Summary: In episode 2 of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta. Together they discuss the essentials of maintaining a consistent brand story across channels. The conversation touches on the importance of defining the perceptions or storylines you want to drive in the market, how to drive perceptions through content and campaigns, and examples of perceptions.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 2 is sponsored by Closing Media & Naro.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

Devon Watts is a long-time startup marketer currently leading Product and Partner Marketing at Mercury. Previously, she ran marketing for the high-growth fintech Anrok, and spent time building her PMM, content, and brand expertise at companies like Yammer, Asana, and Carta. Devon has led B2B marketing teams with anywhere from 1 to 25+ people, and has experience in PLG and sales-led motions. In addition to marketing, Devon loves her kids, being on/in/near the water, her dog Dolores, and eating cheese.

This episode features Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, providers of beautiful, affordable, always on-brand tracking, asking us “How do you tell a consistent story?”

Quotes

”  I think of content overall or your story and brand as another product your company's creating for the same audience. So it's a product. It should be thought of as a product, managed like a product. You need to think about why you're telling your story, what's unique about your story, how your story is differentiated from competitors’ stories. Much like you would think about how your product is going to be differentiated.” - Emily Kramer

“To me, a story is everything you say about your business. And that includes the stuff you say about your company mission, vision, your founding story. It includes the stuff you say about your products. It includes the things you say related to thought leadership. It includes the things you say in ad copy and all of that. Like all of that together is your story. So maybe the story is the through line across all of your marketing fuel.” - Emily Kramer

“My hot take response is what not to do, which is don't just start cranking out content and creative, and marketing assets if you haven't aligned on what your big picture themes are. Because I think that's a very easy way to just get into doing random acts of marketing that aren't cohesive or consistent.” - Jenny Thai

” You have your customers, probably the most important audience and the one we think about most as marketers. But your recruiting team has an audience of candidates, prospective employees, and you have investors. You have these other audiences that you might want to tell slightly different stories to, but still have a consistent through line and still be telling the market at large a unified story.” - Devon Watts

” Start with what you want people to hear. And one exercise for this is ‘what would you want people to repeat back to you about your company?’” - Devon Watts

” Write the headline we would want to see. If we got our dream PR placement or whatever, how would they realistically put it? Not just what's going to be our blog post headline or our landing page headline, because that is not necessarily how the market will perceive or talk about you.” - Devon Watts

” Write perceptions from the perspective of the customer that you're trying to reach. Because then it helps you think about where they actually are right now. Like, do they even think about you? If not, then like, you actually have to create some awareness. Or if there is an existing perception about you, then what do you need to do to shift it to the new perception?” - Jenny Thai

”The combination of your perceptions should be unique to your company. No other company should be able to claim that combination. One individual perception could potentially be used by many other companies, but the combination should feel like uniquely your company or else your story is not going to seem unique.”  - Emily Kramer

” Think about perception as a product you're selling or something you're launching. What's the plan? The campaign plan, the launch plan, the plan to launch this perception into the world? What are the campaigns? What are all the things that you're doing? And I find that some of the best marketing ideas come from this.’” - Emily Kramer

”If you don't know your story, you probably won't be telling a good one. So know your story, spend time to actually define what you're trying to say. Zoom a level out…your work is going to be so much better if you take a couple of steps backwards in order to go much faster, with a much more clear sense of direction.” - Emily Kramer

Time stamps

[00:00] Meet Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury

[01:49] Question from Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit: How do I tell a consistent story?

[2:11] Initial Reactions to the Question

[5:41] Defining Story in Marketing

[7:56] Story vs. Brand

[10:49] Positioning and Story Consistency

[13:28] Crafting Perceptions and Storylines

[22:15] Examples of Effective Perceptions

[27:11] Crafting Unique Company Perceptions

[28:06] Understanding Perceptions Through Famous Slogans

[28:50] Analyzing Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign

[30:51] Decoding Twilio's 'Ask Your Developer' Slogan

[32:43] The 'Got Milk?' Campaign and Market Context

[34:57] Evaluating Effective Perceptions

[37:24] Implementing Perceptions in Content Strategy

[41:14] Final Thoughts on Telling a Clear and Consistent Story

[44:13] "Best, Marketer" Game: Driving Perceptions

Recommended products & agencies

Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan

Closing Media: Mention MKT1 for $5,000 free ad spend

Naro: Get first month free

Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer, Devon Watts, Jenny Thai, Mikayla HopkinsSubscribe to MKT1 Newsletter for a companion newsletter for each episode.

In this debut episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon. Together they answer the question: "How do I handle marketing requests?"They share strategies for prioritizing these requests, underscoring the significance of setting clear goals, aligning with other teams, and understanding the motivations behind each request. Additionally, the episode provides insights on managing request processes, with tips on internal marketing and communication. Wrapping up with entertaining anecdotes of outrageous past requests, the hosts offer both practical advice and humor to guide marketers through similar challenges.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform.

About our co-hostsEmily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s  known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

Grace Erickson is a true marketing generalist with 10 years of experience in B2B startups, spanning functions like growth, brand, product marketing, and most things in between. She's currently the VP of Revenue at Cocoon, a Series A employee leave management platform. Prior to Cocoon, Grace led marketing programs at Asana, Carta, and Cleo in various roles, but always with a focus on an integrated customer journey. Besides being a marketing nerd, Grace spends her time coming up with (but not executing) elaborate schemes and browsing Zillow.This episode also features Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus, the AI prospecting platform for building high-quality pipeline, asking us “How do you handle marketing requests?”

Quotes

” When you are getting lots of random requests, ask why. Try to get to the request behind the request to figure out what exactly people are trying to solve. That usually leads you down a line of questioning that gets you to the actual problem that needs to be solved. And then maybe you already have a solution. You don't actually have to do the request.” - Jenny Thai

” A request coming from your CEO is always going to be treated differently than a request coming from an SDR. And that's just how the world works, and to pretend it doesn't work that way is setting everyone up for failure. And so the sooner you can figure out what the rules are for different people, the sooner you can actually move forward.” - Grace Erickson

” I think sometimes founder requests also come in the form of like, ‘Let's run X company's playbook. It worked for them. So why aren't we doing it?’ So a lot of it is internal education too. So first understand what your founder thinks marketing is, but then part of your job is to explain that there're other ways to approach this problem. And it's not just running whatever startup's playbook worked for them.” - Jenny Thai

” I think the best defense against requests is setting goals. You definitely need shared goals and it's the only way you can actually make the right decisions and actually have the why that's so important to give to people.” - Emily Kramer

Time stamps

[00:00] Meet Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Grace Erickson, VP of Marketing & Partnerships at Cocoon

[00:58] Question from Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at POCUS: How do I handle marketing requests?

[02:00] Initial Reactions to the Question and Advice

[04:40] Importance of Setting Goals

[07:08] Building Internal Relationships

[12:57] Understanding Team Motivations

[16:59] Sharing and Aligning Goals

[31:21] Handling Absurd Requests

[33:25] Legal Involvement

[34:13] Brand Campaign Challenges

[35:02] Managing Request Processes

[38:15] Balancing Feedback

[43:56] Internal Marketing and Communication

[51:32] Lessons Learned

Recommended products & agencies in this episode

Typeform - Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan

Attio - Get 15% off your first year at attio.com/mkt1

Ahrefs

Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily KramerGrace EricksonJenny ThaiSandy Mangat

Subscribe to MKT1 Newsletter for a companion newsletter for each episode.