Welcome to the first Friday Note of The Future of PMM — a resource for our team as we look to scale with AI. The site has lots of great resources to help you learn more about AI and how it's transforming our jobs as product marketers.
This week I also sat down with David Yockelson, a Research VP and Gartner Fellow who leads Gartner's product marketing practice. His Defend / Extend / Upend framework is the clearest way I've seen to think about where and how to deploy AI across PMM activities. More on that in future issues.
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—Chris
Gartner Product Marketing Skills Assessment
As Dan mentioned, we've partnered with Gartner to conduct a brief, anonymous skills assessment that benchmarks our function against other technology organizations.
The assessment covers 18 product marketing activities across five core areas:
This is not a performance review or individual evaluation, so please be open with your responses — it will help us calibrate and identify the PMM capability training we need to provide.
📋 Your Privacy Is Protected
- Individual responses are anonymous — we will not see who selected which answers
- Gartner will only know if someone participated, not your individual responses
- Your input directly informs our priorities for capability development, tooling, and enablement
You should have received an email from Gartner yesterday inviting you to complete the Product Marketing Score assessment. Please take the time to complete it if you haven't already.
AI Tools for Product Marketing
What's Coming and How It Will Help You Work Smarter
AI tools are coming to make your job easier. We've put together a practical guide to what we're evaluating, why certain tools made the list, and what to expect when they roll out.
- First drafts taking too long? Content generation tools can help.
- Competitive intel always stale? AI monitoring changes that.
- Research synthesis eating your week? Summarization tools are a game-changer.
ChatGPT / Claude, Perplexity Pro, Notion AI
Jasper, Writer, Klue, Crayon, Canva Magic Studio
Pricing breakdowns, tool-by-tool strengths, and our testing methodology
AI Marketing Market Growth
The Hockey Stick Is Real
AI Tools Survey — First Look
18 responses so far
Here's what we're seeing from the early responses:
External tools you're using:
SAP tools in use:
Biggest time sinks you identified:
- Building decks & presentations — #1 pain point
- Competitor research — manual and slow
- Writing messaging & positioning
What's blocking you:
Top wishlist item:
Training interest:
💡 Interesting: One respondent's top wish was "a chatbot that can learn from SAP-related information and give accurate answers to the field." Sound familiar? That's exactly what Jacob Brass and team built — see User of the Week below.
Full analysis + action plan coming in Issue #2! Haven't taken the survey yet?
Take the Survey →Jacob Brass & Team Build AI Chatbot for PMM
A Proof of Concept That Shows What's Possible
Jacob Brass, a Product Marketing Manager in SAP's Business Data Cloud & Insights team, assembled a cross-functional team of developers and designers to tackle one of PMM's biggest time drains: repetitive field inquiries.
Their proof of concept? An Agentic AI Chatbot that demonstrates how AI could automate responses to SKU questions, solution capability inquiries, and approval workflows.
The Team: Jacob Brass (PMM), Mehdy Shinwari, Tejasvi Kamble, Niclas Steffen, Khoi Bach (Developers), and Emilia Dietrich (UX Designer)
Read the Full Story →What Happened This Week
Matt Shumer's Viral Essay: "Something Big Is Happening"
The HyperWrite CEO's 5,000-word essay comparing AI's current moment to February 2020 is everywhere this week. His thesis: we're in the "this seems overblown" phase of something much bigger than COVID. The piece resonates because Shumer isn't making predictions — he's describing what already happened to AI workers and warning everyone else they're next.
Read it →SAP Joule Studio Goes GA with Agent Builder
SAP's Joule Studio agent builder is now generally available, letting teams build custom AI agents on BTP with support for frameworks like CrewAI and LangGraph. This is the infrastructure layer for Upend-tier transformations.
Read more →Anthropic's Claude Gets Persistent Memory
Claude Pro and Max users can now enable memory that persists across conversations — no more re-explaining your projects, preferences, or context. For PMMs using Claude for ongoing work, this is a significant workflow upgrade.
Learn more →LinkedIn Accelerate: AI-Powered Campaign Manager
LinkedIn's AI features now automatically adjust bidding, placement, and creative delivery to maximize campaign objectives. Another example of Extend-tier automation arriving in B2B marketing.
Explore →Salesforce Agentforce Comes to Marketing Cloud
Agentforce actions are now available in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, helping manage prospects and nurture campaigns from anywhere in Salesforce. Cross-functional GTM orchestration is here.
Read more →