James Toepfer, former Head of Campaign Strategy and Demand Marketing for Digital Media APAC at Adobe, joins the show to explain why his team there ditched the Marketing Qualified Lead for the Marketing Qualified Account. He unpacks the disconnect that forced the change, an MQL dashboard glowing green while sales sat in the red, and how an account view reshaped BDR targets and conversion.

Expect a practical breakdown of MQA and advice for lean teams without an insights function.

Guest Introduction

James Toepfer is a senior B2B marketing leader with 20+ years driving marketing strategy, go-to-market architecture, and revenue growth across enterprise SaaS in ANZ and APAC, at organisations including Adobe, Google, Intuit, PayPal, and Optus.

Key Topics

• The "green dashboard, red sales" disconnect: why MQL volume and database coverage stopped reflecting sales performance
• What MQA measures: engagement across a buying group of 7-10 ICPs per account, including "dark funnel" activity, not a single last-touch metric
• The multi-quarter transition at Adobe, running MQL and MQA in parallel, led by a global insights team with heavy BDR enablement
• The Account Engagement Hub: a self-serve tool for BDRs to prioritise accounts, see engaged contacts, and build outbound plans
• How BDR incentives changed under MQA: unchanged pipeline targets, but higher-quality conversations and disposition rates
• Adjusting the model under quarter-end pressure by narrowing to the most-engaged accounts, not adding more leads
• Advice for smaller teams: group leads by account manually and work backwards from the revenue number
• Why conversion improved once the denominator shifted to prioritised accounts, alongside sharper, problem-led content

Resources & Links

People

• Kerry Cunningham - Former Forrester analyst, now at 6sense, whose talk first shaped James's account-based thinking
• Jon Miller - Marketo co-founder, early advocate for account-based measurement
• Jon Stona - Global CMO of Airwallex, cited as an example of bold B2B brand marketing
• Nishi Seth - Google Cloud Marketing Lead APAC, cited for her take on continuous optimisation
• Lucinda Barlow - Senior Director, International Marketing at Uber and James's former Google leader, cited for brand built on a customer "jolt"
• Mark Jones - Host of The CMO Show, which Adobe sponsors
• Dave Gerhardt - Founder of Exit Five, followed for ABM content
• Shadé Zahrai - Self-leadership researcher whose "I could" vs "I should" framing James cites as a takeaway

Companies & Tools

• Adobe - Where James led the MQL-to-MQA transition
• 6sense - Intent platform Kerry Cunningham now works with
• Marketo - Automation platform, part of Adobe, co-founded by Jon Miller
• The CMO Show - Marketing podcast hosted by Mark Jones, sponsored by Adobe
• Exit Five - B2B marketing community founded by Dave Gerhardt

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: James Toepfer

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Jeff Sauer has spent twenty years teaching marketers how to measure what matters. In this episode, he explains how AI has rewritten his marketing playbook, letting a lean team (often just himself and a stack of AI tools) produce work that used to take a copywriter, web designer, project manager, and paid ads specialist.

If you run a small marketing team and want a practical look at what AI can take off your plate today, this conversation is packed with real workflows, real numbers, and honest warnings about what still needs a human eye.

Guest Introduction

Jeff Sauer is the founder of MeasureU, a measurement training platform for agency owners and consultants, and previously ran an Inc 5000 agency for a decade before selling it. He has trained more than 50,000 marketers across over 100 countries and built a YouTube channel with more than 55,000 subscribers.

Key Topics

• How AI has shifted marketing staffing from "I need these people" to "what staff do I actually need"
• Jeff's AI stack: Claude Code as his daily driver, plus ChatGPT, Gemini, Veo 3, Seedance, and Copy Coders for specialist tasks
• Building serversideblueprint.com end to end with AI, which sold $15,000 worth of workshops
• An automated LinkedIn workflow that drafts, schedules, and replies to comments, generating over 1,000 B2B leads this year
• Why long-form YouTube content anchors his content engine, feeding blog posts, newsletters, and social clips
• Building 40+ lead generating landing pages in minutes each with Claude Code, no WordPress plugins needed
• His anti-AI tuning rules and six-step skill framework for catching AI writing patterns before they go live
• Why email remains the highest ROI channel, and how voice dictation feeds his AI-assisted writing process

