Humans Over Hype: Phil Gamache on Martech Tools, AI Fatigue & Why People Still Matter

ICYMI: Phil Gamache on the Rise of “Human-First Martech”

“The tools are all interchangeable … but the humans are the ones that are bringing it to life.”

Phil Gamache, founder of The Humans of Martech, joins 10 Minute Martech host Sara Faatz to talk about the reality behind the tech: tools come and go, but the people running them are the true differentiator.

From the explosion of martech apps to the creeping fatigue around anything labelled “AI-powered,” Phil brings a refreshingly grounded perspective. His view? Martech is at a turning point, and the pendulum is swinging back to human-led strategy, judgment and connection.

Whether you’re drowning in tools, navigating AI buzzwords or trying to design a smarter buying process, Phil’s episode gives you both clarity and a path forward.

Phil is equal parts practitioner, observer and storyteller, and he isn’t afraid to say the quiet part out loud: Martech only works if the humans do.

Phil’s Big Idea: Shine a Spotlight on the Underdog Tools

Phil has been quietly building something new a virtual Shark Tank-style showcase for lesser-known martech startups.

Think: real demos, real founders, real feedback … minus the sales scripts.

With 15,000+ martech tools in the wild, he argues that buyers need signal over noise and that honest demos cut through the hype faster than any landing page ever will.

Phil Gamache’s 10 Memorable Moments on 10 Minute Martech

1. The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Tools, It’s People!

Phil’s mantra: So much of martech struggle isn’t about picking tools, it’s about the humans behind them.

Training, documentation, knowledge transfer and culture matter more than yet another feature comparison.

2. The Shark Tank for Martech Has Arrived

Phil’s startup showcase invites founders and marketers to demo their tools live, followed by unfiltered judge Q&A and audience reactions. No scripts. No sales theater. Just clarity.

3. Type form’s Hidden AI Gems

One standout from the showcase: Type form’s Clarify with AI feature, which automatically deepens weak survey answers by asking smart follow-ups. A perfect example of AI improving quality, not just automation.

4. Martech Has a Documentation Problem

Tool stacks grow fast. People leave. Knowledge gets lost.

Phil sees this everywhere and says organizations underestimate how much operational friction stems from lack of training and cross-team context.

5. A Better Way to Buy Martech (Thanks to OpenAI)

Phil shares a brilliant process borrowed from OpenAI’s Keith Jones: Have every stakeholder record both written AND verbal requirements, then synthesize all of it with ChatGPT to reveal the real needs, not just the tidy bullet points.

6. RAG Pipelines = Your New Rabbit Hole

Phil’s advice for people starting in AI: Go toward what scares you, a bit like RAG pipelines, data engineering or ML basics. Let curiosity lead. The rabbit holes deepen your career.

7. The Best AI Learning Resources Aren’t Certifications

Phil recommends Britney Muller’s “AI for Marketers” course on Maven as one of the best practical foundations for non-technical marketers.

8. LinkedIn Is Still the Best Source of Real Martech Knowledge

Ignore the “LinkedIn bros,” Phil says. There are brilliant operators sharing gold if you know who to follow. And many of them have been on his podcast.

9. AI Fatigue Is Real and a Counterculture Is Coming

Phil predicts a shift away from “AI-powered everything” as a differentiator. Soon, companies will emphasize their human touch as the real value.

Want support? Talk to a person. Need help? A real human answers.

10. The Future of Martech Is Human-First

Startups boasting “we got to $100M with two employees and AI agents” may be flashy, but Phil argues sustainable success comes from NOT replacing humans but empowering them.

Phil’s Martech Hot Take

“It’s not a differentiator anymore to say you’re AI-powered. The default assumption is that you are.”

Phil believes the next wave of martech success belongs to companies who:

• Keep humans visible in the experience,
• Don’t hide behind bots, and
• Use AI to enhance, not erase, human connection.

In an era drowning in AI hype, the real differentiator may be … humanity.

Recommended by Phil

Who does Phil follow for sharp thinking?

• Smart operators on LinkedIn
• Martech builders and data leaders
• Guests from The Humans of Martech who go deep on growth, data, measurement and AI

His advice: Let curiosity pick your experts. Follow people who challenge your assumptions.

Listen to the Episode

• Watch the full episode on YouTube

• Subscribe on Spotify

• Listen on Apple Podcasts

Next Up in the 10 Minute Martech ICYMI Series

In the next episode, Matt Bertram, Head of Digital Strategy at EWR Digital, fractional CMO and veteran podcaster, breaks down how the digital landscape is shifting beneath our feet.

Full Transcript: Phil Gamache

Here’s the full transcript to keep you transfixed. Every insight, every quote, unedited and unforgettable.

Sara Faatz: I’m Sara Faatz, and I lead community and awareness at Progress. This is 10 Minute Martech.

Phil Gamache: The tools are all interchangeable, lots of overlap with a lot of the different tools out there. But the humans are the ones that are bringing it to life.

