Marketing is drowning in AI sludge, vanity dashboards, and “spray and pray” content. Your brand is getting lost, not because your product is weak, but because your taste is.

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Lee, Partner Marketing Leader at Microsoft, to torch the illusion that more content equals more impact. Together, we unpack why “brand vs. performance” is a fake fight, why taste is the last unfair advantage, and how to build owned distribution that survives algorithm mood swings. Your CMO will either thank you or feel attacked.

We also cover:

• Annual planning as a power move: kill random acts of marketing.
  Turning founder POV into a scalable channel (without turning them into a dancing bear).
• How to benchmark “taste” (with simple, brutal quality bars your team can actually use).
• Converting narrative into numbers: story→search→sales enablement→SQLs.
• The “No Rented Moats” playbook: email + podcast + events > social roulette.

LLMs are already “deciding” your brand for buyers. Are you shaping that story or letting the machine write it? If your marketing still sounds like everybody else’s, congratulations: you’ve trained the models to ignore you.

This week we rip into the hottest B2B reality: AI Engine Optimization (AEO) meets human-only brand. Ari Yablok, head of brand at Island, shows how to beat sameness by sending clear “this is new” signals, building experiential brands that people feel (not just read), and using unreasonable hospitality to make products and events feel theirs, not “yours.”

We also cover:

• AEO is the new SEO: how to show up inside LLM answers and make people prefer you before they ever ask a bot.
• Signals over slogans: designing booths, visuals, and copy that telegraph “category shift” without a single bullet point.
• Unreasonable hospitality in B2B: turning product nuance and in-person moments into retention (and reputation) machines.
• The “feeling of knowing”: why brand confidence shortens deals—even when buyers can’t explain why.
• Human as the counter-trend: embracing curated flaws and analog touchpoints to stand out as AI perfects the average.

Budgets are shrinking, patience is thinner and the CMO seat is a revolving door. Keep playing the old playbook and you’re next.

What if the path forward isn’t “more content, faster”, but a hard reset on power, process and what we even call “brand”?

In this episode, Drew Neisser, Founder of CMO Huddles, drops a reality check on B2B: CMOs are operating in Antarctica—hostile, short-term, and PE-pressured and it’s still the most exciting moment in marketing. We get blunt about the “do more with less” lie, why “brand” is a budget-killing word (start saying “reputation”), and how AI should first nuke your workflows and org chart before you let it ghostwrite your strategy.). This is the insider’s guide to surviving the freeze and shipping work that closes.

We also cover:

• CMO power plays: why owning Partnerships/Rev levers earns a real seat at the table.
• Short-termism judo: aligning with CFOs on “metrics that matter” and fixing attribution theater.
• What actually converts now: late-stage, face-to-face moments (small dinners > giant trade shows).
• Direct mail’s comeback: high-impact, targeted sends that unblock stalled deals.

Everyone’s racing to “do more with less,” then wondering why everything sounds the same. Budgets shrink, headcount drops, and the AI mandate lands like a memo from Mount Olympus: use it, ship faster, cut costs. Here’s the plot twist: AI isn’t your edge but your point of view is. If your story’s bland, the tech just scales blandness.

In this episode, Julien Palliere, AI Strategist at Column Five joins Jason and Josh to deliver a necessary reality check.

We unpack why “just add AI” is a lazy brief, how AEO is quietly disintermediating brands, and why volume is the enemy of results. The verdict: bad marketing makes you generic, not AI. 

We also cover:

• The Wedge System: Turning a sharp POV into a repeatable AI-powered content engine.
• Personalization That Actually Personalizes: Using CRM, 6sense, and LinkedIn signals to change copy by persona in real time.
• Where AI Belongs (and Doesn’t): Map the workflow, target structured/repeatable steps, avoid breaking fragile creative processes.

Marketers are hooked on attribution perfection. Meanwhile, your buyers are ghosting and your “AI-powered” campaigns sound like everyone else’s. What if the edge isn’t more dashboards but it’s better judgment?

In this episode, Nicole Gates, VP Growth Marketing at Varonis tears up the playbook B2B keeps clinging to. She shows how a “process person” builds a launch machine that actually ships, why tiering by customer impact (not internal hype) changes everything, and how moving SDRs under marketing with real SLAs turns MQL theater into pipeline. We dig into the noisy AI arms race (robots fighting robots), shifting budget from paid-to-play to earned trust via thought leadership, and using AI where it improves outcomes (routing, enrichment, speed-to-lead), not where it creates slop.

We also cover:

• How to tier your launches by what matters to customers, not your org chart.
• Why the best growth marketers think more like editors than analysts.
• What happens when you replace data obsession with decision confidence.

When everyone’s chasing quick wins, it’s easy to forget the one lever that compounds everything: brand clarity. But cramming “agentic AI” into your homepage won’t save you, it just makes you sound like the chorus.

In this episode, we sit down with Jess Ellis, Head of Brand, Content, Creative & Comms at Attentive, to talk about what it really takes to build a brand that drives pipeline in a crowded B2B market. Jess gets candid about bringing a hypergrowth org back to its foundation-mission, values, and a point of view people can actually feel. We dig into consent-based personalization that respects customers, why brand and demand aren’t enemies, and how to use AI as a speed-up.

We Also Explore

• Why slapping “AI” on your homepage isn’t a strategy
• How to make personalization feel human, not creepy
• Brand vs. demand is a fake fight (and how to prove it)
• The metric that earns budget: brand health with teeth

If your marketing feels harder than it should, you’re not imagining it. So what’s the smarter way forward?

In this episode, Adam Greco, Product Evangelist at Hightouch argues for a simpler model: composable CDP. Instead of locking yourself into a monolithic suite, you keep data where it already lives and activate it directly. That means days instead of quarters to get value, and less money wasted on campaigns that annoy customers instead of delighting them. Adam pulls from decades in analytics to show how organizations can finally stop tripping over their own tech, build trust between data and marketing, and focus on the few initiatives that really move the needle.

The question: are you doing more, but achieving less?

We also explore:

• Why annual planning done right can be a superpower, not a slog.
• How to kill the “brand vs. performance” tug-of-war with shared goals.
• The messy reality of category creation and how not to get steamrolled.
• Why short-form video is quietly replacing SEO as the new credibility engine.

Everyone’s talking about AI, but let’s be honest, most B2B brands still sound like copy-paste corporate speak. The scary part? While you’re stuck writing “safe” content, your competitors are out there building cult followings.

On this episode, Jason and Josh talk with Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus, about what it really takes to make people care. Sandy has worked in product, growth, and brand teams, so she’s here to share the lessons you won’t find in a playbook. From building a community people actually want to be part of, to cutting through the AI hype without sounding like a bot, this conversation is all about marketing that feels alive.

Here’s what we dig into:

• Why so many startups crash when product, growth, and brand don’t align.
• The real secret to category creation (spoiler: it’s not just slapping “2.0” on a slide).
• How to turn a community from “nice idea” into a genuine growth engine.
• The fine line between brand personality and just being unclear.
• Sandy’s one-line marketing philosophy: everything is easier when you’re famous.

Marketers are under constant pressure to prove impact. Often with smaller teams and tighter budgets. The challenge? Balancing brand building with demand generation while keeping content fresh and effective.

In this episode, Jess Cook, Head of Marketing at Vector, shares how she’s tackling that balance in real time. Jess talks through practical ways to get more value from every piece you create, without burning out your team. She explains why “minimum viable content” can help you move faster, how repurposing can multiply your reach, and why even unexpected moments (like a CEO going rogue on LinkedIn) can become brand building opportunities.

We also cover:

• How to establish authority in a new category.
• Why repurposing can be your most effective growth strategy.
• The benefits of testing fast instead of chasing perfection.
• How to turn unpredictable moments into authentic brand stories.
• The evolving relationship between brand and demand.

When AI can spin up a logo in seconds and templates are everywhere, it’s fair to wonder: why hire a designer at all? Because people don’t connect with “good enough.” They connect with taste, the kind that feels intentional, lived-in, and real.

In this episode, Andrew Chen, Head of Brand Design at Hive, makes a simple case: tools help, but taste wins. He talks about how skating and the hardcore scene taught him to make things people actually want, why trust (not slide decks) gets bold ideas approved, and how the next wave favors curators who know what to keep and what to cut. Andrew’s path is a reminder that great work isn’t about pedigree; it’s about context, craft, and caring enough to sweat the details.

We also get into:

• How building trust gets buy-in faster than any moodboard.
• Using “yes, and” to turn rigid briefs into better ideas.
• Why juniors shouldn’t wait for permission to pitch the risky thing.
• How food (seriously) can sharpen your storytelling instincts.