APAC's B2B Growth Podcast

What does it actually look like to roll out AI at enterprise scale inside one of the world's most recognisable technology companies? Craig Mills, APAC Head of Demand Generation and AI Marketing Transformation Lead at IBM, shares the real story: the internal lockdowns, the false starts, the springtime of ideas that fizzled, and the hard-won clarity that followed.

Craig walks through IBM's shift from experimentation to intentional, use-case-driven execution in 2026, with a focus on email marketing as an underrated strategic weapon. He also shares a simple three-part navigation framework any B2B marketer can apply, regardless of the size of their organisation.

Guest Introduction

Craig Mills is the APAC Head of Demand Generation and AI Marketing Transformation Lead at IBM. With over two decades at IBM, Craig has led marketing transformation across Asia Pacific, focusing on data-driven demand generation and the practical adoption of AI across complex, multi-market enterprise environments.

Key Topics

IBM's AI adoption arc: from pre-GPT predictive analytics through the GPT moment, internal lockdowns on AI use, the launch of IBM watsonx in 2023, and the shift to focused execution in 2026
The "client zero" experience: how IBM employees lived the AI transformation firsthand through changes to HR systems, well before the broader market caught up
Why email marketing is Craig's number one AI use case and how IBM is moving from successful pilots to systematic, micro-targeted execution at scale
Micro-segmentation at enterprise scale: how AI enables hyper-personalised outreach to audience pockets that were previously too small to justify the investment
The people-process-tools interconnectivity challenge: why enterprise AI is so difficult and why most organisations are still struggling to get it right
Craig's three navigation points for B2B marketers: get closer to customers and partners, get closer to your product, and go faster
Building maximum mental flexibility: why clarity of mission is the prerequisite for individual speed and creative agility in an AI-driven environment
The IBM Enterprise 2030 finding: 79% of executives expect AI to drive significant revenue by 2030, yet only 24% know where it will come from

Resources and Links

Tools

IBM Enterprise 2030 Report -Craig's North Star on AI strategy: 79% of executives expect AI to drive significant revenue by 2030, but only 24% know where it will come from.
This Week in Startups -Podcast by Jason Calacanis. Craig recommends it for building a startup mindset inside large organisations.
IBM watsonx -IBM's enterprise AI platform, launched May 2023, central to IBM's AI transformation story.
Microsoft Copilot -AI productivity tool Craig uses to move faster through emails and meetings.
Claude -Anthropic's AI assistant, used by Craig for external customer research.

People Mentioned

Jason Calacanis -Entrepreneur and host of This Week in Startups. Craig spent a year listening to build a startup mindset within IBM.
Ray Dalio -Founder of Bridgewater Associates. Craig follows him for his geopolitical frameworks and historical perspective on the forces shaping the world.

Companies

IBM -Global enterprise technology and consulting company.

Also mentioned 

Diablo - The classic video game. Apparently the only thing more addictive than playing with AI tools at midnight. 

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Craig Mills

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

AI has made marketing easier to produce - but harder to win. That's the sharp framing Cameron Partridge, Chief Growth Officer at Humanforce, brings to this conversation. Drawing on nearly a decade in the US, including a front-row seat to the AI boom at Invisible Technologies, working directly with OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft on AI training, Cameron delivers one of the most grounded takes on where marketing is heading.

From the collapse of specialist roles to why marketing must own revenue, this is the episode to send to every marketing leader sitting on the fence about what AI means for their team and career.

Guest Introduction

Cameron Partridge is Chief Growth Officer at Humanforce, an AI-driven human capital management platform serving frontline workforces globally. He spent nearly a decade in the US, most recently as CMO of Invisible Technologies, one of North America's fastest-growing AI companies, where he helped grow revenue from $25-30M to close to $200M run rate while working directly with the world's leading AI model providers. He previously held senior leadership roles at BBDO and Macquarie Group, and began his career at Medibank, Telstra, and GE Capital in Australia.

Key Topics

Why AI has lowered the floor of marketing quality and what "AI slop" means for how you actually win in a crowded content landscape
How the marketing function is collapsing from siloed specialists into generalists - and why that's both an opportunity and a threat
Why Cameron no longer hires for deep channel expertise, and what he looks for instead: cultural fit, outcomes focus, and "neural plasticity"
Why marketing must stop reporting on activity and move toward shared revenue ownership with sales - and the rise of the Chief Growth Officer title
The go-to-market engineer role: what it is, why it's a critical hire, and why these people are rare in Australia
Why AI boosts individual productivity but not organisational productivity, and how systems thinking closes the gap
Cameron's AI toolkit: Claude for deep work, ChatGPT for quick questions, Claude Code for vibe coding - and why courses are the wrong way to learn AI
The job outlook for marketers: why middle managers face the most risk and why now is the time to act

Resources & Links

Tools

Claude - Cameron's go-to for deep work and complex tasks
Claude Code - Used by Cameron for vibe coding projects
ChatGPT - Cameron's "new Google" for quick questions
Manus - Meta owned AI agent platform Cameron is experimenting with
NotebookLM - Recommended for knowledge work
SEMrush - Part of Cameron's cross-platform insights dashboard
X (formerly Twitter) - Recommended for following AI researchers
Substack - Recommended for action-oriented AI insights

People Mentioned

Allie K. Miller - Top LinkedIn voice on AI; also on Instagram

Companies

OpenAI - Worked with directly at Invisible Technologies; recommended for following researchers
Anthropic - Makers of Claude; referenced as a foundational model provider worth following
Google - Referenced in Cameron's analytics dashboard and as a major AI model provider
Invisible Technologies - Cameron's former employer; recommended as a source for enterprise AI developments

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Cameron Partridge

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

See the results: https://xgrowth.com.au/reports/abm-pulse/

ABM is evolving fast in APAC, and xGrowth has the data to prove it. In this episode, Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell unpack the findings from xGrowth's latest ABM Pulse benchmark, based on responses from 93 B2B marketers actively running ABM programs across the region.

From a dramatic shift away from one-to-few programs to AI quietly expanding the scale of what a single budget can cover, this episode cuts through the noise and tells you exactly what is actually happening with ABM in 2025. If you are making investment decisions or defending the ABM line item to your CFO, this one is for you.

Key Topics

Why one-to-few ABM dropped from 72% adoption in 2024 to around 38% in 2025, and what that signals about market maturity in APAC
How strategic (one-to-one) ABM has held steady at around 50% as organisations focus on protecting and expanding existing customer relationships
The AI effect on program scale: why nearly a third of respondents are now running programs targeting 100 or more accounts on the same budgets they used for far fewer
ABM investment sentiment in 2025: 57% of respondents are holding or growing their ABM budgets, with only 5.2% cutting
Why inbound is under pressure from zero-click search and LLM-driven traffic drops, and how this is pushing more organisations toward ABM as a primary pipeline channel
Budget planning paralysis: why a significant portion of APAC marketing leaders still had not confirmed their 2026 budgets well into Q1, and what that says about market uncertainty
How to use benchmark data like this as social proof when making the case for ABM investment to a CFO or board

Resources & Links

xGrowth ABM Pulse Report - download the full benchmark findings
xGrowth - APAC's B2B growth agency
Shahin Hoda on LinkedIn
Alexander Hipwell on LinkedIn

Contact & Credits

Hosts: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Running a global marketing function from APAC sounds like a logistical headache. For Jon Stona, VP of Global Marketing at Airwallex, it's a deliberate competitive advantage. In this episode, Jon unpacks how one of the world's fastest-growing fintechs has architected a marketing org that's globally consistent yet locally authentic - spanning Singapore, San Francisco, London, and regional hubs across Asia, Europe, and Australia.

From making the case for product marketing before performance spend, to using an F1 sponsorship to systematically close a trust gap against legacy financial institutions, Jon brings rare clarity to the strategic decisions that most B2B marketing leaders only talk about in theory. If you want to think bigger about brand, team design, and what marketing can actually own in a scaling business, this episode is worth your time.

Guest Introduction

Jon Stona is VP of Global Marketing at Airwallex, the Australian-founded global payments and financial platform supporting over 150,000 businesses worldwide. Before joining Airwallex, Jon held senior marketing roles at Stripe, Google, and Nike - giving him deep experience scaling marketing across global technology platforms and challenger brands at every stage of growth.

Key Topics

Why Airwallex built its global marketing org out of APAC, and why the APAC talent pool - wired for fragmentation and global trade from day one - is a genuine strategic asset
How the team is structured across Singapore, San Francisco, London, and regional markets, and why a flat, matrix model is essential when you're this geographically dispersed
The case for investing in product marketing before growth marketing - and why getting your positioning, segmentation, and value prop right is the "root" everything else depends on
The four truths Jon applies to any market expansion: brand truth, product truth, market truth, and user truth - and how product marketing is the function that calibrates where the variation sits
How Airwallex uses its McLaren F1 partnership to build trust at scale, structured around the reliability-credibility-intimacy-low self-orientation framework - and how they actually measure the pipeline and employee sentiment impact
Where AI is genuinely delivering efficiency gains in marketing (Writer, Jasper, Profound) and the paradox this creates: as AI levels the playing field on distribution, the non-technical facets of marketing - storytelling, positioning, insight - matter more than ever
Jon's advice for B2B marketers who want to take bolder moves: return to first principles, and remember you're marketing to humans who happen to make business decisions

Resources & Links

Books

Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

AI Tools

Writer - AI content platform for brand voice consistency and marketing workflow efficiency
Jasper - AI platform for end-to-end marketing content creation
Profound - Tool for tracking how your brand appears across LLM platforms

Blogs & Publications

HubSpot Blog

People Mentioned

Reko Rennie - Internationally acclaimed Kamilaroi artist who collaborated with Airwallex and McLaren on the 'Shifted Perspectives' campaign at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix
Dan Ariely - Behavioural economist and author

Companies & Platforms

Airwallex
McLaren Racing

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Jon Stona

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Events are one of the highest-effort, highest-impact levers in B2B marketing, but most teams run them on autopilot. In this episode, Shahin sits down with Jannat Dawra, Head of Marketing APAC at Dotdigital, to break down her commercial, revenue-first approach to field marketing and events.

Jannat runs 80 to 100 events a year and brings a rare blend of creative instinct and commercial rigour to the craft. From deciding which event type to run, to managing a thin attendance list two weeks out, this episode is packed with practical frameworks for senior B2B marketers.

Guest Introduction

Jannat Dawra is Head of Marketing APAC at Dotdigital, a leading customer experience and data platform. Based in Sydney, Jannat leads brand and demand generation across the region and has previously held senior marketing roles at Insider and LinkedIn.

Key Topics

The three event buckets: sponsored industry conferences (brand and first-touch), strategic partner events (deepening executive relationships), and owned events (roundtables, community events, summits).
A commercial approach to event prioritisation: reverse-engineering every event from revenue and pipeline goals. Does it add value to the ICP, accelerate existing pipeline, or strengthen retention and expansion?
The opportunity cost framework: why a $10K event is never just $10K, and how to factor in team time and effort before committing.
Planning across the funnel: quarterly check-ins with sales, CS, and partnerships to flex the event mix based on where pressure sits in the business.
The individual event checklist: clear objective and KPI, stakeholder buy-in, a one-sentence audience definition, speakers matched to the audience profile, and a project plan with contingencies.
Post-COVID attendee expectations: smaller rooms, curated guest lists, clearer themes, no buzzwords, and ROI scrutiny over vanity metrics.
The 70/30 prospect-to-client split: why each audience needs different event design, and what happens when you blur the two objectives.
The post-event playbook: individual follow-up, nurture automations, and treating events as one touchpoint in an 8 to 12-step buying journey.

Resources and Links

People Mentioned

Simon Sinek, speaker and author referenced by Jannat

Companies and Platforms

Dotdigital, Jannat's company, cross-channel marketing automation platform

Books and Podcasts

Atomic Habits by James Clear
The Diary of a CEO, podcast hosted by Steven Bartlett

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Jannat Dawra

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth