Talking Headless returns April 29 with two guests who know analyst relations from both sides of the table. Here is why that conversation matters more than most marketing teams realize.
Talking Headless · Playaz Productions Network · Wednesday, April 29 · Noon ET
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Wednesday, April 29 · Noon ET
Analyst relations — the function that sits between what a company knows and what the market believes — rarely gets the spotlight it earns. Most marketing leaders treat it as a support function for the sales cycle, something to manage during Magic Quadrant season and largely ignore in between. That is a mistake, and one of the reasons I love being the host of the to Talking Headless: to put analyst relations professionals and technology analysts in front of an audience that should care a lot more than it currently does.
The April 29 episode brings together two guests who have spent careers navigating that space from different vantage points. I am grateful to Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary for giving me the opportunity to host this show on the Playaz Productions Network (PPN). What they built with the CRM Playaz, and the broader PPN community, made a show like Talking Headless possible.
Two Guests, Two Different Vantage Points
Executive Marketing & Communications
Mary McCahon
Mary brings more than 20 years of senior marketing and communications leadership to this conversation. She has held executive roles at Verint, AWS, Cardinal Health, and Progressive Insurance. Before any of that, she was an Emmy Award-winning television reporter — which tends to produce sharper instincts about how a story actually lands than most marketing training programs ever will. She was one of the first analyst relations professionals I met, when she was at AWS.
Founder & Principal Analyst
Tim Banting
Tim founded So What, Now What, a firm that helps B2B technology companies build evidence-led narratives that cut through market noise. His framework is in the name: The What, The So What, The Now What. He previously led the digital workplace team at Omdia, held competitive strategy roles at Microsoft and Cisco, and was an analyst at GlobalData. Tim and I met at ZohoDay. He has spent enough time on both sides of the briefing table to know exactly what analysts find useful — and what they tune out.
Analyst relations is not a vendor management function. It is a market-making function. The difference shows up in how a company is positioned years before a deal closes.
Why the AR Community Needs This Conversation
Technology buying at the enterprise level is rarely a clean journey from awareness to decision. Analysts shape how categories get defined, which vendors get shortlisted, and how boards and procurement committees talk about a market. That influence is significant — and the professionals who manage it are chronically underrepresented in marketing conversations.
Most content about B2B marketing focuses on demand generation, content marketing, and brand. Analyst relations tends to get folded into corporate communications or treated as a specialized niche that only large technology companies need to worry about. Neither framing is accurate. The moment a company starts competing for enterprise deals, analyst coverage — or the absence of it — is shaping perception among people who will never read a blog post or attend a webinar.
The Talking Headless mission is direct: increase the visibility of the analyst relations community and the technology analysts who do this work. This episode is built around guests who can speak to what that function requires, what makes it work, and where companies consistently get it wrong.
What to Bring to the Conversation
If you lead marketing at a B2B technology company and you are watching this episode, come with real questions. How do you build an analyst relations program before you can afford a dedicated team? How do you brief an analyst when you do not have the research subscription that gets you formal access? What does the analyst actually look for, and what separates a briefing that moves the needle from one that wastes everyone's time?
Tim has evaluated hundreds of vendor narratives from the analyst chair. Mary has run communications and analyst relations at organizations where the strategic stakes attached to every briefing are enormous. That combination does not show up in a panel discussion very often.
You can catch all previous Talking Headless episodes on the show's YouTube playlist before joining live on the 29th.
What to do differently on Monday
If your company competes for enterprise deals and you do not have a named owner for analyst relations — someone whose primary job is building and managing those relationships, not handling it alongside a dozen other priorities — that gap is costing you coverage and credibility in rooms you are not in.
Before April 29, pull the list of analysts who have written about your category in the last twelve months. Count how many you have briefed. If that number is low, you now have a clear project.
Watch the show on April 29 at noon ET on the Playaz Productions Network. Bring the questions you have been too busy to ask.
Sources
- McCahon, Mary. LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/marymccahon. Accessed April 2026.
- Banting, Tim. LinkedIn profile. Founder and Principal Analyst, So What, Now What. LinkedIn. Accessed April 2026.
- Playaz Productions Network. "About Us." playazproductions.network, playazproductions.network/about-us. Accessed April 2026.
- Talking Headless. Episode archive. YouTube / Playaz Productions Network, youtube.com. Accessed April 2026.