Trust & Influence in B2B

Here's an uncomfortable idea for any B2B business competing for a high-value deal: your biggest competitor may not be a better business. It may simply be one that's easier to believe.

That's the starting point for the second year of the Trust Advantage research from Emmett & Churchman, which surveyed 200 senior technology decision-makers and sat down with 19 CEOs making real, high-stakes buying decisions. The finding: capable businesses lose deals constantly, not for lack of capability, but because of what the research calls the commercial credibility gap, the distance between what a business can deliver and what a buyer can see, believe and defend.

Joel is joined by Lorraine Emmett, founder and managing director of Emmett & Churchman and the lead author of the research, to unpack why 45% of senior buyers say they've ruled out a supplier for failing to prove its credibility, and what leadership teams can do to close the gap in their own business.

Download the 'Trust Advantage' report here: https://emmettandchurchman.com/trust/

What you'll learn

• What the commercial credibility gap actually is, and why it explains lost deals that looked like safe wins on paper.
• The three questions buyers are really asking of every supplier, and which one businesses most consistently fail to answer.
• Why a frank discussion of limitations and risk can build more trust than a flawless pitch.
• What a smaller or less recognised B2B business can do to compete credibly against a better-known incumbent.
• The first practical step for any leadership team that wants to close this gap in its own business.

Chapters

• Introduction: the commercial credibility gap
• Why Emmett & Churchman ran this research for a second year
• The three questions every buyer is asking: can I see it, believe it, defend it
• Why “can I see it” is the one businesses fail most
• Overpromising versus candour: the biggest destroyer of trust
• The human side of commercial negotiation
• Equipping your champion: evidence that travels beyond the room
• Challenger opportunity: why 57% would choose a trusted smaller supplier
• Reframing commercial credibility as a leadership issue
• The CEO commercial credibility test
• Closing thought: where to start closing the gap

Follow Lorraine Emmett

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraineemmett-b2b-strategic-comms/
• Emmett & Churchman: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emmett-churchman/home/

Closing boilerplate

If you found this conversation useful, the best way to support the show is to subscribe and leave a rating wherever you listen. It genuinely helps more B2B marketers find us.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡ www.joelharrisonb2b.com

💬 What's costing your business the deals it should be winning: capability, or credibility? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. www.joelharrisonb2b.com/podcast

#JoelHarrisonB2B #B2BMarketing #ThoughtLeadership #TrustAndInfluence #B2BSales #CommercialCredibility #B2BBuyers #MarketingPodcast #B2BInsights #CMOLeadership #B2BGrowth

Why AI makes human experiences more valuable, not less, with Claire Ellis of JPC

ABM was supposed to be about relationships. As AI makes targeting and personalisation cheap and abundant, the thing ABM was meant to build in the first place, trust with the people who actually decide, has become the real differentiator. Nowhere is that more acute than in ABM's biggest deals, where a single account can be worth millions and keeping it can matter even more than winning it.

➡️ Joel Harrison is joined by Claire Ellis, Managing Director of JPC, to unpack experiential ABM: human moments designed to move specific stakeholders, rather than events that simply fill rooms. Claire explains why buyers are now using AI to form preferences early and out of sight, why so much supplier activity is noise rather than relationship progress, and how to work out who really carries the room. She shares how BT moved from infrastructure provider to strategic partner with Translink, where organisations should deliberately keep human judgement in the loop, and why accountability matters more than accuracy when AI shapes what a senior buyer sees. If you run ABM, or are weighing up where your next experience budget should go, this conversation will sharpen how you plan, measure and own those moments. This episode is sponsored by JPC.

What you’ll learn

• Why AI has made trust harder to earn in complex deals, and what buyers rely on instead.
• How to design experiences around the change you need in specific stakeholders, rather than around the format.
• How to spot who really carries the room, and when to rethink your account plan.
• Where to deliberately keep human judgement, and how open to be about AI's role.
• What credible relationship movement looks like, and who should own what happens next.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: trust and ABM in an AI world

01:55 Claire Ellis and JPC

04:29 Where suppliers go wrong in complex deals

08:26 AI cuts both ways: why trust is harder to earn

11:59 Influencing an account before the opportunity exists

15:30 What experiential ABM is, and what it isn't

18:06 Why the format gets decided first, and what it costs

22:00 Finding who really carries the room

26:17 BT and Translink: when co-creation is real

31:14 Where to keep human judgement in the loop

35:13 Accuracy, authenticity and accountability in AI

37:44 What credible relationship movement looks like

41:47 What a CMO should ask before booking anything

44:11 Close and where to find out more

Follow Claire Ellis

Claire Ellis on LinkedIn ▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/claireellisjpc/

JPC ▶ https://thinkjpc.com/

Find out more

Read JPC's report, The human advantage in an AI-powered world ▶ https://thinkjpc.turtl.co/story/experiential-abm-roundtable-recap/page/1?pid=6aabbc5b8632548bf34bd33c

Hear Claire and JPC at the Global ABM conference ▶ https://events.b2bmarketing.net/abmconference

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach, whether you're a marketing leader, an ABM practitioner, or working alongside sales on your most important accounts.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What's the last event in your account plan that actually moved a relationship? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing.

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ABM, #AccountBasedMarketing, #ExperientialABM, #ExperientialMarketing, #B2BTrust, #AIinMarketing, #EnterpriseSales, #StrategicAccounts, #SalesAndMarketing, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BStrategy, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth

Everyone's talking about buyer group marketing. Far fewer are doing it well, and most organisations have no reliable way of knowing how mature their approach really is. For this sponsored episode, Joel Harrison is joined by Greg Salmon, CEO of Pretzl, and Jeff Lowe, Pretzl's go-to-market advisor and a former CMO and Chief Commercial Officer at SMART Technologies, to unpack the 2026 Buyer Group Index. Produced in association with the ANA and research firm NewtonX, the Index surveyed 200 senior go-to-market leaders and measured 28 practices against commercial outcomes, from pipeline velocity to time to market.

➡️ Greg explains why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, why the single score of the MQL is so comforting and so misleading, and how to reach the hidden influencers and build trust with people a vendor may never meet. He also warns that AI can scale bad assumptions as easily as good ones. Jeff draws on his years client-side to argue that separate sales and marketing teams are an outdated idea, explains why connected data has become a CMO's problem, and sets out what the leading organisations do differently.

What You'll Learn

• Why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, and how to tell the difference.
• How to identify the hidden influencers in a buying group and build trust with people you may never meet.
• Why AI is speeding up go-to-market activity without automatically improving growth, and what to do about how AI represents your brand.
• Why connected data and genuine sales and marketing alignment are the highest-impact practices, and among the weakest.
• What the leading organisations do differently, and how to benchmark your own maturity in around 15 minutes.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: Pretzl and buyer group marketing

01:57 Introducing the 2026 Buyer Group Index

03:59 When buyer group marketing is persona nurture by another name

04:38 What a maturity score of 63.2 tells us

07:01 Why the MQL is so hard to let go of

10:06 Who the hidden influencers are

11:25 Building trust with people you never meet

12:28 Practical step: mapping your buyer group

14:57 When most buyer research happens out of sight

16:31 Why AI isn't automatically improving growth

17:36 How AI represents your brand

18:49 Practical step: the next 90 days

20:09 Jeff Lowe: from client-side to Pretzl

20:59 Why the real benchmark is lower than 63.2

22:18 Connected data and the systems gap

24:00 Should sales and marketing be one team?

26:56 What the leading organisations do differently

29:23 Practical step: benchmark your own maturity

31:31 Wrap-up

Follow Greg Salmon, Jeff Lowe and Pretzl

Greg Salmon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-salmon-280a1412/

Jeff Lowe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflowe2/

Pretzl: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pretzlco/

Take the free Buyer Group Index assessment: [link]

If you're responsible for go-to-market and want an honest view of where your organisation stands, this conversation is for you. It's practical, candid and packed with first steps you can act on now.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Is your buyer group marketing the real thing, or persona nurture with a new name? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BStrategy, #BuyerGroupMarketing, #BuyerGroups, #GoToMarket, #GTMStrategy, #SalesAndMarketing, #ABM, #RevOps, #AIinMarketing, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth

Nostalgia sells everything from trainers to TV reboots, yet it barely registers in B2B marketing. To find out why, Joel Harrison went through three years of B2B Marketing Awards entries in search of the exceptions, and invited Guy O'Brien, co-founder of B2B influencer marketing agency Custom Influence, into the studio to make sense of what he found.

➡️ Together they unpack five ways B2B brands are going retro, from Exel Composites retelling the Three Little Pigs to Allica Bank's bowler hat, and ask why so few try it. Guy's verdict is that nostalgia isn't wrong for B2B, it's just hard: target the wrong generation and you alienate the buyers coming through; lean too far into the joke and people remember the ad but not the brand. Joel adds a warning of his own about nostalgia that stirs the wrong memories. If you're weighing a bolder creative idea, this conversation will help you judge when going retro will pay off.

What You'll Learn

• Why nostalgia is everywhere in consumer marketing but rare in B2B, and why that comes down to difficulty rather than suitability.
• The five creative approaches B2B brands are using to go retro, with campaign examples from the B2B Marketing Awards.
• How to avoid alienating buyers from other generations as B2B buying groups get younger.
• Why the brand, not the nostalgic idea, has to be what people remember.
• How a nostalgic idea can build a community rather than a one-off moment.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: where this conversation came from

01:52 - Guy O'Brien and Custom Influence

03:44 - Nostalgia and the humanisation of B2B

04:27 - Trend 1: Generational era cues (Just Group)

09:45 - Why nostalgia is so rare in B2B

11:25 - Trend 2: Childhood storytelling (Exel Composites)

17:16 - Trend 3: Retro media formats (Infoblox and 6sense)

22:45 - Trend 4: Period-specific aesthetics (Ecolab)

27:14 - Trend 5: Iconography of tradition (Allica Bank)

34:29 - The verdict: is nostalgia viable in B2B?

36:14 - When nostalgia backfires

40:47 - Where to find the campaigns

Follow Guy O'Brien

LinkedIn: [link]

Custom Influence: https://custominfluence.com/

Closing boilerplate

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to creative and thought leadership, whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Would you take your B2B brand retro, or is nostalgia best left to consumer marketers? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #NostalgiaMarketing, #B2BCreative, #CreativeEffectiveness, #BrandBuilding, #InfluencerMarketing, #B2BMarketingAwards

The winning vendor is usually already on the buyer's shortlist before a single sales conversation happens, and increasingly, it isn't a salesperson or a website that put them there. It's a large language model, quietly checking what real people are already saying about you.

John Rockhold, VP of Market Engagement at Spotlight, joins Joel Harrison to unpack Influence Orchestration, Spotlight's new research into how buying preference now forms in AI answer engines, peer communities and analyst conversations, long before a deal ever reaches a pipeline. John's team interviewed 23 leaders who build and measure B2B influence, reviewed 27 published studies of buyer behaviour, and analysed millions of AI engine answers and citations across B2B technology categories. The conversation also draws on Spotlight Summit, the event John's team ran in Kansas City the week this episode was recorded, where Joel spoke alongside Bijou Barry, Megan Burns and other voices shaping this shift.

What you'll learn

• Why buyer preference now largely forms out of sight, in AI prompt windows, peer conversations and communities, before a vendor even knows a deal exists
• What separates the vendors AI answer engines actually recommend from the ones they ignore
• Why earned trust compounds over time, while paid attention resets the moment you stop paying for it
• Who should really own influence inside a B2B company, and why almost nobody does today
• What to check in your own AI visibility on Monday morning, and what to do if you don't like what you find

If you find this conversation valuable, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating or review. It really helps other B2B marketers discover the show.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: the shortlist is already written

01:47 Welcome, John Rockhold

02:08 Inside Spotlight Summit

04:22 What Spotlight does, and where the report began

08:25 Why “Influence Orchestration”

11:22 The day one shortlist: 95% and what it means for the buyer journey

15:05 Robots, humans, and the return of intermediaries

16:55 The verification loop: how buyers check what the machine tells them

19:20 Earned versus owned: the quote, the sidebar, and the flip

22:13 Megan Burns and the internal trust problem

25:28 Why nobody owns influence, and why that has to change

26:42 The 50% ceiling: when owned content collapses your visibility

28:20 Three predictions for 2027 and 2028

33:48 What to check on Monday morning

35:15 Does compounding influence favour challengers or incumbents?

38:33 What John learned at Spotlight Summit

Chapter times are taken from the pre-edit transcript. Re-time against the published cut once the final edit is locked.

Follow John Rockhold

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrockhold/

Spotlight: https://spotlight-io.com/

More from Trust & Influence in B2B

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What's the one place your buyers are checking that you haven't thought about yet? Let us know in the comments.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing: https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast: https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#B2BMarketing #TrustAndInfluence #InfluenceOrchestration #AIinMarketing #GEO #AEO #BuyerJourney #AnalystRelations #B2BPodcast #MarketingPodcast #JoelHarrison #Spotlight #JohnRockhold

Every B2B vendor now has an AI story. Michelle Huff, Chief Marketing Officer at Alteryx, argues that's exactly the problem: when everyone makes the same promise, positioning around AI stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes. Michelle brings more than 25 years leading marketing and go-to-market strategy at Oracle, Salesforce and UserTesting to the question of how a 25-year-old analytics brand earns its place in the AI era without sliding into hype.

Joel and Michelle talk through how Alteryx replaces claims with proof – a 760,000-member user community, customer stories, and a framework (Visible, Understandable, Repeatable, Auditable) for what makes an automated decision trustworthy. Michelle also unpacks a strikingly simple way to think about handing judgment to AI: treat it like onboarding a new hire, earning autonomy step by step rather than switching it on and walking away.

What you'll learn

• Why positioning around AI is now table stakes rather than a differentiator – and what to do about it
• How to move a brand beyond me-too claims to demonstrable, genuine value
• What proof of substance actually looks like to a buyer who's heard every AI promise before
• Why the real AI story is about automating judgment, not just tasks
• A practical framework for deciding what's ready to automate and what still needs a human in the loop

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: why AI positioning is now table stakes

02:02 Meet Michelle Huff and Alteryx's 25-year evolution

04:54 25 years across tech shifts: the instinct that carries through

08:49 Beyond the AI me-too: proving value, not just claiming it

10:36 Community and advocacy at scale

12:21 Building movements, not monuments: the Salesforce influence

14:00 Where AI genuinely changes the product vs. just the language

15:50 Vision vs. reality: staying grounded while pointing ahead

16:19 Repositioning a legacy brand without over-claiming

20:15 The BIRA framework: visible, understandable, repeatable, auditable

23:50 Data vs. story: which one wins when they pull apart

26:45 Automating judgment: the new-hire analogy and the trust score

31:02 Task-owners vs. problem-owners: staying valuable as AI reshapes marketing

32:58 Advice for teams that don't trust their AI output yet

34:29 Closing thoughts

Follow Michelle Huff

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellehuff/

Alteryx: https://www.alteryx.com/

Closing boilerplate

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership – whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Where's the line for you between AI that's a genuine step change and AI that's just new language on old capability? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

Iron Mountain is nearly 75 years old, built on physical records storage, and structured as a real estate investment trust — known for most of its history for warehouses and shredding trucks, not brand campaigns. Then Karen Feldman arrived as the company's first-ever Chief Marketing Officer.

Karen joins Joel Harrison to explain what it actually means to become a legacy business's first CMO when marketing already exists, just without a seat at the top table — and the trust-building playbook that got her there. We cover the brand health study that reshaped her budget priorities, the McLaren Racing partnership that mirrors Iron Mountain's own value proposition, how AI is reshaping B2B search behaviour, and her advice for any marketing leader walking into a legacy business.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe and leave a rating or review — it really helps other B2B marketers find the show.

Guest

Karen Feldman, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Iron Mountain

Karen Feldman is SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Iron Mountain, a role she took on in November 2024 as the company's first-ever CMO. She joined from IBM Consulting, where she spent over 25 years at IBM, including as CMO leading the business's repositioning following the Kyndryl spin-off.

Karen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-feldman-217440/

Host

Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B and host of Trust & Influence in B2B.

Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

In this episode

00:00 Welcome, and introducing Karen Feldman

02:27 What Iron Mountain actually does today

04:48 Karen's path from IBM Consulting to Iron Mountain

11:06 The brand platform: protect what matters, unlock what's possible

14:43 Earning the leadership trust to build a real CMO mandate

19:09 The McLaren Racing partnership

21:59 Brand, demand, and speaking the business's language

28:28 AI and trust in the B2B mid-funnel

32:25 Advice for marketers walking into a legacy business

35:11 Two years in: what's been unlocked so far

Follow Karen Feldman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-feldman-217440/

Iron Mountain: https://www.ironmountain.com/

Closing & Calls to Action 🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/ What would you tell a marketing leader walking into a legacy B2B business for the first time?

Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing: https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn:

https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast: https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandStrategy, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #CMO, #MarketingLeadership, #BrandTrust, #LegacyBrands, #B2BGrowth, #TrustAndInfluenceInB2B, #IronMountain

NPS has survived more obituaries than almost any other metric in B2B marketing — and it's still standing. Bain & Co.'s newest research doesn't try to kill it off again; it argues the real predictor of B2B growth is something else entirely: whether a vendor makes a buyer's 'day one' shortlist, the mental list formed before anyone picks up the phone. Tony Larks, a B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience spanning sales, enterprise technology and zero-to-one startup builds, read that research and asked the obvious next question — could you estimate your shortlist position without ever surveying a buyer?

➡️ Tony walks Joel through the AI prompt he built to do exactly that — scoring companies against Bain’s five-part framework using nothing but public signals: analyst coverage from the likes of Gartner and Forrester, peer review sites such as G2, forums including Reddit, and even employee sentiment on Glassdoor. He shares the story of an NPS score skewed by SMB customers who’d rather pay a compliance fine than do the hard work of getting compliant, unpacks why ‘shortlist share’ risks becoming exactly the kind of vanity metric NPS became if marketers try to game it with PR spend, and explains why fixing the fundamentals — service, roadmap transparency, honest pricing — beats gaming any signal. He’s open-sourced the tool and is giving the prompt away free to anyone who wants it. If you’ve ever wondered whether your brand is even in the room before the RFP lands, this conversation will change how you think about being ‘in the market’ versus being in contention.

What You'll Learn

• What's actually wrong with NPS, the B2B trust metric — and why nobody's replaced it, until now

• What the ‘day one list’ is, and why Bain says most lost deals were never winnable to begin with

• How Tony built an AI model that estimates buyer confidence from public signals alone, and where the approach is strongest and weakest

• What brands should actually do once they know where they sit on the shortlist

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: Why We're Finally Talking About NPS

01:35 - Meet Tony Larks: From Sales Floor to Startup Marketing Leadership

04:45 - From Sentiment Tracking to Bain's ‘Day One List’

09:28 - What's Actually Wrong With NPS (And What Isn't)

12:14 - NPS's Cultural Blind Spot: Sevens, Nines and Detractors

15:07 - Inside Bain's Day One List: Why ‘Lost’ Deals Were Never Winnable

17:56 - Do You Need Bain's Budget? Mining Your Own CRM Data

21:02 - The Hidden Buyers Bain's Framework Surfaces

23:55 - Building an AI Proxy for Buyer Trust: How the Shortlist Matrix Works

26:26 - Estimation vs. Measurement: How Rigorous Is Good Enough?

28:07 - The Gaming Risk: Can Shortlist Share Be Bought?

31:26 - Could ‘Shortlist Share’ Become the Next Vanity Metric?

33:27 - What Marketers Should Actually Do With Their Score

35:02 - Explaining the Two-by-Two Grid

36:13 - NPS Isn't Dead, It's Just Incomplete

37:42 - Wrap-Up and How to Get the Tool

About the guest

Tony Larks is a B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience, starting his career in sales before moving into marketing roles spanning distribution, systems integrators and enterprise technology businesses. He has spent his most recent years leading zero-to-one marketing builds inside startups, and over the past year has been building a suite of AI agents to track brand and market sentiment — work that led him to develop the open-source ‘shortlist matrix’ featured in this episode.

Tony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonylarks/

Blog featuring shortlist matrix prompt: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-measuring-market-share-start-shortlist-tony-larks-hazje/?trackingId=BHbT3G1Q76e9aaY0PZoOcg%3D%3D

About the podcast

This is a full episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, hosted by Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B.

Joel on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

If this was useful, subscribe for more on trust, influence and the metrics that actually predict B2B growth — and tell me in the comments where you think you’d land on the day one shortlist.

Most B2B marketing leaders aren't short on expertise — they're short on the confidence and the practised skill to be visible with it, whether that's in the room with their own board or out in public. Archana Dhankar, VP Marketing EMEA at Proofpoint, TEDx speaker and LinkedIn Top Voice, joins Joel Harrison to unpack what it actually takes to build that visibility, internally and externally, and turn it into real influence.

➡️ She breaks down the practical mechanics of building influence: a 2:1 ratio for balancing self-promotion against value-added content, a three-stage framework for knowing when visibility has become influence (likes, saves, and inbound interest), and why trust compounds differently on a public platform than it does inside your own organisation. She's also candid about the cost — the professional accountability, the late nights, the posts that flop despite your best instincts — and closes with practical advice for reluctant leaders and junior marketers on where to start.

• Why visibility and influence are not the same thing, and how to tell them apart
• The 2:1 ratio Archana uses to keep self-promotion from tipping into ego
• A three-stage framework for measuring whether your content is building real influence
• Why trust compounds differently on social platforms than it does in daily work
• The personal cost of building a public profile – and why consistency, not confidence, is the hard part
• How to start building influence if you're a reluctant leader, or a junior marketer just starting out

• 00:01 – Introduction and episode setup
• 02:08 – Archana's journey: two decades in B2B marketing, content roots back to 2008
• 04:20 – Visibility vs. influence: the core distinction
• 06:17 – What prompted Archana to go public, and the “side hustle” advantage
• 09:33 – Three phases of measuring when visibility becomes influence
• 12:51 – Self-promotion vs. ego, and the 2:1 content ratio
• 14:18 – Balancing personal brand with company brand
• 16:47 – Why trust is the foundation of influence
• 18:41 – Winning over skeptical stakeholders: SEMrush and Adobe as B2B influencer examples
• 20:28 – How being an influential leader has shaped Archana's career
• 23:29 – The personal cost: accountability and consistency
• 26:08 – Where to start if you want influence, not just visibility
• 30:19 – Advice for junior marketers
• 31:14 – The one mindset shift that matters most

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archanadhankar/

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Jason Miller, who leads content and marketing at V7 Labs and previously held senior content marketing roles at LinkedIn, Marketo and ActiveCampaign. Before B2B, Jason spent a decade in the music industry — touring with bands, working artist development, and photographing rock's biggest names — and he's never really left it behind. Together, they explore why the safe, by-the-numbers approach so many B2B marketers default to is quietly the riskiest choice of all, and what a career spent between the tour bus and the marketing plan has taught him about actually earning an audience's attention.

➡️ Jason holds nothing back. He explains why the music industry never called its fans “leads,” and how that community mindset shaped his approach at Marketo, where the entire strategy handed down from Marketo co-founder and CMO Jon Miller was simply “get people to like us.” He unpacks why viral, one-hit-wonder campaigns — from Old Spice to the Volvo truck ad — aren't repeatable playbooks for most brands, and why chasing them is a trap. He's candid about the tension between personality and brand safety inside a large corporate marketing team, drawing on his time working on Bing at Microsoft, and makes the case for consistency over virality — including a great story about Rick Rubin, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and creating for yourself rather than for an audience. He closes with a warning about AI and taste: why outsourcing judgment to an algorithm is the worst thing a marketer can do right now, and what will actually matter in B2B marketing going forward.

What You'll Learn

• What the music industry got right: why bands never called their fans “leads,” and what that means for B2B community-building.
• The Marketo playbook: how “get people to like us” became a strategy, not just a slogan.
• The one-hit-wonder trap: why viral campaigns like Old Spice and the Volvo truck ad aren't repeatable playbooks for most brands.
• Personality vs. brand safety: what happens to a big idea inside a large corporate marketing team, and why smaller, faster teams can take more risks.
• Consistency beats virality: “posting the draft,” building in public, and what Rick Rubin's work with Red Hot Chili Peppers can teach content marketers.
• AI and the death of taste: why outsourcing taste to an AI agent is a mistake, and the skills marketers now need to stay relevant.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: From the Mosh Pit to the Marketing Plan

02:21 - Jason Miller: From Music Industry to B2B, and Life at V7 Labs

05:13 - Startup Speed vs. Corporate Red Tape

07:07 - Life on the Road: Artist Development Lessons

09:33 - B2C Personality Meets B2B: The Marketo Playbook

12:58 - The One-Hit-Wonder Trap: Old Spice, Volvo and Repeatable Playbooks

15:13 - HubSpot, “It Slaps,” and the Line Between Cool and Try-Hard

17:55 - Second Skin: Music as a Sense of Purpose

20:55 - Personality Inside a Corporate Machine: The Microsoft/Bing Story

24:49 - Consistency Over Virality: Posting the Draft and Rick Rubin's “Create for Yourself”

29:18 - Likable, Relevant, Consistent: What Actually Works on LinkedIn

31:43 - Why the Clay and Eleven Labs Playbooks Aren't Repeatable

34:14 - AI, Taste and the Last Human Trait

38:37 - Closing Thoughts

Note: chapter times are taken from the unedited transcript and are approximate — confirm against the final published cut before adding to the platform.

