Twenty-five years ago, the goal was to build a website as a digital “single source of truth.” In an era of AI agents and hyper-personalized realities, is the very concept of a single, universal brand “truth” now an obstacle to creating a truly relevant customer experience?
Agility requires not just adopting new channels and technologies, but fundamentally rethinking the role of content and data in a constantly shifting landscape. It’s the ability to move from managing a static digital property to orchestrating a fluid, dynamic relationship with your audience.
Today, we’re going to talk about the 25-year evolution of digital experience, from the early days of enterprise content management to today’s complex ecosystem of AI-driven, composable platforms. We’ll explore how seismic shifts—from the introduction of the iPhone to the rise of agentic AI—have not just changed the tools we use, but have fundamentally redefined the relationship between brands and their customers.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, CMO at Sitecore, a company that is turning 25 this year and has managed to maintain its leadership in the space through many changes and a few curveballs.
About Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek
Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek (BB) is the Chief Marketing Officer at Sitecore, where she leads a global team of marketers who are redefining what’s possible in modern marketing. Together, they’re putting the power of generative and agentic AI to work – creating digital experiences that connect people and possibilities across the globe. Michelle is a trailblazer in bringing AI into marketing. At IBM, she served first as Global Head of B2B Marketing at the Weather Company, and then as CMO of IBM Watson, the company’s pioneering AI platform. There, she served as the steward of the Watson brand, helping the world understand how AI can transform both work and life. Since then, she’s become a Fellow at the Marketing Academy, a founding member of CMO Huddles, and has held CMO roles at both Skillsoft and IDC. At IDC, Michelle reimagined marketing as a strategic growth engine, launching a bold new brand identity, spearheading the company’s first GenAI initiatives, and aligning brand, demand, and strategy to drive global impact. Michelle is a frequent speaker on marketing leadership, AI, and purpose-led growth. A lifelong learner, she’s also a runner, rescue dog mom, and dark roast devotee. Her best ideas rarely arrive in a meeting, but often hit mid-stride or mid-walk.
Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebb/
Resources
Sitecore: sitecore.com
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Transcript
[00:00:52] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. 25 years ago, the goal was to build a website as a digital source of truth. Well, in an era of AI agents and hyper-personalized realities, is the very concept of a single universal brand truth now an obstacle to creating a truly relevant customer experience? Agility requires not just adopting new channels and technologies, but fundamentally rethinking the role of content and data in a constantly shifting landscape. It’s the ability to move from managing a static digital property to orchestrating a fluid, dynamic relationship with your audience. Today, we’re going to talk about the 25-year evolution of digital experience, from the early days of enterprise content management, to
[00:01:37] Greg Kihlström: today’s complex ecosystem of AI-driven composable platforms. We’re gonna explore how seismic shifts from the introduction of the iPhone to the rise of Agentic AI have not just changed the tools that we use, but have fundamentally redefined the relationship between brands and their customers.
[00:02:35] Greg Kihlström: To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, CMO at Sitecore, a company that is turning 25 this year and has managed to maintain its leadership in the space through many changes and a few curveballs. Michelle, welcome to the show.
[00:02:49] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Oh, it’s nice to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:51] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I should just- just say welcome back to the show ’cause, yeah, no, glad… Ret- returning champion here, so good- always- always good to talk. (laughs) So, um, before we dive in, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and- and your role at Sitecore?
[00:03:05] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Sure. And first of all, thank you. I don’t think anybody pronounces my last name as well as you just did. Most people call me Michelle BB. So thank you for doing that. Look, I am so fortunate to have the privilege of serving as the chief marketing officer here at Sitecore. You know, at my core, when I kind of look back at my career, um, I have always been a marketer that sits at the intersection of technology and humanity. Um, I served as the CMO for IBM Watson for a period of time, and the global head of B2B marketing for the weather company. And I’ve always been really intrigued by how we can take complex emerging technologies and make them really meaningful and useful, but in a very human way. And,
[00:03:50] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: you know, it’s really funny because as- as I was preparing for this and thinking about Sitecore’s 25th anniversary, which by the way, I actually have the cookies for, so-
[00:03:58] Greg Kihlström: Awesome. (laughs)
[00:03:59] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … 25, Greg, I’ll send you one in the-
[00:04:00] Greg Kihlström: You’re gonna have to, yeah, you’re gonna have to send a few of those. Yeah. (laughs)
[00:04:03] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: But it was, you know, it was a wonderful moment to reflect for me. Um, and just, if you’ll bear with me, but if I- if I were to go back into the way-back machine, back to the spring of- of 2001, I was at a company called GN Netcom Jabra, which had made Bluetooth wireless-
[00:04:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:21] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … headsets. And we were working in the early days, I was, you know, five. We were working in the early days of Bluetooth wireless headsets and Bluetooth in general. And I remember transporting one of the very first wireless Bluetooth headset prototypes from CES in Las Vegas to CEBIT in Germany in the same week. And at the time, it was such an honor and a privilege, and it felt like such a big deal because it was. I mean, the idea that you could remove the cord and untether people from their devices at the time felt incredibly futuristic. And when I think about that moment now, what strikes me is that we were standing between eras, between the physical
[00:05:06] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: and the digital. Everything was analog, um, and then it became connected. And at that time, you know, the internet was still kind of finding its place in business. I mean, you know, really, 25 years ago, most corporate websites were fairly static. They were kind of more brochureware than experience.
[00:05:25] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:05:26] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: And while e-comm existed, it was like this tiny fraction of retail. But even then, you could feel that something exponential, something foundational was changing. And that is when the front door to a brand moved onto a screen. And what began as like this place just to be found became a place to sell, to serve, to listen, um, to build relationships. And I find that incredibly fascinating because for 25 years, brands built…… digital experiences around the assumption that customers would eventually come to them-
[00:06:05] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:06:05] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … to the website, then to the app, the campaign, the landing page. But now we’re seeing something incredibly different. That front door is changing, and I’m excited by this conversation because I know that we’re gonna talk a lot about what’s happening to web and websites-
[00:06:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … in the age of AI. Um, but what I will say is that I am, yes, really a long way of saying that I am super excited by this moment for Sitecore because we’ve spent 25 years helping brands deliver the most powerful digital experiences as the world has kept changing, and now I, I will tell you that we are helping brands prepare for this next era. It’s super exciting.
[00:06:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, yeah, let’s, uh, let’s dive in here and, and, you know, first congrats to Sitecore for, for 25 years. This is, um, I, I’m expecting some of those cookies, but, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk later. Um, but, uh, but yeah, you know, and, and we’re gonna talk about this in terms of, as I said in the intro, you know, we’ll, we’ll talk about the, you know, the, the history of, of Sitecore mu- h- and how it kind of mirrors, uh, the history of MarTech. I mean, MarTech is probably only a few years older than, you know, than, than 2001 really in, in earnest. I mean, I remember, you know, I, I was a webmaster. Does, does, is that even a job? Like, in 2001, I was a webmaster at a startup, which are also two things that did not exist when I started high school,
[00:07:31] Greg Kihlström: you know, so that’s another whole kind of thing to, to think about as well. But, you know, I was static, writing static HTML and we had some, like, anyway, JSP thing that we cobbled together or whatever, to do enterprise content management, which, you know, uh, admittedly in 2001, you know, we, we’ve, I, I, and as we’ll talk, we’ve come a long way, you know, a- and I think at the, at the core of that, you know, when content management began and, you know, at that time, I wasn’t managing a, a thousands of pages site. I- it was hundreds of pages, probably. But the challenge was the same, you know, centralizing publishing content to a single destination.
[00:08:15] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Yeah.
[00:08:16] Greg Kihlström: Those were challenges that were, they were new chall- you know, we didn’t, we didn’t have those, you know, print publishing had been through its whole course and, and other things like that. But publishing to a single web destination was, was a relatively new thing. You know, now we’re talking about orchestrating omni-channel journeys. You know, what’s the, what do you think is the biggest catalyst that forced that pivot-
[00:08:39] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Role.
[00:08:39] Greg Kihlström: … from really just being a publisher to now an orchestrator?
