Stirling and Dowe dive deep into why marketing is too often treated as an administrative "service desk" rather than a vital growth driver. Dowe argues that a marketer’s primary reason for existence is contribution to revenue, advising teams to look past surface-level vanity metrics, like clicks and impressions—to hyper-focus on opportunity creation and pipeline results.

Connect with Ian Dowe:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-dowe/
• Website: https://healthaxis.com/

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Chris shares how his unconventional journey from broadcast journalism to tech marketing shaped his philosophy that clarity is kindness. He discusses how AvePoint revolutionized its global content strategy by auditing and mapping assets to the B2B Buyer Journey Framework, shifting focus away from competitor features and directly toward unique customer outcomes.

Connect with Chris Musico:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophermusico/
• Website: https://www.avepoint.com/

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The conversation explores how building a true community differs from simply managing an audience. Chanelle breaks down how community-led growth naturally drives high-converting word-of-mouth traffic, reduces acquisition costs, and even unlocks massive retail partnerships like Sephora. She emphasizes that authentic community is a long-term play built on values that resonate deeply with specific cultural or emotional niches.

Chanelle also shares a powerful case study from her work at The Class. By shifting away from celebrity-focused hype ads to copy that addressed real user needs mined from exit surveys, her team cut acquisition costs in half over nine months, proving that community feedback is the ultimate foundation for creative strategy.

Connect with Chanelle Leslie:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisischanelle/
• Website: http://taryntoomey.com/ or https://www.chanelleleslie.com/

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In this episode, Tom and Sarah unpack what it really takes for marketing to earn a permanent seat at the strategy table, why so many CMOs are still fighting for credibility they should already have, and what the marketing leaders who make it to the top understand that others don't.

This is a conversation about the long game, and what three decades of showing up, adapting, and leading through change actually looks like.

Connect with Sarah Greenough:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahgreenough/
• Website: https://www.princetonproperties.com/

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The conversation challenges traditional marketing dogma, revealing that most consumer choices are driven subconsciously by the primitive "System 1" brain, powered heavily by emotion. Evan explains common cognitive biases, such as the frequent misuse of loss aversion, and emphasizes why visual content is processed exponentially faster than text.

They also dive into the future of marketing research, discussing how AI-driven eye-tracking tools like FengGui are democratizing neuroscience, while traditional methodologies like focus groups and surveys are becoming obsolete.

Connect with Evan Day:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanday17/
• Website: https://www.britecap.com/

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The spray-and-pray era is over, not because AI killed it, but because buyers finally have enough noise that they can afford to ignore everything that doesn't earn their attention. And in environments like healthcare technology, where buying cycles are long, committees are large, and the inbox is a graveyard for templated sequences, the stakes for getting it wrong are especially high.

John Terrone brings an operator's lens to this problem. In this episode, he and Tom explore what AI actually enables in outbound, not replacement of human judgment, but the elimination of the manual, repetitive work that distracts sales and marketing teams from what matters: context, timing, and trust. They dig into why traditional sequences are breaking down, how AI can support relevance at scale without becoming another spam machine, and what happens when sales and marketing finally share the same intelligence layer.

This isn't a conversation about spamming faster. It's about rebuilding outbound around empathy, problem-awareness, and systems designed to let humans do the thinking, while AI handles the grunt work.

Connect with John Terrone:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnterrone/
• Website: https://www.promptlycheckin.com/

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Johanna Wahlroos has navigated this at the highest levels, leading global strategy and planning at DoubleVerify, and before that, building and scaling brand programs at Google. Her perspective on international brand leadership is practical and hard-won: audiences evolve faster than personas, cultural literacy is not optional, and "knowing your customer" is never a finished job.

In this episode, Tom and Johanna unpack what it actually takes to keep a brand coherent across cultures, time zones, languages, and markets that refuse to hold still. How do you protect the core without suffocating local relevance? When does global coherence become a liability? And what does the modern CMO need to lead across a world that is simultaneously more connected and more distinct than ever?

This is a conversation about brand stewardship at scale, and what humility, clarity, and cultural fluency look like in practice.

Connect with Johanna Wahlroos:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanna-wahlroos-99071820/
• Website: https://doubleverify.com/

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Finola Austin has spent her career at the intersection of creativity and performance, helping brands move beyond the one-off creator post and build something more durable: a content system that feeds paid media, retail, CTV, and owned channels without sacrificing authenticity or losing control of the brand.

In this episode, Tom and Finola get into what it actually looks like to operationalize influence, how smart brands are treating creator content less like a campaign and more like an asset class, why the brands winning with UGC are the ones with the clearest brief, and what CMOs need to build internally before scale becomes possible.

This is a conversation about what it takes to make creative work everywhere, and keep it working.

Connect with Finola Austin:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finola-austin-99ab6744/
• Website: https://www.linqia.com/

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It's hard not to get caught up in the noise.

No Assigned Seats is a show about cutting through it.

Hosted by Thomas Stirling, brand strategist, agency founder, and the guy brands call when the wheels are spinning but nothing's moving, each episode is a conversation with the leaders who've navigated real change, made hard calls, and built something worth talking about.

Not tactics. Not hot takes. Real decisions, real stories, and the kind of clarity that only comes from having actually been in the room.

New episodes dropping soon. Subscribe now so you don't miss a seat at the table.

Connect with Thomas Stirling:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tstirling/
• Website: https://www.stirlingbrandworks.com/