Marketers won't be judged on how well they use AI chat tools, they'll compete with people who can build. That's the shift Dan Slagen saw coming, so Zapier's Chief Marketing and AI Transformation Officer called a code red. Slagen joins Mike Kaput to unpack Zapier's move from AI adoption to AI-native work: the three tiers of builders, the AI-powered marketing brain, "lossless marketing," working in public, and honest talk about AI slop and adoption. Access the show notes and show links here: https://podcast.smarterx.ai/shownotes/231?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast_shownotes Timestamps: 00:00:00 — Intro 00:03:50 — Who Dan Slagen is and why Zapier's marketing story matters 00:06:12 — The February “code red” 00:10:53 — How the team actually adopted AI 00:12:05 — Building Zapier's AI-powered marketing brain and “lossless marketing” 00:15:52 — Bringing in agentic expertise and charting the steps 00:21:25 — The behavioral side: how people interact with the machines 00:23:25 — How the average marketer connects to the central brain 00:26:31 — Impacts and benefits 00:30:30 — Where it got harder or messier than expected 00:32:11 — Dan's advice for leaders who are behind This episode is presented by Google Cloud: Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner. Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/ Subscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@aishowpod Get our weekly newsletter: https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/newsletter Enroll in AI Academy: https://academy.smarterx.ai/ Join us at MAICON: https://www.MAICON.ai Register for a free webinar: https://smarterx.ai/webinars Connect with us Slack community: https://smarterx.ai/community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smarterxai X/Twitter: https://x.com/aishowpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterxai TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@aishowpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marketingAIinstitute