Why great marketing is like baking Cookies

Summary

MarTech Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: Why great marketing is like baking Cookies
Date: June 22, 2026
Host: Benjamin Shapiro
Guest: Amanda Cole, CMO of Bloomreach

---

Episode Overview

This episode of the MarTech Podcast explores the evolving landscape of modern marketing through the metaphor of baking cookies. Host Benjamin Shapiro and guest Amanda Cole unpack the shift from channel-centric, demand generation tactics to a more holistic, customer- and brand-centric approach, especially in the era of AI. Amanda shares actionable insights from the CMO’s perspective, reflecting on how teams and playbooks are being re-written, and why experimentation—and even “burning a few batches”—is essential today.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Marketing and the Cookie Metaphor

• Like baking cookies, marketing today requires intentionality about “ingredients”—campaigns, channels, data, and creativity.
• The old approach of optimizing individual channels is likened to focusing on one ingredient (like baking soda) and expecting a great cookie. Instead, the blend and balance are what matter.
  • [02:51] Amanda Cole: “That mix of ingredients coming together is actually how you deliver that strategy in marketing... You’ve got to pull together the right kinds of campaigns, the right mix of channels, the right amount of data and intelligence in order to deliver that unique, delicious experience.”

2. The Danger of Channel Optimization & Over-indexing on Demand Gen

• Optimizing one channel at a time does not create a cohesive experience; modern marketing success hinges on the total brand journey.
• Historic over-focus on acquisition is “ruining our brands” by neglecting deeper customer relationships and retention.
  • [05:49] Amanda: “For a very long time, we’ve been focusing so much on acquisition, and I think focusing on acquisition is what’s ruining our brands... It really is about delivering a great experience in the product... and in the entire lifecycle around that customer.”

3. AI’s Role: From Channel to Customer Optimization

• AI enables marketers to move past channel-level tweaks to tailoring experiences at the individual customer level, at scale.
  • [07:14] Amanda: “What AI is going to unlock for us is that you don’t have to optimize by channel, you can actually optimize by customer... AI is allowing us to do that at an individual level.”

4. The Brand vs Attribution Shift

• Obsession with attribution largely served as “marketing talking to the CFO,” but tells little about what drives true, sustainable business growth.
• The least trackable yet most important channel is word of mouth—the sign of a truly loved and growing brand.
  • [09:07] Amanda: “Attribution has been a kind of bullshit metric... If we go back to the first principles and we say, how do I grow my business, how do I get customers who stay longer, how do I improve my LTV... the number one channel for all of us is actually the least trackable channel, word of mouth.”

5. Modern Buyer Journeys & the Importance of Brand

• Buyers arrive at brands already informed by LLMs and community validation; so much of the funnel is “already baked” before tracked website interactions begin.
• Companies that invested in brand pre-AI are thriving, as authority is being leveraged by LLMs, further strengthening their position.
  • [11:27] Amanda: “Especially in B2B, brand is not a campaign... it is a representation of who our customers are when they buy from us.”

6. The Pressure Cooker CMO

• The CMO role is undergoing a high-pressure transformation: expected to scale new technologies, maintain or exceed targets, and guide teams through major change—often with the same resources and on tight timelines.
• AI is exposing weaknesses in inherited systems and processes, and while it unlocks some capabilities, it can also “ruin the customer experience” if not implemented thoughtfully.
  • [12:57] Amanda: “...if we didn’t have all this baggage, we probably could leverage this new tech and actually move a lot faster. But... most of us have established systems and infrastructures and teams that we need to bring along this transformation.”

7. Metrics for the New Marketing Era

• Growth remains the key outcome metric, but future success is indicated by customer-centric measures: LTV, NRR, product usage.
• New leading indicators include citations, brand authority, user engagement, and community sentiment, rather than sheer web traffic or leads.
  • [16:29] Amanda: “The best bellwether... is are we growing revenue with our existing customer base?... increasing LTV or NRR... making sure that you’re delivering value for your customers.”

8. Loneliness and Experimentation: The Modern Marketing Kitchen

• With no set playbook, CMOs must experiment, often feeling “alone in a strange kitchen.”
• There’s essential value in allowing for failed experiments (burned cookies) as the best path forward is discovered.
  • [22:10] Amanda: “It feels like you’ve gone to somebody else’s house and you’re in some kind of time challenge to bake, and you have no idea where anything is... The kitchen’s probably gonna be real messy.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On baking and marketing:
  • Amanda Cole [03:16]: “That mix of ingredients coming together is actually how you deliver that strategy in marketing.”
• On channel optimization:
  • Amanda [04:04]: “It needs to be the appropriate amount of mix for the total brand experience that you’re trying to deliver...”
• On acquisition obsession:
  • Amanda [05:49]: “Focusing on acquisition is what’s ruining our brands... you need to earn that customer over and over and over again.”
• On AI’s promise:
  • Amanda [07:14]: “You can now look at every single individual human being... and we can actually optimize specifically for them.”
• On attribution’s real value:
  • Amanda [09:07]: “Attribution has been a kind of bullshit metric because it’s marketing trying to figure out how do I talk to my CFO...”
• On loneliness in marketing:
  • Amanda [19:32]: “Now we’re in the middle of rewriting that playbook, and we’re all trying and testing different things... it does feel a bit lonely these days.”
• On experimental grace:
  • Ben Shapiro [22:25]: “There needs to be some grace here for experimentation, trial, and also failure. Sometimes you’re going to burn the cookies. It’s okay.”

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:51] Amanda explains the core cookie metaphor for marketing.
• [04:04] Why channel optimization (like an unnecessary ingredient) misses the point.
• [05:49] - [07:14] The limitations of channel optimization and need for a customer-centric approach, enabled by AI.
• [09:07] Amanda’s frank take on attribution and the need to focus on word-of-mouth and customer value.
• [11:27] The definition of brand in B2B and B2C in the AI paradigm.
• [12:47] The “pressure cooker” CMO and digital transformation challenges.
• [16:29] Amanda outlines growth metrics that matter in the new world.
• [19:32] The loneliness and uncertainty facing modern marketing leaders.
• [22:25] The value and necessity of experimentation (and permission to fail).

---

Lightning Round Highlights

• [23:16] Less-useful metrics: B2B leads, B2C database size.
• [23:53] Phrase to ban from AI keynotes: "AI"—since it’s now simply marketing.
• [24:55] Advice: Stop treating content/search as a volume game; personalize for natural-language, one-person queries.
• [26:16] Human skill that becomes more valuable with AI: emotion and human connection.
• [27:43] Technology will converge; human relationships and brand connection will set companies apart.
• [27:52] Where Amanda finds information: Emily Kramer (MKT1), Allie Miller (Instagram AI influencer), NotebookLM for organizing and debating research, and of course, Claude.
• [30:05] Fun AI builds: Internal calculators, share-of-voice tools—experimenting and learning even from failed prototypes.

---

Takeaways

• The future of marketing lies in blending channels and data with customer connection and brand strength, not isolated channel optimization.
• AI is transformative but exposes foundational problems; winning brands are those that combine technological adoption with deep, consistent customer experience.
• The CMO role demands adaptability, courage to experiment, and a focus on relationships—not just metrics.
• In the AI era, marketing’s human elements—emotion, motivation, community—are more crucial than ever.
• There’s shared vulnerability—even top marketers are learning and improvising as the playbook is re-written.

---

Final Quote

• Amanda Cole [32:55]: “You need a good thing.” (in response to giving yourself permission to burn a few batches—i.e., try, fail, and try again.)

---

This episode offers an honest, insightful look at the real pressures, metaphors, and approaches modern marketers must embrace—not just to keep up, but to meaningfully lead in the next era of business growth.

Transcript

[A]

The Martech 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.

[B]

From advertising to software as a service to data across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising. Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. We're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action.

[C]

Then it's just a matter of timing.

[A]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that you technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech podcast. Benjamin Shapiro

[B]

71% 71% of marketers expect content demand to grow by 5x in the next year. For the first time in history, marketers can generate unlimited campaigns, emails, landing pages and customer journeys all on demand. AI is making the unimaginable possible, but most marketing teams can't keep up with the pace of change. The bottleneck isn't production anymore, it's coordination. So what's the recipe for blending the art of marketing with the science of AI? I'm Benjamin Shapiro and today we're talking with Amanda Cole, the CMO of Bloom Reach, about what the next era of marketing looks like with the customer journey. The marketing team structure and the decision making process have all changed. Amanda, welcome to the Martech Podcast.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

Excited to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us. We've got a fun topic today. Let's start off by saying everything we're going to talk about is about baking cookies. Let's start off with what is your experience baking?

[C]

It's very bad. I do not bake because there's too many rules and you have to be very specific in what you include and how much of it and I would rather cook than me.

[B]

Well, well there you go. Now you gave the recipe. I I am great at chocolate chip crescent rolls with the Pillsbury Crescent rolls that my kids eat in the morning and that's about the end of my experience. But the reason why I wanted to ask you about baking is we're going to make the metaphor here, the comparison of why modern marketing is like baking cookies. So, so dive in here and tell me why marketing today is like baking cookies.

[C]

I think it is like baking cookies or maybe even like cooking, if we go that far. But I'll stay with the metaphor of baking cookies because you have to be intentional about the ingredients that you, that you pull in, like we talked about. And actually when you think about what the differentiation is, whether you're doing a white chocolate macadamia or a chocolate chip or maybe, maybe some caramel sea salt or something. I eat a lot of cookies, clearly, I just don't bake them.

[B]

An expert in some regard. Go ahead.

[C]

That mix of ingredients coming together is actually how you deliver that strategy in marketing. And so as CMOs and leaders in marketing, we've got to pull together the right kinds of campaigns, the right mix of channels, the right amount of data and intelligence in order to deliver that unique, delicious experience.

[B]

Look, there's this fundamental change in how marketing and the world is operating these days and I think we're all struggling to figure out what the playbook is. And one of the things that we've seen is that people think about channel optimization as sort of a discrete one off thing. Let's go back to our cookie metaphor and talk to me about why optimizing individual channels doesn't work for modern marketing today and why it's like cookies.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, let's, let's talk about baking soda. For the longest time, I didn't want to put baking soda in a cookie any time I made it because I don't think baking soda tastes good. I know it makes your refrigerator smell better, but it, it just felt like an unimportant ingredient. And then my, my son, who's actually a science major, was describing to me the purpose of baking soda and why it matters and how it actually adds consistency and texture and things to your, to your baked goods, which makes sense, actually. So now I, now I included if and when. They're very rare times that I bake. But when you think about channels, we oftentimes think about them as that single ingredient. How do I, how do I think about email or ads or SMS as this singular ingredient? But the reality is it needs to be the appropriate amount of mix for the total brand experience that you're trying to deliver in order for that customer who is not just an email customer or an SMS customer or is only finding out about you on ads, but it needs to be part of a holistic experience in which they're interacting with your brand.

[B]

Yeah, optimizing one channel at a time feels like the wrong way to think about growth. And I think that we're coming out of this era where everything that we've done was always about demand generation. And you could look at an individual campaign, an individual creative, and you can optimize the shit out of it.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

And the problem is that doesn't create a cohesive experience. And now the world has changed, and it seems like that experience really matters. Matters more. What is it about sort of the. The AI version of marketing or the world that we live in, that means that the customer journey needs to be more cohesive.

[C]

Yeah. And I think I'll. I'll actually even back up a little bit. I think for a very long time, we've been focusing so much on acquisition, and I think focusing on acquisition is what's ruining our brands. CMOs, who are very, very focused on the next thing and the next customer, or CEOs or chief digital Officers or C. Whatever you want to call it, are so focused on acquiring the next customer that we're not thinking about what does it take to actually earn the customers that we have. Because you need to earn that customer over and over and over again. And it's not about ad spending or optimization or tweaking this or tweaking that. It really is about delivering a great experience in the product that ultimately the customer is purchasing, but then also in the entire lifecycle around that customer. AI can tremendously help with that. But the reality is, right now, we've been so focused on acquisition, and that is where the focus remains. How can I use AI to acquire more customers? And I think that's a dangerous starting point.

[B]

Yeah. When I think about the channel mix and how it's changed, I actually think that really gets into our next cookie metaphor, which is how do you know when you have the right recipe? How do you know when you have the right ratios? What works today? What's the combination for, how the buyers actually search, which gets the right consistency of batter or whatever. Cookie metaphor. I'm really forcing this one. Go ahead.

[C]

That's it. Well, every time we say cookies, you have to take a drink.

[B]

Cheers.

[C]

Yeah. I think that what AI is going to unlock for us is that you don't have to optimize by channel, you can actually optimize by customer. And so we can now look at every single individual human being. Not contact id, not record in our database, but every single human being that we know and understand as a brand and we can actually optimize specifically for them. And AI is going to allow us to do that. It already is allowing us to do that at tremendous scale. So I can treat an individual in a digital ecosphere in exactly the same personal way that I would in the human ecosphere. And where pre AI we kind of were getting there with micro segments and smaller audiences and those kinds of things and technology was helping us get there to a certain extent. AI is allowing us to do that at an individual level.

[B]

Yeah, I think that in the pre AI era, our cookies had too much flour and they were dry as hell. We were just absolutely over indexing on demand generation, on attribution, on what can be counted and we totally under indexed on the things that people love, which is butter and chocolate. And yes, our cookies were plentiful and God, forget the cookie metaphor for a second. We did a ton of marketing and we optimized the crap out of everything. I don't think any of the people actually like the buyer experience. And I'll even go down to like B2B and go to sales where it was like the SDR and the qualification and then the connection to AE and the, you know, it's like all this to just get a demo to see what the product is. Now all of that stuff seems to be going away. So when you think about channel mix today and we're moving away from this attribution at all costs, you know, everything must be measured or it doesn't count. And it seems like there's the shift back towards brand. How do you sort of find the right recipe between what can and can't be tracked?

[C]

Yeah, and I, I mean everything can be tracked. Right? But the, but it's, what are we tracking for everything. Everything can be tracked. I mean we're, they're listening to us right now. But the, the. I think for a very long time attribution has been a kind of bullshit metric because it's, it's marketing trying to figure out how do I talk to my cfo? Like, how do I translate marketing language into words that my CFO can understand so that I can get more, more budget? And we all know, we've all been there, we can all make a report, say whatever, whatever we want to make it say. So if we go back to the first principles and we say, how do I grow my business, how do I get customers who stay longer, how do I improve my ltv? And we think about the number one channel for all of us actually the least trackable channel, that's infuriating. Word of mouth. How do I build a tribe of customers who are stuck with me so much that they're willing to help expand my brand. That's when you know that you have the right mix of experience of activation of brand marketing. And it's, it's not an easy CFO metric, but there's definitely ways to, to help your CFO understand the value of that. When you think about ltv, when you think about referral based, there's lots of tools that help you track and measure referrals from customers, repeat customers, lifetime value, as I mentioned.

[B]

Yeah, we're in this funny spot now where because most buyers rely on LLMs for their research and then they go and they validate the LLM research with community, they basically show up decided. And so by the time they're getting to your website and there's a click that can be cookied and tracked and nurtured, the process is done. And so to me it's kind of like we're in this era where like the, the batter is already made and all we're doing is put in the oven. A lot of it has to do with how good is your brand. And it seems like the companies that invested in brand in the pre AI era and have that muscle built and have that authority, like all of that is being grabbed by LLMs. And so we're seeing this shift in terms of the brand centric and the relationship centric. Brands are tending to operate and perform very well on the marketing side. And the ones that were pure demand gen are really struggling. Are you seeing the same thing?

[C]

Absolutely. And the reason, especially in B2B brand is not a campaign. And in B2B you often see brand as a campaign. In B2C you, you see that brands are these things that customers live and breathe. It's part of their identity. They wear something proudly or they own something that means a lot to them because there's identity and community in brand. And in B2B we, we, we forsake that we make brand a campaign. We don't think about what does this mean as identity, as community is how does this define the people who are our customers when they say that they are a customer of Bloomreach, what does that mean about them and who they are? And so brand is not a marketing metric. Brand is a, I think a company metric that the product team has to care about. The sales team, the marketing team, the engineering team. Like it is something that we live and breathe because it is a representation of who our customers are when they buy from us.

[B]

I want to talk to you a little bit about what it means to be a CMO today. And it seems like going back to our cookie metaphor, CMOS are being asked to switch from a gas oven to an electric one. Right. We're, we're being told, don't use the old playbook now, use AI to do everything. What does that feel like and how is it affecting the role of the cmo?

[C]

Yeah, and it's actually more akin to a pressure cooker, I think, where it's like you're really, you're really feeling it and you better cook fast.

[B]

Well played.

[C]

But I mean, I, I think that, that this is like any, any technology transformation. There's a very high level of understanding of what is possible with the technology and a very limited understanding of the, that you have to fix in order for that technology to work. And so we're seeing the collision of those two realities come to play, that, that if we didn't have all this baggage, we probably could leverage this new tech and actually move a lot faster. But the reality is most of us have established systems and infrastructures and teams that we need to bring along this transformation. And so I think that the natural result right now is to just apply AI to a problem. And what that's doing is exposing the messy infrastructure and it's really kind of highlighting some of the challenges that we have organizationally. You were talking about enterprise software sales cycles. We all hate that cycle getting. You have to fill out a demo request form and then you talk to somebody on the phone and then it takes you three more calls before you ever actually see the platform. And by the time you see it, you're like, I'm over it. I don't want to, I don't want to do this. That has to change immediately. We see that happening in a huge way with AI startups coming in. You're validated as an AI company. If your software is easy to use and I can access it and interact with it immediately, how we do that and make that transformation happen is going to have to be done with AI. But I can also tell you that there are a lot of use cases where we're applying AI, where we're actually ruining the customer experience. And that balance is where I think CMOs need to be spending most of their time.

[B]

You mentioned the pressure cooker effect, and I'm imagining that that is the CEO saying, putting downward pressure and saying, use AI. We have to be AI driven. You can be better, you can be more efficient. Here's the tool. Go get em. It's a bunch of sugar. Just pour it on top of the cookies. It'd be great. And then the CFO is saying, great, show me performance metrics. And so you're building things that are new. You're trying to experiment, to do things a different way, but you're asking to be doing it better than what is tried and true. And to me, that's where the pressure comes in. Am I imagining that? Is there still the same pressure from the cfo? And does the coo, did the two of them need to get in a room and talk about what the recipe should be?

[C]

Yeah, I think it's a. You're, you're exactly right. It's, it's the. I need to try and do new things. But the ask is try and do new things with the budget that you have and make sure you don't miss the targets that you already have. So I need to have time to try and do new things with the same budget that I already have. And then the speed at which I need to transform has to be pretty fast. So I need to learn and pivot really, really quickly. And by the way, bring my entire organization along in a process that likely is redefining their job. And they're starting to clue in like, if we make this transformation, what's going to happen to me and my role? So you've got to then paint the vision for what the future of your organization looks like all in like the next three days.

[B]

But, but just ask Claude to do it right?

[C]

Well, you know, it's, Claude does help a tremendous amount.

[B]

And what Claude giveth, sometimes Claude taketh away. You know, it's like counting empty calories. I guess I'm trying to force a cookie metaphor. How do you know? How do you know when your cookies are done? How do you evaluate success now when the old metrics are breaking down?

[C]

Yeah, the metric is always going to be growth. And I, I think that a very, very important metric that we should be focused on is growth from our customers. It shouldn't. We. We. Growth at large is really easy metric. Are we growing as a company? But I think the best bellwether for whether or not we're doing the right things to give us long term success and to build a brand is are we growing revenue with our existing customer base? And I think the marketers that are focused on that increasing LTV with their customers or in the B2B world, NRR with their customers and really making sure that you're delivering value for your customers, I think you will, you will be okay.

[B]

Yeah. But I understand that growth is the metric that we're all looking at. And that's how we're being evaluated as marketers. Right. Is the business growing? But the leading indicators are totally different. Right. We're not looking at traffic as whether future growth is coming. Right now we're looking at things like citations and brand authority. What are the metrics that you or the customers that you work with are using to try to understand what's coming down the pipeline as the buyer journey has changed?

[C]

Yeah, in B2B, it's definitely those higher level metrics like you talked about. So are we showing up in AEO and geo? I think that's what a lot of us in the CMO world are certainly trying to figure out. And how do we do that effectively? And there's certainly positive trends happening in that space. We're finding that the ability to create and publish web pages is a lot easier. Not using the CMS is likely more beneficial to you than maybe what some of the old site structures users are. How you show up in G2 and Reddit, that that's obviously a consistent piece of feedback, but that's highly tied to what your customers actually think about you and what they say about you online. So it does kind of connect back to that, to that customer experience. And then you look at the, the next level of metrics, like are we actually in B2B? Are we generating the leads and the conversations and the meetings that are that our sales team needs to be having. And another metric I think is really important for customers or for marketers, excuse me, in B2B is are our customers using our product? And those are real time metrics that you can look at and say how often are our customers logging in, interacting, getting value? What does our support ticket look like? And those don't feel like normal marketing metrics, but they're absolutely things again, that give you an indication of how well aligned you are with the market and with your ICP and where things are headed. On the B2C side, we see a lot of customers talking about repeat purchase or you know, how win back is going. How are we actually doing in total order volume? So there are certainly early stage metrics that still connect back to revenue that are super important for marketers to pay attention to.

[B]

It seems like the kitchen's a lonely place right now. What's it like to be a CMO when you're asked to be using different tools, using different ingredients, if you will. You know, when you're sitting in that seat, is it any different than what the world was like before? Or am I imagining you know, being in a kitchen baking cookies on your own, it is.

[C]

I think. I think it is really hard right now because, as you said, the playbook was kind of written, and so we all. We all did the same thing. There were some variances, certainly very cool campaigns. But how you did the work or how you baked the cookies or the ingredients that you use were all pretty similar. And now we're in the middle of rewriting that Playbook, and we're all trying and testing different things, and we almost don't even have time to really connect with each other and talk about what's working and what's not working, what cookies failed or. Or what do we think ended up tasting really good. And. And then you add to that layer that the competitors and what you hear from your CEO and your CFO about, apparently every competitor in the world is moving faster and doing better than you are. And so it does feel like you're left behind or you're not smart enough or you actually don't really know what you're doing. And it does feel a bit lonely these days.

[B]

It's funny, I sit, you know, in my home office half the time. Half the time, 95% of the time, I'm running three Claude projects at the same time, trying to build some sort of feature, and I always feel like I have no idea what I'm doing because I'm not an engineer, but now all of a sudden, I'm pretending to be one, and I can't imagine what that's like. When you're working at a company and responsible for managing a team, doing this at a larger scale. You know, I walk outside and I show friends and family, hey, there's this thing I built. And they're like, you're one of the more advanced AI users that I've met. And I'm sitting here all day long being like, I'm an idiot. I don't know how any of this stuff works. Magnify that by 10. If you're a CMO and doing this at scale, am I the only one that's feeling this level of pressure?

[C]

No, not at all. I mean, this is. This is all day, every day. You think you've unlocked something really, really cool, and then you meet somebody way cooler, and you're like, oh, shit, I've got. I've got so much Runway that I still need. Need to grow.

[B]

Going back to the cookie metaphor, honestly, it feels like all of us are not only trying to bake a new recipe in cookies, it feels like most of us are trying to bake a new recipe. We're also doing it in somebody else's kitchen. Like, the playbook is that different where, like, the tools and the stove and every little thing. We have to sort of rethink how we're going to do it. And it's interesting how some people just naturally gravitated because they have a process and understanding of what it feels like to do what they want to do. And if you're trying to figure out your infrastructure the first time or if you had bad IG and before, you're gonna have some problems creating the new recipe as well.

[C]

Yeah, I think that's a very fair comparison. It feels like you've gone to somebody else's house and you're in some kind of time challenge to bake, and you have no idea where anything is. And so you've just gotta start running through cabinets and counters and drawers and throwing stuff around. And so the kitchen's probably gonna be real messy.

[B]

Yeah. And that's. Honestly, that's part of it is like we're all experimenting and trying to figure out what works. And it's okay to open the drawers a couple times and spend a little time taking inventory and looking at what you have. Hopefully the CFO and the CEO are pressuring you that much where they're expecting the same output at the same pace. There needs to be some grace here for experimentation, trial, and also failure. You know, sometimes you're going to burn the cookies. It's okay.

[C]

That is true. You need a good thing.

[B]

All right, Amanda, Mercifully, we're going to leave the cookie recipe behind here, and we're going to move on to our lightning round where I'm going to ask you a couple of Martech related questions, stuff about your career, maybe even a little brand strategy and AI. Are you ready?

[C]

I'm ready.

[B]

I think what's the biggest marketing metrics that executives obsess over that matters way less than they think?

[C]

Probably. I mean, on B2B, I would say probably leads in B2C, probably database size.

[B]

Database size. It's a bicep measuring contest, if you will. How big is your database? I think it's. And how we get that in podcasting all the time, which is. How many downloads do you get? I'm like, you know, getting a download is a file on a device. It's not a listener. It's not a listen. There's a lot of bad metaphors. I'll stay away from them. Why don't we just move on to the next Question. If you could ban one phrase from every AI marketing keynote, what would it be?

[C]

Probably AI. I mean it just is marketing. I mean you can't. You. I. AI has been embedded in marketing for a very long time. We've used models and predictions and optimization. That is at least some version of AI. Generative AI certainly changed the game. Large language models have made a really big difference on what, how applicable AI is and the power of it. But I do think we should stop saying AI.

[B]

Yeah, it's kind of like saying, oh, we're going to do some mobile marketing. That's just called marketing now. Everybody's on their phones all the time. You don't have to say the mobile part. Yeah.

[C]

Or like get on the Internet or

[B]

I don't know, I'm going to log on. My favorite one or least favorite I should say is democratize.

[C]

Uh huh.

[B]

Right. Like we're democratizing cookies in this podcast. You got to be killing me. I cannot stand democratize. That needs to go away and never show up in a keynote. You're just doing marketing. Okay, let's move on to the next one. What's one thing marketers should stop doing immediately now the AI search is changing discovery.

[C]

Well, I do think that one thing, maybe not that they should stop doing, but one thing that we absolutely have more of a benefit of doing is understanding the natural language questions that, that customers and prospects have and our ability to respond to and create content for those questions is exponentially greater than ever before. So stop thinking about pages and content in context of that metric we were talking about earlier, which is number of visitors, because you can actually create a page that's valid for one person and that's okay. So I, I guess that's what I would say. Stop thinking about search in terms of volume.

[B]

For me, this is your chance to build a brand like every marketer now has the opportunity to say, you know what, the world is changing, it's upside down. Instead of me having to be all demand focused all the time, we're going to rebalance our marketing budget and we're going to get to this healthy brand and demand mix as opposed to totally over indexing on performance marketing. If there's a time to take advantage of the opportunity to rebalance and have a healthier marketing program, build things that are going to become compoundingly more valuable over time. Brand content, strategy, media. I'm biased. That's what people should be doing. What's the most human skill that becomes more valuable as AI gets more better?

[C]

We, we talk about this A lot like it's. It is emotion and human connection and really like understanding the unsaid underlying fears, motivators, the things that have been core to marketing and marketing strategy for a really long time. Genuinely understanding at a human emotional level what motivates someone to do something and make a change. That that is going to be the super skill for marketers in the future.

[B]

Do you remember the movie or it used to be a play. Chicago.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, the song goes, give them the old razzle dazzle. That's it, right? Like you have to be able to present yourself as a human and be entertaining and be engaging because everything is human. Karaoke. That's what all marketers are going to become. Right? We're just marionettes on a string where we sing and dance. Maybe I'm just conflating my experience as a podcast host, but like, if you can't have human emotion and communicate what you're doing, none of that is going to carry over. And I think that what makes brands actually identifiable and unique and valuable today is the human connection. So give them the old razzle dazzle.

[C]

I agree. And I think from a technology perspective, I think technology is going to become very, very, very similar. I think it'll be harder to differentiate, so it will come down to the relationships of the people at those companies.

[B]

I 100% agree. Okay, last question for you. Tell me the places where you go to get information that makes you one of the top marketers in the world.

[C]

I have so many. Claude actually is a great resource for helping you find resources. Obviously, the Martech podcast. Emily, stop, stop. Go on, please tell me more. Emily Kramer from she does MKT1 is A. Is a great publication with frameworks and different tips and tricks. There's an AI influencer named Ali who does a ton of stuff on Instagram that I love because it's short.

[B]

An AI influencer, as in not a real person.

[C]

No, sorry. She's an influencer in AI.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

AI influencer. Allie Miller is a real person who talks a lot about AI. And then there's Natalie from corporate, who's. So I guess I have a lot of Instagram examples now that I'm thinking about it.

[B]

You're on Insta. You're on Instagram consuming a lot of marketing content. That's actually the most interesting thing to me.

[C]

I got to the top, don't you know? But there, there really is. There is a ton of information. And I do think expanding your ability to consume. Claude really does. And actually a notebook LLM is another thing. That I use because as I get the sources from Claude and pull in and I'm able to capture and summarize where, where things are at least high level interesting, I can then double click and go into more detail and I store and actually organize my research in NotebookLM.

[B]

Tell me more about that NotebookLM as your database essentially for research. How are you using it?

[C]

Yeah, it's awesome because you can pull all the different topics you can organize in folders by projects you can query and have conversations and essentially almost a digital twin version of yourself that you can debate with based on the context sources that you pull into NotebookLM. And so Claude from a, from a. I. I am obsessed with Claude. I. You, I am. I. The first thing I log into every day is Claude. And most of the people I know, it's, it's the same. And so like identifying those sources, having questions, getting information, identifying thought leaders or posts or articles that, or even books that I should be reading and then the ones that, that I want to keep track of or be able to reference and go back on and include in in my thought process, those get stored in different project folders in Notebook alone.

[B]

Tell me the coolest thing that you built yourself using AI.

[C]

I, I mean, I get really excited about the stuff that I build and then when we go to actually use it, it doesn't necessarily work or it's not as cool as I thought. You know, I'll create a calculator that I think is really cool or I actually created a share voice tracking tool I used. I connected Claude to Supabase to Vercel and I built this whole, what I thought was a really cool share voice tracking tool and I sent it to our PR team and they're like that, you're an idiot. There's so many reasons why this doesn't work.

[B]

I think PR can't say that they're supposed to be all buttoned up.

[C]

They did, they were. They threw it out. So what I think is cool is that for all of our lives, everybody has been able to do the job of marketing. They've all told us how to write copy better, how design could be better, what swag could be better. And now finally we can say to engineering, we can do your job.

[B]

The coolest thing I built is the replacement and the ability to say, hey, engineering, I could do that too.

[C]

I can do your job. Yes.

[B]

The most useless and my favorite thing that I've built with all of our internal tools, the color of the page changes throughout the day. I hear everything's logo has a gradient in it, and it looks a little bit like a sunrise, so the color change changes where the gradient changes. So it looks like it goes from sunrise to sunset throughout the day. So when I look at any given page that I'm on, I basically know where I am in the day, whether I need to hustle or whether I still have time because, like, it's golden hour at the end of the day. And then, you know, when I log in at night, the page is like black, like midnight, and it looks like a club. My favorite useless AI development. All right, well, Amanda, I appreciate you coming on the podcast, humoring me with the cookie metaphor, telling us a little bit about how to get ready for the new era of marketing and talking about some of the fun stuff you've been doing. Thanks for coming on and being my guest.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

All right, and that wraps up this episode of the MarTech podcast. Thanks to Amanda Cole, the CMO of Bloom Reach, for joining us. If you'd like to contact Amanda, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com or you can visit her company's website, which is bloomreach.com if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

[C]

Foreign.

[A]

Thanks for listening to the MarTech podcast, and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.