What if the future of marketing isn’t about creating better campaigns, but about designing intelligent agents that render campaigns obsolete?
Agility requires not just adapting to new technologies, but fundamentally re-architecting our operating models to harness their potential.
Today, we’re going to talk about the move from personalization to agentic experiences and what that means for enterprise marketing.
We’ll cover:
- How “agentic experiences” are moving beyond simple personalization to fundamentally change the economics of customer acquisition and retention.
The shift in talent and technology required, moving from managing campaigns to orchestrating AI agents across the customer journey.
The practical first steps for building an “agentic foundation” within a complex enterprise environment, focusing on governance and core systems.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Kathleen Managing Director of Marketing and Anuj Mathur, Managing Director of CX Transformation at Brillio
About Kathleen Ulrich
Kathleen Ulrich is Managing Director of Marketing at Brillio, where she leads the company’s global marketing strategy and brand growth. She oversees brand, content, digital marketing, social media, corporate communications, analyst and media relations, research, and insights. Known for her multifaceted leadership, she brings together cross-functional teams around a unified vision, driving measurable impact across a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Kathleen Ulrich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kulri/
About Anuj Mathur
Anuj Mathur, based in California, United States, is currently a Managing Director, CX Transformation at Brillio. Anuj Mathur brings experience from previous roles at IBM and Accenture Song. Anuj Mathur holds a 1993 – 1997 Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication @ JNV University, India. With a robust skill set that includes Delivery Performance, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Portfolio Management, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce B2B Commerce and more. Anuj Mathur has 2 emails and 1 mobile phone numbers on RocketReach.
Anuj Mathur on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuj-mathur-bayarea/
Resources
Brillio: https://www.brillio.com
This episode is brought to you by Brillio. Founded in 2014 as a full-service digital transformation services and consulting firm, we apply our expertise in customer experience transformation, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), platform and product engineering, cloud infrastructure, and security to help customers quickly innovate for growth, create digital products, build service platforms, and drive smarter, data-driven performance. We strive to provide not only what the customers want, but also what they need. To us, success means leading our customers to better outcomes, and aligning our priorities so that we win when they win. We ensure that every individual is fully invested in the success of our customers.
We’re proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 – Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658
Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f
Don’t miss We Make Future – the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2
The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1
Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
[00:01:32] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. What if the future of marketing isn’t about creating better campaigns, but about designing intelligent agents that render campaigns obsolete? Agility requires not just adapting to new technologies, but fundamentally re-architecting our operating models to harness their potential. Today, we’re going to talk about the move from personalization to agentic experiences and what that means for enterprise marketing. We’re gonna cover how agentic experiences are moving beyond simple personalization to fundamentally change the economics of customer acquisition and retention, the shift in talent and technology required moving from managing campaigns to orchestrating AI agents across the customer journey, and the practical first steps for building an agentic foundation within a complex enterprise environment, focusing on governance and course systems. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Kathleen Ulrich, Managing Director of Marketing, and Anuj Mathur, Managing Director of CX Transformation at Brillio. Kathleen and Anuj, welcome to the show.
[00:03:45] Kathleen Ulrich: Thank you so much, Greg. It’s great to be here.
[00:03:48] Anuj Mathur: Thank you for having us.
[00:03:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Looking forward to talking about this topic with you. Definitely timely topic here. Before we do that, though, why don’t you each give a little background on yourselves and your roles at Brillio?
[00:04:00] Kathleen Ulrich: Sure. I’ll go ahead and go first. Um, as Greg mentioned, I’m the managing director of brand and comms here at Brillio. I lead the global marketing across our four verticals, CMT, BFSI, healthcare and life sciences, and consumer. And when I came into this role, I came in with a very specific mandate to take a traditional marketing function and rebuild it as a commercial engine, source pipeline, vertical depth, AI native go-to-market. It’s pretty easy, right?
[00:04:34] Anuj Mathur: As for myself, uh, Greg, um, Anuj Mathur here. So as, uh, you know, as the global head for customer experience transformation, I play multiple different roles, um, for the practice, um, across our front office transformation and touch points, like whether it is a sales, uh, motion or sales of field sales, uh, customer service, commerce, and then today we’re gonna talk about marketing. Uh, and it spans across, you know, whether it’s, uh, our differentiation, go-to-market activity, driving innovation, leading some of that with our customers jointly. And overall, I think where we’ve seen a lot of the transformation happen, our pivot happen most recently is really about agentic experiences, and
[00:05:19] Anuj Mathur: we’re gonna talk a little bit, uh, later today about, uh, about that as well.
