I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Dive into the future of marketing technology with Scott Brinker, the visionary behind ChiefMarTec.com, as we explore the seismic shifts reshaping how marketers build and leverage their tech stacks. Scott reveals why the convergence of universal data layers and artificial intelligence is creating what he calls "a perfect storm" of innovation that's forcing us to rethink fundamental assumptions about marketing operations.
"We're not just changing tools," Scott explains, "we're changing how marketers think about what's possible." This conversation unpacks why the ability to move data freely between systems has become as critical as the systems themselves, creating the foundation for truly transformative AI applications.
We tackle the tension between platform consolidation and specialized tools, exploring Scott's concept of a "rationalized tech stack" that provides the stability of core platforms while maintaining the flexibility to integrate cutting-edge capabilities. You'll discover why openness at both the data and API levels has become non-negotiable when evaluating marketing technology.
Perhaps most fascinating is Scott's perspective on how AI is democratizing software creation beyond even the "citizen developer" movement. He describes a near future where marketers will create sophisticated applications without realizing they're writing code, potentially generating "billions, trillions of apps" on demand through natural language requests.
For marketing leaders navigating this landscape, Scott offers practical advice: maintain comprehensive visibility of your current stack, balance investment between operations and experimentation, and above all, design for change. As AI-generated content proliferates, he suggests personality-driven marketing and the "creator ethos" will become essential differentiators.
Ready to future-proof your marketing technology approach? Listen now and gain insights from one of the industry's most respected voices on what's next in MarTech.
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(00:21):
changing how marketers thinkabout what's possible.
If you're interested in thefuture of MarTech from Scott's
perspective and really who isn'tthis is really a must watch.
So I hope you find it useful.
Let's dive in.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
We're in.
Hi Scott, how are you doing?
Scott Brinker (00:43):
Hi, great to be
here with you.
Kevin Kerner (00:48):
Yeah, I'm so
excited to have you.
I know we're going to talk alot about composability and the
Martech stack and all the geekyquestions that I have in my mind
to get into that.
I know we'll both like.
I know you really well, but Iwonder if you'd do just a quick
introduction.
How did you get to where youare today and what are you doing
today?
Scott Brinker (01:09):
Sure.
So the short version is yeah, Istarted out life as an engineer
and then sort of as a softwareentrepreneur, got very
fascinated with marketingbecause it turns out if you
build it they don't necessarilycome and then actually ended up
being more in the direction ofan entrepreneur, building
originally a web services agencythat was bringing technology to
marketing departments, agencythat was bringing technology to
marketing departments.
And that's where I got reallyfascinated by this collision
(01:30):
between the world of marketingand the world of IT and software
.
That you know back a coupledecades.
If you'd gone to your highschool guidance counselor, they
would have like put theseprofessions on opposite ends of
the spectrum and obviously inthe world we live in today, that
just becomes so deeplyentangled.
And obviously in the world welive in today, that just becomes
so deeply entangled.
(01:51):
And so over the years I builtsoftware companies, smart tech
companies, myself.
After I sold the last one Ibuilt, I actually joined a
company called HubSpot to helpbuild their ecosystem of
technology partners, because Igot very committed to the vision
of how do you get all thesedifferent tools to integrate
better together?
And then, in parallel to that,yeah, for now about 17 years
I've been writing a blog anddoing other sort of speaking and
(02:12):
writing around just thisconcept of marketing technology,
some of which is the technology, but frankly, actually some of
the more interesting topics tome are the people and the
organization and the process.
And how do you run a modernmarketing team with technology
so deeply entangled.
Kevin Kerner (02:29):
I didn't know you
had that background.
That's really wild and we're aHubSpot customer and we also
work in HubSpot, so I love itand it is very integrated.
We're going to talk a littlebit about the integration of
some of this tech and howintegrated it's getting, how the
ease of integration, andHubSpot does a great job with
that.
I love it.
It's not a plug, it's likeliterally, I love how easy it
gets.
You know you've been doing thisfor a long time.
(02:50):
What do you think the mostfundamental shift is in the
MarTech landscape that'shappening right now?
Maybe the last 12 months, and Iknow there's, of course, AIs in
that but I'd love tocrystallize, like what, what's
the biggest shift right now?
Scott Brinker (03:08):
Well, I'll answer
that two ways.
One is like let's for a momenttake AI off the table, because
the answer is, of course, ai.
But if we weren't talking aboutAI, if AI wasn't sucking all
the oxygen out of the room, Ithink the most interesting thing
we'd be talking about inMarTech is this shift towards
true universal data layersinside a lot of companies.
