Category: Articles

The future doesn’t belong to the companies that do the most with AI; it belongs to the ones that do the smartest things with it. And that requires a leader who knows what’s actually inside their AI budget.

Ralf Haug, CEO and co-founder of Yolm, thinks that peace is about to break. Yolm builds business software that runs a company’s operations and reporting on a single live database, so Haug has an obvious stake in what follows.

The 2026 AI Holiday Shopping Trends Survey, commissioned by Talkdesk and conducted by Centiment in September 2026, gathered insights from 1,048 U.S. consumers and 312 U.S. retail leaders. The findings underscore that while AI is poised to transform retail, the pace of innovation must align with the measured development…

New research from Parloa shows consumers trust AI to watch their trips, want full resolution above all else, and are increasingly willing to let AI agents negotiate with a provider’s AI, with openness rising sharply among younger travelers.

The 6sense 2026 B2B Buyer Experience Report reveals that B2B buying is not a journey of discovery but one of deliberation, driven by experienced professionals with pre-formed opinions and continuous attention to categories. This necessitates a fundamental shift in GTM strategy to adapt to buyer psychology and journey mechanics.

The work Andrew Laffoon and his team are doing at Mixbook serves as a vital case study. They demonstrate that you don’t have to choose between modern technology and timeless values. You can use AI to enhance human creativity, not replace it. You can build for efficiency without optimizing…

Ashleigh Cook, CMO at RainFocus, argues that marketing leaders should stop treating events as places where content gets delivered. In her view they’re places where buying decisions speed up, and they should be planned and measured that way.

Most of the major holiday forecasts are in, and they cluster around 4% growth or better. NRF expects 4.2%, EMARKETER 4.1%, Bain 4.5%, ICSC 4.3% to 4.9%, and Mastercard 5.5%. We expect 3.0% to 3.5%.

In a conversation with Airstream CMO Mollie Hansen and Nomadics Founder Chris Pendl, we explored how they moved beyond the typical marketing playbook to build an experience that customers pay for, creating a self-sustaining engine for brand advocacy, authentic content, and genuine connection.

In August 2025, 8×8 launched The Power of You, a brand platform built on short, cinematic films about real IT and customer experience leaders from its customer base, produced with generative AI.