The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

Alexis Zheng, Chief Product and Technology Officer at G2, says most B2B buyers now arrive with a shortlist an AI helped build, so the vendor website is no longer where the decision gets shaped.

The shortlist is built before the first click. G2's Buyer Behavior Report finds buyers reach a vendor's site only after narrowing their options, which moves demand generation off the properties a brand controls.

Reviews are a lever, not the whole answer. Zheng and Greg Kihlström get into what makes a signal reliable enough for an AI recommendation engine to act on, and which of those signals a marketing team can actually influence.

AI economics are starting to decide which deployments survive. Zheng compares the moment to self-driving cars — the technology works, but the cost structure dictates adoption — and what that means for how CMOs weigh AI investment.

About Alexis Zheng

Alexis Zheng is Chief Product and Technology Officer at G2, where she leads product, engineering, and AI research. She has spent her career at the forefront of technological change, building products at LinkedIn, Uber, Grab, Cruise, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Her experience spans everyday consumer services, self-driving technology, and the infrastructure behind AI. Across those settings, her focus has remained consistent: making technology useful and accessible to more people. A hands-on builder, Alexis brings a practical perspective on what AI can do today, how to evaluate whether it works, and how to put it to work in service of human goals.

Connect with Alexis Zheng on LinkedIn

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G2

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

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Peter van der Putten, lead scientist and director of the AI Lab at Pega, explains how enterprises govern AI that makes customer decisions on its own, and who stays accountable when it does. He and Greg Kihlström get into what governance looks like inside day-to-day marketing and customer experience work.

"AI governance" covers several different jobs. A predictive model choosing a next-best-action, a generative tool helping a marketer draft copy, and an agent executing a workflow carry different risks and need different controls.

Fairness and transparency belong inside the decision. Van der Putten on embedding ethical AI principles directly into next-best-action decisioning and omnichannel journey orchestration, and on monitoring models for bias beyond conversion rates.

Decentralized AI experimentation is a brand risk as well as a compliance risk. When teams run their own models with no central governance, customers get inconsistent treatment from what is supposed to be one company.

About Peter van der Putten

Peter van der Putten is assistant professor of AI, Leiden University and Director AI Lab at Pegasystems. Through his expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Peter helps leading brands to become more ‘human’ by transforming into customer centric organizations. In addition to his role at Pegasystems, Peter is an assistant professor and creative researcher at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University, The Netherlands. Peter is particularly interested in how intelligence can evolve through learning, in man or machines. Peter has a MSc in Cognitive Artificial Intelligence from Utrecht University and a PhD in data mining from Leiden University, and combines academic research with applying these technologies in business. He teaches New Media New Technology and supervises MSc thesis projects.

Peter van der Putten on LinkedIn

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Pega delivers the platform to reimagine, run, and evolve the processes and decisions an enterprise can't afford to get wrong. We combine AI with proven architecture to keep mission-critical operations governed, scalable, and continuously adaptable. Since 1983, the world's largest organizations have trusted Pega to turn transformation ambition into durable results.

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.

Donna Dror, CEO of Usercentrics, says data transparency has moved onto the P&L: over half of consumers will pay more for brands that are clear about how AI uses their data. She and Greg Kihlström get into what that changes.

Transparency is a pricing input, not a legal cost. Usercentrics research found 47% of consumers have already taken a revenue-affecting action — canceling, switching, cutting spend — over how a brand handles AI and their data.

"Accept all" is in structural decline. Roughly half of consumers click it less often than they did three years ago, which means smaller data sets feeding the same targets, and a planning and measurement problem marketing teams have not yet solved.

Naming the category isn't disclosure. Privacy-aware consumers are about three times more comfortable with AI personalization than privacy-unaware ones — Dror discusses why brands now have to say what the AI actually does with the data, not just that they use it.

Dror and Kihlström also cover the U.S. state-by-state privacy patchwork, and whether consent moves off the website entirely to browser-level controls and personal data agents.

About Donna Dror

Donna Dror is CEO of Usercentrics, a global consent management and privacy technology platform that helps businesses turn regulatory compliance into a growth lever. Under her leadership, Usercentrics surpassed $117M in Annual Recurring Revenue in August 2025 - a milestone reached by fewer than 200 private companies worldwide. Her leadership has been recognized with a Stevie® Award for Female CEO of the Year.

Donna has also spent the last nearly seven years at Full In Partners, a software-focused early growth fund, where she has been working closely with portfolio companies on organizational design, go-to-market strategy, and operational scale.

Earlier, she spent eight years on the senior leadership team at Similarweb (NYSE: SMWB), helping scale the company from $10M to $150M in ARR and contributing to its successful IPO in 2021, experience that shaped her approach to building durable, high-growth technology businesses.

Donna has lived across three continents and has been based in New York for over a decade. She now splits her time between the company's global offices, with a focus on how privacy infrastructure, AI, and data strategy are converging to reshape digital business.

Donna Dror on LinkedIn

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

Usercentrics

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. 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.

Sunil Frida, CMO of Zscaler, joins Greg Kihlström on the problem most marketing teams haven't priced in: the AI tools and agents marketing adopted that security never reviewed.

"AI" hides two different decisions. A tool that speeds up a human's draft and an agent that acts in your name at machine speed are not the same risk and don't take the same controls. Frida discusses where a CMO should draw that line inside their own operation.

The CMO and the CISO are now running one system. What the marketing department looks like from the security side of the table — the tools bought on a card, the AI embedded in SaaS platforms overnight, the permissions nobody reviewed.

Coherence is the constraint on speed, not headcount. When thousands of customer-facing decisions a day are made by systems rather than people, what keeps them adding up to one brand with one logic.

About Sunil Frida

Sunil Frida brings more than 20 years of experience leading marketing, product positioning, and go-to-market strategy for some of the world’s most influential cloud and cybersecurity companies. He is known for building and scaling high-performance global teams, shaping category-defining narratives, and driving sustained growth at scale.

Prior to Zscaler, Sunil served as SVP of Product Marketing and Analyst Relations at CrowdStrike, where he led global product marketing, competitive intelligence, alliances, and analyst engagement. He helped expand the Falcon platform narrative, advanced the company’s AI and data strategy, and supported multiple years of strong ARR and revenue growth while also guiding communications through critical moments for the business.

Earlier in his career, Sunil spent more than seven years at Amazon Web Services, holding senior leadership roles across data, analytics, databases, and emerging technologies. He partnered closely with product, sales, and engineering leaders to establish durable operating mechanisms and position AWS as a market leader across multiple categories.

Sunil holds an EE from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Melbourne.

Sunil Frida on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilfrida/

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

Zscaler: https://www.zscaler.com

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.

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/

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

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.