AI can write the first draft and pull together a report. But what should B2B marketers do with the time it saves? Andrea Pell talks to marketing leader Chris Howard about budgets, better decisions and the skills teams need now.

If AI can produce the white paper and build the monthly report, what are we actually paying B2B marketers to do?

It’s a fair question, and one that’s starting to shape conversations about budgets, teams and hiring. For Chris, who has spent more than 20 years leading marketing functions, the answer isn’t “more content, faster”. It’s having the time to work out what the numbers mean, make sharper choices and come up with ideas that wouldn’t have appeared in a prompt.

Watch their conversation below, or read the full transcript.

Editorial note: Lightly edited for punctuation, repetition and readability while preserving the meaning of the conversation. Timestamps are approximate.

Transcript

Andrea  [00:05]
Yes, perfect. So, hi Chris. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time to have a chat with me about kind of what B2B marketing looks like at the moment. You've obviously got really extensive experience in the industry, so I would love to get your thoughts and insights from current conversations, current experiences, just in regards to what the B2B market is looking like, and hopefully offer some insight into the future. So, just to kick off, it'll be good to pass over to you. Just have a little intro into yourself and kind of what brings you into this kind of space that you're in at the moment.

Chris  [00:44]
Yeah, well, so I've worked in marketing, and I feel old now, by saying 20 plus years. I've worked in publishing, I've worked for recruitment businesses, and then most recently for an HR transformation consulting firm, and I've run marketing teams at my last four businesses. So, I was marketing director at a company called LACE Partners, executive marketing director, sitting on the executive team, the leadership team, running the business operational team. I was the chief marketing officer at an executive search firm called Aquis Search, which is a global marketing, sorry, a global executive search in the financial services space, predominantly in Asia, but they had a UK operation, which I was based out of, and so I had a global marketing team that operated across a couple of few countries there, Hong Kong, and Mumbai, and then London. And I've worked within pharma and life sciences, I ran the marketing team for a life sciences business there called SCC. And I've also worked for the trade body, recruitment, employment, conversion, but that is going back a bit further, and we obviously want to focus more on some of the here and now. So yeah, currently, I am speaking to lots of individual

Chris  [02:00]
businesses, smaller businesses, about supporting them with their efforts on almost a fractional marketing basis, which has been really, really interesting, and has come out of really a desire and an interest to be quite agile, I would say, in some of the work that I'm doing, you know, project based work, I quite enjoy that fast paced type stuff. So that's a little intro to me, because I can waffle on forever.

Andrea  [02:28]
No, amazing. And I think that's really what I want to pull on, you're having those variety of conversations, and you seem really focused on that kind of self learning stage of, you know, where marketing is going. And I think that is really kind of insightful, and you can offer a lot to the wider community, they're kind of from our candidate network, even from our clients who are looking at what they're looking to do with their teams over the next, you know, six months, year, five years, just to kind of get those budgets in plans and feel a bit of confidence, kind of, of what that's going to look like. So we'll dive straight in, obviously, feel free to kind of push back or challenge any kind of questions that I am asking. So it would be really good to kind of get an idea from your conversations, what the current state of the B2B marketing space is at the moment. I know that's a really broad question. But if there's kind of any kind of snippets from those kind of conversations you've been having, that'd be really insightful.

Chris  [03:26]
Yeah, so I think, from my perspective, I'd certainly say that, from what I, other marketing directors I speak to, CMOs that I speak to, just my own personal experience of my time at LACE, marketing and the B2B marketing space is becoming more scrutinized than ever from a commercial and ROI point of view. I feel like I've been having this conversation for about five or six years around, you know, the commercial side of marketing and driving ROI. And we've always talked about it. But I think the increase in prevalence of AI tools that can help you to get to the answers that you need to get to quicker, I think that is having a bigger impact on the mindset of B2B marketers, marketers in general, really, because it's enabling you to get to some of the answers that you've never been able to get to unless you did a whole heap of research. So a really, really good example. We might talk about this later. We've been using, when I was at LACE most recently, we've been using AI as the center point or large language models to connect to things like our CRM to our social platforms like LinkedIn to multiple platforms to bring them in

