Huddlers in the News

“I’m in a small town and the only one for miles who knows anything about marketing, including our C-suite. It gets very lonely,” shared a CMO from a $45 million services company. If that line doesn’t give you shivers, you’re probably not a CMO.

Small Town, Big Expectations

Being the lone marketer in the C-suite is like a penguin trying to teach marketing to a polar bear. You live on opposite ends of the earth, speak completely different languages, and see the world through entirely different lenses. The polar bear nods politely while you explain customer journeys and brand equity, but you can tell they are just waiting for the fish course.

How Do You Teach the Unteachable?

The first question to ask: how do I help my peers see marketing’s impact? PowerPoint decks and monthly reports often fall short. The C-suite needs proof that marketing is driving revenue, retention, and a competitive advantage, not just clicks and clever campaigns.

Start with Their Pain

The fastest way to get their attention is to speak to what keeps them up at night. CFO worried about margins? Show how marketing lowers CAC and prevents churn. CRO hungry for pipeline? Hand them qualified opportunities. CEOs live for growth, so draw a direct line between marketing investment and business outcomes, short-term and long-term.

Bring Them into the Arena

Customer Advisory Boards, win/loss reviews, event keynotes—these are not just marketing’s domain. Invite your peers to participate. When they hear the customer voice unfiltered or feel the energy of the market up close, they will not need convincing that marketing matters.

Be the Innovation Engine

CMOs are leading the charge on generative AI. Do not hide in pilot purgatory. Demonstrate how AI compresses campaign cycles, cuts costs, and unleashes creativity. A single well-executed experiment can turn skeptics into advocates overnight.

Speak in Business, Not Marketing

Jargon is the enemy. Ditch the CTRs and impressions. Talk pipeline velocity, customer lifetime value, pricing power, and win rates. When you speak their language, you stop being “the brand person” and start being the growth driver.

Build Your Own Peer Group

Even if you do all this, the job can still feel lonely. That is why you need a community of fellow CMOs who have been there, done that, and solved the exact problems you are facing.

The Bottom Line

You can survive being the only marketer in the room or town, but you do not have to go it alone. Join CMO Huddles and connect with peers who will help you stay ahead, share what works, and celebrate the wins with you. Plus, we will send you a penguin "stress ball" to crush when the CFO requests another ROI report. You can try it free and see how much lighter the job feels.

For those new to CMO Huddles, it's helpful to know that a group of penguins is called a huddle, and that CMO Huddles donates 1% of its revenue to the Global Penguin Society.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 486: Courageous B2B Marketing

By the time you implement “best practices,” they’ve become boring practices, and B2B sure doesn’t mean boring to business.

In this episode, Drew talks with Udi Ledergor (Gong), author of Courageous Marketing, the book that challenges B2B marketers to stop playing it safe. Together, they explore what it means to lead with creativity, confidence, and courage. Udi also shares how Gong earned attention by building an audience that wanted to engage, not just be targeted. With every executive, from the CEO to the CFO, invested in the story, marketing became a company-wide advantage instead of a department.

Three B2B Marketing Traps Udi Warns Against:

1. Following industry best practices instead of breaking them
2. Letting marketing own brand alone
3. Hiring for experience over potential

Plus:

• The punch-above-your-weight framework that makes a startup look enterprise-ready
• Why brand must be led by the CEO and modeled across the exec team
• How to hire for curiosity, learning speed, and potential
• How to sell the 95–5 content mindset to your CEO and CFO

If you’re done blending in, this conversation will remind you why courage still wins in B2B.

Udi will be speaking at the CMO Super Huddle in Palo Alto on November 7th, 2025. All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of his book, Courageous Marketing, and can get it signed in the morning!

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 485: Scalable Acts of Marketing: Building a Repeatable Growth Engine

Most marketing books promise tips. Scalable Acts of Marketing shows you how to build a system that scales.

Written after thirteen years of helping grow Service Express from $30 million to $350 million in ARR, Joshua Leatherman’s field-tested guide blends a business fable with a hands-on playbook.

In this episode, Joshua Leatherman (Cyderes) joins Drew to walk through how durable growth happens when marketing speaks in outcomes, earns executive trust, and runs one motion across brand, demand, sales, and success. He connects the fable’s lessons to real-world moves inside growth-stage companies, laying out a playbook any marketing leader can use to build momentum that lasts.

In this episode:

• How to shift from activities to outcomes that a CFO and CRO will back
• How to own pipeline with clear SQO definitions, shared attribution, and consistent follow-up
• How to stand up RevOps as “Switzerland,” with shared KPIs, fast handoffs, and five-minute speed-to-lead targets

Plus:

• Why marketing must stay on the field after the first meeting
• How to use R&D (“rip off and duplicate”) to accelerate playbooks
• What to hire for right now: Curiosity, learning velocity, and accountability
• How authoritative content fuels discovery in an AI-led world

If you’re ready to build a marketing system that earns trust, investment, and results, this episode shows where to start!

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

“Our CEO is demanding we become an AI-first company but is that really a thing?” asked a seasoned CMO from a $375mm SaaS company. This CEO’s demand is neither isolated nor surprising. It is, however, ill-advised. “AI-first” is certainly not a vision, or at least not one that will inspire growth or differentiate the company.

Leadership 101: Three Core Responsibilities

1. Set the vision
2. Hire the team that can achieve the vision
3. Allocate resources to achieve the vision

AI-First Is Not a Vision

In her bestselling book, “The Right Kind of Wrong,” Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson writes about former Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill, who shocked Wall Street in 1987 when he announced safety, not profits, as his top priority. Setting a goal for zero injuries, O’Neill empowered every employee to stop the production line if they saw a safety concern and fostered a culture of learning by insisting they study every accident, however minor.

When O’Neill retired 13 years later, Alcoa was both the most profitable and safest aluminum company in the world. It turns out that addressing safety issues leads to continually improving production processes, increased efficiency, and higher employee satisfaction. Using Edmondson’s language, employees thrived thanks to the “psychological safety” needed to inspire innovation.

Unlike zero injuries, AI-first is a solution in search of a problem.

Telling your team to use AI-first is like asking a four-year-old boy to play with a hammer. Most likely, they’ll have fun, but the outcome may prove expensive if not painful. This is not to say that using AI won’t help you accomplish lots of good things faster. However, returning to the vision thing, leaders need to focus on the big problems they want their departments or orgs to solve.

CMOs Need to Focus on the Big Problems to Get Big Stuff Done

Differentiation is undoubtedly a big problem for most brands. AI can certainly help you with competitive assessments, synthetic research, options generation, and even implementation suggestions. But it is a thought partner, not the decider. It will not help you build consensus with the executive team. It will not drive the commitment to execute relentlessly against your newly differentiated positioning.

What Are Your Biggest Challenges?

Seriously, I'd like to know. However, before sharing these, I would encourage you to prioritize them, then categorize them by scope (marketing-only, Sales & Marketing, GTM, company-wide, etc.) and timeframe (short, medium, long-term). With these in hand, applying AI will feel both purposeful and rewarding.

If you're a B2B CMO and DM me with a specific challenge, our team will connect you with another who either shares this challenge or has solved it.

Let's go human-first, shall we?

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 484: Integrated B2B Campaigns: Where Every Message Connects

There are a lot of worries in B2B right now. AI, tight budgets, shifting search. The one that should sit near the top? Disconnected campaigns.

Scattered themes, mixed messages, disconnected plays. Buyers can’t follow the story and impact fades fast. Integrated campaigns fix that.

In this episode, Drew brings together Kelly Hopping (Demandbase), Scott Morris (Sprout Social), and Marni Carmichael (ImageSource) to share how they make integration work at their companies. You’ll hear how one story aligns teams, builds momentum over quarters, and stays on track with shared goals and tight handoffs. By the end, you’ll come away with different ways to align message, motion, and measurement behind one story.

In this episode:

• Kelly shares how company and pipeline goals set the theme, channels, partner plays, and internal enablement.
• Scott explains how a hub-and-spoke campaign model unites brand and demand, and how quarterly launches turn features into a full-funnel motion.
• Marni shares how tight SDR handoffs, quick follow ups, and clear SLAs keep campaigns from stalling in the field.

Plus:

• How to set one message that adapts by persona without splintering the story
• How to plan one quarter ahead so execution and enablement stay in sync
• What to measure from awareness through to deal conversion
• When to bring partners and customers into the narrative to lift conversion

It’s time to align every effort into connected campaigns that build momentum. Tune in!

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

“What’s bringing me joy is being in an office after 5 years of WFH,” shared a delighted B2B leader who just changed companies. “I missed being around people, and having the separation between work life and home life,” she added. Another Huddler chimed in, “I’m so jealous - I started dressing up for myself just to create a feeling of separation.” My mind rattled with questions.

Q: Will CMOs (and the companies they work for) be more successful going back to the office?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you have any statistical evidence to back up your supposition?

A: No.

Q: Then what makes you so sure that in-office companies will outperform 100% virtual companies?

A: Human nature.

Q: Can you be a little less pithy?

A: Certainly. Most humans do better when they are surrounded by others who share common goals, values, and experiences. Casual in-person “water cooler” conversations spread information faster and lead to the sharing of nascent ideas. It is easier to build accountability in person. It is easier to read the room when you’re in the room.

Q: Do you at least have “anecdata” to support your argument?

A: Sure. I was speaking to a partner at a big law firm and asked him about the development of their associates during the first two years of Covid. He said without blinking, “They are a full 2 years behind past associates. They missed hours of training they would have received just by being in the partner's office.”

Q: That’s a very specific situation. Can you broaden the aperture?

A: Sure. It is just easier to build a team that works in sync when they are physically together. Critical non-verbal feedback doesn’t come through Slack, email, or even Zoom.

Q: Wait, isn’t your company, CMO Huddles, 100% virtual?

A: Guilty as charged. We make it work, but I have no doubt we’d be even more effective if we were in an office together.

Q: Going back to the office is not the CMO's decision. Why are you even bringing this up?

A: You may have heard that CMOs change jobs often (perhaps more frequently than they’d like). I’m just saying that when considering your next opportunity, add “has an office” to your criteria. And not just because it suits you, but also because that company is likely to be more successful.

Q: This feels like retro advice, especially in the GenAI era. Does the proliferation of GenAI and agentic workflows change your opinion?

A: No. It enhances my argument. Famous futurist Alan Toffler projected that as our world becomes increasingly hi-tech, the need for hi-touch interactions also grows. Bots can’t build culture. And culture famously eats strategy (AI-enhanced or otherwise) for lunch.

Q: Isn’t hybrid a better solution?

A: Perhaps. The ? becomes how much face-to-face time the CMO gets with their boss, board, peers, and direct reports. If everyone is in the office on different days, it becomes quite challenging to meet regularly and build strong, productive relationships.

Q: It feels like you’re barking at the moon.

A: I’m a penguin. I don’t bark.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 483: From Tactics to Strategy with Michael Watkins

If you're reacting more than leading, it's time to rethink your strategy mindset.

Michael Watkins joins Drew Neisser to explore how CMOs can evolve from tactical executors to strategic leaders. Hear how to develop enterprise thinking, lead across silos, and apply Watkins' RPM model to every level of your marketing org.

Want more? Check out the rest of the conversation on YouTube.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to apply the RPM (Recognize, Prioritize, Mobilize) model to level up strategic thinking
• The difference between enterprise leadership and functional execution
• Why most marketers struggle with long-term thinking—and how to fix it

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 482: Juggling CMO+: How to Lead Across the Business

Wearing the CMO+ hat rewires the role. You pick up a second lane, your calendar tightens, and perceptions shift from “just the marketer,” a label no one should wear, to business leader.

The path is demanding, but when the plus lines up with company priorities and earns trust across the business, the impact is unmistakable.

In this episode, Drew sits down with Sandy Ono, EVP and CMO at OpenText, who leads global marketing across ten business units while also owning partnerships and alliances. She treats both as one go-to-market, aligning partners and the field around a single story, running the forecast together, and keeping a steady rhythm so co-selling and co-marketing stay aimed at the same targets.

Three Actions Behind Sandy’s CMO+ Success:

1. Mindset: Claim growth as the job and step closer to revenue through partnerships
2. Skillset: Learn forecasting, deal construction, and the weekly rigor of partner sales
3. Toolset: Build the operating rhythm that connects co-selling, co-marketing, and accountability at scale

Plus:

• How to choose a plus that aligns with company growth priorities
• How to juggle both roles with capacity planning and clear priorities
• How to protect brand integrity while telling a shared story with partners
• How to measure progress with sourced pipeline, influenced revenue, retention, and feedback loops into product

Weighing a plus or already living one? You’ll find proven moves here.

