The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

Leah Nurik, CEO and co-founder of Brandi AI, argues that when a buyer asks an AI assistant which vendor to consider, the answer names a few companies — and the rest effectively don't exist. She and Greg Kihlström get into what decides who makes that list.

Generative Engine Optimization is not SEO with a new acronym. Nurik discusses which parts of a mature search operation still do real work in AI-mediated discovery, and which parts have become motion that connects to nothing.

Much of what shapes your AI answer lives in sources you don't own. Earned coverage, third-party reviews, and public discussion carry the signal, which makes this a job of influence rather than control — and strains a marketing plan built around owned channels.

Visibility stops being a rank and becomes a probability. Ask the same question twice and a model can answer differently; ask a second model and it answers differently again. Nurik and Kihlström talk about what to measure instead, and how to tell that story to a CFO when site traffic goes down and AI citations go up.

About Leah Nurik

Leah Nurik is CEO and Co-Founder of Brandi. Leah has worked with over 400 growth-stage software companies in her 20-plus year career. She has held senior strategy, product and marketing leadership positions at Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Infowave and others. She also founded and led Gabriel Marketing Group, an award-winning global public relations, branding, and integrated marketing agency focused on B2B SaaS companies. Leah's expertise spans digital, public relations, content marketing, product marketing, and go-to-market strategy.

Leah Nurik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahgabriel/

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Brandi AI

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.

Ramon Soto, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Northwell Health, built the "Raise Health" movement by galvanizing 100,000 employees before going after the external audience — an inversion of how most enterprise brands sequence a launch. He and Scott Goodson, Founder and Chairman of StrawberryFrog, join Greg Kihlström to break down what that actually required.

A movement starts inside, not in market. Soto discusses why aligning a 100,000-person workforce around a shared purpose changed the strategic approach to everything that ran externally.

Purpose has to become operating behavior. Policies, decisions, and frontline authority are what make a brand promise credible — or expose it. Goodson and Soto weigh in on closing the gap between what a brand says and how it behaves.

Streaming series as brand infrastructure. We discuss why Northwell put content on Netflix and HBO instead of buying more healthcare advertising, and how they kept it from reading as branded content.

The revenue case for movement-based marketing. We discuss drawing a credible line from purpose-driven activity to $3 billion in net new annual revenue and market leadership in one of the most competitive sectors in the country.

Scott Goodson on LinkedIn

Ramon Soto on LinkedIn

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Strawberry Frog: https://www.strawberryfrog.com

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.

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/

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

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.