Chris Bontempo is the Chief Marketing Officer of Johnson Controls, a global leader in thermal management, mission-critical building systems, energy efficiency, and decarbonization. Prior to joining Johnson Controls, Chris worked his way up at IBM from an Analyst to become the Chief Marketing Officer, IBM Americas. He’s especially passionate about how AI changes the marketing operating model and how marketing can own market intelligence to shape strategy.

Chris joins Jon Miller to discuss the exact frameworks he uses to win C-suite trust, defend the marketing budget with the CFO, and turn agentic AI into a genuine competitive advantage.

Episode Takeaways

• Marketing must own the "voice of the customer" function, not just demand gen. back into the company, and being an energy supplier to the ecosystem. Representing the voice of the customer back into the business is what earns marketing a seat at the strategic C-suite table.
• CMOs should focus on the real business conversations, it's whether marketing, sales, product, and services collectively drove a revenue outcome. CMOs need enough financial acumen to defend budget in "secured revenue" terms with the CFO, not lead-volume terms.
• Accept a certain amount of chaos as the price of AI experimentation. 100% success means you aren't taking enough risks. If every AI pilot succeeds, they aren't pushing hard enough. Leaders should explicitly normalize this with their teams so people aren't punished or discouraged when early AI pilots fail.
• Shift the unit of work from "the tool" to "the workflow," using agentic frameworks to orchestrate multiple tools. Move away from evaluating individual platforms and instead map full processes and let agents determine which tools to invoke. Pair marketing AI engineering talent directly with field marketers, sellers, and service teams to rapidly prototype these workflows together.

Standout Quote

• “ You have to be able to hang with your CFO in the conversation around secured revenue.” - Chris Bontempo

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-bontempo/
• Johnson Controls Website: https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/

More from The B2B CMO Project

• Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2bcmoproject/
• Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/
• Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/
• More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts