI productivity study: https://fortune.com/2025/07/20/ai-hampers-productivity-software-developers-productivity-study/

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Wade Foster, CEO and cofounder of Zapier, says the next frontier for marketers isn’t just shiny AI agents, but practical AI workflows. By weaving automation and intelligence into the systems teams already use, marketers can reduce manual tasks, accelerate lead management, and unlock new personalization at scale. Wade explains how Zapier has moved beyond basic integrations to become an orchestration layer for AI, and why this shift matters for marketing leaders looking to drive results without overhauling their entire stack. He unpacks the biggest workflow wins he’s seeing across the industry and where marketing is heading next. 

For Further Reading: 

Wade Foster in AdWeek

How to analyze Facebook and LinkedIn campaign performance with AI-powered agents

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Hannah Elsakr, Vice President of New GenAI Business Ventures at Adobe, hears from enterprise marketing leaders every day about what they really need from their AI tools. She talks about why so many marketers are still hesitant to adopt AI into their workflows for true transformation, and how Adobe Firefly is helping to create commercially safe and ethically sourced generative AI to open new doors for your brand.  

For Further Reading:

Adobe’s AI Vision: Hannah Elsakr on Empowering Creativity Responsibly

Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express now feature Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Model

What’s Next in the Evolution of Generative AI-Powered Marketing

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Jacob Bank, Relay.app founder and CEO, says the days of building up a huge marketing department might just be over. The Relay.app platform helps teams design and deploy custom AI agents, without losing impact. Bank explains why the old model of hiring is on the way out, why he offers step-by-step guides to users on how to effectively build agents, and how marketers can rethink scale, autonomy, and leverage in this new age. 

For Further Reading: 

After selling his last startup to Google, this founder now wants to automate mundane tasks with Relay

Backed by a16z, Relay races to market with Zapier in its crosshairs

The Mom Test

Traction

Jeff Su

Jacob’s Favorite AI Agents!

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Diaz Nesamoney, Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, says that commerce media is fast becoming the next big wave in advertising, thanks to transaction-level data that makes personalization more precise than search and social media ever could. He explains how commerce media is growing beyond retail and how AI allows that scale, as well as the complexities marketers face when handling diverse product catalogs across multiple retail platforms. 

For Further Reading: 

The Future of Commerce Media Isn’t Retail. It's Everywhere

Commerce Media Has Entered a New Era

Commerce media evolves as AI, offsite, and new vertices reshape the landscape

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Bill Gross, founder of Overture (the company that created paid search) and now ProRata.ai, says that generative AI is fundamentally rewriting the rules of search - which means marketers, advertisers, and customers must all adapt to new ways of discovering products. Gross explains ProRata’s business model, how advertising will evolve inside AI-generated results, what a fair-value model for publishers and creators might look like, and how brands can stay discoverable and trusted as attention shifts away from search pages toward GenAI chat models. 

For Further Reading: 

Generative AI Has a 'Shoplifting' Problem. This Startup CEO Has a Plan to Fix It

ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers

ProRata.ai

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Sid Sudhakaran, Head of Data Strategy & Engineering for North America at Kantar, explains the benefits of the company’s ambitious AI assistant: KAiA. He explains how it democratizes data, when chatbots work for marketers (and when they don’t), and the real customer pain points they are tackling each and every day. 

For Further Reading: 

Embedding Artificial Intelligence in the World’s Largest Companies

Leveraging GenAI for Connected Insights

Kantar forecasts ten marketing trends for 2026 strategic planning

MMA and Kantar unveil how consumers are using AI

More about KAiA

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Michael Walrath, Chairman and CEO of Yext, says today’s AI is fundamentally rewriting the rules of search, discovery, and brand visibility. Drawing on his extensive ad tech experience at DoubleClick, Yahoo, Moat, and now Yext, Walrath explains why AI-powered search is so much more powerful than traditional search—and why many current assumptions about GEO, SEO, and advertising are headed for a fast reckoning. Expanding on our episode with Bill Gross, Walrath also argues that inserting ads into AI experiences is the wrong answer, clicks are disappearing, and the future of AI marketing will look more like structured data and affiliate-style value exchange than traditional advertising.

Yext CEO on Search in the Age of AI: https://www.barrons.com/video/yext-ceo-on-search-in-the-age-of-ai/F798C382-AB67-47FD-AA54-4BEA89F5F38F

Yext’s Visibility Brief on Brand Visibility in AI Search: https://martech.org/yexts-visibility-brief-your-guide-to-brand-visibility-in-ai-search/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Shelly Palmer, professor in residence at Syracuse and expert in all things AI, returns to the show to offer up what trends he saw at CES, and where the marketing industry is going. He explains how fast AI is changing every day, what marketers need to be doing to keep up, and why the technology is still underhyped.

For Further Reading:

CES 2026 Day 1: https://shellypalmer.com/2026/01/ces-2026-day-1-robot-wars/

How to Install and Setup Claude Code: https://shellypalmer.com/2026/01/how-to-install-claude-code/

MMA CMO AI Transformation Summit featuring Shelly: https://mmaglobal.com/cmo-ai-transformation-summit

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Shegun Otulana, CEO of Copysmith.ai, says there’s a widening gap between marketing teams that use AI tools on the edge, and ones that have fully rebuilt their processes around AI. He explains how his company is focusing now on the shift to GEO, how he’s built and continues to build AI-powered products for specific client needs, and why share of voice, mentions, and citations are becoming the new metrics of visibility.

For further reading: 

Copysmith.ai: https://www.copysmith.ai/

Comeback Town: He built a billion dollar company in Birmingham and so can you: https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2025/03/comeback-town-he-built-a-billion-dollar-company-in-birmingham-and-so-can-you.html

From $250k Raised to $1.25B Exit w/ Shegun Otulana: https://bryce.medium.com/from-250k-raised-to-1-25b-exit-w-shegun-otulana-34e32912c603

More about Shegun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheguno/

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