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Why There’s More Content in 2026… But Worse Results
00:49:22
Merriam-Webster named "slop" the 2025 word of the year - and it explains everything about where AI-generated content is heading.
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- [00:00]
A
Think maybe early on we got too caught up in, oh my gosh, I can produce more, I can produce more. I can produce it faster. And thinking more about volume and for us, from a content perspective, I constantly say more content doesn't equal better content. Better content equals better content. And that's where that slop comes into play. You're just focusing on volume and just putting anything out there. It just is all going to sound the same. It's all going to be noise. And how, again, are you really going to be breaking through to your audiences? Foreign.
- [00:32]
B
Welcome back to Marketing Trends. I'm Stephanie Postols and my guest today is Elizabeth Maxson, the chief Marketing officer at Contentful. Contentful is the digital experience platform behind brands like kfc, Formula One and Ruggable. And Elizabeth recently partnered with the Atlantic on a major piece of research that surveyed hundreds of marketing leaders on how AI is actually being used, not how we see say it's being used. And what she found is both uncomfortable but actionable. So let's get into it. Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:03]
A
Thank you so much, Stephanie. It's great to be here.
- [01:05]
B
Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on. So I'm going to get right into diving into your research that you all did, because I saw that your research found that the Vast majority of CMOs surveyed say that AI is a top, top tip, top priority. But when you actually look into the details of how these teams are working day to day, I think it says that almost nothing has changed. So tell me more about this.
- [01:28]
A
Yes. So that stat that I now know is it's 96% of CMOs are prioritizing AI, but actually only 65% are making meaningful investments. And I think we're at a point right now where CMOs are obviously feeling a lot of pressure from their boards to be able to do more with less, which is not a new ask to marketers that it's always been asked of us for forever, but. But do more with less with AI. And I think right now there is this opportunity where teams are very enthusiastic about what they want to be doing with AI and they're not being very clear on the problems that they are trying to solve and being more intentional with solving that. And so that was a big thing that I actually found really interesting in the research as well.
- [02:07]
B
Yeah, I think I remember on our call last time that we had you called this the optimism execution gap. And so what does that actually look like inside of marketing. Org, especially thinking about those that 65% that you just Talked about, like, tell me more about this gap.
- [02:23]
A
Yeah, so I think it comes back to knowing where to get started. And so in a lot of places, I think we were stuck in experimentation mode. And with the speed that AI has been moving and changing, you could use a tool at one point and it not be great, and months later it is wildly different. And so I think there's also this wanting to have some proof into showing that you're using AI, but actually adopting that deeply embedding into your workflow is really, that gap is now happening. A big part of this is I feel teams need to start moving out of that experimentation phase into those deeply embedded workflows and really starting to be a little bit more committing to what they need to do, especially when it comes to their tech stack.
- [03:05]
B
I do. I mean, when it comes to this, like, pause, getting kind of stuck, I personally feel like I'm kind of in that because there's so much like so many new pieces of tech and capabilities coming out, I mean, even over just the past couple weeks. And like, personally I'm like, well, I don't know if I want to move forward because there might be a better tool or a better way to do it. And here I am now buying someone else's tech stack and then something else comes out. Now it's all open source and then now I can do it myself. So how do you think about this? Like, move forward, commit, execute, but also be prepared for maybe something coming and wiping out all of your plans in a day?
- [03:46]
A
I think one, it's being okay with that. I think that's inevitable. Right. With anything that you buy. Right. But I think a big thing that marketing teams really need to do today is first identify what is the problem they are actually trying to solve. What is the pain point? What is the one thing that you can go and fix in your organization? Whether that is making your team go faster, maybe it is taking care of a mundane task. And then honestly, I think a lot of it is sharing in community. One of the things I had mentioned before this call is I was chatting with another CMO. I mean, chatting with CMOs all the time. And we're just constantly sharing, what's new? What are you using? I've never been so open about my technology stack ever in my life. And I think that's why it's. Everyone is curious and no one has the answers. And the more that we can be sharing together what we're doing and what we're not doing, I think is really going to help everyone Succeed and times, yeah, you're going to invest somewhere and maybe there's another tool that's going to wipe it out or you can build it. But I also think it comes back to your own time. Do you want to build it? Do you know, do you have the time and energy and effort to do that? Or should your time and effort actually be spent on something else? Or hire your own AI engineer to build it? I think that's also interesting, seeing a lot of new roles that are coming to the fold that didn't exist before. We now have an AI engineer, for example, in my Marops team. I never thought that that was going to be a thing years ago. So I think it's really interesting. It's new opportunity for new jobs. I don't think it's as much fear as marketers feel of AI taking away their jobs. I think they gotta find a way to be intentional, purposeful, solve a problem as a way to head towards that commitment.
- [05:24]
B
So for the research that you did with the Atlantic, I was wondering as I was looking through, I'm like, I wonder, like, why did you want to do this research? What was behind it? What were you trying to figure out? I'd love to hear some of the behind the scenes on it.
- [05:37]
A
Yeah, I mean, for us, there's a couple aspects of it. I mean, from a strategy perspective, you know, we have gone through a transformational shift here at Contentful and really designing a product meant for marketers. But we were speaking to developers. So step one was, how do I get into the mind of marketers? And obviously I am one. Right. And that's that that provides only one point of view though. And so we really wanted to find a partner that was going to work with us creatively, pull together a global point of view and really understand marketers at a deeper level. More so of what how they're thinking and feeling from their own skill sets to what they're prioritizing in their workflows and then obviously, where can Contentful come in and help? So it really came from a place of curiosity and again, wanting to expand our point of view across many.
- [06:23]
B
Were there any pieces of data that came back that were really surprising or that proved you and your team know wrong, where you're like, I thought we were going to see this and we saw the opposite.
- [06:35]
A
I wouldn't say that we saw thought something and saw the opposite, but one thing I did find surprising was actually the global breakdown. So, for example, if we looked at what within different regions, what did certain marketers prioritize as their most important focus in North America they prioritize campaigns. In emea they're prioritizing governance. Of course, thinking back on that, that makes sense, right? Like you have to think about all of the steps that around data. And of course governance is, you know, important in EMEA as it should be for everyone. But it was interesting to see such a stark difference. And again thinking about from our own team of marketing to marketers, it's really challenged us to think differently in the content we're creating. How can we make sure our content geared towards our EMEA market is focused on that governance for solving other problems in North America. So it is interesting looking at things culturally and how that behavior is driven. I also see that not only in the research, but even in our day to day tools. An example of this is Qualified. We've been using qualified as a chatbot on our website and we see much more use of it in North America than we do in emea. And it's like interesting. It's like what is that skepticism to want to talk to a chatbot? So there's a lot of behavior elements that I think I just geek out over as well. So it's, I like seeing that come through in data to help inform what our strategy should be.
- [07:58]
B
The chatbot example is interesting because yeah, just from our US point of view, it's like why wouldn't you want to interact that way or try it? Because we don't really want to talk to people. So it is our preferred method. But maybe they want a phone call.
- [08:12]
A
Honestly, I'm finding these trends in very funny pockets. It's not like there's not one person in our team thinking from a global lens. Here's what I'm seeing differently within region. It's just kind of popping up. So again it, it all comes back down to the data. I mean the qualified data was something that our team presented to me last week and I was like, oh, that's an interesting finding. And so yeah, I'm just starting to kind of pull all these mini data points together to help inform us of how to speak to these audiences better. I mean obviously that's every marketer's goal, right, Is to meet their audiences where they're at and the more we can learn about them, the better we can do that.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah. Do you find that they're, I mean now when I look at all the new technologies coming out with openclaw and things like that, are you re envisioning HAL to find this data quicker and probably have whole teams of AI agents that are going out, finding information, coming back, changing your marketing AB testing overnight and all of a sudden you just wake up and are approving different ways of testing it. Or maybe, yeah, tell me more about how you're thinking about these more recent shifts that are happening in this world.
- [09:15]
A
I feel like that's what you just painted is super future. But in the reality of today, this is what we would call evidence based creativity. And it's really leveraging AI to be able to surface trends and data and insights that maybe you didn't have before. I think often when you first start, like early in a marketing career, you're very focused on, you know, creating the thing, launching the thing, how did the thing perform, what could I learn from it and maybe do it again? What, where we should really be looking at what are the data and insights we can be getting from AI, Whether it's summarizing, it's pulling from new data sources, it's something that is automated versus the manual work that maybe has taken you in your past to now have that inform your strategy. And so I really see data coming in at the beginning in addition to the end. And that's probably maybe a new step in the process for marketers.
- [10:05]
B
Previously you talked about, you know, AI slop and how much is going out there and which I know this was like the term, I forget who termed it. You probably know you told me about this. But like that was the term in 2025.
- [10:17]
A
Merriam Webster they added slop as the word of the year in 2025.
- [10:22]
B
Do we think it's going to be the word this year too? Or are things changing now? Because now I'm like, now it really feels like you can do more than we ever could. But what makes it different this year than last year? You think if you think it is, could be different.
- [10:35]
A
I don't think it's different. I think it's more awareness that it's happening. So, you know, I, what I think is interesting, I had, we had our company kick off in Berlin a couple weeks ago and we were in these functional breakouts with our marketing team and I was telling a story of the first time I really felt like I experienced the slop. And it was when I recognized writing that was published on LinkedIn that I know that my GPT had sent me almost verbatim, right. I was like, oh my gosh. You know, it's, you know, it's just, it just shows that you're not sounding unique and it's also very different in formatting of writing. It's very kind of these short form sentences that seem to be really interesting. So I guess my point is the more people are using it themselves, the more they can now recognize the slop. And I think maybe early on we got too caught up in, oh my gosh, I can produce more, I can produce more. I can produce it faster. And thinking more about volume and, and for us, from a content perspective, you know, I constantly say, you know, more content doesn't equal better content. Better content equals better content. And that's where that slop comes into play. It's like if you're just focusing on volume and just putting anything out there, it just is all gonna sound the same. It's all gonna be noise. And how again, are you really gonna be breaking through to your audiences?
- [11:53]
B
So then when thinking about good content, I mean, you all, you're the masters of being able to see this with not only, I mean, one, I'm thinking, how do you work with your team on, you know, making really good content? But then also, what are you seeing from the industry? Because it feels like it's changes so rapidly of, okay, now this is the style, this is the thing that's working. Nope, not that anymore. Now everything's video. Nope, not that anymore. And it just shifts really quickly. And I'm also like, who's making up these rules? How do we know that this is even what's working? So is there anything that you're seeing as of now that maybe is very different than previous years or where things are headed?