You know, again, going back afew years in Maritech, every
(03:28):
Maritech application had its owndatabase and the whole focus on
integration was, you know,throwing pieces of data from one
database to another.
This is what we saw the rise ofthings like CBPs, you know, to
help facilitate.
But over the past five yearsthere's been this real shift in
adoption around cloud datawarehouses lake houses, lakes,
(03:49):
take your pick.
You know that really almostevery application,
asymptotically, is now startingto like, send data down into
that universal data layer and isincreasingly able to pull data
out of that universal data layer.
And this is a huge unlock inbeing able to get data to flow
more freely, not just acrossmarketing, frankly, across the
(04:10):
whole org.
But it's such an unlock formarketers because there was all
this data.
Before that they just nevereven were able to get access to
it, certainly couldn't getaccess to it easily.
And so I think that trend is,you know, continuing on.
And that's where it then kindof intersects with, of course,
the big trend of AI, because,for all the amazing and
wonderful things that AI isstarting to make possible,
(04:33):
almost all of them depend onbeing able to feed the right
data, good data, you know, atthe right point in time in your
tech stack.
And so these two trends of likeyeah, improvement of our data
infrastructure, combined withnow some of the really cool
possibilities that AI unlocks,it's kind of a perfect storm.
Kevin Kerner (04:54):
I've never
actually thought about it that
way.
You're right.
It's really the connectionbetween the databases and how
easy that's become.
And then you layer onintelligence on top of that AI,
and it can make use of all thoseconnections.
It can even make theconnections happen faster or
easier.
It's really amazing.
I think I'm seeing a coupletrends from friends in the
(05:14):
industry.
Now we work primarily on thetech industry.
It's either more companiesconsolidating around a few big
platforms and those platformshave certainly the connectors
built in and then there's theother probably and I have a
unique perspective because Iwork with big companies we are a
company, my own company there'sthis decoupling that's
happening of a lot of the bigsoftware, where I'm finding
(05:36):
these little applications thatdo little things but very
valuable things.
They might or might not pluginto another ecosystem, and I
tend to find two camps we'regoing to consolidate, tend to
find two camps we're going toconsolidate, got to find a way
to get rid of all these littlethings and get a big thing.
Or it's like wow, look at allthis cool stuff I can plug
together.
What do you think's drivingthose competing forces?
And I'm just curious of yourthoughts around those two
(05:58):
dimensions.
Scott Brinker (06:00):
Yeah, no, it's a
great question and the question
I think is on everybody's mindand there's not.
I mean, one of the things Ilike about it is there's not
necessarily a right answeruniversally.
It really it depends, like,what are you trying to get out
of?
I mean, the reason peoplegenerally look to do
consolidation is for acombination of like listen, we
want this to be simpler to use.
(06:20):
You know, we find like okay,there's too many different
interfaces, too many differentthings people are trying to
learn.
So if we can simplify thenumber of things that people
have to learn, great, they'llget more value out of that.
They'll utilize it.
There's certainly thisintegration question of like hey
, listen, it's one thing to intheory have a lot of highly
specialized, best in breed tools, but if they don't work well
(06:43):
together you're not really ableto unlock the full value of that
.
And then there's even just sortof the procurement level of
like okay, how many vendors doyou manage?
Who do you price negotiate with?
Although you have to be alittle bit careful there,
because consolidation,particularly on the price side,
that cuts both ways.
Yes, you can certainly look athow you save money by
(07:06):
consolidating to a smallernumber of vendors.
But there is a flip side ofthis is, if you become just far
too dependent on any one vendor,yeah, the price leverage
actually shifts to the otherdirection, and so I actually
think it's in a lot ofmarketers' best interest, a lot
of IT organizations' bestinterest, to make sure the way
they design their tech stack isthat they're always maintaining
(07:28):
some optionality so that youalways have that leverage,
whether it's because you want tobe able to adopt something new
that you weren't able toanticipate, or when it comes
time to have a vendornegotiation.
You're like, you know, just soyou know we have options, so
make sure you're giving us thegood deal, anyways.
But so that's sort of likewhere you know we have options,
so make sure you're giving usthe good deal, anyways.
But so that's sort of like whereyou know I think people think
(07:49):
of for consolidation, as far asmore of the best of the breed.
It's just the fact that there'sso many things emerging so
quickly, so many newcapabilities.
You know we're still seeinglike new channels and new
tactics and marketing, andthere's just too many things
changing for any one vendor tobe able to keep up with all of
that, and so different marketersfor, like different things
(08:18):
they're wanting to do, it can behighly advantageous for them to
pick a particular pointsolution that lets them
experiment with something youknow, maybe like accelerate
something in a way that theircompetitors aren't doing.
