Skip to content
MarketScale
‹ Back to IndustriesSoftware & Technology

How to Champion AI in Marketing

In this episode of the Marketing AI SparkCast, Aby Varma, founder of Spark Novus, sits down with guest Jessica Hreha, Head of Marketing AI Strategy and Transformation at Jasper. The conversation delves into Jessica’s inspiring journey from her time at VMware to her leadership role at Jasper, where she fosters AI adoption across enterprises….

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Software & Technology teams put it to work with Executive Thought Leadership.

By Aby Varma · Aby VarmaAiAi in MarketingChampion Ai
Share

Key takeaways

01

In this episode of the Marketing AI SparkCast, Aby Varma, founder of Spark Novus, sits down with guest Jessica Hreha, Head of Marketing AI Strategy and Transformation at Jasper.

02

The conversation delves into Jessica’s inspiring journey from her time at VMware to her leadership role at Jasper, where she fosters AI adoption across enterprises….

Get featured

Want to get featured in MarketScale Software & Technology?

Create a free MarketScale workspace and get your company's expertise featured across our Software & Technology coverage. No credit card, no demo required.

Request an invite

In this episode of the Marketing AI SparkCast, Aby Varma, founder of Spark Novus, sits down with guest Jessica Hreha, Head of Marketing AI Strategy and Transformation at Jasper. The conversation delves into Jessica’s

inspiring journey from her time at VMware to her leadership role at Jasper, where she fosters AI adoption across enterprises. They discuss practical strategies for marketing professionals to become AI evangelists in their organizations, emphasizing the potential

of AI in transforming workflows and driving tangible results.

Topics Covered:

  • Jessica’s AI Journey: From leading the Marketing AI Council at VMware to joining Jasper, Jessica shares how her role has evolved to champion AI in marketing.
  • AI adoption in large organizations: Jessica explains how she drove AI adoption at VMware, including challenges like skepticism, governance, and compliance
  • hurdles.
  • AI impact: They discuss how companies like Morningstar, VMware, adidas and more saw significant cost savings, increase in output, time saving, and productivity boosts through AI integration.
  • Strategies for marketers to evangelize AI in their orgs: Jessica provides a roadmap for marketing professionals to champion AI adoption, including building teams, securing executive sponsorship, and defining use cases.
  • Jasper’s role as a marketing AI tool: They explore Jasper’s capability in scaling content creation and enabling personalized, data-driven campaigns.

Jessica Hreha is the Head of Marketing AI Strategy and Transformation at Jasper, where she helps enterprise clients with AI adoption and marketing innovation. Previously, she led the Marketing AI Council at VMware. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicahreha/

Aby Varma is the founder of Spark Novus, which specializes in driving marketing transformation through AI adoption and AI-infused marketing services. As an experienced marketing executive, Aby helps businesses navigate the complexities of digital transformation with AI-driven strategies. https://www.linkedin.com/in/abyvarma/

Article by MarketScale.

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Software & Technology starts with a company putting its solutions engineers, product teams, and customer engineers on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Buyers ask AI engines who to consider, and published expert answers are what those engines cite.

Get your team featuredSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.

About the author

Aby Varma
Aby VarmaAI-in-Marketing Futurist

Host of The Marketing AI SparkCast. AI Optimist and Futurist. Global B2B Marketing Leader. Aby Varma is a transformative CMO with extensive experience in driving growth and positive business outcomes through innovative B2B marketing strategies, recognized for blending compelling narratives with digital creativity to enhance brand engagement, lead generation, and customer loyalty. Varma excels in fostering cross-functional collaboration between marketing, sales, and product teams, enhancing efficiency and revenue operations. His leadership has been pivotal in guiding high-performing teams and navigating complex, multinational corporate environments, resulting in global market expansion and optimized strategies. As an exceptional executive communicator, Varma effectively influences stakeholders and secures buy-ins for key initiatives, underlined by his adaptability and dedication to positive business results. He has been influential in the Forbes Communications Council since July 2022, sharing insights on marketing and digital. At Hexagon AB, Varma held roles including Senior Vice President of Marketing and Executive Director of Marketing, Go-To-Market & Digital Strategy, showcasing skills in lead generation, sales enablement, and AI. His earlier tenure at Intergraph Corporation as Global Marketing Director, Digital, further highlights his expertise in B2B marketing. Varma's academic credentials include an MBA in Marketing & Management Information Systems from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University and a Masters in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. His extensive background and forward-thinking approach position him as a key figure in the evolving landscape of marketing and AI.

Follow Software & Technology Insights

Get new expert content in your inbox.

Software & Technology: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Software & Technology buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. See how AI describes your company today, and where competitors show up instead.

Free workspace

You just read one Software & Technology expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your solutions engineers, product teams, and customer engineers into the articles, video, and social content Software & Technology buyers are searching for. Create a free workspace and see it with your own people. No credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What you get, free

Your own MarketScale Studio workspace
One video edit a month, on us
AI writing, editing, and publishing tools
In-platform coaching to learn the system

More Software & Technology Insights

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra pitch is to skip integrations and run the software UI itself

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra pitch is to skip integrations and run the software UI itself

OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra on Sept. 3 with a "computer use" capability that lets the model operate existing software UIs directly instead of requiring custom API integrations. The staged rollout through Daybreak, ChatGPT tiers, and AWS shifts the automation bottleneck from building connectors to governing UI-driven sessions, with speed measured in minutes per task as the cost input.

  • 01Astra operates software via pixels, keyboard, and mouse interactions to bypass API integration work on the long tail of internal tools without clean API access
  • 02OpenAI reported Astra at 40 minutes per task (47% faster than GPT-5.6 Sol at 75 minutes), making task time the practical proxy for compute cost modeling and throughput evaluation
  • 03Enterprises must define governance before broad rollout: eligible workflows for UI automation, audit logging systems, identity and secrets handling, and fallback procedures when UIs change or sessions break

Sep 3, 2026

Cloud is set to take 26% of IT budgets, and hiring is shifting toward platforms

Cloud is set to take 26% of IT budgets, and hiring is shifting toward platforms

Foundry’s 2026 Cloud Computing Study, cited by CIO, reports IT leaders expect 26% of IT budgets to go to cloud computing in the next year and that 74% accelerated cloud migrations in the last 12 months. At the same time, CIO’s coverage of Robert Half Technology’s 2026 IT salary report shows AI/ML engineers at a $170,750 median salary and a striking capability gap, with only 7% of leaders saying they have the capabilities to complete prioritized projects and 65% expecting to upskill existing staff. Separate reporting from Nextgov on senior appointments in the Pentagon CIO office, and Government Technology’s account of Illinois’ multi-agency data-sharing MOU, indicate large organizations are staffing for organizational change, governance, and cross-domain data sharing, not just for lift-and-shift migrations. For enterprise operators, the signal is that cloud programs increasingly depend on internal platform engineering, adoption enablement, and finance-aligned governance, because those functions connect migration speed to day-two operations and business results.

  • 01A useful benchmark for 2026 planning: Foundry’s survey puts cloud at 26% of IT budget next year, so showback/FinOps and workload-level chargeback governance can’t stay a side project (per CIO citing Foundry).
  • 02Talent pricing has become an input to architecture decisions. A CIO, citing Robert Half, compared the median pay for AI/ML engineers ($170,750) with systems administrators ($98,000), arguing that platform standardization and self-service guardrails are as much about labor strategy as technology.
  • 03If 65% of leaders expect to upskill to close gaps, the differentiator becomes your internal adoption system, in-app guidance, runbooks, and training telemetry, not the third new tool in the stack (per CIO citing Robert Half; illustrated by Ferring’s Whatfix rollout reported by BankInfoSecurity).

Sep 2, 2026

AI agents are pushing access controls and testing into the data layer

AI agents are pushing access controls and testing into the data layer

Snowflake is warning that dashboard-era access controls do not hold up once AI agents can query and act across datasets, pushing governance closer to the data layer, according to TechTarget’s Computer Weekly. In parallel, TechTarget reported that enterprise AI-agent testing needs to expand beyond pre-deployment checks into continuous monitoring so agents don’t drift beyond prescribed instructions. InformationWeek’s reporting on CISOs at Intuit, Smartsheet and ETS adds the operational risk: unmanaged “AI orphans” and identity sprawl as agent count grows, which shifts near-term workload onto IAM, data governance and platform engineering teams building the guardrails.

  • 01If an AI agent can reach multiple tools, the real control plane becomes the data layer and identity, not the BI dashboard permissions model.
  • 02Agent rollouts that stop at pre-production testing are likely to miss the failure mode operators actually see, post-deploy tool changes that alter what the agent can do.
  • 03“AI orphans” is a practical inventory problem: if teams can’t enumerate agents, they can’t set ownership, secrets rotation, or access reviews on a schedule.

Sep 2, 2026

Explore More Software & Technology Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Software & Technology.

Browse Software & Technology Hub

About the Expert

Aby Varma
Aby Varma

AI-in-Marketing Futurist

Host of The Marketing AI SparkCast. AI Optimist and Futurist. Global B2B Marketing Leader. Aby Varma is a transformative CMO with extensive experience in driving growth and positive business outcomes through innovative B2B marketing strategies, recognized for blending compelling narratives with digital creativity to enhance brand engagement, lead generation, and customer loyalty. Varma excels in fostering cross-functional collaboration between marketing, sales, and product teams, enhancing efficiency and revenue operations. His leadership has been pivotal in guiding high-performing teams and navigating complex, multinational corporate environments, resulting in global market expansion and optimized strategies. As an exceptional executive communicator, Varma effectively influences stakeholders and secures buy-ins for key initiatives, underlined by his adaptability and dedication to positive business results. He has been influential in the Forbes Communications Council since July 2022, sharing insights on marketing and digital. At Hexagon AB, Varma held roles including Senior Vice President of Marketing and Executive Director of Marketing, Go-To-Market & Digital Strategy, showcasing skills in lead generation, sales enablement, and AI. His earlier tenure at Intergraph Corporation as Global Marketing Director, Digital, further highlights his expertise in B2B marketing. Varma's academic credentials include an MBA in Marketing & Management Information Systems from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University and a Masters in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. His extensive background and forward-thinking approach position him as a key figure in the evolving landscape of marketing and AI.

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Software & Technology and beyond.

Book a 15-minute demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512