[00:08:45] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Oh, my God. It’s such a great question. You know, I, I think what we’re really talking about is marketing, to your point, used to be about putting content on a website and getting people to go there. It was like the center of gravity. But now, we have to create these connected experiences across a variety of mediums. Web, apps, search, social, email, commerce, and increasingly now, AI. But when you strip away kind of like all of the jargon and all of the, the tech, it’s like, I think the shift is actually pretty simple, Greg, which is the customer stopped moving in a straight line. Um, I think mobile and social started that change, uh, because people were now discovering brands in so many more places, moving between
[00:09:31] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: channels more quickly, and then expecting that those interactions were gonna feel connected to them. And I think what’s happened now is that AI is pushing that even further because the first real meaningful touchpoint that someone has with a brand probably isn’t going to happen on the website at all.
[00:09:51] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: It is probably going to happen in an AI overview or recommendation or an AI-mediated or generated answer before someone ever reaches the brand-owned experience on a website. And so I, I think that for marketing leaders, the mindset shift is you cannot treat your website as the entirety of the experience. It’s still really, really important, and I don’t, I don’t want to diminish the importance of the site, but I think it’s changing in terms of its role. I think it is becoming more foundational. I think it is becoming source material. I think it is a place where your brand’s truth needs to be incredibly clear
[00:10:36] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: for people, but then also for machines. And that means that the job that we have as marketers isn’t just about publishing content, but it is making sure that our brands are showing up consistently and credibly and authentically wherever the customer is forming an opinion. And so yeah, that, it’s, it’s a massive shift.
[00:10:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think another, another shift is, you know, and again, having, having been doing this for a, for a few years, I, there’s also a s- a sense of what’s old is new again and, and, you know, there’s a cyclical nature to this thing. But, you know, there, there was, back in the day, there was web services and then, you know, APIs are still around, and, you know, composability, I think, definitely different in, in some ways. But i- in some ways, you know, there, there’s, it’s a, it’s a new, it’s a new flavor of (laughs) of, of those, those predecessors and certainly moved to the cloud and, and lots of other things have, have enabled, um, some, some benefits there. But there is this debate between kind of this, this all-in-one suite
[00:11:43] Greg Kihlström: versus a, a composable best of breed and, you know, that’s been a debate, you know, since, since the, any of those things kind of e- existed. You know, from, from your perspective, from a CMO’s perspective, what are the primary trade-offs between these two approaches and, and how does that strategic choice impact the agility of, of the organiz- the marketing org itself?
[00:12:08] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Oh, it’s, that is, that is the real thing, agility. Um, look, I, for a long time, and, uh, again, uh, you and I, this is funny, we could probably have a conversation about sort of our or- you know, origins in the business. But, you know, for a long time, we as marketers were told that having more tools meant more flexibility. And sometimes they did. But if you really think about it, more tools means more disconnected workflows, more hand-offs, more complexity, and then more places where the customer experience can break down.
[00:12:41] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:12:41] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Now, on the other side, too much rigidity can slow us down. It makes it harder to adapt, it’s harder to experiment, harder to respond quickly when the market changes. And so we’re trying to strike this balance and create an environment where marketing teams can move with speed, with scale, but with control at the same time.
[00:13:02] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:03] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: And, look, I think now we are probably getting to a place where we can do that, um, in a world where we have, uh, AI to help us create and personalize experiences at a scale that, frankly, humans alone could not manage.
[00:13:18] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:18] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: But I think it does come dow- back to this sort of point, like, if your foundation underneath is fragmented and you’ve got all of these different tools working in different places, um, AI is gonna scale that fragmentation. So you might get more content, but it might not be good, and it might be disconnected from other things that you’re doing. And you might get more personalization, but not more relevance because you don’t have the underlying source code that is providing, um, the insight into, or the intelligence. Um, and then, you know, you risk eroding trust when you’ve got things happening in all of these different systems. And so I think this is where we, um, as leaders have to be incredibly thoughtful,
[00:14:04] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: um, and we have to look around and say, “Not, it’s not do I have the right tools.” It’s actually, “Do I have the right operating model? Do my teams-“
[00:14:15] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:16] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: “… have an underlying shared context? Do we know and are we able to keep our brand consistent across everything we do, every market, every channel, every interaction?” And I, I think this is less about the tools and the technology and more about how our organizations are structured. I think we have to be less channel-bound, which we have traditionally been, more, more journey-focused. Um, but yeah, I, I, you know, customers, they just, they don’t experience our brands in, like, org chart boxes.
