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

(00:00) Introduction
(01:51) The CMO Who Scrapped His 2026 Marketing Plan in January
(03:23) What Triggered This, and Why It Happened in Two Weeks
(06:30) What Is an AI Agent? (Plain English Definition)
(09:15) AI Agents vs. Automation: The Key Difference
(10:53) The Mindset Shift Required to Use AI Agents Effectively
(13:19) What Happens to Marketers in Execution Roles
(16:38) How Automation Reshaped Marketing Jobs Before
(17:40) Do Marketers Need to Understand AI Internals
(29:01) Is AI Coming for Marketing Jobs, The Honest Answer
(30:05) What Marketers Should Do Right Now
(37:28) 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

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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.

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

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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 strongest marketing leaders are not the ones with perfect plans. They are the ones who know how to lead through real life.

And few people understand that better than Niki Hall and Dayle Hall.

Niki, former CMO of Five9, and Dayle, CMO of SnapLogic, join Marketing Trends to share how they balance two big careers, raise a family, and approach marketing from completely different angles.

They break down how they support each other through major job shifts, navigate brand versus demand debates, and build teams that can adapt to rapid change. They also explain how AI is reshaping customer experience, what metrics actually matter, and why modern leaders need both operational rigor and creative courage.

Key Moments:

00:00 Meeting the CMO Couple

02:23 How They Met at Cisco

05:08 Early Career Moments That Shaped Them

08:16 When Their Marketing Paths Split

10:11 Growing Up as Marketers Inside Cisco

12:00 Balancing Two Big Careers and a Family

13:40 The Realities of Career Timing and Tradeoffs

15:56 Parenting, Travel, and Real-Life Leadership

18:15 Why Community Matters for Working Parents

20:38 Helping the Next Generation of Leaders

23:20 Marketing in 2026 and the Impact of AI

24:43 Brand vs Demand and How They Debate It

31:17 What They Learned From Each Other’s Strengths

32:00 Org Design and Building a Modern Marketing Team

51:03 Career Pivots, Pressure, and Personal Growth

1:12:54 Lightning Round and Final Takeaways

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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 brands everyone talks about are not the safest ones. They are the bold ones.

And few people understand that better than Nick Tran.

The former TikTok Global Head of Marketing and current Diageo President and CMO joins Marketing Trends to break down how he built momentum inside fast moving environments, rebuilt brands under pressure, and helped TikTok become a cultural engine instead of just another app.

Nick explains why the traditional marketing playbook is obsolete, how to create ideas that move culture instead of reacting to it, and what today’s fastest moving teams get wrong about attention, creativity, and risk.

CHAPTERS / KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Engineering a Viral Influencer

02:20 What Bold Marketing Looks Like in 2026

04:20 Crisis Marketing at Taco Bell

07:05 Lessons From Stance and Samsung

09:30 Reinventing Hulu With Culture Marketing

11:00 Why the Old Marketing Playbook Is Dead

13:40 Inside TikTok’s Project Cheetah

16:45 Making Creators Culturally Famous on Purpose

19:35 Five Marketing Behaviors Leaders Must Unlearn

22:20 The ROI Trap and Bad Marketing Metrics

25:00 Why Modern CMOs Should Become CEOs

26:00 The Ocean Spray x DogFace420 Breakout Moment

29:10 The Rise of AI Influencers and Virtual Icons

30:00 Worldbuilding: The Future of Brand Marketing

33:00 Reinventing Ciroc Through Lifestyle Experiences

37:00 Pickleball, Pop-Ups, and The New Experiential Playbook

43:00 Out-of-Home Creative, Simplicity, and Cultural Signals

This episode is brought to you by Lightricks.

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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.

When everyone has access to the same AI tools, what separates the great from the forgettable is the human behind the screen.

Fiverr’s VP of Global Brand Communications, Shiri Hellmann, joins Marketing Trends to break down how her team turns chaos into creativity. From producing the viral “Gary” campaign with real freelancers to writing a rom-com about avocados, Shiri reveals how Fiverr spots cultural moments early, takes smart risks, and proves that talent still beats the algorithm.

CHAPTERS / KEY MOMENTS

00:00 - The Weirdest Fiverr Requests Ever

02:58 - How Fiverr Grew from Weird to Global Brand

04:00 - Inside Fiverr’s Wildest Marketing Campaigns

06:11 - Freelancers Behind Fiverr’s AI Ad "Gary"

08:40 - How Fiverr Selects Top Creators

10:00 - The Data-Driven Matchmaking Engine

12:10 - Strategy Behind Creative Campaigns

14:05 - From Vibe Coding to Avocado Apps

16:20 - AI, Humans, and the Future of Creative Work

18:55 - Taking Risks and Learning from Failures

21:00 - The "F***-Up Night" and Courage Culture

23:25 - Biggest Marketing Lesson: Marketers vs. Consumers

26:30 - How Fiverr Stays Grounded and Human

29:40 - Emerging Trends and The Future of Work

33:10 - How Fiverr’s Culture Fuels Innovation

37:25 - What’s Next for Fiverr and Freelancers

41:00 - Shiri’s Advice for Marketers and Founders

44:45 - Closing Reflections and Takeaways

LTX is the all-in-one creative suite for AI-driven video production; built by Lightricks to take you from idea to final 4K render in one streamlined workspace.

Powered by LTX-2, our next-generation creative engine, LTX lets you move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and deliver studio-quality results without compromise.

Try it today at ltx.studio

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.