How Cloudflare Is Reframing Technical Depth for Growth
An analysis of the executive conversation and our research, surfacing the priorities and opportunity lanes agencies can leverage to win new business. At a Glance Interviewee: Jeff Samuels, Chief Marketing Officer Company: Cloudflare Estimated Revenue: $2.17 billion Location: San Francisco, California Website: cloudflare.com Industry: Connectivity cloud, cybersecurity, networking, and developer infrastructure Company Notes: Public company with 332,000+ paying customers and … Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
Pindrop’s Partner-Heavy GTM Signals New Co-Marketing Demand
An analysis of the executive conversation and our research, surfacing the priorities and opportunity lanes agencies can leverage to win new business. At a Glance Interviewee: Adriana Gil Miner, Chief Marketing Officer Company: Pindrop Estimated Revenue: $100M+ ARR Location: Atlanta, GA Website: www.pindrop.com Industry: Digital communications security for fraud, deepfakes, and authentication Company Notes: Enterprise platform positioned as a real-time defense layer across … Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
Ethan Chernofsky and the Value of Staying Uncomfortable
Executive: Ethan Chernofsky, Chief Marketing Officer Company: Placer.ai Industry: Location analytics Company Snapshot: Placer.ai helps brands, retailers, real estate players, and investors understand what is happening in the physical world through location analytics. Format: CMO Journeys Interview Why It Matters Ethan Chernofsky did not build his career in a straight line. His path moved through agency work, public relations, strategy, and then into in-house leadership, where the stakes got bigger and the learning got sharper. That makes his story worth studying because it shows how a marketer can grow by chasing discomfort instead of avoiding it. It also makes his perspective useful for agencies. He has been on both sides of the table. He has pitched. He has been pitched. He knows what feels thoughtful, what feels forgettable, and what makes someone worth calling when the timing changes. Their Path, in Short Chernofsky describes himself as a regular kid from Pennsylvania. He played baseball, did well in school, and grew up with parents who made sure he stayed on track. But what stayed with him most was a fascination with people dynamics. He became interested in how people make decisions and what shapes behavior, which later became a core part of how he thought about marketing. He left home young, spent time in different places, and eventually built his career in Tel Aviv’s tech ecosystem. Once he got into that world, he says, one opportunity kept leading to another. He started on the agency side in public relations, working with companies including Wix, Lightrix, and Lemonade. That work gave him a rare vantage point. He got close to many companies at once and learned by watching how different leaders thought. He could see what strong storytelling looked like, what smart positioning sounded like, and how different businesses approached growth. But over time, he wanted something more. He did not just want to advise from the outside. He wanted to own the work more fully. The move in-house felt intimidating. He says that plainly. It was not just a new title. It was a new way of operating. Agency life had taught him pace and range. In-house life demanded depth, patience, and a willingness to listen. At Similarweb, he says, he had to learn from people who were already doing the work at a high level. Sometimes that meant talking less and absorbing more. That mindset stayed with him. Across each step, he seems to have been drawn less by comfort and more by the chance to stretch. He does not frame growth as a smooth climb. He frames it as entering rooms before you feel fully ready, then learning fast once you are inside. Big Themes From the Conversation One of the clearest themes in the conversation was his relationship with discomfort. Chernofsky says the fear never really goes away, and he does not think it should. To him, that tension is part of growth. If you feel completely settled all the time, you may not be pushing yourself enough. He had a striking take on imposter syndrome. He said he does not see it as a syndrome at all. He sees it as real. Every new challenge asks you to do something before you feel fully qualified to do it. In his mind, that is not a warning sign. It is the cost of getting better. Another theme was curiosity without ego. He says you can learn from everybody, both the people you admire and the people you do not naturally connect with. Some people teach by example. Others teach by showing you what not to do. Either way, he believes there is value in paying attention. He is also wary of simple labels. His view of the “full stack marketer” idea is direct: most people are not great at everything. They are strong in some areas, weaker in others, and always still learning. The important part is being honest about that. Know your strengths. Know your gaps. Keep moving anyway. Running through all of it is a sense of fascination. He talks about being energized by things he does not fully know yet. That may be one of the best clues to how he operates. He does not lead with certainty for the sake of appearances. He leads with curiosity, enthusiasm, and a willingness to test ideas in public. Watch CMO Journeys Interview How They Choose the Right Agency Partners When I asked how he thinks about outside partners, his answer was balanced. His natural instinct leans internal. He likes having people close to the brand, living it every day. But he also sees the value of agencies when the match is right. The way he explains it is simple. Internal people bring depth. Agencies bring range. One person may know the business inside and out. An agency can bring multiple perspectives, more category exposure, and lessons from other companies and markets. So the question is not whether one model is better than the other. It is where the value shows up for the work that needs to be done. He used PR as a strong example. Placer.ai has worked with an external agency for years, and he pointed to the benefits clearly. The agency brings a broader market view and experience across multiple interests. But he also pushed back on the idea that bigger always means better. In that case, they did not want the largest shop. They wanted the right one. That idea shaped how he evaluates agencies more broadly. He thinks too many companies ask who did great work for someone else and treat that as enough. He believes the better question is whose model fits what you actually need. Sometimes that is a boutique agency. Sometimes it is a much bigger team. Size does not prove fit. Alignment does. He was just as clear about what gets his attention. Multi-channel outreach can work, he said, but only if the message is strong. Generic outreach does not land. Volume