[00:14:51] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:14:51] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: And so, um, you know, I just find it interesting because I think that the best technology choices are the ones that are gonna help us as marketers work the way that our customers expect us to work, right? Faster, more connected, more responsive, and then we have to stay true to our brand when we’re doing so.
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[00:16:50] Greg Kihlström: You know, speaking of how, you know, consumers reach our brand, you know, no conversation about the last 25 years could be complete, at least in technology, could be complete without mentioning the iPhone and really the, you know, as- as well as social media. I mean, think about, I mean, I think about all the things that have happened in, in, in the marketing world, you know, over the last 25 years. There’s, there are, we could have, the show could be eight hours long probably. But, um, but, you know, the launch of the iPhone, you know, just the, the ta, how social media took off, it wasn’t just, you know, it did add channels and, and there were teams involved in, in mobile and social marketing and, and stuff like that. But, um, they also just fundamentally changed the way that content was created,
[00:17:35] Greg Kihlström: was consumed, making it more immediate, um, as well as, you know, fragmented, but also more conversational just in general.
[00:17:44] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: For sure.
[00:17:44] Greg Kihlström: Um, you know, how does that, how do those kinds of things break that traditional CMS model that we talked about a little bit earlier, and, you know, what, uh, you know, what, what’s the lasting impact on, on content strategy that they’ve had?
[00:17:58] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Oh, gosh. Um, look, I, I think that the iPhone…… re- remarkably. It changed access. And I think social changed authority. So-
[00:18:10] Greg Kihlström: Mm.
[00:18:10] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … if you go back to 2007, the launch of the iPhone meant that, that consumers were truly untethered, because we now actually had a computer in our pocket.
[00:18:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:19] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: It allowed us to search. We could buy from anywhere. We weren’t limited to just our desktops. And so, I think, while tactically we had to think a- about redesigning websites for mobile and responsive experiences, but the bigger shift is just what you said, that the content had to work in context. It had to be useful in the moment someone needed it. And that is a very different experience. Then you add social, and that brings in an entirely, um, other dimension, because it made that conversation two-way. And a brand wasn’t the only voice shaping its story, because now you’ve got customers, right? You’ve got UGC, you’ve got creators and influencers, and you’ve got your employees and communities,
[00:19:05] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: who now have a voice and are part of how people form opinions. And I think this is where you start to see the fractures, Greg, in the traditional CMS model, because it was built around pages and publishing. It really was.
[00:19:20] Greg Kihlström: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:20] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: That’s, that’s more what it, uh, meant to do. But with mobile and social, the world started to move towards moments in conversation, so content couldn’t just live as this static page in one destination. It had to be able to travel across channels and formats and devices and communities, and it had to stay consistent while being flexible for the channel that it was in. And I think one of the most permanent lessons that we learned from that period is that while a brand’s content is important, it is insufficient on its own.
[00:19:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Because people do want to hear from a brand, but they also want validation from their peers and from experts and other third parties. And that lesson that we’ve learned all those years ago, um, matter more now, right? Because mobile and social were the first big cracks in this idea that the customer journey starts on the homepage, and AI is widening those cracks. And so today, the entry point to a brand could be in a search result, for sure, but it also could be in a TikTok. It could be in a LinkedIn post. It could be an analyst reporter. It could be an AI-generated answer. And so the job of content strategy is not just to publish more. It is to make sure that we show up, our brands show up, as useful,
[00:20:39] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: as credible, wherever that first impression happens, because the website isn’t the front door anymore.
[00:20:46] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right. Yeah, and I- I think, um… I guess an- another, another thing to talk about as we, uh, you know, as, as we kind of explore what’s, what’s changed, uh, d- data collection is, is a huge thing.
