The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

Jody Kaminsky, Chief Marketing Officer at iCIMS, led a full brand transformation to reposition an established talent acquisition company around AI — in a category where being wrong about AI costs someone a job. She and Greg Kihlström get into what that took.

A brand refresh is a business decision before it's a design decision. Kaminsky weighs in on the business drivers that signaled it was time to change, what iCIMS deliberately gave up in familiar brand equity, and how the new narrative got tied to where the company is actually going.

"AI" is not specific enough to be a promise. A tool that speeds up work a person is still authoring and a system that decides and acts on its own are very different products with very different stakes in hiring. Kaminsky discusses how precise you have to get with buyers about which one you're selling.

The brand is tested in the product's behavior, not the campaign. What the platform decides, how it explains itself, and what happens when it gets something wrong all shape the brand more than the messaging does — and Kaminsky weighs in on keeping marketing's story and the system's behavior aligned as output scales.

About Jody Kaminsky

Jody Kaminsky is the Chief Marketing Officer at ICIMS, an enterprise AI talent acquisition platform, and former CMO of UKG who led the company through the Ultimate Software/Kronos merger. With 30+ years of experience as a CMO and marketing board advisor guiding enterprise technology companies through large-scale transformations, Jody's experience lies in leading brand evolution, shaping compelling brand narratives, aligning marketing with business strategy, and building credibility in a crowded AI market. Today, she applies that experience at ICIMS, which powers responsible AI hiring for more than 4,000 organizations worldwide, including The Container Store, Urban Outfitters, PetSmart, Canon, Heineken, and The Cheesecake Factory, giving her perspective shaped by some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Jody Kaminsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodykaminsky/

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ICIMS:

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom

Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter, and check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay Lee, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Five9, argues the contact center is not a cost line marketing inherits. It's where brand promises get tested, and where the richest first-party data a company owns already sits. He and Greg Kihlström get into what changes when marketing takes it seriously.

Brand is what the system decides, not what the campaign says. When a bot, an agent, and the app give three different answers to the same exception request, customers don't read it as a service defect. They read it as the company.

Service data is the first-party source marketing says it wants and rarely uses. Transcripts, chat logs, and sentiment are already there. Lee talks about where the handoff from service data to marketing action actually breaks down.

"AI in the contact center" hides four very different decisions. Routing rules, churn scoring, drafted agent replies, and an agent that resolves and acts on its own carry different accuracy bars and different accountability. Lee talks about getting buying committees to name which one they're actually buying.

About Jay Lee

Jay H. Lee is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Five9. A growth-focused leader in enterprise software and fintech, Jay brings more than 20 years of experience driving go-to-market transformation, scaling global marketing organizations, and delivering measurable business outcomes.

Prior to joining Five9, Jay served as Chief Marketing Officer at Icertis, where he led the company’s global marketing organization and helped position the business for its next phase of growth. Previously, Jay was the Chief Marketing Officer at Avalara. There, he was instrumental in more than doubling the company’s revenue from approximately $380 million to over $800 million by building and scaling a high-performing global marketing team. This achievement was a key contribution to Avalara's $8.4 billion acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.

Earlier in his career, Jay held senior leadership roles at PayPal, American Express, and GE Capital, where he led initiatives across marketing, product, and business strategy. At PayPal, he led marketing for the Business Financing Solutions division, helping expand global lending and drive significant growth in originations.

Jay Lee on LinkedIn

---------- Resources ----------

Five9

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom

Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter, and check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the biggest source of new marketing budget this year isn't a new line item from your CFO — but millions of dollars already sitting trapped inside the Google Ads campaigns you're running right now?

Agility here isn't just reacting faster to the market. It's having the intelligence to anticipate and act on opportunities inside a live auction, thousands of times a second — without losing the thread of your larger strategy.

Today, we're going to talk about:

- The difference between AI that writes your ad copy and AI that autonomously makes financial decisions on your behalf.

- How to fund new initiatives by reclaiming the 12–18% of "trapped capital" sitting in your current paid search spend — without asking for a bigger budget.

- Why "set it and forget it" automation leaves an edge on the table in live auctions, and what it actually takes to capture it.

To help me dig into this, I'd like to welcome Matt LeBaron, CEO at Revvim.

