Podcast - Martech Therapy

Why AI strategy fails for the same reason data strategy did

Tiankai Feng on the human behaviors that determine whether your AI implementation accelerates dysfunction or actually solves problems.

Tiankai Feng has been doing a publication tour for his new book, Humanizing AI Strategy, and he noticed something odd about the conference circuit. He keeps getting invited specifically because he talks about the human side of AI, which apparently makes him an outlier. Everyone else is presenting on architecture, model comparisons, and technical capabilities.

This feels like a replay of what happened with data strategy about five years ago. Companies invested in platforms and governance frameworks while assuming the technology itself would solve their problems. It didn't. Most data strategy failures traced back to human behavior, organizational dysfunction, poor

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

Should your CDP take a year to implement? Zeotap CEO Elad has thoughts

A lively, no-nonsense chat with Zeotap’s ZEO Elad Simchon. We talk CDPs, audience boosting, European data culture, why US vendors misread Europe, and what’s coming next in AI-powered marketing.

If you ever wanted to hear two grown men bond over Bayern Munich, data sovereignty, and the existential mystery of why CDP projects take a year and a half to get going, you’re in the right place.

This week on Couch Confidentials, I sat down with Elad Simchon, CEO – sorry, ZEO... of Zeotap. Yes, ZEO. I accidentally coined the term mid-recording, and Elad immediately claimed it for the brand. Fair play.

Our chat was one of the most jovial conversations I’ve had all season. We wandered everywhere: his “midlife-crisis startup,” Germany’s secret basketball empire, DMEXCO survival

Crossing worlds: Teik Chua on Martech, culture, and the global CDP perspective

Teik Chua from O2 Virgin Media reflects on how Martech and CDP strategy differ across regions, and why culture often defines transformation more than technology. A grounded conversation about growth, context, and perspective.

When you’ve spent most of your career in one market, it’s easy to assume Martech challenges are universal. But move across regions, and suddenly familiar frameworks start to look very different.

That’s what struck me while talking to Teik Chua, now Head of AdTech & Audience at O2 Virgin Media, who previously worked across Southeast Asia with Accenture and other large consulting projects. Teik has seen Martech maturity through several lenses, from fast-moving experimentation in Asia to slower, highly structured transformation programs in Europe.

“Consulting gives you frameworks, but leading Martech in-house teaches you patience. You can’

When a Martech guy walks into AdTech... and lives to tell the tale.

I was entirely out of my depth in this one. Sitting down with AdLib co-founder Mike Hauptman turned into more than just an AdTech crash course.

I’m a complete novice when it comes to AdTech and raising my two teenage kids. And Mike brought me up to speed on one of those topics.

Programmatic, DSPs, audience segments… it’s always sounded like a parallel universe to the Martech world I live in.

So when I sat down with Mike Hauptman, co-founder and CEO of AdLib DSP, I treated it as a chance to get schooled and he didn’t disappoint.

We talked about how programmatic advertising actually works, why it got so complicated, and how AdLib is trying to make it as easy as Google

Can an AI marketing OS really think like a CMO?

Inside my demo with Dojo AI, from Lucky Saint campaigns to zebra striping trends

I sat down with Duarte Garrido and Luke Costly-White to see what DOJO AI calls an “all-in-one AI Marketing Operating System”. Big claims, but then again, these are undoubtedly “big claim” days we are living in, so I wanted to see what that actually looks like in practice.

Luke’s story already makes this demo interesting. Luke began as a DOJO power user, then became an angel investor, and now works at the very company he backed (for those who read my piece on reference calls with angel investors: this one isn’t on the sidelines anymore).

The demo itself

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