We're Not Marketers

Nina Churchill quit her corporate PMM job effective immediately. She then wrote a series of posts on LinkedIn that reached about half a million people. She's a fellow product marketer and founder of Fresh View Concepts, where she helps B2B companies stop sounding like everyone else.

We get into the post, the burnout and the 11 weeks of FMLA before it, and why we put up with behavior at work that we'd call abuse at home. Then the useful stuff. Why your manager is the top reason you stay or go. The questions to ask a hiring manager before you take the job.

And oh yeah, by the way? She's also coming to Death to Marketing in October.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome, and the hosts introduce themselves

00:29 Meet Nina Churchill, recovering performance marketer and founder of Fresh View Concepts

01:27 Nina's coming to Death to Marketing (and Saugatuck)

02:06 Gab's question: are product marketers ultimately marketers?

03:42 The LinkedIn post that made Eric want to run through a wall

04:18 A new manager, a burnout, and 11 weeks of FMLA

06:44 "Effective immediately"

07:06 Half a million people and a flood of DMs

07:46 Why do we accept at work what we'd call abuse at home?

10:32 Any backlash? "I can't like this, but I respect it"

11:09 "Your LinkedIn is your LinkedIn"

12:25 Jumping without a parachute: therapy, ADHD, and deleting the apps

15:34 Blood pressure, cortisol, and life after quitting

17:59 Boundaries: bad at them, or never practiced?

18:59 Fresh View Concepts, 2011, and some questionable age math

19:32 Running her business differently this time around

20:20 "Oh, you look stable"

21:15 Productive in two hours, not eight

23:06 The moment she decided she was the boss

23:29 The agency that always had her back

25:10 From bartending to product marketing in HR tech

26:07 How much your manager really matters

27:59 Interview the hiring manager too

30:38 The coworker who gave her name to recruiters

32:04 Why she signed up for Death to Marketing

34:50 Do we need to hide the booze? Mocktails for everybody

35:58 Death to sameness

37:31 Payroll, and why nobody trusts your AI

39:40 Where to find Nina: the Sameness Report and Whirl

Additional sources

1. Fresh View Concepts, Nina's positioning consultancy

https://freshviewconcepts.com

2. Whirl, Nina's AI mock interview tool (free if you were recently laid off)

https://whirlinterview.com

3. Nina Churchill on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninachurchill/

4. Nina's writing at 3Sixty Insights

https://3sixtyinsights.com/author/ninachurchill/

5. PostHog, Nina's example of a brand that's actually different

https://posthog.com

6. Death to Marketing, October 2026

https://www.death-to-marketing.com

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Your CEO just said you're hosting an event. You've never run one. Now what?

Maggie Arai is the Founder of IRL Studios, where she designs in-person events for online brands. She's run more than 70 of them. She's also the person keeping Death to Marketing, our own conference, out of a ballroom with fluorescent lighting.

We asked her what a product marketer needs to know before their first event lands on their desk. Where the budget quietly disappears (food and bev, every time). Why every event needs a 10 to 15% contingency line. And her take on open networking (heads up: not the answer none of us expected).

She also tells us, on the record, where we already messed up planning our own event.

If you've been handed an event with no budget, no team, and a note to "do something like that happy hour," start here.

What and who was mentioned in today's episode
IRL Studios, Maggie's company: https://irlstudios.ca

Maggie Arai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-arai/

Above the Fold: https://www.spiralyze.com/abovethefold

Highline by UserEvidence: https://userevidence.com/highline/

Toronto Tech Week: https://www.torontotechweek.com/

Death to Marketing: https://www.death-to-marketing.com

In this episode

00:00 Welcome, and the hosts introduce themselves

00:29 Meet Maggie Arai, Founder of IRL Studios and our event planner

01:31 Why would anyone sign up to run something this insane?

02:18 Nobody wants another ballroom with fluorescent lighting

03:26 What scared her about taking on her first B2B event

04:29 Event number 71, and still intimidated

05:44 You don't have to be a product marketer to have imposter syndrome

06:01 Are the rules different for B2B and consumer events?

09:21 Her first real exposure to a room full of product marketers

11:04 The IRL Studios thesis: getting online people into one room

13:31 Zach wants his lawyer in a suit

14:19 Be honest: where did we mess up?

14:50 The budget line nobody scoped: venue visits

16:32 Get more detailed in your budget than you think you need

17:57 Why every event budget needs a 10 to 15% contingency line

18:58 Your CEO says you're hosting an event. What catches you off guard?

19:23 Food and bev will eat your budget

21:13 Skydiving, whitewater rafting, and the insurance question

22:46 Why we killed the roast, and what replaced it

26:23 How Maggie designs events people actually want to attend

27:57 Easy to host an event, hard to host one that moves the needle

28:45 Why Death to Marketing ends with a field trip

30:23 The one event practice that has to die

31:05 Open networking has to die

33:18 The invisible hierarchy in every networking room

36:16 Drink tickets are not a designed experience

37:22 Toronto Tech Week: two DJs and nowhere to talk

38:27 Go see the room for yourself

39:20 Where to find Maggie

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Eric Holland and Gab Bujold recorded this one on a deck in Stowe, Vermont, in the middle of Drive, with a cardboard cutout of Zach standing in for the third host. It is the first We're Not Marketers episode made in person, and it is mostly about why the three of them keep showing up to the same conference in fake mustaches.

The costumes started as a joke about not being allowed into a marketing event by a podcast called We're Not Marketers. Three years later the bit has produced a real relationship with Dave Gerhardt, a running gag the check-in desk now expects, and enough conviction to go build their own event.

Show Notes
00:00 Cold open at Drive, and the first We're Not Marketers recorded in person

00:25 Why Zach is on tape as a cardboard cutout

01:02 Why three product marketers keep coming back to the same Vermont conference

01:28 The disguise started as a joke about not being let into a marketing event

02:18 How Drive turned into a family vacation

03:12 Gab's four hour drive from Quebec City with a six month old and a corgi

05:03 Why not San Francisco, and why not Vegas

06:02 Why are we dressing like a bunch of assholes

06:29 The real first reason for the costumes: hiding from Dave

07:03 The clumsy first year, and feeling like a misfit in the room

08:19 Dave Gerhardt walks up: Hey, guy with the hair

11:27 Why the costume works, and the comment from the check-in desk

12:18 Where Zach actually is, and why he still got more selfies than either host

13:33 Why product marketers specifically need to get uncomfortable

13:44 Gab on product marketers being scared to ask for budget

15:22 The survey that got over 10,000 visits, and what belongs on a resume now

16:05 Where the name Mojo came from

17:57 The difference between fear and expecting fear

19:14 Death to Marketing, six weeks before a wedding

20:14 Three guys, no private equity, one event

23:34 Zach's cutout blows over, and Brendan Hufford checks in

24:48 Community with a lowercase c

27:34 What happens when a 200 person event becomes 400

28:16 The boat tour, and what they took for Lake Michigan

29:39 LaShay Lewis, and the line that stuck

30:01 The pain of change is no longer worse than the pain of staying the same

31:16 Go shake hands, go touch grass

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Video landed on every marketer's plate this year. Nobody added headcount for it, and nobody explained how to actually get one made. Natalie Taylor runs marketing at Capsule, where enterprise teams like HubSpot, ServiceNow and Instacart build on-brand video without going through a creative team, and she has spent two years watching product marketers get stuck in the same queue.

Her fix runs against the standard playbook. Stop treating the launch video as the last asset. Make it first, because it is the most complex format you own, and once it is right the copy, the visuals and the email GIFs all fall out of it.

She also walks through what an agentic video skill actually does, step by step, and says the quiet part out loud about her own category: most AI product demos are not showing you real output. Then the whole thing detours into a pizza tier list that somehow lands the sharpest AI argument in the episode.

SHOW NOTES

00:00 Cold open and host introductions

00:41 Natalie joins, and admits she has never held the title of product marketer

01:56 The question the show exists for: are product marketers actually marketers?