Chris  [04:40]
together into a centralized place and then ask the AI large language model based on the fact you have input and access to all of this. I want to know the answer to that. And then you're able to get that answer. And then the good thing from a marketing perspective is that enables you to get your answer quicker and then start to actually formulate the story that I want to play back to the board. How is that impacting the current state of change in the market? I think because everyone kind of gets access to these tools, it's kind of a bit like there's a football podcast I listen to and they have this phrase which is every team gets to do tactics because they've all got data analytics teams. In the Premier League, they've all got lots and lots of people that are focused on analysis and it's not just the rich clubs who can have big wage bills and afford all of this now because everyone gets access to that. I feel like that's happening in marketing at the moment. Everyone's getting access to it. So you're able to fast track content creation, you're able to look at your reporting and ask the right questions, look where your digital ad spend is going, you're able to get a more accurate answer on things like attribution and AI is hoping to support that. It does have some drawbacks which is all we go on to,

Chris  [05:52]
but yeah, I think that's kind of my helicopter view of the market at the moment.

Andrea  [05:57]
I think that's really important. AI is such a buzzword at the moment. Everybody's talking about it and everyone's kind of even trying to navigate it or feel confident with that kind of with the use of it on a database, but also kind of complement with self-learning as well. People don't just want to replace, as you said at the beginning of this call, you've had 20 years experience. I mean, it's very difficult to kind of say to eliminate the 20 years experience because AI can do it. That's not what we want to do. And that's essentially where we want to kind of make sure that the B2B marketing space is secured within that kind of development. And again, while we're having this conversation, we're flooded. I think everybody's seen on LinkedIn flooded with AI content and yes, it's great to use it, but I think having this human interaction and having some insight from a person actually allows a lot more depth into the industry. So with that kind of AI side of things, let's just kind of get that conversation kind of done and moved on so that we could kind of talk about the kind of the wider scope of things. Do you think within the kind of cascading in

Andrea  [07:08]
the team side of things, how do you feel that's going to impact either in the short term or do you have any kind of ideas or insight into what that looks like if you reflect on your old teams that you used to hire? Would that model look completely different or what do you think that would be over the kind of the future? Yeah, so I think if we're talking about the types

Chris  [07:33]
of molding, the type of marketeer of the future, I think the mindset of the type of person that succeeds needs to have more agility. So you need to be able to quickly try something and if it works, great, carry on, let's do this, let's really lean into this, but if it doesn't work, quickly chuck it away. And the good thing about the rapidly evolving world of work that we're seeing is you can get access to information and data and reporting that can tell you quite quickly whether something's working or not. So for me, if I think about the types of skills of future marketers, I'm probably leaning more into those softer sides. So it's that ability to be able to be agile. I really hate this word because it's a bit management speaking, but like pivoting. And then I also think curiosity as well. So be on that, like as a person, as an individual, we're always thinking about marketers, I think, or the ones I speak to, they're always on the hunt for the next cool thing to like to try it, to see if it works. If it does, then great, then just chuck it onto the scrap heap. And that's not just

Chris  [08:45]
the latest bit of martech to add to your martech stack. There are plenty of interesting visuals and PowerPoints that I've seen showing all of the different marketing tools that exist at the moment. And there are literally tens of thousands globally. So you can't actually layer in too much into your marketing tech stack. So it's, you need to be curious, but in terms of your skills, you need to be able to be a bit more ruthless. And we had a phrase and a lace that we often use, which was ruthless prioritization. And I think that type of ability to, you know, make that judgment call at the right time, I think that's important too. Cause otherwise you can end up with a lot of legacy stuff, legacy tech, you know, legacy way in which your, your, your department, your function is functioning legacy operating model approaches, which just aren't quite fit for purpose. And as a marketing director, as a chief marketing officer, your job is constantly to be looking about the whole elements of your marketing function is your operating model. What's it doing now? Is that still going to work in six months time? If that is that going to work in 12 months time, two years time, what things might change? What, and I'm not talking about, oh, we need 10 more people. We need two people,

Chris  [09:59]
whatever it is. It's the skills that are needed. It's the marketing tech that you've got. It's the, you know, do we need to have more specialists? Do I need to find what sort of personality of person works well in the current landscape? You have to factor all of that in and you need to constantly be looking ahead. You know, you never stand still in marketing. It's one of the great things that I love about the function.