How Adriana Gil Miner Leads Through Discomfort and Change
Executive: Adriana Gil Miner, Chief Marketing OfficerCompany: PindropIndustry: Digital communications security (fraud, deepfakes, authentication)Company Snapshot: Enterprise platform helping detect deepfakes, prevent fraud, and restore trust across contact centers and virtual meetingsFormat: CMO Journeys Interview Why It Matters Adriana Gil Miner is the kind of marketer who runs toward uncertainty. She’s Chief Marketing Officer at Pindrop, working on a trust problem: when voice and video can be faked, how do people know what’s real? Her story is worth studying because she blends the discipline of data-driven marketing with the power of storytelling. For agencies, she offers a practical view from both sides of the table. Their Path, in Short Gil Miner breaks her career into chapters. The first was early digital marketing, when e-commerce was maturing and measurement was still catching up. At Digitas, she worked with American Express and took over an affiliate program that became the company’s number one acquisition channel. That work also pulled her into product problems — moving communications from old systems into digital. The second chapter was a pivot into brand and storytelling. As user-generated content began to reshape how information spread, she moved to Weber Shandwick and learned what she calls the “incredible power of storytelling.” One client she supported during that period was Tableau. Later, she joined the company and focused on brand building and community — work that also tied into Tableau’s data storytelling and data journalism efforts. Her current chapter merges those worlds: the science of technology and the human craft of narrative, applied in high-growth environments where change is constant. Watch CMO Journeys Interview Big Themes From the Conversation She treats discomfort as proof of growth. Every leap, she says, makes her uncomfortable, and if she isn’t uncomfortable, she isn’t growing. So she builds a career (and a team) around learning fast. She also lives by advice from former Tableau CMO Elisa Fink: “people are the plan.” To Adriana Gil Miner, marketing isn’t a set of tactics. It’s what capable people can build together, especially when the tools and the market keep moving. Pindrop’s Story Pindrop’s work starts with a hard truth: it’s getting harder to trust what you hear and see. Gil Miner says deepfakes aren’t just celebrity headlines. It can take seconds of someone’s voice to generate a convincing fake, and video is getting harder to verify, too. When voice and video can be copied, the usual identity checks stop working. Fraudsters impersonate customers and call retailers to push through refunds — “$20, $30 at a time” — then scale it with bots. It’s not a niche problem: Pindrop’s 2025 Voice Intelligence and Security Report notes retail fraud surged +107% from 2023 to 2024 (reaching 0.79% of calls as confirmed fraud), and the team forecasts it could climb to 1 in every 56 calls. Or they impersonate a family member and drain bank accounts — another channel where phone-based attacks keep rising, with fraud at U.S. banks occurring in 1 out of every 650 calls and up +61% cumulatively since 2020. That pattern is why Pindrop’s work has started showing up in public-facing moments, not just behind-the-scenes security stacks. In this Al Jazeera segment, CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan breaks down how quickly deepfakes are getting cheaper and more convincing — and why humans are already bad at spotting them. It’s a useful lens on the same trust problem Gil Miner is focused on: when a fake voice can trigger real-world outcomes (from stolen refunds to election misdirection), the “verify first” mindset stops being a nice-to-have and becomes table stakes. How They Choose the Right Agency Partners When she stepped into the CMO role, she says the priority was to “get the message out about the problem.” This is white space — there aren’t “deepfake budgets,” and buyers don’t always have language for what they’re facing. So her job is to “sell the problem” first, because the public needs to understand that “you and I are at risk.” Of course, awareness isn’t the only scoreboard. Leaders still want pipeline, and they still ask for predictability. Her answer is a three-part go-to-market “stool.” One leg is awareness. She talks about showing up inside communities and social channels, plus channels like podcasts and out-of-home that build word of mouth. The second leg is direct pipeline: a strong ABM program that blends outbound SDR work with LinkedIn and digital performance. She adds a line that feels like her whole philosophy: digital is “more like a cat.” When someone is interested, you can catch it. To create momentum, she leans into events because events put “people in front of people.” The third leg is partners. Pindrop is “very partner-heavy,” she says, embedded in platforms like Zoom, Webex, and Microsoft Teams. For her, partners aren’t a checkbox. They expand distribution and selling routes, and she describes increased investment in marketing and selling with them. That operating model shapes how she works with agencies. Internally, her team is lean — about 20 people — organized into brand and community (plus customer marketing), product marketing, and a demand-gen engine that includes integrated campaigns, martech, and events. She’s also restructuring for an AI world, with an initiative to “democratize creative,” where everyone in marketing is expected to be their own writer and designer, supported by tools and training. Externally, she uses agencies, consultants, and fractional talent. She says an outside view helps organizations move faster. But she’s clear about where agency value is going. AI can replace a lot of production, she says. Execution isn’t the differentiator. The differentiator is strategy, clear goals, and the ability to guide transformation — helping teams adapt when old habits break, and when messy realities like legacy data get in the way. So what makes an agency stand out? Understanding. She says her inbox is packed with outreach, and most of it sounds the same. The agencies that win “deeply understand you.” They do real research, bring intelligence, and teach her something. What falls