The Newish Rules of B2B Marketing and Newsjacking Dolly Episode

This week, former Forrester Research Director Jeff Clark is back in the studio and joins our host Ian Truscott to discuss a research project from the B2B CMO Project called The New Rules of B2B Marketing in 2026 - How the Best B2B CMOs Are Rewriting the Role.

The B2B CMO Project, is a research and community initiative founded by Jon Miller (best known as the co-founder of Marketo) and Sydney Sloan (former CMO of Salesloft and G2) and the report is based on interviews with more than 50 B2B CMOs at companies including Zoom, Salesforce, Nutanix, Snowflake, PagerDuty, and Sprout Social.

Jeff and Ian give it their 5 f’in’ things treatment, pulling their favorite points from the research, including:

1. The credibility gap for marketing leaders

2. AI as a new capability beyond GEO

3. Prove marketing’s value in the language of the board

4. Invest in brand as a strategic asset 

5. Building a marketing team for the next decade.

Then, Ian moves to our virtual bar, The Rose and Rockstar, and joins Robert Rose, Chief Trouble Maker at Seventh Bear. They share their horror at an AdAge article that newsjacked Dolly Parton's passing with a very poor piece about what we marketers can learn from her. 

So Ian asks: if this is bad newsjacking, what is good newsjacking, and is it still an effective tool for content creators and marketers?

Enjoy!

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The Links

The people:

• Ian Truscott on LinkedIn 

• Jeff Clark on LinkedIn

• Robert Rose on LinkedIn

Mentioned this week:

• The B2B CMO Imperative: 2026 Marketing Leadership Report

• The Beat Newsletter: Times Like These

• What Dolly Parton’s career can teach marketers about staying relevant (requires subscription)

• Robert’s latest Lens newsletter: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

• Robert discussing the Dolly Parton article on This Old Marketing

Rockstar CMO:

• The Beat Newsletter that we send every Monday

• Rockstar CMO on the web and LinkedIn

• Previous episodes and all the show notes: Rockstar CMO FM.

Track List:

• We’ll be right back by Stienski & Mass Media on YouTube

• Piano Music is by Johnny Easton, shared under a Creative Commons license

• Foo Fighters - Times Like These (Official HD Video)

You can listen to this on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Spotify.

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