Tag: podcast

Transformational B2B Marketing — The Modern Software Factory

Posted on by

When Lauren Flaherty reflects on the changes that have taken place in the software industry since she came on board as CMO of CA Technologies in August 2013, she recognizes that today everyone operates on a sped-up clock. Gone are the days of months-long product development cycles. Technology has enhanced – and disrupted – every single industry, and Flaherty’s was not exempt.

In 2014, when she launched CA’s “Business Rewritten by Software” campaign, companies were beginning to understand the importance of reinventing their business models using software, but the technology was still left in the capable hands of the I.T. department. Today, I.T. is no longer separated from the business, but instead uniquely intertwined with its mission. Flaherty recognized that shift, which structured her team’s latest campaign: “Modern Software Factory.”

[To listen to the podcast now click here.]

During her four years at CA Technologies, Flaherty also learned invaluable lessons on transforming your brand, believing what you preach, and making the product experience real and tangible for customers.

Flaherty explains that every brand transformation has to start from the inside, and that it needs to permeate throughout the entire company. For example, employees should be receiving company-related news from the company, not external sources. When CA underwent its own transformation, Flaherty’s team implemented the changes six months prior to going public with them. She found it important to consult with her sales leads and get their unique perspective about the pain points their customers were experiencing. That helped her evaluate whether the transformation they were implementing was on point and would be well received.

Because CA’s products promised agility, Flaherty found it important to hold the company to the same standards. Rather than operating under drawn-out production cycles, she made sure her team worked in mini-sprints that built on the customer feedback they were receiving. This helped them get the product out to market faster in a way that was always relevant to the customers. During the process, Flaherty found that there was no longer a separation between tech and business – the two were entirely intertwined. The language and medium her department used to talk about their products needed to address both C-suite executives and I.T. teams.

The latest campaign, “Modern Software Factory,” built on the patterns Flaherty’s team observed throughout the last three years. This campaign worked to help people visualize abstract software concepts. They used television (an excellent medium for storytelling) to address the C-suite executives and partnered with CNN during the 2016 presidential election in what Flaherty describes as a “co-creation.” While it appeared to be a media buy, what her team actually did was create a seamless experience between two mediums; CA recognized that people would be consuming election coverage through various types of media, and by creating an app experience for CNN, CA was able to show – not tell – what they could do for brands. And in case you were wondering, the engagement and reach CNN experienced during that period would have taken years to develop without the help of the app!

Inside Story on Marketing the New York Times

Posted on by

The Q&A below is simply the amuse-bouche of one of the most delicious podcasts I’ve recorded to date.  Please note that it was an honor just to get the interview with Meredith Kopit Levien, the Chief Revenue Officer of The New York Times. (Kind of like getting a table at Sylvia’s.)  Meredith is responsible for both marketing and sales AND has been a driving force behind The New York Times digital transformation and their stunningly timely “The Truth is Hard” campaign. For the main course, chomp into this podcast!

Drew: Looking back at the last four years at the New York Times what would you say is the most innovative thing you’ve hatched?

Meredith: I think the most innovative thing we’ve had to do fundamentally change our ad business. We really had to change what business we’re in, or expand the idea of what business we could be in. In the past, marketers have bought audience and adjacency from us. They wanted to reach our audience or or be next to our content because of what that content does for their brand. So much of our work now is also driven by what goes into the space that they buy from us. We launched T-Brand Studio initially to be really effective at making branded content, and it has morphed into a whole enterprise that can serve any need a marketer has around strategizing for making, distributing, or measuring content. We believed and continue to see whitespace in the market here. Who should help a marketer decide what are the stories that are going to engage people best? Surprise or interest people most? Know the right formats to really make people interested? That’s what the New York Times as a brand does for a living every day. So who better than us as an organization and a brand to help marketers do that.

Drew: Take us behind the scenes in the development of “the Truth is Hard” campaign and what inspired you to really to launch it.

