What’s slowing your marketing team down isn’t a lack of creativity, ambition, or AI tools.
It’s the system—or rather, the lack of one.
After decades in global and regional leadership roles at Oracle, Salesforce, Sun Microsystems, and Sage, and now working side-by-side with Executive Committees, CMOs and CROs (Chief Revenue Officers) and Entrepreneurs across Europe, I’ve seen the same story play out again and again:
- The pressure keeps rising.
- The expectations keep piling on.
- And yet—execution stalls.
Why?
Because even high-performing teams fall into six invisible traps that kill momentum, alignment, and credibility.
👉 If you’re a CMO, VP Marketing, or Go-To-Market leader, this post will help you:
- Spot 6 hidden traps killing your team’s momentum
- Discover real-world fixes proven at Oracle, Salesforce, Intercom & more
- Learn how to drive speed, alignment, and credibility using AI + human insight
✅ Whether you’re scaling globally or fighting for internal traction, this post shows how to:
- Deliver faster wins without sacrificing long-term value
- Align your teams without more meetings
- Put AI to work—not just to write, but to decide
🚨 The 6 Traps Sabotaging Your Marketing Impact
1. Hierarchy over Speed
By the time your co-branded campaign clears Marketing, Legal, and Brand… the momentum is gone.
(→ In the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™, we use friction analysis in Step 1 to spot and unblock these bottlenecks fast.)
🧾 Real-world example: At Oracle, we used AI and ABM at scale to triple marketing-sourced opportunities, double win rates, and reduce campaign cycle time. This was achieved by automating planning and orchestration workflows, enhancing both speed and quality of execution.
2. Silos Between Product, Marketing, and Sales
Your product’s launched. Marketing’s still pitching last quarter’s positioning. Sales hasn’t seen either.
(→ Step 4 of the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™ aligns all go-to-market teams through shared priorities and synchronized messaging.)
🧾 Real-world example: At Salesforce, Account-Based Engagement brought marketing, sales, and product together through shared data and metrics, leading to a 212% increase in unique site visitors and a 15% lift in close rates. Source: BCG, “Moving Beyond ABM to ABE”
3. Artisanal Activation
Content is reinvented every time. No system, no compound gains.
(→ We industrialize top-performing content in Step 5: Plan & Produce with precision.)
🧾 Real-world example: Intercom applied Jobs-to-be-Done to unify product and content strategy. This led to a systematized way of producing high-performing messages across onboarding, sales, and support flows. Source: Intercom’s JTBD Playbook
4. No Feedback Loop
You launch, then realize two weeks later that your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) didn’t engage. Too late.
(→ IMPACT’s real-time calibration loop surfaces signals early—before opportunities close.)
🧾 Real-world example: Quicken’s Job-To-Be-Done (JTBD) research revealed that customer churn often stemmed from emotional friction in expense categorization. This insight reshaped onboarding flows and reduced drop-off within the first 30 days. [Source: Bob Moesta case study from Jobs Theory]
5. AI as a Gimmick
You’re using ChatGPT for faster emails… not for deeper insight or alignment.
(→ AI is baked into every IMPACT stage, from customer insight to strategy to orchestration.)
🧾 Real-world example: At Oracle, we used AI to prioritize leads and orchestrate ABM workflows, resulting in a 3x increase in opportunities, a 2x boost in win rate, and a 2.2x increase in average deal size, while significantly enhancing alignment between sales and marketing.
6. Strategy Without Traction
Big announcement. New positioning. Yet no one adopts it.
(→ In Step 6, we embed strategic shifts into team rituals, behaviors, and tooling.)
🧾 Real-world example: Google and LinkedIn famously adopted OKRs to scale company-wide alignment. This enabled strategy to move from slideware to daily action, with measurable traction across functions. Source: Google Re:Work – OKR Guide
🧠 Sound familiar?
These aren’t just minor friction points. They’re symptoms of an operating model built for 2015, not 2025.
And no, adding more tools won’t fix it.
🧭 Enter the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™
To lead in this new environment, you need more than inspiration—you need operating power.
That’s why I created the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™: a 6-step method to help CMOs, CROs, Product and Go-To-Market leaders move from misalignment to momentum, from uncertainty to scalable growth.
It’s not another framework. It’s a pragmatic, AI-powered system, forged inside some of the most demanding environments—Oracle, Salesforce, Sun Microsystems, Sage—and refined for today’s cross-functional reality.
Each stage of the playbook is built to solve one question:
- Identify – Where are the frictions, unmet needs, and strategic blind spots?
- Map – What’s the clearest path to value, aligned with real customer motivation?
- Plan – How do we turn this into a cross-functional execution rhythm?
- Act – How do we break silos and synchronize product, marketing, and sales?
- Calibrate – What signals are we getting, and how fast are we adjusting?
- Transform – How do we embed this into culture, not just campaigns?
🔎 Curious how it works?
You can learn more about the methodology here and request a personalized overview if you’d like to explore what it could unlock in your team.
🚀 The Rise of the Centaur CMO
To lead in this new era, CMOs need more than tools—they need transformation at operating system level.
Enter the Centaur CMO.
Part strategist, part technologist, part storyteller—the Centaur CMO combines human creativity with AI precision to deliver at the speed, clarity, and coordination modern business demands.
Mastering the Centaur mindset means embracing five AI-powered roles:
- Smart Fisher™ – Find demand, don’t force it. Detect intent signals and market whitespace. (Step 1: Identify)
- Couture AI™ – Real-time personalization with purpose. (Steps 2 and 4: Map + Act)
- Pit-Stop AI™ – Compress Go-To-Market cycles from months to days. (Step 3 and 5: Plan + Calibrate)
- ClearGlass AI™ – Build trust with explainable, ethical automation. (Step 4 and 6: Act + Transform)
- Centaur Marketer™ – You, augmented. Operate across all stages, with speed, empathy and data-fueled clarity.
🔥 Want to see it in action?
I’ll be breaking all this down live on stage at VivaTech 2025, during the CMO Game Changer session:
🗓 Tuesday, June 11
📍 Exec Arena – Hall 2, VivaTech Paris
⏰ 20 minutes talk + 10 minutes Q&A
You’ll walk away with:
✅ Escape the 6 traps sabotaging your execution
✅ Visualize your Centaur mindset: the 5 roles every CMO needs now
✅ See the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™ in action—built for real-world speed and traction
✅ Get inspired by real B2B wins from top marketing and Sales teams
🎯 Ready to break through?
🎟️ Spots for follow-up sessions at VivaTech are limited — My Vivatech Profile — DM me on LinkedIn, grab me after the talk, or book a 30-min working session to explore how the IMPACT Transformation Playbook™ can boost your Go-To-Market impact — and your Net Bookings — in weeks, not months.
Emmanuel Obadia & Partners | Transform & Innovate 