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CMO Confidential
Michael Treff, CEO Code and Theory | B2B Marketing - The Year in Review & the Year Ahead
00:39:50
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The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.
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The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.
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Typeface helps the world's biggest brands move from business brief to fully personalized campaigns in hours, not months with its Agentic AI marketing platform. They are the first enterprise platform with agentic AI marketing workflows designed to instantly automate work that used to take weeks. With Typeface, one campaign scales into thousands of personalized experiences across ads, email and video while staying true to your brand. The company's AI native platform integrates seamlessly into your martech stack and marketing workflows and includes enterprise grade security. Adweek named Typeface AI Company of the Year, Time Magazine featured them as a best invention and Fast Company called them the next big thing in tech. See how major brands like Asics and Microsoft are transforming marketing with Typeface. Learn more at Typeface AI CMO welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them. The Chief Marketing Officer Confidential CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, ebay, farmers insurance and ancestry.com I'm here today with my guest, Michael Treff. Today's topic B2B Marketing the Year in review and the year ahead. Now Michael is the CEO of Code and Theory, an agency that combines creatives with engineers to bring clients answers at the intersection of technology and marketing. Under his leadership, the company has grown to over 2,000 people. For the record, this is our 150th show since we started, and we are proud to bring back the only punk rocker we have interviewed in the history of the show, who, incidentally, also has our most watched episode ever. Also, Michael has also agreed to serve as our B2B correspondent, sharing periodic observations from the front lines in the coming year. Welcome back, Michael.
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Thank you so much, Mike. It's always a pleasure to be here. Congrats on 150 and I look forward to my press credentials for next year.
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There we go. All right, it's been a While since we last talked, because you've done two shows with us, let's check in on the health and financial trends, just generally you see in the B2B space. Give us an overview of what's going on in the B2B world.
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C
Well, I'm so glad you brought that up. Thank you. Look, it's sort of a tale of two cities in the sense that you see so much investment and so much infrastructure going into the B2B space for a lot of reasons, like there's a lot of work to be done there. The journeys are changing, the customers are changing, their behaviors are changing, the way products are sold, services are sold. All that is changing. There's a ton of disintermediation in the relationships, unlike before. And so you see a lot of investment going into the B2B space. Generally for people to reinvent their infrastructure, reinvent their martech, reinvent their systems, reinvent their technology because they need to. You also see a squeezing of, you know, some of the legacy platforms and legacy spending that you would have had. So like to go a little deeper on that.
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A
Yeah, let's go a little deep on you and give us a couple examples so everyone can, can go ahead and follow along on the pressures on the business.
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C
Sure. So look, you see, it's important when we talk about B2B that we're not. When I talk about it, I'm not just talking about B2B marketing per se.
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Exactly.
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C
Yes. All the things that sit around it. So when I look at our clients and I look across the landscape, a lot of the money is shifting away from consumer marketing or B2B marketing in the traditional sense, because people are investing in their infrastructure. What do they mean by that? What do I mean by that? They're building better martech systems, they're implementing content supply software so that they can do better. They're trying to still figure out what they're doing with AI and where are all those investments? And did any of them work? Did any of them not work? What can we learn from that? There's no question that there's an ROI accountability piece to it as well. So that for people to make investments, and you do see a lot of the money shifting into more capitalized budgets versus OPEX budgets, infrastructure budgets versus, you know, disposable spend budgets. You're seeing that because there is an ROI analysis layer that hasn't happened before or at least hasn't happened to this degree. So people investing in their infrastructure, in their martech, in their software, in ways to Reinvent themselves as a business. How they show up, how they go to market, how they manage customers, how they engage them, the platforms that they build around them. Definitely happening. People just spending more money on sponsorship or, you know, traditional marketing spend or social or the other places where you would have historically seen investment even in the B2B space, not as much. And I think a lot of that comes back to the sort of change in behaviors and relationship between customers and their B2B customers as well.
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A
Tell us about that change. Because what I heard you say is the industry is becoming much more disciplined on how it spends money. And it's not just about leads or anything else. It's really about return on money. Tell us what you meant by that last comment you just made.
