I’m Joel Harrison, founder of B2B Marketing.net (formerly B2B Marketing magazine) Propolis and the B2B Marketing Awards. It’s been my mission for the past 21 years to recognise, celebrate and evangelise for the amazing profession that is B2B marketing, which has evolved beyond that recognition in that time.
In this podcast, I’ll be exploring what I believe is the biggest challenge facing B2B marketers today: Trust.
Buyers have always been cynical, hard to reach and even harder to convince, and increasingly expect to be self-directed in their research. In other words, they only want to engage with you on their terms. As if that wasn't bad enough, media and content channels are fragmented whilst AI is opening the floodgates to a tidalwave of content of questionable quality and veracity. It all adds up to a crisis of trust in B2B.
In this podcast, I'll be interviewing innovative and inspirational marketers in the front line of addressing this challenge, providing deep insights into the context of this challenge, exploring new insights about its implications and looking at real world solutions and success stories.
I’ll be exploring this topic from every relevant angle and perspective, but I’m going to focus particularly on thought leadership, influencer marketing and advocacy as they have particular relevance to this challenge.
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Stop trying to please everyone! | Karl Van den Bergh of Illumio on why consistency, not consensus, is what earns trust in B2B
Saison 1 · Épisode 69
samedi 25 juillet 2026 • Durée 30:55
Most leadership advice pushes you toward a familiar template: decisive, diplomatic, endlessly composed. It's meant to build trust. Often it does the opposite – because trust depends on people actually knowing who you are, not the version of you assembled to fit expectations.
In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Karl Van den Bergh, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Illumio, the breach containment company. Karl has spent more than 25 years leading go-to-market teams at global technology companies, including CMO roles at Gigamon and DataStax, and now writes regularly on authenticity and what it means to be human at work.
Together they unpack why being yourself is a trust strategy rather than a soft skill, how to tell real authenticity apart from the performative kind, and why Karl believes AI raises the value of human, relational marketing rather than eroding it.
In this episode:
Why most leadership advice pushes conformity rather than authenticity, and what gets lost in the process
The test that actually separates real authenticity from the performative kind
Why brands that try to please everyone end up forgettable – and the campaign that proves the opposite
How fear of conflict quietly kills team performance, and what fixed it on Karl's own team
Why Karl believes AI raises the value of human, relational marketing rather than replacing it
Chapters
00:00 Cold open
01:26 Karl's background – from physics to CMO
03:13 Why he started writing about being yourself at work
06:10 Why a distinctive point of view is a differentiator
08:37 Personal brand vs. company brand
10:55 What authenticity actually means
11:50 Spotting performative authenticity
13:47 How authenticity cascades through a team
17:27 Where leaders fall short on consistency
19:46 Does this get harder as the stakes rise?
21:56 The counterargument: "Don't Be Yourself"
24:30 AI and the flattening of content
27:52 One thing to start doing differently next week
Karl on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlvandenbergh/
Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/
Employee voices drown out brand voices in B2B – so how do you orchestrate them? Rida Oyebade of Workday on employee advocacy
Saison 1 · Épisode 68
jeudi 23 juillet 2026 • Durée 31:58
Why is employee advocacy so often mistaken for a content strategy? Rida Oyebade, Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, explains why handing employees “ready-made content” isn’t enough — advocacy only works when it still sounds like the person sharing it, not the brand behind them.
In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, host Joel Harrison talks to Rida Oyebade about employee advocacy — the discipline of turning colleagues into credible, willing voices for the brand. Rida traces her own path into advocacy, breaks down the different tiers of an advocacy programme, and is candid about what she’s learned building one from scratch at Workday: why participation has to stay genuinely optional, why no programme survives without real buy-in from leadership, and why the whole discipline is really about borrowed trust rather than borrowed content.
In this episode
Why brand-originated content is losing ground to individual voices in B2B
Why handing employees ready-made content isn’t the same as earning their voice
The three tiers of employee advocacy, and why each needs different handling
Why employee advocacy means borrowing someone’s “personal real estate” — and why participation has to stay optional
What actually makes advocacy programmes work, and why persuasion alone isn’t enough
Whether employee advocacy is a specialism worth building a career around
Guest
Rida Oyebade is Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, where she leads employee advocacy — working with colleagues, or “influencers” as she prefers to call them, to carry the brand into places a corporate account can’t reach.
