Future of Marketing

About Future of Marketing

Future of Marketing explores how B2B marketing teams are actually using AI at work. Each episode features honest conversations with CMOs, growth leaders, and operators about real workflows, real decisions, and the trade-offs involved in AI adoption across GTM, content, SEO, analytics, and revenue teams. This isn't about tools or perfect answers. It's about how marketing actually gets done when AI enters the system: what works, what breaks, and where teams are still experimenting. Live uncertainty is allowed. Concrete examples are required. If you're responsible for growth, pipeline, or brand and trying to turn AI into something genuinely useful, this show is for you. thefutureofmarketing.substack.com (https://thefutureofmarketing.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Mada Seghete

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Feb 2026

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

23 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Building a Startup Inside an Enterprise with Alex Atzberger of Optimizely

   In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete (Upside) and Ethan Smith (Graphite) chat with Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. This conversation explores how a well-known marketing technology company evolves when AI starts reshaping the category it helped define. Alex breaks down why he treated AI as an existential threat to the core business, and how the company built a “speedboat” startup inside the “cruise ship” of the existing organization. We discuss: * Why Optimizely kept the brand name after the acquisition, and how Alex thinks about turning strong category recognition into a broader platform opportunity. * How Optimizely is reframing experimentation as part of the full marketing workflow, not a side function owned by a small testing team. * Why Alex sees AI as an existential threat to the core business, and how Optimizely responded by building a standalone AI platform alongside the existing company. * Why AI adoption in marketing should focus on removing organizational burden, so talented people can spend more time on customer work, strategy, and creativity. * Why the best AI workflows are not one-off productivity agents, but full agentic systems that change how work gets done (https://upside.tech/blog/agentic-gtm-is-here-your-data-isnt-ready-for-it) across content, ABM, experimentation, and performance loops. Where to find Alex: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aatzberger/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aatzberger/) About Alex Alex Atzberger is CEO of Optimizely, where he is leading the company’s evolution into an AI-native marketing platform built around content, experimentation, personalization, analytics, and agent orchestration. Since taking over as CEO of Episerver in 2019, he has led the acquisitions of Optimizely, Welcome, and Netspring, rebuilt the company as the modern Optimizely, and scaled it to more than $400M in ARR. In his role, Alex focuses on helping marketing teams move from fragmented tools to a composable AI platform where every campaign, workflow, and AI output can be measured against business impact. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform (https://upside.tech/), Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency (https://graphite.io/) and XYZ Venture Capital (https://www.xyz.vc/) and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so (https://www.fame.so/?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=masters-of-community-with-david-spinks?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=fame-client) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com (https://thefutureofmarketing.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   15 Sept 2026

   How To Scale Founder-Led Growth with Tom Sweeney from Watt

   In this episode of Future of Marketing, host Ethan Smith (Graphite) chats with Tom Sweeney, Head of Growth at Watt. This conversation explores how an early B2B company can sell an enterprise product without immediately building a classic SDR-heavy motion. Tom breaks down how Watt is using founder-led content, LinkedIn, Reddit, creator partnerships, and product-led sales to reach marketers with a small team and a sharper signal. We discuss: * Why Watt is focused on real consumer behavior, what people click, search, buy, and engage with, rather than only what people say online. * How customer intelligence changes marketing decisions across ICP, pricing, offer, creative, and product. * Founder-led content as an acquisition channel, and why brand accounts struggle when buyers want a real human point of view. * How Watt uses “content ABM” on LinkedIn, combining a timely topic, a strong graphic, a sharp point of view, and proprietary data to engage target accounts. * Building a product-led sales motion where users reach value within 30 seconds, then qualify themselves through product usage, prompt quality, reports created, and fields consumed. * How Reddit can build trust when operators answer real questions with expertise, useful data, and no hard CTA. * Why 200 to 300 thoughtful community responses a month can improve recognition and brand sentiment, even when direct attribution is difficult. * How Watt plans to scale founder-led content across the team, then layer in creator-led distribution through DTC brand and agency operators who can become real product users first. Where to find Tom Sweeney: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdamien/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdamien/) About Tom Thomas Sweeney is Head of Growth at Watt, where he leads brand, marketing, and GTM as the company scales from category creation to category leadership. Watt helps growth teams get grounded answers to customer and market questions by combining 200,000 behavioral signals across 300M+ US shoppers with a company’s own first-party data, making enterprise-grade behavioral intelligence accessible through simple, plain-language questions. In his role, Thomas focuses on positioning Watt as the platform for teams that want to understand how people actually behave, not just what they say. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform (https://upside.tech/), Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency (https://graphite.io/) and XYZ Venture Capital (https://www.xyz.vc/) and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so (https://www.fame.so/?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=masters-of-community-with-david-spinks?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=fame-client) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com (https://thefutureofmarketing.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   11 Aug 2026

   The Case Study Playbook with Russell Banzon, Cresta’s CMO

   In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete (Upside) and Ethan Smith (Graphite) chat with Russell Banzon, CMO at Cresta. The conversation works through problems most B2B marketers hit. How do you get a Fortune 500 logo to agree to a case study, and when. How to make numbers credible in a category full of fabricated ones, and how to justify a channel that is hard to measure. We discuss: * Case studies as a commercial term. Why the rights conversation belongs in presales, and what to trade for it. * Distinguishing real case studies from fabricated ones, and what Cresta invests in to make its own numbers hard to dispute. * Analyst reports as a mid-to-bottom funnel asset. Where Cresta places them, and how analyst interest starts compounding through customers rather than outreach. * Buying out of home without direct attribution. How Cresta selected cities, the signals they used to measure it, and the unexpected return. * The $1 / $10 / $100 / $1k task framework for deciding what to automate, and where automation stops being worth the build. * Hiring for agency, curiosity, and taste, including the specific interview questions for each and why taste is not a visual trait. * Matching your growth rate to the company’s, and how to tell when the two have diverged. Where to find Russell Banzon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbanzon/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbanzon/) About Russell Russell is a B2B GTM leader who is passionate about driving pipeline and revenue for SaaS technology companies. As the former VP of Marketing at Gong, he played a key role in scaling the company from seven figures to nine figures in ARR, leading category creation, international expansion, and the evolution from a single-product company to a multi-product platform. Now, as the CMO at Cresta, he is helping to shape the future of AI in the contact center space, though that story is still being written. Outside of work, you might find Russell at a Hip Hop dance event, cheering on the Raiders, or competing in a local bowling league. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform (https://upside.tech/), Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency (https://graphite.io/) and XYZ Venture Capital (https://www.xyz.vc/) and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so (https://www.fame.so/?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=masters-of-community-with-david-spinks?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=fame-client) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com (https://thefutureofmarketing.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

8 ratings

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