Resources & Links

Companies & Tools

• MeasureU, Jeff's training company
• MeasureU AI Marketing Guide, free guide to this episode's four workflows, plus an AI vs human task grid
• Claude and Claude Code, Jeff's daily AI driver
• ChatGPT and Codex, for image generation and code checks
• Google Gemini, for image generation
• Google Veo 3 and ByteDance Seedance, for AI video generation
• Copy Coders, Genesis bots for email, script, and landing page copy
• Publer, Taplio, Apify, and n8n, earlier tools for LinkedIn scheduling, research, and automation, now folded into Claude
• MacWhisper, voice dictation for email drafts
• Z.ai GLM models, used to critique and bug check AI code
• Authority Hacker, source of Jeff's skill framework
• Lovable, an early 2025 vibe coding tool
• WordPress, Gravity Forms, and Go High Level, the old site and lead capture tools Jeff no longer needs

Contact & Credits:

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Jeff Sauer

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Shaun Thresher built his own AI powered second brain, using Claude Code, to run his marketing and copywriting work end to end. In this episode, Shaun walks through how he moved from bouncing between two separate AI chat windows to a single centralised system that reads his voice, his clients' details and his workflows before it writes a word.

He explains why one well briefed agent with multiple skills beats a pile of specialised agents, how he trains AI to score new content against his best performing posts so it stops sounding repetitive, and how he uses AI to dig up prospect lists most competitors never find, including one built from a public FDA compliance database. Whether you're just starting to explore Claude or ChatGPT, or you're ready to build a proper system around your marketing operation, this conversation is full of practical, hard won lessons.

Guest Introduction

Shaun Thresher is a copywriter turned AI systems builder who spent eight years at Agora Financial, a top US direct-response shop, before becoming CMO of online assets at a publicly-traded company and later CEO of one of its e-commerce brands. He now runs BioRevGrowth, building AI powered "second brain" systems for marketers, and since January 2025 has led marketing and technical operations for a US-based long COVID doctor. 

Key Topics

• Moving from copying and pasting between ChatGPT and Claude to a single centralised second brain, built and stored in GitHub
• The difference between agents, skills and workflows, and why Shaun now favours one well briefed content agent with multiple skills over many separate agents
• How Shaun sources prospect lists from public databases, including an FDA compliance database, instead of relying solely on paid tools like Clay
• Building a "digital fingerprint" from a client's best performing content so AI generated posts match their voice and tone
• Scoring new content against a curated pool of top performing past content to avoid repetitive, generic AI output ("AI slop")
• Why Claude Code offers more flexibility than a standard chat interface, including API and MCP connections into tools like Google Ads and Meta Ads
• Common pitfalls: memory systems that quietly stop working, and installing unfamiliar agents without understanding how they operate
• Advice for marketers starting out: pick one problem to solve, invest in a higher tier AI plan, and find a community for support

Resources & Links

People Mentioned

• Ethan Mollick - Wharton professor and AI researcher
• Nate B. Jones - AI strategist and newsletter writer
• David Arnoux - runs the GenAI Circle community Shaun is part of

Companies & Tools

• BioRevGrowth - Shaun's growth and revenue consultancy for biotech and nutraceutical companies 
• Clay - data enrichment and outreach platform
• GitHub
• Vercel
• ChatGPT and OpenAI Codex
• Claude Code / Claude Desktop
• Google Ads, Meta Ads
• Firecrawl
• Zernio -social media scheduling and publishing API
• Remotion - animation library used for content generation
• Second Brain 2.0 - the pre-built go-to-market agent system Shaun purchased and plugged into his own setup.

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Shaun Thresher

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

AI isn't just changing individual jobs, it's changing the shape of the org chart itself. In this episode, Neal Woolrich, Director in Gartner's Human Resources Advisory practice, joins Shahin to unpack whether the traditional "pyramid" structure is giving way to a "diamond" with fewer entry-level roles, and what that means for the next generation of managers.

Neal cuts through the noise around AI-driven layoffs (much of it, he argues, is "AI washing") and shares Gartner's projection that AI becomes a net job creator by 2030. He also walks through real governance models from Lloyd's Bank, ServiceNow and Red Hat, and tackles the thorny question of what happens when AI agents start appearing on the org chart alongside humans.