[00:20:59] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Right.
[00:20:59] Greg Kihlström: You know, the… I remember the, the big data was the… it was like the agentic AI of its day, or, uh, this was, this was-
[00:21:06] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: (laughs)
[00:21:06] Greg Kihlström: … a few years ago, but, you know, everyone was very focused on collecting as much data as they possibly could, and then we have consumer data privacy regulations, and so, you know, we’ve collected all of these things. Now, wh- what, what did we collect, why did we collect it, and what are we doing with it? As well as, um… I think one of the challenges that organizations are running into today is that they have data, but, you know, in order to enable it to do things with AI, it- they’re, they’re running into, into different types of challenges. But, you know, thinking about that, that original, maybe, use case for the DXPE as, you know, primarily, let’s get all we can from customers, because the more we get, the more we can, you know, do, do things, uh, you know, uh, i- ideally in their best interest
[00:21:52] Greg Kihlström: with it. How has the role of customer data within a platform changed with, you know, with so- some of the things I mentioned and, and, and others? You know, is it, is it less about passive collection and maybe more about enabling real-time activation? You know, what, what’s, what’s changing now?
[00:22:10] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: So, I, I think you’re right. I think that the role of data has changed quite a bit from, “How much can we collect?” to, “What is it that we can responsibly collect based on what someone has offered to share?”
[00:22:30] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Because consumers are far more aware of the value of their data. And so, to me, consent is table stakes. I would go further and say that this is where we have to start looking at preference, because consent-
[00:22:45] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:45] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … is only the starting point-
[00:22:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:22:46] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … of the relationship, and preference is that ongoing relationship that we wanna have, and, and so, look, uh, uh, uh, there’s a trade-off, because people need to understand what they’re sharing, for sure, and how it’s being used, but they also recognize that in this data exchange, it’s going to improve their experience. And so, to me, this is where personalization is so important and where it has to evolve, because we’ve got to figure out how to use the data responsibly in a way that feels welcome, not creepy, um, that feels clearer and easier and more relevant, um, and respects the reality that, that we have of
[00:23:31] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: not just privacy expectations and regulations, but what people want and what their preferences, uh, suggest. And so-
[00:23:41] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:23:41] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … as brands, we need systems and practices that k- can keep up with this, you know, the legal requirements, for sure, but also with customer expectations. And I think that connects directly to authenticity, because how you show up and what you say and what you-
[00:23:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:23:59] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … do, um, i- you know, it’s not just the tone of voice. It’s not just the brand storytelling. It is how the experience feels to the customer. And when you do it correctly, when you are using your data responsibly, if the interaction is helpful and credible, that’s a moment where you can win the trust of the consumer…. or you can lose it.
[00:24:19] Greg Kihlström: So now I wanna talk a little bit about the measurement component of this. And certainly, you know, back in the day, um, you know, my, my web trends reports of, of like page hits or, or whatever, you know, we’ve come a long way of, um, you know, of, of things like that. But, you know, what does, what does this, what does measurement look like when, you know, to your point, the, the homepage isn’t always the front door, you know, the journey is, is spread out, and now we’ve gotten, you know, with, with AI kind of changing the way that we look at things, like, you know, personalized content. Not everybody sees the same page, not everybody needs to see the same content. Um, you know, are we, are we moving beyond historical dashboards
[00:25:04] Greg Kihlström: of things, moving towards predictive model- You know, what, what, what should CMOs and, and other marketers be thinking about when it comes to, you know, ah, effectively measuring web experience?
[00:25:16] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Yeah. Um, I don’t want- I, I, I wanna be clear, I don’t want us to throw out old metrics. Page views, times on site, bounce rate, like, they still tell you something, they are not meaningless.
[00:25:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: But I do think they were designed for a different world where the website was the obvious center of the journey. And, and again, that world’s changing. I think we’ve, we’ve beaten that one.
