Ahrefs Podcast

The "Sitcom" Ad Strategy: How One Funny Video Closed 12 Deals | Luke Winter (Deadpan Agency)

One of Deadpan Agency's comedy campaigns paid for the entire production cost within a single episode — and went on to influence 12 additional client deals. Luke Winter didn't get there by making polished corporate videos. He got there by making B2B brands funny. Luke is the founder and creative director of Deadpan Agency, a London-based studio specializing in comedy video for SaaS and tech companies. After 12 years producing the kind of cinematic explainers that collect 400 views and disappear, he pivoted to a niche within a niche: episodic B2B comedy campaigns built around real customer pain — not brand ego. You'll learn why humor lowers purchase resistance better than any production budget, how the StoryBrand framework keeps your brand from accidentally casting itself as the hero (and why that's the wrong move), and what actually happens to your brand when a joke doesn't land — the answer is less catastrophic than you'd expect, but bad audio is a different story entirely. This is also why AI can generate a video but can't replace the taste to know if it's any good. (00:00) Intro (01:15) Why B2B brands invest in video ads (03:48) What a comedy video campaign actually costs (08:35) Why humor outperforms spectacle in B2B marketing (14:08) How to measure if a video campaign worked (21:13) How to make the humor feel owned by your brand, not your agency (25:07) Rooting comedy in real customer pain (28:12) The StoryBrand secret: your brand is the guide, not the hero (32:21) How to build a visual identity audiences recognize across episodes (38:21) What actually happens when a video flops (46:21) AI-generated video: useful tool or creative shortcut? (52:33) Why taste matters more than the prompt Where to find Luke: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/luke-winter-75a2885a Website: deadpanagency.com Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timsoulo X: @timsoulo Website: timsoulo.com Referenced: Deadpan Agency: deadpanagency.com Gamma: gamma.app StoryBrand by Donald Miller: storybrand.com Contagious by Jonah Berger: jonahberger.com/books/contagious/ ClientBoost: clientboost.com Ahrefs: ahrefs.com

Inside ZoomInfo’s $1.2B AI GTM Engine | Tal Raz

ZoomInfo powers the world's outbound prospecting — and gets the majority of its own new business from inbound. Tal Raz, ZoomInfo's CMO, explains the flywheel behind a $1.2B ARR go-to-market machine. Tal is a nine-year veteran of ZoomInfo who joined as a marketing analyst and built her way to the C-suite by obsessing over funnel gaps, data quality, and campaign execution. She now leads a ~100-person global marketing team and is one of the architects behind how ZoomInfo actually goes to market — using its own platform to do it. In this conversation, Tal explains why AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are doing the buyer research that used to land on your website — and what that means for inbound-dependent companies. She breaks down why most AI-powered outreach fails (it's a data problem, not an AI problem), how GTM Studio compresses a weeks-long campaign launch into hours, and what "no leaders leaders" looks like as a real operating philosophy inside a public company. EPISODE CHAPTERS (00:00) Intro (01:11) Why ZoomInfo — master of outbound — relies on inbound for most new revenue (07:18) Why AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini) is dismantling traditional SEO-driven inbound (11:01) The execution gap: why AI-powered outreach so often gets it wrong (15:33) GTM Studio: how to compress weeks of campaign prep into hours (23:23) AI SDRs — real replacement for human sales reps, or just hype? (27:42) Managing a 100-person global marketing team from Israel (33:11) How to measure marketing by working backwards from ACV, not MQLs (41:46) What Henry Schuck really thinks about brand marketing (44:58) The apology billboard: turning a product failure into a campaign (50:50) Labubu at Dreamforce: making the case for playful B2B marketing (54:18) "No leaders leaders": why ZoomInfo's C-suite stays in the weeds (57:56) From marketing analyst to CMO: Tal's 9-year journey at one company (01:04:56) How AI is changing what it means to be a marketer (01:10:22) Rapid fire: favorite book, admired company, and thought leader WHERE TO FIND TAL LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tal-raz-46529620/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tal-raz-46529620/] WHERE TO FIND TIM LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/] X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/ [https://www.timsoulo.com/] REFERENCED ZoomInfo: https://www.zoominfo.com/ [https://www.zoominfo.com/] ZoomInfo GTM Studio: https://www.zoominfo.com/products/gtm-studio [https://www.zoominfo.com/products/gtm-studio] Gamma (the "Office" campaign): https://gamma.app/ [https://gamma.app/] The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36072.The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36072.The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People] Kieran Flanagan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan] Labubu (Pop Mart): https://www.popmart.com/us [https://www.popmart.com/us] Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com [https://ahrefs.com/]

How to Build a $2.1B Brand with a Team of 10 (Gamma’s Playbook)

Gamma is everywhere right now. With viral videos starring Rainn Wilson, massive drone shows over San Francisco, and a valuation of $2.1 billion, this AI startup has mastered the art of capturing attention in a crowded market. But behind these huge stunts is a surprisingly small, scrappy team using a very specific playbook to punch way above their weight class. My guest today is Kristin Fracchia, the Head of Marketing at Gamma. She’s the architect behind the company’s explosive growth to 70 million users and its transition from a quiet product-led company to a brand that dominates the conversation. Kristin reveals how she orchestrates “audacious” marketing moments that break the internet without breaking the bank. In this episode, we deconstruct the exact strategies Gamma uses to go viral repeatedly. You’ll learn how to manufacture “luck” in PR, why unscalable influencer marketing is your biggest advantage, and how to execute massive brand stunts like The Sphere and celebrity cameos—even if you’re just a team of ten. Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode: (00:00) Intro (01:29) The “Audacious” Launch Playbook for breaking through AI noise (05:28) Why constant shipping kills marketing momentum (and what to do instead) (10:38) The “Twist” Framework: How changing one element makes you viral (12:30) Landing a New York Times exclusive without a big agency (16:31) How to find the unique angle journalists actually care about (20:34) Scaling influencer marketing from manual outreach to 70M users (23:36) Why you can’t track ROI on influencers (and the proxy metric to use instead) (28:54) The “How did you hear about us?” attribution model (35:51) The strategy behind Gamma’s viral video parodies (Severance, Mission Impossible) (41:00) How Kristin used ChatGPT to negotiate a contract with Rainn Wilson (46:11) The real cost of celebrity cameos for B2B startups (48:01) Why distribution matters more than the creative asset itself (52:52) Production costs: When to go in-house vs. hiring an agency (56:44) Exploiting the “Gap”: How Gamma hacked The Sphere in Las Vegas (01:03:28) Orchestrating a 4,000-person drone show using existing events (01:08:55) “Peacocking”: Why your brand is your marketing budget (01:12:21) Using AI Tarot cards to win at Dreamforce (01:13:42) Rapid Fire: Favorite books and marketing inspirations LINKS: Connect with Kristin: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinfracchia/ Twitter: @KristinFracchia Website: https://gamma.app/ Connect with Tim: Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/ References: “Audacious” by Mark Schaefer : https://businessesgrow.com/audacious/ Lenny’s Podcast:  ⁨@LennysPodcast⁩ Claire Vo (Product/AI thought leader): https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

10x Your Marketing With These AI Workflows | Kieran Flanagan (Hubspot)

Most marketers use AI to write generic emails. Kieran Flanagan used it to increase sales meetings by 30% and build a “Chief of Staff” that manages his 350-person team. Kieran is the SVP of Marketing at HubSpot, where he has helped scale the company from 250 to over 7,000 employees. He is also the co-host of the popular “Marketing Against the Grain” podcast. In other words, Kieran doesn’t just theorize about AI; he is actively “vibe coding” custom internal tools to overhaul HubSpot’s entire go-to-market motion. In this episode, Kieran opens his laptop to show exactly how he builds custom AI agents that extract viral talking points from video, automate complex management reporting from Slack, and personalize outreach at massive scale. Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode: * The “Vibe Coding” Strategy: Why building your own simple tools beats buying off-the-shelf software. * 30% More Meetings: The exact email workflow change that drove massive sales efficiency. * Management Automation: How to use AI to summarize weekly team activity and identify blockers across 350 employees. * The Death of Prompt Engineering: Why “context grafting” and intent matching are replacing complex prompts. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Introduction 00:30 - Managing a 350-person team at HubSpot 04:05 - How AI drove a 30% increase in sales meetings 08:07 - Building custom data sets for personalized outreach 14:47 - Demo: Kieran’s custom “Viral Talking Points” tool 21:18 - Why “Vibe Coding” is the future of marketing workflows 25:49 - Turning video transcripts into high-performing LinkedIn posts 30:45 - The evolution of prompt engineering (and why it’s dying) 38:37 - The “Shakespeare Trap” of using AI for feedback 42:30 - Using AI agents for deep research and storytelling 50:28 - Automating management: Summarizing Slack and identifying blockers 59:05 - Why AI makes creativity more valuable, not less 01:02:40 - The #1 trait Kieran looks for when hiring 01:03:15 - Sneak peek: AI agents inside Google Sheets Where to find Kieran: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan/ X: @searchbrat Website: https://www.kieranflanagan.io/ , https://www.hubspot.com/ Podcast: @MATGpod Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/

Top SEO myths debunked with real data | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

Is SEO actually dying, or are you just listening to the wrong people? While the media claims that AI is causing a 25% traffic collapse, data from 40,000 of the largest websites in the U.S. tells a completely different story. In this episode, Ethan Smith (CEO of Graphite) joins Tim Soulo to perform SEO Necromancy — resurrecting search from the dead by debunking the biggest myths in the industry. Ethan is widely regarded as the leading expert on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), having built growth engines for brands like Instagram, Robinhood, and BetterUp. He doesn’t just share opinions; he shares data-backed insights from his recent study on how search behavior is actually shifting. You’ll hear why the rise of ChatGPT isn’t the Google killer everyone predicted, how small websites are actually gaining traffic in the AI era, and the exact strategy you need to ensure your brand is cited by LLMs. Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode: 00:00 - Intro 01:00 - Why AI isn’t actually killing the web 04:49 - Measuring the real traffic drop 07:31 - The winners and losers of the AI traffic shift 13:24 - How AI behaviors are expanding the search pie 18:18 - Cleaning up outdated and inaccurate citations 23:28 - Why SEO and AEO are the same thing 27:09 - Why your AI tracking is biased 38:33 - Mining sales calls and Reddit for high-intent prompts 41:29 - How to win the RAG citation game 47:29 - Why being #15 in citations is better than #15 in Google 51:04 - ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Perplexity: where to focus first? Where to find Ethan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanls/ Website: https://graphite.io/ Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/