Why AI Can't Fix Marketing Without a Data Foundation

In this episode of Marketing In The Now, host David Reske sits down with Marie Bahl, CMO of Uptempo and a three-decade veteran of enterprise software marketing, for a thought-provoking conversation about why AI alone won't solve marketing's biggest problem. Marie argues that before marketers can truly harness the power of AI, they need something the industry has long been denied: a unified data backbone that ties every campaign, dollar spent, and marketing effort back to measurable ROI. Drawing on her experience across energy, healthcare, education, and AI, she makes a compelling case for why marketers must stop accepting fragmented tech stacks, take ownership of their complexity, and demand the infrastructure that every other business function has had for decades.