Speaking At Fortune 500 Marketing & Sales Corporate Event

When a 170-year-old global company asks you to open their AI summit

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking at Corning’s annual Marketing & Sales Summit, kicking off the day for more than 90 members of their marketing and sales organization.

The focus of the session was simple — but urgent:

How AI is transforming the way marketing and sales teams work, compete, and create.

This wasn’t a conversation about hype, tools, or trends.

It was about operational reality.

Because AI is no longer a future capability — it’s a present expectation.

The real AI opportunity isn’t what most teams think

Most AI conversations inside organizations still focus inward:

• Efficiency
• Automation
• Speed
• Cost reduction
• Scale

Those matter — but they aren’t the biggest shift.

The biggest shift is happening on the buyer side.

As I shared during the session:

The buyer you built your company for no longer exists.

AI-augmented buyers now show up to the first meeting with:

• Competitive comparisons already completed
• Pricing analyzed
• Sentiment synthesized
• Objections prepared
• Vendor shortlists created

Buyers are becoming “Omniscient Buyers” — humans augmented by AI intelligence.

And that changes everything about marketing, sales, and brand strategy.

The invisible buyer journey

One of the most important conversations of the day was about something most teams can’t see.

The buyer journey is becoming invisible.

Discovery, consideration, and evaluation increasingly happen inside AI systems rather than websites, documents, or emails.

That means:

• Fewer clicks
• Less attribution
• Shorter journeys
• Higher buyer intent

Decisions are still being made.

You just don’t see them happening anymore.

This realization tends to shift the conversation in the room very quickly.

Reclaiming “Corrupted Time”

Another theme that resonated strongly with Corning’s team was what we called “Corrupted Time.”

Time lost to:

• Manual asset tagging
• Repetitive content versioning
• Status-meeting preparation
• Manual segmentation analysis
• Re-entering data across systems

AI’s real power isn’t creative genius.

It’s removing administrative friction so humans can focus on strategy and creativity.

When AI removes drudgery, teams regain what I call “mental RAM.”

That’s where breakthrough thinking happens.

AI adoption is a workflow problem, not a technology problem

One of the most important lessons for enterprise teams is this:

AI fails when it’s treated as a tool instead of a teammate.

Organizations don’t struggle because AI isn’t capable.

They struggle because:

• Teams expect “magic button” results
• Governance isn’t clear
• Skills lag behind access
• Workflows don’t evolve

Technology adoption is easy.

Behavior change is the real challenge.

From prompts to production

We also explored what it takes to operationalize AI inside marketing teams.

Not just experimenting — producing.

We walked through:

• Deep prompting frameworks
• AI-assisted content workflows
• Buyer-intelligence driven messaging
• AI-first search strategy (AEO)
• Practical AI applications inside the Adobe ecosystem

The goal wasn’t inspiration.

It was implementation.

Why I love speaking with enterprise teams

What stood out most from the day wasn’t the technology discussion.

It was the mindset.

Large organizations like Corning aren’t asking whether AI matters.

They’re asking:

“How do we actually do this responsibly and effectively?”

That’s the right question.

Because the companies that win in the next decade won’t just use AI tools — they’ll redesign how work happens.

A personal note

Opening Corning’s Marketing & Sales Summit was an honor.

But more importantly, it was another reminder that the AI conversation has shifted from curiosity to capability.

From experimentation to expectation.

And from tools to transformation.

If you’re planning a leadership event or summit

I regularly speak with:

• Enterprise marketing teams
• Sales organizations
• Executive leadership groups
• Product and strategy teams

Topics include:

• AI in marketing and sales
• The AI-augmented buyer
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
• Buyer intelligence and simulation
• AI workflow transformation
• Prompt engineering for teams

If you’re planning an event, workshop, or leadership session, I’d love to be part of it.