What happens when marketing’s sharpest minds pull back the curtain? Hosted by Stephanie Postles, Marketing Trends drops listeners into the world of trailblazing CMOs, CEOs, and visionaries who share their journeys and groundbreaking strategies. From navigating the balance between automation and human touch to leading teams through unprecedented transformation, you’re getting an unfiltered look at the lessons and ideas driving the industry forward. Whether you're leading a team or aspiring to innovate, Marketing Trends is your new secret weapon.
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Webflow’s CMO: Stop Chasing More Content! Win AI Search! End Silos!
Episode 562
Wednesday, September 9, 2026 • Duration 48:33
Webflow just scanned 2,000 real websites and gave them a report card on how ready they are for AI search. The median score? A 2 out of 5. And the reason companies are failing isn't the reason LinkedIn keeps telling you.
Dave Steer — CMO of Webflow, with prior stops at Twitter, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, Cloudflare, and GitLab — joins Stephanie Postles to unpack what the data actually says: the failure point isn't content volume, it's the technical basics of your website. Broken internal links. Missing schema. No bylines. Stale content. Fix those four things and you'll pull ahead of a category that's failing them all.
Then Dave goes deeper — why AEO breaks the siloed marketing org, why hiring an 'integrated marketer' won't fix your silos, and why the teams that know how to fight well are the ones that are going to win.
What you'll learn
• Why the median website scores a 2 out of 5 on AI discovery readiness — and what that actually looks like under the hood
• The 4 technical fixes (internal links, schema, bylines, content freshness) that will move you up the AEO maturity index this week
• Why AEO can't be one person's job — and what a cross-functional weekly cadence actually looks like (the Reddit task force story)
• Why hiring an 'integrated marketer' doesn't create an integrated team — and what an 'orchestrator' role does instead
• The Tuckman model of high-performing teams, and why 'silos exist because of conflict aversion' — not because of org design
• The 3 expertise sets every modern CMO needs — and why nobody is world-class at all three
• 2:22 The biggest shift Dave has seen in two decades of marketing
• 3:24 CMO 1.0 vs CMO 2.0 — from campaigns to systems
• 5:34 What's actually working (and not) across millions of websites
• 8:28 'AI has fundamentally rewritten the buyer journey — under our feet'
• 9:42 The 4 pillars of AEO maturity (and why it's a team sport)
• 12:14 'What we learned shocked us' — the 2,000-site scan
• 13:54 Why 'just make more content' is making the internet worse
• 16:15 The 4 technical fixes: links, schema, bylines, freshness
• 18:29 Can AI help do these basic checks?
• 20:47 The Reddit task force — what cross-functional AEO actually looks like
• 26:58 Building high-performing teams (Tuckman model + conflict)
• 31:26 The integrated marketing hire that didn't integrate anything
• 36:03 'The teams that know how to do this will beat the teams that don't'
• 37:52 Trust is the highest-order bit — your name is your guarantee
• 39:37 Is the CMO role dying? The 2.0 answer.
• 41:01 The one skill every CMO needs to unlearn
• 42:46 Lightning round
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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Build for Community, Not the Playbook
Episode 561
Wednesday, August 12, 2026 • Duration 45:04
Don’t sell to your community. Just talk to them.
DadGang founder Bart Szaniewski started with $750, 100 hats and no real business plan. Four years later, the brand has sold more than a million hats and generated over $36 million in revenue.
He’s done it while ignoring a lot of conventional DTC advice: DadGang still uses Shopify’s free Dawn theme, shoots much of its content on an iPhone and runs a private Facebook group for its community. Bart’s philosophy is simple: don’t copy what works for someone else. Build around your customer.
On this episode of Marketing Trends with Stephanie Postles, Bart explains how DadGang keeps its marketing simple at scale, turns customer feedback into real products, and uses email, SMS and AI without overwhelming the people on the other end.
What you'll learn
Why Bart still uses Shopify’s free Dawn theme after $36M in revenue
The question that changed how DadGang thinks about community
How customer feedback turns into real product launches
Why emails that aren’t trying to sell can still drive revenue
How DadGang uses email, SMS and AI without adding unnecessary complexity
Why Bart resists arbitrary growth pressure - even at scale
This episode brought to you by Attentive.
Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.
Spotlight: The 5,000-Year-Old Method of Making People Remember You
Episode 560
Wednesday, July 29, 2026 • Duration 16:09
How do you get your brand into the 90% of memory that's subconscious?
In this segment from Marketing Trends, neuroscientist Pranav Yadav reveals that the human brain is a pattern-seeking storytelling device — and the formula for creating lasting brand memory hasn't changed in 5,000 years. From Vedic rituals to Alexander the Great's encounter with a naked wise man to MasterCard's Priceless campaign, Pranav traces the thread between ancient storytelling wisdom and modern brand architecture.
This episode brought to you by Attentive.
Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Marketing Has Forgotten What It’s For
Episode 559
Wednesday, July 15, 2026 • Duration 51:14
Are you just busy working? Or are you adding value?
Marketing has become overloaded with channels, platforms, metrics, and specialized roles. But Seth Matlins believes the job itself is much simpler: create value, drive sustainable growth, and help the business create and keep customers.
In this episode, Seth joins Stephanie Postles to explain why CMO job descriptions are often fundamentally disconnected from business results—and why marketers must see themselves as commercial leaders, not merely brand leaders.
They discuss the danger of optimizing for departmental metrics instead of business outcomes, why short-term pressure can destroy long-term growth, and what Seth learned from one of the biggest strategic mistakes of his career. They also explore why brands must become more humane in an AI-driven world, what separates the world’s most influential CMOs, and why every decision a company makes either creates or destroys value.
Seth Matlins is the founder of The Wisdomist Company, former Managing Director of the Forbes CMO Network, and host of Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing.
Follow Seth: LinkedIn — Seth Matlins
Listen to his new show: Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing (Vox Media + The Wisdomist Company)
This episode brought to you by Attentive.
Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.
Why Agents Will Buy, But Marketing Must Stay Human
Episode 558
Wednesday, July 1, 2026 • Duration 01:03:49
A bank just issued the world's first loan to an AI agent. The agent applied, signed, and set its own repayment schedule. That's where marketing now lives — and most teams are still optimizing for the wrong layer. In this episode, Katja Forbes (founder of The CX Evolutionist and author of the field guide on machine customers) explains why AEO is a trap, why "the more discoverable you are, the more interchangeable you are," and what the actual moat looks like in agentic commerce. Fresh off a trip to Alibaba, BYD, and Unitree Robotics in China, Katja walks through the five types of machine customers already in market, why Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles is the B2C playbook, why Walmart's AI procurement is the B2B playbook, and the one mindset shift every marketing leader needs to make this quarter.
What you'll learn
• Why "AI agent" is too small a frame — and the 5 types of machine customers already buying today
• Why AEO and machine-readability are table stakes, not strategy
• The values-as-data play: how Patagonia and Walmart are already winning the agentic moat
• Why you can't greenwash an AI agent (and what to do if your supply chain receipts aren't flattering)
• The abundance-vs-efficiency mindset shift — and why stripping headcount for AI gains is corporate anorexia
This episode is brought to you by Attentive.
Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.
Not more marketing. Better marketing.
That’s marketing made personal. That’s Attentive.
To learn more visit attentive.com.
What if everything you're optimizing for in marketing — attention, clicks, engagement — is a proxy for the one thing that actually drives action?
Pranav Yadav is the Founder & Global CEO of Neuro-Insight, the world's largest measure of memory. His company maps brains to determine what advertising actually does to people — second by second — with an 86% correlation to real-world sales. In this conversation, he makes the case that memory is the only metric that matters, explains why hyper-personalization is destroying culture, and breaks down exactly why Budweiser's most iconic Super Bowl ad failed at the brain level while Samsung's Wallhuggers became their most successful campaign ever.
Pranav Yadav is a former Goldman Sachs trader turned neuroscientist, Forbes 30 Under 30, and Ad Age 40 Under 40. He created the Neuro Impact Factor — the brain-based metric that all Australian out-of-home media is now traded on.
Key takeaways
• 90% of all memory is subconscious — brands have been measuring the wrong 10%
• $750 billion in annual marketing spend is wasted because recall ≠ memory
• The brain is a pattern-seeking storytelling device — personal relevance opens the door to memory
• Hyper-personalization destroys the shared cultural memory that makes marketing work
• The #1 rated Super Bowl ad (Budweiser Lost Puppy) placed the brand at the exact moment the brain stopped encoding memory
• Samsung's Wallhuggers hid the brand for 45 seconds and became their most successful campaign
This episode brought to you by Attentive.
Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.
Not more marketing. Better marketing.