Guest Introduction

Neal Woolrich is a Director in Gartner's Human Resources Advisory practice, based in Melbourne, where he advises organisations on culture, employee experience and organisational design. He spent 13 years as a broadcast journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) before moving into HR consulting.

Key Topics

• Why the traditional "pyramid" org structure (many entry-level roles, fewer managers, fewer executives) is being challenged by a "diamond" shape with a shrinking entry point
• The shift from specialist workers to AI-complemented generalists, and what it means for how organisations build skills over time
• Why Neal believes many AI-attributed layoffs are actually "AI washing," with financial or market pressures the real driver
• Gartner's projection that AI becomes a net job creator by 2030, and what the next four years of labour market disruption might look like
• New roles emerging directly from AI adoption, including AI governance and AI ethics functions
• Three real-world governance models: Lloyd's Bank's "control tower" approach, ServiceNow's AI council with supporting pods, and Red Hat's three-tier framework based on degree of AI impact
• The emerging practice of placing AI agents on the org chart, and the open questions around ownership and accountability when things go wrong
• Differences in AI adoption pace between the US, UK and Australia, and why Neal doesn't think Australia's "behind" position is cause for panic
• How organisations can communicate AI rollouts to reduce the roughly 40% of the workforce that reacts negatively to major change

Resources & Links

People Mentioned

• Rick Beato – YouTube music educator and producer Neal cited as someone whose commentary on the shift from big studios to home recording has shaped his thinking about the AI "bubble" debate

Companies & Tools

• Gartner – Research and advisory firm where Neal works; source of the org-structure and net-job-creator research discussed throughout
• Ramp – Fintech company referenced for its hiring trends report, which found companies adopting AI kept similar junior hiring rates to before AI
• Lloyd's Bank – UK bank cited for its "control tower" approach to AI governance
• ServiceNow – HR technology company cited for its two-tier AI council and pod governance model
• Red Hat – Open-source company cited for its three-tier framework grouping roles by degree of AI impact
• IBM – Red Hat's parent company, referenced regarding a recent stock drop tied to AI strategy commentary
• Moderna – Referenced for merging its IT and HR functions in recognition that AI is a human experience as much as a technology one

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Neal Woolrich

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is presented by xGrowth

What happens when a marketing leader goes all in on AI, not just for himself, but for his entire team? Ronan Bray, Head of Marketing & Growth at Cloud Assess, joins the podcast to unpack exactly that. From a two week Christmas break spent teaching himself to build apps, to rolling out a fully connected go to market platform that pulls live data from HubSpot, Google Search Console, and Notion, Ronan shares the real story of AI adoption inside a B2B marketing team, mess, momentum, and all.

This episode is a practical playbook for any marketing leader wondering how to move a team from AI curiosity to AI capability. Ronan gets specific about what worked (starting small with personal projects), what didn't (announcing a team wide AI mandate with almost no context), and where he still won't let AI near the steering wheel, like paid ad spend and image or video creation.

Guest Introduction

Ronan Bray is Head of Marketing & Growth at Cloud Assess, where he leads a global marketing team driving pipeline with over 85 percent of ARR from inbound. Over 16 years he has scaled B2B marketing for ASX listed companies and his own startups (three reaching acquisition or buyout), building on experience at HubSpot and Drift.

Key Topics

• Ronan's personal path into AI, from everyday ChatGPT use to picking Claude as the team's core tool to avoid spreading focus too thin
• How a two week Christmas break and a personal "vibe coding" project (a lawn care scheduler built in Lovable) became the spark for wider team adoption
• The simple three question framework Ronan uses with his team: where's your time going, what's repetitive, and what's the ideal end state
• Building a go to market hub in Lovable that connects HubSpot, Google Search Console and Firecrawl to surface content gaps and sales insights automatically
• Why Ronan's team keeps a human in the loop on all content, even though AI can draft it, because audiences and algorithms can both tell when something is fully AI generated
• The security guardrails Cloud Assess put in place around domain locking and vulnerability scanning when building internally with Lovable
• Why Ronan won't hand over paid ad spend decisions to AI, even with tools connected to Google Ads
• What's next for Ronan's team: using AI for image and video generation to communicate fast moving product releases to sales and customers