Sara Faatz: That’s Phil Gamache, founder of The Humans of Martech. Let’s get started. Why don’t we talk about what’s keeping you up at night? What is your burning martech idea or topic right now?

Phil Gamache: One thing that I’ve been building kind of on the side a little bit is this idea of spotlighting martech tools that are a bit not super well-known and kind of like behind the scenes and a bit more on like the startup side. And I think that like as a martech buyer, it’s really hard these days to keep tabs on all the new tools that are coming out, even more with AI today. So, I started doing this, like I paired up with a couple of martech experts in the space, advisors and operators, and we’re trying to do like a shark tank theme to it. And so, we’re doing like a virtual event and we’re inviting martech products that we think are really cool that our audience would be interested in learning about that maybe they haven’t heard of before. And then we have the marketer or product marketer or the founder, if they’re a really small company, just like give us a real demo of the product.

Phil Gamache: Then after they’re done presenting, then we have like a bunch of judges, like the sharks kind of like asking further questions and kind of putting them on the spot a little bit, completely unscripted. And then the audience is like live and gets to like ask questions and stuff like that. So, we did our first one in May and it was super fun. Going to try to do another one later, but it’s something on the side of the podcast that I tried to do because it’s so hard today to keep tabs with all the tools that are coming out and you’re spending all this time researching and then you’re filling out a demo form and maybe you’re getting a demo, but it’s from a sales rep who doesn’t understand your world. And so, yeah, I thought that was like a fun one.

Sara Faatz: The State of Martech Report, I think, showed us that there were more than 15,000 pieces of martech right now in the martech landscape. Were there any ones in there that you like that you can talk about that really stood out to you that kind of that you thought, wow, this is evolutionary or even revolutionary?

Phil Gamache: Yeah, there’s a couple of like well-known products that presented like Type form, for example, super well-known, but they pitched some of their like AI features that weren’t as well broadcasted as like their survey kind of tool that they’re known for. But they showed us this like clarify with AI feature. Basically, you as the survey creator build like the skeleton of the questions and the survey. And then based on the user’s answer, sometimes they give you like a generic boring answer. But then you get to let the clarify with AI, like clarify that answer. So, like, oh, what did you mean by you enjoyed that cream? Like, what actually did you enjoy? Like, when did you use that cream? And so as like a user filling that out, you feel like your responses are more validated. It’s not like this is a generic survey, and I’m just kind of filling that out. But yeah, Type form had some really cool things to show.

Sara Faatz: You know, your show is The Humans of Martech. Where do you think the human belongs in martech and in the martech stack?

Phil Gamache: Yeah, the show was created because there’s too much focus on tooling, right? I just talked about like spotlighting martech tools, but the whole premise of the podcast is spotlighting the humans that are behind the tools. Like the tools are all interchangeable, lots of overlap with a lot of the different tools out there, but the humans are the ones that are bringing it to life. They’re the ones in a lot of cases supporting like half a dozen tools or more for a big company supporting sales, supporting marketing. And so I think that like we can spend all the time in the world categorizing different tools into a landscape chart and comparing different features and as valuable as that is for people like in a buying decision, the people that live in those shoes and are like on the job operating, like there’s only so much value in like another tool comparison and another landscape chart.

Phil Gamache: And so, I hear all the time like there’s just like sometimes conflicts like internally politically about why a certain tool was done, why a certain philosophy about architecting the stack was done. And yeah, there’s too much focus on the tools and I feel like you know, the budget for training the people, educating the people, the documentation, transferring that to other humans because like you know, people change jobs too and you need to have like backups in place. And so yeah, I’m basically running the show to humanize martech.

Sara Faatz: Have there been any use cases or recent conversations that you’ve had with people where you say, wow, that’s a… You know that person is doing some pretty incredible things with AI to make their jobs better to have higher job satisfaction, to be more productive. Are you seeing things outside of just, hey we know we can do X, Y or Z with AI. Is there something that you’re like, wow? That’s a story we need to tell the reader?

Phil Gamache: We had Keith Jones from OpenAI, he’s like head of GTM systems there, and he… obviously like we’re trying to figure out what are they dog feeding inside at OpenAI? Like what are they using? When are they using ChatGPT? And one of the best stories that he came up with was on the topic of like how to buy martech. the whole like before you even get to RFP, like figuring out what are the use cases and the problems that people are having so that we can find a solution to kind of fix this. And he’s got a whole system that he’s kind of evolved over time in his career, and he gives credit to a bunch of peers in his space. But he basically has everyone who is part of the buying committee or like going to be an end user or whatever, and he has them write down like all of the must haves and like the key requirements for a certain use case or whatever the whole goal of the RFP is.

Phil Gamache: And then he has them record themselves speaking on video or just audio and adding context to that list of requirements. And when you’re talking out loud, there’s a bunch of extra context that comes out that doesn’t make it on paper when you’re like trying to be a bit more succinct. And so, from that, he takes both like the written version, the audio transcript version, uploads that into ChatGPT with a bunch of other stakeholders. And he’s like; this is this person’s role. This was what they wrote. This is the extra context from the verbal version of this. And then like from all of that, he’s got like a synthesized version of the requirements for buying this tool. And so, it’s just like a quick example there that came to mind. But yeah, cool because it’s kind of like an open AI kind of sharing like how they use the tool internally.

Sara Faatz: If somebody were just kicking off their AI journey right now, what two pieces of advice would you give them?

Phil Gamache: I would say look into things that make them step out of their comfort zone a little bit. There’s a lot of technical verbiage when you start diving into learning about AI. There’s a bunch of certifications you can do, but instead of like the certification route, like I would just go down rabbit holes with terms that make you kind of uncomfortable like RAG pipelines. I went down that rabbit hole recently and uncovered seven different terms and that brought me into a different area. And there’s a lot of YouTube content that’s really good around some of those things. So I would say like, yeah, try to like step out of your little echo chamber and try to find things that bring you out of your comfort zone, not just like technical ability, but like other subjects, whether it’s data or machine learning applications, like there’s a whole world technically and from the data side that when you just live in marketing, you might not have any idea about. So that’s one tip there. But there’s obviously like outside of certification, some really cool courses.

Phil Gamache: One of my favorite guests ever, someone I’ve followed on the show or in marketing for a long time is a woman called Britney Muller. She’s a former SEO scientist at Moz. And now she’s like, went all in on AI and ML, like way before the whole hype cycle happened. And she’s got a really cool course on Maven that’s specifically AI for marketers. And everyone that I’ve chatted with that done that course, and I got to sit down with her for an hour and a half on the podcast. And so, there’s some really good courses out there for folks to kind of like catch up on, make sure they’re going in the right direction. But I think you got to be curious and there’s so many rabbit holes you can go down on.

Sara Faatz: That’s great advice. Well, and I guess that brings me to my last question, and you may have answered it a little already, but who do you follow for inspiration or information?

Phil Gamache: Yeah, I’m a big fan of LinkedIn as much shade as folks throw to LinkedIn and as much as LinkedIn bros there are about hyping AI content and stuff like that. There are a lot of really smart folks on LinkedIn, some cool companies and startups and I had the pleasure of chatting with a bunch of them. So, I would say folks can check out the show, and you can even filter by that category. So, if you’re into growth or you’re into data or you’re into measurement or whatever it is, like we go wide because marketing technology kind of applies to a bunch of different marketing roles. But yeah, you’ll find an episode with someone you like and chances are that person is pretty active on LinkedIn or on Twitter and they’re sharing other stuff and going deeper on the topics that they chatted about on the show. So yeah, who do I follow? Who do I look up to? Like check out the podcast. Those are the folks.

Sara Faatz: One last question. I said one last question before, but one more last question. What is your martech hot take right now?

Phil Gamache: The one I would pick maybe is that I think there’s going to be this counterculture in the next couple of years with AI. So right now, everyone like ran on their websites and their homepages and added AI powered and the new Agentic this and Agentic that. And I think speaking to the fatigue point that we chatted about, a lot of folks are kind of just like rolling their eyes at it and glossing at it. It’s not a differentiating factor to say that you’re AI powered and it’s like the default now. like you should be and it shouldn’t really be part of your messaging. Like we just kind of assume that hopefully you’re doing it. I think there’s going to be a counterculture of people that are showcasing the fact that there are humans behind this tech. There are humans that are involved in the customer journey process. And if you reach out to us, we won’t make you spend 10 minutes chatting with an AI bot and you’ll get sent a bunch of support articles and you won’t actually get any help. We have a team of like dedicated 24-7 people that are humans and will help you.

Phil Gamache: And yeah, we use a bit of AI to make them more efficient, but there’s a human behind the emails that we sent. And there’s a human behind the product that we created and you get to like opt into the AI automated experience or having an actual human to have conversations with. Because yeah, I think there’s an overhype of AI right now is, and it’s valid in a lot of cases, right? Like I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of tools too that you’ve gotten your hands on that you’re excited about. But there is a lot of like the GPT wrappers, the smoke screens, the vaporware. And so I think the culture is like really emphasizing that like, hey, instead of being that startup that’s saying like, we’re getting it to a hundred million with like two employees and we’re making them work like crazy, but we have all these AI agents. the companies that are saying like, hey, we’re doing cool stuff with AI, but like none of this stuff works without the humans. And we have a whole team of humans and we’re not laying off half our team for humans. Like the humans doing that or the companies doing that are going to be supported by humans. 'Cause you know… I don’t know. the humans in the loop thing only goes so far. Like we’re doing this for humans versus just like trying to save money and we’re laying off humans. I don’t know. There’s something to that counterculture idea.

Sara Faatz: Interesting. Yeah. Like you’re the key value proposition is the human in an era of AI. That’s really interesting. Phil, thank you so much. Really enjoyed our conversation today and enjoyed having you on the show.

Phil Gamache: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Sara.

Sara Faatz: Listeners, thanks for tuning in. To never miss an episode, make sure you like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I’m Sara Faatz and this is 10 Minute Martech.