[00:05:23] Greg Kihlström: Great. And I know, uh, each of you gave a little background on your roles, but why don’t we talk a little bit about Brillio and, and give a little background for those that are less familiar?
[00:05:33] Kathleen Ulrich: Yeah. Sure, Greg. So Brillio, we just celebrated our 12th anniversary a couple months ago.
[00:05:39] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:05:39] Kathleen Ulrich: Um, we are an AI-first digital transformation partner to global enterprises. AI engineering has always been at our core since day one, and we’re deeply rooted in AI intelligence. We put this into production, not pilot, and we do this across customer experience, data, and platform engineering.And we’re organerized, organized around our, the verticals I mentioned earlier. We have 14 delivery locations across North America, Europe, and Asia, and we are 5,500 AI first professionals strong.
[00:06:16] Greg Kihlström: Great. Great. So yeah, let’s, let’s dive in here and we’re gonna talk about a few things, but why don’t you start from the strategic aspect of this. And while the concept of personalization is surely not new, the idea of agentic experiences feels like a significant leap forward. So, let’s talk about this from a strategic standpoint. What’s the core business problem that this newer approach of agentic experiences is uniquely positioned to solve for enterprises where, uh, maybe more traditional personalization methods may fall short?
[00:06:52] Anuj Mathur: You know, where we’re seeing a lot of the great opportunity is, is looking at the missed opportunity in the traditional world. Yes, there were some linear processes and the customer journey was kind of curated and, you know, almost kind of, um, for the most part, uh, people saw and predicted the journey and crafted it, uh, much before the customer actually took that journey. And oftentimes, that was not really what it was, right? So it was more about like, you know, chasing up and trying to do. I think the bigger opportunity here is, is there’s lots of drop-offs that happen in that customer touchpoint journey across the physical domain, digital domain, the intersection, the cust- you know, the customer is getting
[00:07:37] Anuj Mathur: smart about using different surfaces, so it’s really about a white glove experience so you can, you know, partake in some part of the journey on one channel, one surface, and then kind of you’re on the move and then at a later point in the day, you pick up another device, and then you basically start at the same exact point. So that’s one example of white glove experience. It’s really about making that journey seamless for the customer. It’s all about, you know, identifying that points from a value added perspective, right? It’s not really just about, hey, I gotta engage you with something. It’s really about what value am I serving in this conversation, um, how am I kind of driving you to become an advocate of the brand,
[00:08:22] Anuj Mathur: uh, or how am I kind of, you know, helping, uh, create a conversation that is material and meaningful for both parties.
[00:08:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:32] Anuj Mathur: So anoth- you know, an example I’ll, I’ll kind of talk about here, um, one of the recent conversations that I had in, uh, healthcare life sciences, right? So we all go to the doctor’s for some reason or the other. They have like pages and pages of forms. Oftentime, you know, at least I don’t understand some of those questions and either you skip it. So that’s a, that’s an opportunity to kind of improvise and advance the healthcare because again, you’re not filling the form for the, just to get an entry into the doctor’s office, but it’s actually a checkpoint, right, a gate for you as a self-dec- declared kind of information. So that’s an, that’s an area as an example where, uh, you know, where
[00:09:17] Anuj Mathur: we’re helping digitize these forms. Also, during that process, have an agentic assistant alongside, right, that’s actually a, a kind of a sidekick that will actually help you understand what the question is, pull in information from your past records, et cetera. So you’re only filling out things that the doctor’s office is not already aware of. And all of this is HIPAA compliant, right? So, so again, you still have to follow all of the best practices, regulations, et cetera, but now what you’re doing is you’re, you’re compressing the amount of time that you’re really meeting with the patient and it’s really about what has changed since the last visit as an example.
[00:09:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, and one of, one of the other things that I want to talk about here too is just how these things get envisioned and, and planned, right? I mean, in, uh, in simpler scenarios, the- there- there’s a different approach taken, but, you know, building this kind of future often requires what some might call a, a business dreamer to reimagine end-to-end workflows, uh, really in, in new and, and different ways using agentic approaches. How should leaders balance the need for this kind of blue sky thinking with the practical realities of those things that we all live with? You know, the legacy systems, compressed budgets, quarterly pressures, you know, how, how, how should someone think about this?
[00:10:41] Anuj Mathur: Yeah. No, that’s an excellent question, Greg. Um, you know, it’s n- not really, I mean, I, I do want to double click and clarify, it’s not necessarily the old way of blue sky thinking because that, that, you know, is just ideation. You know, what, what we’re really kind of embarking on is an outcome-based and rearchitecting the entire journey that, that the customer goes through and also not a linear journey in any way. The customer can start at any point in time, drop off, reconnect, et cetera. And it’s really about driving towards what KPIs, what business outcomes are you actually putting effort to even have that conversation with the customer, right? So, it’s really about
[00:11:26] Anuj Mathur: rewiring all of it with the end in mind, uh, and, and that’s, that’s how you reimagine the future experience, right? So, you know, an example I’ll, I’ll kind of talk about here, um, most recently, we- we’ve been working with, uh, one of the largest global, um, credit card company and they’ve had this product, um, you know, one of the plastic products, been out there in the market for 20 years, um, and, you know, people know what that is and th- they’ve been using it, but, you know, with the, uh, you know, a-… newer, uh, you know, banking technology first companies that are coming in, they’re, they’ve been facing a lot of headwind around, like, “Okay, but how do I
[00:12:11] Anuj Mathur: connect? How do I increase the consumption or the amount of spend people are doing on that, on that plastic?”
[00:12:19] Anuj Mathur: And so what we did was we actually then worked with that global brand across multiple different countries and touch points and, and, and in terms of, um, how, uh, we can reimagine the entire customer-centric conversation. And this is, this was a very complex product, where a, a, a customer would load up one currency, travel to five different countries, and use different currencies locally, and then come back home and be able to settle everything in their home currency. You know, it seems simple, but in execution, it has a lot of different kind of area, uh, things that have to not only from, you know, backend systems that, that haven’t been figured out last 10, 15 years.
[00:13:04] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:04] Anuj Mathur: But it’s about how do you make that available to the customer and easy to use on, at the point of that transaction? And I think that’s where we’re seeing a lot of innovation come through.
[00:13:17] Kathleen Ulrich: Anuj was mentioning it’s a nonlinear journey. It definitely is. And Brillo is our own customer zero, where we’ve rethought, re-architected what that looks like within Brillo and across all of our functions, and product ty- put into production AI across every function that we have here in Brillo, all with our customers in mind. So not only do we go on the journey with our customers, but it’s really important that we dogfood. We eat what we say we’re putting out into production. And, um, and I think that’s, um, really important.
[00:15:36] Greg Kihlström: Let’s talk a little bit more, maybe dive a little deeper in how we build the, the, the engine, so to speak. And this involves terms like agentic content supply chain, agentic campaign orchestration. You can see a theme here. Uh, things like this are, are emerging, and, and a lot of organizations are, are looking at these things. Can you break down what these look like in practice and how they differ from… I’m sure a lot of marketers out there are very familiar with marketing automation and digital asset management and, and all of those things. How, how are some of these things different from what they might be used to today?
[00:16:14] Anuj Mathur: There’s actually quite a stark difference in what we are looking at from a content supply chain. Let me kind of start there. So what we really mean by, um, you know, in the, you know, about six months, eight months ago when we said personalization, um, for an email campaign, what, what we were all kind of doing and hoping for is, you know, the masthead, the imagery, the messaging is pretty much same for what Kathleen may receive, you may receive, what I may receive from that brand. It’s the salutation, it’s the name. That’s the level of personalization if there was some purchase history, and kind of bring in that element from a cross-sell, upsell perspective. That’s, that’s really where we were kind of, you know, in that space. Where we’re looking at now… And,
[00:16:59] Anuj Mathur: and what, what happens in that, uh, in that past world is the, the effort and the cost and number of people and man-hours that goes into finalizing the, the brand direction, the, the creative brief for that one campaign, th- you know, figuring out what assets and content are required, it’s an army of people that are working through. And then, then you’re also looking at, “Okay, how do I translate into different languages? And then how do I make it culturally viable for, like, you know, US English vers- versus a British English, you know? It does matter, right, how you connect. Now, what we are starting to see with the agentic experiences is, is, uh, think of it as a Lego block, right? So you would create these smaller assets, but
[00:17:44] Anuj Mathur: then AI agent is assembling, um, that message for that customer at the open time of that email.