Resources & Links

Companies & Tools

• Cloud Assess: Ronan's company, an AI powered training and assessment platform, referenced throughout as the environment for his AI rollout
• Lovable: the AI app builder Ronan and his team use to build internal tools, including their go to market hub
• Claude: the AI assistant Ronan's team standardised on for everyday tasks and custom team projects
• HubSpot: the CRM feeding deal and pipeline data into the go to market hub
• Firecrawl: the web scraping tool connected to their platform to analyse blog and competitor content
• ChatGPT: the tool Ronan first used for personal AI adoption before switching to Claude
• Notion: used by Cloud Assess's product team to track features, later integrated into the go to market hub
• Higgsfield: an AI image and video tool Ronan tested via MCP, which he found fell short for a recent website rebuild

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Ronan Bray

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Most B2B marketers treat partners like a sales channel. Jordana Sunderland says that's the core mistake. In this episode, Jordana, Director of Integrated Marketing for the Pacific Zone at Schneider Electric, joins Shahin to unpack what genuine partner marketing looks like and why so many companies get it fundamentally wrong.

From her early career marketing pharmaceuticals to her current work navigating the energy transition, Jordana draws on cross-industry experience to reveal how insights, enablement, and real partnership beat price conversations every time. If your go-to-market relies on a channel or distribution network, this episode is essential listening.

Guest Introduction

Jordana Sunderland is Director of Integrated Marketing, Pacific Zone at Schneider Electric, a global leader in energy technology. With over two decades of B2B marketing experience across the pharmaceutical and energy sectors, Jordana has built a reputation for turning partner relationships into genuine growth engines through enablement, insight, and advisory-led sales.

Key Topics

• Why leadership and sales teams default to price conversations with partners, and why that framing is detrimental to long-term growth
• How to win share of mind over share of shelf by understanding what partners are actually trying to achieve in their business
• The role of partner enablement, including loyalty programs, training, and data-driven insights, in driving preference for your product over competitors
• A real-world example from community pharmacy: how Jordana's team became indispensable to partners by providing expert analysis on government pricing changes that directly affected their revenue
• How to balance end-user demand generation against partner-led selling, and why Jordana recommends a 70/30 partner-to-end-user investment split as a starting point
• The attitudinal segmentation approach to partner acquisition: why firmographic size is a poor proxy for partner quality and how to identify partners who share your values
• Co-marketing reality check: why logo placement and random promotions deliver nothing, and what genuine co-marketing amplification looks like
• MDF fund management: how to maintain brand alignment when marketing development funds are in play, and why sales and marketing must be tightly connected

Resources & Links 

Companies & Tools

• Schneider Electric -Jordana's current employer; a global energy technology company
• Viatris -the generics pharmaceuticals company (formerly Mylan) where Jordana held a marketing role prior to Schneider Electric

Books & Resources

• The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - recommended by Jordana as a foundational read that shaped her marketing approach

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Jordana Sunderland

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

The CMO role has never been harder. Trust from leadership sits at around 30%, average tenure has dropped to 16–18 months, and budgets keep getting cut while pressure mounts to "bolt on AI" without any strategy in place. But is this a people problem, or a playbook problem?

Andrei Zinkevich, co-founder of Fullfunnel.io, argues it is firmly the latter. In this episode, he and host Shahin Hoda tear apart the demand waterfall model that has been quietly undermining B2B marketing functions for years, and map out a practical path to cross-functional go-to-market that actually drives revenue. Andrei also shares his change management playbook, his approach to building CFO buy-in, and why deploying AI into a broken process just accelerates the wrong outcomes.

Guest Introduction

Andrei Zinkevich is co-founder of Fullfunnel.io, a B2B marketing consultancy helping tech and service companies with high-value deals and long sales cycles build full-funnel, account-based go-to-market programs. He is co-author of the book Full-Funnel B2B Marketing alongside co-founder Vladimir Blagojevic, a systematic guide to fixing broken GTM playbooks and building an enterprise pipeline without organisational revolution.