Growth, creativity and trust: the B2B story of Cannes Lions 2026
Saison 1 · Épisode 67
mardi 14 juillet 2026 • Durée 39:28
In this special edition of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Fiona McKenzie of Marketbridge to make sense of Cannes Lions 2026. Fresh from five days of multi-stream content, installations and fringe events, they let the dust settle and distil what actually matters for B2B marketers – viewed through a growth lens, not creativity for its own sake.
They unpack why B2B is visibly on the rise at Cannes, the tension between creativity and commercial measurement, and the CFO buy-in conversation (brand as future cashflow). They dig into three important releases from the week: the FT's work on trust (including the finding that 82% trust a source more when it challenges than when it agrees), Bloomberg on reputation pulling weight across the full funnel, and Bain & Co.'s new model positioned as a rival to NPS, scoring a buyer's likelihood to choose you before any deal is on the table.
The conversation moves through the B2B Lions winner – an obscure Swedish ball-bearing company using tidal energy in the Faroe Islands, and why a big idea told as a wider go-to-market story is a step in the right direction – the rise of creators and influence in B2B, Joel's framework of five "trust champions," and a notably optimistic read on AI: a technology that surfaces existing misalignment and removes grunt work rather than replacing human judgment. They close on what Cannes could do better for the B2B community.
In this episode:
What Cannes actually is, and why it's so hard to navigate. B2B moving up the agenda. The growth-versus-creativity lens. CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow. Why CMOs are exhausted by the measurement debate. Three key releases: FT on trust, Bloomberg on reputation, Bain's NPS rival. The B2B Lions winner and what it signals. Creators, influence and Joel's five trust champions. A grounded, optimistic take on AI. What's missing, and what would take Cannes to the next level in 2027.
Reports and resources mentioned (links below):
FT – research on trust in B2B https://dimensionsofinfluence.ft.com/
Bloomberg – reputation across the funnel, B2B Summit presentation https://www.bloombergmedia.com/blog/corporate-rep-study-2025/
The deal is won before you're in the room | Why the recommended choice now beats the visible one, with Lottie O'Donoghue from Velo
Saison 1 · Épisode 64
mercredi 8 juillet 2026 • Durée 30:24
Most of the conversations that decide a B2B deal happen in a room you'll never be in. Buyers swap recommendations, compare notes and build their shortlists in spaces marketers can neither see nor measure – and by the time you're in contention, the decision is often half made.
In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Lottie O'Donoghue, strategy director at Velo, a specialist B2B agency built on recommendation. Lottie has led marketing client-side in scale-up SaaS and run ABM at Accenture, and now shapes recommendation strategies for Velo's clients across technology, industrial and professional services.
Together they unpack why becoming the recommended choice has shifted from a nice-to-have to a commercial imperative, the real difference between being known and being recommended, and the trust signals that quietly compound into advocacy.
In this episode:
Why the recommended choice now matters more than the visible one
The trust signals that accumulate into recommendation, and the ones marketers most underestimate
How to make the case for investing in influence that conventional attribution can't capture
Where to start if you suspect you're not being talked about in the right rooms
Velo's six Rs of Recommendation Marketing framework
This is a sponsored episode, produced in partnership with Velo.
Why lead gen is still B2B's trust free zone | How blind faith and 'tolerable mischief' underpins a global industry, with Robin Caller of Leadscale
Saison 1 · Épisode 66
jeudi 2 juillet 2026 • Durée 42:30
Lead generation is the discipline B2B marketing relies on most and trusts least. In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Robin Caller, founder and CEO of Leadscale, explains why, and what it would take to fix it.
Most people in B2B know that a good share of the leads changing hands every day are of questionable quality. Few will say so on the record. Robin is an exception. He calls it "a tolerable level of mischief", a grey zone the whole industry has quietly learned to live with, and in conversation with host Joel Harrison he explains why it persists, why he refuses to call it fraud, and how transparency could begin to put it right.
