Future of Marketing

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Camille Ricketts and Mada Seghete sit down with Anthony Kennada, Founder and CEO of Goldenhour to examine what happens when AI automates the mechanics of marketing. Anthony argues that the old B2B playbook, gated content, nurture sequences, demo requests, and attribution fights, is breaking down because buyers have learned to avoid it. He shares why distribution is now the central challenge for AI-era companies, how Gainsight built the Customer Success category around audience pain instead of product features, and why the “human last mile” of brand strategy still depends on taste, judgment, and wisdom.We discuss:* Why the marketing automation era trained teams to optimize for traffic, forms, nurture, and attribution instead of buyer experience* How AI exposes existing weaknesses in B2B marketing rather than creating them from scratch* Why distribution becomes the harder problem when products are easier to build with AI* How brands can stand out through authenticity, emotion, founder presence, community, events, and belonging* Why Anthony believes people will still shape enterprise buying decisions, even as agents influence shortlists and recommendations* How CMOs should rethink paid distribution and consider more direct, experiential, event-led motions* How the 95-5 rule changes audience strategy by forcing marketers to serve people who are watching but not ready to buy* Why over-engineering measurement can reduce the creative impact of brand campaigns* How GTM engineering requires both technical orchestration and real understanding of revenue, sales, and pipeline* Why owned media is powerful but difficult for small B2B teams without strong content, distribution, conversion, and audience-building capability* How Goldenhour uses AI-enabled brand systems and activation agents while keeping human operators at the center* Why the final 10% of brand work still requires human judgment: asking better questions, knowing what to cut, and reading the roomKey Takeaways→ AI is not killing marketing. It is exposing the parts of marketing that were already broken: gated content loops, lead spam, attribution fights, and metrics that optimized activity over buyer experience.→ As products become easier to build with AI, distribution becomes the harder problem. Anthony’s view: marketing is now responsible for helping companies stand out when features are easier to copy and categories are more crowded.→ The work that becomes more valuable is the work AI cannot fully own: authenticity, emotional storytelling, founder presence, community, events, and brand trust.The End of the Old Playbook→ Anthony argues that the marketing automation era trained B2B teams to send traffic to owned properties, convert it with an offer, then email people until they booked a demo or unsubscribed.→ That system is breaking because buyers understand the exchange. They know what happens after they fill out the form.→ AI may automate parts of that machinery, but the strategic opportunity is not more volume. It is creating stronger human experiences.Brand and Distribution→ In an AI-shaped market, the existential question is not just “Can we build the product?” It is “How do we get seen?”→ Anthony believes the best brands will be built around trust, familiarity, emotion, community, and belonging.→ That is why events and experiential strategies matter more, not less. In-person connection is becoming a counterweight to digital noise and AI-generated sameness.Positioning and Category Creation→ At Gainsight, Anthony learned that positioning around customer pain can be more powerful than positioning around platform capability.→ Instead of leading with features, Gainsight built around the customer success manager: a persona with limited budget, support, technology, and internal recognition.→ The lesson for founders and CMOs: move upstream from product functionality and tell the story of the customer, the problem, and the market shift.Audience-First Marketing→ Anthony pushes past the narrow definition of ICP. The 5% of buyers in the market today matter, but the other 95% are still watching, learning, and forming opinions.→ Audience-first marketing means leading a conversation before buyers are ready to buy.→ That conversation could be a manifesto, a strategic narrative, a category point of view, or a content system that helps the market understand what is changing.The Human Last Mile→ AI can accelerate brand and positioning work by gathering context, synthesizing inputs, and producing drafts.→ But Anthony believes the final 10% remains human: asking sharper questions, knowing what to cut, reading the room, and applying wisdom built from experience.Where to find Anthony Kennada:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akennada/Future of Marketing is brought to you by the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

Katrina Wong is the Chief Marketing Officer of New Relic, a $1 billion revenue observability platform that went private in a $6 billion deal in late 2023. She joined in May 2024 as the company’s first CMO, responsible for brand evolution, demand generation, and market expansion. She previously held marketing leadership roles at Segment and Salesforce and has been part of seven successful company exits across her career. She studied environmental toxicology before moving into tech, and applies a scientific approach to hypothesis testing and measurement in marketing.We discuss:* Why stretch goals, not achievable targets, create the conditions to overachieve pipeline* How New Relic moved from 3x to 5x pipeline goals with the same budget and eventually eliminated the lower goal* How sprint-based demand gen works: setting numeric goals Monday, checking trajectory Wednesday, hitting targets by Friday* Why the sprint facilitator’s role is to probe the how, not just receive status updates* When database growth plateaus, how distribution through partnerships, communities, and influencers unlocks pipeline within weeks* How defining ICP through compelling events in top deals, not firmographic patterns, enables targeted lookalike motions* How Katrina uses customer advisory boards and co-innovation sessions to identify emerging problems before they surface broadly* How New Relic moved from claiming “intelligent observability” to naming a specific pain point: engineers troubleshooting AI-generated code at 3AM, at a scale that can’t be solved by humans alone* Why AI reduces the manual work of marketing and restores space for creativity, storytelling, and brand building* How Katrina rolled out AI adoption bottoms-up through a monthly marketing showcase, then layered in top-down governance* Why the CMO role means wearing the company hat, not just the marketing hatWhere to find Katrina Wong:* LinkedInFuture of Marketing is brought to you by the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Camille Ricketts sit down with Idan Koren, CMO of Verkada, to explore what it actually takes to build a technical marketing organization in the AI era. From structuring a high-performing MDR function to using first-party data for real personalization, Idan explains why the biggest gains don’t come from flashy AI demos but from building better systems, infrastructure, and decision frameworks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Camille Ricketts sit down with Cecilia Stallsmith, CMO at Lovable, to explore what it takes to market a product in a category that’s still being defined. Cecilia shares how to win over developers and non-technical users at the same time, why brand and identity matter more than most teams admit, and how AI is reshaping both marketing execution and team structure in real time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Mada Seghete sit down with Kate Johnson, CMO of Dscout, to dismantle one of marketing’s biggest myths: single-source attribution. Kate shares why chasing “what channel won” is the wrong question, how deal storytelling reveals the real drivers of pipeline, and why small, cross-functional teams can outperform larger ones when structured around outcomes, not silos. The future of marketing isn’t about replacing humans with AI. It’s about freeing them to think. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Mada Seghete sit down with Dave Steer, CMO of Webflow, to explore why trust has become the real competitive advantage for brands navigating an AI-driven market. Drawing on leadership roles at PayPal, eBay, Cloudflare, and Webflow, Dave shares the trust equation modern CMOs need to survive, why most marketing teams fail to prove incremental ROI, and how AI is reshaping the marketer’s role into something closer to a go-to-market engineer.Learn more about how Webflow helps marketing teams create, manage, and optimize personalized web experiences that drive real results. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of Samsara, to unpack what it actually takes to build an AI-native marketing team. Meagen shares how marketing deployed live AI agents across marketing ops, web, field marketing, growth, PR, creative and more. The conversation goes beyond tools into culture, accountability, and why creativity and human connection still matter more than ever. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

Future of Marketing explores how B2B marketing teams are actually using AI at work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com