Rethinking Brand, Multi-Touch Attribution, and Marketing Careers in the AI Era

AI is changing how CMOs build teams — Kelly no longer backfills roles one-for-one, instead asking whether an agent can automate the manual work, then reallocating headcount toward strategy, prompting, editing, or customer journey ownership

BDRs are not dead — at 6sense, BDRs drive 64% of pipeline, but the model is different: AI handles research, follow-up, scheduling, and lower-segment volume, while humans focus on relationships and enterprise selling

Brand is becoming more important in an AI-led buying journey, as more buyers start research in LLMs and build shortlists before talking to sales

Kelly is skeptical of relying only on booth scans — at major events, 6sense looks at the full event ecosystem: booth, ancillary meetings, VIP dinners, practitioner events, and hosted experiences

Multi-touch attribution as relative attribution helps Kelly understand which channels contribute across the full journey, especially for enterprise deals with six-to-nine-month sales cycles

Kelly is shifting more attention toward the 95% of the ICP not yet in market — owned content, research, press releases, communities, podcasts, and keynotes shape what buyers and LLMs remember

AI can execute fast but can also be confidently wrong — if the message, positioning, or strategy going in is unclear, AI will scale that confusion faster, making strategy and clarity more valuable