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Building an AI-Driven Marketing Engine for a Small-Cap MedTech Company, VP Marketing
Competing against multi-national giants with a fraction of their resources, our client needed a rare leader who could harness AI to build a fully autonomous demand generation engine and prove they had actually done it before.
THE CHALLENGE
Our client was a small-cap MedTech company with a portfolio of differentiated products in an established market. Competing against multi-national giants, they couldn't match them dollar for dollar from a marketing standpoint. Their answer was to change the game entirely, investing heavily in AI as a commercial driver to build an "always-on demand engine" that would allow a lean team to produce output at a scale otherwise reserved for companies many times their size.
Finding the right leader presented two challenges. Given how nascent AI adoption in business operations still is, we entered this engagement unsure the right talent even existed, initially framing the process as a mapping and research project before evolving it into a more traditional executive search. And once we began speaking with candidates, the work shifted to validation: had they actually integrated AI into the fabric of a marketing organization, or just talked about it?
Beyond AI fluency, our client needed someone scrappy, hands-on, and accustomed to doing more with less. Someone used to large teams and big budgets would not work here.
THE SOLUTION
Because the search began as a research exercise, our first priority was developing a methodology for identifying Marketing executives with legitimate, demonstrable AI implementation experience. We ultimately landed on a highly effective approach specific enough to surface executives who had actually led AI-driven transformations, rather than simply overseen teams that used off-the-shelf tools.
From there, the work of validation began. We spoke with each candidate with a clear objective: understand whether AI was truly integrated into how they operated, and whether they could point to concrete results. Many candidates could speak compellingly about AI in the abstract. Far fewer could describe in specific terms how they had rebuilt a marketing function around it, and what the output looked like before and after.
In parallel, we assessed closely for the cultural and operational profile the role required. We explored how candidates had operated in resource-constrained environments, how hands-on they remained as leaders, and how they thought about building for scale without building a large team. We were looking for a builder, not a manager.
THE RESULT
We shortlisted five candidates, from which two finalists were selected to interview with the Board before a final selection was made.
The search was completed in 63 days, a result our client was thrilled by and our team was proud of, particularly given that we entered the engagement without certainty that the right talent even existed yet.
The impact
In this hire, our client has added a leader with a deep life sciences marketing background and proven experience using AI to exponentially increase marketing output while maintaining, if not improving, quality. Equally important, they are a real doer and a natural fit for the company's culture and operating style.
The new VP is now positioned to do what the client set out to accomplish: rebuild the commercial organization around an AI-first model and give a lean, ambitious company the demand-generation firepower to compete well above its weight class.
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