What if the biggest risk of AI in marketing isn’t about job replacement, but about creating more fragmented, siloed work?
Agility requires more than just adopting new tools; it demands a fundamental rethinking of how teams collaborate and orchestrate work. When a technology like AI promises to accelerate individual tasks, true agility means ensuring that acceleration translates into collective momentum, not organizational friction.
Today, we’re going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI experimentation and into the reality of its operational impact on marketing teams. We’ll explore what happens when AI graduates from being a personal productivity tool to becoming an integrated part of a team’s workflow, and how that shift changes everything from campaign execution to the very structure of marketing itself.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Prachi Gore, CMO at Asana.
About Prachi Gore
Prachi Gore is the Chief Marketing Officer at Asana, where she leads the company’s global marketing strategy and brand development. Prachi brings extensive experience scaling product-led B2B organizations, having previously served as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Checkr, where she built the company’s demand engine, elevated its brand, and launched its product-led growth business. Prior to Checkr, Prachi led Marketing at SmartRecruiters, guiding the company’s evolution from an SMB-focused product to a leading enterprise talent acquisition suite. This diverse background across consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets gives her deep expertise in demand generation, brand strategy, and AI-enabled go-to-market innovation. Prachi is passionate about creating marketing that combines human creativity with rigorous, data-driven execution, and is committed to helping teams work more effectively and tell clearer stories.
Prachi Gore on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachigore/
Resources
Asana: asana.com
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. What if the biggest risk of AI in marketing isn’t about job replacement, but about creating more fragmented, siloed work? Agility requires more than just adopting new tools. It demands a fundamental rethinking of how teams collaborate and orchestrate work. When a technology like AI promises to accelerate individual tasks, true agility means ensuring that acceleration translates into collective momentum, not organizational friction. Today, we’re going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI experimentation and into the reality of its operational impact on marketing teams. We’re gonna explore what happens when AI graduates from being a personal productivity tool to becoming an integrated part of a team’s workflow, and how that shift ch- changes everything from campaign execution to the very structure of marketing itself. Now let’s dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Prachi Gore, CMO at Asana. Prachi, welcome to the show.
[00:01:43] Prachi Gore: Thank you. This is such an honor. I’m excited to be here.
[00:01:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, really, really looking forward to this topic. Definitely, it, it is definitely something top of mind for me. I know for many others as well. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Asana?
[00:01:57] Prachi Gore: Yeah, I’m the CMO at Asana. I am fairly new, five months in, uh, so kinda, like, enjoying every bit of it. It’s a ramp and steep learning curve. Uh, prior to Asana, I ran marketing at a company called Checker. I was there for about six years and got a lot of AI experimentation under my belt in the last two years I was there, so excited to be here.
[00:02:19] Greg Kihlström: Love it. So yeah, let’s dive in here, and I wanna start with what I teed up in the intro and really talking about… You know, I feel like since, you know, sometime in 2022, we’ve all been playing with AI tools, you know, particularly generative AI tools, and seeing the benefits of being able to create a lot of stuff very quickly. I think that stuff has maybe gotten better over, over the years. I’d like to think at least it’s gotten better over the years. But still, what we have been kind of led to is, is a paradox here, which is AI, you know, it’s, it’s led to a lot more productivity. We can do a lot more in less time, even, you know, potentially with less people being tasked with a certain,
[00:03:05] Greg Kihlström: a, a certain initiative or, or whatever, but it’s also led to more fragmented work.
[00:03:10] Prachi Gore: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:11] Greg Kihlström: Can you maybe expand on this challenge a little bit, and you know, what, what, what you’re seeing here as far as what other marketing leaders are, are experiencing?
[00:03:20] Prachi Gore: Yeah, I would love to, and actually that’s one of the reasons why I joined Asana, so I’ll get into that in a minute as well.
[00:03:27] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:03:27] Prachi Gore: But when I was at Checker, like you said, we started our kind of marketing experimentation, like, late 2023 around content and just briefs and all this amazing stuff.
[00:03:38] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:03:38] Prachi Gore: And the reality is that some experiments worked, some didn’t. But mostly, every individual got a little bit better. We got a lot more content out. We got a lot more, um, ideas out.
[00:03:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:03:50] Prachi Gore: Like there was no shortage of ideas. And as a marketing leader, having said all of this, we didn’t really see, like, pace of campaigns pick up or launches happening much faster or just, like-
[00:04:03] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:03] Prachi Gore: … throughput and productivity as a team go up. And my aha was that, you know, output just went up materially-
[00:04:11] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:04:11] Prachi Gore: … and outcomes didn’t follow that same path. And, like, that’s the paradox that you pointed out, and to me, um, now it’s public knowledge. There’s lots of data that says, you know, 75% of the knowledge workers are using AI, which is fantastic, uh, but only 5% of companies are seeing any real business outcome from it, are reporting any ROI, right? So there’s a lot of data out there that’s kind of saying this now, but that was my personal experience. And so when I, you know, talked to Asana, my aha clicked, because we used a lot of, like, you know, orchestration tools that were stitching different individual-
[00:04:46] Greg Kihlström: Aha.
[00:04:46] Prachi Gore: … outcomes together. We, we, we experimented quite a lot, and, and I think the, the biggest fundamental reason why you see that gap is because two things, work is inherently hard, and the workflows that actually mattered crossed lots of different people, lots of different teams, lots of different systems, need decisions, approvals, like handoffs. Like it is complex. It is truly complex. It was complex for two humans or, or a team of humans working, and it’s complex with agents as teams as well, right?
[00:05:18] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:18] Prachi Gore: And so there is no solution out there that solves that, and that’s why every individual got faster, but in our case, we were copy-pasting from one place to the other. We were editing here, then going back into our check window and saying, “Oh, these were the edits. Here’s the feedback. Let’s…” You know, so we were going through this back and forth, and so we just became, like, individuals gluing different systems essentially. (laughs)
[00:05:38] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:38] Prachi Gore: So the productivity we gained was lost in the coordination, and I think to me, that is, you know, it’s not a technology problem anymore. It’s not an ideas problem. It’s, there’s a lot of personal assistants available for every individual. To truly become agentic as a company, it is a coordination problem. So I, I, I think that’s kind of, like, my view of the world, and I experienced it firsthand, and now I see us solve this for our customers, which is just exciting. Of course, we’ve done it in-house at Asana too, but…
[00:06:10] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think that’s a, that’s a great…… characterization of, of the challenge, I think, ’cause I, I have been there. I know many others have, have been there. The copying and pasting between things, and, “Oh, I need to remember to tell the, this platform what this one said, and where was it in that cha-” You know, like, all, all, all of those things that, uh, you know, to your point, we were doing it with people as well, but, you know, people are better at certain things than AI and, and vice versa.
[00:06:41] Prachi Gore: And, and you don’t have to context engineer people. Like, they are in the meetings, they are listening to it, they get the context, they have, you know, the intelligence to use the context to apply. With your own personal agents, you are constantly context engineering, like making sure they’re connected to all the different docs, playing around with all the different feedback, and-
[00:06:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:06:58] Prachi Gore: … you know, that is a loss of productivity while you gain it on one end.
[00:07:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. And I think that context engineer, I think that’s a, that’s a great thi- Th- that’s a great, um, word to, you know, phrase to put to that, ’cause I, I think it is, it … I know we’ve, most, if not all of us, have been doing it, and yet it’s, uh, you know, to kinda name it, uh, helps it as well. And, and, you know, there, there’s another thing that, that you’ve, um, you know, a concept that I know you’ve, um, embraced. It’s the, this idea of AI teammates, um, which, you know, kinda, along, along the lines of what you were saying as far as, you know, kind of the antithesis to the copy, paste, and everything. Can you talk maybe a little bit about, um, the thoughts there, and, uh, you know, what this means in, in practice?
[00:07:45] Prachi Gore: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Greg Kihlström: I mean it.
[00:07:47] Prachi Gore: Yeah. 100%. So, you know, I, just to establish, I am personally a big user, we use Claude, we use Gemini, l- love it.
[00:07:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:07:56] Prachi Gore: We use it heavily. And so that is, technology is amazing, those tools are amazing, we use them, right? And then, as I think about, like, the vision state for my org, or any full company, but let’s just say marketing org.
[00:08:09] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:08:09] Prachi Gore: I want us to become, you know, closer and closer to, like, a self-driving org with humans in the loop. You know, the output of our team is 10X-ed, 100X-ed even, if we could use, like, a team of agents or teammates.
[00:08:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:24] Prachi Gore: And the reason I like, not just the framing of teammates, but to, to realize this vision, the agents need to act as teammates, and I’ll give you an example of what I mean. So, agents that we use through LLMs today-
[00:08:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:08:40] Prachi Gore: … I see them as my one-on-one personal assistant. You know, I’m brainstorming with them, they’re the thought partner, they’re putting together quick docs for me, like, you know, editing my work, like, all of that good stuff.
[00:08:50] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:51] Prachi Gore: But in the context of a, you know, project, or a critical workflow, let’s just say a campaign launch. We are launching a campaign for the new vertical.
[00:09:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:01] Prachi Gore: It is not enough to just produce a creative brief, to say, “Hey, here’s a campaign brief.”
[00:09:06] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:07] Prachi Gore: I need a teammate, who, let’s just call them a campaign strategist, you know, or something.
[00:09:13] Greg Kihlström: Sure.
[00:09:13] Prachi Gore: That can be in my environment, work with me on creating the campaign brief, but then also work with my whole slew of team that is campaign managers, you know, web designers, content writers. Like, you know, there’s a whole … Product marketing managers, we have, like, so many people working on a launch of a campaign.
[00:09:31] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:09:32] Prachi Gore: To say, “Hey, here’s the campaign brief. Four parties, like, here are tasks, go review this, edit this, I can read your comments, I can edit the brief. And then I can create a task for the handoff, and like the next step, and creative brief.” And so that, to me, is a teammate, which is a … The agent has an identity, they have permission sets, they can see all the documents that we work off of, and they can work independently across multiple people. So it’s like, not me-
[00:10:00] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:10:00] Prachi Gore: … and you, agent, alone, like single player. It’s truly multiplayer in that one agent can work with multiple people in a system, following a plan if, you know …
[00:10:11] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:10:12] Prachi Gore: You know, you are commenting on my doc to say, “Change this, blah, blah, blah.” The agent is able to read it, made th- make the edits, inform both of us, and keep the project moving forward. I think that unleashes, like truly, the ROI for any team, and this is marketing specific. Of course, I’m a marketing leader, you know-
[00:10:28] Greg Kihlström: Right, right. (laughs)
[00:10:29] Prachi Gore: … so I’m giving you those examples, but you could extrapolate that to any business workflow.
[00:10:36] Greg Kihlström: So, you know, we mentioned the fragmentation already of, you know, everybody kinda going in their own e- their own chat window as well. I also think that approach … There’s also just the concept of sprawl, which I think is related. I mean, they’re, maybe they’re two sides of the same coin, but, you know, just so many things going in so many different directions that are not tied to one another, and so I think what you’re talking about i- is kind of the, the solve for that, right?
[00:11:04] Prachi Gore: 100%. I mean, I think there’s like, uh, just like slew of ideas and output, I actually think is creating more chaos at the company-
[00:11:13] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:13] Prachi Gore: … because everyone has 10 ideas now, everything feels urgent, but you’re still kinda tied to the same bottlenecks and the handoffs and the decisions, and so you can’t actually take all the output and action it.
[00:11:26] Greg Kihlström: Hmm. Yeah.
[00:11:27] Prachi Gore: So, I believe it’s creating more chaos (laughs)-
[00:11:30] Greg Kihlström: (laughs) Yeah.
[00:11:30] Prachi Gore: … than less chaos, and, and definitely there is individual productivity gain. I, I see it for my own work, I see it for our team’s, but as an organization, as a marketing team, can I say, “Hey, we could ship like 10X more campaigns in the same amount of time with the same team?” Um, not yet.
[00:11:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Prachi Gore: And I would say that my bar is 100X, because the Agentic technology is there. Like, we should be able to ship 100X more, and, you know, the, the blockers are what I was stating.
[00:11:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Prachi Gore: So the fragmentation, the output, the chaos, without that, you know, structured coordination, is, isn’t, is, is gonna always stay.
[00:12:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So, so doing this well, you know, utilizing AI more as a teammate than as, you know, a, a siloed, you know, all, all the, all the other stuff we talked about. What’s the, what are the skills, what are the mindset shifts, you know, how do teams need to, to g-Behave and, and learn differently to, to make the most of this in a, in a productive way?
[00:12:30] Prachi Gore: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a few different elem- this is, this is a very broad question, but I’ll try and address, like, a few different things. You know, one is mindset. You, you mentioned skills and mindset, so I’ll use that fram- framing. But on the skills, you know, you just have to be significantly more clear in your thought if you want to produce answers faster.
[00:12:51] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Prachi Gore: And this is even just for me individually for my own productivity. Like, the more structured I am, the more clear I am in my prompt, the more context I’m giving it, the better the outcome’s gonna be and the less back and forth I’m gonna do with my own agent. So, I think just, like, the clarity of thought and the structure, um, is important.
[00:13:09] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:13:10] Prachi Gore: I think the other skill, um, piece that I’ll call out is, like, you know, in, in the last many years, decades I would say, we’ve done… Everyone has, like, their special talents, you know, the taste-making.
[00:13:23] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:13:23] Prachi Gore: And we’ve all done a ton of work for the sake of work. And in this new world, I see agents doing a lot of the work for the sake of work, the orchestration, the process management. And so each one of us is gonna need to identify our taste-making-
[00:13:38] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:38] Prachi Gore: … to uniquely bring that to the table and to change the outcome from average to great-
[00:13:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:13:46] Prachi Gore: … from an agentic process, right? Because a- agents will have boundaries. I mean, you know, so…
[00:13:52] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:13:52] Prachi Gore: So, I think the taste-making part of the skill, and that’s a combination of, like, I need to recognize what I’m really great at, what taste-making value I add, and then I have to, like, play that up every single time in the context of skill.
[00:14:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Prachi Gore: And then from a mindset standpoint, I think the biggest change in mindset is we have to think agents-first in everything.
[00:14:16] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:17] Prachi Gore: So, it’s like, you know, I tell my team this. It’s like, when, when you start doing something, the first question, and I, I do this, ask myself, “Can, can my agent do this?” And we, in Asana, I have multiple agents that are shared. I, of course, use my Claude, Gemini.
[00:14:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:14:32] Prachi Gore: It’s like, can an agent do this? And if, you know, I have, like, my own list of questions of, like, how to go through this, but-
[00:14:38] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:14:38] Prachi Gore: … if the answer to those is yes, then I don’t touch it. Let the agent start, because then I get that time to go do something else. So, I think that’s, like, one mindset. The, the second mindset shift is, at every level in the company, you’ve all become managers now. (laughs)
[00:14:54] Greg Kihlström: Right. (laughs)
[00:14:55] Prachi Gore: So every, you know, it’s like-
[00:14:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:14:57] Prachi Gore: … everybody is a manager of a team, and when I think of that team as a manager, you have to onboard every single individual, which is, which means, like, you have to be clear about the job they do, what their responsibilities are, what context you need to provide. And, and so in Asana, we have this concept of teammates, y- you know, we talked about this.
[00:15:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:16] Prachi Gore: And the few teammates that I have that work for our team, they have a very clear job description that I’ve put in, and a very clear, like, guidance in terms of, like, “Here is the stuff I want you to think about.” Like, I have a brand strategist that I, you know, our team works with.
[00:15:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:31] Prachi Gore: And they have, you know, I’ve given them, in detail, like, you know, narrative documents, you know, frameworks to use, like… So it’s, uh, give them a little bit more context so they work like you’d want them to work. So, truly think of them as teammates. So it’s like, I think those are the two big mindset changes. It’s like, first a- think agents-first, and then everyone now is a manager, so you have to, like, think about yourself as one, and like, you know, um, it’s a different way of operating. For anyone who’s been a manager, it’s easier, but-
[00:15:59] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:59] Prachi Gore: … you know, for everyone else.
[00:16:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, I mean, do you think it’s also… I mean, ’cause I, I, I will say about myself, and I’ve said this before, but, um, I’ve always thought of myself, you know, I think everyone probably thinks of themselves as a bit strategic and they can-
[00:16:12] Prachi Gore: Yeah.
[00:16:12] Greg Kihlström: … think a few steps ahead or whatever. But there’s been nothing like AI to prove how important it is to be able to think a few steps ahead. And, you know, I, I think it’s made me better at doing that, just kind of forcing it, you know, ’cause, I mean, I’ve managed people before. I’ve, you know, all of that. But it’s, um… To see that AI kinda go down the wrong path, and knowing that you could have given it better instructions, like, there’s no better teacher than that to me. (laughs)
[00:16:42] Prachi Gore: Hu- hundred percent. I mean, I think one other things, you know, um, and a realization for me-
[00:16:47] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:16:47] Prachi Gore: … that where I’ve changed my mind a little bit is, like, my thinking was, you know, AI has, like, all this experience set out there. They, it could read all the docs to everyone’s experiences, like, all of that good stuff, and, and therefore, any new entrant, you know, like-
[00:17:02] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:17:02] Prachi Gore: … do you need the years of experience, that even I have gathered, like, to actually go direct it strategically in the same way-
[00:17:09] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:17:09] Prachi Gore: … to go… And my learning over my, the course of my experimentation and with my teams is that you actually do, and that is exactly the point that you’re calling out. The value of that experience is helping you prompt better, is helping you catch the things that don’t seem right, is helping you, you know, um, guide the agents better on the things. So I, I think the, I, in my process of, like, experimentation with AI and where I was two and a half years ago, I’ve changed my mind in, like, truly high value of not just the taste-making and the skill, but the experience in spotting those things and, like, guiding the agents better. Um, so I agree with you.
[00:17:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Prachi Gore: I mean, I think that is absolutely essential. Um, I think the human in the loop is so critical. I know there’s, like, a lot of conversation around, you know, zero human, all agent. And I think it, you know, depending on the scale of operation and the type of task, but anything that kinda starts to feel even just a little bit complex, the human in the loop is the safeguard. I think it, it can inject taste-making and creativity into the task-
[00:18:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:15] Prachi Gore: … especially the marketing stuff. And so, uh, there’s, there’s a ton of potential for all the people working with the agents, and that is high value for the agents to deliver great outcomes from the people.
[00:18:29] Greg Kihlström: So, you know, let’s, let’s also talk a little bit about how we measure success, and, you know, of course, with the caveat that, you know, if we’re marketers, we’re not gonna give up our marketing KPIs and, and stuff like that. You know, of course, we’re still selling widgets or, or, you know, doing whatever we, we need to do. But, you know, you, you had mentioned, it’s certainly not about volume of output, right? Um, because, you know, we can, uh, at this point… I mean, there’s tokens involved or whatever, but, like, there’s near limitless output potential depending on your subscription levels to various cloud services or whatever. But, so, are there, are there different or, uh, ar- are there metrics that we should be watching as far as, like, how are we, we being successful when we’re using these tools and,
[00:19:14] Greg Kihlström: and things like that?
[00:19:15] Prachi Gore: Yeah. I mean, you know, my view on this is, the, the metrics that matter are ultimately the business metrics. You know?
[00:19:22] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:22] Prachi Gore: Marketing is in the business of driving growth. Can we drive growth, and are we continuing to drive this growth? Um, I think the second level metric that is important is, uh, revenue. Like, just efficiency.
[00:19:35] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:36] Prachi Gore: Given that we have this technology, am I driving this growth more efficiently? I should be able to, in theory. Like, I really should be able to drive significant more growth. Um, and so I think those are the two lenses, but I, the primary lens is always, like, growth. And so when I think about the, the outcomes that matter, not the output, it’s like, can I ship campaigns faster? Can we get hyper-personalized with all of our campaigns? Because, at the end of the day, we are speaking to a person who’s a persona that cares about certain things, and will AI allow me to go do that? Because right now, otherwise, you just need humans to be able to do that. And, and so it’s all about, you know, just the growth equation. Like, how do we go drive 10X growth, um, without really adding significant more cost? Now, AI is expensive, right? It’s
[00:20:21] Prachi Gore: not, you know-
[00:20:22] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:20:22] Prachi Gore: … one-for-one, but it’s, it’s, it’s cost, and, and that is cost I’m willing to put to go drive the outcome. Um, my vision for all of us is, if we can… if we use this technology, which is powerful and amazing, right? Every 10-person team will be able to operate like a 100-person team.
[00:20:41] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:20:42] Prachi Gore: And every 100, 200,000-person company or team will be able to move at the pace of a 10-person team. And so I think we need to design this tech to allow us to do that, and that’s where we, as humans and as teams win and really, like, leverage this. But the, the metric, to your point, is the outcome we are here to go drive, which is growth. Um, but growth w- with a new, you know, there’s gonna be a new expectation of efficiency in that growth.
[00:21:10] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:21:10] Prachi Gore: Uh, you know? Uh, for sure, and that is the right expectation to have because the technology can do that for you.
[00:21:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. I mean, in, in that scenario you described, it almost seems like it would be easier for the smaller team to do, you know, the, the, the work of the larger one than, you know, uh, having worked with many enterprise orgs, than the larger one being able to move at the speed of, of the smaller one. But I, but I love that, that concept. And I mean, so I guess, where can one of those large organizations start making the right steps to being more nimble like that?
[00:21:45] Prachi Gore: Yeah. And we have, like, Fortune 50, lots of Fortune 50, Fortune 10 even customers, and they’re all doing this. It’s not that, you know, they aren’t.
[00:21:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Prachi Gore: They are. And my, kind of, learning from what I see them do is, at every process step, you know, start with the smallest job to be done and figure out how you can agentify it, how you kinda drive the, you know, the outcome. But focus on the outcome, not the output. Otherwise, you’ll create more chaos because you just have so many more people that are generating that.
[00:22:15] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:22:15] Prachi Gore: But if you have that systems thinking to say, “Okay, what is the smallest workflow to the most complex workflow, and how do I, step by step, go solve this in an agentic way?” I do believe that a 10,000-person company can operate at the pace of a 100-person company if they apply or deploy the technology the right way and drive, of course, that scale of outcome for their business.
[00:22:36] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Um, and last thing, you know, bef- before we wrap up here, I do wanna touch on one other thing you’ve mentioned, and, and I’m certainly hearing a- and reading a lot about this as well, you know, AI is contributing to the collapse of, of the traditional funnel for, you know, for, for a few different reasons. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about, you know, what, what does that look like and, you know, what should brands be focusing on to, you know, still stay, um, relevant at, at points in the funnel even, even if it’s collapsing, I guess?
[00:23:11] Prachi Gore: Yeah. I mean, I think what AI has done is completely transform the buying journey, you know?
[00:23:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:23:16] Prachi Gore: We were, um, as brands in B2B and B2C, I would say, very used to search being the primary, you know?
[00:23:23] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:23:23] Prachi Gore: Uh, your browser or search bar being, like, the entry point. We were all very used to and had designed our campaigns and marketing flows in a way where the click was coming to your website and, and then the journey began. And, um, that’s not happening today, you know? Um, we’ve seen massive increase in just, um, AI search. So people just talking to, you know, even if it’s in Google, the AI results show up r- with recommendations. So you don’t have to click through 10 sites anymore. You don’t have to do all of the analysis. There is a farmed analysis, and you can do back and forth. And so the buyer journey is changing, you know, drastically. And so what, what does that mean for us as teams and brands? I think the
[00:24:08] Prachi Gore: fundamentals of marketing don’t change. Like, if we are centered around who are we selling to and what are their pain points, and, and therefore, what is the message we are putting out there to help them solve their problems?
[00:24:20] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. mm-hmm.
[00:24:22] Prachi Gore: That’s not changing. That is exactly what we should be doing (laughs) in every content-
[00:24:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:24:25] Prachi Gore: … every touch point, everything we produce. The how we get to them is changing. And so there is, you know, uh, the- there’s all sorts of syllables for it, like AEO.
[00:24:34] Greg Kihlström: Right. (laughs)
[00:24:35] Prachi Gore: MEG, you know, GEO.
[00:24:36] Greg Kihlström: GEO, yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:37] Prachi Gore: Yeah. There’s, like, there’s a new one.
[00:24:38] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:24:38] Prachi Gore: But it’s like, at the end of the day, I’m just going to, uh, call it AI search. Somebody said that to me yesterday, and I was like, “Okay, that makes sense.” But…If you think about AI search, they are searching, there’s a recommendation, and they might say, “Okay, like, oh, I like Asana, so I’m just gonna go directly to asana.com.” And they will start their journey much later in the purchase funnel. So how do we get into the chat bo- uh-
[00:25:00] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:25:01] Prachi Gore: … the things that we … And there’s fundamentals and there’s a playbook. So I think that’s different. I think the other thing that is, you know, so discovery has changed, we have to go fix that. I think the other big piece is, I believe, and i- it’s been true w- with all the digital noise anyways for the last five or 10 years, but, like, investing in the brand and in the tastemaking, and the standout brands-
[00:25:24] Prachi Gore: … that’s gonna win. Because at the end of the day, you’re still … the human is still making the decision today.
[00:25:29] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:25:29] Prachi Gore: At least, you know?
[00:25:30] Greg Kihlström: Right. Yeah.
[00:25:31] Prachi Gore: Today and in the foreseeable future, and I think that’ll continue for a little bit. But the tastemaking doesn’t change, the, the creativity that marketing brings to the table d- d- doesn’t change. The brand, importance of brand doesn’t change. The importance of building trust with your customers doesn’t change. So like many of the fundamentals that were always important are still very important, and we have to go do that.
[00:25:53] Prachi Gore: Like those are first principles, you know-
[00:25:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:25:55] Prachi Gore: … as marketing teams. And then the tactics of how we were getting discovered, how we were, you know, getting them to purchase have changed, and we have to lean in and, like, change our ways. Um, I hope that answers your question.
[00:26:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, you know, it’s, everything’s different, but there’s, th- there’s similarities here to SEO, there’s similarities here to how things h- have, to your point, have always been. And, and I do think, you know, whether we’re talking B2B software purchases, which are not, you know, um, they’re, they’re not insignificant, you know, purchases, or, you know, any- anything above a commodity, I would say, a human is going to choose one brand-
[00:26:31] Greg Kihlström: … over the other, right? I mean, they’re-
[00:26:33] Greg Kihlström: … they’re not just gonna say, “Hey, give me a car,” and they show up and there’s a car in their drive- … uh, you know, that, that’s not gonna h-
[00:26:39] Prachi Gore: No. Yeah.
[00:26:39] Greg Kihlström: I, I don’t think that will happen anytime ever.
[00:26:42] Prachi Gore: It’s not, and I think my only guidance to my team and anyone listening out there would be, it’s like, the old playbooks, just retire them.
[00:26:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Prachi Gore: Keep your first principles thinking, keep the fundamentals of what marketing needs to go drive. Like, that is still true.
[00:26:56] Prachi Gore: And then design new playbooks because the buyer journey has changed, how the buyer’s gonna interact has changed. You’re gonna talk to many agents-
[00:27:02] Prachi Gore: … on the other side, so your agents will talk to tho- their agents, and we have to design new playbooks for that. But the fundamentals stay the same.
[00:27:09] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Well, Prachi, thanks so much for, for joining today. I’ve got two questions for you as we wrap up here.
[00:27:16] Prachi Gore: Yeah.
[00:27:16] Greg Kihlström: First one, um, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:27:23] Prachi Gore: (laughs) Uh, all the success stories of us doing amazing agentified work at Asana for sure-
[00:27:29] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Prachi Gore: … in our own marketing team. Uh, I would have, across every department, an example, our teams are leaning in hard.
[00:27:36] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:37] Prachi Gore: Um, I think the, um, other thing that we would talk about for sure is a more informed opinion on how I’ve been able to change the metrics, uh, having-
[00:27:48] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:27:48] Prachi Gore: … done that, you know?
[00:27:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:49] Prachi Gore: So I gave you kind of a sense of, you know, um, we measured the growth and outcome at some kind of efficiency leverage, but I’d have, like, true data points hopefully to, to talk about then, because we will go drive more growth and our teams are leaning in hard. So-
[00:28:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:28:05] Prachi Gore: … uh, those two potentially, and then from a worldview perspective, I think … And I already start seeing … L- well, like, worldview as in, like, you know, AI, in the marketing world-
[00:28:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. (laughs)
[00:28:16] Prachi Gore: … because of this AI.
[00:28:17] Prachi Gore: Uh, we are already starting to see the conversation move from, like, “Hey, are you using, you know, AI-“
[00:28:23] Prachi Gore: “… in your teams?” to “What are the most critical workflows that you’re being able to solve for, that you’re moving towards, that you’re, like, agentifying in many ways?” if that’s a word. And I think a year out from now, we’ll have a high amount of confidence in that blueprint to say, “Okay, you start here, then you go there, then you do this,” and, like, that gives you the measurable outcomes that I, I believe we’ll be able to drive. So-
[00:28:47] Prachi Gore: … um, that is my hope. (laughs)
[00:28:49] Greg Kihlström: Love it, love it. And last question for you, uh, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:28:57] Prachi Gore: You know, my biggest motivator for the work I do is to be able to learn. And so today, like, these times are the best times for me personally, because I’m just soaking it up every single day, any- anything that I can learn and do and experiment with. But personally right now, to stay agile, I’m doing two things. I’m, like, listening to a lot of podcasts and staying current on what are other people doing, and even just talking to peers just to stay current, because so much is changing every single even week or two weeks, I feel like there’s new information out there. So, like, how do I stay current? Like, I’m very conscious about that. And then I do detach from all of this, like, usually on long hikes or runs or something, to just, like, bring the human back in the sentiment, because ultimately, I think the combination of those, both of those things are gonna drive great outcomes for us as a team and the company. And so those are my go-tos right now.
