How AI and Automation Free Marketers from HTML with Brendan Farnand of Knak

How AI and Automation Free Marketers from HTML with Brendan Farnand of Knak

Brendan Farnand co-founded Knak to take the HTML out of email — so marketers can build campaigns instead of wrestling with code. He's also the first guest to set the benchmark on our new series, Past the Pilot. I'm Kevin Kerner, host of Tech Marketing Rewired from Mighty & True. This series is about what senior B2B marketing teams are actually doing now that the AI experiments are over. Brendan went first, and he got specific. We get into the "square-shaped" marketer AI is making possible, why Knak canceled its Lovable subscription once designers and developers landed in the same platform, and the campaign agent his team put into production — fed with brand guidelines, briefs, research, and even recordings of their kickoff calls. He also explains why they killed the fully-headless version, and what OpenAI told them about keeping a human in the loop. Then the three benchmark questions every guest this series answers: 1. One AI workflow you put into production that moved a real number, and one you killed. 2. What's still stuck in pilot that you expected to be running by now. 3. The one thing your team won't hand to AI, and why. Brendan's answer to that last one — about writing, and why his voice still has to sound like him — is worth the listen alone. Stick around for AI Roulette, where a snarky bot asks him why he'd still rather work on cars. Reach Brendan at Brendan@knak.com [Brendan@knak.com] or on LinkedIn. Learn more at www.knak.com [https://www.knak.com]. 🎧 More episodes: https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/podcast/ [https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/podcast/] 📬 Newsletter: https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/newsletter/ [https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/newsletter/] 📝 Substack: https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462402/fan_mail/new] 🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True. New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing. Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe3pK9B3GtqMzBga0aFskWeO2ajgMxM_O] 👉 Catch all our episodes at www.techmarketingrewired.com [https://www.techmarketingrewired.com] 📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com 🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkerner/] for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes. 📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] 📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/drag-and-drop-newsletter-home#subscribe] for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier. www.mightyandtrue.com [http://www.mightyandtrue.com]

Why the AI Rollout Is Such a Mess (and Where Humans Still Win) with Sean Richards | Concordia University

AI didn't give marketers more time to be creative. It gave them more time to make slop. That's the tension at the heart of this one. I'm Kevin Kerner, host of Tech Marketing Rewired from Mighty & True, and this is the opener of our new season, Past the Pilot — what marketing teams are actually doing now that the AI experiments are over. To set the table, I wanted someone who teaches this stuff and actually uses it. Sean Richards is a creative director, copywriter, and educator who's spent nearly eight years teaching marketing at Concordia University. We get into why Gen Z feels like it's holding the bag on AI, the token subsidy nobody's pricing in, and why higher ed is due for a reckoning. Sean explains how he teaches AI in the classroom — discipline and critical thinking first — and why more output isn't the same as more value, using a brutal 30-articles-in-a-week client story to make the point. He also points to Canva's "clear the decks" week as the gold standard for rolling AI out the right way. Then we land on where human judgment still wins, with songwriting and Suno as the example: a thoughtful human on the front end, AI in the middle, and a human touch on top. Stick around for AI Roulette, where a snarky bot calls Sean out for teaching marketers to demand proof by day while writing a musical about chasing Bigfoot by night. Hear Sean's musical, Yeti or Not, at https://yetiornotmusical.com [https://yetiornotmusical.com] and connect with him on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-richards-48684485/]. 🎧 More episodes: https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/podcast/ [https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/podcast/] 📬 Newsletter: https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/newsletter/ [https://mightyandtrue.com/insights/newsletter/] 📝 Substack: https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462402/fan_mail/new] 🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True. New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing. Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe3pK9B3GtqMzBga0aFskWeO2ajgMxM_O] 👉 Catch all our episodes at www.techmarketingrewired.com [https://www.techmarketingrewired.com] 📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com 🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkerner/] for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes. 📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] 📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/drag-and-drop-newsletter-home#subscribe] for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier. www.mightyandtrue.com [http://www.mightyandtrue.com]

