Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a discussion I recently had with Elizabeth Maxson, CMO at Contentful, a digital experience platform trusted by more than 4,200 companies around the world. Elizabeth joins me today to talk about a research report they recently published called When Machines Make Marketers More Human, whether marketers are moving beyond experimentation with AI tools, what sort of pain points/challenges they are facing, the possibility that all of these new tools are creating their own complexity problem and what sort of differences in behaviour and performance they are observing between marketers in EMEA and the US.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why you need the I4JM in your life – Interview with Mark Smith and Ray Gerber – and is number 564 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Elizabeth:

• AI as an Amplifier, Not a Replacement: AI’s role for marketers (and by extension, customer experience professionals) is to amplify human creativity and efficiency, counteracting the fear that AI will replace jobs.
• The Struggle to Move Beyond Experimentation: Many teams are still struggling to move from one-off experimentation with AI tools into deeply embedded production workflows, with pain points centered on speed, efficient execution, and delivering consistent, high-quality content.
• The Optimal Tech Stack Size: While some teams use 30+ AI tools, the most successful teams that are optimizing their existing tech stacks are using a focused 6 to 10 tools, highlighting the need to curb “tech sprawl” and complexity.
• Goal-Focused AI Adoption: To manage tool proliferation and complexity, companies should adopt a goal-focused approach, tracking how tools save time or money on specific use cases and investing only in those that deliver clear, measurable outcomes.
• Customer/Employee Experience as the Starting Point: A critical discipline is to first define the desired customer and employee experience, and then work backward to select the technology/AI tools that best enable that experience.
• The Full Stack Marketer (CX Superheroes): A new generation of “full stack marketers” is required, fluent in AI-enabled workflows, skilled in effective prompting, and capable of navigating diverse technology stacks.
• Prioritizing Human Soft Skills: AI’s limitations—lack of lived experiences, cultural resonance, curiosity, and empathy—make these soft skills critical for human marketers to create memorable and differentiated content, counteracting “AI slop.”
• The ‘Push It’ Philosophy: Focus on content that makes customers feel something (“push it”), rather than just being technically on-message or product-focused (“stick it”), driving human connection and personalization.
• Simple, Non-Creepy Personalization: Personalization does not have to be creepy or overly complex. Marketers can achieve significant impact by starting small—like delivering geo-targeted website messages—to ensure content relevance without being invasive.
• Global Differences in AI Approach: European marketers are pioneering governance and testing AI tools selectively against a defined plan (more purposeful), whereas US teams are more focused on campaign optimization and testing (more experimental). The global “optimism execution gap” remains, with high intent but lagging meaningful investment.
• Elizabeth’s best advice: In this world of AI, you can’t lose sight of authenticity and the ability to connect with customers on a human level. And if you leverage AI to make your marketers more human, you are able to do that.
• Elizabeth’s Punk CX brand: Ruggable

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Maxson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Contentful, a digital experience platform trusted by more than 4,200 companies around the world. Elizabeth brings nearly two decades of integrated marketing leadership to the role and is focused on driving marketing strategies that leverage AI and personalization to help brands deliver personalized and scalable content to their audiences. Prior to Contentful, Elizabeth served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau, a Salesforce company, where she led go-to-market strategy, drove end-to-end marketing initiatives, and spearheaded strategic technology partnerships, launching critical relationships with industry giants such as AWS, Google, Alibaba, Apple, and many others. In addition to her role at Tableau, Elizabeth has also served as the Head of Marketing at Quip, another Salesforce acquisition. She holds a BAA in Facility Management and Marketing from Central Michigan University.

Find out more about Contentful, check out the When Machines Make Marketers More Human report, say hi to them on X (Twitter) and Instagram @contentful and @contentful.inc, respectively and, finally, feel free to connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Photo by Juliya Zemlyana on Unsplash