02:18 Why marketing labels never made sense to her

03:20 "You're a marketer if you're doing marketing"

03:24 The one exception: why demand gen sits in its own bucket

05:19 The Tuesday afternoon Slack message that says "let's do some product videos"

05:54 Everyone is being asked to make video, job description or not

07:36 The old workflow: ask the creative team, join the queue, wait

08:25 Fully agentic video, without opening an editing tool

09:23 Eric asks whether video is back in fashion or just newly possible

10:17 What Twitter's feed of launch videos says about the format

11:14 Capsule starts with the launch video instead of ending with it

12:58 Anthropic as the model for tier-two launches

14:01 Capacity versus tooling when you are one person

15:19 Video skills, walked through with a Zendesk example

16:36 Why most AI video tools are one shot, and why this one hands you a project

18:39 What a PMM should actually go learn about video

19:52 You should not need to be an expert to make something good

20:43 Gab on developing taste

21:03 The agentic promise versus the learning curve nobody mentions

23:31 Zach on feeling like an idiot yelling into a chatbot

24:07 Smoke and mirrors, and how Natalie is launching against the hype

25:05 The pizza tier list begins

27:34 "An AI agent won't be able to do that for you"

30:03 Zach imagines Natalie as a MasterChef judge

31:03 Pizza is a canvas, and so is AI

33:17 The pizza industry secret, and the oven she and her husband built

35:07 Chicago, New York, or New Haven

35:53 Where to find Natalie

SOURCES

Capsule, the video platform Natalie runs marketing for: https://capsule.video

Modern Pizza Products, the oven she co-founded: https://www.modernpizzaproducts.com

Emily Kramer's fuel and engine framework: https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/fuel-engine

Natalie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliecstaylor/

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This is the Death to Marketing episode. Zach, Eric and Gab take stock of what it has actually cost to build a conference from nothing: the $200 sponsorship offer that set the whole thing in motion, the $90,000 in sponsors they have since closed, the 48 people who have bought tickets, and the friend who texted to say he wasn't coming.

What it does to you when the success of your business becomes the measure of you as a person, why selling tickets turned out to be harder than selling sponsors, and the lesson none of them expected to learn about asking for help.

Death to Marketing is October 11 in Holland, Michigan. *Recorded August 10, 2026.

Show Notes

• (00:00) Why the branding scared people off — on purpose
• (00:39) "It's not an event for everybody"
• (01:46) Neither of them had ever run an event
• (02:58) The $200 offer that started all of this
• (03:23) From a $200 reimbursement to $90,000 in sponsors
• (04:30) The math that made no sense
• (05:04) The two events that set the bar
• (06:46) Are conferences a crutch for the PMM community?
• (10:28) Enough about PMA
• (11:02) The real number, said out loud
• (11:05) "48 people we have to pay to have a good time"
• (12:24) Someone bought a ticket from Scotland
• (12:55) What turned out to be easier than expected
• (13:11) The moment it stopped being a bit and became a real event
• (14:12) "This is the rollercoaster we're going to be taking"
• (15:22) Hiring a partner who pushes back on you
• (16:37) What Eric took on personally
• (20:05) Why planning it made it easier to say no to sponsors
• (20:36) Running an event like a product launch
• (22:05) How this compares to every sales kickoff they've sat through
• (23:05) The one thing no other event is doing
• (25:21) The hard stuff starts here
• (25:49) When your business becomes your identity
• (26:54) The text from a friend who wasn't coming
• (27:37) "An event run by these three losers"
• (29:00) "I want this to be the only event we ever throw"
• (29:59) Turtle pace: the grind of selling tickets
• (30:55) The discipline of narrowing the audience mid-sale
• (34:38) The delegation problem
• (36:09) "One of the heaviest things you'll ever do"
• (37:59) Keep, stop, do over
• (38:47) Keep: the partner
• (41:42) Do over: the waitlist
• (43:36) Do over: invite-only?
• (43:58) The coin flip nobody can call
• (45:23) If they do it again, it might be a stage play
• (48:31) The ask, without the false urgency

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Jason Druss spent 15 years being the customer — a film colorist at Warner Bros, NFL Films, and his own Philly boutique — before Adobe pulled him into product marketing for Premier Pro and After Effects. In this episode, Jason (Principal Product Marketing Manager, Adobe) drops his takes: why workflow isn't a buzzword when you've actually lived it, how his team runs a private WhatsApp group with hundreds of users, and why being your own ICP is both a superpower and a trap.

If you've ever felt like a fraud talking about users you've never met, this one's for you.

More from this episode

• Why "customer" gives Jason the ick (and what word he uses instead)

• The PMM job is 50% talking to users — not Slack, not slides, not strategy decks

• How Adobe's PMM team gets buy-in before a feature exists, not after

• The Tarantino move: why Jason starts every story at the end

• Being your own ICP is a cheat code… until it makes you look like a fanboy at annual planning

• The exact reason Frame.io's Camera to Cloud killed an industry workflow that hadn't changed since 1920

• Why every PMM should buy a pillow with their product's logo on it (yes, really)

• The unsexy truth about "creative freedom" — you have to earn it with data first

• How Jason found his PMM job: he wasn't looking, his mentor was watching his LinkedIn posts

• Why "make it pretty" and "make it beautiful" are two completely different briefs

Time Stamps
00:00 Cold open — the misfit intros

00:45 Why this episode is different: a PMM pulled IN to PMM, not chasing it

01:30 Jason Druss intro — from colorist to Adobe PMM

02:15 THE QUESTION: Are product marketers marketers?

03:30 "We're storytellers before we're marketers"

04:30 Should the product or the user be the main character?

05:30 The trap of feature-led storytelling vs. workflow thinking

07:00 What "workflow" actually means (and why it's not jargon)

09:00 The Frame.io / Camera to Cloud story

12:30 How Frame.io rewrote a 100-year-old industry workflow

14:00 Jason's spicy take: PMMs must eat, live, breathe the product

16:00 How user needs have shifted dramatically in 5–10 years

18:00 The Premier Pro pillow story (and why every PMM should have one)

19:00 Where most companies fail at user research

20:30 The private WhatsApp group with hundreds of users

21:30 Weekly webinars, betas, and the questions you're NOT asking users

24:00 Scrappy is a state of mind, not a company size

25:00 Jason's career timeline: Blackmagic → NFL Films → Warner Bros → Frame.io → Adobe

28:00 The crisis of faith — leaving "colorist" behind

30:00 Why Jason's passion is impossible to fake

31:30 The dark side of being your own ICP

33:00 Mixing intuition with data — the PMM credibility unlock

35:00 Advice for aspiring PMMs: become a subject matter expert first

38:00 The creativity rant — your differentiator vs. AI

41:30 ROI, business metrics, and earning the seat at the table

44:00 The "beautiful circle" of product marketing (and who's outside it)

46:00 Where to find Jason + Adobe Max teaser

48:00 Outro

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Some of B2B are the cool kids shouting "synergy" with spinach dip in hand. Gila Shapiro — copywriter, PMM, and resident chaos agent at Fireflies.ai — joined the crew to roast corporate buzzwords, expose "copy thinking" and "copy pasting" with AI, and give the founder POV trick that ends executive copy fights forever.

If you've ever been asked to "elevate enterprise synergies," this one's for you.

More from this episode

• The two words that should disqualify any marketer from giving copy feedback (hint: rhymes with "synergy")

• Why having a frying pan doesn't make you a chef — and writing copy doesn't make you a copywriter

• The "shout pineapple" school of copywriting

• Why B2B brands are scared of being unfollowed — and why that's why nobody clicks

• The dinner party test that kills 90% of corporate jargon on contact

• The difference between "copy thinking" and "copy pasting" (and why one of these kills your career in 18 months)

• Gila's reverse-engineering trick for ending founder vs. marketer copy fights forever

• Why making your boss happy and making your customer click are two completely different jobs

• The brutally honest reason most messaging processes are broken — and the only fix that actually works

• Gila pitches Riverside vs. SquadCast live on the show (and we may or may not be switching now)

Show Notes

Timespan:

00:00 Cold Open & Host Introductions (Eric, Zach, Gab)

01:00 Introducing Gila Shapiro — Copywriter, PMM, Creative Strategist at Riverside

02:50 The Recurring Question: Are Product Marketers Actually Marketers?