Meredith: Thanks for that question; it’s my favorite one to answer of late. I’m going to go all the way back to a year ago, maybe more than a year ago. We made a decision probably 18 months ago that we needed to start thinking about The New York Times as a consumer brand and take its power as a brand much more seriously. The staffing decision we made around that was to bring somebody in to run brand. We hired a guy a year ago named David Rubin who is the Head of Brand. He works as a peer to our brilliant Head of Consumer Marketing, Clay Fisher. So it started with bringing in talent with deep, deep, deep brand thinking, brand planning, brand execution, experience.  So for the last year there was a budding intent to face the world more as brands do. And behind that intent was a sense that we are a world-class news brand, which to me means we define the category that we’re in and we deliver the work that we do and its products very very well. But we also had this opportunity to also to begin to become and behave like a world-class consumer brand.

Drew: Can you talk about the strategy development?

Meredith: We spent quite a bit of time on core brand principle definition, with deep, deep involvement from the newsroom at The Times. We arrived at a very simple brand statement, which is essentially that The New York Times helps people understand the world, and we arrived at a set of principles around which we would operate. Then as we’re doing that and as we’re beginning to really think like a brand thinks (what is our narrative, what are the messages, how do those messages look, where’s the consistency?), this stunning thing happened in the world: We had a presidential election. We had an extraordinary moment in terms of news cycle. We saw our traffic and engagement go to a place beyond anybody’s expectation. And then the news became the news. And so you asked why did the Truth Campaign happen?I imagine we would have done a brand campaign had the news not become the news. But I think what that brand campaign was, which was really about the process by which the world arrives at truth and the role that journalism plays in that, I’m not sure that that would have happened had the news not become the news. We did that with Droga, which we feel very proud of the work that they’ve done and very lucky to work with them. We broke the campaign the weekend of the Oscars. The first phase of the campaign essentially was meant to remind the world of the role that journalism plays in speaking truth to power, holding power to account, and how important it is to have journalism and high quality journalism as a partner on any individual’s path to finding truth. The second phase of the campaign, which we’ve launched just a few weeks ago, is a short film series that we’ve done with Darren Aronofsky, the incredible filmmaker, which is more about the craft of journalism at the New York Times. It’s about the commitment, the resources, and the expertise that it takes to cover the world and to find the truth, and to do so in a way that people can believe in and trust; in a way that gives people a tool to help make sense of what’s going on around them. And you can expect that we’ll continue the campaign on the other phases.

Here are a couple examples of The Times’ latest ads:

Be Your Own Best Customer

Posted on by

When Tom Libretto came to Pegasystems as Chief Marketing Officer in 2016, he recognized that the tech company was in the midst of a big change. Leadership was challenging many of their preconceived notions, and Libretto jumped right in to propel the changes. His first step was to get the lay of the land, so to speak, and understand what was working and what wasn’t, who were the star performers, and where the opportunities were for growth. Having worked at Lotus, Nokia, and Chase, Libretto brought with him an understanding of the discipline it took to effect change in a company. (To listen now, click here.)

For the smaller, more agile Pegasystems, Libretto knew he wanted to embrace real-time adaptive learning analytics. In this week’s podcast, he shares three takeaways for marketers to keep in mind as martech takes a hold on modern marketing.

The first takeaway is that if you’re selling a product to your consumers, you’d better be your product’s best user. One advantage Libretto had at Pegasystems is that their platform was one of the star performers. In fact, it was such an amazing product that they used PEGA to market, well, PEGA! Libretto described this as “drinking their own champagne,” but it helped convey a serious level of authenticity to customers. His team was also able to gain a unique perspective on their users’ issues and needs. And if the team ever created an update for the software they used in-house, it was automatically shared with their customers.

The second takeaway Libretto stressed is that the future of marketing is now. Some of us fear that the rise in cognitive artificial intelligence will put them out of our jobs, but the reality is that AI allows us to create a more personalized, seamless experience for customers. For example, with real-time adaptive learning analytics, Pegasystems is engaging in constant A/B testing. The time of “one-size fits all” marketing is in the past, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for storytelling. Marketers will likely always need human stories to engage with consumers on a deeper level. Technology simply makes it easier.

The final takeaway Libretto shared was actually one of the hardest lessons he had to learn in marketing, and that was, “Don’t be afraid to fail.” It’s in our nature to want to please our clients and sell products, but sometimes you must fail in order to learn. The most important part of failing, however, is learning from it. Libretto made sure his team knew to diagnose their failures, because then at least they wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. So, while Libretto wouldn’t tolerate all mistakes, per se, he made sure his team remembered: “If you’re not failing, you’re not learning.”

