Scott Brinker's Recent LinkedIn Posts

"Partners are friends, not food." 😂 (Overheard in an executive strategy session earlier today.) Uh, yeah, kinda ecosystem 101 there. 😂

Two ideas from my research project with Databricks that we released yesterday fundamentally rewired how I think about martech. 🧠 Mind-bending idea #1: Everything. Is. Data. Not just customer data. Not just campaign data. Company operations data, content, code, governance controls — all of it living on a common data plane, underpinning everything in the business. This isn't just a universal data layer for classic martech records. It's a universal data layer for everything. The wildest part? Code as data. When you realize that AI models, prompts, agent skills, and governance rules can all be managed and manipulated as data — queried, updated, versioned, orchestrated — something clicks. Functionality becomes as fluid as any other kind of data. I think of this as the Grand Unified Theory of Martech: The martech stack doesn't just use data. It is data. ⚡ Mind-bending idea #2: The new math of integration. I've spent my career wrestling with martech integrations — as a developer, as a platform leader, as an analyst. Integration has been the bane of martech since the moment there were more than two tools on the landscape. We've made great progress, but there was still a long way to go. When everything lives on a shared native data substrate, the complexity curve changes fundamentally. Hub-and-spoke integration models are O(n) — every new connection adds proportional overhead, technical debt, and failure points. On a common data plane, you're approaching O(log n). Each new integration adds only a minuscule fraction of incremental complexity because everything is already adjacent and accessible. It's not just faster and easier. Going back to idea #1: when everything is already data on that plane, the integrations themselves become richer and more powerful — no longer bottlenecked through narrow APIs with partial coverage and perpetual version drift. This one felt personal. In the best possible way. There's a lot more in my latest newsletter issue and the report itself — including the composable canvas architecture framework, the semantic layer, context graphs, and more. The link to the web version of the newsletter issue is below. You can grab a free copy of the full Databricks report from there too. Massive thanks to Tasso Argyros, Katy Yuan, and the entire Databricks team for being such incredible partners on this project. 🙏 #marketing #martech #AI

Bryce Peake, who led marketing decision sciences at Domino’s, says this in my new report with Databricks, released this morning — and I think it gets to the heart of it: “We’ve been trying to modify the same martech stack we’ve had since the internet started interneting...” For years, we’ve kept adding more tools, more integrations, more layers, more duct tape. Now AI is forcing a bigger question: What if the future of martech isn’t a taller stack — but a different architecture altogether? In this new report, I explore what that next architecture might look like: a composable canvas built on a unified data foundation. In addition to Bryce, I interviewed Meagen E. (CMO, Samsara), Kumar Ram (VP/global head of marketing data sciences, HP), and Chris Wissing (chief product officer, Epsilon) — plus Databricks’ own Rick Schultz (CMO), Elizabeth D. (head of martech), and Tasso Argyros (VP of engineering, and previously founder/CEO of ActionIQ). What struck me across all of those conversations was that, from very different vantage points, they were all describing the same shift. The future of martech is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. Curious to hear what you think. Download the report: https://lnkd.in/etpcakZ7 #marketing #martech #AI

Our first executive dinner discussing decisioning architecture for marketing in the age of AI was a tremendous success. If you'd be interested in joining a future one, my co-host Abhi Yadav set up a form in the comments of this post.

Reflecting on a recent report I wrote on "smart loyalty" for Brevo, I explore the possibility that loyalty systems could be excellent context-as-a-service (CaaS) platforms in today's chiefmartec newsletter. I discuss a couple of important issues for CaaS platforms: ➡️ It's not just about the data. It's about a tight engagement/decisioning loop. ➡️ Latency matters! It determines whether a system is actually providing context or shipping stale assumptions downstream. And while loyalty programs are mostly a B2C phenomenon, there are some fascinating parallels in B2B with customer success — and a promising #martech opportunity in how to address them. If you're not yet a subscriber, I'll put the article in the comments here as well. #marketing #martech #AI

I really like the structure of Stripe's 5 Levels of Agentic Commerce described in their Annual Letter. (Definitely worth a read!) But having just poked fun at the classic crawl-walk-run maturity model, my sense is that the growth of system complexity and trust required to move up to the higher levels will *not* be a linear journey. Not a prediction. Things are moving too fast for me to feel that I can divine the future beyond tonight's dinner plans. But to the extent that I can draw upon my experience and common sense, my guess is that there's a big exponential gap between Levels 3, 4, and 5. My quick little sketch should probably be on a log scale for the y-axis. What's your guess? #martech #AI

