The Amplifier
A B2B tech marketer of many years, from PR into events, marketing and growth strategy, now leading Europe at Marketbridge and arguing that AI amplifies broken systems rather than fixing them.
"I sort of talk a lot about marketers losing their mojo."
Fiona McKenzie is President, Europe at Marketbridge, a growth consultancy she joined after building and exiting her own B2B tech agency. She is known for arguing that AI is exposing, rather than fixing, the disconnected data and siloed teams inside most go-to-market systems.
McKenzie studied a media degree and was drawn towards marketing through elected options, then started her career in PR after attending the CIPR Graduate Open Day. Her first job carried some recognisable brands on the surface but was deep B2B tech, a field she has worked in ever since. She moved from PR into events and experiential, then into more traditional marketing, and now into growth orientated strategy, a trajectory she describes as a full circle moment.
Before joining Marketbridge, McKenzie ran her own agency, which she took into the larger organisation when, by her account, the wider go-to-market demands of clients had outgrown what a specialist shop could deliver alone. As President, Europe she now advises B2B technology clients on change management, marketing operations and technology strategy, and coaches marketing leaders through the pressures of overloaded remits, tighter CFO scrutiny and the arrival of generative engine optimisation.
You're not really a CMO, are you? You're transformation director. That's your job.
"That's not how our buyer experiences our brand."
McKenzie argues that marketing, PR and events working in silos does not match how a buyer actually meets a brand. The teams pulling ahead, she says, share KPIs and connect their engines from the start. Structure, not just data, decides whether the customer gets a coherent journey.
"How is this activity going to move the buyer towards generating revenue?"
With the CFO scrutinising spend harder than ever, McKenzie insists every marketing activity has to be justified by its effect on the buyer and on commercial goals. She sees measurement and attribution as the evidence marketers need to defend brand investment. Success measures, in her view, cannot sit in isolation from sales and customer experience.
"The ones that aren't afraid to make drastic change, I think they're the ones we'll see winning."
McKenzie contrasts long-standing enterprise brands, weighed down by legacy ways of working, with newer entrants free to build their engines and teams from scratch. The advantage, she argues, goes to those growing fast enough to build it right, or bold enough to overhaul what they have. Comfort with drastic change is the deciding trait.
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