[00:17:54] Anuj Mathur: Right? So based on… It’s not based on when that email was sent. It’s based on when the email has been opened, and it’s a dynamic personalization to that individual with an assembly of these Lego blocks that make that complete email. That’s a complete different, obv- you know, piece. The second part of that is, how do you even create these Lego pieces of content, assets, et cetera?And, and that’s where we have been able to, you know, we’ve been fortunate to work with a couple of our consumer customers and clients to, to really kind of create these assets through, uh, some of the newer agentic capabilities. And, and so what we actually do is we train the models on their digital assets
[00:18:39] Anuj Mathur: that, you know, the content and messaging that they may have, uh, records of the last 10 years to kind of inform about the brand, tone, theme, et cetera, of that brand, and then these assets are dynamically created. So, so now, you imagine, so again, you know, the, the ease and the speed and the time to market has significantly re- reduced. However, I do want to emphasize on one critical thing, Greg, here, which is, we always keep a human approver in the loop so it’s not the Wild, Wild West where the systems-
[00:19:10] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Anuj Mathur: … are going out and doing whatever. No. The system creates these things, the assembly of these Lego blocks or components, and then a, a human, you know, marketing manager would go in and approve different flavors of that, and then it basically, uh, executes on it, if you will.
[00:19:28] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. And so for those, for those that’s, you know, all of the, all of this sounds great, but maybe it sounds a little complex. Uh, you know, what are maybe some of the essential first steps in building the foundation to, to be able to do this? You know, where, where do you recommend that a, a leader focuses their investment?
[00:19:49] Anuj Mathur: Yeah. No, I think it’s, it is, you know, for all of us, right, the, the speed of innovation is so, so fast and with so many companies releasing everything every week, it is humanly impossible to keep track of a lot of these things, right?
[00:20:02] Greg Kihlström: (laughs).
[00:20:02] Anuj Mathur: Um, so I think a few thoughts, and, and this is what we practice in our programs as well, is, is, um, you know, don’t throw what you’ve got, right? You’ve got some data, marketing ecosystem that’s been working for you last 10, 15, 20 years, et cetera, so don’t have to throw that. The first thing is, you know, have a deep analysis of where those, um, drop-offs are happening. What are the specific use case or actions that have a m- that could potentially have a material impact on your conversion? Um, and, and, you know, start there, you know, identification of those.
[00:20:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:20:42] Anuj Mathur: Uh, next would be in those, you know, moments, identify what kind of interactions can actually improve or give that, you know, significant benefit to unlock that business value. So if you really kinda look at the funnel, if you were able to unlock, like, you know, 10 steps in different funnel, if you were able to unlock even, like, a few percent point at every of these drop-off points, it’s a cumulative-
[00:21:08] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Anuj Mathur: … huge gain that you’re looking at, right? So I think that’s how I would suggest kind of, um, uh, starting to approach, uh, test and learn, right? You know, improvise your foundational processes, uh, whether its control tower, governance of AI, your business rules, et cetera. Think, you know, again, depending on where the organization is in that curve, you want to s- dip your feet, but also, um, not take too much time, because I think, you know, this is, uh, this is something you can actually unlock fairly rapidly.
[00:21:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So let’s talk about measurement then and, you know, when, when an organization’s rearchitecting for an agentic approach, often, there’s a, there’s a focus on outcomes versus simple outputs. Um, I wonder, you know, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what, what are the KPIs that, uh, either new KPIs that need to get adopted or what, w- how does measurement change when, when an organization is successfully making this transition?
[00:22:08] Anuj Mathur: I think it’s a very important, you know, aspect of, as I was saying before, right, start with the end in mind. So I’ll take a few examples, right, in terms of the KPI. You know, for any marketing organization, customer acquisition cost is, uh, one of the key, uh, KPIs, bef- you know, passionately called as CAC, um, and, and that is something you need to look at, right? What does it cost for you to get a net new customer and how are you looking at the human machine interaction to really bring that cost down? That’s number one. Second is, is also about, um, how much of the addressable
[00:22:53] Anuj Mathur: market are you able to go connect with, right? And then the third thing that also happens within the, the marketing ecosystem is that, at some point in time when it is a marketing qualified lead, a marketing team is handing it off either to the sales teams or contact center teams, so that’s another point to really measure the throughput and see how much of that is happening in true numbers and also, you know, trends. Another example I’ll say, you know, give you is, is, uh, let’s say in the banking industry, right? So product per customer is a very big KPI. How many products a individual is, is kind of having relationships with that bank, and, and that’s where I think, again, marketing comes
[00:23:39] Anuj Mathur: into play very heavily, whether it’s personalizing the offers like we were talking before, or, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, credit card benefits that, uh, that a lot of the customers are not even aware of, right? They sign up. They kind of read the brochure, but in the day-to-day, you’re not kind of constantly… So it’s situational benefits, right? The card companies know where the spend’s happening, so they probably know where you are and if there’s any lounge access needed because they know you rebook, booked your flight, something changed. Uh, they have that information, right? Another example within the banking spaces, a lot of the banks go through acquisitions and mergers, and you’re kind of bringing two different-… um, families of products together. So, again, not a very
[00:24:24] Anuj Mathur: easy job for the marketer to really kind of have very simple transparent kind of, you know, bring the products together and then continue to kind of push the PPC to if you’re, uh, you know, abou- you know, uh, uh, checking and then saving, and now you’re also pushing a credit card and a loan product-
[00:24:41] Greg Kihlström: Okay.
[00:24:41] Anuj Mathur: … and a mo- mortgage product on top of it. And, and the same marketer is kind of juggling so many balls. So, how do you really kind of think about it? So, I think those are a few examples of KPIs, you know, in some specific industries I’d say very critical. So, if you’re starting with, “What do I want to measure? Why do I want to do this marketing?” Kind of get down to the brass tacks and then reimagine the entire process based on that, I think the results and the outcomes are gonna be certainly very different.
[00:25:09] Kathleen Ulrich: Yeah, and I think one other point is that I think in the agentic world, those touchpoints with humans will compress and be smaller. And I believe that the handoff between marketing sales will be even smoother or will even just disappear because marketing and sales will become one organization. So, that’s how I see it, um, and, of course, that all impacts, you know, talent and the future of marketing.
[00:25:45] Speaker 5: Now at Baker’s, your points go even further. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, it all adds up to more ways to save. Because we know every dollar matters. That’s why we’re committed to making every shopping trip work harder for you. Baker’s, fresh for everyone.
[00:26:14] Speaker 1: You’re listening to this podcast, so I know you’ve got a curious mind. Here’s a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you’ll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cashback. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
[00:26:54] Greg Kihlström: What I want us to talk about next is just what… you know, how, how does this change things? You know, this… it, it would seem to imply that there’s a major shift in talent, you know, e- everything from marketers being much more tactical to now managing agents and, and, and things like that. So, you know, what do you see as… what, what new skills are gonna be most critical, and, and how should leaders approach upskilling their existing teams versus, you know, hiring for different, uh, roles and, and things like that?
[00:27:28] Kathleen Ulrich: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell you from my standpoint. Um, you’re right about m-… the role’s changed, maybe from being a campaign manager to managing agents and workflows and, now, stack engineering. Um, but I also believe that domain expertise and understanding how businesses run will be just as equally important. Um, it, it’ll be easy to code or to create an agent, you know, in the future, but understanding the business and how they run and also that human input of being more customer-facing will be really important as well. Um, and the
[00:28:13] Kathleen Ulrich: one other shift that I see with CMOs, which is really important, is that we’re no longer managing functions. We’re almost architects of, of systems, of-
[00:28:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:28:25] Kathleen Ulrich: … of a whole entire… and, and that, that I see even from my role shifting where, um, I’m looking at more folks who are… who can manage agents and, um, and manage the stack. And also, you know, I see my role as shifting to engineer… to architecting systems rather than managing a function.
[00:28:47] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:49] Anuj Mathur: Yeah, and if I could add a little bit to that, right? I mean, we previously talked about business dreamer, and I think that is true when it comes to talent.
[00:28:59] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:59] Anuj Mathur: So, the core depth in industry domain understanding, that is key. It’s not going anywhere, right? It… that is going to be… continue to be the foundation of the marketing function we’re talking about. Now, what is expected is also the newer tools and capabilities that are… like earlier, it was very easy to say… swivel around and say, “Oh, that’s… IT’s gonna take care of it,” or, “The data team’s gonna take care of it,” right? “Um, I only focus on campaign,” right? That is going to change. What is changing is, is the, the human decision-making in the entire reimagine process. What are the touchpoints? What are the points where you actually have to have a human make the right decisions, and, uh, what
[00:29:44] Anuj Mathur: agents to bring in to really kind of really ultimately take accountability for that KPI act that we talked about? So, I think the talent is, is… you’ll, you’ll, you know, you’ll see an upleveling of the talent in terms of when you have smarter technology available, not only you need to know how to use it, but also where to use it and where not to use it, right? So, I think that’s, that’s, um, a little bit of a pivot that we’re gonna… we’re already starting to see in the industry and, and, uh, individual functions, managers, and, and overall CMO organizations.
[00:30:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, a- and it would seem the- the end goal … I mean, just looking- looking forward s- you know, a few months, a few years, is really building a- an agentic organiza- a lean agentic organization. Uh, you know, what is … I know you’ve- you’ve both touched on this, uh, a bit here, but, you know, w- what does this type of organization look like in five years? You know, how does it operate differently from today’s top-performing marketing de- departments, in terms of things like speed, structure, and even decision-making? Mm-hmm.
[00:30:58] Anuj Mathur: Yeah. So, I’ll go. I’ll take this one, right? So, in my view, I think it’s a … You know, what we’re looking at is, uh, you know, overall kind of, uh, domain knowledge, um, deep understanding of that, the inner workings of how that is- is happening, uh, curious, continuous learners. And because we’re gonna be seeing a lot of new things, the pace is not gonna slow down. It’ll only pick up, right?
[00:31:30] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:31:30] Anuj Mathur: And the application of that technology. So the way I kinda see that is it’s- it’s really a big business thinker, um, who’s constantly kinda looking at a, “How do I improve my KPIs,” right? “What I’m … What’s … You know, what are the tools? What are the new tools in the toolbox that I could use, uh, towards that?”
[00:31:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Kathleen and Anuj, uh, thanks for joining today and- and sharing all your ideas and insights. Got two last questions for each of you as we wrap up here. Uh, first one is, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:32:11] Kathleen Ulrich: That sounds exciting (laughs).
[00:32:13] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:32:13] Anuj Mathur: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Kathleen Ulrich: And I hope we can do it in one year and- and bring a, you know, a couple of other organizations together and have a panel. Because I think what you’ll see is the marketing organization, the sales organization. You know that- that imaginary line? It’ll dis- it’ll be completely dis- it’ll disappear. And I would love to see how other CMOs, um, are- are- are moving in this journey to an agentic marketing organization or an agentic organization, and how it impacts, you know, their KPIs, how it impacts, you know, sales and what they’re reporting out on and how they’re- how they’re measuring it and the outcomes that they’re seeing. Um, I hope we h- we can do this.
[00:32:57] Anuj Mathur: See more and more of the outcomes with this conversation, right? What really matters. And I’m really excited about it, because that just opens up a new aspect of possibility. Uh, whether it is, uh, you know, uh, driving new partnerships in the marketplace for that brand, whether it is having a- a slightly more dif- you know, advanced or different conversation with the customers. So- so as we kind of … The brands start to focus more on those- those outcomes, you know, we’ll start to see the narrative change and- and the customer behaviors also evolve over time. So I’m really excited for that.
[00:33:38] Greg Kihlström: Nice. And last question for both of you. What do you do to stay agile in your roles, and how do you find a way to do it consistently? Mm-hmm.
[00:33:52] Anuj Mathur: Uh, one day, you may feel like you’re kinda gotten it, and then next day you wake up and- and there’s another set of news. And you’re like, “Oh, I missed the entire thing while- when I was sleeping,” right?
[00:34:00] Anuj Mathur: I think there’s a few things. Again, you know, being consultants, uh, we have to really be on the feet. So again, I’m gonna go back to the same three things, right? Deep understanding of the industry know-how and the domain functions. Um, understanding of what tools are available today, and a business dreamer. I think you gotta constantly challenge the status quo, constantly look at not be satisfied with one, the first and easiest answer. And- and really kinda, you know … Part of- part of that is, like, challenging your subordinates to kinda come up with some new innovative ideas to drive that- drive that, uh … You know, make that as a behavior.
[00:34:44] Kathleen Ulrich: The shift I’m making is to listen more and to be curious, because this is a really fascinating time. Of my entire career, this is probably the most fascinating time to be curious and to learn. Um, and it’s changing so fast that there’s absolutely no way that one person will have all the answers. And the team that I have, they’re curious and, um, and they’re very agile too. Um, and- and just bringing them into the process and letting them find the answers that I don’t know, that I don’t … that I don’t know. So for me, it’s being curious.
