Keeping the Revenue Engine Running, with Karl Ortmanns
Funnel Reboot podcast
We often hear marketers talk about how vital their work is to sales. What we don’t hear nearly as often is the reverse: how essential sales is to a well-functioning marketing team. If marketing creates the content, sales provides the context. And that context is what makes campaigns relevant, credible, and grounded in the real world. Sales teams feed marketing the on-the-ground truth—what prospects are actually saying, how they react to new pricing, and how they interpret a company's positioning in different segments. That’s especially clear when a business serving the SMB market tries...
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Brandjitsu, with Michael Dargie
Funnel Reboot podcast
Is your Brand truly memorable? Would a person who bought from you a year ago be able to recall your name or say what they found compelling about you? The reality is that a lot of brands are instantly forgettable. You don’t have to wallow in a world of Meh - you can turn your brand into something memorable - we’re going to hear a process that’s been codified in a book that came out in 2025 called BrandJitsu. . Listen in as we delve into the book’s process, which begins not with a funnel but with a Loop we’ve got to Embrace. We’ll hear how to plumb the depths of our brand...
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Website Wealth, with Philippa Gamse
Funnel Reboot podcast
One of the best known events in the modern Olympics is the High jump. Since its dawn in 1896 all jumpers used the same technique. They would run towards the bar, then begin their vault by putting one leg over, or trying to go head-first over the bar. But someone came to the 1968 Mexico City games, who couldn’t win on physicality, but who did have a hack no one had thought of. That person was 21 year old American Dick Fosbury, who you wouldn’t find anything notable looking back at his track career. Back in high school he’d struggled to master all the motions used...
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The Path to AGI with John Thompson
Funnel Reboot podcast
Artificial General Intelligence is a term that most of us have heard, a good number of us know how its defined, and some claim to know what it will mean for the average marketer. Here’s what OpenAI’s Sam Altman said “It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.” What nobody knows for sure is when it will be here. Some said that GPT5 would herald the dawn of artificial general intelligence. This episode is airing In mid-2025, and GPT5...
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Books for the Summer Break
Funnel Reboot podcast
Hey, Glenn here. It’s the middle of summer when I’m recording this; a time we don a pair of shades, a beach towel and a good book. Funnel Reboot usually shares talks with marketing book authors, but for this show I’m going to share some reads that go a little farther afield. Come along with me through six books that are all amazing. The subjects range between business, humanities, technology and science fiction. Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:01:44 The Discoverers 00:12:43 Blindsight 00:19:05 How Big Things Get Done 00:24:12 Private Truths, Public Lies 00:27:41...
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Optimizing Marketing with Statistics, with Ateeq Ahmad
Funnel Reboot podcast
Sometimes, to reach a solution, we must take unfamiliar paths. In the early 1940s, a brilliant mathematician named Abraham Wald left his homeland in Hungary fleeing the spectre of war. He moved to the United States, and became part of a team at Columbia University tasked in 1942 with an aspect of the war where the Allies were losing badly to the Nazis. It involved the many Allied planes that would leave from England but never return to their bases, having been shot down somewhere over Europe. These B‑17 and B‑24 bombers had 10-man crews, weighed up to 30-32 tonnes, had wingspans of...
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Unorthodoxy, with Gil Gildner
Funnel Reboot podcast
We as consumers do a lot of things just because the people around us are doing them. For proof, look no further than some historical examples—from the 17th-century tulip bulb craze in Holland to doomsday cults and prepper movements in the lead-up to Y2K. Buying fads such as pet rocks, fidget spinners, Beanie Babies, and NFTs all show how easily prevailing thoughts influence individual behavior. The science behind this is well understood. The evolutionary drive to fit in with our peers is very strong. When a group of people’s purchases are plotted as a histogram, we always see the...
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Gen AI Activation in Marketing & Sales
Funnel Reboot podcast
Most of the leading AI companies tell us how wonderful their technology will make our lives. In a recent post put out by OpenAI’s head, Sam Altman called The Gentle Singularity, he says “We will figure out new things to do and new things to want...Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we’ll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other.” Of course, these new things need to be marketed and sold. Sam has good news there too, saying: “Generally speaking, the ability for one person to get much more...
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From Armageddon to GA4 Alignment, with Neil Shapiro
Funnel Reboot podcast
Since July 1st, 2023, the world of web analytics has undergone a seismic shift—and if you're still reeling from the transition to Google Analytics 4, you're not alone. In this episode, we unpack what many are calling the 'Armageddon' of digital measurement. You'll hear why GA4 isn’t just a new version of an old tool, but a completely different ecosystem In human years, GA4 is still a toddler. But it is growing rapidly and some are giving it a chance to mature. Many marketers took their licks in the forced transitioning to GA4 and there are still some raw emotions about how this...
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Deeper Clarity - Better Results, with Nilufer Erdebil
Funnel Reboot podcast
Episode 209 When it comes to initiatives humans undertake, we only need to look at a few to see how they can fail spectacularly. One example: The iconic came from a competition won by a young Danish Architect. The board who’d commissioned him to build it was told it would be completed by 1963, but things were so chaotic and so behind schedule, he had to be fired. It is truly a marvel of design, but it’s a posterchild for poor projects because it didn’t open until 1973. Another example: Out of a desire to research high-energy particles and potentially solve the...
info_outlineHere’s a question a lot of us are asking ourselves today. How do marketers build genuine, durable trust when the cost of generating massive volumes of AI content is basically zero? How can you argue for making humanly-crafted content in small quantities When it’s so easy to have AI pump it out in big quantities?
The hard truth is that humans are wired to notice what other humans do. Meaningful communication with buyers contains elements that just don't scale - this takes more than a trivial amount of work. But that is precisely why you need to do them.
A new book came out in 2025, called Human Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI. Even though Gen AI that’s all around looks set to marginalize content marketing, this book predicts that AI’s knock-on effects will bring old retro practices back into vogue. If Wired Magazine were to meme it using their Wired/Tired/Expired phrasing, it might say that
Humans Interacting with no machines = Expired
Machines Monopolizing Interactions = Tired
Human-Human interaction via Machine = Wired
The book also argues that marketing & communications folks have to make different types of content for segments of the buyer journey, all held to different goals and different time horizons. Don’t dump random content on social channels. Like instruments in a score, your pieces need to work together—not add noise.
It also said being Human-Centered extends to where and how we use our messages. Our leaders have to go to trade shows, make podcasts, meet people, and have real conversations. Trust grows when customers feel seen and heard.
The author of the book is by day, a speaker and is currently Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Canva. By night, she’s a Singer, actor, and fitness fiend. Let’s go to Northern California to talk with Ashley Faus.
Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.