Marketing Trends

In January 2026, a CMO at a six billion dollar software company scrapped his entire year's marketing plan only two weeks into the year. AI agents made it obsolete.

Stephanie Postles, CEO of Mission.org, and Lacey Peace, VP of Content, explain in plain English what AI agents are, why they are fundamentally different from the automations marketing teams rely on today, and what this shift means for marketing jobs, team structure, and the skills that will matter most going forward.

If you have confused AI agents with automation or wondered whether your role is safe, this episode gives a direct answer.

Chapters

00:35 - Introduction

01:31 - The CMO Who Scrapped His 2026 Marketing Plan in January

02:30 - What Triggered This, and Why It Happened in Two Weeks

05:12 - What Is an AI Agent? (Plain English Definition)

08:14 - AI Agents vs. Automation: The Key Difference

09:40 - The Mindset Shift Required to Use AI Agents Effectively

13:50 - What Happens to Marketers in Execution Roles

14:20 - How Automation Reshaped Marketing Jobs Before

15:16 - Do Marketers Need to Understand AI Internals

20:28 - Is AI Coming for Marketing Jobs, The Honest Answer

21:54 - What Marketers Should Do Right Now

23:48 - Recap and What Is Coming Next

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most brands think viral marketing takes months of planning and massive budgets. Nick Tran engineered it in 72 hours.
 
In this segment from Marketing Trends, the former Global Head of Marketing at TikTok breaks down the exact reverse-engineered playbook that turned unknown creators like the Ocean Spray skateboarder into overnight viral sensations, and why the traditional 2-3 month campaign timeline is dead.
 
From understanding why Nick tells marketing leaders to "kill your KPIs" and hire for intuition instead, to learning how he identified viral potential before it happened, this is a masterclass in speed-to-market and cultural relevance.
 
If your team is still running 90-day campaign cycles while competitors are shipping in weeks, this framework will show you exactly what you're missing, and how to move faster without sacrificing quality.
 
Chapters:
00:00 - The Reverse-Engineered Playbook
04:32 - Project Cheetah: 72 Hours to Viral
09:15 - Moving Upmarket Without Losing Your Soul
13:48 - Five Things Marketing Leaders Must Unlearn
 

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The marketing teams winning with AI today are not the ones chasing every new model release. They are the ones who found the boring, repetitive tasks their teams hate and automated those first.
Nir Pochter, Co-Founder and CMO at Lightricks, joins Stephanie Postles on Marketing Trends to break down what AI actually means for creative workflows and why most teams are still using it wrong.
You’ll learn:
- The "algebra problem" of AI adoption
- How to save your design team 80% of their time
- Why the gap between marketers who use AI well and those who don't is widening fast.
- How to use an LLM scoring system to pre-review documents for you
- The dangerous trend of "AI Marketer" job titles
- What’s really in store for the future of video+AI
 
Key Moments:
00:00 — Why AI Hasn't Improved Creative Output Yet
02:06 — The Algebra Problem: Tools vs. Knowing How to Use Them
07:27 — Nir's Background: AI PhD to Lightricks and FaceTune
09:46 — What Used to Take Weeks Now Takes Minutes
13:35 — Why Automating Everything Failed Miserably
16:38 — Start with What People Hate Doing
20:08 — The LLM Scoring System: Nothing Gets Reviewed Without an 85
21:43 — Train Your LLM to Be Mean, Not Nice
23:32 — Building Custom GPTs with Company Guidelines
26:30 — The Pitfall: Using AI to Please Leadership
28:47 — From Toys to Tools: Why Text-to-Video Isn't Enough
31:05 — Coca-Cola's 70,000 Prompts (Was It Worth It?)
34:41 — AI Won't Replace Creatives, But This Will
37:04 — The Two Critical Skills: Prompting and Curation
37:55 — How AI Multiplies the Skills Gap (7 vs 10 Example)
42:47 — What CMOs Should Be Asking Their Teams
46:20 — Why "AI Marketer" Is LinkedIn Fluff

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The websites that win today are not the ones with the most content. They are the ones that deliver a fast, clean experience in the very first second a visitor arrives.
Josh Koenig, Co-Founder and SVP of Marketing at Pantheon, joins Stephanie Postles on Marketing Trends to break down what he is seeing across thousands of high-traffic sites and why most teams still miss the basics. He explains how the shift from search to ask is changing online discovery, what AI bots prioritize when they crawl a site, and why the fundamentals of clarity, structure, and speed now matter more than any growth hack.
Josh also shares how teams are using Pantheon’s new Content Publisher to eliminate copy-and-paste workflows, why vibe coding is giving non-technical teams the ability to build richer digital experiences, and what the rise of AI-powered crawlers means for anyone trying to stand out on the modern web.

Key Moments: 
00:00 — The Two-Second Rule: Why Website Speed Kills Conversions
04:30 — The Hidden Growth Killer Most Marketers Miss
08:21 — AI Crawlers Gone Wild: The UFC Fight Night Story
12:22 — Five Evergreen Website Tactics for the LLM Era
16:13 — The Gated Content Dilemma: Lead Gen vs AI Indexing
20:42 — Avoiding Artificial SEO: When Optimization Goes Too Far
23:10 — The Generic Content Trap Poisoning AI Search Results
26:00 — Content Publisher for Google Docs: Eliminating Copy-Paste
31:53 — The CMO-CTO Partnership: Why This Relationship Unlocks Growth
36:05 — Brokering Peace Between Marketing and IT Teams
40:20 — Vibe Coding for Marketers: The Prototype Revolution
44:06 — Next.js Explained: Open Source for Marketing Development
48:17 — From Vibe Code to Production: The Last Mile Problem
51:03 — Data Analysis Without the Wait: LLMs Democratizing Insights
54:20 — The Entrepreneurial Marketer: Why Technical Fluency Is Required

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The most future-ready marketing leaders aren’t the ones chasing trends… they’re the ones who can reinvent themselves every time the industry changes.
Michelle Huff, Chief Marketing Officer at Alteryx, joins Marketing Trends to break down the mindset that kept her relevant through every major tech revolution, from Web1 to cloud, SaaS, PLG, and now AI. She explains how to balance curiosity with focus, why AI is really about automating judgment (not just tasks), and how she’s redesigning her marketing org around agents, automation, and new workflows.
Michelle also shares early results from Alteryx’s AI experiments, how she’s rebuilding a 700,000-person community, and why great leaders still start with the end user even as their buyer audiences expand.
 
Key Moments:  
00:00 – How to Stay Relevant Through Every Tech Shift
03:42 – A Career Spanning Web1, Cloud, SaaS, and AI
06:58 – Curiosity Is the Ultimate Career Advantage
10:12 – When Leaders Should Tinker and When to Delegate
13:28 – Building a Marketing Culture That Experiments
16:41 – Why AI Is About Judgment, Not Just Automation
20:07 – Inside an AI-Powered SDR Outbound Workflow
23:34 – Do AI Agents Replace People or Elevate Them
26:58 – Upskilling Teams in an AI-Driven Organization
30:17 – Why Most AI Content Fails to Break Through
33:36 – How to Stand Out in a Noisy B2B Market
36:52 – Why Enterprise Brands Lose Touch With End Users
39:48 – How Alteryx Built a 700,000-Person Community
43:06 – Turning Community Into Competition and Learning
46:32 – Early AI Wins That Drive Real Pipeline Impact
 

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.