How 8am Rebuilt Its Go-To-Market For the AI Age with CMO, Nate Skinner

Everyone can buy the same AI tools now. That’s the problem and the opportunity. When technology stops being scarce, differentiation comes from how you show up, how well you understand the customer, and how consistently your go-to-market system reinforces that understanding. Kevin Kerner sits down with Nate Skinner, CMO at 8am, to unpack a full-stack transformation: rebranding from AffiniPay (a name closely tied to payments) into 8am, a platform that supports legal and accounting professionals with payments, practice management software, timekeeping, reconciliation, and embedded fintech services. Nate explains how the team anchored the rebrand in research, then backed it up with real operational change so the brand isn’t just a new logo living inside an old motion. We also get tactical on modern growth. Nate shares how 8am shifts to audience-based selling, restructures territories and partner relationships with bar associations, and rebuilds the website around customer context. Then we dig into answer engine optimization (AEO) and why showing up in Claude, ChatGPT, and other answer engines changes content strategy, technical SEO, and what “ungating” should look like. Finally, we talk about building AI agents, combining Gong call transcripts with Claude for sharper insights, and why leaders need to use the tools themselves to set the tone while still protecting the human voice that makes a brand feel real. Subscribe for more real-world go-to-market engineering stories, share this with a marketing leader who’s wrestling with AI adoption, and leave a review so more builders can find the show. What part of your GTM would you rebuild first? I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462402/fan_mail/new] 🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True. New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing. Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe3pK9B3GtqMzBga0aFskWeO2ajgMxM_O] 👉 Catch all our episodes at www.techmarketingrewired.com [https://www.techmarketingrewired.com] 📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com 🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkerner/] for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes. 📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] 📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/drag-and-drop-newsletter-home#subscribe] for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier. www.mightyandtrue.com [http://www.mightyandtrue.com]

Vibe Coding for the Enterprise: How AI is Rewiring the Modern Web Stack | Guy Yalif (Webflow)

The way we build for the web is being fundamentally rewired. We’ve moved past the era of "drag-and-drop" and into the era of "Vibe Coding"—where natural language and AI orchestration allow teams to ship high-fidelity web experiences in hours, not weeks.  But for an enterprise CMO, how do you balance that "startup speed" with the security and stability required for production-grade marketing? In this episode of Tech Marketing Rewired, host Kevin Kerner sits down with Guy Yalif, Chief Evangelist at Webflow, to deconstruct the "messy middle" of AI adoption. Guy shares a masterclass on the evolution from traditional SEO to AEO (AI Engine Optimization) and explains why the future of MarTech lies in the Micro-App Stack. Key topics discussed in this episode: * The Vibe Coding Revolution: How the gap between strategy, design, and code is completely disappearing. * Enterprise-Grade AI: Harnessing the speed of AI while maintaining the security and scale required by large organizations. * The Death of the Monolith: Why the future is about "micro-apps" and intelligent microservices that AI can actually orchestrate. * The AEO Playbook: Why "technical cleanliness" and internal link structures are the new requirements for being discovered by LLMs. * Leading the "Beautiful Mess": How to build AI fluency within your team by making it safe to experiment, fail, and "feel stupid" during the learning curve. Connect with Guy Yalif: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guyyalif/ [https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.linkedin.com/in/guyyalif/] Webflow: https://www.webflow.com [https://www.webflow.com] More Tech Marketing Rewired Content: Explore more episodes and resources at mightyandtrue.com/podcasts [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/podcasts] or subscribe on Substack for deep-dive takeaways: kevinkerner.substack.com [https://kevinkerner.substack.com] I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462402/fan_mail/new] 🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True. New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing. Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe3pK9B3GtqMzBga0aFskWeO2ajgMxM_O] 👉 Catch all our episodes at www.techmarketingrewired.com [https://www.techmarketingrewired.com] 📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com 🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkerner/] for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes. 📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] 📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/drag-and-drop-newsletter-home#subscribe] for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier. www.mightyandtrue.com [http://www.mightyandtrue.com]

How AI Signals Power Smarter B2B Growth with Jay Tuel of Demandbase

In this episode of Tech Marketing Rewired, host Kevin Kerner sits down with Jay Tuel, Chief Evangelist of Sales at Demandbase, to deconstruct the "signal madness" currently hitting B2B tech. Jay breaks down how to move from manual CRM research to AI-driven orchestration that identifies the real buying committee—even when it's 40 people deep. In this episode, you’ll discover: * The Inbound Shift: Why Jay believes AI can (and should) handle 100% of inbound follow-up to ensure relevancy and speed. * Mapping the Buying Group: How to move beyond a single contact to identify the 17 to 40 people actually involved in an enterprise deal. * Creative Signal Sourcing: Using 10Ks, investor calls, and even video transcripts to drive executive-level engagement. * The "Human-in-the-Loop": Where strategic humans fit into a world of automated outreach and how to avoid the "AI doom loop" of generic messaging. * Self-Optimizing Tech: Why the future of MarTech is tools that continually optimize their own scoring based on real conversion outcomes. Connect with Jay Tuel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytuel/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytuel/] Learn more about Demandbase: https://www.demandbase.com/ [https://www.demandbase.com/]  I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462402/fan_mail/new] 🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True. New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing. Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe3pK9B3GtqMzBga0aFskWeO2ajgMxM_O] 👉 Catch all our episodes at www.techmarketingrewired.com [https://www.techmarketingrewired.com] 📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com 🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkerner/] for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes. 📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at:  https://kevinkerner.substack.com/ [https://kevinkerner.substack.com/] 📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter [https://www.mightyandtrue.com/drag-and-drop-newsletter-home#subscribe] for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier. www.mightyandtrue.com [http://www.mightyandtrue.com]