Technologies don’t go mainstream on their own. Someone has to explain them, position them, and make the world want them. That someone is a product marketer — and they rarely get the credit.
Angelia McFarland is joined by Brian Whitaker — founder and CEO of Zettabyte Content, and a 20-year veteran of B2B technology marketing — for a conversation about the role product marketers actually play in technology evolution and why the industry consistently undervalues them.
Brian has led marketing execution for billion-dollar acquisitions, built regional and global alliance strategies, and now runs an Austin-based content marketing consultancy helping B2B technology leaders tell their stories in a world obsessed with data and bored by dull marketing. His philosophy: product marketing works from a place of “disciplined audacity” — staying humble enough to learn from the room, bold enough to push the idea past the committee that wants to make it safe and forgettable.
The conversation covers the ways product marketers are sidelined within the organizations they serve, what it looks like when marketing leadership actually defends big ideas rather than regressing them to the mean, and the specific harm to innovation when the marketing function is treated as an output machine rather than a strategic partner.
If a technology succeeds, engineering gets the credit. Sales gets the commission. And product marketing gets the next brief. This episode is for the PMMs who know exactly what that feels like — and who are deciding what to do about it.
This auntie has more to say.
Find Angelia and her full body of work at eopmedia.com. If you’re ready to turn individual clarity into collective infrastructure, The Agency Collective is the next step. For Season 3 and beyond, check out The Tech Aunties on Spotify.