And this is a balance, you knowyou want to not have like the
Wild West of just a millionundisconnected tools.
But I think if you have aphrase I like is a rationalized
tech stack where you have, youknow, generally like these core
platforms, but they're openecosystem, and then you have the
ability to bring in thesespecialist tools when they're
(08:39):
useful to you.
You can kind of have the bestof both worlds.
Kevin Kerner (08:44):
Yeah, I totally
agree, I was.
The other thing is changingreal fast.
I mentioned I had Jacob Bankfrom Relay on talked to him
earlier this week and I askedhim about agents and the
improvement in agent, the agentfunction and what's happened
over the last, you know, let'ssay, 12 months, and he says he
can, because of course he'swriting a bunch of prompts every
day inside the his agents andhe can see, almost on a
(09:05):
week-by-week basis, the modelsgetting better, Like what is
returned from the AI is actuallyimproving on a week-to-week
basis.
I don't want to say day-by-day,but it's just incredible.
So you think about all thoseplatforms connected ecosystem
they have their own AI sometimeinside them.
Ecosystem they have their ownAI sometime inside them.
(09:28):
And then you have this idea ofagents that are either in the
platform or intermediary inbetween the platforms and I
think it's fascinating that allof those things are evolving at
the same time.
You know they're all beginningto evolve all together, so it's
a really incredible environment.
Scott Brinker (09:42):
Yeah, well, I
mean, this is exactly why you
have to lean into openecosystems.
You know people ask me like OK,what are a couple of things
that you know they should askvendors.
You know my top two questionsare always like OK for the data,
can I get any of the data Iwant into it and can I get any
of the data I want out of it?
Because we live in a world herewhere it's just not rational
(10:10):
anymore to say, like a vendorcan black box and hold your data
hostage.
You have to be able to haveaccess to it.
And then the next layer up isyou know, from an integration
perspective, how much.
You know how much of thecapability is accessible by APIs
.
Because it's exactly to thisthing of what you're saying here
with these AI agents are likethe perfect example.
Listen, I may want to use an AIagent that's built into that
tool and if that does what Ineed, fantastic.
(10:32):
But I might also want to use athird party, independent agent
that does something different.
Heck, we're probably not faraway from more and more people
just wanting to build their ownagents, you know, really hyper
tailored to their business, andif your tech stack doesn't give
you the ability to give youaccess to the data or API
services to empower what thoseagents can do.
Yeah, you start to feel likeyou're really boxed in and, in a
(10:52):
world where things are changingweek by week, the last thing
you want is to be boxed in.
Kevin Kerner (10:57):
Yeah, it's never,
never been like this before.
It's crazy.
That's it brings up.
The point in my mind is like doyou see that all these, that
all these tech companies aregoing to have to give access,
universal access or betteraccess inside the platform?
Are you seeing any platformsthat are like I don't know, I
got my own AI here.
I don't know if I want to giveothers type of tools access into
(11:18):
my data because it makes mytool less relevant, or is that
happening, or will that happen,and there's eventually just the
consumer wins in that case.
Scott Brinker (11:27):
Yeah, I think
this is one of the things where
I mean it's it's, it's the lawof economics of this.
It makes absolute sense whyvendors, given their desires,
would be like no, no, no, it'sall in our system, we control it
all.
You can't get out of ours, likeyou know, and it's not for any
evil reason.
It's just like hey, no, no,it's all in our system, we
control it all, you can't getout of ours and it's not for any
evil reason.
(11:47):
It's just like hey, thebusiness models the more lock-in
we have, the better.
It's the exact opposite,obviously, for the buyers, the
consumers, the customers who areusing this stuff, is
optionality.
Particularly in an environmentof just such rapid and
unpredictable change,optionality is just an
incredible asset, and I thinkthis is one of the cases.
People often complain about thesize of the MarTech landscape.
(12:09):
Like you've got literallythousands and thousands of
vendors, and I get it, it's toomuch.
Like I can't keep track of itall you can't even fit it now on
the.
Kevin Kerner (12:19):
MarTech
architecture thing you've been
doing for so long.
Scott Brinker (12:22):
It's just crazy.
But one advantage of that isthere is a lot of competition
among MarTech users, and that isactually a good thing for the
buyers of this, because you knowwhat it basically comes down to
is, even though the major noteven just the major MarTech
platforms, if they could, theywould do a lot more lock-in, but
(12:44):
in an environment where there'sso much competition and the
buyers are demanding the abilityto have optionality and
integration, it's just not anoption, because if you're not
going to open up your platform,the buyer's going to choose a
competitor.
So anyway, that's my take on it.
