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

Amy Cook is the Co-Founder & CMO of Fullcast, the Go-to-Market Cloud built for RevOps leaders by RevOps leaders. Over Amy’s career, she’s led multiple companies through successful acquisitions as a CMO at companies such as Simplus, PathologyWatch, and nClouds. Amy joins Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to discuss why she ditched MQLs for pipeline-first metrics, turned radical transparency with her CRO into a trust-building strategy, and used AI tools to reposition her brand for the AI answer-engine era.

Episode Takeaways

• Get as close to revenue as possible. Marketers should actively pursue ownership of pipeline reporting, customer-facing work, and even partnerships/alliances rather than staying siloed in brand and demand gen. This proximity to revenue is the single biggest lever for earning a strategic seat at the table.
• Treat individual LinkedIn thought leadership as brand infrastructure for AI answer engines. AI answer engines cite individual LinkedIn profiles far more than company brand pages, so CMOs have an "obligation" to become visible thought leaders themselves and to push their C-suite to do the same. Teams should also prioritize presence on YouTube and Reddit, since both are heavily cited by answer engines.
• Treat AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) like the early days of SEO, meaning fast-moving and testable. Google's newly released AEO optimization guidelines (bullet points, short sentences, structured answers) are fundamentally similar to classic SEO/outline writing.

Standout Quote

• “ This is our time as marketers to become like the most valued and most trusted person on the C-suite” - Amy Cook

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyosmondcook/
• Fullcast Website: https://www.fullcast.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

Wendy White is the Chief Marketing and Partner Officer at Daxko, where she leads marketing and partnerships for the platform that's powering the member management and operations engine behind so much of the fitness industry. Wendy has been a CMO for a number of companies and held globe-spanning marketing leadership roles at giants like Microsoft and Intel. Wendy joins Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to discuss how to lead an organizational AI transformation, what it means for a CMO to lead as a business-first executive, and why a new brand measurement matrix is needed for an era where LLMs, not search engines, are where buyers do their research.

Episode Takeaways

• CMOs should position themselves as business executives first, and functional leaders second. Strategic CMOs actively weigh in on customer success strategy, sales org structure, and software procurement, which are all outside the traditional CMO scope. The modern CMO who earns a durable seat at the table does so by demonstrating strategic fluency across the entire business, not just owning the marketing lane.
• Treat AI adoption as a cultural mandate, not just a tooling decision. This means changing job descriptions, updating career ladders to include behavioral AI capabilities, and making it explicit company-wide that AI is not a choice. Leaders who treat AI as optional will fall behind those who structurally embed it into how people are hired, evaluated, and promoted.
• The "follow the sun" model, combined with AI, creates a continuous marketing execution engine. For example, Wendy's team has roughly half of its FTE headcount in India, with AI tools trained on brand guidelines, Gong calls, and campaigns. The result: Wendy wakes up to approval requests, not project kickoffs. This compresses execution timelines dramatically and is replicable for any GTM team willing to invest in AI-enabling offshore talent.
• After years of decline, PR is becoming a top priority again for marketers, specifically because LLMs are trained heavily on authoritative published content. Getting your company cited in industry and trade press is no longer just a brand play; it directly influences how AI systems describe and recommend your product. GTM teams should re-evaluate PR investment through this lens immediately.
• Brand measurement must be rebuilt for the AI era. Wendy introduced a new brand matrix that includes AI-driven sentiment monitoring (Reddit, G2), direct referral traffic as a brand signal, earned media share, and LLM citation share. CMOs should proactively introduce these metrics before the board asks why brand spend isn't measurable.

Standout Quote

• “What a modern CMO needs to do is to be really deeply integrated into the overall market and business strategy of the company. Don't sit back and wait for it to be about like, what's the next trade show?” - Wendy White

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendywwhite/
• Daxko Website: https://www.daxko.com/

Mentioned in this Episode

• Guillaume "𝑮" Cabane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cabane/
• Matt Heinz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/

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