04:00 The "Elevate Your Enterprise Synergies" Test

05:30 Writing Copy vs. Being a Copywriter — The Frying Pan Analogy

07:00 Gila's Process: Say the Terrible Thing Out Loud

07:35 The Dinner Party Test

09:00 Why Most People Default to Corporate Jargon

12:30 Be Interested to Be Interesting — The Customer Interview Trick

15:30 Ownership at Riverside & Wearing Multiple Hats

17:30 The Broken Brief-to-Copy Handoff Process

19:30 What to Do When Good Copy Doesn't Convert

21:30 Personal Brands vs. B2B Brands: Why B2B Is Afraid

23:30 AI for Job Security — Copy Think vs. Copy Paste

27:00 The "Copy Think vs. Copy Paste" Framework

30:00 Internal Fights with Executives Over Copy

31:25 The Founder POV Reverse-Engineering Trick

33:30 Burnout, Garden Gnomes, and Chasing the Fun Parts

36:30 Live Pitch: Why Switch from SquadCast to Riverside?

40:30 Cheers and Farewell

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Louis Grenier has run a podcast called Everyone Hates Marketers for 8 years. He's not here to be nice about it. In this episode, Lou breaks down why product marketing only exists because B2B tech forgot what customers actually want — and why your positioning project is probably being run by the wrong person. We cover customer research frameworks, the CEO buy-in problem no one talks about, and the Irish convenience store that is a crime against positioning. Hit play before your next messaging doc meeting. You'll thank us.

More from this episode

• Product marketing only exists because B2B tech companies got so far from their customers they had to invent a role to translate what the product actually does.

• Why the most powerful thing a consultant can offer is not being inside the company.

• Lou's actual Hotjar failure — why the CMO wasn't enough to make repositioning work.

• The six things you need to know from customers before you can touch a positioning doc.

• Why calling something a "marketing initiative" is the fastest way to kill CEO buy-in.

• "Sniff the same glue" — Lou's surprisingly accurate description of organizational alignment.

• The 3-meter Irish storefront that is simultaneously a convenience store, Indian takeaway, off-license, and Red Bull dealer. One shop. Three meters. Zero positioning.

• Why community is just a word companies use when they want a place to sell at people without being obvious about it.

• Lou's hot take on co-founders: "Good luck to whoever wants to take that role with me."

• The one customer research mistake that guarantees useless data: talking to the wrong people at the wrong time.
  

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Are product marketers actually marketers, or are they just glorified slide deck designers waiting for sales to bark orders? David Lim—a PMM who's survived Google, HP, and multiple startups—joins the skeleton crew to drop some uncomfortable truths. We talk about earning respect when founders don't have a clue what you do, why knowing your customer's quarterly priorities is a superpower, and what happens when you fight a C-suite exec on product strategy (spoiler: sometimes you get fired). If you've ever been asked to "make that deck pretty," this one's for you.

More From This Episode

• The brutal truth: What happens when you don't earn internal respect as a PMM

• Why sales teams don't talk to product teams (and how PMMs become the bridge)

• The one customer question David asks that unlocks everything: "What are your quarterly priorities?"

• David got fired for fighting a founder on product strategy—here's what he learned

• Why most founders have zero idea what PMMs actually do (and think you're just a lead gen machine)

• The "gut feeling" trap: When executives ignore your research and launch anyway

• How to stop rolling your eyes when leadership makes dumb decisions (David admits he's not good at this)

• Why working under the product org might actually be better for PMMs

• The ultimate PMM flex: Knowing your customer better than anyone in the company

• Are PMMs actually marketers, or just the people who make sales decks look pretty?