Kevin Kerner (13:00):
Yeah, I want to
sort of adjacent topic I want to
get to is this idea of yeah, Isaw something you'd posted about
the citizen led software.
You had this graph that showedwhere we are today with
production ready software fromcompanies all the way down to
like, everyone buildingeverything all at the same time.
That is super cool idea.
We use glide a bunch, which isthe no code.
(13:22):
That is awesome.
We use it for we built a wholeum company dashboard really for
customers and for us all inglide, and literally what it
would have taken in react orangular or something five years
ago, it would have takenhundreds of thousands of dollars
and it took, you know, we built, we had a prototype up in you
know, maybe a couple weeks for afew hundred dollars.
(13:42):
It's just amazing.
So and it's, you know, it's gotall the apis and such great
stuff.
I wonder, I wonder, if youcould talk a bit about that
graph, that transition you seecoming, and why you see it's
coming all the way down to thecitizen led.
Scott Brinker (13:56):
I think that's a
really cool idea yeah, and
actually even, I think, goesfurther than the citizen led,
because for a while we talkedabout citizen developers, where
it's okay, it's a power user, anops person, a business, you
know, sort-minded, but they're abusiness person and that they
could develop, using no-codetools, their own little apps or
automations or whatnot.
(14:17):
And that's what you know.
Gartner, I think, was the onewho coined the phrase.
Oh, that's citizen development.
What's really wild now is withsome of these AI products like
just take ChatGPT, because thisis a real example, I'd used the
other week products Like justtake ChatGPT, because this is a
real example, I'd used the otherweek.
You can go in as just a marketerand say hey, chatgpt, could you
go to the stock market data andI want to like look at, you
(14:38):
know, tech companies versusnon-tech companies for the past
20 years and put together achart for me.
You just type that in a naturallanguage.
It turns around for a bit andcomes back and you've got a
beautiful graph that shows youexactly that.
Now, if you actually click onthe little details thing of how
ChatGPT did that, it opens up.
It turns out it wrote a Pythonprogram at your request, you
(15:02):
know, pulled that data togetherand then, like you know, you
called it, like you know,charting library to, you know
render it, and so what's wildabout this is people making
these requests.
You know, these AI assistantsand agents.
They're writing softwarewithout even being aware that
they're writing software.
And that's sort of why, when Ithink about that long tail, I
think like, ok, at that point intime, I mean you can't even
(15:25):
measure it.
It's you know, we're nottalking about millions of apps,
we're talking billions,trillions of apps.
It's you know, we're nottalking about millions of apps,
we're talking billions,trillions of apps.
And at some level, yeah, itjust even stops being a thing to
think about these things asapps.
It's more of like, oh yeah,just doing my bidding on demand.
It's kind of wild.
But, that being said, I will saylike I don't think this is the
end of commercial software.
You know, because, let's faceit, like when you look at a lot
(15:48):
of these major platforms andwhat they do, there's a lot
there.
It's not just database with alittle bit of UI.
I mean the amount of sort oflike business logic and rules
and the way in which thesethings have been like carefully
constructed that allow you tohave like stable foundations to
your tech stack.
That's not something thateverybody wants to be creating
from scratch.
It's not just not enoughcomparative advantage in doing
(16:10):
that, you know.
So I think the world we'removing into is one where, yeah,
the tech stack is still going tohave these like major products
and platforms at the center.
But if they're all open andthey all give you that ability
to like tap into their powerthrough APIs or open data
exchange, then you can imagineusing more and more of these AI
tools to be able to build muchmore custom workflows or
(16:34):
employee experiences or customerexperiences.
On top of that and I think thisis something where I mean every
business wants to run thingstheir own way.
It's just hey, you know, if youdidn't have like an army of
software developers, you knowwhole budget like you kind of
had to say like, well, we'lljust take the software from the
vendor as is and we will adaptto the software rather than the
(16:58):
software adapting to you.
And this is what excites meabout some of this AI is I think
it's going to empower a lotmore businesses to say like,
okay, great, we've got yoursoftware as the starting point,
but now we're going tomanipulate how we actually work
with it, you know, to reallytailor to our vision of how our
business would operate or ourvision of how we should deliver
our customer experience.
Kevin Kerner (17:19):
Yeah, you think it
becomes a world of micro apps.
You know just apps everywheredoing all kinds of crazy stuff.
As far as the eye can see, yes,I did a little test the other
day using Claude, and I wastrying to get some ideas for an
engagement dashboard and itbuilt this really cool dashboard
.
It wasn't really usable but Iwatched it right at the Python
as it was doing it and it haderrors in it, but it's just
(17:42):
amazing that you can do that now.
Play that out another year,couple years.
It's just incredible.
I wish the I don't know aboutyou, but I wish the big
platforms Perplexity, claude,chatgpt made it easier for you
to use their apps inside ofother things.
You can I mean you can, but asa layman, like, let's say,
(18:05):
you're just a business personand you wanted to dig into, you
know, google, your google stackor something else one of them
just came out with is it mcp orat some universal?
robic yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, so that's a that.
I don't know much about that,but it sounded like a the days
of email when we had separateemail platforms, you know, cc
(18:28):
mail and pegasus Mail and allthe other mails.
Scott Brinker (18:30):
Lotus 1, 2, 3.
Or whatever that thing was.
Scott was on Lotus and I was onCC Mail.
Kevin Kerner (18:37):
I couldn't get you
an email.
It was terrible, terrible userexperience.
But I wonder if more of that'sgoing to happen with the big
players.
Scott Brinker (18:45):
Yeah, well, I
think that is definitely
Anthropix's vision of the MCP.
The Model Context Protocol iscould there just be a standard
of how these things interface,whether it's other databases or
other services?
And kind of everyone's beenlike, yeah, that's a really good
idea.
And so you're actually seeingpretty rapid adoption of MCP.
You know, and again, like allthis stuff is early.
(19:05):
And again, like all this stuffis early.
But you know, one of the funnythings about this is because
sometimes people stillaccurately say like, hey,
there's how much of this is hype?
And sure, there's absolutely alot of hype.
I mean, the Garga hype curve isalive and well.
But here's the difference is itused to be years ago.
The hype would have a certaintrajectory and then over time
(19:29):
the reality would catch up.
But the distance between thetwo was usually measured in
years and like as you weresaying earlier here, like now
it's at a place like, yeah, thehype definitely gets ahead of
the reality.
But the time it takes for thereality to close that gap, it's
not years anymore, it's months.
In some cases it's like weeks.
And so I both, on one hand, cancontinue to maintain a
(19:51):
skeptical mindset of the hypewhen I first hear it, but I am
very reluctant to say like, yeah, that's not going to be
possible in the next yearbecause two months later, well,
maybe.
Kevin Kerner (20:00):
I keep getting
slapped down every time I say no
, that's not going to happen.
Then I see it happen and then Isay no, that couldn't possibly
happen.
Boom, it happens.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah, I think the MCP thing isreally interesting and I wonder
if the other platform providers,the big guys, will either adopt
or create their own or whatever.
It's going to be an interestingwar to see play out.
(20:22):
On another topic of sort ofthis consolidation, you
introduced this idea of a systemof context.
I think it was system ofcontext right and I was really
amazed by that.
People have to look at it, ormaybe I can link to it.
That thought that you have asurrounding system and
subsystems between.
(20:43):
Can you talk a little?
Can you describe that a bit?
Scott Brinker (20:45):
Yeah Well, I mean
, part of what was in my head
here is like for a long time inMarTech stacks, we'd sort of
divided things into systems ofrecord and systems of engagement
, you know.
And what's been interesting isat the data layer you start like
getting this.
You know the cloud datawarehouse phenomenon, the
universal data layer is.
It is even like less of sayingone particular thing is a system
(21:09):
of record, you know, but somethings help, like I start to
call them more systems of truth.
Maybe that's too philosophicalof a word, but you know this
idea that the data is actuallyflowing everywhere and you just
have a question of like, ok, fordifferent kinds of data, what
technology is sort of being thearbiter of what the truth is or
isn't in that or isn't in that.
But then on the engagementlevel too, I mean that term came
(21:32):
around in the days when peoplewere thinking like, yeah, well,
we'll have, you know, maybe amarketing automation system,
maybe a you know web, you knowDXP platform, you know, and so
you could sort of count.
On one hand, what you said werethe systems of engagement.
But now, with all this longtail or hyper tail of you know
agents and you know, or a hypertale of you know agents and you
know custom software and allthis Boy, you're getting to this
(21:56):
place where, like, differentsoftware is truly being adapted
much more to the specificcontext in which a particular
employee is working or which aparticular customer is having an
engagement.
And so that's where I startedto suggest, like, maybe we
shouldn't be thinking aboutsystems of engagement so much as
like, yeah, systems of contextand they're exploding everywhere
.
About systems of engagement somuch is like, yeah, systems of
context and they're explodingeverywhere.
But, that being said, you knowwe were talking earlier.
I don't believe that everythingis just going to be completely
(22:16):
custom, you know, for everysingle business.
I think it's going to be thisinterplay, but in this world of
what our systems of context arebuilt on is, you will have a set
of core platforms that actuallyprovide really valuable
functions for you know, likeyour core, you know CRM
management, your you know coredigital asset management.
You know things like, again,you don't want to like, reinvent
all this, you know from scratch.
(22:38):
On that, yeah, you'll have allthese more and more tailored
experiences for employees andcustomers, and each one becomes
like, oh, what's the context forthat particular person at that
particular time?
Kevin Kerner (22:50):
That's such a cool
thought.
And in between all thosesystems of context is something,
something will they'll eithertalk together or there'll be
something in between that willhelp them talk together.
Do you have a, do you have anidea of what?
Will there be a master systemabove all those systems of
context running, or is therethere any light towards someone
(23:11):
winning that you know, broaderAI system that just talks to all
these things?
Scott Brinker (23:16):
Yes, I think you
put your finger on what, to me,
is the quintessential battle ofthe moment is okay, who is the
conductor?
We've got all these things thatare operating inside our
environment.
Who is the conductor?
And right now there is not asingular conductor.
You have multiple systems thatare conducting different parts
(23:36):
of this and, if I'm being honest, I think that's likely to be
the case for a of like oh, thisone's orchestrating this piece
of our world, oh, this one'sorchestrating this other piece.
You know, I do think, thingslike MCP.
You know, if we start to seemore standards about how to
(24:00):
integrate these things, andthere is an emerging category of
software that's almost beingdesigned from the ground up to
be orchestration.
You know, platforms in thisenvironment, but I think it's
just way too early to predictthat there's a winner, and
what's wild is well, I think wewould all want there to be a
winner, like if you could justmagically say yes, I would like
(24:21):
one system that is the totalorchestrator and conductor for
this.
I'm not sure if that's actuallygoing to emerge anytime soon,
and it's almost like you know,these sort of was that like the
nash equilibrium game theory isyeah, it's not necessarily a
winner takes.
All it's some interplay between, yeah, multiple conductors,
that, yeah, because this iswe'll have to, you know, sort of
(24:44):
manage.
You know which one they'returning to in which particular
context, but I don't know.
Yeah, you start trying topredict how this is going to
look a few years from now.
Kevin Kerner (24:52):
It's just, it's
just hard to change so much I
honestly that's right we willhave to play this back in a year
and see all this back in a year, if we're even able to do this
in a year, okay.
So I have a really good friendhe's a cmo who I talked to late
last week and they were tryingto make sense of all this.
What do you do if you're abusiness leader that is trying
(25:17):
to understand the tools thatthey have and how they can
benefit from some of these newertechnologies, let alone try to
figure out do you have the rightstuff?
How do you react to this stuff?
If you're, let's say, amarketing leader and you're
looking at your stack going, soyou have the right stuff here?
Scott Brinker (25:31):
yeah, it's a
great question.
Um, probably not a 30 secondanswer to that.
I will say a few things likeone is, there are these products
out there called sassmanagement platforms and they
plug them into your sack andbasically they're through a
combination of like singlesign-ons or like your finance
system.
They, they actually will mapall of the different
subscriptions and all thedifferent SaaS things you have
(25:53):
and like give you an ability tosort of like both view that and
manage that collectively, whichevery time I've seen people plug
this in, it's awesome.
Like yeah, you'll ask peoplelike hey, how many things do you
have in your sack?
And they'll be like I don'tknow.
You know they'll plug it onplatforms.
I comes back with like 300.
Wait, god.
Kevin Kerner (26:12):
And then you start
looking at the list.
It's like my checking account.
I go, oh God, what am I?
Are my Apple subscriptions?
I'm like what?
How did it?
Scott Brinker (26:21):
which kid.
It's bizarre, like when youactually start to look at all
the things you subscribe to.
There's like things we don'teven really think of as SaaS but
they kind of are.
Like how many of your employeesare using Coursera for training
?
I mean, at the end of the day,it's an LMS SaaS app Anyway.
So that's one place to start isactually make sure you're
getting a complete view ofwhat's in your stack today.
(26:43):
I think the other thing is sothere's maybe two things here.
One is sort of the balancebetween an investment in what
you currently have and whatyou're doing versus how much
time and resourcing should yoube allocating to experimenting
and learning on the frontier?
And this is one of these thingswhere I'd say it's the 80-20
rule, where for you it might be90-10 or whatnot might be 70-30.
(27:05):
It's probably not 50-50, where,right, I mean, still, the vast
majority of the time reallyneeds to go into the current
operations.
I mean, marketing is a reallycomplex machine right now and
marketers just don't have theluxury of you know, setting all
that aside and like hey, let'senvision an entirely different
tech stack and operating system.
(27:26):
You know, you have to beadjusting the plane a bit while
it's in the air operating system.
You know you have to beadjusting the plane a bit while
it's in the air, but you couldalso make the mistake in the
other direction of just notgiving people inside your team
enough space to start toexperiment and learn, even if
you're going to sandbox some ofthese things.
You know.
In fact, you should sandboxsome of these things and make
(27:46):
sure you have guard rails.
But there is so much capabilitythat is advancing so quickly.
If you aren't carving out sometime and resourcing and, frankly
, permission for people to beable to go and do this, you know
you really risk losing the sortof skill and capability
development you know that needsto happen.
(28:09):
And then the last thing I wouldsay about this from your current
tech stack is to me, the mostimportant thing is design for
change.
We were chatting earlier aboutthis too.
It's like if you aren't leaninginto the insistence of open
platforms and anytime you'reevaluating a vendor or something
(28:29):
to change in your tech stack,that the openness of both a data
layer and an API layer if theyaren't near the top of your list
, yes, price matters.
Yes, you know the functionalityof what you have.
I mean, there's a bunch ofthings that matter, but, boy,
the sort of openness you know atthe data and API level, it's
got to be there in that firstclass citizen set of things
you're looking for, because thatis what gives you that
(28:50):
optionality.
Then, because that is whatgives you that optionality, then
, as these new things start toemerge and new capabilities
emerge, your ability to plugthem in and take advantage of
them like increases by an orderof magnitude.
Kevin Kerner (29:01):
Yeah, totally
agree.
Besides, something really Ithought was great is the also.
That's the sandbox approachdemocratization to some degree
of your team and giving them theability to go test.
Because if you're a, if you'rea CMO, looking at this stuff
your head would explode becauseyou're not, you can't, it's just
hard to take it all in.
But if you distribute some ofthat creativity and
experimentation to your team andyou and you start to begin
(29:22):
people to hire people that maybeknow a little bit more about
technology and how to how toreally utilize technology on the
marketing function, you can getmore done through more people
that are creative, willing toexperiment.
Sandboxing is the right thingto do because you don't want
people going crazy, but it seemslike the makeup of the type of
person that is going to berequired to experiment and
(29:46):
select tools it's just going tobe different than it is today.
You're just going to have tohave that technical curiosity, I
guess.
Scott Brinker (29:55):
I think you're
right that it's the curiosity,
almost that's the key thing.
Like, up until very recently,the technical skill required was
important too, like if youdidn't really sort of understand
programming.
If, like, boy, if you werepresented with a piece of
JavaScript, would you freak out,you know, it was important just
because that was the way inwhich you would experiment and
(30:16):
pull these things together.
But now, with these tools again, like things like the code
itself, they really are veryquickly fading into the
background.
But the difference is, like, issomeone still willing to like,
have the curiosity of, hey, canI get this to do this thing here
?
And can I like, oh, what if Itook this other thing over here
and connected it?
You know, and that's, that's anew skill.
(30:37):
You know, we've just never evenhad these capabilities.
You had to write that beforeright when they went to college,
I'm like, oh yeah, this is howyou'll be running marketing, you
know.
So it is a mindset, I think, asmuch as anything else else.
Kevin Kerner (30:49):
Okay, so I want to
do something here real quick
before I let you go.
I'm calling this.
This is the only second timeI've done it, so I have not
tested it, but one other timethis is going to be called AI
roulette, so we're live here, sowhat?
Scott Brinker (31:01):
I did, was I
loaded I loaded a prompt and a
perplexity.
Kevin Kerner (31:04):
I told it.
I have you on the podcast.
Today we're talking a bit aboutcomposability in the MarTech
stack.
I wanted to ask a provocativeand unexpected question and I
loaded in your latest posts,your LinkedIn profile with all
your recent posts and the emailthat we had gone back and forth
on.
So I'm going to hit send hereand see what happens.
Drumroll, here we go Twoseconds.
(31:24):
It didn't take very long.
Okay, here we go.
I'm going to read it live.
I'm going to preview it.
Preview Given the rise ofgenerative AI and its potential
to flood MarTech with lowquality automated content, do
you think composability could?
Couple of years ago, where Iwas talking about the second
order effects of some of this AIand content generation is a
perfect example, it's like ohthere's this trigger, we can now
(31:45):
use these tools to generatecontent.
Scott Brinker (32:06):
What's the first
order effect?
Well, the first order effect isthere's going to be a hell of a
lot more content.
I mean like, yeah, just, youknow, anyone can make content
super easy, and now we'regetting to a point where it can
happen on autopilot, okay.
Well, what is the second ordereffect of that?
You know that sort of contentis basically worthless.