About Matt LeBaron

Matt LeBaron is Founder and CEO of Revvim. He began his career in 1997 at CatalogCity.com (later SHOP.COM), starting in the mailroom and rising to Director of Database Operations. He was part of the team that built what may have been the first multi-vendor shopping cart, which Amazon studied as inspiration for zShops. In 2004 he moved to marketing as SHOP.COM's first Head of Customer Acquisition, where he uploaded six million keywords from search logs to Google Ads and, within three days, wrote his first automated bidding algorithm, which SHOP.COM pursued a patent on. He founded digital marketing consultancy New Day Consulting in 2007 and Revvim in 2011, bootstrapping it with consulting revenue. In 2020 his team built and patented AdAi, which onboarded over $5B in annual Google Ads spend in its first two years. He lives in San Juan Bautista, California, with his wife and kids.

Matt LeBaron on LinkedIn

---------- Resources ----------

Revvim

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems.

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms.

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit!

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off.

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show.

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn.

Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter, and check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology.

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creative has never been cheaper or faster to produce than it is right now — so why is it still so hard to say, with any confidence, which of it is actually worth the money?

Agility isn't just moving faster. It's knowing which creative decisions compound, which ones evaporate, and having the evidence to defend the difference when the budget conversation starts.

Today, we're going to talk about creative effectiveness and how to prove its value. Specifically, we'll explore:

- What the evidence actually shows about emotional response and long-term brand growth — and what the industry still gets wrong about it.

- How large-scale creative data changes the way work gets developed, not just the way it gets judged after the fact.

- How to make the financial case for creative quality in an organization that's measuring everything else in-quarter.

To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer, Advertising at System1.

About Andrew Tindall

Andrew Tindall is a leading voice in modern marketing effectiveness, championing a practical, creativity‑driven approach that reconnects media and creative. As Chief Growth Officer, Advertising at System1, he oversees thought leadership and major agency relationships, producing influential research on how emotion and creativity fuel advertising effectiveness across TV, audio, digital, and OOH. Drawing on a decade in FMCG at Diageo and Bacardi, he brings real‑world pragmatism to his analysis and frequently shares insights from System1’s extensive UK and US TV ad database to comment on current advertising. Andrew regularly speaks at industry events such as MadFest and the Festival of Marketing, and he advocates for “effectiveness for all” through his weekly column in The Drum and his fast‑growing presence on LinkedIn.

Andrew Tindall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-tindall/

---------- Resources ----------

System1

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

The hardest part of martech right now is telling which tools are actually earning their keep. That's the question running through the MarTech Summit Boston agenda on October 27. We're attending MarTech Summit Boston on October 27 as a media partner. If you want to join, the code AGILE15 saves you 15%. https://aglbrnd.co/r/c70c250b8d52dff3

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom

Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter, and check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rahul Shah, CEO of CommerceIQ, argues that discoverability has replaced shelf position as the battleground in retail, and that keeping retail media and product content in separate teams is now a competitive liability. He and Greg Kihlström get into what replaces the old model.

Discoverability is where the sale is decided. Product quality still matters, but an item that an AI-mediated retail environment can't read, verify, and surface never reaches the consideration set at all.

Retail media and product content are one system, not two budgets. Paid performance should be changing organic content, and organic performance should be changing paid — the separation between them is an org chart artifact that now costs money.

Automation runs at retail speed; humans keep it coherent. Shah on where AI-driven execution takes over from dashboard analysis, what humans have to keep owning as output scales, and how to attribute the resulting lift.

About Rahul Shah

Rahul Shah is CEO of CommerceIQ, the AI-native retail growth partner for brands. Rahul has spent more than two decades building and scaling technology businesses across product, engineering, and go-to-market. He was most recently Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ) and held senior leadership positions at PayPal and GE. He also scaled venture-backed companies including Branch Metrics and Applause past $100 million in revenue. He holds an MBA from Berkeley Haas and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Rahul Shah on LinkedIn

---------- Resources ----------

CommerceIQ

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems.

The hardest part of martech right now is telling which tools are actually earning their keep. That's the question running through the MarTech Summit Boston agenda on October 27. We're attending MarTech Summit Boston on October 27 as a media partner. If you want to join, the code AGILE15 saves you 15%.

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms.

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit!

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off.

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show.

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn

Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter, and check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology.

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.