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C
Sure. Let's talk about it in a B2B sense. You're selling expensive software, you're selling, you know, work enablement products. You're selling infrastructure to companies. You're selling insurance services, whatever it may be, to large organizations. Sure. Great. You're selling technology that goes into a manufacturing cycle. Great. One of the changes and the big ones is the way people collect information and do comparison shopping. And it's not just because there's, oh, there's AI and there's agents. Like, that's true. People can get information in a different way, but it disintermediates the relationship. So it's, you know, it's been about events historically, it's been about thought leadership. It's been about downloading, you know, PDFs and reading them white papers and establishing your credibility in a sector especially. That's true in like financial services, as an example. Well, today there's such disintermediation because people are using things like Perplexity or ChatGPT or other platforms to collect the information, do the hard work, do an analysis, understand it that like when you're finally, you know, at the end of what was a traditional cycle, it's like all that work is already done. So you need a different way to engage with that consumer. It used to be about relationship nurturing and stepping them into it.
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And you did an mql and then that was really good.
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C
Exactly.
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On how many MQLs you got. We did a whole show on the gumball machines broken. And MQLs are kind of a false metric.
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Yes, exactly. Because now it's like, If I'm a B2B seller, if I have a big B2B business, I should be asking myself, like, how can I add value now? Because just sending the information and doing the comparison and specs and all these other things, that's not necessarily the best place for value because I can get that information elsewhere so much easier than I ever could before. And I can do the comparison. So what does matter and what helps me with the. I'm the buyer now. What helps me prove my roi? Well, sales enablement, materials, just as an example, making the case so that me, the technology buyer at company X, can go to my CEO, go to my cfo, go to my board, whatever it may be, and say, look, look at this analysis we've completed. Here's where we think the ROI is, here's why we want to buy product X over product Y. Here's the tests we've done, here's how it integrates into our stack and all that stuff. I don't have to do that on my own anymore. I can now flip back over to the B2B seller. I can provide platforms that can help you do that. I can help do the modeling for you. I can help do the sales materials and enablement for you. I can help do the integration, planning and timeline for my technology into your company if I need to. And now more than ever. So if I'm the B2B marketer, I'm stepping back and I'm saying, huh, where can I add value in this relationship, in this chain? And if it's really not in just the materials or the establishment of my brand is credible, which I can do a million other ways, maybe it is in all the things that will help you be successful in your own organization. Let me put my effort on that. And so, so that's the kind of things we've been focusing on.
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This has a massive revolution in B2B marketing where targeting and segmentation and power to the buyer, really where it's a focus on end to end results, not just the front end, that's a massive shift. Right?
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Let's take a short break from our discussion for a word from our sponsor.
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Typeface.
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Exactly. Yeah. And I would think it's, you know, it seems obvious like businesses are in the business of making money. They're in the turn on getting an investment on their roi, you know, on their investment. They're only getting an ROI on their investment. So you know, look, help being a partner, that's not just a seller. You know, we look at the software companies. I'll give you an example. Yeah, we look at the software companies. And what are the software companies very, very good at? Be it Adobe, be it, you know, whoever else it may be, Salesforce, you name it, doesn't matter. Agnostic. They're really, really good at explaining all the products to you. These are what our products. Exactly.
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Buy our stack. Yes. Because you can then do all these following amazing things.
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Exactly. But then they also, and they've learned over the years that they can't just leave it. They can't just say, hey, write me the check and here's the stuff, now go do it. So they've all built implementation arms to compete with the sis that are out there or partner with the sis that are out there. They understand that unless the clients can unlock the value of it after the sale, they're not going to re up. It's pretty simple. If I didn't get the ROI, if I just spent $100 million on a martech or an ad tech stack and I don't get the ROI out of it, there's a problem. So the software companies have been smart in saying, well, we got to ensure the success of our products and services. How do we do that? Consultative change management, implementation services, you know, value realization work streams. And the sis do that too. And Code in theory does that too. I mean, we have a, we have a change management SI piece of our business called EXT where we're partnering with these companies to do that for them. But the reason that's important is those software companies were smart and they were early and they said this is a complicated purchase. This is a very significant technology purchase. And now we need to make sure our customers get the value out of it.
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And so, and the outcomes are getting a lot of clearer. Is it easier if you're in B2B and we'll take the big guys out of it, like Salesforce and Adobe out. Is it easier for startup B2B to do this right than it is for legacy B2B businesses?
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Oh, it's such a great question. That's a hard one.
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That's why I'm such a good interviewer after.
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Really, your experience is just shining right now. Like the answer I think is yes and no. It's both. So I think what smaller companies are able to do, two things they're able to do really well is one, really understand the problem that they're solving because they're laser focused on those problems. They're new companies, they don't have a robust product portfolio. They're focused on solving specific use cases, specific needs in the market. So everything around those use cases, like they're able to sell really well, support really well, be agile. Their customers really matter to them because they're young and they're growing and they're new and they need to establish that revenue intake, et cetera. And you sort of start to see that even in some of the acquisition market, like in the AI acquisition market, like you have these huge acquisitions being made left and right on sort of not, I don't want to say single purpose, but like limited scope companies that do this one thing really well. So they're better at that, that's for sure, because it's more meaningful for them. What they're not better at and where some of the institutional players are really great at, it's understanding how it all works together and having a suite of how everything might work together more effectively and helping you navigate that holistic change better. Because it's not just one component that they're solving, it's the end to end system.
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So that's, I mean this is great for B2B buyers.
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It really is. It really is. Like If I'm a B2B buyer, this is like the heyday. I can impact the products and the services more than I ever could. I can hold accountability to the ROI of my investment in you and then force you to help me unlock that value. You. It's more transparent because we have better data, we have better attribution, we have better modeling, we have better ROI analysis to know if it's working or not and then hold us all accountable in that. So for me, like If I'm the B2B buyer today, this is like where I've wanted to be.
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Yeah. So we'll talk about the marketing part of this in a little bit, but I want to dig into AI a little bit because you're just watching so much money pour into this. You see the mutual tie ups between the LLMs and the chip makers. And you predicted in an earlier show, I think a number of months ago that there would be pressure on ROI. Tell us what's going on in AI as seen through your lens as the B2B correspondent for CMO Confidential.
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C
Oh, my first assignment. I love this. Look, there's no question about it. I mean we all knew it. I mean I'm old enough to remember.com bubble1 like it was about ROI at that point then. And of course with AI it follows a very similar trajectory. There is no question that there is more pressure on organizations to demonstrate what AI is doing for them now. Wave one of AI was all about automation and cost savings. Can I automate these jobs? What can I do? Can I get more output with the same number of jobs? But how can I bottom line impact. But really from a cost savings or even just potentially a volume output perspective, we're definitely seeing that. Another thing we're seeing is, and this is both good and bad, probably more bad for people like me who run agencies. But you're seeing a lot of clients put pressure on the agencies to do more because they're using AI and they're using tooling and essentially at the same cost or less, they want the full value savings of that. And that's like a pressure as well. So wave one, automation, efficiency, cost savings, et cetera, Wave two and what we're seeing now and the bridge between the two, I will explain in a second is well, what is it doing now to grow my business, not just save money, not just be more efficient on the bottom, but like every company needs growth, earnings are about growth. Right. They're not just about efficiency.
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Market for a lot of industries because of inflation. And there's yes, newer sentiment is down, people are nervous. So yes, let's talk about where you're going with that point. I didn't mean.
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Yeah, no, I love it. It's a, it's a great observation. The market is getting tighter and tighter and harder and harder to navigate from a growth perspective. But the streets expectations are on growth and certainly again if more capital investments are happening, you ultimately need to show the ROI and the enablement on that. So the bridge is that so many people spent all this money on automation and AI and they have been mostly unsuccessful in realizing the value. Maybe they were able to realize the value in short term job cuts or you know, other sorts of efficiency measures. But certainly no one has been able to point to AI and say it's unlocked growth for me in xyz, unless they're the AI software company in which case they built a piece of software to do a thing. So that is the bridge. And so the next Phase and where we think it's going has always been around cx. It's been about how do you. And again, that's a word.
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Customer experience.
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Yes, customer experience. Thank you for defining. We like to say that word is like a mirror. It's like whatever you think it is, that's what it is. We used to say that about digital transformation. Like people thought if I took the money from traditional advertising and put it into digital, I was digitally transforming. So like CX can mean anything to us. It means how are you meeting customers better where they are, how are you creating better products, better services, better experiences for them. Using AI both as like an experiential enabler. And I don't mean experiential marketing, but I mean in the experience or in some sort of computer personalization or ways that ultimately drive value to the experiences that a customer has with a company.
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So that's everyone. All companies say they're really into the experience. But my experience has been a lot of companies, airlines, and let's call you out. You say you're into it, but you're not really into it. How do I know the company I am using is really into my customer experience or not? What's the measures you recommend people do?
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So a few things. Look, coding theory, not to plug coding theory, but we live at the intersection of creativity and technology and so much of our business is about building products and services.
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So good, you got your talking points in so perfectly there.
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I know my PR team is going.
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To be really, they are going to be really happy.
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The point of that is like you should be looking, you should be looking at customer satisfaction in the experiences, both in a qual and a quant perspective. I mean, you should be looking at ultimate business metrics of repeat revenue. If you're an E commerce business, you know, your arpu, if you're in a subscription business, your ARR is it growing. Like you should be looking at the things that ultimately tie back to the transaction, the business itself, not the penetration or the marketing metrics. I'm not saying those aren't important.
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They are, you know, they're not outcomes.
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Yeah, exactly. So you want like real key indicators. Like you want real things that corollari relate to the business. You don't want indicators of like efficient creative or marketing spend. And so we push people on that. You know, we actually not to, not to, you know, talk about stuff that we do, but we, we actually just published some research with the Wall Street Journal that was exactly about this. I will show you. It's printed right here.
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A
We will post it. Look, you send it, we'll post it in the comments.
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Okay, great. Where we did a study on this, we did a study around like AI's imminent impact on CX and what we heard, and I want to make sure I get the numbers right here, was that from this survey that we did, 94% of executives that we spoke to say that CX strategy contributes to business success. But then 93% of those exact same people said that their digital CX needs improvement. So we're sitting there saying, huh, it's all really important to you, but none of you are happy with it. So when we talk about the next realm of AI investment, that's why we can conclude it's going to be around AI investment that drives experiences for customers and how those can relate back to the business.
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A
But beneath that is also you have to actually, you can't just invest. You have to have use cases and think it through. You can't just throw money at this. You have to have a plan. Right? Yes, that's a great point because I mean, this isn't like it's not going to take care of itself. You have to direct it.
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C
Right, Exactly. So this is another place we think is a huge area for the next few years. It's like, what are we seeing in the market around AI? We're seeing one. And you made this point incredible connectivity. AWS goes down, all of a sudden 15 other things go down that are critically important. All the infrastructure is related to itself. And I don't mean to call it aws. It could be anybody. It's just a example, like it's all connected. Nvidia is doing a chip deal with, you know, company X, who's also buying from, you know, company Y. And it's all inter, all interconnected. And so the interconnectivity of the AI landscape and the technology landscape is more clear than ever. So what does that mean? It means if I'm a company and I'm investing in technology and infrastructure, I'm investing in AI. It can't just be use case by use case, tool by tool, area by area of implementation. That's important. No one's saying that's not important. But point solution tooling isn't going to get you all the way there. So you need to step back and have a roadmap and to have part of that roadmap. And I think this is the one that most companies are really struggling with. No shade, but like, what is your plan for your humans? Why don't we start with designing the company? How do we want our humans to be spending?
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A
Yeah, we did a whole show on this with the CEO of Typeface about, you know, the culture is the biggest issue because people have to think bigger and it's not easy.
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C
Totally. And so that's hard. Think about that confluence of things I have to think through. I have to think through what are my customers and their behaviors and what's changing there. What is my infrastructure, my tech stack and my tooling that's going to help me get there. And then also for all the humans that are going to work at my company, what do I want them spending their time on every day? And that Venn diagram is a really hard thing. So your point of like, do we need a plan? Do we need a roadmap? Shouldn't we be focusing there? Absolutely. And that doesn't mean that you have to wait three years to do something. You shouldn't do that either. It's this weird, uncomfortable gray where you need to be thinking long term, but also immediate use case and application and be opportunistic about that. In order to do that, to your point on culture, you have to be willing to like, accept that you're going to fail, you're going to make mistakes and that's okay because you'll learn from it.
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A
Well, and this, I want to go back to the ROI thing because this is where I think it might get dicey. I want to talk about valuations, but also where if you ROI every project, you'll never get going. But if you don't have some long term roi, you will probably go out of business. So when I, look, I want to start with the big story here of all this money just, and these tie ups between everybody, these valuations, where are, where do you think they end up from a long term ROI perspective? Again, can everybody, I think there's seven big players now. Can they all win? Like, what's going to happen here?
