The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® | What CMOs Need to Know About Marketing Technology, AI & CX

Sunil Frida, CMO of Zscaler, joins Greg Kihlström on the problem most marketing teams haven't priced in: the AI tools and agents marketing adopted that security never reviewed.
"AI" hides two different decisions. A tool that speeds up a human's draft and an agent that acts in your name at machine speed are not the same risk and don't take the same controls. Frida discusses where a CMO should draw that line inside their own operation.
The CMO and the CISO are now running one system. What the marketing department looks like from the security side of the table — the tools bought on a card, the AI embedded in SaaS platforms overnight, the permissions nobody reviewed.
Coherence is the constraint on speed, not headcount. When thousands of customer-facing decisions a day are made by systems rather than people, what keeps them adding up to one brand with one logic.

About Sunil Frida
Sunil Frida brings more than 20 years of experience leading marketing, product positioning, and go-to-market strategy for some of the world’s most influential cloud and cybersecurity companies. He is known for building and scaling high-performance global teams, shaping category-defining narratives, and driving sustained growth at scale.
Prior to Zscaler, Sunil served as SVP of Product Marketing and Analyst Relations at CrowdStrike, where he led global product marketing, competitive intelligence, alliances, and analyst engagement. He helped expand the Falcon platform narrative, advanced the company’s AI and data strategy, and supported multiple years of strong ARR and revenue growth while also guiding communications through critical moments for the business.
Earlier in his career, Sunil spent more than seven years at Amazon Web Services, holding senior leadership roles across data, analytics, databases, and emerging technologies. He partnered closely with product, sales, and engineering leaders to establish durable operating mechanisms and position AWS as a market leader across multiple categories.
Sunil holds an EE from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Melbourne.

Sunil Frida on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilfrida/

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Zscaler: https://www.zscaler.com

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: 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 check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

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://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765
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Leah Nurik, CEO and co-founder of Brandi AI, argues that when a buyer asks an AI assistant which vendor to consider, the answer names a few companies — and the rest effectively don't exist. She and Greg Kihlström get into what decides who makes that list.
Generative Engine Optimization is not SEO with a new acronym. Nurik discusses which parts of a mature search operation still do real work in AI-mediated discovery, and which parts have become motion that connects to nothing.
Much of what shapes your AI answer lives in sources you don't own. Earned coverage, third-party reviews, and public discussion carry the signal, which makes this a job of influence rather than control — and strains a marketing plan built around owned channels.
Visibility stops being a rank and becomes a probability. Ask the same question twice and a model can answer differently; ask a second model and it answers differently again. Nurik and Kihlström talk about what to measure instead, and how to tell that story to a CFO when site traffic goes down and AI citations go up.

About Leah Nurik
Leah Nurik is CEO and Co-Founder of Brandi. Leah has worked with over 400 growth-stage software companies in her 20-plus year career. She has held senior strategy, product and marketing leadership positions at Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Infowave and others. She also founded and led Gabriel Marketing Group, an award-winning global public relations, branding, and integrated marketing agency focused on B2B SaaS companies. Leah's expertise spans digital, public relations, content marketing, product marketing, and go-to-market strategy.

Leah Nurik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahgabriel/

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Brandi AI

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: 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 check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

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://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ramon Soto, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Northwell Health, built the "Raise Health" movement by galvanizing 100,000 employees before going after the external audience — an inversion of how most enterprise brands sequence a launch. He and Scott Goodson, Founder and Chairman of StrawberryFrog, join Greg Kihlström to break down what that actually required.
A movement starts inside, not in market. Soto discusses why aligning a 100,000-person workforce around a shared purpose changed the strategic approach to everything that ran externally.
Purpose has to become operating behavior. Policies, decisions, and frontline authority are what make a brand promise credible — or expose it. Goodson and Soto weigh in on closing the gap between what a brand says and how it behaves.
Streaming series as brand infrastructure. We discuss why Northwell put content on Netflix and HBO instead of buying more healthcare advertising, and how they kept it from reading as branded content.
The revenue case for movement-based marketing. We discuss drawing a credible line from purpose-driven activity to $3 billion in net new annual revenue and market leadership in one of the most competitive sectors in the country.

