martech - Martech Therapy (Page 7)

Humans, not tools - A Martech podcast about the real stuff

Phil Gamache on podcasting as therapy, measuring what matters, and why being opinionated at 4am might just land you a guest slot.

Phil Gamache said, “I ask questions like an analyst, but I listen like an operator.” And that’s exactly why I invited him onto Couch Confidentials, for quotes like that. At the end of the day we are all trying to achieve the same.

He doesn’t just host Humans of Martech, he’s built a platform that holds up a mirror to the way we actually work. The late-night migrations. The marketing ops arguments. The tools that break quietly while no one’s watching. His podcast is not about frameworks or vendor checklists, it’s about people trying to

Shopify isn’t enough

…and deep down, you already know that.

There’s a moment that creeps in somewhere between “should I try another email pop-up plugin?” and “why don’t my reports ever answer real questions?” It’s a quiet realization. The platform that made it beautifully easy to launch your store might not be built to help you scale your marketing or understand your customers beyond last Tuesday’s sale.

Shopify does many things well. It’s clean, manageable, and doesn’t ask you to learn code or bribe a developer friend. It’s perfect for what it is: a commerce platform. Not a data platform. Not a campaign

Agentic AI in Martech: When agents disagree

Part 3: The inevitable conflicts in multi-agent systems

Picture this scenario: your personalization AI decides that Sarah (Conner? 😅), a loyal customer, should receive a premium upgrade offer because her engagement scores have been climbing. Simultaneously, your churn prevention AI flags Sarah as a retention risk and recommends a discount promotion to keep her engaged. Meanwhile, your email frequency optimization AI determines Sarah is approaching communication fatigue and suggests suppressing all promotional messages for the next week.

Three different systems, three different conclusions, one very confused customer experience.

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This is the multi-agent conflict

The evolution of Omni-Man

From debugging eVars to preaching composable gospel -> Adam Greco's 25-year journey through martech's identity crisis

I finally sat down with Adam Greco for what turned into one of those conversations that explains how we got to this beautiful disaster we call modern martech.

Adam earned the nickname "Omni-Man" back when he was basically Adobe Analytics incarnate, the guy who could fix your broken implementations and somehow make eVars seem less like a cruel joke played on marketers by bored engineers. For years, he was the poster child for mastering one platform completely.

Which makes his current crusade for composable CDPs either beautifully ironic or perfectly logical, depending on whether you've had your coffee yet.

His

Agentic AI in Martech: From complicated to complex

Part 2: What happens when your Martech stack becomes a rainforest?

Last week I wrote about the scale problem with agentic AI, how systems making billions of decisions weekly break traditional governance models. But there's another dimension to this. One that goes beyond just volume.

It's about predictability. Or rather, the slow erosion of it.

Your Martech stack used to be a Ferrari. Now it's a rainforest.

Scott Brinker and Frans Riemersma used this metaphor in the State of Martech 2025 report to explain how AI is changing martech systems from "complicated" to "complex." They were focused on the technical implications. I want to explore what this means for governance and

Data is boring. And by extension, CDPs are kind of boring too

A candid conversation with CDP Institute founder David Raab on AI delusions, data denial, and the awkward art of explaining Martech to your in-laws

CDP Institute’s David Raab coined the term Customer Data Platform, which makes him either the godfather of modern Martech or the guy responsible for every PowerPoint slide with a data unification triangle on it. Possibly both.

In this episode of Couch Confidentials, we talk about the slow death of CDP hype, why AI is just a mirror for your data mess, and why companies keep renaming “data plumbing” as “activation” in hopes it’ll feel more important.

We also cover how vendors are racing to bolt AI onto every surface like it’s a startup-themed version of Iron Man,

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