How I’d Use AI to Win If I Were an Adtech CMO: The “You’re Everywhere” Playbook
We need to think bigger about the implications of AI for B2B marketing — and adtech marketing in particular.
Most companies are still running a woefully outdated distribution playbook. They're focused on earned media (a 20th-century strategy) and blogs (a 2000s strategy), while their audience has moved on to first-party channels: social (especially LinkedIn), newsletters, and podcasts.
AI is deeply related to this diagnosis. It lets you ramp up production dramatically — not by scaling mediocre writers, but by scaling your best ones. If you have a great writer on staff, they can now produce a lot more. That should be treated as a core strategic input.
So what does it mean to run the Sharp Pen playbook — building a brand through first-party channels — in the AI era?
The “You’re Everywhere” Playbook
People come up to me at conferences and say, “You’re everywhere.” That’s because I post on LinkedIn and X multiple times a day, write a weekly newsletter, and publish a weekly podcast.
I’m constantly getting in front of adtech CEOs and marketing leaders to share my POV and the Sharp Pen approach.
I could do this before AI. But AI makes me several times more scalable — and it gives you and your best marketers the same capability.
The “You’re everywhere” strategy — not just showing up on first-party channels but dominating them — has been democratized. If you’ve got ideas, you can and should be producing daily content, ideally across multiple channels, to stay top of mind, outcompete on trust, and build real relationships.
This is how you build a brand now. And it doesn’t require huge headcount. You just need a few smart people with ideas, someone with the taste to prompt and edit an LLM, and an AI subscription.
Scaling Your Chief Evangelist
Leveraging AI is not just about productivity. AI also lets you scale the tone and POV of your founder or chief evangelist. You can train an LLM to write like them — even ask what they’d likely say about a given topic — and then scale that voice across the org.
Let’s say a company’s beliefs were:
Direct advertising is the future, and it should be automated.
Publishers should own their data, products, and relationships.
The real competition is the walled gardens.
Automation should elevate people, not replace them.
And its voice was:
Pragmatic
Insightful
Direct but measured
Using those inputs and an LLM, I could generate a virtually infinite amount of content. And that’s what I’d do as a CMO: combine the Sharp Pen playbook with AI productivity to scale my smartest people within clear brand parameters — until my company became omnipresent.
I’d want people saying, “What is in the water over there? I see [insert company] everywhere.” That’s how you dominate share of voice, outcompete on trust, and build relationships — which lead to more pipeline, bigger deals, and shorter sales cycles.
Why the ‘You’re Everywhere’ Playbook Is Elusive
If you’re thinking, “This is awesome, I’m going to do this” — great. But here’s why most companies won’t:
You still need talent. You need people who understand the industry, have provocative ideas, and write well enough to refine what an LLM produces. Many companies already publish a lot of slop — AI just makes that easier. What you want is to scale great thinkers and writers.
Adtech companies are too conservative. Most are more afraid of saying the wrong thing than of saying nothing. But the truth is, no one’s thinking about you as much as you are. Most companies just go unnoticed. So, say more, and be comfortable with the inevitability that some of your posts won’t land.
Change is hard. Most B2B companies still aren’t posting anything meaningful on social — in 2025! Even if they adopt AI, many will use it rarely or badly. And yes, AI means your team should probably be smaller: fewer people, all A-players, getting rewarded more to do significantly more. So, some folks will resist it. But the train has already left the station. The old “a few B-players per team” model is done.
If you’re a CEO or CMO ready to reimagine your marketing org and achieve something bigger, reach out. Let’s build the “You’re everywhere” effect. It’s never been more attainable — and yet so few will attain it.
That’s your opportunity.