It's, like you know, becausethe actual attention of your
audience and the ability to likewin on a differentiation
(32:29):
component or to build areputation like you're just not
going to do it through thatchannel, and so I think this is
something where you just have tolook at an entirely different
way to engage with your audience.
Now, what's interesting is,well, on one hand, you're
thinking of content marketersbeing unleashed with tools,
(32:49):
these thermonuclear content, youknow, content generation tools
that you know just floodeverything.
On the other side of theequation, one of the hottest
things out there in marketingright now, or just sort of in
the, you know, webosphere ingeneral, is the world of
influencers and creators Isthese voices that are unique,
voices that stand out.
(33:11):
They engage audiences.
I was talking to someone theother day who was telling me
like, oh, you know, I mean, theproblem is people only have, you
know, the attention of goldfish, you know.
So how do you do marketing inthat?
I'm like, well, okay, here'sthe counter to that.
You know, when you have, youknow, shows like I don't know
like Joe Rogan's like podcastthat I think goes on for hours
at a time, you at a time, youknow like, well, he has a huge
(33:34):
audience of people who seem morethan willing to like give him,
like multiple hours of hisattention.
You know, and you see thisthroughout a variety of these
different creators, and I think,if I am a marketer trying to
think about like, okay, how do Istand out in a world of
theoretically infinite content?
It's got to be this thingaround the personality, the
differentiation, like leaninginto this sort of like creator
(33:59):
ethos.
You know, whether it's actuallycollaborating with creators,
which is certainly one option,or even if you're going to do
some of this internally, tothink like, okay, maybe it's
just, instead of having thisfaceless, voiceless, you know,
content we churn out like whoare some of the voices inside
our company that could be reallyengaging personalities and do
we actually like use them moreas a mechanism to, like create
(34:19):
an audience and engage withpeople in a way that they're not
going to get from the genericcontent.
I don't know, there's probably adozen other different
strategies you can think through, but I think it's a great
question everyone should beasking.
Kevin Kerner (34:32):
Yeah Well, we'll
credit perplexity with the best
question in this entire podcast.
Scott Brinker (34:35):
I don't know
about that, you've got all it is
, don't you?
Kevin Kerner (34:42):
I think the answer
is dead on.
I mean, I think if there'sgoing to be a rise in
product-led market, moreproduct-led personality
marketing, really like, hey,I've created this thing, look
how cool it is, let me show youhow to use it.
Here's my opinion around thespace.
I see it working with all thepeople I follow.
(35:03):
I follow them because they'reinteresting and it's great and
I'm geeking out about this stuff.
I follow that a lot more than Iwould going to a website or
having someone send me a whitepaper or whatever.
I have this theory, scott, aboutthe.
You know, I was here before theinternet started and actually
before email started.
Now and now we got AI and Ithink that AI could end the
(35:23):
internet because there'll be somuch stuff out there.
You know it's now.
We can't use email, we can'tuse LinkedIn, we can't use any
of the other things.
We're just going to be able tomeet face-to-face like this.
That will be the world.
So I will have seen the rise ofthe internet all the way down
to just personal meetings likethis.
Scott Brinker (35:41):
Although you know
now the thing that will like
yeah, you know, it's the spin on, that is boy.
Some of these AI avatars aregetting so good You're asking
yourself is this the real ScottBrinker?
Kevin Kerner (35:51):
This is really
Scott.
I was good.
You're asking yourself is thisthe real scott?
Scott Brinker (35:55):
brinker, this is
really scott.
I was wondering how you coulddo this.
I thought you had a meeting toactually like validate.
Kevin Kerner (36:00):
Uh this, it's time
ahead I am super glad that we
reconnected and it's beenfascinating to talk to you.
Of course, I could talk to youa lot longer, but I know you're.
You're a busy guy.
I know you have a bunch ofstuff coming out.
I know you have this.
Uh, I think you have somecomposability research coming
out, which is awesome.
You've got the MarTech onlinething happening.
I want you to be.
I want people to know how theycan get more of this stuff from
you.
Where would they go?
Scott Brinker (36:20):
Well, I guess
probably the best place would be
chief MarTechcom, and that'schief MarTech without the H at
the end.
Long story on that, probablynot a good story, but anyways,
chief MarTech just ends in.
You know the Ccom and I'll posteverything there.
But yeah, feel free to, likeyou know, reach out on LinkedIn
(36:41):
as well too.
Kevin Kerner (36:41):
I'm SJ Brinker
okay, awesome Scott, this has
been great.
Thank you so much.
It's really great to talk toyou and I appreciate it and good
luck.
We'll talk in a year andcompare notes.
Scott Brinker (36:53):
Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Kerner (36:56):
Okay, we'll see
you.