Category: Show Notes

How Braze Mastered the Art of the Rebrand

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Renaming a company is no small task. It’s even more challenging when your company is fewer than 10 years old. Marissa Aydlett, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Braze, is Drew’s guest for this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. They skillfully unpack the art and science of renaming a company and it’s a conversation you don’t want to miss.

Marissa shares insight into challenges surrounding the renaming process and the subsequent rebranding efforts. There is power behind selecting a name and future direction for your company, and it’s not something that should be tackled haphazardly.

Key differences between historical, in the moment, and predictive data are also covered. Knowing how to capture these types of data and use them to your company’s advantage is one of the biggest pieces of advice Marissa has for listeners.

What You’ll Learn

The essentials behind renaming a company

Braze is a customer engagement platform that allows companies to send out personalized messages across a variety of platforms. Formerly known as Appboy, the company began in 2011 and Marissa’s team started the renaming process when the company was only 6 years old. She knew the company needed to be a leader in predicting how people will communicate and interact with each other in both B2B and B2C environments in the future. Achieving this leader status could only come after a renaming process. Marissa shares the following key insights about renaming a company:

  • Understand that a name could stick with your company forever
  • A name should be symbolic of your company’s goals and values
  • Naming a company is a personal experience – be sure to take into account internal and external opinions
  • Don’t be afraid of seeking third-party advice and support
  • Have a plan for rebranding efforts after the naming process is complete

All of this advice and more great insights can be found on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

The power of choosing a great name and how that name can organically become an eponym

The ultimate dream for marketers is universal awareness – the point in time when your brand becomes synonymous with a noun. Having your brand become a verb is an even better case scenario. Think, “I’ll Venmo you the money!” or “I’ll Google it!” Marissa has found that the company name “Braze” is organically becoming an eponym and that organic discovery process is better than any marketing-driven campaign. Her team members are using variations such as “Brazify it!” and that’s quite an exciting process to watch. There’s power in a great name. It could drive the future direction of your company for years to come. You can’t afford to miss the renaming secrets that Drew and Marissa discuss, so be sure to listen.

Being an innovative company is all about fostering personal connections with each customer

Even though a stellar name is a perfect foundation for a company, the company then has to strive to make personal, individualized connections with every customer. That’s where data comes into play. Marissa describes how Braze encourages its clients to use three types of data: historical, in the moment, and predictive. This combination of data gives a company the best chance at knowing what the customers want, when they want it, and why they’re seeking it. She says it’s all about delivering the right message at the right time to the right person. It’s an explanation that’s best heard from the expert, so be sure to listen to Marissa’s conversation with Drew. You won’t regret it.

Timeline

  • [0:30] Drew introduces his guest for this episode, Marissa Aydlett of Braze
  • [2:56] The major brand transformation from Appboy to Braze
  • [7:56] Understanding the true importance of selecting a new name through dedicated research
  • [10:33] The biggest lessons Marissa’s learned throughout the renaming process
  • [14:27] So the company has a new name – now what?
  • [18:06] The medium was the message at Braze’s live promotion events
  • [21:57] Turning the Braze name into an eponym
  • [24:40] The future of Braze – where are all of the company’s ideas heading?
  • [28:21] Historical data vs. in the moment data vs. predictive data
  • [34:23] The power of first-party data within predictive analytics
  • [36:39] How to look at your marketing programs beyond the next 6 months

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The Keys to Building Brand Trust and a Customer-Centric Business

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Salesforce has built a company that makes the customers a top priority, and it’s a big part of the brand’s success. Focusing on the customers means a marketing strategy centered on having an authentic voice and encouraging interactions that feel personally relevant to the consumer. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Salesforce CMO Simon Mulcahy shares why that trust is so critical, and how companies can put customers first in their business plan.

Additionally, Simon discusses the art and science of marketing, the role artificial intelligence can play, and how GDPR and data security concerns are forcing marketers to get better.

This conversation is sure to inspire, click here to listen!

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What You’ll Learn:

Don’t put a product at the center of your business model

Companies often make the mistake of placing their product at the center of their business model. Simon counters this mindset and explains that in the modern era, it’s much easier to build an amazing product, but much harder to engage the customer in a relevant, honest way. With that in mind, customer-centered thinking has to be everywhere in your business, starting with the CEO. If you keep your focus squarely on the customer, success in other areas of business will follow.

Brand trust takes years to build, but seconds to lose

One of the key points Simon emphasized is that business is all about trust. If your company prioritizes generating trust in the community you’re trying to serve, customers will keep coming back to your brand. Conversely, one major negative interaction can destroy months of rapport with a customer, so you should always be conscious of your tone and how it will be received. A voice that inspires trust in your customers will serve your marketing for years to come.