Andrea  [10:23]
Yeah, definitely. And you're saying that I had to come to that commercial aspect is it keeps you driven. So I think I suppose in the B2B space, people have always been revenue focused or kind of having some kind of data to really, to drive them forwards, to ensure that and obviously it does in the kind of consumer brand side as well. But you know, within that B2B space, that revenue is the key thing. So do you feel people are investing more? I mean, obviously, you know, you're doing some fractional stuff with some, with some exciting businesses that are maybe in a stage of growth, which is wonderful. So there obviously is investment because you've got lots of experience. But do you, do you feel there's kind of a trickle of confidence coming back into that marketing space? I think it went a bit slower. I mean, summer months were absolutely terrible for everybody. I think July and August, especially with the heat wave, everyone decided to throw the towel for a bit, but it's kind of, it's picking back up again. Are you kind of feeling that from your conversations that there is confidence coming back in?

Chris  [11:24]
Yeah. So what I would say is I think that what businesses are realizing is that marketing is no longer the sole preserve of one department or one function. And even the smaller businesses too, like businesses that maybe don't have as big of budgets are realizing that actually, you know, we can deliver on quite a lot in terms of output if we get it right, use and utilizing AI as part of that. But rather than what I always think is, you know, asset creation or content creation, you know, small businesses can now spin up that stuff quite easily. And so perhaps they're not looking to reduce budgets or those that are looking to reduce budgets. I would sound a word of caution because I would say, rather than just think you can do less with more, try the redeployment approach. So we've got a budget of, I don't know, let's just say six years ago, you might have spent 10 grand on a white paper production, which was, you know, get a ghostwriter in, maybe it's more like 15 grand, a ghostwriter in, you get a design agency. Now, a lot of that stuff

Chris  [12:36]
can be delivered through AI, through the use of LLMs like Claude or whatever it is, it can spin up design, you know, there's plenty of systems out there at the moment. But rather than the savvy businesses are saying, well, rather than say, well, we don't need to spend 15 grand anymore, let's spend, you know, a couple of grand on getting the print job done. It's what can we do now with that money to redeploy it to drive more lead generation? So do we now redeploy that money towards a bigger ad spend pot that we've got? Do we invest more time in, you know, it could be something as simple as Claude credits or, you know, do we look at how can we upskill our team so that we can deliver training to them, use that money to deliver training to them so that they're able to utilise AI tools or get better at using things like HubSpot. So for me, sensible savvy businesses that are looking to a growth and for greater demand generation are not thinking, well, that's just an opportunity to reduce stuff from the bottom line, but it's spend more to make more or spend the same to make more. So keep it kind of all the same, don't sit as a cost saving

Andrea  [13:45]
exercise and then kind of, you know, because I suppose we're still in that exploratory phase. I mean, we, as a recruiter, we have seen the expectation of this kind of skill level with the AI tools or utilising, you know, different platforms as especially the AI side, it's kind of suddenly jumped onto specs, it's jumped onto the expectation. So, you know, it's obviously leading the way within what people want to have within that team, and they obviously appreciate they need to spend money for it. So, you know, it's not junior level roles that we're not seeing that these are senior level roles to implement it into a business. So if there's been a structure of an organisation where there hasn't been that internal learning or internal development into utilisation at all, people are kind of bringing outside people in to upskill the rest of the team. So I think that's a really good way of doing it is that kind of knowledge sharing and, you know, maximising that potential of, you know, and obviously, you know, giving that person opportunity to share their information and the knowledge as well. So, you know, with the kind of elements, I know B2B space, there's normally a little bit more kind of limitation within,

Andrea  [14:58]
you say that in kind of quotes, you know, limitation of creativity and what you want to do and kind of the messaging if you're especially in professional services. Obviously, you know, there is you know, a direction of messaging which it needs to be. So, creativity within that B2B space, do you feel over your kind of tenure of 20 years, has it become more prevalent? Have you expected to be more of a thoughts, you know, ideas person or is it been more about an execution side of things? I certainly think the beginning of this year, 2026, because of some of the stuff

