Showing Up for Your Board with Tracey Newell, Author of Hers for the Taking

How to Embed AI into Your Marketing Team with Wendy White

Wendy White is the Chief Marketing and Partner Officer at Daxko, where she leads marketing and partnerships for the platform that's powering the member management and operations engine behind so much of the fitness industry. Wendy has been a CMO for a number of companies and held globe-spanning marketing leadership roles at giants like Microsoft and Intel. Wendy joins Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to discuss how to lead an organizational AI  transformation, what it means for a CMO to lead as a business-first executive, and why a new brand measurement matrix is needed for an era where LLMs, not search engines, are where buyers do their research. Episode Takeaways * CMOs should position themselves as business executives first, and functional leaders second. Strategic CMOs actively weigh in on customer success strategy, sales org structure, and software procurement, which are all outside the traditional CMO scope. The modern CMO who earns a durable seat at the table does so by demonstrating strategic fluency across the entire business, not just owning the marketing lane. * Treat AI adoption as a cultural mandate, not just a tooling decision. This means changing job descriptions, updating career ladders to include behavioral AI capabilities, and making it explicit company-wide that AI is not a choice. Leaders who treat AI as optional will fall behind those who structurally embed it into how people are hired, evaluated, and promoted. * The "follow the sun" model, combined with AI, creates a continuous marketing execution engine. For example, Wendy's team has roughly half of its FTE headcount in India, with AI tools trained on brand guidelines, Gong calls, and campaigns. The result: Wendy wakes up to approval requests, not project kickoffs. This compresses execution timelines dramatically and is replicable for any GTM team willing to invest in AI-enabling offshore talent. * After years of decline, PR is becoming a top priority again for marketers, specifically because LLMs are trained heavily on authoritative published content. Getting your company cited in industry and trade press is no longer just a brand play; it directly influences how AI systems describe and recommend your product. GTM teams should re-evaluate PR investment through this lens immediately. * Brand measurement must be rebuilt for the AI era. Wendy introduced a new brand matrix that includes AI-driven sentiment monitoring (Reddit, G2), direct referral traffic as a brand signal, earned media share, and LLM citation share. CMOs should proactively introduce these metrics before the board asks why brand spend isn't measurable. Standout Quote * “What a modern CMO needs to do is to be really deeply integrated into the overall market and business strategy of the company. Don't sit back and wait for it to be about like, what's the next trade show?” - Wendy White Guest Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendywwhite/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendywwhite/]  * Daxko Website: https://www.daxko.com/ [https://www.daxko.com/]  Mentioned in this Episode * Guillaume "𝑮" Cabane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cabane/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cabane/]  * Matt Heinz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/]  More from The B2B CMO Project * Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/]  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2bcmoproject/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2bcmoproject/]  * Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/]  * Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/]  * More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts]