That’s marketing made personal. That’s Attentive.
The SEO Blog Era Is Over. Here's What Replaces It.
Episode 556
Wednesday, June 3, 2026 • Duration 55:18
Your blog will never earn an audience. Ever. That's not me — that's Melissa Rosenthal, who ran the SEO content engine at ClickUp, built media at BuzzFeed and Cheddar, and is now co-founder of Outlever building the playbook that replaces it.
In this episode, Melissa makes the case that the SEO blog era is collapsing in real time, that one strategic LinkedIn poster will out-perform 150 employees doing employee advocacy, and that while every other B2B operator is betting on AI, she's betting on humans — and using AI to do it. She's also dogfooding the entire thesis with her new publication, The State of Brand, which hit a million unique views in three weeks.
What you'll learn
• Why the SEO blog was a 'slot machine' — and what survives the AI search collapse
• The two-month consistency rule that separates real owned media from content theater
Stop Counting Your AI Agents. Customers Don’t Care.
Episode 555
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 53:17
Every CMO is being told to replace people with AI agents as fast as possible. Keri McGhee, CMO at Attentive, is doing some of that — and deliberately refusing to do other parts of it. The line she's drawn between the two is the most useful rubric we've heard in months.
Attentive runs SMS, email, push, and RCS for thousands of consumer brands — a category where the temptation to automate everything is maximum. But Keri's strongest customer-loyalty moment last year wasn't an AI agent. It was a single text from a real human after a graduation dress arrived without its matching belt. 'I will buy a million more things from them.'
This episode is the rubric: where AI is unlocking near-100% revenue lifts, where iOS 26 just quietly killed 80% of your text marketing, and the customer moment no agent count can replace.
What you'll learn
• Why brands using AI hands-off-the-wheel are seeing near 100% revenue lift — and the two customers proving it
• How iOS 26 broke text marketing for 80%+ of devices, and the 2Tap opt-in fix most brands don't know about
• The personalization rubric that gets 91% of consumers to say yes
• The metric CFOs are asking marketing leaders about right now instead of CAC
• The one customer moment that no AI agent can replicate — and why it's the only outcome that matters
Marketing Spotlight: How Simple Personalization Dramatically Increased Engagement
Episode 554
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 • Duration 06:59
Most CMOs think personalization requires complex AI and endless customer segments. Elizabeth Maxson proves otherwise.
She breaks down actionable personalization strategies — from geo-tagging that drove a 51% lift in event attendance to playful homepage tricks that captured marketers' attention and boosted engagement.
The takeaway: Stop overcomplicating personalization. Start with big buckets and simple, contextual changes.
Chapters
00:00 - Why Personalization Should Be Simple
00:32 - First-Time vs Returning vs Current Customers
01:07 - Marketer vs Developer Homepages
03:01 - Geo-Tagging: +51% Attendance
04:28 - The Big Buckets Approach
05:28 - The Lorem Ipsum Attention Hack
06:22 - Ruggable Cat vs Dog Personalization
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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Twilio's CMO Scrapped His 2026 Plan in One Month
Episode 553
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 52:22
What happens when your next customer isn't even human?
Chris Koehler is the CMO of Twilio, and his 2026 marketing plan lasted exactly one month before AI agents forced him to rethink everything. In this conversation, Chris gets real about why planning horizons have collapsed from years to weeks, what happens when AI agents — not humans — are doing the buying, and why brand might matter MORE in an AI-driven world, not less.
Chris Koehler is the Chief Marketing Officer at Twilio, a $5B+ customer engagement platform. Previously, he led marketing at Box and helped build the analytics engine at Adobe.
Key takeaways:
• Why using AI to speed up bad processes is the wrong move — you need to reimagine them entirely
• The agent buying continuum: SEO → AEO → human-to-agent → agent-to-agent
• Why brand awareness becomes MORE critical when agents do the discovery
• The 'frozen food vs pizza' framework for the future of software
• How to stop feeling paralyzed: the quadrant exercise he uses to prioritize AI initiatives
Follow Chris on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ckoehler/
Learn more: twilio.com
Chapters:
00:00 Meet Chris Koehler, CMO of Twilio
01:44 The Healthy Tension Between IT and Marketing
02:44 Planning in Weeks, Not Quarters
04:40 The Rise of Asynchronous AI Work
07:22 Unlearning 30 Years of Marketing
11:37 Frozen Food vs Pizza: The Future of Software
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