Chris  [15:35]
that we were doing and simplifying processes that would take longer, I'll give you a really good example. We used to put together a monthly marketing report focusing on where have we generated value to the business. So, in the pipeline that we've got and we used HubSpot as our system for pipelining, within that, how are we able to track the pounds, shillings and pence that can be attributed towards some of our marketing efforts, whether it's LinkedIn ad spend, whether it's, you know, meta ads, Google ads, whether it's emails, whether it's email marketing, whatever it is. And that report used to take us a solid week to pull together from different sources. And we were able to automate that report to about two hours through using, I mentioned it earlier, so we used a system called Supermetrics, which is kind of like a central piece which pulls together HubSpot, LinkedIn data, and Supermetrics then pulls it all together. And within Claude, you can then say, you know, here's a bunch of questions that I'm being asked by the board that I want an answer to, have a look at last month's data, tell me how we got on from a

Chris  [16:50]
revenue generating, where was our best performing, you know, revenue generating compared to pipeline, which is which area has pushed more leads into our system that the account management team can follow up on. So because that whole process didn't take a week of mining the data, and just a couple of hours, that then freed me up personally, to I think I spent half a day one day writing the actual story and creating the narrative that can be fed back to the board, which is, this is the impact that marketing has made. But then here's a bunch of stuff that the account management team could be thinking about. And then also, we were able to spend more time talking to the account management team about, okay, now that we've got this free time, how do we personalize our ABM approach based on the, you know, we had a X number of target accounts that we were just targeting at LACE Partners, and it was about, okay, how do we do something which is now a bit more bespoke, because the things that used to be the time take the time, the things that took the most time freed us up a little bit. So I think that's an important thing to think about how AI is impacting in creativity by taking away certain times.

Chris  [18:01]
If I think about how B2B brands are investing, and whether they're investing enough in creativity, or whether we are more creative than yesterday, or than yesteryear, the one thing that I would urge slight caution on, and it goes back to a TED talk that I actually listened to, I'll dig it out and send it to you. But it was a lady who was a professor, she was talking about how AI only operates within the parameters that it's given. And even if those parameters are massive, and it pulls in data from because everyone's using AI every day, it's only ever going to take things from those parameters. And the example that she used was ice cream. She said, if I fed into a large language model, that I have three flavours of ice cream, that I always tend to eat, it's strawberry, it's vanilla, and it's chocolate. And I do that 100 times. And then I ask, one day I wake up and I ask the LLM, I don't know what ice cream I want today, can you give me some options? I fancy something random. The likelihood is, she's just going to give you one of those three. She said, it doesn't take into account that creativity part is gone from the human brain waking up one morning and doing a Heston Blumenthal

Chris  [19:15]
and saying, I fancy a curry flavour ice cream, that nobody's ever thought of, nobody's ever imagined, because the human brain can do that. There is talks, I've been to a couple of events, conferences, and a roundtable dinner talking about, I think it's an AGI, so it's like a genteck engine intelligence, so I have to check the specifics on that acronym. But the concept was that by 2030, a lot of AI will be that advanced, that it can think like that. It can think like humans and do those types of tasks. I'm sceptical on that. Surely we always want people in a room talking about ideas and talking about that and it's implementing. I think for me, that's all got really organic creativity is when it comes from those thoughts and conversations that when it's lying in bed at night and you decide to go to sleep and that's the idea that you have the creative thought. That's when you have those ideas, isn't it? When it's about, when you're not really prepared for it and you're not thinking about it,

Chris  [20:26]
they kind of pop in and I think that's the space that needs to be protected.

Andrea  [20:30]
That's from my opinion, but obviously the evolution of technology is coming and it's fabulous and I think there's some really good things that people can upskill from. I think as long as people learn, it's the learning and development from it rather than the replacement of thought process completely.

Chris  [20:47]
Sorry, I got that wrong. It was AGI, artificial general intelligence and that whole idea is that artificial intelligence can effectively replace all of that sort of creativity that humans can, which again, as we just talked about. Let's hope not.

Andrea  [21:02]
But I think that's a really nice time to finish. I think that was really nice to kind of end on like the creativity side of things. So that was wonderful. Thank you ever so much for your time, Chris. I really appreciate it and I think there's some really good ideas to kind of have a little think about and I'm really keen to kind of hear what happens next and different thoughts and you're kind of going out there having those conversations and keep me updated with what's going on in the market.