Time Stamps
00:00 Introduction and Season 5 Kickoff

00:59 Introducing Guest: David Lim (PMM at BVO)

02:36 The Big Question: Are Product Marketers Actually Marketers?

04:15 How PMMs Earn Respect (Or Get Stuck in the Black Hole)

07:00 What Sets PMMs Apart: Cross-Functional Collaboration

09:45 The Research That Changed Everything (Working Under Product Org)

13:00 Advocating for PMM: Educating Teams on What You Actually Do

16:00 The Metrics Problem: What Should PMMs Own?

20:00 Working with Customer Success Teams (QBRs and Product Feedback)

23:00 When You Know the Customer Better Than Anyone Else

26:00 Understanding Quarterly Priorities (The Detail Most PMMs Miss)

29:00 Customer Advisory Boards and Sales Advisory Boards

33:00 The Struggle: When Executives Ignore Your Research

35:00 David's Story: Getting Fired for Fighting Product Strategy

38:00 Gab's Story: When a Writer Called the Product "Shit"

40:00 Rolling with the Punches (And Why It's Hard)

42:00 In-House vs. Agency PMM: The Respect Difference

45:00 Post-Launch Research: The Key to Proving You Were Right

47:00 The Founder Talk: Setting Clear Expectations

49:00 Understanding the Customer's Buying Process

50:00 Wrap-Up and Where to Find David

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Product marketers think they own the messaging. SEO thinks they own the traffic. But who actually owns your website—and why are they both probably wrong? In this spicy debate with BX Studio, we dig into the turf war destroying B2B websites, why your CEO is the real problem, and the radical idea that maybe your website should actually reject leads (yes, really). Buckle up for hot takes on keyword worship, the death of MQLs, and why your Rolex store strategy is all wrong.

Featuring from BX Studio...
Jacob Sussman, CEO

Nikiya Griffith, Director of Organic Growth

Grace Arrese, Partnerships Associate

More from this episode

• Why adding SEO keywords is like putting ketchup on a wagyu steak

• The real reason your website converts trash leads (hint: it's not the copy)

• What Rolex stores know about lead qualification that B2B marketers don't

• The "Irish Exit" messaging framework that'll change how you write forever

• Why tracking MQLs is like measuring your height to lose weight

• The CEO wrecking ball effect (and why it destroys every website eventually)

• How QuickBooks became a cautionary tale for AI-obsessed marketers

• The Writer's Wiki secret that could save product marketing 20 hours a week

• Why your anti-ICP strategy matters more than your ICP

• The shocking truth about who actually owns your website (spoiler: it's not who you think)

Time Stamps

00:00 Opening & Attendee Check-in

01:00 Real Humans vs AI Note-takers Discussion

02:00 Setting the Stage: PMMs vs Non-PMMs

03:00 The Main Question: Who Should Own the Website?

03:45 Eric's Hot Take: Product Marketing Should Own It

04:45 Nikia's Counter: Joint Ownership is Key

05:45 Website Ownership and Blame Discussion

07:00 Real-World Website Conversion Problems

08:30 The Writer's Wiki Solution

11:00 Dream Relationships Between PMM and SEO

13:00 Keyword Lists vs Message-First Approach

16:00 Website Design and FAQ Strategy

18:00 The CRO/CEO Acronym Confusion

20:00 QuickBooks AI Positioning Disaster

22:00 Who Has Final Say on Messaging?

26:30 The CEO Wrecking Ball Problem

29:00 The Irish Exit Messaging Analogy

31:00 Metrics That Matter: SQLs vs MQLs

33:00 The Rolex Store Anti-ICP Strategy

35:00 Enterprise Positioning and Deterrence

38:00 Nikia's Counter: Why More Metrics Matter

41:00 The Internal Echo Chamber Problem

45:00 GEO vs SEO: The New Frontier

48:00 Closing Thoughts and Farewell

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