Follow the Guest

Follow Jason Miller

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsnmiller/

https://www.v7labs.com/

Closing & Calls to Action

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, funny in places, and packed with takeaways on how to build genuine personality into your content — whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—having something to say, or having the confidence to say it? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

Hashtags

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ContentMarketing, #BrandPersonality, #B2BContent, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BStrategy, #ContentStrategy, #Storytelling, #MusicIndustry, #B2BGrowth, #ThoughtLeadership, #MarketingTrends

Most leadership advice pushes you toward a familiar template: decisive, diplomatic, endlessly composed. It's meant to build trust. Often it does the opposite – because trust depends on people actually knowing who you are, not the version of you assembled to fit expectations.

In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Karl Van den Bergh, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Illumio, the breach containment company. Karl has spent more than 25 years leading go-to-market teams at global technology companies, including CMO roles at Gigamon and DataStax, and now writes regularly on authenticity and what it means to be human at work.

Together they unpack why being yourself is a trust strategy rather than a soft skill, how to tell real authenticity apart from the performative kind, and why Karl believes AI raises the value of human, relational marketing rather than eroding it.

In this episode:

• Why most leadership advice pushes conformity rather than authenticity, and what gets lost in the process
• The test that actually separates real authenticity from the performative kind
• Why brands that try to please everyone end up forgettable – and the campaign that proves the opposite
• How fear of conflict quietly kills team performance, and what fixed it on Karl's own team
• Why Karl believes AI raises the value of human, relational marketing rather than replacing it

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

01:26 Karl's background – from physics to CMO

03:13 Why he started writing about being yourself at work

06:10 Why a distinctive point of view is a differentiator

08:37 Personal brand vs. company brand

10:55 What authenticity actually means

11:50 Spotting performative authenticity

13:47 How authenticity cascades through a team

17:27 Where leaders fall short on consistency

19:46 Does this get harder as the stakes rise?

21:56 The counterargument: "Don't Be Yourself"

24:30 AI and the flattening of content

27:52 One thing to start doing differently next week

Karl on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlvandenbergh/

Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Why is employee advocacy so often mistaken for a content strategy? Rida Oyebade, Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, explains why handing employees “ready-made content” isn’t enough — advocacy only works when it still sounds like the person sharing it, not the brand behind them.

In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, host Joel Harrison talks to Rida Oyebade about employee advocacy — the discipline of turning colleagues into credible, willing voices for the brand. Rida traces her own path into advocacy, breaks down the different tiers of an advocacy programme, and is candid about what she’s learned building one from scratch at Workday: why participation has to stay genuinely optional, why no programme survives without real buy-in from leadership, and why the whole discipline is really about borrowed trust rather than borrowed content.

In this episode

• Why brand-originated content is losing ground to individual voices in B2B
• Why handing employees ready-made content isn’t the same as earning their voice
• The three tiers of employee advocacy, and why each needs different handling
• Why employee advocacy means borrowing someone’s “personal real estate” — and why participation has to stay optional
• What actually makes advocacy programmes work, and why persuasion alone isn’t enough
• Whether employee advocacy is a specialism worth building a career around

Guest

Rida Oyebade is Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, where she leads employee advocacy — working with colleagues, or “influencers” as she prefers to call them, to carry the brand into places a corporate account can’t reach.

In this special edition of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Fiona McKenzie of Marketbridge to make sense of Cannes Lions 2026. Fresh from five days of multi-stream content, installations and fringe events, they let the dust settle and distil what actually matters for B2B marketers – viewed through a growth lens, not creativity for its own sake.

They unpack why B2B is visibly on the rise at Cannes, the tension between creativity and commercial measurement, and the CFO buy-in conversation (brand as future cashflow). They dig into three important releases from the week: the FT's work on trust (including the finding that 82% trust a source more when it challenges than when it agrees), Bloomberg on reputation pulling weight across the full funnel, and Bain & Co.'s new model positioned as a rival to NPS, scoring a buyer's likelihood to choose you before any deal is on the table.

The conversation moves through the B2B Lions winner – an obscure Swedish ball-bearing company using tidal energy in the Faroe Islands, and why a big idea told as a wider go-to-market story is a step in the right direction – the rise of creators and influence in B2B, Joel's framework of five "trust champions," and a notably optimistic read on AI: a technology that surfaces existing misalignment and removes grunt work rather than replacing human judgment. They close on what Cannes could do better for the B2B community.

In this episode:

What Cannes actually is, and why it's so hard to navigate. B2B moving up the agenda. The growth-versus-creativity lens. CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow. Why CMOs are exhausted by the measurement debate. Three key releases: FT on trust, Bloomberg on reputation, Bain's NPS rival. The B2B Lions winner and what it signals. Creators, influence and Joel's five trust champions. A grounded, optimistic take on AI. What's missing, and what would take Cannes to the next level in 2027.

Reports and resources mentioned (links below):

• FT – research on trust in B2B https://dimensionsofinfluence.ft.com/
• Bloomberg – reputation across the funnel, B2B Summit presentation https://www.bloombergmedia.com/blog/corporate-rep-study-2025/
• Bain & Co. – new buyer-choice model positioned against NPS https://www.bain.com/insights/raising-the-odds-on-a-deal-how-likelihood-to-buy-rewires-b2b-growth/

Chapters:

• (00:00) Welcome and why we waited for the dust to settle
• (01:13) What Cannes actually is, and how to navigate it
• (03:04) B2B on the rise at the festival
• (04:28) The growth lens: creativity anchored in commercial value
• (05:21) CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow
• (07:54) Why CMOs are exhausted by measurement
• (10:23) Is B2B creativity judged by the wrong (B2C) playbook?
• (11:26) Three key releases: FT, Bloomberg and Bain
• (16:45) Talking the language of the boardroom
• (19:36) The B2B Lions winner: a Swedish ball-bearing story
• (24:29) Creators, influence and the five trust champions
• (30:11) AI: surfacing misalignment, not taking our jobs
• (35:17) What Cannes could do better
• (37:46) Wrap-up and how to share your own take

Connect with Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Connect with Fiona on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-mckenzie-8a16921a/

Most of the conversations that decide a B2B deal happen in a room you'll never be in. Buyers swap recommendations, compare notes and build their shortlists in spaces marketers can neither see nor measure – and by the time you're in contention, the decision is often half made.

In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Lottie O'Donoghue, strategy director at Velo, a specialist B2B agency built on recommendation. Lottie has led marketing client-side in scale-up SaaS and run ABM at Accenture, and now shapes recommendation strategies for Velo's clients across technology, industrial and professional services.

Together they unpack why becoming the recommended choice has shifted from a nice-to-have to a commercial imperative, the real difference between being known and being recommended, and the trust signals that quietly compound into advocacy.

In this episode:

• Why the recommended choice now matters more than the visible one
• The trust signals that accumulate into recommendation, and the ones marketers most underestimate
• How to make the case for investing in influence that conventional attribution can't capture
• Where to start if you suspect you're not being talked about in the right rooms
• Velo's six Rs of Recommendation Marketing framework

Download Velo's report here: https://www.velo-b2b.com/ebooks/?utm_source=Joel+Harrison&utm_campaign=Recommendation+Marketing

This is a sponsored episode, produced in partnership with Velo.

Lead generation is the discipline B2B marketing relies on most and trusts least. In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Robin Caller, founder and CEO of Leadscale, explains why, and what it would take to fix it.

Most people in B2B know that a good share of the leads changing hands every day are of questionable quality. Few will say so on the record. Robin is an exception. He calls it "a tolerable level of mischief", a grey zone the whole industry has quietly learned to live with, and in conversation with host Joel Harrison he explains why it persists, why he refuses to call it fraud, and how transparency could begin to put it right.

A note before you listen: Robin speaks freely, and not everyone in the industry will agree with all of it. That's rather the point.

