INDUSTRY EVENTS | 20th – 21st MAY 2026
B2B Marketing Leaders Forum Recap & Takeaways
Almost a month on from the B2B Marketing Leaders Forum, I’ve (finally) had a chance to digest the huge amount of excellent content and synthesise my key takeaways, especially in relation to martech and marketing automation.
Before I get into the details – I’d like to thank Emma Roborgh and her team for putting together an excellent and interesting conference again this year.
It is definitely one of the best B2B events in the Sydney calendar. I felt that splitting the two-day itinerary into an AI-focused second day worked pretty well, and created some much-needed air space for non-AI topics on the agenda.
Published: 17 June 2026 | Adrian Jones
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Growth marketing
Thomas Barta launched us into the first day, urging marketing leaders to look beyond excellence in execution to becoming growth rebels – boldly delivering new ideas and initiatives.
Not just rallying teams, but igniting them. Solving bigger problems than your brand or performance marketing. He cited the Boston Consulting Group, saying that whilst AI is up to 40% better at execution than humans, it’s 23% worse at strategy, and 41% worse at creativity.
Dentsu B2B’s session focused on how to drive impact by leveraging B2B growth levers. With customer expectations rising, their research suggests that despite rapidly changing tech, our performance is lagging, with more customers saying we don’t “know them” in 2025 (77%) than we did in 2021 (66%).
Demand AI compared AI to “a brilliant intern” – and reminded us that we need to go back to first principles of ensuring that we are clear on content purpose:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- What is useful to our prospects/customers?
- What can we offer our customers that they cannot get anywhere else?
- What is working, creating better outcomes?
Just because we can easily produce more with AI, does not mean that we should. They cited Mark Cuban’s Milli Vanilli effect in mind – “Within the next 3 years, there will be so much AI, in particular AI video, people won’t know if what they see or hear is real. Which will lead to an explosion of face-to-face engagement, events and jobs”.
There is a good chance that the more artificial our world becomes, the more valuable real human interaction will become, and the challenge will then be how to scale this.
Pipeline 360’s session focused on keeping mid-funnel opportunities moving.
Growth-first models involve measuring flow by shifting focus from simple campaigns to understanding the specific context of an opportunity to determine its next needs, moving from tracking individual leads to analysing how engagement spreads across buying groups, and transitioning from monitoring generic activity to identifying clear signs of progression.
Current and future impacts of AI
The B2B marketing landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift from traditional production-line mentalities to sophisticated decision engines. As Jeremy Cooper from Databricks highlighted, the pace of production is accelerating rapidly, meaning the core value of marketing teams is shifting away from just scaling activity (e.g., more content, more leads, and more pipeline) toward the quality and velocity of decisions.
His recommended approach is to develop a decision engine that focuses on who has the context to decide, how to capture what has been learned, and how to make the next initiative better than the last.
This transformation is driven by the realisation that automation is taking over the repeatable workflows of the traditional production line. Leaders who win in this era will run their teams based on their ability to navigate complex scenarios where they may not have all the data, utilising directional findings to justify spend decisions and navigate the market.
For modern B2B marketers, the directive is clear: scale judgment, not execution. As AI compresses workflows, the efficient size of a marketing team may shrink, but the impact of each individual grows exponentially.
The challenge is no longer about adding headcount to deliver value, but about empowering teams to swarm quickly around opportunities using a rich understanding of human, agent, and vendor skills.
Judgment becomes the ultimate differentiator when technology moves faster than the market’s understanding. This involves moving from curation to control and evolving agency management to incentivise outcomes rather than just output.
Humans are becoming the “last resort” for execution, with a heavy focus on automating consistent, repeatable workflows so marketers can focus on high-level strategy and authentic connections.
The final pillar of this new era is the construction of integrated growth and retention engines. Most B2B engines are built to win the first deal, but true sustainable growth is exponentially impacted by customer success, product, and sales layers working in unison.
As noted by Thomson Reuters leaders, proving value within the first 90 days is critical; otherwise, there is a significant negative impact on retention.
In closing
Marketing must now turn commerce into meaning by being explicit about the value brought to clients. This means aligning KPIs with commercial outcomes—like revenue, margin expansion, and EBITDA contribution.
By building “Agentic Martech Stacks,” teams can handle everything from programmatic ABM scaling to lifelike outbound execution, ensuring that brand discoverability and commercial authority are maintained in an AI-first world.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is the main takeaway from the B2B Leaders Forum?
A. We’re moving from production-line mentalities to sophisticated decision engines. The priority is shifting from scaling activity to the velocity and quality of your decisions. Focus on empowering your team to swarm around opportunities, rather than simply delivering more volume.
Q. How can leaders become ‘growth rebels’?
A. It’s about igniting your team to deliver new ideas, not just rallying them for execution. Growth rebels solve the big problems, using human creativity and strategic thinking. AI is brilliant at execution, but strategy and creativity remain uniquely human advantages you should leverage.
Q. Why are customers saying we don’t ‘know them’?
A. Despite better tech, customers feel less understood now than in 2021. This research suggests a gap between having data and truly using it to build a personal connection. Your challenge is to ensure your strategy keeps pace with these rising expectations.
Q. Should we use AI to produce more content?
A. Treat AI like a brilliant intern and stick to first principles. Ask if your content is useful and unique. Don’t produce more just because you can. As our world becomes more artificial, authentic human interaction is becoming far more valuable.
Q. How do I keep mid-funnel opportunities moving?
A. Stop focusing just on campaigns and start measuring flow. Look at the context of each opportunity, track how engagement spreads across buying groups, and identify clear signs of progression. It’s about understanding the buying journey rather than just counting leads.
Q. What does ‘scale judgement, not execution’ mean?
A. As AI automates the repeatable, your team’s value shifts. Don’t add headcount for execution. Empower your people to swarm around opportunities using a blend of human, agent, and vendor skills. Your impact now stems from the quality of your judgement, not your total output.
