Brendan Farnand, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak, joins the podcast to talk about his marketing career at IBM and Trend Micro and the recurring challenge of turning campaign ideas into executed assets. Farnand argues email remains a highly effective, owned channel, potentially becoming even more important in the AI era, but B2B teams often “settle” for outdated templates due to technical complexity and bottlenecks.
He discusses balancing marketer creativity with brand and regulatory compliance, and balancing brand consistency with conversion on landing pages through cross-team alignment and testing. Farnand says “conversion” and gating practices are still being redefined, making experimentation critical, but testing is hindered by the chaotic “messy middle” between ideation and execution platforms. He cautions against fully agentic marketing that creates undifferentiated “AI slop,” advocating intentional human/AI balance and continuous learning.
- Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
- Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
- Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com
About Knak
Knak is the agentic production layer for enterprise marketing. It’s the system between creative brief and send, where your team and AI build on‑brand campaigns that are more personalized, more tested, and live in days.
About Brendan Farnand
Brendan is the Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak, where he’s on a mission to revolutionize the way marketing teams produce campaigns. A seasoned expert in demand generation, customer experience and all things MOps, Brendan is passionate about empowering marketers with agentic solutions that unleash creativity, speed up execution, and drive real results. With a keen sense of innovation, he empowers brands to develop high-impact campaigns that drive meaningful revenue – without roadblocks.
Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:37 Why Knak Exists
02:33 Email Isn’t Dead
05:57 What Makes Emails Good
09:34 Freedom vs Brand Control
12:17 Landing Pages and Testing
14:42 Gating Content and Conversions
17:09 The Messy Middle Bottleneck
20:08 Can AI Build Everything
24:41 Enterprise Production Reality
27:26 Customer Obsession at Knak
30:04 Future of AI Marketing
34:35 Career Advice for Marketers
35:57 Best Advice Received
36:54 Where to Learn More
37:48 Closing Thanks
Quotes
“Even if you do get ChatGPT to generate you an on-brand, perfectly coded email, good luck — there’s many more steps to go through in an enterprise before you can actually go to market with the campaign.” Brendan Farnand, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak.
“What’s really important for every enterprise organization today is to sit down and have the discussion: where should humans be involved, and where should agents be doing the work?” Brendan Farnand, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak.
“Really listen to your customers, listen to the market, listen to the people around you… before you speak your mind, just listen and learn.” Brendan Farnand, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak.
Follow Brendan:
Brendan Farnand on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanfarnand/
Knak website: https://knak.com/
Knak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/knak-/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We’d also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.
Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