The 5 New Imperatives for B2B CMOs with Jon Miller & Sydney Sloan

In this special episode, Sydney Sloan and Jon Miller break down the most important findings for marketing leaders from The B2B CMO Project’s new research report. The findings in this report draw on recorded interviews with more than 50 B2B CMOs at companies including Zoom, Salesforce, Nutanix, Snowflake, PagerDuty, and Sprout Social. Their goal: give CMOs the clearest possible picture of what has stopped working, what the best leaders and operators are doing differently, and exactly what to do about it. Sydney and Jon cover why the old B2B marketing playbook is broken and the five imperatives for modern marketing leaders to succeed. Episode Takeaways * Why the Old B2B Marketing Playbook is Broken: The MQL-driven, content-to-lead-nurture model worked for a generation, but the data now shows it's actively undermining marketing's credibility in the C-suite.  * Imperative 1 - Earn Your Seat by Becoming a Business Executive First: CMOs need to think of their C-Suite peers as their primary team and provide them with the voice of the customer, especially when that means surfacing problems before they’re apparent to others. * Imperative 2 - Prove Marketing’s Value in the Language of the Board: When CMOs report in marketing language, they get treated as a tactical marketing function. When reporting to the board and peers, the best CMOs lead with business outcomes first and treat marketing metrics as internal diagnostics. * Imperative 3 - Invest in Brand as a Strategic Economic Asset: Getting CFO buy-in on brand is very hard when marketers talk about awareness. Instead, connect brand strength to measurable business outcomes: lower customer acquisition cost, higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, and better pricing power. When marketers speak the language of finance, brand stops being a debate and starts being a priority. * Imperative 4 - Lead Marketing Through AI Disruption: Buyers are beginning their research, discovery, and evaluation in LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, not just search engines. Adopt metrics like citation share and share of answer to measure how often your company and products surface in AI-generated responses, and build your content strategy around winning those placements. * Imperative 5 - Build the Organization and Capabilities for the Next Decade: Everyone is figuring out the AI-era at the same time, meaning those who actively engage with peer communities and share learnings will move faster.  Standout Quotes * “ The CMO role is too hard these days to do it alone, so let's do it together.” - Jon Miller * “ We want to look at owning the customer voice, that is my favorite part of being a CMO.” - Sydney Sloan Chapters * 00:00 Introduction & Overview of The B2B CMO Project Research Study * 06:25 Why The Classic B2B Marketing Playbook Stopped Working and How CMOs are Moving Forward * 09:39 1. The Credibility Gap is the Real problem for CMOs * 14:43 2. The Metrics Problem & How to Prove Marketing's Value in the Language of the Board  * 19:49 3. Brand is a Strategic Investment * 25:03 4. Leading Marketing Through AI Disruption * 30:46 5. Build the Marketing Organization & Capabilites for the Next Decade Mentioned in this Episode * The B2B CMO Project Research Report [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/research]: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/research [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/research]  * B2B CMO Survey [https://interviews.g2.com/research/d4aa5130-d54f-4606-800d-ffb8696f71ba]: https://interviews.g2.com/research/d4aa5130-d54f-4606-800d-ffb8696f71ba [https://interviews.g2.com/research/d4aa5130-d54f-4606-800d-ffb8696f71ba]  More from The B2B CMO Project * Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/]  * Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/]  * Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/]  * More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts]

Reframing Marketing ROI to Return on Objectives with Karl Van den Bergh

Karl Van den Bergh is the Chief Market Officer at Illumio, known as the world’s first breach containment platform (built on AI and designed for Zero Trust). Over the course of more than 25 years, Karl has held leadership roles in Marketing, Product and as a GM in Cloud, Analytics and Cybersecurity businesses, including SAP, Gigamon, Datastax, and Tibco. Karl joins Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to share his insights on why marketing leaders need to communicate with the C-suite using the language of the board, what it means to run a marketing team like a predictable sales org, and how to get buy-in on investing in brand by tying it to Return on Objectives, not ROI. Karl also dives into how to overcome ‘The CMO Tax’ and what his team is doing to stay top of mind, both for customers and LLMs. Episode Takeaways * Earn executive trust by speaking the language of business, particularly sales, first. For example, Karl Van den Bergh leads every executive and board conversation with pipeline contribution and bookings, rather than top-of-funnel metrics, because those are the numbers the C-suite and CFO already understand and care about. Forget about impressions or MQLs; instead, anchor the marketing narrative to revenue outcomes before expanding to broader brand metrics. * Running marketing like a sales organization, with targets, over-assignment of pipeline, and a forecast, creates predictability, which earns trust with the CEO and CFO. That trust is critical for securing investment in longer-horizon brand and awareness initiatives. * Don't create a new category unless you have absolutely no choice. Category creation is extraordinarily expensive and slow, requiring years of market education before revenue follows. * Reframe success internally from ROI to "Return on Objectives" when selling brand investment. Rather than trying to tie every awareness dollar directly to bookings, Karl uses a Return on Objectives framework: define the objective (e.g., be top-of-mind when buyers enter the market), set metrics tied to that objective (web visits, content downloads from target accounts), and benchmark performance against industry standards. This makes non-pipeline investments defensible and credible to peers in the C-suite. Standout Quote * “Advice to all CMOs out there, do not create a category unless you absolutely have to. Because it is so hard.” - Karl Van den Bergh Guest Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlvandenbergh/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlvandenbergh/]  * Illumio Website: https://www.illumio.com/ [https://www.illumio.com/]  Mentioned in this Episode * Anup Singh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anupvsingh/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/anupvsingh/]  * Andrew Rubin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsrubin/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsrubin/]  * Brian Gentile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gentile-b1376/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gentile-b1376/]  * Rick Wootten: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickwootten/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickwootten/]  * Raghu Nandakumara: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghunandakumara/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghunandakumara/]  * Ryan Farsai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanfarsai/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanfarsai/]   * Profound: https://www.tryprofound.com/ [https://www.tryprofound.com/]  More from The B2B CMO Project * Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/]  * Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/]  * Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/]  * More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts]