Marketing isn’t just for the marketing team

Every single touchpoint with the consumer represents the brand. That means that everything from salespeople, to direct communications, to customer service, is marketing, to an extent. Make sure that the brand identity is infused into every element of the company, and that each department is helping deliver a personalized, contextually-relevant experience.

Timeline

  • [1:20] Drew introduces his guest for this episode, Simon Mulcahy, CMO of Salesforce
  • [3:15] Simon’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
  • [13:07] Why the customer is at the center of the Salesforce business model
  • [19:53] The most powerful lesson learned from Salesforce – it’s all about trust
  • [25:26] The importance of having a unified view of your customer
  • [31:10] Simon shares his opinion on the future of customer centric businesses
  • [36:39] How GDPR will impact customer-centric businesses
  • [41:50] Simon’s “two do’s and one don’t” for marketers

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The Art of Storytelling

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Storytelling is an important concept, but it’s often misunderstood. It is absolutely crucial for creating meaningful marketing efforts that stand out, but few B2B marketing leaders are using it to its full potential.

On this special 80th episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew revisits 5 past interviews that highlight key elements of successful storytelling and its use in marketing.

To hear these insights from successful story-driven marketers, click here to listen now!

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Why you need a signature story rooted in emotion – with David Aaker of Prophet

David explains that when trying to convey a message, a CMO has two options: share facts or tell stories. And facts don’t work. B2B storytelling must magnify the problem, offer a solution or accentuate the outcome. This can artfully be done by combining customer testimony with just enough facts to provide a reliable level of reality. However, simply listing data and facts is a record-keeping entry – not a compelling marketing campaign.

How and when to put emotion into your ads – with Manny Rodriguez of UC Health

Manny’s healthcare marketing philosophy goes against the grain: He always strives to connect to the human side of B2B marketing by putting the patient first. He shares how to nurture the emotional component of storytelling to effectively connect with the audience, as well as his 4 top lessons all CMOs should learn.

Brand identity and storytelling need to be strongly united – with Martin Häring of Finastra

One of the biggest challenges any CMO will face is the task of creating a new brand identity without losing the loyalty and enthusiasm of existing customers. It goes far beyond choosing new colors, a new name, and a fancy new logo. From legal issues, to market research, to the process can be daunting. Martin discusses the foundational principles – including storytelling – that helped him get the job done quickly and successfully.

With innovative storytelling, marketing campaigns can resonate with millions – with Rich Kylberg of Arrow Electronics

Arrow’s story-driven marketing campaign reached people around the world. Rich and his team connected with Sam, a former indy car driver who had become a quadriplegic following a crash in 2000. Arrow was given an opportunity to create technology with real human benefits, and to share a story that would engage people and bring about positive change. Some time after being connected, Sam was able to take his family for a Sunday drive again. Rich explained that Arrow wants to share stories that can “drive technology innovation forward and inspire people to dream big because anything is possible.”

How storytelling can be the foundation of a successful rebrand regardless of scale – with Carolyn Feinstein of Dropbox

With over half a billion worldwide users, Dropbox is major player in cloud storage. Despite their success, they wanted a to expand to ensure their continued status as an industry leader and innovator. With a story-driven campaign, Carolyn helped successfully execute the massive rebrand that coincided with a new company mentality.

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Quotes

  • Aaker: “The media world is clutter, today. It’s really hard. Into this context steps story.”
  • Häring: “In marketing, we are all storytellers. We have to create emotions.”
  • Feinstein: “At the end of the day, our role is to understand the people that we’re trying to reach deeply and to know the kind of stories that will resonate most deeply.”
  • Kylberg: “It was a wild success. This initiative totally transformed the company, totally pushed us into the dominant position in our industry.”
  • Rodriguez: “We took the risk of really tasking the patient with telling the story, and the payoff and the benefits have been huge.”

Discover the Funny, Creative Culture Behind the Success at Big Ass Fans

Posted on by Drew Neisser

It’s easy for B2B marketing to skew factual and dry, and it often forgets that on the receiving end of messaging and marketing, there are actual humans with senses of humor and personalities. Alex Reed, Global Marketing Director for Big Ass Fans, knows this well, and has used it to craft funny, innovative B2B marketing and branding that connects with his audience on an emotional level.

In this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Alex and Drew discuss the importance of using humor in marketing, share inventive ways to connect with customers, and examine why being relatable, funny, and approachable is extremely important, even if you’re an industrial-size fan manufacturing company.

 

 

This conversation is loaded with helpful insights into creative marketing, click here to listen now!

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What You’ll Learn

Customer Listening Drove Big Ass Fans to Get Creative

Alex shared a story of how the name went from the lackluster “HVLS Fan Company” to “Big Ass Fans”. There was no big secret to the company’s a-ha moment, they simply listened to customers who would call and ask “are you the guys that sell those big-ass fans?”. It was an early lesson for the company: pay attention to what your customers are saying and adjust to fit what they’re looking for can have massive payoffs. Alex also stresses that, in making these creative decisions, it’s important to run everything by his team; if he’s making a joke, it can’t be too uptight otherwise it won’t be funny, and it can’t be too crass otherwise it’ll be poorly received.

How Big Ass Fans Connects with Customers

Humor and creativity need to be ingrained in the company culture; a funny company name can only take a brand so far. “Big Ass Fans” can get a prospect’s attention, but there’s plenty more hard work that goes into landing a sale. Alex Reed and the marketing team committed to taking traditional outreach efforts and twisting them to deliver messages in a way that sets them apart. Rather than physical mailers, they produced a quarterly magazine that avoids being a catalogue and focuses on human interest pieces related to company employees or industries they service. The company used this to build up the ‘Big Ass Fan Club’ from the subscriptions, and now have a robust infrastructure for maintaining positive relationships with the customer base.

The Primary Goal for All Marketers

In reflecting on the lessons he’s learned as CMO of Big Ass Fans as a brand, Alex’s first piece of advice was that a marketer’s number one job is to stand out. Big Ass Fans delivers humor, and shares their company culture with the world, but Alex notes that there are plenty of ways to connect with your audience emotionally, you just have to find them. For more in-depth discussions surrounding marketing and Big Ass Fans, listen to the full episode.

Timeline 

  • [1:17] Drew ponders the use of humor in B2B marketing and introduces Alex as his guest for this episode
  • [4:00] Why Alex uses humor in his communication strategy
  • [8:08] Big Ass Fan’s innovative way of connecting with their customers
  • [15:20] The Big Ass ways of acquiring customers
  • [20:16] Using traditional media in nontraditional ways to connect with customers
  • [27:36] The role humor plays in acquiring customers and hiring top talent
  • [30:32] Alex shares his best lessons for marketing

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HealthSparq is Redefining Transparency in Healthcare Through Bringing People Together

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Risk is too-often considered a dirty word in healthcare sectors. Transparency in healthcare industries is sadly uncommon. For this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite Drew interviews a courageous thinker in healthcare that’s changing the way people think about risk-taking in healthcare, CMO of HealthSparq Burt Rosen.

Burt’s background in hospitality and education allowed him to see the massive gap in the healthcare industry – it’s wasn’t actually about helping and connecting people. By turning his company upside down and digging into the true goal of HealthSparq, Burt has launched a movement that strives to make healthcare less confusing and more transparent.

This interview will restore your faith in the healthcare system. Learn how an insatiable level of curiosity can make you successful in any industry, as well as how to know when your brand positioning has struck gold. Finally, hear the background story behind Burt’s “What’s the Fix?” conference.

Burt and Drew tackle big issues on this episode and help you unravel the transparency in healthcare issues. Be sure to give it your full attention. Click here to listen now!

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Redefining HealthSparq’s brand story in order to identify their true niche

Burt learned about the importance of connecting with people and caring for them during his careers in education and hospitality. When he joined the HealthSparq team he recognized the need for a massive redefinition of the brand. Rather than talk about the specifics of the tools the company offers, Burt wanted to talk about the impact the tools has on the actual human using them. That’s why HealthSparq’s tagline is now “Helping people make smarter healthcare choices.” No matter how powerful research tools or cost calculators may be, if they’re not helping people feel more comfortable and confident in their own decisions, the tool is not serving the greater brand purpose. Burt’s understanding of person-first business is unparalleled and you’ll enjoy hearing him passionately talk about this idea on this episode.

Transparency in healthcare is key because it’s so personal to people and their families

HealthSparq’s marketing team realized that healthcare should not be impersonal. Everyone has a healthcare story – they should be positive and comforting tales, not riddled with confusion and frustration. Burt believes that the professionals in the industry should be framing every decision in regards to the customer and patient. This underlying belief drives everything HealthSparq creates. HealthSparq knows that people of every age and from every walk of life want the same things. They want to be taken care of, they want good service, and they want transparency. Changing a decades-old industry is not for the faint of heart and to hear how Burt is conquering this task be sure to listen to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

How a simple focus group idea turned the healthcare industry upside down

In every other industry, focus groups and panel questioning is commonplace. In the healthcare sector? Not so much. An idea for a public focus group left long-standing industry professionals baffled. When the first few HealthSparq-sponsored panels drew in massive amounts of feedback and stories it sent shockwaves through the industry. These panels soon morphed into Burt’s passion project, the “What’s the Fix?” conference. This conference, with the second one being held in May 2018, strives to connect actual people to industry leaders. Making people smarter about healthcare and the decisions they make for their families is always a move in the right direction. Burt’s excitement about the conference is contagious and this episode is sure to leave you inspired.

What You’ll Learn

  • [0:30] Drew’s introduction of Burt Rosen, CMO of HealthSparq, and why risk shouldn’t be a dirty word in healthcare
  • [1:40] Why Burt embraces risk in healthcare and what attracted him to the industry
  • [4:08] You can learn the skills necessary for any industry if you understand marketing and have an insatiable curiosity
  • [8:13] Identifying HealthSparq’s true niche through risk-taking rebranding
  • [12:01] Uncovering what people really want out of healthcare through public focus groups
  • [23:19] The importance of investing in face-to-face interactions with actual people
  • [26:24] Storytelling at HealthSparq and why it’s so critical for Burt and his team
  • [30:01] How a low-budget conference became a massive movement in the healthcare industry
  • [34:10] Everything starts with the positioning of the brand
  • [37:38] Burt shares what’s next for HealthSparq and the What’s the Fix? conference

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Top 4 Best Practices for Creating the Best Marketing Organization Structure, Learned from Mindtree’s CMO

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Drew’s conversation with Paul Gottsegen, Executive VP and Chief Marketing/Strategy Officer of Mindtree, will provide new CMOs with a step-by-step playbook for creating the best marketing organization structure possible. Paul provides listeners with 4 best practices to follow for ultimate success in digital, content, and social marketing.

Paul explains that “I’ve learned everything by making every mistake in the book.” Don’t repeat his mistakes, learn from his experiences. Those experiences have allowed him and his team to bring in over 100,000 sales pipeline leads over the past few years. The company’s stock value has quadrupled, and Mindtree has become a globally trusted brand.

Learn from one of the industry’s best experts on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. Click here to listen now!

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#1: Find out what your CEO/Executive Board’s marketing expectations are

A CMO should not spend a single dollar or make a single decision until they determine what goals the company leadership team has for marketing. By having their expectations outlined ahead of time, you’ll save time, energy, and resources. Paul struggled with conveying the true importance of marketing to Mindtree’s executive board, but he summarized it by saying, “Marketing isn’t easy! If it was, everyone would be doing it in amazing ways. You just have to keep pushing good content, having great interactions, and build company credibility.” This mindset needs to be conveyed to company leaders before any of the other best practices can be implemented.

#2: Build the best marketing tech stack infrastructure you can afford

Once marketing expectations and goals are established, a CMO should focus on building the best marketing tech stack possible. Paul explains that marketing professionals should “hire and fire tech stack tools quickly; don’t just sign a longer contract for a better deal!” He goes on to explain that many organizations forget about the staffing needs that come along with every tech stack tool and that every tool should provide quality metrics. Your tech stack should always be evolving and changing to fit the needs of the company.

#3: Focus on building a competitive brand

Clear marketing expectations and having the right infrastructure then allows a CMO to focus on building a competitive, trusted global brand. Paul explains that small marketing organizations shouldn’t immediately focus on going toe-to-toe with brand 10x-20x larger than they are. That growth will come in time. However, every brand does need to focus on telling a better story that explains why YOU can solve a customer’s problem better than anyone else. Marketing can and should be about more than securing contracts. It’s about building a reputable, trusted, expert brand. All of this can be accomplished by following these 4 best practices, fully explained in the audio for this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

#4: Don’t be afraid to partner with experts and empower your team

Even the CMO of Mindtree wasn’t afraid of turning to outside experts when he and his team hit a wall. There are thousands of qualified professional marketers that can provide third-party insights into your organization. Empowering your team to become experts in different areas is also immensely beneficial to a marketing organization’s structure. Specialties are great, employee silos aren’t. Your team should be just that, a team, all focusing on one common goal. This final best practice is best heard from Paul himself, so don’t miss this episode.

What You’ll Learn

  • [1:38] Drew’s guest introduction and why this episode is a playbook for marketing organization structure
  • [4:45] Paul’s biggest challenges as a new CMO and how he learned the best marketing lessons
  • [10:50] Hidden costs to tech stacks that often go overlooked
  • [13:37] How can a small B2B company develop a competitive brand?
  • [17:58] Making Mindtree’s tagline, “Welcome to possible,” become reality
  • [20:26] Paul’s proudest moment of marketing execution at Mindtree
  • [23:57] Utilizing metrics and how to drive more leads to the sales pipeline
  • [30:12] The biggest area of uncharted territory in B2B marketing
  • [34:23] Paul’s 2 do’s and 1 don’t for CMOs

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