agentic ai - Martech Therapy

The CDP split is official (and it’s not the one vendors were selling)

For years, CDPs have been stretched like the industry’s Spandex. Data foundation one moment, orchestration layer the next, now even the “context brain” for AI. In this year’s Magic Quadrant, Gartner finally names the split. And it changes how everything should be read.

Reading this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms gave me a familiar feeling.

Not, not that of reading a short novel, with its 46 pages. Not excitement. Not disbelief. More the quiet recognition you get when something you’ve been circling for a while finally lands on paper. The conclusions didn’t come out of nowhere. They arrived right on time for the category.

For years now, CDPs have been asked to stretch in every possible direction. Think of them as the industry’s Spandex. One moment they’re a data foundation. Then an orchestration layer. Then

When AI replaces processes, not people

A conversation with Paul Meinshausen and Duarte Garrido about the mental models teams struggle with when adaptive systems replace rule-based workflows. Most marketers aren't ready for this shift yet.

I set up this conversation with Paul Meinshausen from Aampe and Duarte Garrido from DOJO AI because I've been watching the same pattern repeat across different companies. Teams bring in AI tools, get excited about automation, then hit a wall when they realize the technology isn't just doing their work faster. It's doing it differently. That difference requires a mental model most marketers don't have yet.

Watch the full episode here ☝

Paul's background is in cognitive science and decision-making under uncertainty. Duarte came up through big brand marketing before building tools for challenger brands with smaller teams. Both of them

Aampe and DOJO AI show why AI-native marketing starts with people, not tools

AI-native marketing won’t fix marketing’s problems, but it might fix how teams work. From Aampe’s change management approach to DOJO AI’s human-in-the-loop philosophy, the real transformation starts inside the organization, not the model.

As I stated on LinkedIn last week, it was a wild week of news. Lee Hammond mapped the chaos in a post on LinkedIn after his visit to CDP World, while David Raab imagined the redesign after challenging ChatGPT. And somewhere between the two, I found myself in a demo with Aampe, realizing just how hard it is to think differently.

Towards the end, I stopped Aampe’s Amaan Kulatunga and admitted, almost out loud:

I’m still trying to fit this into campaign logic.

I was still thinking like a marketer from 2015. And that, I suspect, is what

Shopping like a human & the quiet rise of Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is reshaping how people discover and buy online. From Bloomreach’s Clarity module to OpenAI’s new ChatGPT apps, a more human form of shopping is quietly emerging, one built on dialogue, not dashboards.

I spent yesterday morning at the Bloomreach Partner Enablement Day event in Amsterdam, where Adam Hackett spoke about conversational commerce and the company’s new Clarity module. It wasn’t a pitch, more a quiet look at how online shopping is beginning to resemble an actual exchange, less filtering, more asking. The kind of conversation that once happened with a store assistant, now expressed through an interface.

Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer sharing Clarity at the Bloomreach Partner Enablement Day.

Bloomreach’s framing felt grounded, it really did. They’re not trying to turn shopping into a chatbot novelty, we are no longer

From psychology to Spryker: Guido Jansen on community, automation, and AI in B2B

Spryker’s Global Business & Technology Evangelist, Guido Jansen, discusses community, vibe coding, and the reality of AI in the enterprise.

In this episode of Couch Confidentials, I sit down with Guido Jansen, Spryker’s Global Business & Technology Evangelist, and someone with one of the longest job titles I’ve ever introduced on the podcast. Guido’s path is unusual: a background in applied cognitive psychology, years building the Magento community, and now leading community and customer success efforts at Spryker.

We discuss what it means to build ecosystems that last and how feedback loops from hackathons and developer meetups inform Spryker’s product direction. Guido also shares his experiments with n8n, vibe coding, and MCP integrations, as well as

Agentic AI in Martech: The Handoff

Part 6: Practical experiments for teams ready to delegate

After five posts exploring the theoretical challenges of agentic AI, scale, complexity, conflicts, roles, and trust, I want to end this series with something more practical. If you're convinced that agentic systems represent the future of Martech but aren't sure where to start experimenting, what's the actual first step?

Based on the patterns I've observed and my own experiments, I think the answer lies in designing deliberate handoff protocols. Not grand AI strategies or comprehensive automation plans, but careful experiments in delegation that help you learn how to work with autonomous systems.

Starting with low-stakes decisions

The teams that seem

Posts tagged with agentic ai

Starting with low-stakes decisions