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C
Look, if I knew that I would be retired because I would just be.
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Maybe it's just a matter of time.
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C
Maybe. I mean, look, we have historical analogs to learn from, right? It's not like this is not the first technological advance that we've ever seen. Like the machine, you know, the engine was a big advance, the printing press was a big advance. It's not like publishing went out of business exactly. Like the camera didn't put, you know, oil painting out of business. Like there's, you know, a million examples I look back to. Let's just think about the last 25 years you had basically the proliferation of the Internet, the mass Internet in a way that the rest of the world could, could use it. You then had the smartphone which came in and you know, the smartphone didn't kill the Internet, it just found a way to be complementary to it. Right. And it built a whole new other industry of really big players. And then social media comes along and you know, that didn't, that didn't kill talking. Well, maybe in some families it did but like you know, certainly these all are symbiotic. And so now here we are, we're in the world of AI. It's still very early. Like we're in like inning. You know, I'll use the Dodgers Blue jays example. We're inning one of 18 here from that very long World Series game. You know, we are very young right now. We are very nascent. We really don't know. Like, like just think of two years or three years ago we were all talking about blockchains and NFTs.
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A
What is it, three years since chat GPT came out.
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C
Exactly.
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So let's, let's let. So everyone's entering or about to enter the planning process for next calendar.
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C
Yeah.
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When you look at what your companies are looking at and all the moving pieces and all the craziness, what kind of growth targets and budget allocations are they doing for next year? And then we'll write the marketers into that story.
- [25:51]
C
Yeah. So one of the things that's been different about this cycle, at least from us from an agency perspective is there is more sort of uncertainty about the budgeting for next year. And I'm not saying that as an economic indicator. I'm saying that because there are so many competing priorities. You have, you know what we've been talking about in this show about the competing priorities of infrastructure and cooling and where to prioritize my investments from a mark on perspective, even like consumer marketing against B2B marketing against whatever it may be, you. So we have not seen any sort of like consistent trending where I'm, where, where all the money is moving in one direction and it's consist across our client base. We're not seeing that. What we're seeing is a lot more consideration and a lot more interrogation of where budgets should go, which is sort of delaying decisions on where they need to go. And hopefully this resonates with, you know, your listeners. Like you're not alone if you don't have your budget.
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A
A lot more, a lot more deliberation and a lot more thinking Than all right, last year we spent this and we're cutting it by two. Or we're up by two. It might be, it might be. We really got to think through everything again.
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C
Right. Which is why I go back to the point you made, which is we need some sort of duality between the long term roadmap, which is what you were talking about, and we need to be thoughtful here about what we're trying to do over the coming years with. Also what are we doing right now to impact and what are the like bricks that we're building today for the house of the future.
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A
And you see a lot of companies doing this budget. So one of the things that I'm thinking might be going on is if you're a runaway company or you really think, God, we have a growth at all costs, we don't care, we're going to, we're going to, you got to grow the business x percent with 10% less money or whatever. How realistic are people being at looking at the true growth of the business and how pie in the sky are? And just in general, are you seeing a lot of times where boards and management can detach from each other?
- [28:03]
C
This is more true than ever. We're seeing a divergence there. We're seeing, you know, late stage companies mature, developed companies with if they haven't had like a robust product innovation pipeline, new service offerings, new markets that they're going into any sort of like real expansion avenue, we're seeing them be pretty moderate in saying this is what we're going to do and a lot of it's internal for us next year and this is how we're going to replatform. If they're a new company, growth company, early stage company, you know, technology company that's really a disruptor in a market. We're seeing growth at all costs for sure because they're on the upside. So you know, similarly to what you're seeing, you know, in, in, in the polarization of the marketplace where you have like the uber winners and then the losers and there's very little in the middle. You're starting to sort of see that in budget planning for next year as well. Based on company is in their maturity curve or where they are in their innovation and future pipeline curve. And so that's a real thing.
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A
So budgeting is not going to get any easier for anybody is what I heard you say. Let's also talk about, let's write the marketing tools into this. We talked about MQLS as being not really the thing. Tell us what is replacing them and what you are recommending your marketers or your clients. Marketers to look into given all this change?
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C
Yeah, sure, Great question. So it's a tough one. Like, certainly there's a hypothesis that exists in the world among most marketing organizations that I talk to that everybody wants personalized everything. Personalized content, personalized CRM.
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A
That's been the case for, like, since marketing was invented. We got to get more personalization.
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C
So. Yeah, of course, of course. And like, and then the ad tech's gonna be there and it's gonna perfectly separate and segment everything. So. And then we're gonna dynamically optimize every piece of advertise. Like, that's the prevailing belief.
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A
I feel like just one marketing bingo with your last. I've dynamically optimized my personalization exactly.
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C
Like, this is the language in the meetings. Like, this is what people say. So, you know, there. The hypothesis in that is that it is the content itself or the personalized level of that content and the volume of content, that that was the problem. And I, you know, I think there's some truth in that. There's no. If you are a really complex business that has, you know, let's call it 50 real customer segments, and you're really trying to be specific. Like, if you're like the GE of the old days where there was like, all these different lines of business and you really had, like, a very different customer in all of them, I get why that makes sense and I get why you want that. And that's all true. I would go back to what we were talking about earlier, that you should also put some money into the experiences and sales enablement and like, all those things. But, like, that's true. But for most people, no one's asked the question, is more or better personalized content actually driving any value? And very few people are able to answer that right now because it's just hasn't happened yet. And so when we talk about the tooling, like, do we believe that people should be putting in infrastructure that lets them do scaled content and personalized content, content and segmentation and all the things that, you know, buzzword bingo allows us to say, definitely. But do we believe that they should also tightly look at. Is it driving back to our other conversation, ultimate business results? Yes. And oftentimes that's the breakdown is the marketing organization is saying, look how much more I made with so much less. Look at the value of this tooling I put in because, like, look how much more volume we're able to look we personalized 5,000 segments, forget 50 and like, no one is then tying it back to, say, holistically at the business level.
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A
The c. Because if you think about how many brands you buy, just brands in a week, as a human, just go through the grocery store and think, do I need a personal relationship with my mustard? I don't know.
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C
Exactly.
- [32:04]
A
You know, exactly. Maybe not right?
- [32:08]
C
But like, but maybe, just maybe for the people who are mustard obsessed, like, you know, the recipe builder, like, might be a good idea for you in all these other ways where you never did it before and it's a GPT interface and you have a bot that does that for you and you built the mustard agent because how fun would that be? And everyone would freak out about that marketing anyway. So, like, you know, there are real opportunities, but like, tying it to ultimately, why are we doing this in the business? So when it comes to your question on tooling, like, we are interested in putting the Martech investments, the tooling investments into the things that we can measure, into the things that we can attribute attributably. Go back and say, this improved your business this way, because those are where the investments will keep coming, coming.
- [32:48]
A
So that, that's what I would call outcome based personalization. Right?
- [32:52]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [32:53]
A
Okay, good. I. I wish you had some passion about this, by the way.
- [32:56]
C
Yeah, no, I've really, I've taken a few riddles. I'm like, really calm today.
- [33:00]
A
I know you are. I mean, I, I feel like you're almost asleep. Hey, you know, we could go on and on, but I want to do predictions. But first I want to say, what should agencies and marketers be thinking about in 2026? So they should be planning now to know something by the end of next year. What should it be?
- [33:22]
C
That is a great question. So what they should know. Oh, this is a tough one.
- [33:30]
A
What they should have more than one answer. If you have. You have two or three things, you can throw them out there.
- [33:35]
C
All right, thank you.
- [33:36]
A
You can personalize it. You can personalize it for me.
- [33:39]
C
Oh, my God. It's like you have incredible content tooling on this show. It's amazing. I would say it's always three. So three things. One, they should know what they want to do with their humans over the next five years. What do companies want their humans to be doing? That is the most important question because that should speak directly to the value in the investments that you make. Number two, they should know at the end of 2026 where they are on their AI maturity curve and they should really be investing according to that. And number three, they should really be looking at the customers and the customer journeys and where the differences are in 2025 closing right now. And you know, month, month 11 of 2025 versus what those journeys are going to look like in 2027 and forward. And they should be retooling how they go about their marketing mix and retooling how they go about the efforts that they put forward to meet those customers in those different places. Like I think about things like, you know, agentic browsers and I think about how disruptive that can be to traditional search business, to traditional pay per click business, to traditional, you know, web based, click based economy blue links. Like this is going to be very, very different for most customers in most categories, not just in terms of where information is consumed, but in terms of where transactions happen and who's even doing those transactions.