A note before you listen: Robin speaks freely, and not everyone in the industry will agree with all of it. That's rather the point.
In this episode:
– Why lead generation has been B2B's least-trusted discipline for 20 years
– What "a tolerable level of mischief" really means, and why it isn't fraud
– The "blind faith" model and the hierarchy of transparency
– Why marketers tolerate poor-quality leads: the quota trap
– How advertisers are part of the problem, not just the victims
– The provenance questions every buyer should be asking their suppliers
– Why "more leads will not be the answer" in the AI era
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Lead Generation Challenges
05:42 Transparency and Its Role in Trust
08:20 The Ambivalence of Stakeholders
11:26 Blind Faith in Lead Generation Practices
14:23 The Importance of Transparency in Data Collection
17:19 Navigating the Gray Areas of Lead Generation
Stop claiming you're the best! AI will mark you down for it | Tom Rudnai on winning influence in the age of Dark AI
Saison 1 · Épisode 65
mardi 23 juin 2026 • Durée 35:47
In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Tom Rudnai, Founder of Demand Genius and author of the Dark AI study — a research project that analyzed hundreds of AI prompt clusters across major B2B categories to map where brands are truly winning and losing influence. Tom's central finding is as counterintuitive as it is urgent: the more boldly a brand claims to be the best, the more likely AI is to quietly sideline it during the buyer conversations that shape outcomes. So where is influence actually earned in an AI-led world — and what should B2B marketers be doing differently?
➡️ Tom cuts through the noise with sharp, data-grounded thinking on why AI is not a search channel — and why treating it like one is one of the most costly mistakes in B2B marketing today. He introduces the "Dark AI" concept: the 84% of buyer conversations where no brand gets cited, yet where the problem framing, requirements, and shortlist criteria are already being quietly formed. He unpacks how AI enters exploratory mode at the top of the funnel — and why confident, directive brand language fails at the exact moment influence is most available. He also lays out the concept of information gain, arguing that original research, clear perspectives, and genuinely new knowledge are now the highest-value signals a brand can produce. From convergence patterns to what to actually measure, this conversation will challenge how you think about authority, content, and trust in modern B2B.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: Why Bold Positioning Can Backfire in AI Search
02:08 - Tom's Background and the Story Behind Demand Genius
03:59 - How Buyers Use AI Differently from Traditional Search
06:16 - The Dark AI Study: What It Measured and What It Found
10:30 - AI Visibility vs. AI Influence: The Iceberg Explained
13:18 - Convergence: How AI Narrows Down to a Recommendation
18:38 - Information Gain: The New North Star for B2B Content
Why Replacing Junior Marketers With AI Is a False Economy | Professor Laura Chamberlain on Next-Gen Talent
Saison 1 · Épisode 63
mardi 16 juin 2026 • Durée 43:28
In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Professor Laura Chamberlain, Professor of Marketing at the University of Warwick and Founder of Think Talk Thrive. They tackle one of the most pressing questions in the profession right now: Do we still need junior marketers—and if so, what do we owe them? As AI absorbs entry-level tasks and graduate vacancies continue to shrink, is marketing quietly destroying its own talent pipeline?
➡️ Laura draws on years of teaching across every level of the profession—from undergraduates to C-suite executives—to challenge the notion that AI can simply replace junior roles. She makes a compelling case that young professionals bring far more than cheap labour: native AI fluency, cultural proximity, fresh thinking, and an eagerness that senior hires can't replicate. She and Joel explore how the erosion of mentorship, rising imposter phenomenon among 18–25-year-olds, and the compression of entry-level roles are creating a long-horizon crisis no single company will feel—until it's far too late. If you're in any way responsible for building or leading a marketing team, this episode will challenge how you think about who you hire, how you develop them, and what the profession stands to lose if we keep pulling the ladder up behind us.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: The Junior Marketer Crisis
02:06 - Laura's Background and Teaching Perspective
03:13 - Is Marketing a Career Young People Choose or Fall Into?