In this episode:

– Why lead generation has been B2B's least-trusted discipline for 20 years

– What "a tolerable level of mischief" really means, and why it isn't fraud

– The "blind faith" model and the hierarchy of transparency

– Why marketers tolerate poor-quality leads: the quota trap

– How advertisers are part of the problem, not just the victims

– The provenance questions every buyer should be asking their suppliers

– Why "more leads will not be the answer" in the AI era

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Lead Generation Challenges

05:42 Transparency and Its Role in Trust

08:20 The Ambivalence of Stakeholders

11:26 Blind Faith in Lead Generation Practices

14:23 The Importance of Transparency in Data Collection

17:19 Navigating the Gray Areas of Lead Generation

18:22 Finding Fair Solutions for All Parties

21:37 Advertisers: Victims and Perpetrators

21:54 The Importance of Data Sharing

24:30 Data Decay and Its Impact on Performance

25:16 Trust and Transparency in Data Transactions

25:25 Generational Perspectives in Marketing

27:03 The MQL Mindset and Its Limitations

29:20 Dynamic Qualification of Leads

31:12 Managing Tolerances in Imperfect Systems

32:48 The Future of Lead Generation

36:23 Questions for Better Data Practices

39:56 The Ethical Implications of Data Sourcing

42:42 A Positive Outlook on Future Trends

About the guest

Robin Caller is the founder and CEO of Leadscale, a London-based lead generation and data quality business. He has spent more than two decades in lead and demand generation and is one of the industry's more outspoken voices on data quality, transparency and trust.

Robin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robincaller/

About the podcast

Trust & Influence in B2B is hosted by Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B. Each episode explores marketing strategy and practice with senior B2B practitioners, researchers and academics.

Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Enjoyed this episode? Follow the show in your podcast app and leave a rating or review – it helps other B2B marketers find it.

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Tom Rudnai, Founder of Demand Genius and author of the Dark AI study — a research project that analyzed hundreds of AI prompt clusters across major B2B categories to map where brands are truly winning and losing influence. Tom's central finding is as counterintuitive as it is urgent: the more boldly a brand claims to be the best, the more likely AI is to quietly sideline it during the buyer conversations that shape outcomes. So where is influence actually earned in an AI-led world — and what should B2B marketers be doing differently?

➡️ Tom cuts through the noise with sharp, data-grounded thinking on why AI is not a search channel — and why treating it like one is one of the most costly mistakes in B2B marketing today. He introduces the "Dark AI" concept: the 84% of buyer conversations where no brand gets cited, yet where the problem framing, requirements, and shortlist criteria are already being quietly formed. He unpacks how AI enters exploratory mode at the top of the funnel — and why confident, directive brand language fails at the exact moment influence is most available. He also lays out the concept of information gain, arguing that original research, clear perspectives, and genuinely new knowledge are now the highest-value signals a brand can produce. From convergence patterns to what to actually measure, this conversation will challenge how you think about authority, content, and trust in modern B2B.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: Why Bold Positioning Can Backfire in AI Search

02:08 - Tom's Background and the Story Behind Demand Genius

03:59 - How Buyers Use AI Differently from Traditional Search

06:16 - The Dark AI Study: What It Measured and What It Found

10:30 - AI Visibility vs. AI Influence: The Iceberg Explained

13:18 - Convergence: How AI Narrows Down to a Recommendation

18:38 - Information Gain: The New North Star for B2B Content

22:11 - Why Confident Category Claims Fail in AI-Led Journeys

25:28 - What B2B Marketers Should Actually Be Measuring

30:49 - Patterns Across Categories and AI Models

33:22 - The One Takeaway Every Marketer Should Remember

Follow Tom Rudnai,

linkedin.com/in/tomrudnai

demandgenius.ai

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #AISearch, #DarkAI, #AEO, #BuyerJourney, #InformationGain, #B2BGrowth, #AIMarketing, #DemandGeneration

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Professor Laura Chamberlain, Professor of Marketing at the University of Warwick and Founder of Think Talk Thrive. They tackle one of the most pressing questions in the profession right now: Do we still need junior marketers—and if so, what do we owe them? As AI absorbs entry-level tasks and graduate vacancies continue to shrink, is marketing quietly destroying its own talent pipeline?

➡️ Laura draws on years of teaching across every level of the profession—from undergraduates to C-suite executives—to challenge the notion that AI can simply replace junior roles. She makes a compelling case that young professionals bring far more than cheap labour: native AI fluency, cultural proximity, fresh thinking, and an eagerness that senior hires can't replicate. She and Joel explore how the erosion of mentorship, rising imposter phenomenon among 18–25-year-olds, and the compression of entry-level roles are creating a long-horizon crisis no single company will feel—until it's far too late. If you're in any way responsible for building or leading a marketing team, this episode will challenge how you think about who you hire, how you develop them, and what the profession stands to lose if we keep pulling the ladder up behind us.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: The Junior Marketer Crisis

02:06 - Laura's Background and Teaching Perspective

03:13 - Is Marketing a Career Young People Choose or Fall Into?

06:29 - What's Preoccupying Students Entering the Profession

09:48 - The Graduate Jobs Squeeze and AI's Role

11:37 - Debunking the "We Don't Need Juniors" Narrative

14:31 - What Young Professionals Uniquely Bring to Marketing Teams

17:20 - The Case for Mentorship and Why It's Breaking Down

23:42 - How Junior Marketers Learn Without Entry-Level Tasks

25:42 - Learning to Be Strategic: The New Junior Skillset

30:06 - Specialists vs. Generalists in Marketing Education

34:51 - Are Young People Better or Worse at Using AI?

39:33 - The Long-Term Cost of Abandoning Junior Talent

41:09 - What Needs to Change: Laura's Call to Action

Follow Laura Chamberlain

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmchamberlain/

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—investing in junior talent or letting AI fill the gap? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #JuniorMarketers, #MarketingTalent, #AIinMarketing, #MarketingEducation, #EarlyCareer, #FutureOfMarketing, #MarketingMentorship, #TalentPipeline

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Kate Hassler, Group Director of Brand and Comms at Access Group—a $9 billion global B2B software company serving 160,000 customers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. While headlines scream of AI-driven redundancies at tech giants, Access Group took the opposite approach: hiring more people, running company-wide hackathons, and building a culture where AI is simply business as usual. So what does a genuinely human-led AI transformation actually look like from the inside?

➡️ Kate walks through every stage of Access Group's journey—from pockets of shadow AI usage and no formal governance, to enterprise Claude licenses with custom brand skills built in. She reveals the story behind the now-legendary "AI bus" metaphor that united 9,000 employees around a single, simple idea, and explains how structured playtime - not mandates - turned the biggest sceptics into the most vocal champions. She digs into why Access chose to protect junior talent rather than cut it, how one senior designer reinvented himself as an AI strategist, and why the "human at the start, human at the end" principle is what separates meaningful content from AI slop. Whether you're a marketing leader navigating an AI rollout or just trying to get your team over the line, Kate's blueprint is grounded, practical, and genuinely inspiring.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: AI and the B2B Marketing Workplace

02:12 - Kate Hassler and Access Group Overview

04:03 - Company-Wide AI as a Strategic Priority

07:26 - The London Bus Metaphor: Origin and Impact

11:04 - Why the Metaphor Has Endured a Year On

12:32 - From Shadow AI to Structured Adoption

14:33 - Copilot, Claude, and the Licensing Journey

17:27 - Building Custom Claude Brand Skills

19:00 - Human at the Start, Human at the End

21:14 - Hackathons, Play, and AI Champions

25:37 - Job Security and Empathy-Led Leadership

28:07 - Splash Maker: A Creative Reinvents as Strategist

32:49 - Biggest Lessons from 12 Months of AI Transformation

36:37 - Junior Talent and the Future Pipeline

Follow Kate Hassler https://linkedin.com/in/kate-hassler https://www.theaccessgroup.com

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—getting your team on board with AI, or putting the governance in place? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #AIAdoption, #AIInMarketing, #MarketingLeadership, #AITransformation, #FutureOfWork, #CreativeServices, #B2BTech

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Tejal Patel, Independent Marketing Consultant and former marketing leader at Cisco, Microsoft, and Nokia. Together, they examine how B2B technology marketing is changing as AI reshapes content creation and digital channels become more saturated than ever. Using exclusive insights from B2B Marketing Awards data, they reveal four emerging trends that are helping leading brands stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

➡️ Tejal explains why marketers are moving beyond traditional buyer personas and investing more heavily in developers, practitioners, employees, and advocates who influence purchasing decisions from within. The conversation explores the growing importance of employee advocacy, experiential marketing, proof-of-concept campaigns, and highly targeted direct mail programs that cut through digital noise. They also discuss why trust, authenticity, and human experiences are becoming more valuable competitive advantages—and why many marketing measurement frameworks may be preventing organizations from fully embracing these strategies.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction and Why Tech Marketing Leads B2B Innovation

01:23 - Meet Tejal Patel and the Rise of Human-Centric Marketing

05:21 - The Shift Toward Internal Influencers and Practitioner Audiences

10:22 - Why Marketers Are Targeting Doers Instead of Decision-Makers

12:15 - The Measurement Challenge Behind Long-Term Marketing Success

14:02 - Employee Advocacy and Authentic Brand Influence

16:51 - Proof of Concept as a Marketing Campaign

18:01 - Why Demonstration Beats Persuasion

20:52 - Quality Over Quantity in Modern B2B Marketing

23:19 - The Growth of Experiential and Sensory Marketing

25:11 - What Gen Z Buyers Teach Us About Engagement

27:29 - Creating Experiences That Prove Value

31:13 - Building Impactful Experiences on Smaller Budgets

33:53 - The Return of Direct Mail in B2B

37:21 - Has Digital Marketing Lost Its Distinction?

39:59 - The One Thing Marketing Leaders Should Change Today

42:34 - Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Follow Tejal Patel

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejal/

https://tejalpatel.co.uk/

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It’s honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What do you think will matter more in the future of B2B marketing—AI-powered efficiency or human-centered experiences?

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with the marketers, leaders, and innovators shaping the future of B2B.

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #TechMarketing, #ExperientialMarketing, #EmployeeAdvocacy, #ABM, #DemandGeneration, #MarketingInnovation, #MarketingLeadership, #CustomerExperience

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Brian Macreadie, Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard, one of the UK's most creatively ambitious international law firms. Brian reveals how his team did something no legal firm had ever done before—becoming the first-ever official legal partner of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show—and built a full-funnel campaign around it called Flourish in the City. Could flowers, billboards, and a garden at Chelsea really deliver 350% ROI and 40 new clients in under a year?

➡️ With over 30 years of B2B marketing experience across telecoms, media, and legal, Brian doesn't just talk about creativity—he proves it pays. He breaks down the strategic thinking behind Flourish in the City: why a noisy, content-saturated legal market demanded something radically different, and how a single emotionally resonant idea can anchor an entire integrated campaign. From 19 digital billboards at Bank and London Bridge, to handing flowers to city commuters, to hosting 400+ VIP clients across 57 intimate Chelsea events—this is full-funnel B2B marketing at its boldest. Brian also tackles the harder questions: how do you build internal buy-in for long-term, creative marketing investment? How do brand and ABM complement rather than compete? And what does it really take to build the kind of trust that turns one conversation into a 25-year client relationship? His two golden rules haven't changed in 30 years—and they're more relevant than ever.

Chapters:

00:00 Podcast Welcome

00:30 Meet Brian McCredie

00:55 Inside the London Office

02:01 Flourish in the City

03:50 Episode Learning Goals

04:36 Brian Career Journey

05:40 Why Legal Needs Creativity

07:19 About Addleshaw Goddard

08:33 The Attention Problem

09:55 Trust and Top of Mind

11:58 Why Chelsea Flower Show

13:34 Authentic Brand Fit

16:28 Pilot Proof and Client Love

17:39 Behind the Scenes at Chelsea

19:17 Flourish in the City

21:05 Making the Long Term Case

23:22 Sponsorship as Full Funnel

25:06 VIP Events at Chelsea

27:54 Citywide Media Blitz

31:31 Measuring Impact and ROI

33:16 Building Creative Buy In

36:08 Results and Payback

37:18 Transferable Marketing Lessons

40:17 Final Takeaways and Close

Follow Brian Macreadie,

https://linkedin.com/in/bmacreadie?originalSubdomain=uk

https://addleshawgoddard.com

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn

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#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #LegalMarketing, #B2BCreativity, #SponsorshipMarketing, #FullFunnelMarketing, #BrandBuilding, #B2BEvents, #IntegratedMarketing

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Maureen Blandford, Founder of Serendipitas and co-author of the Diginomica Enterprise Data Health Study. Together, they expose one of B2B marketing's most uncomfortable truths: that senior leaders across major enterprises don't actually trust their own data—even when they say they do. Could the data powering your most critical business decisions be far less reliable than anyone is willing to admit out loud?

➡️ Maureen draws on nearly twelve years as a B2B tech CMO and frank conversations with eighteen senior practitioners—CEOs, CDOs, and commercial leaders—to unpack the dangerous gap between stated and behavioral trust in enterprise data. She introduces the "verification tax," where organisations are burning 30 to 70% of professional time simply assembling and reconciling data rather than analysing it. They dig into why 94% of organisations still have siloed data despite years of integration projects, why legacy MarTech was never built for strategic business needs, and why vendor-funded research is feeding a narrative that doesn't match reality on the ground. On AI, the findings are stark: vendor surveys claim 93% of organisations plan to deploy autonomous AI agents within two years—yet only 3 of 18 interviewed organisations have anything resembling agentic AI in practice. Maureen also shares what genuine AI readiness requires and, crucially, three things any senior marketer can do this week—with no new budget and no board approval—to start making real, lasting progress.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to the B2B Data Trust Crisis

02:28 - Why Data Became Maureen's Central Obsession

04:10 - What the Current Data Narrative Gets Wrong

05:37 - Stated Trust vs. Behavioural Trust: The Key Discovery

11:26 - The Verification Tax and Its Hidden Cost

14:12 - Why MarTech Was Never Built for Strategy

15:55 - 94% of Organisations Still Have Siloed Data

19:29 - Why Vendor Research Misleads Buyers

23:39 - The AI Readiness Gap: 93% vs. Reality

29:08 - The Three Types of AI Organisations (and the Most Dangerous One)

31:00 - Rays of Sunshine: What's Actually Working

34:41 - Three Things You Can Do Starting Monday

Follow Maureen Blandford, https://linkedin.com/in/maureenblandford/ https://serendipitas.com

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think is the biggest barrier to data trust in B2B—the tools, the culture, or the narrative? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

👉Subscribe now and tap the bell icon to get notified whenever a new episode drops—from the show floor, the studio, or the front lines of B2B.

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In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Angela Tangas, CEO of Oliver, part of the Brandtech Group—the original pioneers of the in-house agency model. Together, they tackle one of the most urgent questions facing B2B marketing leaders right now: how do you move beyond AI experimentation and drive genuine, scalable transformation? And is the operating model you choose as important as the technology itself?

➡️ Angela draws on her experience working with eight of the world's ten largest advertisers across forty-eight countries to deliver a frank, practical, and genuinely eye-opening conversation. She explains why 2025 became the year of "pilot purgatory" for so many organisations—and what separates the brands that broke through from those that didn't. She unpacks the layered pressures on B2B marketing teams today, from longer deal cycles and more decision-makers to the commoditisation of AI-generated content, and makes the case for why volume without effectiveness is a dead end. Angela also tackles the environmental footprint of AI adoption—an issue she argues deserves far more attention—and sets out a clear, actionable framework for marketing leaders who want to build momentum this quarter. From governance and change management to agentic workflows and the future of the resource mix, this episode is packed with real-world insight.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to AI-Led Marketing Transformation

02:09 - How Oliver and Brandtech Group Work

04:05 - What's Driving Urgency Behind AI Adoption in B2B

07:09 - The Capability Gap in B2B Marketing Teams

08:15 - Where Marketing Teams Are Focusing Their AI Efforts

10:37 - Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Are Teams Getting It Right?

14:02 - The In-House Agency Model Explained

18:26 - How Oliver's Role Has Evolved with AI

20:24 - Managing the Resource Mix: Internal Teams, Agencies & AI

23:11 - The Environmental Cost of AI in Marketing

25:59 - What's Holding Organisations Back from Real Transformation

29:37 - What Marketing Operations Will Look Like in 2–3 Years

32:39 - Where Marketing Leaders Should Start This Quarter

Follow Angela Tangas, linkedin.com/in/angelatangas oliver.agency

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ |

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #AgenticAI, #AITransformation, #InHouseAgency, #MarketingOperations, #GenerativeAI, #AIinMarketing, #MarketingLeadership, #BrandtechGroup

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Nick Eades, Chief Strategy Officer at Freemarket and one of B2B marketing's most experienced senior leaders, having served as CMO five times across PE-backed, publicly quoted, and VC-funded businesses at companies including IBM, Dell, BT, and Fujitsu. Together, they explore one of the most consequential shifts reshaping the marketing profession: the rise of private equity ownership in B2B — and what it demands of marketers operating inside it. Could the high-pressure, outcome-driven discipline of PE-backed marketing actually be making all of B2B better?

➡️ Nick holds nothing back. He dismantles the cult of MQLs — sharing real-world cases where marketing leaders were measuring leads that never converted to revenue — and argues that closed-won SQLs sourced by the GTM function is the only metric that truly counts. He introduces his operating mantra of "evidence builds confidence," explains why he talks about reputation and positioning rather than brand, and breaks down what a genuine GTM engine looks like in practice: daily standups, zero ego, AI-powered tech stacks, and full sales-marketing alignment. He also speaks candidly about the personal demands of PE culture and how to manage your own capacity without burning out. If you're a marketer whose organisation has been acquired, is at risk of acquisition, or simply wants to sharpen your commercial instincts, this conversation will challenge how you think about your role and what it's really there to deliver.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: PE and B2B Marketing

02:09 - Nick Eades: Background and Career

03:13 - How PE Transformed the B2B Landscape

06:06 - Buy and Build: The SaaS Era and Cheap Capital

08:08 - What PE Owners Actually Expect 12:09 - Marketing Inside a PE-Backed Business

14:25 - Why MQLs Don't Matter (And What Does)

17:03 - Building a GTM Engine That Drives SQLs

18:15 - The CMO Role in PE: Myth vs. Reality

22:02 - Riding Two Horses: Brand vs. Demand in PE

25:14 - Evidence Builds Confidence: Metrics That Matter

28:16 - Personal Wellbeing and Capacity in PE

32:18 - GTM as a Silo Buster

36:11 - The Death of ROI as a Standalone Metric

36:53 - Future-Proofing Your Career for a PE World

Follow Nick Eades

https://linkedin.com/in/nickeades/

https://freemarket.com/

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—proving marketing ROI or building a GTM engine that makes ROI irrelevant? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #PrivateEquity, #PEMarketing, #GoToMarket, #GTMStrategy, #RevenueMarketing, #SalesAndMarketing, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Alastair Hussain, Chief Strategy Officer at TMP (The Marketing Practice), a specialist B2B marketing agency. Together, they confront one of the most pressing realities in B2B marketing today: the chaos most marketers are experiencing isn't a streak of bad luck—it's the symptom of operating models that have fundamentally broken down. Is coherence the cure, and what does it actually take to build it from the inside out?

➡️ Alastair draws on TMP's Cost of Chaos Report—research spanning over a thousand B2B marketers and tech buyers—to map out the "chaos cascade": how macro forces like geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change filter down into fragmented teams, stalled deals, and burned-out marketers. He argues that the instinct to move faster or pile on more technology doesn't fix chaos—it accelerates it. The real answer is coherence: aligning brand, messaging, product, and strategy so every part of the marketing function pulls in the same direction. Along the way, they explore why product has become marketing's most disconnected discipline, how cognitive fluency underpins buyer trust, and why CMOs need to take back control of the strategic conversation rather than waiting to be handed objectives. Whether you're leading a stretched team or questioning the value of your marketing function, this episode delivers both the diagnosis and a clear direction forward.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: The Chaos Facing B2B Marketers

02:12 - What Is the Chaos Cascade?

05:30 - The Human and Commercial Cost of Chaos

09:00 - Why Faster and More Tech Makes Things Worse

13:15 - Defining Coherence: What It Actually Means

17:00 - The CMO as Chief Market Officer

19:45 - Why Product Is the Most Disconnected Area

22:20 - Making the Business Case for Coherence

24:00 - 97% of Buyers Notice Vendor Coherence

26:30 - Cognitive Fluency and Buyer Trust

30:00 - Buyer-Side Barriers: Decision Makers, Messaging, and Trust

33:45 - Realistic Expectations for CMOs Under Pressure

36:00 - Where Coherence Breaks Down in Practice

38:00 - Advice for Overwhelmed Marketing Leaders

Follow Alastair Hussain,

https://linkedin.com/in/alastairhussain/

https://tmpb2b.com

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—fixing internal alignment or improving external messaging? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #MarketingOperations, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth, #CostOfChaos, #MarketingAlignment, #BuyerTrust, #B2BStrategy

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Skip Fidura, Fractional CMO, Non-Executive Director, and Board Advisor with over 20 years of experience across B2B and B2C marketing on the client, agency, and provider sides. The fractional CMO model is having a moment—but is it a real structural shift in marketing leadership, or just a buzzword that's been marketered up? And what does its rapid rise reveal about how organizations truly value marketing?

➡️ Skip has been working fractionally since before it was fashionable, and he doesn't hold back. He breaks down the real distinctions between a fractional CMO, a consultant, and a contractor—and why getting that wrong can cost organizations dearly. He explores the cost and structural forces driving the fractional trend, from cash-strapped scale-ups to founders seeking an exit strategy. Skip also addresses the harder truths: how marketing's long-standing failure to speak the language of finance has made it easier for businesses to sideline strategic marketing in favor of cheaper, more piecemeal solutions. He shares how trust is built (and lost) when you're only present part-time, and offers a grounded take on whether this model is a genuine step forward—or a warning sign for the profession. If you're weighing up a move to fractional, hiring one, or simply trying to understand where senior B2B marketing leadership is headed, this is essential listening.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to the Fractional CMO Trend

02:13 - Defining the Fractional CMO Role

05:00 - Fractional vs. Consultant vs. Contractor

07:10 - Why the Term "Fractional" Has Exploded

09:00 - How Skip Got Into Fractional Work

10:30 - Cost and Structural Drivers Behind the Model

13:35 - Marketing's Place in the Revenue Function

18:20 - The Fractional CMO in Unstable or Transitioning Orgs

21:55 - Marketing's Failure to Speak the Language of Finance

25:00 - Is a Little Marketing Better Than No Marketing?

28:00 - How Fractional CMOs Build Trust

31:45 - The Gig Economy and the Fractional Lifestyle

34:45 - Is the Fractional Model Here to Stay?

Follow Skip Fidura,

linkedin.com/in/skipfidura

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—proving marketing's ROI or earning a seat at the leadership table? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #FractionalCMO, #MarketingLeadership, #CMO, #ScaleUp, #B2BTech, #MarketingROI, #GigEconomy, #SeniorMarketing

Agentic AI is one of the most talked-about developments in B2B right now — but most marketers haven't yet asked the question that matters most: what happens to buyer trust when an AI agent starts acting on their behalf?

In this episode, Joel Harrison speaks with Andy Johnson, founder and director of client strategy at HUT3, one of the most respected ABM agencies in B2B and one of the earliest adopters of agentic AI in the industry. Andy and his team haven't just been watching this technology evolve — they've been actively building with it for the past three years.

Andy makes a case that will surprise many listeners: that agentic AI, done properly, isn't a threat to buyer trust — it's one of the most powerful ways to build it. But get it wrong, and you're not just making a single mistake. You're scaling bad decisions fast, across your entire account base.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What agentic AI actually means in plain language — and why it represents a genuine step change, not just another AI product
• Why trust in B2B is already being broken by human failures — and how agentic workflows are designed to fix them
• The real risks: scaling bad decisions fast, fragmented data systems, and the governance gap most organisations haven't addressed
• Who's accountable when an AI agent gets something wrong — and how well-designed workflows should handle it
• What the buyer actually cares about when it comes to AI-driven communications (the answer may surprise you)
• How the marketer's role is changing — and why Andy's team has grown, not shrunk, on the back of building agentic AI workflows
• Where Andy sees this all heading by 2030 — and what B2B marketers should be doing right now to get ready

About Andy Johnson

Andy Johnson is founder and director of client strategy at HUT3, an award-winning ABM agency operating across the B2B landscape. HUT3 have been among the earliest agencies to move from talking about agentic AI to building with it, developing workflows across research, content creation, personalisation and campaign activation. Andy brings over 30 years of experience in account-based marketing to his thinking on how AI is reshaping the discipline.

Resources and links

• Find out more about HUT3 at hut3.co.uk
• Connect with Andy Johnson on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to the Trust & Influence in B2B podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
• Read the accompanying LinkedIn newsletter article: Can you orchestrate trust with AI agents?