Scott Goodson on LinkedIn

Ramon Soto on LinkedIn

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Strawberry Frog: https://www.strawberryfrog.com

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

The hardest part of martech right now is telling which tools are actually earning their keep. That's the question running through the MarTech Summit Boston agenda on October 27. We're attending MarTech Summit Boston on October 27 as a media partner. If you want to join, the code AGILE15 saves you 15%. https://aglbrnd.co/r/c70c250b8d52dff3

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: 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 check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

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://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jody Kaminsky, Chief Marketing Officer at ICIMS, led a full brand transformation to reposition an established talent acquisition company around AI — in a category where being wrong about AI costs someone a job. She and Greg Kihlström get into what that took.
A brand refresh is a business decision before it's a design decision. Kaminsky weighs in on the business drivers that signaled it was time to change, what iCIMS deliberately gave up in familiar brand equity, and how the new narrative got tied to where the company is actually going.
"AI" is not specific enough to be a promise. A tool that speeds up work a person is still authoring and a system that decides and acts on its own are very different products with very different stakes in hiring. Kaminsky discusses how precise you have to get with buyers about which one you're selling.
The brand is tested in the product's behavior, not the campaign. What the platform decides, how it explains itself, and what happens when it gets something wrong all shape the brand more than the messaging does — and Kaminsky weighs in on keeping marketing's story and the system's behavior aligned as output scales.

About Jody Kaminsky
Jody Kaminsky is the Chief Marketing Officer at ICIMS, an enterprise AI talent acquisition platform, and former CMO of UKG who led the company through the Ultimate Software/Kronos merger. With 30+ years of experience as a CMO and marketing board advisor guiding enterprise technology companies through large-scale transformations, Jody's experience lies in leading brand evolution, shaping compelling brand narratives, aligning marketing with business strategy, and building credibility in a crowded AI market. Today, she applies that experience at ICIMS, which powers responsible AI hiring for more than 4,000 organizations worldwide, including The Container Store, Urban Outfitters, PetSmart, Canon, Heineken, and The Cheesecake Factory, giving her perspective shaped by some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Jody Kaminsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodykaminsky/

---------- Resources ----------

ICIMS:

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: 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 check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

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://aglbrnd.co/r/f1782ab12211f765
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay Lee, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Five9, argues the contact center is not a cost line marketing inherits. It's where brand promises get tested, and where the richest first-party data a company owns already sits. He and Greg Kihlström get into what changes when marketing takes it seriously.
Brand is what the system decides, not what the campaign says. When a bot, an agent, and the app give three different answers to the same exception request, customers don't read it as a service defect. They read it as the company.
Service data is the first-party source marketing says it wants and rarely uses. Transcripts, chat logs, and sentiment are already there. Lee talks about where the handoff from service data to marketing action actually breaks down.
"AI in the contact center" hides four very different decisions. Routing rules, churn scoring, drafted agent replies, and an agent that resolves and acts on its own carry different accuracy bars and different accountability. Lee talks about getting buying committees to name which one they're actually buying.

About Jay Lee
Jay H. Lee is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Five9. A growth-focused leader in enterprise software and fintech, Jay brings more than 20 years of experience driving go-to-market transformation, scaling global marketing organizations, and delivering measurable business outcomes.

Prior to joining Five9, Jay served as Chief Marketing Officer at Icertis, where he led the company’s global marketing organization and helped position the business for its next phase of growth. Previously, Jay was the Chief Marketing Officer at Avalara. There, he was instrumental in more than doubling the company’s revenue from approximately $380 million to over $800 million by building and scaling a high-performing global marketing team. This achievement was a key contribution to Avalara's $8.4 billion acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.

Earlier in his career, Jay held senior leadership roles at PayPal, American Express, and GE Capital, where he led initiatives across marketing, product, and business strategy. At PayPal, he led marketing for the Business Financing Solutions division, helping expand global lending and drive significant growth in originations.

Jay Lee on LinkedIn

---------- Resources ----------
Five9

The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703

Need to evaluate martech, AI, or CX platforms and don't know where to start? The Agile Brand Guide List is now in beta. We're building the most useful, free-to-use, and up-to-date way to assess what truly matters when evaluating platforms. See more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/f76be3a33cc491bb

Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/491818c79fb1873f

Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).

Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20

Enjoyed the show? Tell us more and give us a rating so others can find the show: 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 check out Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba

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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.