Ron McMurtrie is Commercial and CMO Leader, with 30 years of experience scaling SaaS, industrial tech, payments, and business services businesses.
In this episode, Ron breaks down what it actually takes to lead marketing through transformation, why AI has yet to make a better marketer, and how brands need to rethink their presence on Reddit and Wikipedia to stay visible as LLMs reshape search.
Ron shares the real story behind building VCE into a unicorn, how to align people, process, and technology around the customer, and why most AI transformations fail before they even start. He also makes the case for moving away from campaign-based, activity-driven marketing toward full customer lifecycle thinking.
Whether you are a CMO navigating change, a marketer trying to understand GEO and AI visibility, or a leader building a team for the next five years, this episode is full of hard-won perspective from someone who has done it across industries.
Takeaways:
- Start every transformation with the customer, then align people, process, and technology
- Most AI transformations fail because change management is skipped or done too late
- Wikipedia and Reddit now feed LLMs — treat them like your own website
- Move from activity-based marketing to full customer lifecycle and value-based thinking
- AI improves marketer productivity but has not yet made a better marketer
- Personalization at enterprise scale requires understanding buying groups, not just personas
- CMOs who treat AI as a tech problem rather than a workforce transformation will fall behind
- The answers are in the room, peer community is an underrated leadership accelerator