Key Topics

• Why CMO trust and tenure are falling: the broken demand waterfall model, not individual performance, is the root cause, and why MQLs are no longer moving the needle with leadership
• The case for cross-functional go-to-market: why siloed marketing, sales, and customer success KPIs make revenue growth structurally impossible for companies with long sales cycles
• Flipping the measurement funnel: using revenue and sales-qualified opportunities from strategic accounts as North Star metrics, then decomposing to account engagement thresholds rather than arbitrary scoring models
• Driving organisational change without triggering a revolution: the two-stage approach of problem buy-in first and solution buy-in second, including how to collect evidence, find internal change agents, and connect the dots to strategic initiatives
• The "CFO quiz" playbook: reviewing closed-won deals across all touch points to reframe the attribution conversation with leadership and shift toward revenue-responsible marketing metrics
• Making existing programs account-based as the entry point for change: showing marketing's impact on strategic accounts and pipeline without needing new technology or budget
• AI in B2B go-to-market: why AI accelerates whatever processes already exist (good or broken), the dangers of "doing more with less" without a strategy, and the POS framework (Pilot, Operationalisation, Scaling) for responsible implementation

Resources & Links

• Vladimir Blagojevic-Co-founder, Fullfunnel.io and co-author of Full-Funnel B2B Marketing
• Full-Funnel B2B Marketing by Andrei Zinkevich and Vladimir Blagojevic — also available on Amazon

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Andrei Zinkevich

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell and Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

What happens to all those leads marketing works so hard to generate? More often than not, they go cold. According to Nishi Seth, Industry & Solutions Marketing Lead for Google Cloud APAC, this isn't a niche problem. It's one of the most persistent challenges across B2B, regardless of company size or sophistication.

In this episode, Shahin sits down with Nishi to unpack the real reasons leads stall between marketing and sales, from qualification gaps to missing context, and what it actually takes to fix them. Nishi shares battle-tested lessons from scaling Google Cloud's marketing-to-sales motion across APAC, including how AI is transforming BDR productivity right now.

Guest Introduction

Nishi Seth is the Industry & Solutions Marketing Lead for Google Cloud APAC at Google, with over 20 years of experience across cloud technology, financial services, and travel. She has held senior marketing roles at American Express and British Airways, and is a recognised B2B marketing leader across the Asia-Pacific region.

Key Topics

• Why leads go cold: the two root causes (qualification gaps and context gaps) and why even the most sophisticated B2B organisations struggle with them
• The three pillars of an optimised marketing-to-sales handover: lead quality, context, and a continuous review and feedback loop
• Why BDRs are the critical bridge between marketing and sales, and how to assess whether your BDR function is actually working
• How MQL definitions should evolve over time: Google Cloud's journey from basic demographic scoring to 48+ real-time intent signals, including account-level qualification
• What providing context to BDRs really means: enablement calls, campaign-specific opening scripts, and cadences tailored to how each lead engaged
• The key metrics that reveal handover health: SAL acceptance rates, SAL-to-SQL conversion, number of outreach touches, and lead velocity
• How AI is changing BDR productivity: using automation for low-intent lead follow-up, real-time AI assistants during live sales calls, and AI-powered account research at scale
• Nishi's rapid-fire take: "strong opinions, loosely held," using AI to boost your own marketing productivity, and why simplifying complexity in B2B is what excites her most

Resources & Links

• Google Cloud — Nishi's base for all real-world examples discussed, from MQL definition evolution to AI-powered BDR tooling
• Google Gemini — Nishi's go-to research tool in place of following influencers; she also used it to prepare for this episode

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Nishi Seth

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Too many B2B marketing teams are still talking leads when they should be talking revenue. In this episode, Shahin sits down with David Heyworth, GTM advisor and former Head of Marketing at Vocus, to unpack what it really takes to drive commercial outcomes in the second half of 2025. From ditching MQL vanity metrics to building genuine alignment with sales, finance, and product, David brings hard-won lessons from complex B2B environments in Australia.

This is a conversation packed with practical frameworks and honest war stories, including one of the most creative ABM activations you'll hear about: a commissioned coin ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, hosted by former Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, that cemented a 20-year defence sector partnership without a single sales pitch.

Guest Introduction

David Heyworth is a GTM advisor and CMO with deep experience leading marketing in complex B2B environments across Australia, including his tenure as Head of Marketing at Vocus, one of Australia's leading fibre and network solutions providers. He specialises in go-to-market strategy, sales and marketing alignment, and account-based selling for enterprise and government markets.

