The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

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.

Kyla Malone, Director of Marketing at IDT, talks with Greg Kihlström at Braze Forge 2026 about earning trust from customers who rely on one company to stay connected to family abroad and send money home.

Moving into money movement raises the bar for the brand. When the customer who buys calling credit also trusts IDT to move their money, the brand has more to prove. Malone explains how that shift changed the way her marketing team works, and how IDT balances name recognition across brands like BOSS Revolution and net2phone with giving customers what they actually need.

Personalizing for customers across languages and home countries. How IDT puts Braze to work, and where AI helps the team do what it already did faster versus where it makes something new possible.

Measuring personalization and setting the pace of change. How Malone judges whether personalized experiences and content are working, and how she keeps her team moving together while keeping up with customers.

Kyla Malone on LinkedIn

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

IDT

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

We’re proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658

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.

Robin Ross, Digital, Analytics and Loyalty Executive at Activate Insight, on how brands compete when a consumer's AI agent controls the consideration set. Recorded live at MAICON 2026 with Greg Kihlström.

- Brand preference is now decided before the customer sees the options.

- When an agent builds the shortlist, the direct-to-customer relationship enterprises have invested in for decades runs through an intermediary the brand doesn't control.

- Loyalty and first-party data have a second audience.

Ross and Kihlström look at what a loyalty program is worth when an agent weighs price and features on every purchase, and how a data strategy has to change to inform agent-based decisions. Attribution breaks when the agent is the filter.

If a brand is considered and rejected without an impression or a click, the traditional funnel has nothing to measure. The conversation covers what marketing leaders should track instead.

About Robin Ross

I’m a marketing and strategy executive with 20+ years of experience driving growth through data, loyalty, and digital transformation. I’ve led initiatives that expand membership, strengthen customer engagement, and scale innovation across functions. My expertise includes marketing analytics, loyalty programs, digital transformation, and applying AI and data to accelerate decision-making. I focus on simplifying complexity, aligning teams, and building systems that deliver measurable results. I thrive at the intersection of strategy and execution—partnering with leaders to clarify goals, design customer-centric programs, and turn them into business impact.

Robin Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-ross-activateinsight/

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

Activate Insight

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.

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