- [12:28]
A
Yeah, I think for us, where we're doubling down for our own business, but also to help our customers do this is actually in personalization of content. So I love to give this example. We've been personalizing email forever, right? If you got an email that didn't say, hi, Stephanie, you would be questioning, how do they not know my name? It's the most basic thing of knowing who you are in any type of engagement. And I really believe that that expectation is going to span to your website as well. So an example for us, you know, one of the beauties of working at Contentful is also my team runs on Contentful. And so we found that 26% of our visitors to our homepage were clicking login, which obviously means that they are current customers. They're logging into our platform. So they shouldn't be seeing any messages of why buy Contentful? They already bought Contentful, so they should be seeing messages around what's new, what haven't they seen? Yet, like, how can we be a little bit more kitschy, a little bit more, you know, catching their eye? And we think about this in every aspect from first time visitors to returning visitors. Also focus from a marketer's perspective to a developer's perspective, we provide very different experiences on our homepage and it's completely tailored to that Persona. This is a huge unlock for customers and I think they, like CMOs today, really need to start thinking about their website differently. Maybe, maybe that's where they really need to experiment. We experiment all the time. I think homepages get stuck in. That's my brand. That's the first impression. I can't touch this. And it's like, no, go take risks with that. Go personalize those messages. Because by the time that a human actually gets to your website, they have way more intent because they've done all their research in an LLM, right? Like the use of the website, how it used to be is no longer. And now with GEO and aeo, by the time they come to your website, they clearly need something from you. So whether they're in the US interacting with your chatbot or they're in a me on, you know, going through their website on their own, they have higher intent. And so how can you be personalizing the content to them to really make sure that you are driving that to conversion?
- [14:33]
B
How much are you personalizing? Let's just, I mean, for you all, earlier you said we were, you know, originally talking to maybe developers or more tech focused people and then we wanted to shift to marketers. How much are you shifting when it comes to. Okay, I'm a marketer coming. Is the whole entire website different?
- [14:50]
A
Not the whole, not every single part of the website, but like our homepage, the whole web homepage is wildly different. We also do that for various product pages, like if it's more geared to developer. But it's everything. It's from images, it's content, it's CTAs. Where do we want you to click? And obviously advance the conversation and, and it's really thoughtful. The problem though is I feel like you can go down a dark hole of making it very complicated. And so we have been really trying to be the example of keeping it very simple and already seeing really huge improvements. A great example for you is we host an event called Contentful at the Cinema. So we buy out AMCs all over the world and we host prospects and customers at a big movie premiere. So you mentioned Formula One. Formula One's a customer of ours. You know, we did it for Formula one, we've done it for Wicked. That's a big draw. And so what we did is started using geotagging just in the eyebrow of our website. So it'll say, hey, Austin, because it knows you're in Austin, you know, come check out content Pulta Cinema on, you know, February 26th. And we saw a 51% increase in engagement of getting attendees at these events just by simple geotagging. I mean, it's just, it's so simple. I can't stop saying the word simple because I think a lot of marketing teams overcomplicate it and that, that is what I think is going to be a huge unlock is if they can really do that.
- [16:14]
B
Wow, Okay. I want to dig in more on this because, I mean, I've been hosting podcasts, talking to C level leaders since 2017. So I've probably done 3,000, 3,500 different interviews. And I remember a time, it is a lot. I remember a time period where personalization was, I mean, nonstop. Everyone was talking about this and very complicated ways of personalizing it. And I never actually heard numbers because it feels like they were working so hard on the complexity of it that then I never heard like, well, did it work? Well, we'll get back to you after we figure out how to get all that data that we now have. And you know, it's hard to figure out what exactly, what exactly happened. So I love first of all the simplicity of what you're saying. Like, I think that in. It's a good life lesson in general with almost anything. But what are some other simple things that you did that, you know, had big movements like the geotagging.
- [17:10]
A
If you do any a B testing, right. There's so many different elements. You can test one ad against the other, but you can only test one element at a time, right? So maybe it's the headline, maybe it's the CTA button, maybe one, you know, for an ad, it's a person and this is a product. And so it's hard to get to the crux of what actually is the differentiator. So when it comes to our website, we really try to focus on really big buckets, right? So someone who has never been to our website before versus somebody that has. Another great example is we launched a brand campaign last year called Feeling so Contentful. So if you came to our website through a really cool Feeling so Contentful ad, someone looking zen and contentful yoga out, you then saw that same carry through of the brand looking that way and that Same messaging on the website as well. So what I think is interesting here is you're right. Like, I think marketers talked about personalization more as a journey they wanted to put, you know, prospects and customers on. And it's very much just this, a B testing, you know, does this work better than this? But they're, they're not thinking through the other aspects of places that maybe they feel uncomfortable personalizing. And so that's where we've seen that biggest momentum is really these bigger bucket comparisons and just making sure that they're different. Another fun one that we did for marketers was we updated our homepage banner to have lorem ipsum from and so people thought we had made a mistake, obviously. Like, oh my God, they have, you know, like buffer, buffer font there. And it was kind of like a haha like caught you go check out our personalization page. And we saw over 250% higher engagement on learning about personalization on our product page than we had ever seen before. All because we did just this, like funny catfish, you know, type banner on our homepage. And again, you only saw that if you're a marketer. If you came to our page and you're a developer, you did not see that. So how cool is that? I mean, we're seeing it. And this is every CMO that I talk to. I'm like, please let me share our story because if we can be an example for you, I can help you think through things, you know, a little bit differently. Same with our customers are doing it as well. Ruggable is a really. You mentioned ruggable in the intro. They're really great. They do it for pets. Like if you come through an ad by clicking on a cat, I'm a cat lady, you only see cats when you see their rugs. You would never see a dog. And they've seen a huge increase in conversion rates based on personalizing if you're a cat lover or you're a dog lover. And again, like, that's so simple, right? We're not even getting into the type of cats or how old your cats are, anything like that. It's like very simple. You're either this bucket or that bucket. And they've seen really great conversion results coming off of that.