If you're a B2B CMO, you can meet Sandy and another 100 incredible marketing leaders at the CMO Super Huddle in Palo Alto, California on November 6th and 7th. She’ll be speaking on a panel about how CMOs are leading the charge with GenAI.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

“The hardest part for me as a CMO is managing expectations,” shared the CMO of a $6 billion tech company. “Leadership around a CMO wants more demand, more brand, and they want it immediately,” she added. This is not an unusual scenario. However, it is a critical one to break down, as it also leads to many hasty moves that can doom CMOs.

Managing Expectations is Everything

There’s a good reason the first chapter of my first book, The CMO’s Periodic Table, was Setting Expectations. If there’s a mismatch in expectations, the CMO loses, even if the CEO’s, board’s, or investor’s expectations are lunacy. It's on the CMO to get alignment.

Managing Expectations Starts Before You Take the Job

Landing a CMO job is tricky. There is a lot of pressure to promise the moon, or at least more than your predecessor. This is a trap. Odds are, a substantial improvement to a company’s growth rate will not result from marketing wizardry alone. And it certainly won’t happen in one quarter. Experienced CMOs know this and set expectations with clear timelines and milestones before they start, and won’t take the job if these things aren’t acceptable to the hiring execs.

Hasty Move #1: Assuming Your Predecessor Is a Moron

“I think CMOs do each other a disservice when they don’t build on the work of their predecessors,” noted the 3x CMO referenced above. You’ve got a lot to do in your first year, so understanding what’s working and what isn’t is essential. The only way you can do this is not to make assumptions and avoid disregarding everything that’s already in the works. Past initiatives may be just about ready to bloom.

Hasty Move #2: Redoing the Website

You may think the message is wrong. And that the visuals are off the mark. But rushing to rebuild the website is a fool’s errand. Many brands are already struggling to get organic traffic – rebuilding your website is a sure way to see that trend accelerate. Instead, start with a few hypotheses and run as many A/B tests as you can [and fix your LLM exposure issues]. If site architecture is the ultimate problem, fine. But more likely, you have a differentiation problem, one that will take a corporate-wide initiative to fix.

Hasty Move #3: Revamping the Brand without Repositioning

There’s a reason that some CEOs see Marketing as the “arts and crafts” department. Too many of their conversations with marketers involve color schemes and logo designs. Your logo may indeed suck. Your visual design may also suck. And those things should be fixed, BUT not before you have a new go-to-market story that is truly differentiated from your competition. Getting there often requires meaningful changes to the product, pricing, and customer support. It requires repositioning the brand.

Don’t try to put a new coat of paint on an old barn. Rebuild the barn from the ground up.

When CMOs set expectations around differentiation, they get the time they need to make lots of good things happen.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 481: AEO in B2B: Earning Your Spot in AI Answers

“How are we going to show up in LLMs?”

That’s the new CEO question keeping B2B CMOs on alert.

As AI-powered search reshapes how buyers find answers, B2B brands need a new organic strategy—Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). In this episode, Drew Neisser brings together two AEO trailblazers: Guy Yalif (Webflow) and Omer Gotlieb (Salespeak). Together, they tackle what it really takes to earn your place in AI answers. Forget keyword stuffing—this is about understanding how LLMs ingest, rank, and cite information, and how B2B marketers can respond now.

You’ll learn how to earn placement in AI-generated answers by mastering the four pillars of AEO:

1. Content: Answer real buyer questions clearly and concisely.
2. Technical: Make your site machine-readable.
3. Authority: Earn credibility where buyers AND models are looking.
4. Measurement: Track share of voice across critical questions, then iterate.

Also in this episode:

• What LLMs want—but often can’t find—on B2B websites
• How to build a question-driven content strategy using sales calls, support tickets, and win-loss data.
• Why share of voice (across buyer questions) is the new metric for AI visibility.
• How to serve two audiences at once: humans and machines

Whether you're losing traffic to AI summaries or just trying to future-proof your content strategy, this episode is your practical playbook for showing up when it matters most.

Join us at 2025’s CMO Super Huddle on November 7th in Palo Alto, where Webflow is a founding sponsor. In a panel on AEO, Guy will share how to get your brand found in AI-powered answers—plus, attendees will receive personalized AEO assessments.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/