Engaged Employees Beget Better Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When you think about how companies motivate employees, you’ll likely think of human resources first. This wasn’t the case for Patti Newcomer-Simmons, Vice President of Marketing at Intuit. After she returned to the financial software company following a hiatus, Newcomer-Simmons realized that it was her responsibility to improve the lives of her employees if she wanted to increase company productivity. To empower her team to perform at optimal levels, she would need to invest time and energy into promoting employee engagement. (To listen to the whole episode now click here.)

Now, you might think that employee engagement simply means satisfaction with the company. Not so. When Newcomer-Simmons looked at metrics for Intuit’s employee engagement, she instead focused more on retention: Would the employee stay with the company even if they received a better offer from someone else?

Since her return to Intuit, Newcomer-Simmons significantly increased employee engagement—and thereby reduced turnover—which she described as one of her proudest accomplishments. So, if you’re wondering how you can do the same for your own company, you’ve found the right podcast! In this week’s episode, Newcomer-Simmons shared several principles that marketing leaders need to abide by to truly engage and empower their employees, ultimately translating that positivity into productivity.

The first of these principles was pretty simple: be open to your employees’ feedback. Newcomer-Simmons explained that there has to be some level of vulnerability on the part of any leader in the sense that he or she should always acknowledge that they could have done something differently. At Intuit, Newcomer-Simmons schedules monthly meetings and directly asks her teams for opinions on what she could do better in the future, what worked and what didn’t.

The changes she made in response to the feedback received weren’t always grand gestures. Sometimes it was as simple as being mindful of her presence or tone in meetings. Her openness and vulnerability allowed employees to feel as though their voices were heard, which translated to positive feelings towards their efforts and the company. Similar to how brands build loyalty with consumers, being open to feedback encouraged loyalty in Newcomer-Simmons’s team.

The next engagement principle Newcomer-Simmons shared was integrity. It wasn’t enough to listen to feedback and promise change—she actually had to do as she said. She refers to this as the “say-do” ratio. If she were to go back on her word after asking for constructive criticism, it could have been perceived as betrayal. Her employees would have been left discouraged, which would have eventually trickled into loss of engagement with the company. Because of Intuit’s limited window of marketing opportunities during tax season, it was vital to for Newcomer-Simmons to have all hands on deck, which was only possible if her employees were fully engaged.

The last principle she described was leading by example. Employees held to a higher standard than their team leaders and supervisors were at high risk of developing resentment towards the company. Or worse, they would do as their leaders did, which would cause internal conflict because of the discord in employee standards. Both would have negatively affected the company, which is why Newcomer-Simmons emphasized the importance of holding herself to the same standard as her team members. So, if you plan on to raise the bar and ask more from your team, be prepared to raise that same bar for yourself and lead by example.

Building a World Class Brand on a Shoestring Budget

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Dara Royer sat alone at her desk pondering the seemingly impossible–how do you rebrand a global organization with only a $50,000 budget?  She knew in her heart of hearts that rebranding was not just a nice next step for Mercy Corps, but it was a critical requirement for the organization to realize its global ambitions. She also knew there is little glory in being right, what really mattered was getting the rest of Mercy Corps to join her on the journey and embrace the forthcoming change.  Royer’s journey as Chief Development and Marketing Officer is chronicled in detail in Episode 15 of Renegade Thinkers Unite and it is profoundly instructive for all businesses especially those with modest budgets and massive expectations.

And just in case you were wondering if I was hyperbolizing, the outcome of Mercy Corps rebranding was an increase in awareness, revenue via donations and recognition by the Harris Poll as the 2017 EquiTrend “Brand of the Year” and “Most Loved Brand” in the category of International Aid Nonprofits. Those are results that would delight any chief marketer and leads to the question, how the heck did Royer and her team accomplish so much with so little?  Once again, you’re encouraged to listen to this very special podcast episode, but in the meantime here are three key takeaways from this episode related to frugality, storytelling and leadership.

Ultimately, these key takeaways can be seen as a mini-marketing plan. For starters, Royer took the idea of “DIY,” or do it yourself, to a whole new level in her rebranding efforts. Wanting to develop a solid strategic foundation for rebranding, Royer knew that conducting research would be invaluable.  The only problem was cost — typically a global study involving hundreds of interviews can cost more than a hundred thousand dollars, money her organization did not have. So what did Royer do? She made sure her team was trained in research methodology and equipped them with the communication skills to work with their team members, government officials, and the beneficiaries of the people they help. By dedicating that time and energy into training her team, they were able to produce consistent and valid results that allowed specific themes to emerge and guide their rebranding efforts.  Involving the organization in the research had the added advantage of making all the key stakeholders feel like owners of both the process and the ultimate outcome.

Once the research was concluded, Royer drafted a clear strategy statement that focused on telling an “epic” story that would resonate across 42 countries and a broad array of cultures.  For her, it wasn’t about any particular ad. She wanted to make sure that regardless of the marketing channel, the “big picture” was clear and rooted in Mercy Corps’ fundamental belief that a better world is possible. This belief extends to meeting the urgent needs of individuals in the present, while building a stronger world for tomorrow.  With this strategy in hand, Royer focused on telling emotionally-charged stories that resonated with all stakeholders including employees, donors and those affected by Mercy Corps actions.

Without revealing the entire podcast, the final takeaway is a leadership lesson. Royer found that the toughest lesson she had to learn when it comes to rebranding is that being right doesn’t matter. Even if you have THE idea, you can’t just expect a large organization to fall in line. Consensus building is an art form that no enlightened leader can succeed without mastering.  Fortunately for Royer, the necessity of conducting the research in-house had the added benefit of involving a large number of employees in the process, making the ultimate adoption of the new brand positioning less of a sales effort and more of a “look what you all helped create” success story.

Marketing’s Torrid Trio: Storytelling, Data & Tech

Posted on by Drew Neisser

While most of us are driving into the future of marketing with limited visibility, Spotify’s Mayur Gupta not just sees what’s ahead, but also shares his vision with helpful precision. In this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Gupta talks about how he views marketing and innovation from the eyes of an engineer, and the importance of putting human’s needs at the top of the marketing ecosystem, which consists of technology, data, and storytelling. As the Global Vice President for Growth & Marketing at Spotify, Gupta emphasizes that you cannot effectively market only using technology, or data, or storytelling – the three are completely intertwined, and wholly dependent on the marketer’s understanding of unmet human needs. To see what’s ahead, just listen!

For the readers of my book and long-time blog subscribers, Mayur Gupta shouldn’t be a stranger.  We met back in 2014 when he won The CMO Club award for Programmatic Marketing and his interview revealed a truly facile understanding of the rapidly evolving “martech” (marketing technology) landscape.  With over 15 years of experience in leading the digital transformation at places like Kimberly Clark, this digital rock star shares insights that are applicable to both small and large companies alike,

Over at Spotify, Gupta drives the vision and strategy to establish a connected marketing ecosystem as THE growth engine for his company. His goal is to connect the right artist with the right fan through discovery and accessibility, which is why he trains his team to deliver always-on, data-driven, and contextual experiences for both the fans and the artists.

Gupta believes that today’s marketers have all the tools they need to weave together technology, data, and storytelling to predict and address unmet needs. Here are 3 reasons why your brand always needs to be “on” in order to effectively utilize this data:

The consumer is always “on”

Consumers aren’t just tech-savvy, they’re tech dependent. That means more work for brands to engage, inspire, acquire, and ultimately retain that consumer. Consumers have set the bar really high for brands. They know what they want, and they know how to use tech to get it on their terms. That being said, don’t make the mistake of becoming tech-obsessed though and neglect the importance of data and storytelling.

Effective marketing is about meeting the unmet needs of the individual…

And to do that, you need to always be listening, understanding, and predicting consumer behavior — these three principles make up predictive marketing. A good brand will give the company what the consumer wants. A great brand will give the consumer what they want before they know they want it. Virtually all companies have the ability to collect this type of data, but where a company fails is in their application of the data to really understand consumer behavior to ultimately predict and shape future behavior.

The separation of online and offline worlds does not exist

Unless you’re marketing to the Amish, the line between offline and online worlds has become blurred to the point of questionable existence. With more and more consumers constantly plugged in, brands need to be ready to anticipate decisions that can occur at any moment. This has led to consumers caring less about the product, and more about the general experience offered throughout the marketing process conveyed through storytelling. If your story resonates with the consumer on a personal level, and you have the tech and data to tie everything together, you win the loyalty of those consumers.