Haha. Touché, Tom Fishburne! 👏

Tuning into buyer "intent" and "signals" is a foundational capability in B2B martech. There's been multiple waves of intent innovation, but AI agents are in a league of their own. The graph below is not drawn to scale — the "AI agent dialogues" point on the curve should be 10X higher! This chart about the evolution of intent capture and content intelligence was part of a report Frans Riemersma and I wrote for PathFactory a year ago — Generative AI and the Intent-Driven Buyer's Journey. 12 months ago, customer-facing AI agents run by marketers were just starting to appear in production outside of narrow customer service use cases. PathFactory had released a conversational agent that would live on a company's website to let buyers self-service the right content that was most relevant to them. We found these dialogues to be extraordinary windows into the buyer's mind. They were literally telling you their questions, their concerns, their interests, in an open-ended fashion. Yes, this is what happens on external AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT. And, yes, most buyer conversations will happen on those platforms, where marketers have almost no visibility until a click happens. But some conversations can happen with your own AI agents on your website and with AI SDRs (especially inbound). The insights that can be mined — and with the right martech infrastructure, acted on immediately with your marketing and sales teams — are golden. Most companies I've talked to are not doing this today, so it's an opportunity for a GTM competitive advantage. In the report, we talked about this as the advancement of "content intelligence." But today, I would frame it as the advancement of "context intelligence." Dev Ganesan, CEO of PathFactory, agreed to let us now distribute the report we wrote for them ungated, if you'd like to pick up a copy: https://lnkd.in/eday3axE Let me know what you think! #marketing #martech #AI

Marketing's biggest yet underappreciated AI challenge? Decision architecture. We have 15,000+ martech tools. Proliferating channels. More data than any human could process. And now AI agents promising to automate everything. Each addition delivers new capability. The question we need to start asking — of both our existing stacks and every new technology we evaluate — is: what decisions does this serve, and how do we orchestrate that at scale? But most marketing organizations have never explicitly defined how they make their most important decisions: who to target, what to say, when to spend, how to allocate. That logic lives in tribal knowledge, scattered spreadsheets, institutional muscle memory, and calendar habits that have never been examined, let alone documented. You can’t automate what you’ve never codified. I see this as a defining challenge for the next era of marketing leadership. Not which AI tools to buy. But whether you've built the decision infrastructure to match your capability infrastructure. On March 19th in NYC, I'm hosting an intimate dinner for up to 12 CMOs and VPs of Marketing from D2C, ecommerce, and brand companies to dig into this. Chatham House rules. The dinner is sponsored by iCustomer, founded by my good friend Abhi Yadav, but there will be no slides, no pitches. Just a candid conversation among peers about decisions and decisioning at AI speed. If this resonates and you’re VP+ at a retail, D2C, or ecommerce company, I’d love to have you join us. Apply here (seats are limited for this peer group): https://lnkd.in/ey6eeibC #marketing #martech #AI

The "stack" is fading. The composable canvas is rising. That's the thesis behind The New Martech "Stack" for the AI Age — a report I produced with Databricks that's been generating a lot of conversation. And now we're taking it live. I'm hosting a free webinar with two guests who are actually building the future of marketing architecture — not just theorizing about it: 🎙 Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of Samsara 🎙 Kumar Ram, VP & Global Head of Marketing Data Sciences at HP We'll dig into: → Why rigid martech stacks can't keep up with AI agents and humans working together → What a realistic 3-to-5-year evolution roadmap actually looks like → How top marketing orgs are turning their architecture into a competitive advantage No rip-and-replace panic. No vendor hype. Just real talk from leaders who are navigating this shift right now. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e7hrDWYy If you've ever looked at your martech stack and thought "this wasn't built for what I'm trying to do today," I think you'll enjoy this conversation. Haven't seen the report yet? I'll add that in the comments. #marketing #martech #AI

DRAFT Illustration of marketing pace layers (2026). After all the great feedback from my revisting of marketing pace layers in my newsletter last week (available in comments below), I decided to rethink the structure of the layers for today's environment. I'm putting this here without any explainatory narrative to hear how you would interpret this. Would greatly appreciate you weighing in with your thoughts — good or bad. 😀 Thank you! #marketing #martech #AI

10 years ago this month, I published "Hacking Marketing" — an unlikely best-seller based on the premise that marketing and software development were increasingly similar disciplines. That'll never happen! 😂 It wasn't just martech and marketing operations — although they were at the center of that metamorphosis. Marketing departments as a whole began to adapt their strategy and operations in ways that increasingly resembled product management. "Hacking Marketing" aimed to help that transformation by teaching marketers about concepts and practices from the software development world and how to adapt them to marketing management. In this week's newsletter, I revisit three of those ideas and how they're evolving in today's AI environment — and how they can help bring new order to the new chaos: ➡️ Agile marketing management, continuing to evolve ➡️ Functionality as an underutilized creative dimension ➡️ Pace layering for the fast/slow elements of marketing Of course, if you've been following along my recent writing, you won't be surprised to see that context-as-a-service (CaaS) platforms make an appearance in the powerful role they can play in AI-accelerated pace layering. If you aren't a subscriber, you can find your way to the article in my first comment below. (Dear LinkedIn, I so love this mysterious dance.) #marketing #martech #AI

Dinners like these are where the real conversation happens about what’s working, what’s not. Nothing like a group of peers and a few bottled beverages to bring reality to the table. 😀

“If you’re a manager, hire people who you think are out of your league.” This. 1,000X this.

We're entering the CaaS era. Context-as-a-Service (CaaS) For two decades enterprise software optimized around data and applications. CRMs store records. Warehouses store events. Apps expose workflows through UI. Agents change the requirement. Agents operate on context. What context actually is; • account history across CRM, support, product usage • deal state and stakeholder relationships • communications and internal notes • pricing rules and policies • real-time signals across systems Why context becomes a platform layer: Today this information lives fragmented across hundreds of tools. Agents require it assembled and continuously updated. That creates a new architectural layer: Data → Context → Agents → Actions Why this matters for SaaS: Whoever owns the context layer may control how work is executed across the enterprise. This shift, and the turbulence it introduces for SaaS, is a core theme at the Agentic OS Summit (March 24th). Scott Brinker, the Godfather of Martech, joins CXO Whisperer, Erik Charles, to explore the rise of this trillion-dollar trend. Attend free/virtual: https://lnkd.in/dBK45pYE Gainsight Vivun Vidyard Amoeba AI 1mind EverWorker ZoomInfo Alta | AI Revenue Workforce Von Provarity RevSure AI #AgenticOS

Writing up new #AI #martech research, I want to distinguish between "agentic coding" and "vibe coding". Grossly oversimplifying, I think of it as the difference between what professional engineers are doing vs. what non-engineers are doing, respectively. They're generally different toolsets: Agentic coding platforms: Claude Code, Cursor, Devin, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, Windsurf Vibe coding platforms: Bolt.new, Claude Cowork, Lovable, Replit, Vercel v0 Of course, the lines are blurring, as I've talked to three different marketers in the past week who are neck-deep in Claude Code. There are also dozens (hundreds) of other martech products out there that marketing ops and revops people are using for apps and automations. Tools like Make, n8b, Workato, Zapier, et al., are arguably a kind of vibe coding too. And then there are agent orchestration frameworks such as CrewAI that are in a different but certainly adjacent space. Whew, hate to be the person who has to catalog and categorize all these! 😂 But for agentic coding vs. vibe coding "proper", I thought these two comparison charts from Claude and Gemini were a useful way to look at the distinctions.

Last call to get the sneak peek of 70 agentic use cases in marketing and weigh in on your preferred tools: (1) AI in existing SaaS (2) new AI-native app (3) homegrown AI ...plus get a bonus agentic gen AI use case map from Frans Riemersma! This is an open #marketing and #martech community initiative — all of the aggregate data will be shared free and ungated in our upcoming State of Martech 2026 report. If you've found the open research Frans and I do useful, please take a few karmic minutes to contribute: https://lnkd.in/esn-CF7r Thank you! 🙏

Julia Nimchinski and the Hard Skill Exchange team always organize some of the most epic marathon online learning events, especially around AI, and this event next week — the Agentic OS Summit — will surely live up to the best of them. I'm excited to have a candid discussion with the ever-insightful Erik Charles about the evolution from SaaS to CaaS — context-as-a-service platforms — that I've been writing about these past couple of months. I believe there is a phenomenal opportunity here, and I'm rooting for the current leaders of the #martech landscape to make that transition. It's certainly doable from a technical perspective. But as with any paradigm shift, it's changing their mental model — from strategies of scarcity to strategies of abundance — that will be the more difficult hurdle. This is just one session out of dozens, from so many amazing leaders across the industry. Check out the full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/eRTDrwKr Hope to see you (virtually speaking) next week!

Excellent read.

📢 #MartechNEXT is back – bigger, bolder, and more ambitious than ever! 🎉 This year, we are heading on a World Tour – five cities, one-day in-person experiences built for leaders shaping the future of digital experience. 🌎 Headlining the tour are: ⭐ Scott Brinker – VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and editor of chiefmartec.com ⭐ Frans Riemersma – internationally recognized martech analyst and founder of MartechTribe Expect bold perspectives on the state of martech, real-world Progress Sitefinity success stories from partners & practical insights you can bring straight back to your team. Plus, dedicated time to connect with speakers, partners, and peers! 🎟️ All events are free – but seats are limited. Register your interest to secure your spot at the link in the comments! ⤵️

The #MartechNEXT 2026 World Tour is bringing Scott Brinker to Boston, Chicago, Milan & Melbourne! 🤩🌍 Join him for one of the FREE, one-day events & hear his sharpest insights on the future of digital experience. Find the link in the comments & secure your free spot now! 👇

Boston is where, higher ed, healthcare, startups and advanced tech create an ecosystem built for solving complex problems with precision and creativity. Agencies serving this market don’t just adopt emerging tools; they build systems that translate deep innovation into meaningful marketing outcomes. Media, tech and data professionals - don't miss being in the room where we explore the opportunities and challenges that come with this. 👉 Free for 4As members. Decisions Boston: Opening Keynote: https://bit.ly/4tV0Gsu Scott Brinker, Analyst & Advisor at chiefmartec, will kick off the event with the opening keynote, The Next Agency Playbook: Architecting for a Composable, AI-Native Future. The keynote will cover: → Moving beyond monolithic stacks toward composable architectures → The rise of homegrown AI solutions → The shift from structured data to unstructured intelligence → How agencies are transitioning from software integrators to builders of Service-as-a-Software See you on March 25, 2026 at the offices of our gracious host Arnold Worldwide / Havas, Boston, MA. #DecisionsBoston #Martech #AI #AgencyLife