06:29 - What's Preoccupying Students Entering the Profession
09:48 - The Graduate Jobs Squeeze and AI's Role
11:37 - Debunking the "We Don't Need Juniors" Narrative
14:31 - What Young Professionals Uniquely Bring to Marketing Teams
17:20 - The Case for Mentorship and Why It's Breaking Down
23:42 - How Junior Marketers Learn Without Entry-Level Tasks
What Access Group Learned from a Year on the AI Bus | Kate Hassler's Inside Track on How a $9 Billion B2B Software Powerhouse Has Made AI Business as Usual
Saison 1 · Épisode 62
mardi 9 juin 2026 • Durée 39:59
In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Kate Hassler, Group Director of Brand and Comms at Access Group—a $9 billion global B2B software company serving 160,000 customers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. While headlines scream of AI-driven redundancies at tech giants, Access Group took the opposite approach: hiring more people, running company-wide hackathons, and building a culture where AI is simply business as usual. So what does a genuinely human-led AI transformation actually look like from the inside?
➡️ Kate walks through every stage of Access Group's journey—from pockets of shadow AI usage and no formal governance, to enterprise Claude licenses with custom brand skills built in. She reveals the story behind the now-legendary "AI bus" metaphor that united 9,000 employees around a single, simple idea, and explains how structured playtime - not mandates - turned the biggest sceptics into the most vocal champions. She digs into why Access chose to protect junior talent rather than cut it, how one senior designer reinvented himself as an AI strategist, and why the "human at the start, human at the end" principle is what separates meaningful content from AI slop. Whether you're a marketing leader navigating an AI rollout or just trying to get your team over the line, Kate's blueprint is grounded, practical, and genuinely inspiring.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: AI and the B2B Marketing Workplace
02:12 - Kate Hassler and Access Group Overview
04:03 - Company-Wide AI as a Strategic Priority
07:26 - The London Bus Metaphor: Origin and Impact
11:04 - Why the Metaphor Has Endured a Year On
12:32 - From Shadow AI to Structured Adoption
14:33 - Copilot, Claude, and the Licensing Journey
17:27 - Building Custom Claude Brand Skills
B2B Tech Marketing's Human-First Future in The Age of AI | Exclusive Insights from B2B Marketing Awards Data, Focusing on Four Key Trends, with Tejal Patel
Saison 1 · Épisode 61
mardi 2 juin 2026 • Durée 43:07
In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Tejal Patel, Independent Marketing Consultant and former marketing leader at Cisco, Microsoft, and Nokia. Together, they examine how B2B technology marketing is changing as AI reshapes content creation and digital channels become more saturated than ever. Using exclusive insights from B2B Marketing Awards data, they reveal four emerging trends that are helping leading brands stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
➡️ Tejal explains why marketers are moving beyond traditional buyer personas and investing more heavily in developers, practitioners, employees, and advocates who influence purchasing decisions from within. The conversation explores the growing importance of employee advocacy, experiential marketing, proof-of-concept campaigns, and highly targeted direct mail programs that cut through digital noise. They also discuss why trust, authenticity, and human experiences are becoming more valuable competitive advantages—and why many marketing measurement frameworks may be preventing organizations from fully embracing these strategies.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction and Why Tech Marketing Leads B2B Innovation
01:23 - Meet Tejal Patel and the Rise of Human-Centric Marketing
05:21 - The Shift Toward Internal Influencers and Practitioner Audiences
10:22 - Why Marketers Are Targeting Doers Instead of Decision-Makers
12:15 - The Measurement Challenge Behind Long-Term Marketing Success
14:02 - Employee Advocacy and Authentic Brand Influence
16:51 - Proof of Concept as a Marketing Campaign
18:01 - Why Demonstration Beats Persuasion
20:52 - Quality Over Quantity in Modern B2B Marketing
23:19 - The Growth of Experiential and Sensory Marketing
Best in show B2B | Why The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is blooming for Addleshaw Goddard's full-funnel campaign, with Brian Macreadie
Saison 1 · Épisode 60
mercredi 27 mai 2026 • Durée 42:16
In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Brian Macreadie, Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard, one of the UK's most creatively ambitious international law firms. Brian reveals how his team did something no legal firm had ever done before—becoming the first-ever official legal partner of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show—and built a full-funnel campaign around it called Flourish in the City. Could flowers, billboards, and a garden at Chelsea really deliver 350% ROI and 40 new clients in under a year?
➡️ With over 30 years of B2B marketing experience across telecoms, media, and legal, Brian doesn't just talk about creativity—he proves it pays. He breaks down the strategic thinking behind Flourish in the City: why a noisy, content-saturated legal market demanded something radically different, and how a single emotionally resonant idea can anchor an entire integrated campaign. From 19 digital billboards at Bank and London Bridge, to handing flowers to city commuters, to hosting 400+ VIP clients across 57 intimate Chelsea events—this is full-funnel B2B marketing at its boldest. Brian also tackles the harder questions: how do you build internal buy-in for long-term, creative marketing investment? How do brand and ABM complement rather than compete? And what does it really take to build the kind of trust that turns one conversation into a 25-year client relationship? His two golden rules haven't changed in 30 years—and they're more relevant than ever.
Chapters:
00:00 Podcast Welcome
00:30 Meet Brian McCredie
00:55 Inside the London Office
02:01 Flourish in the City
03:50 Episode Learning Goals
04:36 Brian Career Journey
05:40 Why Legal Needs Creativity
07:19 About Addleshaw Goddard
08:33 The Attention Problem
09:55 Trust and Top of Mind
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Bain & Co. – new buyer-choice model positioned against NPS https://www.bain.com/insights/raising-the-odds-on-a-deal-how-likelihood-to-buy-rewires-b2b-growth/
Chapters:
(00:00) Welcome and why we waited for the dust to settle
(01:13) What Cannes actually is, and how to navigate it
(03:04) B2B on the rise at the festival
(04:28) The growth lens: creativity anchored in commercial value
(05:21) CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow
(07:54) Why CMOs are exhausted by measurement
(10:23) Is B2B creativity judged by the wrong (B2C) playbook?
(11:26) Three key releases: FT, Bloomberg and Bain
(16:45) Talking the language of the boardroom
(19:36) The B2B Lions winner: a Swedish ball-bearing story
(24:29) Creators, influence and the five trust champions
(30:11) AI: surfacing misalignment, not taking our jobs
(35:17) What Cannes could do better
(37:46) Wrap-up and how to share your own take
Connect with Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/
Connect with Fiona on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-mckenzie-8a16921a/
18:22 Finding Fair Solutions for All Parties
21:37 Advertisers: Victims and Perpetrators
21:54 The Importance of Data Sharing
24:30 Data Decay and Its Impact on Performance
25:16 Trust and Transparency in Data Transactions
25:25 Generational Perspectives in Marketing
27:03 The MQL Mindset and Its Limitations
29:20 Dynamic Qualification of Leads
31:12 Managing Tolerances in Imperfect Systems
32:48 The Future of Lead Generation
36:23 Questions for Better Data Practices
39:56 The Ethical Implications of Data Sourcing
42:42 A Positive Outlook on Future Trends
About the guest
Robin Caller is the founder and CEO of Leadscale, a London-based lead generation and data quality business. He has spent more than two decades in lead and demand generation and is one of the industry's more outspoken voices on data quality, transparency and trust.
Robin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robincaller/
About the podcast
Trust & Influence in B2B is hosted by Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B. Each episode explores marketing strategy and practice with senior B2B practitioners, researchers and academics.
Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/
Enjoyed this episode? Follow the show in your podcast app and leave a rating or review – it helps other B2B marketers find it.
22:11 - Why Confident Category Claims Fail in AI-Led Journeys
25:28 - What B2B Marketers Should Actually Be Measuring
30:49 - Patterns Across Categories and AI Models
33:22 - The One Takeaway Every Marketer Should Remember
If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.
🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/
💬What do you think comes first—insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.
If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.
🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/
💬What do you think comes first—investing in junior talent or letting AI fill the gap? Let us know in the comments below.
If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.
🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/
💬What do you think comes first—getting your team on board with AI, or putting the governance in place? Let us know in the comments below.
If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It’s honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.
🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/
💬 What do you think will matter more in the future of B2B marketing—AI-powered efficiency or human-centered experiences?
🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with the marketers, leaders, and innovators shaping the future of B2B.
📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:
If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.
🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/
💬What do you think comes first—insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.