- [20:01]
B
Have you had to unravel the complexity with some of your clients of and, and if so, like, what have you seen that people try to do with hyper personalizing where you were like, no, maybe none of that. Just do. Are you a cat or dog person?
- [20:16]
A
A lot of it Is honestly, I talk them through it as a matrix. Right. So if I ask them, are you using personalization today? You know, often it's no, because they don't know where to get started. And they start rattling off every possible combination of a route they could be taking. And it's like, well, I. I have these many products and I have this many Personas and I have this many segments and I have this many regions and there's, you know, all these different factors and I always just pause. Like, let's just pause. And again, like, giving our own examples really help enlighten them to. To think a little bit differently. And I think again, going back to AI, it all comes down to what are your goals, where you. And we're ultimately trying to convert and, you know, pass things over to sales and why not try new things? To be able to do that, especially with your website, is the one thing you own. Right? Like go own it and make changes to it and test and experiment and see if that's a place place I could help you.
- [21:07]
B
Okay, so what do you think about for, you know, I've heard a lot of conversations around website traffic going down. A lot of people are starting their journey in the LLMs. Some people now, at least in micro, are now just using their AI agents to go and do things for them and come back and the agents are executing on their behalf. How are you thinking about that when it comes to personalizing, you know, the website, knowing that maybe I might never make it there?
- [21:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, right now I treat an agent as another Persona. So a big part of what our team is focusing on is how are we creating content that LLMs can easily read and process. So we are ranking high in those searches while also serving a human who has that higher intent by the time they get to our website. So this is new for everyone. Right. Even that those algorithms are constantly changing, you know, now you can now advertise in these LLMs. What does that mean? It's all going to be new competitive space that we're all going to have to be, you know, fighting over to get. And I think it's really thinking about an agent or a bot as a new audience. And how are you creating the right content that's easy to read? Not as many tokens, you know, what are these different technical elements that are very different you probably have never had to think about when you're just creating your website, you know, for humans. And this is going to be a trend. Right. 2024 was the first year that bot traffic Surpassed human traffic. And that is just going to increase across the board. And so it is something that we need to be thinking about for sure. Yeah.
- [22:36]
B
I mean then they could use contentful, right? You guys can figure it out. Have it.
- [22:40]
A
We need a partner to figure that out. But it goes back to if, you know, if you, when you do come to the website, how great would it be to we know who you are and we know why you're there and here everything that you need to find, you know, for your tools to do that. Another great example of this is Nike for, you know, they, they produce tons of content for very specific use cases. And I think that's a really interesting tactic example that I give. I think it's the standard Google search in the past was six words and the standard search in an LLM is 37 or around those numbers. And I think about it for myself, it's like, okay, back in the day I would be like, Nike mom shoes. Like that's my Google search. And it's like, what is that? Right now I'm typing in, I'm in my 40s with four children. I live in the Bay Area. What type of shoes can I be? Hiking in the redwoods. That can easily transition to the playground in the afternoon. And lo and behold, Nike will have an article for that. I mean, it's like literally they're getting to the point of producing really great content for use cases because we need to again meet customer expectations. So our expectations are no longer generic six question searches. Our expectations are really detailed questions and now we have really detailed answers that are bubbling up.
- [23:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, this makes me think about, you know, the rise of voice search. And I don't really type much anymore. At least, I mean, when I think about if I'm in any of the LLMs. I mean, a lot of it I even have is like a whisper flow thing where I just hit shift space bar and then it just starts recording my voice and all of a sudden I can put it into anything. And so it feels like the searches are only going to get way, way longer because then I'm just on there talking about, well, this happened today and then that happened and this is my numerology. And then add in my astrology. Plus I'm a CEO. I'll tell you what shirt I should buy.
- [24:30]
A
Yeah, but it's funny though, but that to me is a behavioral thing. My husband, 100% a total voice guy. I'm not. I have maybe talked into it one time and I, yes, I am a hardcore Typer. I don't, I don't know what it is. So, yeah, I think it's going to be, are you a this person or are you going to be a verbal person or not? And I'm stuck in typing.
- [24:53]
B
Wow. I mean, I'm trying to move back into handwriting again because I saw this study that's very helpful for dementia. This is a total side note, but it was like this big study that happened in Japan and half the group that was handwriting in their journal didn't get dementia or Alzheimer's, and the other half, it was just typing and stuff. And on their iPads they did.
