Shows / The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CX
Marketing technology, AI, and customer experience, explained by the people building it. Three times a week, Greg Kihlström interviews CMOs, product leaders, and martech executives from platform companies like Adobe, Braze, Qualtrics, Salesforce, and Optimizely, and brands like Marriott, Georgia-Pacific, Nestlé, and Zoom about what is actually working inside enterprise marketing organizations.
Each episode runs 20–30 minutes: one guest, one specific problem, no filler. Recent conversations cover…
Episodes
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXG2 CPTO Alexis Zheng on who builds your shortlist now
Alexis Zheng, Chief Product and Technology Officer at G2, says most B2B buyers now arrive with a shortlist an AI helped build, so the vendor website is no…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXPega's Peter van der Putten on why AI governance needs more than one rulebook
Peter van der Putten, lead scientist and director of the AI Lab at Pega, explains how enterprises govern AI that makes customer decisions on its own, and who…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXUsercentrics CEO Donna Dror on why data transparency now carries a price premium
Donna Dror, CEO of Usercentrics, says data transparency has moved onto the P&L: over half of consumers will pay more for brands that are clear about how AI…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXZscaler CMO Sunil Frida on marketing's shadow AI problem
Sunil Frida, CMO of Zscaler, joins Greg Kihlström on the problem most marketing teams haven't priced in: the AI tools and agents marketing adopted that…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXBrandi AI CEO Leah Nurik on winning the answer, not the click
Leah Nurik, CEO and co-founder of Brandi AI, argues that when a buyer asks an AI assistant which vendor to consider, the answer names a few companies — and the…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXNorthwell Health CMO Ramon Soto and StrawberryFrog's Scott Goodson on movements over campaigns
Ramon Soto, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Northwell Health, built the "Raise Health" movement by galvanizing 100,000 employees before going…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXICIMS CMO Jody Kaminsky on rebranding an enterprise around AI
Jody Kaminsky, Chief Marketing Officer at ICIMS, led a full brand transformation to reposition an established talent acquisition company around AI — in a…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFive9 Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Jay Lee on service as a growth engine
Jay Lee, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Five9, argues the contact center is not a cost line marketing inherits. It's where brand promises get tested…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXRevvim CEO Matt LeBaron on unlocking value in your existing ad campaigns
What if the biggest source of new marketing budget this year isn't a new line item from your CFO — but millions of dollars already sitting trapped inside the…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSystem1 Chief Growth Officer Andrew Tindall on Treating Creative as an Investment, Not a Line Item
Creative has never been cheaper or faster to produce than it is right now — so why is it still so hard to say, with any confidence, which of it is actually…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXCommerceIQ CEO Rahul Shah on discoverability as the new shelf
Rahul Shah, CEO of CommerceIQ, argues that discoverability has replaced shelf position as the battleground in retail, and that keeping retail media and product…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXIDT's Kyla Malone on earning trust when customers conduct critical transactions
Kyla Malone, Director of Marketing at IDT, talks with Greg Kihlström at Braze Forge 2026 about earning trust from customers who rely on one company to stay…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom MAICON: Robin Ross on making the shortlist when AI agents do the shopping
Robin Ross, Digital, Analytics and Loyalty Executive at Activate Insight, on how brands compete when a consumer's AI agent controls the consideration set…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXAampe CEO Paul Meinshausen on the control marketers never had
Paul Meinshausen, CEO at Aampe by MoEngage, argues marketers never had individual-level control over customer experience — only rules applied at scale. He and…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXContentsquare's Jean-Christophe Pitié on measuring CX when the visitor is an AI agent
Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer at Contentsquare, says the rules of customer experience are being rewritten as LLMs and AI…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTreasure AI's Brenno Valerio on finding the right time to make martech changes
Brenno Valerio, Head of Sales, Americas at Treasure AI, joins Greg Kihlström at Agentic World in Miami on consolidating the martech stack and proving AI's…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTreasure AI COO & CFO Dan Weirich on what the CFO sees in your AI spend
Dan Weirich, COO & CFO of Treasure AI, explains why the company moved to engagement-based pricing that ties its revenue to customer clicks, and what CMOs…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSpotlight's John Rockhold on influence orchestration: why earned authority now outweighs owned content
John Rockhold, VP Market Engagement at Spotlight, says AI answer engines treat a company's own content as a ceiling — the citations that move buyers come from…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTreasure AI CEO Kaz Ohta on keeping autonomous agents on-brand
Kaz Ohta, CEO and CMO of Treasure AI, helped pioneer the customer data platform category. Now he's betting that customer data matters less for what it stores…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFibr AI CEO Ankur Goyal on your website's second audience: getting AI agents to cite your brand correctly
