The Marketing Millennials

Kelly Cheng, CMO at Goldcast, joins Daniel to talk trust, mind share, and how B2B Marketing can break through when the internet is drowning in AI slop.

In a feed full of AI avatars and synthetic everything, the stuff that actually earns trust is the stuff AI can't manufacture. What breaks through in a feed full of AI content, and how do you scale it without turning into slop yourself?

Kelly and Daniel get into why buyers' shortlists are shrinking even as their options explode, the one thing AI still can't fake (hint: it starts with a T), and the "lazy Marketer" trap that's quietly wrecking teams.
If you're a Marketer trying to win mind share and build real trust in the age of AI, this episode is for YOU.

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Follow Kelly:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyhcheng/

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

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Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com

If you're making budget decisions based on how each channel looks on its own, you're working with an incomplete picture.

Daniel breaks down why blended CAC should be the number your whole operation runs against. Blended CAC is your total marketing spend divided by total customers acquired across every channel. It gives you room to invest in longer-term channels without panicking when one silo looks off, and it stops you from killing channels that are quietly lifting conversions everywhere else.

Jay admits he runs everything in silos, channel by channel, and uses that to shift budget toward whatever's performing. Daniel pushes back: you need both. The blended number is your north star. The silos are your diagnostic tool. When blended CAC starts creeping up, that's when you go channel by channel to figure out what's wrong.

The bigger idea: attribution will always make some channels look better than they are. Blended CAC cuts through that and shows you the real cost of growing your business.

If you want a smarter way to manage your Marketing budget, this is the episode for YOU.

Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend. To find out more, visit:www.workweek.com

When AI can spit out infinite content for free, is yelling into the void actually a losing game?
In this LIVE panel, Daniel sits down with two experienced Marketers with strong opinions about what to do.

Debbie Millman is a designer, author, and educator who founded the world's first ever Master's program in Branding at SVA. She's also hosted the podcast Design Matters for 21 years and is a Harvard Fellow. Christina Bottis is a CMO with 20+ years in B2B Marketing who has built brand at pretty much every size and stage of company.

In this episode, taped live, they get into what "breaking through" actually means, because it’s not volume. It's A+ content, real consistency, and a strategy that makes you behave differently from your competitors (not just a fancier plan).

Debbie also talks about brand as "manufactured meaning" and why our reptilian brains are wired to hate every rebrand on sight.

Plus the big 1: when everyone can generate everything, what's the new scarce resource? The panel makes the case for taste, ingenuity, and originality, and why the Marketer who keeps building real fundamentals (instead of outsourcing them all to AI) becomes the most valuable person in the room.

Also in this episode is a script for how to defend the value of brand - from showing short AND long-term wins, to moving fast without skipping your ICP foundations, and why your audience wants to hear from the real people behind the brand, not the brand itself.

If you're a Marketer who wants to learn how to build a brand that cuts through in the AI era, this is the episode for YOU.

Follow Debbie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahmillman/

Follow Christina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinabottis/

Follow Daniel:

YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured⁠

Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing⁠

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:

⁠www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials⁠

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:

⁠www.workweek.com

What if your most "customer-obsessed Marketing” is built on stuff your customers don't actually do?

Molly Strawn-Carreño is Director of Brand Growth at AYTM, and she's spent years getting researchers and Marketers to finally speak the same language. She sits down with Daniel to break down what real market research looks like now that AI is in every Marketer's toolkit.

They dig into the “Say-Do Gap,” aka the canyon between what people tell you (like in a survey) vs what they actually purchase (like, organic strawberries for the kids, very much NOT-organic broccoli for the husband). Molly shares how to word your questions so people give you the truth instead of an aspirational highlight reel.

Plus she calls out exactly where AI earns its keep in research (chewing through mountains of historic data, narrowing 50 options down to 3) and where AI face-plants (predicting the next weird trend, because no model saw tinned fish charcuterie boards coming).

And she lays out the Marketing hill she'll die on: Marketing and sales have to work together, and good Marketers own the entire customer lifecycle, not just the second a lead converts.

Wrike brings structure, visibility, and accountability to work, so companies can make better business decisions, improve efficiency, and reduce risk. Learn more at https://wrike.com/tmm

Follow Molly:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-strawn

Follow Daniel:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:

www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:

www.workweek.com

Most Marketers are using AI to generate. The ones winning right now are using it to interrogate.

Jay breaks down a two-minute tactic he's been running with clients: go to all five major LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok) and ask each one for the top 50 questions people are asking about your product or service. Then cross-reference the outputs to find what shows up on every platform. Those overlapping questions are your go-to-market. Your blog titles, your podcast topics, your offer angles, your webinar hooks — all of it, handed to you by the market itself.

Daniel adds his own layer: before you let AI anywhere near your copy, write it yourself first. Then feed it in and ask AI to critique it through the lens of the greatest copywriters and strategists who ever lived. What would the legends say about your hook? Your offer? Your opening line? That's how you use AI as a refinement partner instead of a crutch — and the difference in output is night and day.

The bigger idea: AI isn't the shortcut most Marketers think it is. Used right, it's the smartest pressure test in the room.

If you want AI prompts that actually change what you ship, this is the episode for YOU.

Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:www.workweek.com