[00:25:35] Greg Kihlström: (laughs) Sure, sure. (laughs)
[00:25:36] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Um, um, ah, you know, in an AI-mediated world where customers are doing research and they’re asking an AI assistant for comparison and they’re reading a summary and they’re looking at reviews, um, and you know, then eventually they arrive at your site, they’re gonna be far more informed and far more qualified.
[00:25:53] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:25:53] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: And I think that, that means that our traffic is looking different, right? We might get fewer visits, but we might get better visits. We might have fewer casual browsers, but we might have people who are ready to act. And so, I think the conversation is moving from volume to value. And, you know, when I think about my own business, the most important KPIs are the ones that are still tied to business outcomes. So, are we increasing qualified demand? Are we improving our conversion rates? Are we reducing our acquisition costs? Are we accelerating pipeline? You know, is retention getting better? Are we able to expand? Are we making it easier for our customers to get what they need? And then I would say, you know, the other thing we’re starting to ask ourselves as a leading metric is, are we showing up accurately in the places where decisions are being shaped
[00:26:38] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: before the click? Like, are we the answer (laughs) …
[00:26:41] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:26:42] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … to the question that someone’s asking, and are we being described correctly? And so this is where I think y- your point, and I don’t, I don’t know that it’s entirely solved, but I think this is where experience measurement has to evolve, because it, the, the website is shifting in terms of its role, as we talked about.
[00:27:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:01] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Um, I think it is incredibly important, but I actually think that we have to look at the entire digital ecosystem, because it is helping the customer make a more confident decision. And so our, our measurement has to evolve.
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[00:29:06] Greg Kihlström: I think the, the website has traditionally been, at least in the digital realms, has been the hub, right? Of, uh, and, I mean, do you, do you see that, is it that that’s changing or is it just that there’s more entry points and more- You know, they, they don’t take things away, right? They only add, (laughs) add more, right? So, is it, is it still kind of the, the hub of things? Is it just people are getting to it a little bit later? Or, you know, how, how should marketers be thinking about that, I guess?
[00:29:32] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Yeah. No, it’s a really good question, Greg. Look, I think that in a world where the website isn’t the front door, where an AI answer engine may be, the website, um, performs a- a very critical role and serves as the, the brand truth. And I think is a, is a verifiable and reliable source of information.
[00:29:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:29:56] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: But it’ll- is also, um, a place where now someone is coming ready to take some kind of action.
[00:30:04] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:30:04] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: And so you have to be prepared to meet that customer where they are in that experience. And so just dropping them on a homepage, probably not good enough. Um, it, it-
[00:30:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:30:14] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: I think, um, i- in this day and a- day and age, what is gonna be even more important than content is context, and understanding who that individual is and what they’ve been, you know, what they’ve been searching for and what’s important to them. Um-… is gonna be incredibly important because the last thing you want is a journey that feels disconnected or creates friction-
[00:30:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:30:37] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … with the user.
[00:30:39] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and I know, you know, another thing that, um, Sitecore is, is doing and, and certainly something top of mind for many is, um, you know, agentic AI is certainly top of mind for, for so many-
[00:30:53] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Agentic core.
[00:30:53] Greg Kihlström: (laughs) Right, right.
[00:30:53] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: (laughs)
[00:30:54] Greg Kihlström: I mean, not, not only from the brand perspective but also from the consumer perspective, right? So, you know, I, I’m, I’m continually, um, surprised by just how quickly consumers are adopting these, and, and consumers are… They’re also B2B buyers and, you know, so like we’ve got, we’ve got this whole now agent-to-agent, um, you know, potential. But also even just, you know, brand, uh, consumers interfacing directly with a brand agent. So, you know, what, what, what changes in that brand customer relationship when agents, whether it’s one-to-one, you know, one-to-one or a human-to-one or, or whatever, you know, what, what changes for brand when now we’re talking about it’s… you’re not necessarily always interfacing with a, with a human?
[00:31:38] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Yeah. Look, I mean, y- y- you’re absolutely right. I have a colleague, Scott Lerer, uh, who calls this, uh, you know, like w- as we’re moving from a purely human-to-human model, he calls this, I think it’s H2A2A2H, which is human-to-AI-to-AI-to-human.
[00:31:56] Greg Kihlström: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:57] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Uh, I’m not sure that I buy the acronym, but, but if you think about it, the marketer is still human, the customer is still human, but increasingly there’s an intelligent middle layer, uh, that is interpreting and summarizing and recommending and comparing, and then now sometimes, Greg, even taking action.
[00:32:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:17] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: So, what does it change or what doesn’t disappear is the brand-to-customer relationship, but, but it is becoming far more mediated. And I think that it is, in fact, the thing that is changing my job the most, because now, like, my brand’s value proposition is so incredibly important and has to show up in all of my content, I have to have proof and customer stories and product information that is tangible and real to the person who is searching in an LLM because an agent isn’t going to be persuaded by a vague brand promise. And this is important, right? A human probably still feels sort of this, um, attraction to a
[00:33:02] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: brand and how it makes them feel, but-
[00:33:04] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:33:04] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … an agent doesn’t feel and won’t be persuaded. It wants evidence. And so the nature of the content has to change, and, um, sort of the, the, the, the element that, um, is easier for machines to understand, y- you still have to create experiences that are human for the people who are still coming to the site. So it’s this really interesting, interesting world in which my job is to make the brand easier for machines to understand without making it less human for people to understand. And so, uh, in this AI-mediated world, look, I don’t, I, I don’t think, um, it is going
[00:33:49] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: to… I, I, I think we’re gonna continuously see that AI layer in the middle, and, um, even more so, agentic capabilities where these agents will take, uh, actions on behalf of brands and on behalf of customers.
[00:34:06] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, Michelle, thanks so much for joining. I got, uh, two, two questions for you as we wrap up here. Um, first, you know, we’ve, we’ve been talking about, you know, the, h- some, some history here in, in MarTech and just how Sitecore has been tracking over the years as well. You know, how does a company, you know, at, in its first 25 years, you know, how does it keep up? You know, how does a company like Sitecore keep up, stay competitive, you know, with all the changes? I mean, certainly, you know, we… I’m sure we left some, uh, several things out as well that happened along the way as well. You know, w- what’s required as a foundation to be able to maintain that competitiveness and, you know, what’s needed to maintain that, that type of agility over the years?
[00:34:51] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: That’s really… That’s a great question. I… Look, I think you have to stay agile in two directions at once. Um, you have to stay close to your customers, you have to understand, uh, how their needs are changing, but you also have to keep looking ahead around corners to see where the market’s going, um, where behavior is shifting, and, and really where the new set of expectations are going to come from. And I think that’s a really big reason that Sitecore has been here for 25 years, because we have continued to evolve as digital has evolved. I mean, you know, we talked about it o- on, uh, in this episode from content management, to digital experience, to personalization, to AI-powered experiences. And so, I think that AI now makes that kind of adil- agility table stakes.
[00:35:36] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: Um, but I, I, I think that the thing that’s most important to remember is why we do this work in the first place, because even in an AI-mediated world, there’s, at least for now, always a person on the other end of that interaction-
[00:35:51] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:35:51] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: … someone who’s trying to make a decision or solve a problem or buy something. And so remembering the customer, um, you know, I think that’s the most important thing.
[00:36:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it, love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:36:08] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: (laughs) Look, uh, I’m a woman in my 50s. I’ve been doing this work for a very long time and I think that, um, I, look, I think that it gives me pattern recognition and perspective, um, but I will also tell you that I have learned long ago never to get comfortable because I think comfort is where agility goes to die. And so, uh, I just, I force myself to keep learning and I get uncomfortable on purpose. And I use these tools myself and I do a lot of, um, reverse mentoring. I ask my younger marketers, like, what they’re doing, um, because I, look, I think the minute that you assume the next generation has nothing to teach you, you’re already behind. And then finally, I would just say, Greg, there’s something really freeing about being at this stage
[00:36:53] Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek: in my career. Um, I don’t have to be the person with all the answers. I can rely on others and I can say, you know, “Hey, I might not know, but I’m gonna learn.” So for me, that’s, that’s agility. It’s not pretending I’m always ahead, it’s just staying curious and, and brave enough to keep moving.