Subscribe and connect

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a rating or review — it helps other B2B marketers discover the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Robyn Hartley, Managing Director at Paper Kite Media. Drawing on a rigorous analysis of B2B Marketing Awards entries, they expose the uncomfortable truth behind employee advocacy: most brands are deploying it as content distribution, not genuine advocacy. And the data suggests they're missing a significant commercial opportunity as a result. Is your advocacy program building real trust—or just adding noise?

➡️ Robyn and Joel explore why LinkedIn dominates employee advocacy (and why that concentration carries risk), why 70% of campaigns are triggered by brand moments rather than deployed always-on, and why measurement still stops at impressions even in commercially rigorous campaigns. They make the case for "inside-out" sequencing—activating employees internally before any external spend—and discuss how thought leader advocacy is increasingly powering ABM and demand gen strategies, not just brand activity. Robyn's perspective is clear: great advocacy isn't about scripted posts. It's about empowering your team's real experts to build genuine trust with buyers over time. This episode will challenge how you think about your people as a marketing channel.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: The Promise and Reality of Employee Advocacy

01:30 - Meet Robyn Hartley, Managing Director at Paper Kite Media

04:30 - Defining Employee Thought Leaders vs. Employee Amplifiers

06:00 - The Data: Only 14% of Award Entries Use Employee Advocacy

10:00 - LinkedIn's Total Dominance: Strength or Structural Risk?

13:30 - Why LinkedIn Works for B2B (And Where the Risk Lies)

17:00 - Employee Advocacy Beyond Brand: ABM and Demand Gen

20:00 - The Brand Moment Trigger: Episodic vs. Always-On Advocacy

25:00 - Inside-Out Sequencing: Employees as the First Media Channel

29:00 - The Commercial Measurement Gap: Why Reach Isn't Enough

33:00 - CPM Equivalents: A Creative Workaround or a Misleading Metric?

37:00 - Sales and Marketing Convergence Through Employee Advocacy

41:00 - Where Employee Advocacy Is Headed and How to Stand Out

Follow Robyn Hartley,

https://linkedin.com/in/robynhartley/

https://paperkitemedia.co.uk

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

➡️Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

➡️What do you think: is "employee advocacy" really advocacy, or just content distribution? Let us know in the comments below.

➡️Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

---------------

➡️Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

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#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #EmployeeAdvocacy, #LinkedInMarketing, #B2BGrowth, #SalesAndMarketing, #ABMMarketing, #B2BLeadership, #DemandGeneration, #InfluenceMarketing

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Phil Treagus-Evans, Co-founder and CEO at Giraffe Social. Phil discusses his 2025 book, "Human First Marketing," which provides a framework for putting people back at the center of marketing strategy during a time of AI-generated content saturation. They explore why marketing has drifted away from human connection and how to rebuild trust in a cynical B2B landscape.

💬 Can your brand survive the "AI slop" era by being more human, or will you get lost in the machine-gunned noise?

➡️Phil argues that the trust deficit in marketing stems from an obsession with data-driven optimization that treats customers like spreadsheets rather than real people. He breaks down the three essential levers of human-first marketing—Audience, Team, and Personal Brand—showing how leveraging employee advocacy and authentic leadership can outperform any corporate facade. Phil also shares why the AI revolution actually makes humanity a "superpower" and a rare, valuable competitive edge for those willing to ditch the lazy templates for genuine community engagement. Listen to the full episode to learn the practical steps you can take this week to make your brand seen, trusted, and remembered in an increasingly automated world.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to Trust in B2B Marketing

02:11 - Giraffe Social & Human-First Positioning

03:18 - Patterns of Successful Marketing: People at the Heart

05:47 - The Diagnosis: Why Marketing is Broken

07:57 - Symptoms of a Trust Deficit

09:40 - Squaring the Circle with AI: Anti-Lazy AI

12:55 - Defining Human-First Marketing

15:17 - The Three Levers: Audience, Team, and Personal Brand

20:40 - Authentic Marketing vs. Psychological Tricks

23:52 - Why Human-First is a B2B "Sweet Spot"

26:19 - Actionable Steps: Faces and Community Engagement

29:04 - The Future: Humanity as a Superpower

31:46 - Where to find "Human First Marketing"

Follow Phil Treagus-Evans

https://linkedin.com/in/philtreagusevans/

https://giraffesocial.co.uk/

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It’s honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What do you think comes first —insightful data or a compelling story? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #HumanFirstMarketing, #AISlop, #EmployeeAdvocacy, #MarketingTrust, #PersonalBranding, #B2BGrowth

In this episode of Trust and Influence in B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison sits down with Kristen Esto, Founder of Customer Influence, a specialist influencer and creator marketing agency. They explore what the data actually tells us about how influencer marketing works in B2B—and what it reveals often runs completely counter to conventional wisdom. Could the most powerful tool in modern B2B marketing be the one you're not using yet?

➡️ Drawing on an AI-assisted analysis of over a thousand award entries from the B2B Marketing Awards and Elevation Awards (2024–2025), Joel and Kristen walk through five key trends shaping B2B influencer marketing today. Kristen—who brings more than a decade of paid media and data experience to her three years as a creator marketing specialist—shares why niche trade influencers consistently beat high-reach celebrities, why loosening brand control actually drives better performance, and how leading brands are connecting influencer activity directly to ABM platforms and pipeline. They also tackle the case for long-term influencer partnerships and why experiences like factory visits or live events produce content that brief-based campaigns simply can't replicate. Balanced, practical, and refreshingly free of hype, this is essential listening for any B2B marketer wondering whether influencer marketing belongs in their toolkit.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to B2B Influencer Marketing

02:14 - Kristen's Background in the Creator Economy

04:00 - How the Analysis Was Conducted Using AI

05:03 - Trend 1: The Credibility Discount – Why Niche Beats Celebrity

09:03 - Finding the Right Influencers for B2B

12:39 - Trend 2: The Control Paradox – Why Freedom Outperforms Scripts

17:00 - Building Brand Alignment Without Brand Control

20:33 - Trend 3: The Pipeline Connection – Linking Influencers to Revenue

25:24 - Making Influencer Measurement Work for Your Team

27:17 - Trend 4: The Relationship Compound – Long-Term vs. One-Off Partnerships

31:24 - The Case for Long-Term Influencer Partnerships

33:02 - Trend 5: The Experience Dividend – Real-World Content vs. Brief-Based Content

38:42 - Summary and Key Takeaways

Follow Kristen Esto,

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-sesto/

https://customerinfluence.co.uk

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership—whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬What do you think comes first—finding the right influencer or building the right brief? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandVsDemand, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #InfluencerMarketing, #B2BInfluencer, #CreatorEconomy, #AccountBasedMarketing, #NicheMarketing, #CreatorMarketing, #InfluencerStrategy, #B2BPipeline

Marketing is often described as a profession that welcomes everyone. The reality is rather different. Entry still depends too heavily on who you know, which school you attended, and whether marketing even appeared on your radar as a viable career path. For many people — particularly those from non-traditional or underrepresented backgrounds — the door into our profession remains firmly closed.

In this episode, Joel is joined by Martin Troughton, chairman of the Marketing Skills Trust — a charity established in part through a legacy from Professor Derek Holder, founder of the IDM, specifically to help the next generation access marketing as a career.

Martin brings a rare dual perspective: co-founder of Harrison Troughton Wunderman, one of the UK's most awarded direct marketing agencies, and a subsequent fifteen years on the client side. That breadth shapes a conversation that is frank, personal, and at times quietly powerful.

They discuss:

1. Why marketing remains a predominantly white, middle-class profession — and what that costs us creatively and commercially
2. The work the Marketing Skills Trust is doing to change who gets in, from funding the Brixton Finishing School's outreach programme to running the Dogs Legacy events for early-career starters
3. How AI makes the case for diversity stronger, not weaker — and why curiosity, storytelling and human insight are the skills that endure
4. What agency and client-side careers demand from talent — and why the industry is too quick to put people in boxes
5. The story of Guy Lambert: told by Ogilvy he wasn't smart enough for their graduate scheme, he went on to become their MD

If you lead a marketing team or agency, there's also a practical ask: the Trust's Hour of Power programme lets senior practitioners donate an hour of their time to raise money for the next generation. It's a small commitment with a meaningful impact.

Find out more and support the Marketing Skills Trust at marketingskillstrust.org.uk