Attribution Nation

Jessica Fewless was in the room when ABM went from niche idea to mainstream playbook, and her take in 2026 might surprise you: one-to-many ABM should just be demand gen.

In this episode, Jessica and Drew unpack what ABM fixed (bad habits, lead-chasing, misalignment) and where teams still go wrong today, especially when they hand sales an "MQA" and expect reps to magically find the buying committee. You'll hear how she thinks about buying groups, leading indicators like intent + website engagement, and the red/yellow/green model for account readiness that helps teams balance short-term pipeline needs with long-term account development.

Then they switch to the topic most marketers avoid: partner marketing measurement. Jessica lays out why partners aren't just a referral channel, why influenced impact matters as much as sourced impact, and how partner programs break down when built around entitlements, sponsorship fees, and misaligned incentives.

Drew Smith hosts Cat Holt, Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Coologee, Inc., for a conversation on what brand actually does for a business and why most teams measure it wrong. Cat breaks down the biggest misconception leaders have about brand: that performance marketing can replace long-term reputation building and deliver instant ROI on demand.

They dig into the 95/5 rule (why only 5% of your market is in-market at any given time) and why staying top of mind with the other 95% is the real growth lever. Cat shares practical frameworks for making brand impact measurable, from known-audience testing to matched-market lift, plus the critical details that make or break experiments, like properly constructed control groups.

Tune in if you're trying to connect brand investment to lower-funnel performance, build an executive-friendly measurement plan, or escape the quarter-to-quarter trap that keeps brand underfunded.

Most post-acquisition playbooks work…until they don't. In this episode, Drew Smith is joined by EJ Schmidt, CMO and Principal at Orange Marketing Consulting, to discuss a pattern EJ has seen repeatedly in PE-backed B2B SaaS: the 24–36 month stall. They explore why early momentum fades after acquisitions, how data debt and go-to-market drift quietly accumulate, and the warning signs that growth is no longer tracking to the original thesis. The conversation covers how to diagnose whether you're facing a market trust problem or a product-market fit problem, why hypothesis-driven measurement matters more than static reporting, and what leaders can do to stabilize, rebuild, and re-accelerate growth before finger-pointing takes over. You'll walk away with a clearer framework for spotting the stall early and knowing what to fix first.

When your best channels don't click, how do you measure what's working?

Drew Smith sits down with J.P. Carter, VP of Marketing at System Pavers, to break down attribution across a buyer journey that blends digital ads with door-to-door canvassing, events, and in-home sales. J.P. shares the mechanics of turning offline activity into trackable signals, dedicated phone numbers, QR codes, CRM capture, and channel-level ROI, plus why pairing attribution with "how did you hear about us" adds critical context instead of conflict.

They also dig into loss analysis, ROAS as the north star, and a crawl–walk–run testing approach that uses geography-based lift to scale winners without gambling the budget.

In this episode, Drew Smith welcomes Liam Moroney, Founder of Storybook Marketing, to tackle one of the most persistent tensions CMOs face: how to measure brand in a demand-obsessed world. Drawing on his background in B2B startups and brand analytics, Liam explains why brand marketing feels "inconvenient" to measure, and why that inconvenience is exactly what makes it essential.

Together, they discuss why brand doesn't fail measurement so much as measurement fails brand, how risk reduction and mental availability drive B2B buying decisions, and why optimizing only for what's easy to track puts a hard ceiling on growth. Liam shares a pragmatic framework for defining brand success, pressure-testing metrics against reality, and using accessible signals like branded search and competitive context to understand market momentum, not just internal performance.

Tune in if you're stuck in the brand-versus-demand debate, frustrated by vanity metrics, or looking for a clearer, more credible way to connect brand investment to real business outcomes.

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Marni Puente, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at SAIC, to explore what changes when your buyers are government decision-makers and your go-to-market motion is built on relationships, regulation, and long cycles. Marni shares her unconventional path from arts and cultural institutions to the CMO seat, and why B2G marketing has more untapped opportunity than most teams realize. They dig into the "sea of sameness" in GovCon, how SAIC is bringing commercial best practices like customer-centric, one-to-one marketing into a highly regulated environment, and why brand relevancy and consideration belong on the CEO scorecard. Marni also breaks down how she's building an AI-first marketing function to turn constraints into a catalyst, using AI to accelerate research, scale content, modernize workflows, and rethink what marketing measurement can look like beyond basic performance tracking.

Drew Smith hosts Sam Allen, CEO of Iterable, to talk about leading through the chaos of modern Martech, AI, and revenue pressure. Fresh off an 11-year run as a senior Salesforce executive and with an early career in the U.S. Marine Corps, Sam shares how a values-driven, execution-focused mindset shapes his approach to scaling go-to-market teams.

They dive into the explosion of marketing tools (and the paradox of choice), why tech stack rationalization and modernization are now non-negotiable, and how AI enables true micro-cohorting and rapid experimentation without replacing human oversight. Sam also explains why attribution has to cover both sourcing and maturation, and how giving sales and marketing a shared number is key to killing the "black box" perception of marketing.

Tune in if you're wrestling with tech sprawl, trying to make AI actually usable, or looking for a better way to align sales and marketing around revenue.

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Reed Hansen, Owner and Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, to compare how attribution really works across big tech, higher ed, and small business. Reed shares why marketing is a machine, but not a gumball machine, and how execution, time lags, and touchpoints change what you measure and why. They dig into higher ed's dual challenges (partnership vs. enrollment), the messy role of alumni touchpoints and macroeconomics, and the small-biz realities of single-touch wins, affiliates/influencers, and CRM tagging over complex models.

Reed explains how incentives can corrupt data (hello, duplicate records), why centralized CRMs beat rogue spreadsheets, and how content and podcasts can lift pipeline even when multi-touch math is thin. If you need pragmatic guardrails to streamline data capture, align incentives, and measure what's actionable, this episode's your blueprint.

This week on Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Bruno Bertini, CMO at 8x8, to explore how modern B2B marketing wins when creativity and rigor meet. Bruno shares a career arc from Disney "cast member" to quota-carrying sales leader to CMO, and why that blend shaped his belief that people follow people, not product lists. They get into the danger of over-indexing on science, how to protect bold ideas ("do cool stuff") without losing attribution discipline, and why leadership must set the balance.

Bruno also unpacks 8x8's "Power of You" campaign—real customers, AI-driven production, and a human-first narrative—and the measurement plan behind it: earned pickup, awareness shifts, analyst and community engagement, organic lift, and qualitative signals from sellers and customers (not just leads and MQLs).

If you're building a brand that resonates and proves its impact, this conversation is your playbook.

Drew Smith hosts Kimberly Storin, CMO at Zoom, for a candid look at leading marketing when everything's changing. Kimberly traces her path from crisis comms and consulting to transformation roles at AMD and IBM, and into Zoom, where a challenger mindset fuels rapid experimentation.

They cover why CMOs must act as chief market officers, how to balance long-term brand bets with near-term pipeline, and the rule that "if marketing is green, the business should be too." Kimberly shares her three drivers of transformation: curiosity, agility, and calculated risk, plus how competitive insights, churn analysis, and simplified KPIs keep teams aligned to revenue. She also previews Zoomtopia's "for the people" focus on empowering users and solopreneurs with AI.

This episode is perfect if you're rethinking attribution, trimming vanity metrics, and building an agile, market-led org.