About this channel
Marketing Against The Grain asks how marketing work changes when AI becomes part of everyday execution. Team structure, measurement, brand growth and speed all feature in its coverage. Rather than…
Marketing Against The Grain asks how marketing work changes when AI becomes part of everyday execution. Team structure, measurement, brand growth and speed all feature in its coverage. Rather than treating AI writing as an isolated task, the channel places it within wider questions about how a marketing operation is organised, what it costs and which human contributions continue to matter.
The material includes tactical explanations, discussions of marketing strategy and a live demonstration of building an AI marketing team. One example works through the idea of training an AI system to write more naturally using a small set of files. Another asks why marketing teams have not become smaller despite the arrival of automation. Together, those topics connect an individual workflow with a larger organisational question: how does a tool change the work people actually do?
Measurement is another recurring concern. Episodes challenge what marketers choose to track and discuss the role of ambitious goals in scaling. A brand sales story supplies a business example, while discussions about the advantage of fast teams put execution alongside creative output. Claims about marketing costs falling and the limits of replacement by AI are treated as subjects for debate, making the channel as interested in strategic choices as in the mechanics of a tool.
Marketers, growth teams and business owners can use the channel to explore where AI fits into their own work. It is especially relevant to those weighing changes to content production, team responsibilities or performance measures. The combination of demonstrations and broader arguments offers a way to compare a proposed workflow with the commercial purpose it is meant to serve, while keeping attention on the decisions that still require human judgment.
Latest episode
We Tested Muse, Instinct & GrokBot Here’s What You Need to Know
*Free guide: how to get AI to recommend your business* https://clickhubspot.com/51m5
Meta's Muse hit 2.5 million downloads in 13 days. Instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation before it…
*Free guide: how to get AI to recommend your business* https://clickhubspot.com/51m5
Meta's Muse hit 2.5 million downloads in 13 days. Instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation before it had a price. These personal AI agents don't just answer questions, they research, compare, negotiate, and buy. And they don't care about your marketing.
Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan break down the new generation of proactive personal agents (Meta's Muse, Grok Bot, Instinct, OpenAI's Dots), show them working live, and explain why they make the last 15 years of marketing playbooks obsolete.
📌 WHAT WE COVER:
→ Muse, Instinct, Grok Bot, Dots: how fast personal agents are growing
→ Chatbots vs personal agents: memory, preferences, and access to your tools
→ The separate-inbox tip for giving agents email access safely
→ Live: building an AI buyer committee in Grok Bot
→ A world without margin: agents that wait for your discount
→ Live: Instinct shortlists software you can buy without talking to sales
→ Kipp's Grok Bot that clips every episode of the show automatically
→ Agents already have credit cards: Stripe Link and agent checkout
→ Why Amazon and Reddit are blocking the agents
→ Live: Muse pulls every marketing leader who liked an Instagram post
→ The three eras of marketing: direct, intent, delegation
→ Why the capture-demand playbook is broken
→ Promises don't matter to agents. Proof does.
→ Hidden pricing gets you ignored
→ Five things to do now
EP 459 Mentions
Loop: Outlearn. Outmarket. Outgrow https://www.hubspot.com/loop-marketing-book
Meta’s Muse https://ai.meta.com/muse
Instinct https://instinct.com
Grok Bot https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot
Claude https://claude.ai
ChatGPT https://chatgpt.com
🎙️ Hosts: Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Personal agents just made your marketing obsolete
01:50 - Muse's launch numbers and Instinct's $10B round
03:00 - Chatbots vs personal agents (plus the inbox tip)
05:00 - Live: the AI buyer committee in Grok Bot
09:10 - A world without margin
10:10 - Instinct demo, then Kipp's Grok Bot that clips every episode
14:50 - Agents already have credit cards
16:30 - Amazon and Reddit are blocking the agents
18:40 - Live result: Grok Bot finds the clip in 10 minutes
20:20 - Muse hack: every marketing leader who liked your post
22:30 - The three eras: direct, intent, delegation
25:30 - The capture-demand playbook is broken
27:30 - Promises don't matter, proof does (and hidden pricing)
31:50 - What to do now
📺 Subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain for weekly episodes on AI, marketing, and growth.
#MetaMuse #AIAgents #PersonalAgents #GrokBot #Instinct #AIMarketing #MarketingStrategy #B2BMarketing #AgenticCommerce #CMO #HubSpot #MarketingAgainstTheGrain
Host Links:
📲Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar
📲Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat
‘Marketing Against The Grain’ is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.
About the Show
Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s CMO and Kieran Flanagan Hubspot's SVP of Marketing, lead you down the rabbit hole of marketing trends, growth tactics and innovation. On the way you’ll pick up undiscovered strategies to give you that slight edge for success. These are not your typical twitter thread regurgitated marketing tactics that everyone is doing. These are new methods, with unfiltered examination of successful fresh ideas.
YouTube Shorts
AI for Productivity: Faster Work, Smarter Results
AI in Marketing, Decoded
AI Marketing Playbooks, Revealed
Insights in Minutes: Sharp, Clear, Actionable
Latest Tech News & Updates, Explained
Marketing Against the Grain
Marketing Against the Grain | HubSpot Media
Marketing Leaders: The Inside Story Unfolded
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