Renegade Marketers Unite
by Drew Neisser
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
Episodes
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544: Repositioning Nutanix
When everybody has a favorite version of the company story, repositioning becomes an exercise in choosing what survives. Sometimes the company has already changed before the story catches up. At Nutanix, the business was evolving beyond its on-prem roots, so the story had to keep pace without...
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543: Marketing's Long Game in Enterprise Deals
One interested buyer can get an enterprise deal moving. Then the buying committee shows up, each with a question, an objection, or a reason to hit the brakes. That first bit of interest only carries the deal so far. Finance wants numbers, technical teams want proof, champions need help making the...
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542: Follow the Citations: Where to Place Your AI Visibility Bets
Search visibility has officially outgrown your website. SEO still has a seat at the table, but now it has a lot more company. LLMs can build answers from sources scattered across the web, including places your buyers might never visit themselves. So where does authority live now? Which prompts…
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541: What It Takes to Ace a CMO Job Interview
You've got the experience. The interview is where you make it clear, memorable, and unmistakably yours. Years of stories, wins, lessons, and opinions are great raw material. Then an interview asks you to pull the right one out, fast. That's where answers can sprawl, too much context can take…
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540: When AI Rewrites the CMO Playbook
AI is rewriting the CMO playbook fast. And somehow, human judgment is getting more valuable. Start with what the machines do well. They can crank out content, make sense of scattered data, and turn repeatable tasks into workflows at ridiculous speed. That leaves marketers with a better problem to...
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539: Pick Your Battles: Strategic Trade-offs in B2B Marketing
Marketing has no shortage of good ideas. The trouble is, they're all competing for the same budget, people, and attention. When everything looks important, something has to give. A big growth bet may deserve the full weight of the team. A proven motion might be better off with a template and a...
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538: Need for Speed? Earn It First
Urgency makes shortcuts awfully tempting. Find the problem, make the plan, get moving. But a little more work before the sprint can save a whole lot of fixing later. People, relationships, and processes all have to be ready to carry the speed. Get that setup right, and you can hit the gas with a...
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537: When Marketing Leads the AI Migration
Company-wide AI adoption needs a flock leader. Marketing may already have the job. Marketing has a few advantages here. It hears customer friction early, touches nearly every corner of the business, and has gotten pretty good at doing more with less. That makes it a natural proving ground for new...
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536: Stop Paying the B2B Trust Tax
Some of the most expensive friction in B2B marketing starts with one question. Can I trust this? The buying process already comes with enough hesitation. Add a message that burns extra brain calories, a brand promise that shifts depending on where you meet it, or outreach that feels suspiciously...
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535: Building the Brave Habit
How do you know whether the brave move is to go for it or plant your feet? CMOs are making that call with short runways, incomplete information, and teams being asked to adapt fast. Comfort can delay the hard decision. Pressure can push leaders toward false certainty or speed for speed's sake....
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534: The Leadership Move You're Avoiding
Before you ask for another leadership tip, check the glasses you're already wearing. Ty Hammond doesn't do tips anymore, which slightly complicates Drew's plan to grab a few quick leadership nuggets. Good thing. When leaders already know the move they need to make and still keep avoiding it, the...
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533: PE-Backed CMOs
PE-backed CMOs have to make marketing make sense at board speed. The questions come faster. The comparisons come from portfolio companies that look nothing like yours. And no budget line stays "just marketing" for long. In this episode, Drew talks with Kevin Ruane (Precisely), Julie Kaplan…
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532: Seeing Around Corners: The Signals CMOs Can't Afford to Miss
Change only looks sudden when you missed the signals. Rita McGrath gives that idea teeth for CMOs leading through AI, org design changes, and markets that refuse to sit still. The signals are usually there. But in businesses wired to confirm what already happened, they get drowned out by revenue,...
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531: Marketing and Communications as One Growth System
Marketing and comms lose leverage when the story, the proof, and the teams carrying them run in separate lanes. That's how strong work gets less mileage than it should. Recognition stays in PR when demand could use it. Analyst proof misses the sales motion. Internal messaging sounds adjacent to…
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530: Stop the Sales Enablement Scavenger Hunt
A stuffed content library can still leave a salesperson empty-handed. Somewhere along the way, sales enablement got mistaken for asset production. Sales asks, marketing makes, the asset goes somewhere, and the next thing you know, a seller is five minutes from a call wondering which deck, battle...
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529: What 2026's CMO Survey Reveals About Marketing Under Pressure
When every marketing decision has to pay off this quarter, growth starts losing its owner. That's the uncomfortable read from the latest CMO Survey. Under pressure, CMOs are making perfectly rational moves. Safer bets, tighter proof, more focus on the customers already in hand. The danger is what...
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528: Marketing Inside the Sales Rhythm
Sales has one clean tell for whether it trusts marketing. Timing. Bring marketing in late, and partnership turns into a very polite scramble. The field has moved, the campaign needs context, and sales is working leads without the story that made them worth chasing in the first place. Trust grows...
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527: The CMO-CRO Partnership That Made It Snow
The fastest way to break trust between sales and marketing is to let each team bring its own scoreboard. Marketing can point to MQLs. Sales can point to missed revenue. Everyone can be technically right, and the business still loses. No wonder Denise Persson and Chris Degnan have little patience...
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526: AI Velocity vs. Human Creativity
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,...
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525: The AI-Augmented CMO: Architecting Teamwide Adoption
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…
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524: The First 90 Days Just Got Faster
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…
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523: The CMO Job Search Is a Two-Way Street
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...
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522: AI, SDRs, and the New GTM Engine
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...
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521: Chiefs of Marketing
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…
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520: AI Beyond the Sandbox
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...
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519: The ICP Blueprint
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...
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518: The True AI-Driven Leader
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…
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517: The New CMO Superpower: System Design
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 forefront. The system designer. A leader who puts more energy…
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516: From AI Curiosity to Capability
Marketing teams don't need more AI tools. They need better habits around the ones they already have. Experimentation got marketing teams started, but it 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...
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515: Differentiate or Die: Winning in a Sea of Sameness
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...
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514: The Business of Expertise: Why Positioning Beats Talent Every Time
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...
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513: Humor as a Leadership Tool
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...
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512: Finding and Winning Your Next CMO Role
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…
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511: Failing Well Beats Playing It Safe
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…
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510: AEO, SEO, and the New Fight to Shape the Answer
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...
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509: The Real Work of Customer Obsession
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...
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508: Autonomous Transformation: The Strategy Shift for AI
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…
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507: When Org Design Shapes Strategy
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...
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506: Positioning as a Growth Lever
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...
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505: Making Reputation Measurable (and Defensible)
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…
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504: Intentional AI Adoption
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...
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503: The Framemaking Sale: Building Buyer Decision Confidence
Most 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...
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502: Unlocking B2B Intelligence with AI Workflows
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...
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501: A Marketing Budget the C-Suite Believes In
Growth 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...
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500: B2B Marketing Moves from the 2025 Super Huddle
Nine 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...
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499: The Event ROI Reality Check
Events sit at the crossroads of joy and heartburn for B2B marketers. The magic of getting customers together in real life is real, and so is the pain when sales skips the pre-work and ROI gets fuzzy. With every dollar under scrutiny, CMOs are treating events as strategic bets that have to earn...
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498: Leading Teams Through the AI Learning Curve
AI is now part of the job, whether your team feels ready or not. Some folks jump in with prompts and pilots; others stay on the sidelines while the pace keeps picking up. How do you turn that mix into a team that understands AI, uses it well, and gets stronger with every experiment? Drew talks…
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497: AI in B2B Marketing: Wins, Misses, Next Moves
GenAI now sits inside content workflows, SDR outreach, and competitive intelligence. Marketing teams are seeing real wins and real growing pains, and the open question is where to focus next. To answer that, Drew brings together Kelly Hopping, John McKinney (Cornerstone Licensing), and Brian…
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496: How B2B Brands Actually Grow
When it comes to marketing, everyone has opinions—but few have proof. That's where Professor Byron Sharp steps in. In this episode, Drew sits down with the globally renowned marketing scientist and author of How Brands Grow to unpack what B2B marketers are getting wrong, what they should measure...
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495: Teams Built for Growth and Grit
Recruiting great marketers is tough work. Sustaining performance, growth, and energy over time demands deliberate choices. Those choices shape the culture, the pace, and the results your team can sustain through whatever comes next. To see how this plays out across very different orgs, Drew talks...
About this show
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
Hosted by
Drew Neisser
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