- [34:56]
A
Blows up the whole funnel. Blows up everything.
- [34:59]
C
Exactly. And so if we don't know by the end of next year, like where we are against those things, you're probably not going to be in business for a long time.
- [35:08]
A
I think that's a really, those are really good three things before we get to our traditional last question, which, you know what it is, what. Any big predictions for 2026?
- [35:20]
C
I just think the ROI, the emphasis on ROI will continue and I think budgets will be more and more scrutinized. And I think that you, and I'm speaking to my agency brethren here, will need to prove the value of the work that you're doing in all new ways and be far more consultative as an agency to how you can steer your clients spend to things that will deliver value. Because I think the vice grip of prove the ROI is only going to get worse next year, especially if economic conditions change.
- [35:51]
A
Okay, I think that's a great, a great thing. To our traditional last question. Yes, practical advice we have yet to share with our listeners on the show. And our funniest story that you haven't told in our earlier shows, you pick. Well, one or both. You know, I'm at least one.
- [36:12]
C
I'm gonna go practical advice. I think I told a story last time, so I'm gonna go practical advice this time. My practical advice is, is, is just very simply and it's similar to a theme I talk about a lot. But just interrogate everything yourself. Just interrogate everything yourself. Most of the mistakes that I have made are because I didn't like thoroughly interrogate what was happening, why it was happening. Why do we think this?
- [36:38]
A
Can you Give us a good example of that.
- [36:43]
C
Yeah, I mean, I make them all the time, so that's easy. But, you know, we. We made some. We made some bets, right? Like, we make some bets as a company. We might bet on building a new practice, for example, a new capability as an example. You know, and people have tons of passion, just like, you know, maybe I do about a lot of things. And so when people come to me asking for an investment or asking for capability to be built or wanting to go into a certain area, you know, if they make a cogent argument that's rational, I generally approve it. And so, like, sometimes that might be, you know, let's start a government practice in the middle of the change of, you know, deep government practice in the middle of, you know, a very transformative.
- [37:20]
A
Year for government, like, administrative changeover. Let's start that.
- [37:23]
C
Exactly, exactly. Like, and that's fine. And, you know, that's okay. I'm not saying that that was a mistake, actually. That's fine. But like, interrogating, when interrogating and not taking at face value that the argument someone makes is the right argument just because it's a good argument, but really, like, surrounding it to say, like, well, why do we think this? What are the hypotheses? Let me see the data. I know this seems, like, really obvious, but, like, people forget to do that.
- [37:47]
A
When you forget to do that, what happens is you get everybody is all on one side of the argument and you forget the counter side and then run to the shiny object that everyone agrees on. Yes, I hear you saying is you should always have somebody that is taking the counterpoint to that so that you don't just get carried away.
- [38:07]
C
Yes, that is exactly it you want to encourage. The practical advice is interrogate it and encourage a culture of conversation and discourse. And if you do that, you generally end up in the right place in a time of, like, very much uncertain. Navigation.
- [38:19]
A
All right, well, I think that is a great way to end our show. Thank you, Michael, for joining us for our 150th show. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, like, subscribe and share new episodes drop every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple and YouTube. Our catalog gives you access to all of our shows, including why is B2B marketing so bad and what to do About It, Parts one and two, Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Job spec, and of course, Michael's previous shows. Why your AI strategy needs to be more than just tools and using AI for anticipation versus reaction hey all you marketers stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential. Legacy marketing tools weren't built for AI Typeface is the first multimodal platform where agentic workflows handle everything from brainstorming to launch across every channel and customer. Touchpoint Their AI native design transforms manual marketing tasks into automated workflows that create personalized text, imagery and video at enterprise scale. Typefaces AI integrates with existing martech stacks through APIs and native connections so you keep your processes while gaining AI superpowers and enterprise grade security. See how brands like Asics and Microsoft accelerate innovation and transform a single idea into thousands of personalized on brand experiences. Instantly ready to see what marketing looks like when AI handles the heavy lifting? Learn more at Typeface AICMO.