Hilary Smith — Chief Marketing Officer, Linnworks
Published:
And the more we tried to scale more of it with AI, the further it got from, like, the real human story. And so we ended up having to do it the old-fashioned way and saying, 'We’re gonna sit down and we’re gonna listen to customer calls, and we are gonna interview every seller on our team and find out really what customers are facing every day, so that… we are getting the real lived human experience, not just the AI layer that’s been applied over that real human experience.'
What does Hilary Smith say on The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström?
Hilary Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Linnworks, says: CMO Hilary Smith discusses how visible marketing automation often masks substantial manual labor in inventory, order management, and fulfillment, which can undermine brand promises and profitability. She contrasts brittle, rules-based automation with AI-driven diagnostic tools that surface repetitive manual work, argues for unified operational back-ends to preserve omnichannel consistency and trust, and emphasizes keeping humans in the loop to capture lived customer experience and strategic judgment.
From: The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström
Cite as: Hilary Smith. (2026). On The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström. Retrieved from https://research.agilebrandguide.com/insights/hilary-smith-and-the-more-we-tried-to-scale-more-of-it-with-ai-the-furth