Nerding Out on the Neuroscience Behind Buying Decisions with Bryan Law

Bryan Law is the Chief Marketing Officer of Nerdio, the all-in-one Microsoft Cloud management platform. Bryan previously led global marketing teams at Google, Salesforce, ZoomInfo, and SentinelOne, to name just a few. He’s passionate about building distinctive, memory-building brands that translate into efficient pipeline creation, backed by data-driven decisioning and pragmatic AI adoption. Bryan joins co-hosts Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to dig into why B2B brands need to focus on their mental availability, how synthetic AI research can speed up uncovering customer insights, and how marketing leaders can jumpstart their tenure at any new company. Episode Takeaways * CMOs who lead with business acumen, not marketing tactics, earn faster credibility with the C-suite. Bryan deliberately frames his role as a business leader who uses marketing as a tool, fluently speaking the language of revenue, pipeline, and growth targets with finance and sales before discussing campaign strategy.  *  When entering a new company as the CMO, it is critical to be very intentional about identifying who the key stakeholders internally who are going to make or break your success, and then how you can win them over quickly. * Understanding the customer’s pains, wants, and needs quickly is vital to your role as a CMO. One way to do this is by carrying out extensive customer interviews right when you join a new company. A way to speed that process up is to use synthetic AI to model your customers and uncover deeper insights. * The concept of Mental availability, which is understanding the buying triggers that cause customers to think about your category, and which brand associations fire in their minds instantly, is widely used in B2C but almost entirely ignored in B2B. Bryan uses this framework to find uncontested territory: buying situations that customers care about that no competitor owns. Marketing teams should map their category's buying triggers, assess which are already owned by competitors, and build messaging campaigns around the white space. Standout Quote * “ I always try and think about my role is first as a business leader and then secondarily as a marketer.” - Bryan Law Guest Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanbasdenlaw/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanbasdenlaw/]  * Nerdio Website: https://getnerdio.com/ [https://getnerdio.com/]  Mentioned in this Episode * Kim Storin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlystorin/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlystorin/]  * Ehrenberg-Bass Institute: https://marketingscience.info/ [https://marketingscience.info/]  More from The B2B CMO Project * Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/]  * Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/]  * Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/]

Showing Up for Your Board with Tracey Newell, Author of Hers for the Taking

Tracey Newell is the Author of Hers for the Taking and has led global revenue teams, served as President of Informatica and now sits on the boards of some of the fastest-growing software companies in the world. Beyond leading major companies like Informatica, Proofpoint, Polycom, and Cisco, Tracey is now on a mission to help more women step into leadership with confidence and clarity. Tracey joins co-hosts Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to discuss what CMOs can do to show up strategically for their boards, how to prepare yourself for a career in senior management, and why marketing leaders need to pick strategic projects that align with high-level metrics. Episode Takeaways * If you’re considering a career in corporate leadership but don’t feel ready for that, think about what experiences you would need to prepare yourself for a larger role and then start accumulating those experiences. * Despite how things may seem at times, it is absolutely possible for men and women to have both amazing careers and amazing personal lives. The key is setting time aside for both parts of your life. * Most growth-stage companies target a 50/50 revenue split between new logos and expansion, yet the installed base is dramatically easier to sell. CMOs should build dedicated programs around net retention and expansion, starting by solving the underlying data problem: knowing who your customers are, what they own, and where the whitespace lives. This is a direct contribution to top-line growth that earns marketing a strategic seat at the table. * A key to running a successful partnership motion is connecting the peer-groups across the different organizations. For example, the sales teams need to know each other and how to hand off opportunities or involve the other when an opportunity arises.  Standout Quote * “ I've always believed in quality over quantity. The quantity game is a long road to a small house.” - Tracey Newell Guest Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-newell/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-newell/]  * Hers for the Taking Website: https://a.co/d/03vJqSie [https://a.co/d/03vJqSie]  Mentioned in this Episode * Doug Dennerline: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougdennerline/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougdennerline/]  * Sally Shreve More from The B2B CMO Project * Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/ [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/]  * Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/]  * Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/]  * More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts [https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts]