Podcast
Renegade Marketers Unite
Hosted by Drew Neisser · EN
Renegade Marketers Unite focuses on marketing innovators, uncovering the how, what and why behind their on-going success. Award-winning marketer, author, and entrepreneur Drew Neisser keeps these conversations interesting and inspiring, wrapping up each episode with on-the-spot analysis and insights for big marketers and those that want to be. For more information visit http://DrewNeisser.com/podcast
42episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
509: The Real Work of Customer Obsession
Mar 1300:49:03Tap to summarizeMost companies say they put customers at the center of their business. Few actually operate that way. In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew Neisser talks with JD Dillon (Tigo Energy), Carlos Carvajal (Anaqua), and Nikhil Chawla (Resilience) about what it takes to turn customer voice into real organizational change. Together, they unpack what customer-centric leadership looks like in practice—from retention programs and executive briefings to listening to real sales calls and turning customer signals into action across the business. The result is a more operational view of customer obsession, one where the voice of the customer shows up not just in dashboards, but in meetings, decisions, and everyday habits. The big idea: Customer centricity becomes powerful only when it shows up in everyday habits—meetings, messaging, and decisions. If you want to move from customer-aware to customer-obsessed, this episode delivers practical strategies you can apply immediately. What You'll Learn: Why customer obsession must show up in company habits, not just strategy decks How marketing leaders are using customer voice to shape planning and priorities Why stories and quotes from customers often move teams faster than dashboards How narrowing customer centricity to a clear job-to-be-done makes it actionable Why customers should appear in all-hands meetings, planning sessions, and executive briefings How marketing teams can turn customer conversations into a repeatable growth engine This Episode Is For B2B CMOs and marketing leaders who want to move beyond talking about customer centricity and start embedding customer insight into how their organizations actually operate. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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508: Autonomous Transformation: The Strategy Shift for AI
Mar 600:51:44Tap to summarizeAI is forcing a leadership choice. You can treat it like a stack of use cases and end up with a lot of motion and a little progress. Or you can start with a clear vision of the future you want, make strategy visible, and use that to align decisions across the business. In this episode, Drew Neisser talks with Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation, about why the AI conversation so often collapses into tools and use cases, and how leaders can pull it back to vision, outcomes, and the kind of alignment that drives transformation. What you'll take away: Why optimization can keep you busy while you stay stuck How to make a future vision concrete enough to act on What "no strategy without vision" means, and how to spot fake strategy Why leaders default to scorecards, and how it stalls transformation How Brian's "nindrant" separates "we can do" from "we need alignment" Why use case first AI limits gains, and how to shift to value creation Plus: A simple workshop to surface visions before projects A clean split between what marketing can do now and what needs CRO and CFO alignment How to move AI from tool talk to a value creation leadership conversation If you are tired of AI conversations that start with tools and end with small wins, listen to this episode for a vision first approach that changes what you do next. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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507: When Org Design Shapes Strategy
Feb 2700:52:17Tap to summarizeMarketing org design isn't an HR exercise. It determines whether your team spends the year reacting… or actually executing. In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew sits down with Charles Groome (Insightful) and Heather Adkins (Trimble) to unpack what a 2026-ready marketing organization really looks like. Spoiler: It's not built around functional silos. Instead, they explore campaign-led team structures, mindset-driven hiring, and operating systems designed for speed, adaptability, and accountability. You'll hear: How Insightful uses an effort + outcomes framework to evaluate performance Why Trimble reorganized around nine global initiatives instead of functional silos The rise of integrated campaign units to tighten alignment How to hire T-shaped marketers who blend storytelling and data Ways to give teams more autonomy without sacrificing accountability How better org design can reduce burnout and increase clarity If your team structure hasn't changed in years, your team may struggle to adapt when the market shifts. This conversation will challenge how you think about structure, talent, and what it takes to build a marketing team that can pivot with confidence. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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506: Positioning as a Growth Lever
Feb 2000:51:02Tap to summarizeFeature-and-function decks aren't winning anymore. In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew sits down with Bob Wright (Firebrick) to break down how B2B CMOs can use positioning to drive growth, shorten sales cycles, and stand out in crowded markets. They unpack why product-first stories fail, how to get to "one voice" across the company, and what it really means to own a key business problem that buyers care about. In this episode: The three biggest positioning mistakes: product-first thinking, misalignment, and no owned problem Creating urgency when "do nothing" is the real competitor Why "why you, why now" matters more than "how it works" When and how to rethink positioning after PLG, acquisitions, or expansion How to stand out in a world of AI sameness Building positions that sales actually uses If your messaging is drifting into "blah blah blah" territory, this episode will help you reset around problems, not products. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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505: Making Reputation Measurable (and Defensible)
Feb 1300:43:19Tap to summarizeMany CMOs face the same dilemma: You're asked to prove "brand," then told brand tracking is too expensive. So you invest in analyst relations, adjust PR, navigate layoffs, or shift strategy without a reliable way to show how those moves affect market perception. RepuTracker was built to solve that problem. Developed for members of the CMO Huddles Leader program, RepuTracker provides a monthly, evidence-based view of your company's reputation so you can see whether it's rising, slipping, or holding steady, and why. In this episode, Drew is joined by Taran Nandha (Growth Natives) to demo the RepuTracker beta. They show how the tool tracks reputation month to month across multiple signals, then get practical about how to read the output, explain it to leadership, and see whether your moves are showing up in the market. In this episode: How RepuTracker turns scattered public signals into a monthly reputation score with trends and competitor benchmarks. What it measures across key dimensions: Power of voice, awareness, engagement, perception, and employee sentiment. How sources and weighting work behind the scenes across dozens of platforms. How to use trendlines and recommendations to move from "we dipped" to a clear next step. Plus: Why direction over time matters more than one noisy review or spike. How to sanity-check dips using internal context and profile audits. What could come next, from deeper source auditing to tracking visibility in AI search and LLM references. If you're curious how RepuTracker works, what signals it pulls from, and how to interpret the output month to month, this episode is the walkthrough. Learn more about the CMO Startegy Labs ➡️ https://cmohuddles.com/strategy-labs For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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504: Intentional AI Adoption
Feb 600:51:55Tap to summarizeAI is now a standing agenda item. It shows up in QBRs, board packets, and 2026 budget plans with a big expectation stamp on it. CMOs are being asked to operationalize it fast, prove value in workflows, and keep risk, governance, and tool sprawl under control. To get specific about what to prioritize next, Drew brings together Guy Yalif (Webflow), Andy Dé (Lightbeam Health Solutions), and Kevin Briody (DisruptedCMO). Together, they focus on how CMOs can move from scattered experiments to intentional AI adoption across people, process, and technology, and what it takes to make AI a trusted part of how marketing runs. In this episode: Guy shares an AI fluency maturity model and explains why the shift to operational excellence is a change management challenge. Andy breaks down agentic AI and workflow automation with examples from CI, outbound, RFPs, content, and AEO, using "why, what, how, so what." Kevin focuses on the people and platform side, from job anxiety and culture to vendor shakeouts and MarTech-level discipline. Plus: Centering AI plans on people and fluency so it feels additive, not threatening. Using councils, fast-track approvals, and guardrails to scale safely. Balancing efficiency with human experience and customer acceptance. Treating AI tools like core MarTech, with scrutiny around contracts, integrations, and vendor longevity. If you want your 2026 AI plan to feel like a strategic advantage instead of a collection of pilots, this conversation will help you decide what to run, what to scale, and what to skip. Learn more about the CMO Startegy Labs ➡️ https://cmohuddles.com/strategy-labs Check out Firebrick ➡️ https://firebrickconsulting.com/ For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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503: The Framemaking Sale: Building Buyer Decision Confidence
Jan 3000:56:37Tap to summarizeMost marketers worry about whether buyers trust their brand. Brent Adamson, author of The Framemaking Sale, argues that the actual issue sits somewhere else: Buyers do not trust themselves. In this episode, Drew sits down with Brent to challenge three big assumptions: That more supplier trust is the answer, that buyers have a neat journey to map, and that customer centricity is always the right north star. In this episode: Why decision confidence matters more than supplier trust How shifting from "trust us" to "trust yourselves" reshapes GTM How to rethink buyer journeys through the "never again" and spaghetti-bowl lens. Framemaking in practice, from nudges and checklists to maturity models. The three Es, Establish, Engage, Execute, as a shared marketing and sales playbook. Plus: Escaping the smartness arms race by editing content to reduce anxiety and build buyer self-confidence. Turning social proof into a confidence engine, using "other customers like you…" stories. Making content supplier-agnostic, helping buyers ask better questions and weigh tradeoffs. If you want your buyers to trust themselves enough to decide, start here. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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502: Unlocking B2B Intelligence with AI Workflows
Jan 2300:49:57Tap to summarizeIf AI is only helping you write copy, you are leaving real leverage on the table. Every marketing team is buried in invisible busywork; a trail of repetitive, manual steps hiding inside every task. So what happens when you take one of those messy workflows, map every step, and rebuild it? In this episode, Drew talks with Dave Brong (Level Agency) about how CMO Huddles transformed a messy, 10-step post-meeting grind into an automated system that transforms hundreds of conversations into structured insight, searchable intelligence, and real business value. In this episode: How a manual, repetitive workflow became an automated intelligence engine How transcripts, metadata, and semantic search unlock institutional knowledge The reality: Only ±10% of the system relies on AI (code does the heavy lifting) When to use low-code tools vs. engineers for reliability, privacy, and scale Plus: A simple method to audit workflows and spot automation opportunities How to balance build vs. buy for AI workflows How to amplify human judgment instead of replacing it If you are tired of manual follow-up, underused data, and AI hype without impact, this conversation is for you. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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501: A Marketing Budget the C-Suite Believes In
Jan 1600:54:11Tap to summarizeGrowth targets keep climbing while cost lines tighten, and planning season starts to feel very personal for CMOs. AI threads through every conversation, zero-based thinking pulls against last year's baseline, and the goalposts never seem to hold still. So the job becomes building a budget you can walk into the room with, own, and defend with conviction. To get there, Drew brings together Andrew Cox (Forrester), Lisa Cole (2X), and Alan Gonsenhauser (Demand Revenue). The conversation centers on tying spend to strategy, translating marketing into CFO-ready terms, and giving AI a role in the plan that the numbers can support. In this episode: Andrew shares Forrester's view on moving past "last year plus X," building budgets around corporate objectives and campaigns, and forcing prioritization. Lisa applies a zero-based mindset to business priorities, uses a 70-20-10 program mix for core, flex, and test, and frames marketing as an ATM of Audience, Trust, and Monetization. Alan outlines the signals of strong and weak budgets, tying the majority of spend to growth campaigns and long-term value plans, and maintaining a year-round working relationship with the CFO. Plus: Keeping tech spend in check, including guidelines for MarTech mix and contract flexibility Positioning brand and PR in financial terms like pipeline influence, win rates, and pricing power Responding to AI efficiency pressure by fixing workflows first and framing value in utilization, speed, and scalability Why the budget should be the numerical expression of strategy, not a defense of legacy spend If you want to walk into your next budget review with a clear story, solid numbers, and conviction, this conversation will help you get there. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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500: B2B Marketing Moves from the 2025 Super Huddle
Jan 900:25:26Tap to summarizeNine years in. 500 episodes later. Hundreds of CMOs on the mic. A deep well of marketing wisdom for anyone brave enough to draw from it. This milestone episode is a celebration of the bold B2B ideas, experiments, and hard-earned lessons that have filled the show from day one. Thank-you to every marketer who has listened, shared, and dared to try something new because of what they heard here. Recorded live at the 2025 Super Huddle, Drew's conversations with Udi Ledergor, Denise Persson and Chris Degnan, and Carilu Dietrich anchor this milestone episode. In this episode: Udi shares how Gong pulled off a Super Bowl spot on a regional budget, aimed it at VPs of Sales, and tracked impact in traffic, conversations, and pipeline. Denise and Chris explain how a CMO and CRO stayed aligned through four CEOs at Snowflake and evolved the story from "cloud data warehouse" to "data cloud," all in lockstep. Carilu shows how Lovable is building a movement with real users as influencers, a CEO who lives on social, and a speed-first mindset tuned to the pace of AI and customer buzz. Plus: Why a "crazy ideas" budget creates room for standout plays that still satisfy the CFO How empathy for sales and shared ownership of the number strengthen CRO-CMO alignment How CEO-led social, customer stories, and edutainment power modern B2B brands What it takes to move at AI speed while keeping product value and customer love at the center If you want a concentrated hit of CMO-level courage, alignment, and playmaking, this milestone episode is your highlight reel. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
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