Key Topics

• Why agility, balance, and growth are the non-negotiables for B2B marketing teams in the second half of 2025
• Shifting the conversation from lead generation to revenue opportunities and why talking in dollars gets marketing a seat at the table
• How marketing can own the full GTM motion: building interlocks with sales, finance, and product leadership rather than operating in isolation
• The case for an inside sales or sales discovery rep function that sits within marketing and how to prove the model before committing headcount
• Why ABM works better when reframed as account-based selling (ABS) and how to sequence one-to-many, one-to-few, and one-to-one engagement
• Battle-tested lessons from event marketing gone wrong and how champions and pre-agreed outreach schedules turned it around
• A standout defence sector ABM case study: creating a custom commemorative coin and hosting a ceremony at the Australian War Memorial to honour a 20-year partnership
• Go-to-market fundamentals that get skipped: market definition, value proposition, messaging frameworks by segment and buyer persona, and why these must come before the marketing plan

Resources & Links

People

• Peter Cosgrove-former Chief of the Defence Force and 26th Governor-General of Australia
• Seth Godin - Author and marketing thought leader; David recommends his book Purple Cow on differentiation.

Companies & Tools

• Vocus -Australian telco where David served as CMO.
• Akimbo -Seth Godin's Podcast

Books

• Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: David Heyworth

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

What does it actually look like to roll out AI at enterprise scale inside one of the world's most recognisable technology companies? Craig Mills, APAC Head of Demand Generation and AI Marketing Transformation Lead at IBM, shares the real story: the internal lockdowns, the false starts, the springtime of ideas that fizzled, and the hard-won clarity that followed.

Craig walks through IBM's shift from experimentation to intentional, use-case-driven execution in 2026, with a focus on email marketing as an underrated strategic weapon. He also shares a simple three-part navigation framework any B2B marketer can apply, regardless of the size of their organisation.

Guest Introduction

Craig Mills is the APAC Head of Demand Generation and AI Marketing Transformation Lead at IBM. With over two decades at IBM, Craig has led marketing transformation across Asia Pacific, focusing on data-driven demand generation and the practical adoption of AI across complex, multi-market enterprise environments.

Key Topics

• IBM's AI adoption arc: from pre-GPT predictive analytics through the GPT moment, internal lockdowns on AI use, the launch of IBM watsonx in 2023, and the shift to focused execution in 2026
• The "client zero" experience: how IBM employees lived the AI transformation firsthand through changes to HR systems, well before the broader market caught up
• Why email marketing is Craig's number one AI use case and how IBM is moving from successful pilots to systematic, micro-targeted execution at scale
• Micro-segmentation at enterprise scale: how AI enables hyper-personalised outreach to audience pockets that were previously too small to justify the investment
• The people-process-tools interconnectivity challenge: why enterprise AI is so difficult and why most organisations are still struggling to get it right
• Craig's three navigation points for B2B marketers: get closer to customers and partners, get closer to your product, and go faster
• Building maximum mental flexibility: why clarity of mission is the prerequisite for individual speed and creative agility in an AI-driven environment
• The IBM Enterprise 2030 finding: 79% of executives expect AI to drive significant revenue by 2030, yet only 24% know where it will come from

Resources and Links

Tools

• IBM Enterprise 2030 Report -Craig's North Star on AI strategy: 79% of executives expect AI to drive significant revenue by 2030, but only 24% know where it will come from.
• This Week in Startups -Podcast by Jason Calacanis. Craig recommends it for building a startup mindset inside large organisations.
• IBM watsonx -IBM's enterprise AI platform, launched May 2023, central to IBM's AI transformation story.
• Microsoft Copilot -AI productivity tool Craig uses to move faster through emails and meetings.
• Claude -Anthropic's AI assistant, used by Craig for external customer research.

People Mentioned

• Jason Calacanis -Entrepreneur and host of This Week in Startups. Craig spent a year listening to build a startup mindset within IBM.
• Ray Dalio -Founder of Bridgewater Associates. Craig follows him for his geopolitical frameworks and historical perspective on the forces shaping the world.

Companies

• IBM -Global enterprise technology and consulting company.

Also mentioned 

• Diablo - The classic video game. Apparently the only thing more addictive than playing with AI tools at midnight. 

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Craig Mills

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth