Renegade Marketers Unite

AI just handed every marketing team a bigger gas pedal. Now CMOs  have to  decide what  deserves  the speed .   Teams can now publish, prototype, adapt, and distribute at a pace that felt impossible a few years ago. The advantage comes from knowing where to accelerate, where human judgment matters most, and how to keep the creative spark intact.   A strong idea can travel further than ever. A weak...

AI is moving fast enough to make even the savviest CMO feel one tool, one workflow, and one "wait, you can do that now?" behind. The easy move is to delegate it. Let the eager people experiment. Let the technical folks wire things together. Let the team come back with something impressive enough to call progress. If that sounds like a plan, François Dufour would like a word. In this episode, we re...

The first 90 days have always mattered. Now AI is making them faster, sharper, and a lot less forgiving. In this episode, Drew talks with Paige O'Neill ( Culture Amp ), Scott Gordon ( HG Insights ), and Ali McCarthy ( Asset-Map ) about what it takes to start strong in a new CMO role. They explore how to pressure-test what you heard in the interview process, align quickly with the executive team, a...

Some CMO opportunities look promising right up until you stop asking, "Can I land this?" and start asking, "Can I actually win  at this company ?"   In a market that is warmer than it was a year ago but still unforgiving ,  Hugh Marshall  of  Heidrick & Struggles  argues that CMOs need to approach the search with two-way diligence. The offer matters, but so does knowing whether the company, CEO, b...

The go-to-market model most teams are  optimizing  may be the very thing AI is making obsolete.   Too often, the buyer experience feels like a relay race nobody asked to run. AI is already proving  there's  a faster, straighter path to answers, value, and outcomes, making the old model a lot harder to defend.   In this episode, Drew talks with  Amanda Kahlow , founder of  1mind , about why many of...

The  title is Chief Marketing Officer. The CMOs who  earn  the most influence put  Chief   first.   They're  not in the room just to deliver a marketing update.  They're  there to help the executive team make sense of what matters most, navigate tough decisions, and shape where the company goes next.   In this episode, Drew talks with  Kathie Johnson  ( Nintex ) ,  Lorie Coulombe  ( Equity Shift )...

AI experimentation created momentum. But for CMOs, it's time to move out of the sandbox and into repeatable systems.   In this Drew-on-Drew episode, the conversation shifts from AI experimentation to operational discipline. Drawing on recent conversations inside CMO Huddles and insights from the Imaginarium Summit, Drew explores what it takes to turn scattered AI experiments into a scalable operat...

If your ICP   (Ideal Customer Profile)  is still built on broad categories, instinct, and a little  wishful thinking , it may be more aspirational than operational.   An ICP like that leaves too much room for interpretation. Marketing, sales, and ops start working from different definitions of the right account, and the business keeps chasing customers that look right on paper but  don't  behave l...

The AI conversation gets tactical fast. Tools. Prompts. Speed. Output. Helpful, yes. But that barely scratches the surface.   Geoff Woods  is looking past the tool and straight at the leader holding it. In the right hands, AI becomes a force multiplier for strategic thinking, stronger decision-making, and a completely different idea of  what's  possible at the top.   In this episode, Drew sits dow...

We've  spent a long time glorifying the "hero leader." The sharpest thinker. The one with all the answers.  The person everyone  turns to when  it's  time to make the call.   But constant change is pushing a different kind of leader to the  fore front. The system designer. A leader who puts more energy into workflows, decision paths, and team rhythm so fewer hard calls boomerang back to them.   In...

Marketing teams  don't  need more AI tools. They need better habits around the ones they already have.   Experimentation got marketing teams started , but i t  won't  take them  very far  on  its  own. The payoff starts when teams stop treating AI like a side experiment and start using it in ways they can repeat and build on.   In this episode, Drew Neisser talks with  Nicole Leffer , one of the m...

If your brand sounds like everyone else's,  you 're   not competing.  You 're   interchangeable.   Claims like "customer-centric," "trusted partner," and "AI-powered"  don't  do much when buyers hear them everywhere. True differentiation is bold, precise, and hard to confuse with the rest of the category.   In this episode, Drew Neisser brings together  Scott Morris  ( Sprout Social ),  Gary  Sevo...

Most marketers believe  great work  leads to great business.   David C. Baker   would disagree.   In this episode, Drew Neisser sits down with  The Business of Expertise   author to unpack what really separates thriving expert firms from struggling ones. From positioning and pricing power to the myths of growth and creativity, this is a candid, no-BS look at what it  actually takes  to build a suc...

Do humor and serious leadership belong in the same room?   Most leaders default to staying "professional" and miss one of the simplest ways to build connection and improve communication.   In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew Neisser talks with Jan McInnis about how leaders can use humor effectively—without telling jokes or trying to be someone  they're  not.   The conversation refram...

A tough CMO job search can mess with your confidence fast. The  search runs longer than expected. A role looks right on paper, then gets murkier as the conversations unfold. The company says it wants growth, but the real issue may be churn, product, or a CEO still figuring out what kind of marketing leader the business needs. That ' s  what makes this market hard.   You are not only trying to tell...

Too many companies treat every failure the same. That makes people more cautious, more guarded, and less willing to take the smart risks innovation requires.   Amy Edmondson argues that not all failures deserve the same label. Some are preventable. Some come with complexity. Then there is intelligent failure, the kind that comes with thoughtful experimentation in  new territory  and produces the l...

Search is starting to behave differently. More buyers are asking AI tools direct questions, getting synthesized answers, and making decisions without following the old click path. That creates a new challenge for marketers.  Content now  has to  be structured to show up in the answer .   In this "Drew-on-Drew" episode, host Drew Neisser pulls together what surfaced in recent  CMO Huddles Strategy...

Most 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 leaders...

AI 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...

Marketing 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 ca...

Feature-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 p...

Many 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 monthl...

AI 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...

Most marketers worry about whether buyers trust their brand. Brent Adamson , author of The Framemaking Sale , argues that the actual issue sits somewhere else: B uyers do not trust themselves. In this episode, Drew sits down with Brent to challenge three big assumptions: T hat more supplier trust is the answer, that buyers have a neat journey to map, and that customer centricity is always the righ...

If 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...