Ankur Goyal, CEO and Co-Founder at Fibr AI, says your website now has a second audience that never looks at it: the AI agents reading and summarizing your…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXPega CFO and COO Ken Stillwell on AI budgets: the biggest cost is AI doing routine, rules-based work
Ken Stillwell, CFO and COO at Pega, says most enterprise AI business cases fund a label rather than a specific capability — and that the gap shows up later, on…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXCMO Council's Tom Kaneshige on overbuilt martech stacks: alignment is strategy, consolidation is just a tactic
Tom Kaneshige, Chief Content Officer at the CMO Council, says there is no best martech stack — only a best-aligned one. New research on 988 enterprise stacks…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXBraze CTO Jon Hyman on where marketing judgment sits when AI runs the campaign
Jon Hyman, Co-Founder & CTO of Braze, joins Greg Kihlström live at Braze Forge 2026 in Las Vegas on what's left for marketers when AI handles experimentation…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXMixbook's CEO Andrew Laffoon on designing for permanence at the speed of AI
We spend a lot of time asking how brands can be memorable. We spend almost none asking what happens when the memory is the product. Agility gets talked about…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSpotlight Summit Recap: John Rockhold on Influence Orchestration and the evolution of analyst relations
John Rockhold, VP Market Engagement at Spotlight, says AI answer engines treat a company's own content as a ceiling — the citations that move buyers come from…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSAS's Jonathan Moran on experience debt: your brand under peak load is your real brand
Brands have spent millions building out customer experience platforms — so why does the experience so often fall apart at the exact moment it matters most?…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSalesforce's Taksina Eammano on what happens when AI ambition outpaces frontline readiness
What happens when an organization's AI ambition moves faster than its frontline's ability to absorb it? Agility isn't just deploying new technology quickly…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTransUnion's Matt Spiegel on the AI confidence-readiness paradox: AI is only as good as the data you feed it
Matt Spiegel, EVP of TruAudience Growth Strategy at TransUnion, says AI is not a shortcut around your data problems — it's a force multiplier that makes them…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXOffice Beacon CEO Pranav Dalal on building the right marketing team: keep strategy in-house, execute anywhere
If your best marketing people feel like they're doing the work of three, is that a workload problem or a structure problem? Agility isn't just moving faster…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXSpotlight's Deena Zenyk on customer advocacy when AI builds the shortlist
Deena Zenyk, VP of Customer Engagement, Service Delivery at Spotlight, argues that customer advocacy stopped being a content quota the moment AI tools started…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXAirstream CMO Mollie Hansen and Nomadics' Chris Pendl on Camp Airstream as a product, not a campaign
Airstream CMO Mollie Hansen and Nomadics founder Chris Pendl built Camp Airstream as a product owners pay to attend, not a campaign — then had to prove to the…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXDoorDash's Peter Giordano on retail media as full-funnel media: awareness to doorstep in 30 minutes
Peter Giordano, Head of DoorDash Ads at DoorDash, argues that retail media stopped being an ad channel the moment the gap between an impression and a delivered…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTrustRadius' Katie Allison on how B2B buying decisions get made today
What if, by the time a B2B buyer ever talks to your sales team, the decision is already mostly made, and somewhere you can't see and can't measure? For years…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXAthos Commerce CMO Gary Lombardo on why only 14% of shoppers see one consistent brand
If a growing share of your customers now begin their shopping journey on a platform you don't own — and can't see into — is your website still your most…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXLinnworks CMO Hilary Smith on the manual work hiding inside "automated" operations
Hilary Smith, CMO at Linnworks, argues that most ecommerce brands believe their operations are already automated — and that the manual work quietly grows as…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXGeorgia-Pacific's Melissa Blunte on consumer understanding at scale: why data gives you precision, not understanding
As companies invest billions in AI and automation to scale customer interactions, are they unintentionally building a wall between their brand and the very…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXMarketing AI Institute's Mike Kaput on AI pilots vs. AI capability: only about 25% of organizations are scaling with a strategy
Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at Marketing AI Institute, joins Greg Kihlström to unpack the gap between an AI pilot that demos well and an AI capability…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom Opticon 2026: Federated Hermes' Melissa Ryan on what a replatform exposes in your content
Melissa Ryan, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Federated Hermes, moved a global investment manager's website onto Optimizely and found the technology was…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom Opticon 2026: IFPA's Jim Rucinski on running a global digital experience with two people
Jim Rucinski, Solution Engineer at the International Fresh Produce Association, runs IFPA's entire digital experience with a team of two — personalization…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXOptimizely's Greg Heinz on rebranding an AI platform: AI scaled the work, but every input stayed human
Greg Heinz, Senior Director of Brand and Digital Strategy at Optimizely, led the company's rebrand — and he argues AI should amplify creative work rather than…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXCanva CMO of B2B Meghan Gendelman on keeping your brand strong at scale
When every employee can produce polished, on-brand-looking content in seconds, who actually owns the brand anymore? Agility requires guardrails, not just…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXScrunch's Head of Marketing Kevin White on being cited, not just found
Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch, argues that referral traffic from ChatGPT is the wrong instrument for measuring AI search — and that the real…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXStandard AI CEO Angie Westbrock on closing the gap between the ad and the aisle
What if the moment where the buying decision actually gets made is still the part of the journey we understand the least? Agility depends on seeing what…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFreeosk's Matt Eichorn and Dilini Fernando on turning the physical store into measurable media
With trillions spent on digital ads to capture consumer attention, is the most powerful and effective channel for product discovery the one your brand is…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXQualified Digital Chief Client Officer Kate Dalbey on building an adaptive martech operating model
How much of your marketing technology budget is quietly underperforming, not because the software is flawed, but because your teams can't, or won't, fully…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXDomo Chief Design Officer Chris Willis on speed vs. trust in product design
What if the real risk with AI isn't moving too slowly, but instead moving fast on a foundation that hasn't quite earned its trust? Because agility was never…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXISM's Paul Brenner and IAB's Collin Colburn on why the old rules no longer apply to retail media measurement
What if the biggest barrier to scaling your retail media investment isn't technology, but a fundamental disagreement on what success even looks like? Agility…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXAdRoll's Alison Clark on connecting CTV to an omnichannel approach
What if the biggest screen in the home could be treated less like a billboard and more like a direct response channel? Agility requires moving beyond the "set…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXOX's Jenna Kennedy and Guy Gunter Home's William Webster on e-commerce for both B2C and B2B
What happens when your e-commerce platform treats your most valuable professional clients like everyday consumers? Agility means looking past a platform's…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTreasure AI Chief Product and Growth Officer Rafael Flores on evolving CDPs to activation platforms
For about a decade, a customer data platform's job was to be the place your customer data lived. What happens to that job when the most valuable thing a system…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXCareFirst CMO Mack McGee on building the total experience across customers and employees
Whose job is it to ensure the brand promise you market is the same one your customers and employees actually experience? Real agility isn't just rapid…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFront's Kevin Yang on maximizing both speed and coordination
What if the AI tools you bought to make your team faster are quietly making that team harder to coordinate? Agility depends less on how quickly you adopt new…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom Ai4: Dataiku CMO Mark Abramowitz on speed versus agility in AI adoption
What happens to a brand when the story it tells about its AI adoption moves faster than the results it can actually show? Agility isn't about telling that…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXNiCE CTO Kevin Lee on moving from AI pilot to production
What if the real risk in your AI adoption plan isn't that the pilot fails — it's that it succeeds, and you still can't get it into production? Agility isn't…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom Ai4: Big Spaceship's CEO Taryn Crouthers on prioritizing human judgment while moving fast
When a brand says it "used AI," that could mean anything from a tool speeding up a human's first draft to a system generating and shipping work on its own —…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXFrom Ai4: Coca-Cola FEMSA's Jose Martinez on balancing continuous improvement and CX consistency
Jose Martinez, Global Chief Data Officer at Coca-Cola FEMSA, says customers don't experience an AI system's mistake as a data problem — they experience it as a…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXEikona CEO Nir Weingarten on the limitations of traditional A/B testing and how to make it better
What if the 'winning' variation from your A/B test is actually the wrong choice for the majority of your audience? Agility requires shifting from a mindset of…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXThryv's Patricia Rollins on what enterprise leaders can learn from small business
Is the biggest threat to your market share a traditional competitor, or is it a wave of thousands of hyper-specialized small businesses powered by accessible…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXAdobe CMO Enterprise Rachel Thornton on agents as customers
What happens when the thing evaluating your brand isn't a person — but an agent shopping on their behalf, one that doesn't respond to a great story and doesn't…
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CXTaelor CEO Anya Cheng on AI, fashion, and sustainability
In an era where personalization is king, can a brand truly be sustainable, or are we just using new technology to fuel the same old consumption patterns?…