Across a lot of marketing teams, the same headache keeps turning up. People are being pushed towards follower counts, posting frequency, channel debates, and quick-win lead pressure when the bigger problem is weaker fundamentals, reduced senior experience, and too little confidence to push back.

It also builds on Immediate Future’s recent work on practical AI for marketers and social search readiness, where the same pattern keeps surfacing: more tools and more activity do not save time when decision-making is weak.

That matters because the market has got harder, not easier.

Here is the backdrop worth using in the live:

· 74% of CMOs say they are under more scrutiny to prove marketing ROI. The money is watched more closely and every line of spend is being picked over.

· Marketing budgets are flat at 7.7% of company revenue, and 59% of CMOs say they do not have enough budget to execute their strategy.

· In the GTM Confidence Index FY26, only 9% of senior B2B leaders say they are highly confident in achieving their 2026 growth targets. 44% report fragmented stacks and 34% say lack of AI skills is the main barrier to making AI effective.

· In 6sense’s 2025 buyer research, buying groups average 10+ people, journeys take nearly a year, and buyers fill most of their shortlist on day one, then buy from that shortlist 85% to 95% of the time.

· Edelman and LinkedIn found 95% of hidden buyers say compelling thought leadership makes them more open to outreach, and 79% are more likely to champion a vendor during an RFP if that vendor consistently publishes quality thought leadership.

· Forrester says 94% of B2B buyers now use AI in purchasing. In a later 2026 note, it says buyers use AI to research product information (54%) and compare products (55%).

· Metricool’s 2025 study suggests LinkedIn is still a useful attention environment for B2B, with interactions up 122%, clicks up 99%, engagement up 51%, and average impressions up 33% year on year.

Put simply, marketers are under pressure to prove value while buyers are doing more of their homework before sales ever gets near them. That means the old lazy questions are actively unhelpful.

In this episode, Katy Howell, CEO at Immediate Future, sits down with Maxine Ashbrook, Marketing Director UK at Fujitsu, for a senior, no-nonsense conversation about the messy middle of modern B2B marketing.

Today’s buyers are shortlisting without you in the room. Boards want ROI yesterday. And marketing teams are under constant pressure to deliver more with less. So what actually needs to change?

Maxine shares a perspective leaders genuinely need. Instead of trying to outwork the chaos, she reworked the system reshaping team structures, redefining operating rhythms, and changing how marketing shows up internally. The result? Less time lost to friction, rework, and internal politics and more focus on what drives impact.

Social plays a key role in this approach. It acts as the fastest, most visible signal of whether your story, proof, and internal alignment are truly landing. But at its core, this episode is about something bigger: engineering marketing to fit the reality we’re all operating in.

If you’re navigating the pressure of modern B2B and looking for a smarter way forward, this is a conversation worth your time.

Marketing has become a constant stream of interrupts, opinions, and last minute requests.Most teams are doing “work about work” all day, and still being judged on growth.We don’t have time for this is a practical, senior series that calls out the real blockers, the loops, the handovers, the approval theatre, and gives you a cleaner way to run marketing so social stays sharp, trust stays intact, and your team gets time back.You should care because the tools keep changing, the pressure keeps rising, and budgets are not expanding. If the operating model does not get tighter, AI just becomes another thing to manage.This episode with Jack Stanley keeps it principle led, and a clear path that ensures you turnAI into measurable time back.