How CMOs Are Deploying AI Across Marketing
From The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five) by Exit Five
May 7, 2026 · 52 min · Episode 353
About this episode
The episode discusses how various CMOs are implementing AI in their marketing strategies and the impact it has on their teams.
#353 | Tara (CMO, Optimizely), Julia (Director of AI Adoption, Optimizely), Lily (CMO, Three Play Media), Pejman (CMO, Menlo Security), and Kevin (CMO, CompTIA) join Dave for a live Exit Five session on how real marketing teams are actually using AI right now. Lily shows how she replaced two BDR headcount with a HubSpot prospecting agent and went from an 18% to 46% response rate on inbound leads. Julia walks through how Optimizely's marketing team embedded AI agents directly into their content workflow, from briefing to brand voice checking to traffic monitoring, without anyone having to leave the platform. Pejman shares the framework his team uses to map workflows and find the highest-ROI AI opportunities, plus a custom brand tone tool that turns hours of manual review into minutes. And Kevin talks through what it actually looks like to lead an AI culture change on a small team with limited resources. Timestamps (00:00) - - Intro (07:29) - - Guest intros: Tara, Julia, Lily, Pejman, and Kevin (12:38) - - Tara on why AI adoption needs an internal owner and how to govern it without squashing enthusiasm (15:36) - - Lily: why their first AI initiative failed and what they did…
People in this episode
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Guests: Tara, Julia, Lily, Pejman, Kevin
Topics covered
- AI in marketing
- CMO insights
- content workflow
- response rates
- AI culture change
Keywords
- AI adoption
- marketing teams
- response rate
- content workflow
- brand tone
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Optimizely, Three Play Media, Menlo Security, CompTIA
Products: HubSpot
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