- [25:12]
A
So there's so many elements to that. We're a member of my team and I were chatting today about how, thinking about skills of the future, what will our kids, you know, inherently, just because they're just now, you know, ingrained in this technology, they don't know any different. Right. Like, for them, this is very different. But are they gonna miss out on really core skills from like, I'd say street smarts to, you know, like. Like, is there so much relying in technology that they're not going to have, you know, the right skills to. To, to do what they need to be doing?
- [25:47]
B
So, yeah, no, I definitely think about this too. I have four kids as well and I was trying to teach one of our kids cursive and I'm like, you haven't learned this yet? No one's teaching you this. Like, I step in and make sure this skill does not die.
- [26:00]
A
I don't think they teach it. My 8 year old, she tries to do like she sees it and she tries to do squiggly lines, but it doesn't translate. I don't think they teach it anymore.
- [26:11]
B
Yeah, and this could be a whole nother episode of how to think about marketing for the future, future generations. So, okay, when getting back to thinking about team structure, I know earlier you mentioned this of having a new role that is this. What was the role that you called it?
- [26:26]
A
We hired an AI engineer.
- [26:27]
B
What does this person do on your team?
- [26:30]
A
So many things. They're the problem solver. I mean, she came in and we're just like, solve all these problems for us. I think it's right now she's mentioned our company kickoff. You know, a couple weeks ago, she led an entire training for our team on how to build custom GPTs. And we prioritize what GPTs would be most beneficial to our team. And we broke out in teams and we build them and we did that all in an hour. Right. Like she led that effort but now she's going to carry those forward and really understand of those GPTs, you know, what are the data sources that need to be connected, where are areas that require maintenance versus this is one off. Where does this need to have more permissions broader to the entire company? I also look to her from just driving our AI culture. Where are we continuing to share and learn from each other? One of the things that I personally have found shocking with AI is just how one to one it is, you know, the ability to, you know, obviously there's AI and so many different tools but if you look at, you know, content creation, there's not a way right now to be co creating content or being in a conversation together with know, chatgpt and other teammates. And so what are, you know, you might prompt differently than I prompt. Where are we learning how to prompt? You know, like who, who says that's the right way to do it and what is the learning from it? So one of the things that we've done internally, we're Slack users, we create a Slack channel. It is all about an AI playground where we share the good, the bad and the ugly. And it's really great visibility. Perfect example I give is our go to market leader came into the company and said I created this amazing thing with AI where I can create what we call the NASCAR slide, right. It's the slide of all of our customers logos. And he's like those are so painful to create. Right. And making sure you get it right. He's like I used AI to create this in seconds. And then I was like this is amazing. And then I tagged in our customer marketing team like what do you think? And they're like none of these logos are approved. I'm like great. Like I'm glad we shared this. Right. So now a, you know, QAI engineer help us find a way to connect this to Salesforce. Salesforce has the approved logos. How can we be pulling from that data? So anyone create, you know, a NASCAR slide? That is correct, right. So but had he not shared that, that would have just gone out to maybe our entire field. You know, it could have been like a whole new enablement updating in our first call deck and it would have been wrong. And so that's what I think is really missing here is really driving a culture around AI and sharing and learning from each other similar to how I mentioned learning from other CMOs. I think teams need to empower that, that culture sharing as well.
- [29:05]
B
Yeah. Something an interesting shift. I'm Seeing just personally and then with my company is it's like non technical people are now kind of jumping into these more technical spaces. I mean, I'm even thinking about before this interview, I was working in cloud code, getting it into GitHub so my team member could also access the same dashboard that we were building. I don't know how to code. Claude was just telling me every time I'm like, I want you to do this. I was using my voice tool and I was just like, I would love revenue and connected my go high level and I was just saying everything I wanted and then it starts building it. But then I got stuck because I was like, oh wait, I want my team member Lacy to have this too. How do I do it? And then it told me it's like, oh, put it in GitHub, keep it secure. Like it was just telling me how to do everything. And it feels like I'm like, if I'm in there, feel like this is a general shift because I'm a one of one and I'm pretty sure everyone's doing what I'm doing. That's my assumption. But it feels like it's a shift of like people kind of getting their hands dirty in the weeds in a little bit more technical of a way than we've ever had to before. But also because we can, like we're able to get in there and get our hands dirty, which is also fun.
- [30:12]
A
Well, I think. But to your example, for me, you're using it as an assistant, right? It's like assisting you and how to do that. And I think that is what has been interesting is how do you view the AI that you're using it? Is it assisting you? This is where we talk a lot about really believing in the human in the loop and you know, where we believe, you know, if you look at what AI is not it, you know, it doesn't have morals, it doesn't have judgment, it doesn't have lived experiences. This is a place where we really focus on how important the human and the marketer is in the process. And it could untap so many new things for you. Like, you know, you probably did not expect yourself to be doing that, you know, even maybe a month ago. Right. But that doesn't mean that that has to end there either. Right. Like, what other ways can you use this to unlock new opportunities for you?
- [31:00]
B
So I'd love to hear more about your thinking around org chart design when thinking about bringing on new marketers or your team structure. Knowing that we talked A bit of the AI team member who is overseeing all the AI efforts within your team. But how else are you thinking about hiring this year, next year?
- [31:18]
A
Yeah. So one of the things that we also found in our report is a stack rank of skills that marketers find important. So in that order, it's data analysis, data, digital experience, design, personalization we've talked a lot about and then writing for AI tools. So this is something that we are thinking about. We feel there is a new type of marketer that's really emerging, which we call full stack marketer. So someone that brings together that evidence based creativity, they understand the role that they have. They are mastering, you know, prompt optimization, you know, using that data, thinking about the full experience. So I think that's unique. But what makes that unique actually is the soft skills that we should be hiring for, not necessarily the hard skills. So example for me is I've been thinking more about in my own panels or how we're thinking about interviewing candidates is learning how they're curious, how do they operate in ambiguity, what you know, really excites them to change differently. How, what is their exposure to data today and how are they using it? What can they be leveraging from their personal use case? For example, with AI, you know, one thing I often talk about is the more we use something in our personal life, the more we expect it in our work life. And AI is no different. If I think about when I first started using AI, I was coming back from maternity leave with my second or third kid. I don't remember too many children to count.
- [32:40]
B
It all gets blurry after.
- [32:41]
A
But I came back from mat leave and was my teammate was like I, I'm going to write a haiku about you in like five seconds. I was like, what is this thing? And but I used it in my personal life. It, it was, hey, here's all the random things in my fridge. You know, design me a recipe for dinner tonight. Right. And I think that that all has to do with this adoption. Right. So we're adopting things in our personal life, we're expecting in our work life and now we have access to so much more information. So for me I'm looking beyond the hard skills. I'm focused on the soft skills. And then similar to the AI engineer, that's a completely new role, know that we didn't know that we needed years ago. So I think it's a huge opportunity to be reevaluating your team in addition to figuring out where an agent could be a teammate as well.
- [33:22]
B
Yeah, I Love that. I love the focusing on the soft skills. How do you. So if I'm a new marketer right now, like, what other things would you be looking for to identify? Does this person have good soft skills?
- [33:32]
A
It's interesting. I mentor a lot of, you know, young females coming out of college, and they're trying to figure out, you know, one of the things I found interesting is how much they interview with AI and which I think honestly is kind of a poor candidate experience, if I'm being honest. You know, they're missing out on this human. I didn't even, like, think about that, but I get it. You know, companies are trying to get through candidates quickly. It was an interesting lens that I had learned about. We don't do that here at Contentful, but I think that's part of that human touch we want to maintain. So I. What I challenge anyone is just really looking back at their core set of skills. Skills and applying it to any aspect. Doesn't have to be work experience. If you're. You're new to, you know, up and coming in your career, you know, thinking about how you have stayed curious in other ways. Right. Whether, like, that was through school, what are certifications you could be getting? I think that's been really interesting is looking at trainings and certifications around AI. And I don't know, to be honest, that I have an exact opinion on what those are yet. But just seeing an effort that someone has been taking training or classes or is definitely investing in that learning, I think is really critical. And again, we do a lot with our own hiring process where we do require a formal presentation to a panel. We'd like to see the work in action of how they got there. And a big part of that is seeing how they can be curious and giving them a really great prompt to see that curiosity come out and how they would work within our team. So a lot of opportunity there too.
- [35:01]
B
Yeah, it's. It's really interesting. I was talking to some younger marketers and some just entering into college, some on their way out, and many of them I talked to were not really using, like, AI tools, and which I thought was very fascinating. And I'm like, wait, you haven't even tried to, like, experimented with these? So it feels like it'd be an easy way to win just by experimenting and, like, create a base for 44 app, just vibe, code something and be like, I saw your marketing looks like this. I saw one of your ads. Here's how I think you could make it better. And here's an app to show a dashboard. Like, I think it's so easy to win these days because you just can put in a little effort that I think no one else at least when I look at who applies to mission, we get like a thousand applications on a producer role and I'm like, I look at all of them, I'm like, had you just gone up like 1% more and sent me something, that actually would have been helpful. Like you would have gotten right through to an interview, but.
- [35:59]
A
Or even just showing how they got there, what was their thinking in that? Right. That's what I always like to focus on too. I mean, from our team, you know, this goes back to, we had mentioned, you know, there's this fear of AI replacing marketing roles. Right. Is it a content team, is a design team? Some cases, like yourself, maybe you have a smaller team and agents will work for you. You know, I'm coming backwards from a 90 person team, you know, like, I need those 90 people. And so it's more about, again, being intentional with AI, we really focus on AI being what we call like our crappy first draft. Right. Like maybe help you get started, but you need to put your true fingerprints on that. You need to have your own human creativity come through in what we're creating and tying that back to our brand guidelines. And I think that's really important, you know, how can you tie that back to these experiences with candidates to really understand, like, do they think that way? Where, where does AI come into their process? Is it starting? Is it finishing? Is it the whole thing? I think that'll be really enlightening for us to learn about this next generation of marketers for sure. Yep.
- [37:01]
B
Yeah, it'll be, yeah, an interesting time period to watch to try and figure out what is authentic from someone because, yeah, it just feels like it's going to keep getting harder until, you know, people all start doing the same thing again. Like, we saw it with the writing piece where then you're like, okay, obviously on LinkedIn, these, these are all AI written posts. But then they started getting better at outsmarting it. And I mean, even earlier I ran through this process with Gemini where I said, I took a screenshot from Pinterest of this infographic and I said, back into the design principles of this and then we're going to use Nano Banana or whatever and it told me, here's the design principles. Then I gave it my content that I wanted that I'd written up with AI and I said, okay, put this into the infographic and and then I uploaded another screenshot of a hand drawn thing. I said, I also like this design. And it took my content, did it in handwritten format, put in an infographic. And I was like, whoa, I'm actually blown away by myself by doing this. And it made me think. I'm like, how will people know anymore? As it keeps getting better and better, like, it feels like it'd be hard to know. Okay, was that actually from you? Did you actually hand write that? I mean, it looked like I did.
- [38:15]
A
I don't know. That will be.
- [38:16]
B
I'm gonna put it on LinkedIn too. Yeah, I'm gonna see how it does.
- [38:19]
A
I can't wait to see it.
- [38:19]
B
Thank you.
- [38:20]
A
I can't wait. I mean, we did something similar going back to that training we did at our, our kickoff, we did another training just focused on image creation. And so we trained the team on how to write very detailed prompts. I mean, like the depths of these prompts from like, I want this camera angle and this, you know, this type of lighting or what have you. And we had them produce everything from like an advertisement for paid media, you know, to some other type of like content piece. And it was crazy. We had everyone put it into a deck and we just kind of scrolled through them at the end to show them. So it was literally like 80 slides of 80 different possible ads. Right. And like you, you honestly could have published any of them. I mean, that's like how good it was. But the biggest thing was, is none of the model that we were using was trained on our brand guidelines. And so, yes, it looked cool. Yes. It did what the prompt said you wanted to do with some reason. Right. Like there was some trial and error to get that correct. But the importance of training these models on your brand guidelines, what is. It's everything from voice, like the tone of voice that you're having to visually, you know, where are things performing well or not? You know, that really needs to be a phase of that. So in some sense you were training it right? Like you were telling it all the things and you were giving it examples of what you wanted to pull from. And I think that's really important to do.
- [39:40]
B
Okay, I want to shift us over to the lightning round. If you're open to it.
- [39:45]
A
Let's do it.
- [39:46]
B
All right, that's where I'm going to ask you a question and you've got a minute or less to answer. Okay. Sound good?
- [39:51]
A
Yes.
- [39:52]
B
Okay, so you are two time cmo, correct?
- [39:57]
A
Yes.
- [39:58]
B
And you've got four kids under Eight.
- [40:00]
A
Yes.
- [40:01]
B
All right. So I think you've said that work moves in seasons. Some demand momentum, others demand judgment. How do you actually know which season you're in? This is just a question. So I know for myself.
- [40:14]
A
Oh, my gosh. I don't even know, honestly.
- [40:20]
B
I think until afterwards, you look back
- [40:21]
A
and you're like, afterwards? Yeah. I mean, you know, I look at it as, you know, my youngest right now is going through a sleep regression, and he is learning how to walk. He's 13 months, and it's very standard. Right. And he's not sleeping. He's, like, waking up at 3am he's teething. It's just like all the things, right. And it's really crushing my sleep. And I just have to remind myself this is a phase that he is going through and it's temporary. So I think it's more of less of how do I define the season and more how do I get through the season? And I think more about, you know, what am I really doing amazing in this season that I can continue to crush? What are areas for improvement? Where do I need to ask for help? That's a big area for me, is asking for that help. I, you know, like to do a lot of things myself. So it's more of less of the season. I'm in more. What's the mindset of that season and what do I need to move forward into the next one?
- [41:17]
B
Yep. That's so good. By the way. I mean, women, moms, we're so badass. Like, the fact that we can do all of this. I was saying this to my husband the other day. I'm like, the fact that you can lead a team or grow a company while being a mom, while going through hormones, having your psych, all these things, and the fact that we can still do it, I mean, mind blown.
- [41:40]
A
Well, I mean, I think motherhood makes us better leaders. I mean, just there's something really special about how our brains have changed. Our bodies have changed, like, good, bad, and ugly. Right. You know, I definitely still have mom brain, where I'm, like, completely blank, you know, mid sentence. But I think about it as the empathy that it has, you know, taught me that I brought, you know, back to my leadership team, how to be super organized. And I get the question more often than not of, how do you do it? You know, how are you a CMO who has four kids? You know, you must have an auntie. You must, like, they have all these assumptions, and what I tell everyone is, choose your own hard. There's this quote that is marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. You know, being fit is hard. Being obese is hard. Choose your hard. So my hard is not managing a bunch of tiny humans and all their needs. I'm good at that. Like that. Like, I'm good at logistics. I'm good at planning. I'm an over prepare, as we have already discussed. Right. You know, my hard is my parenting technique might be different than my husband's. And that, you know, leads to us trying to figure that out as parents. And that continues to evolve, you know, child over child, especially as they grow older. So anyways, I go back maybe to your season question of choose your own hard. And really, what's that hard for you and how do you identify that and move forward?
- [42:56]
B
I love that. That's so good. Okay, so you called 2026 a course correction year for marketing. So with that, if you had to give every CMO that was your friend one piece of homework for the next 30, 60 days, what would it be?
- [43:15]
A
So I would say two things. One is, let's just have some taste, like AI. This is output. Like no one's differentiated right now. So use your judgment, Use your lived experiences. And then the second thing is going back to personalization. You know, get comfortable being uncomfortable with personalization. Start simple. Start experimenting. You know, don't hold on to your homepage as if, you know, you can never touch it. Like, that's a place where people go first. So why not make that personalized to them would be my advice.
- [43:46]
B
What is a trend or a shift right now that you're watching closely? That has nothing to do with AI.
- [43:51]
A
I feel so out of the loop. I'm on a social media cleanse right now.
- [43:56]
B
So me, I have been too. I put a limit on myself because of all the Epstein stuff. I was like, I can't with this anymore.
- [44:02]
A
I need to get out of here. Beyond that, I did do the limit for the month of December. In January, I cold stopped. So I honestly feel so out of the loop that I, like, I don't even know what's trending right now. I'm like counting on my team to know what's trending and what's every, you know, what they need to be doing. I feel very lame in that aspect, but I feel way more grounded as a person.
- [44:23]
B
Yeah, I think this is a great answer. We can also not keep it if you don't like the answer. But I actually like, this is great. It's good.
- [44:31]
A
I mean, it's honest. My. Yeah, it's, you know, I'm a social media cleanse. It's working for me. I, at this point, I feel like I'm very blindsided to trends right now, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
- [44:43]
B
Nope, I like it. What is a book or, or a podcast that you think that everyone should tune into or read?
- [44:50]
A
You know what's really funny is our entire senior leadership team just read the five dysfunctions of a team. And this is a book written in like the 70s. And it was so eye opening to reread that and apply it to today in the work that we're doing. And we did a really great training on that for our management team. And the bottom pillar is all about trust. And, and I just think trust is so interesting right now in so many aspects, from the trust and boulder that CMOs carry in the trust of their brand every day. But how that needs to be a shared responsibility across all go to market to the trust or lack of trust with AI. I mean, to the trust of how your teams are working together. So anyways, it's, you know, old news, but, you know, re re light coming to it. And so, yeah, I thought it was good to re energize on these different pillars to make up a team to have us better work together.
- [45:47]
B
Oh, that's cool. Okay. So did you all do a book club together or what did that?
- [45:51]
A
Well, we did a whole training around it. We, we brought in an external trainer. It was required for everyone to read the book ahead of time. We did a self assessment on where we felt we were at within the five dysfunctions and then we focused the ones we were on in the worst. And there's still work to be done. This is never a training that is one and done. And so how do we continue to focus on this in our management trainings? Moving forward is something that we're committed to as a leadership team. But yeah, it was a four, I would say a voluntold book club. You know, like everyone had to read it before coming to the training, but I, I found it very refreshing and grounding. Quick read. And also just gives you a lot of perspective on social media. So many different aspects of a business and the role that individuals play.
- [46:36]
B
Okay, last question. And this one comes from Reddit. There was all these threads and conversations happening where people were talking about their martech stack and how I remember a couple people basically saying, like, I've got, you know, 15 tools and 12 of them overlap. How would you as a marketer think about this? Looking at your marketing tech stack, like, how do you find the things too quickly? Okay, we don't need that anymore. What does auditing that look like? And you can have more than a minute on this one.
- [47:03]
A
You're opening up a can of worms here. Okay, so a couple things to think about the tech stack. One, this was surprising in the research. We actually had a question on this in the research and it found that the sweet spot for a tech stack is six to seven tools. I was at a dinner in New York with a bunch of CMOs around a table and you had one person saying, oh my gosh, that's not enough. I have 30. You had someone else sitting next to me saying, oh my gosh, that's too many. So I think it's very, you know, unique to your needs of the business. And for us it's something that we do take seriously. You know, we actually just did and we're working through an audit right now with our Marops team as well as with our IS team of where are we trying to actually invest and where are we trying to make sure that we are seeing those results? And if not, what does that mean for us? Another example, I had mentioned qualified earlier. We just, you know, are doing more with qualified recently and I made a point on a sales call today, like, hey, listen, marketing's investing in this. We're trying to make you, you know, take some things off your plate. What does that mean for how you are then going to perform better? Like, let's put a goal around that. Let's, let's be measuring this. This goes back to data, right? How that data can form it. So I think it's just staying consistent with reviewing and evaluating. Also most sharing. I joke with a lot of CMOs, but I really want to do this. I want to host a closed door session with like a handful of CMOs of just like show us your tech stack and everyone like an open Komodo, like let's just show everything and like let's question it and why do you do this and why do you do that? And a lot of CMOs are open to that. I really just need to put it on the calendar.
- [48:38]
B
Why don't we do it?
- [48:38]
A
Yeah, I think we should.
- [48:40]
B
Yeah. I mean I've actually wanted this. Some of the best content clips from our episode is when I've had CMOs dive into their tech stack. So the market readiness and they want this content. It's there.
- [48:52]
A
Exactly. Yes, I'm into it.
- [48:54]
B
Well, Elizabeth, this has been awesome. Thank you for coming on marketing trends. Where can people learn more about you and what you're working on at Contentful thank you Stephanie.
- [49:02]
A
This is a really great conversation and I'm leaving super energized, so I appreciate you. For anyone that is looking at how we personalize our website, please go ahead and head to contentful.com or come follow me or connect on LinkedIn and let's stay more connected.
- [49:16]
B
Amazing. Thanks Elizabeth.