Kevin Lee interviews Des Cahill, CMO at Tipalti, a company helping companies grow by making worldwide payments easier. Today Tipalti is being used by a number of big brands, including Twitch, Roblox, and Canva, that process a large number of global transactions.

Des and Kevin about how the potential market for Tipalti, given that a minority of global companies are now using any kind of automation in their A/P and A/R processes and how it's useful in terms of onboarding freelancers, eliminating fraud and tax liability issues, working with multiple currencies, and otherwise improving payment processing efficiencies.

They discuss Tipalti's own marketing efforts and channel philosophy. As Des observes, "there are no magic channels. Because if a magic channel appears, it's transitive, because other marketers are going to discover that advantage and bid up the cost... I think we can always as marketers do a better job within channels and be smarter because every channel is diminishing marginal return. And every channel is addressing a different part of the funnel and the buying journey."

They chat about Tipalti's use of influencer marketing and testimonials and then turn to the subject of AI. Tipalti is partnering with OpenAI to introduce AI into its system and Des is bullish about how it will allow finance professionals to query the system using plain language to extract the financial intelligence they need.

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Kevin Lee interviews Chad Hickey, Founder and CEO at Givsly, a company working to reduce corporate "swag" waste while helping brands save money and becoming more sustainable. As he notes, "the swag industry is a $60 billion business and only 21 percent of that swag is kept. So you're talking about $50 billion in waste."

Kevin and Chad chat about Givsly's origin story, how cutting down on physical swag can save brands money, and what Chad expects to achieve by attending the Cannes Lions Festival. They explore whether it's better for a brand partnering with his platform to curate a short list of non-profits and non-profit categories from which consumers can easily choose, and chat about the degree to which brands are attracted to the Givsly platform because of money-saving potential vs. concerns relating to sustainability.

"We don't see people focus on one or the other," says Chad. "I think that people are starting to acknowledge that they have to broadly think about how they impact climate change."

Chad and Kevin discuss his experience enrolling nonprofits as Givsly channel partners, whether donation amounts in the Givsly platform can increase proportionate to a user's engagement, the degree to which gamification is being used, and Chad's hopes for 2023 and beyond.

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Kevin Lee interviews Megan Cunningham, CEO and Founder at Magnet Media, a global brand content studio. Prior to founding Magnet Media, Megan worked in production at PBS, HBO, Nickelodeon, and HBO. Magnet has been very successful over the years; its clients have included big brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, ABC, Showtime, The Associated Press, Dreamworks Animation, NBC and other top-tier brands.

Kevin and Megan discuss Magnet Media's origin story and trade notes on the recent Cannes Lion Festival which both attended. They discuss how "run-of-the-mill" creative can be distinguished from strategic, results-driven creative, and the key role played by market data in terms of fashioning effective creative campaigns. They discuss how brands should think about allocating funds for creative campaigns, and the folly of under-investing in great creative (which makes campaigns more efficient) while over-investing in media spend supporting that creative.

They trade notes on brands using influencers in their campaigns, and the degree to which such campaigns need to be scripted or left open-ended. As Megan notes, "I think that the idea of having a (creative) brief but one that is subject to be interpreted by the influencer, in their own voice, and with what they know and works for their audience and their channel, is the best way to approach an influencer campaign." They also touch on the issue of whether authors of short-form creative content can easily make the transition to creating long-form content.

They discuss the extent to which social media platforms have, unlike the old Hollywood or music business models, produced a meritocratic system where the best creative is rewarded. As Megan notes, some of the most successful influencers have established relationships with the platform owners, giving them an "embedded advantage" that most creators lack.

They talk about the wisdom of brands cutting back top-funnel spending in the face of a potential recession (which may or may not ever manifest itself). As Megan observes, "I don't think it's healthy for any business to just say, we're going to pull the plug on stuff, we're going to hit the brakes. To me, that's a big red flag for that business in general, because it really is an invitation for your competition to speed way ahead of you."

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Kevin Lee interviews Rick Watson, founding CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, a New York-based strategic e-commerce firm. Rick has been active in e-commerce for more than 20 years and has been a featured speaker on news programs such as Bloomberg Surveillance and Bloomberg West, as well as retail-focused industry events, including NRF Shop.org, ECommerce Europe, ETail West, and others.

They discuss important issues facing e-commerce merchants these days, including the rise of AI. We discuss compound marketing, which Rick notes will not be effective when you have a "me too" product. As he notes, "everything goes back to the what is your brand promise? And what are your your set of hero SKUs? What are what is the promise of those items? And how is it merchandise in a way that can be disruptive? Are you the lowest price best performing product? And if not, there needs to be another niche."

Rick is passionate about leveraging market research to discover as much as one can about one's customer, including how they search and the kinds of problems that each is trying to solve. As he notes, "you need to conduct first-party primary research on people who don't buy from you. And it needs to start with the problems that you're trying to solve as a company, and what problems those consumers are trying to solve in your general universe."

Rick and Kevin trade notes on recent moves in the marketplace, including Overstock.com's acquisition of Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and about movers in e-commerce software. We close with his remarks on what has gotten him excited in e-commerce for 2023 and beyond.

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Kevin Lee interviews Martin Schneider, Head of Research and Chief Evangelist at Annuitas, a boutique management consultancy specializing in go-to-market transformation. As his website states, "currently, companies are stuck in a cycle of random acts of sales and marketing, trying to consistently produce high quality leads and opportunities, but failing. Leaders are facing the hard truth that they must transform their go-to-market motion – becoming more customer-centered and embracing a strategic demand state if they want to reach growth goals."

Kevin and Martin discuss the benefits which a go-to-market transformation can convey to an organizations, particularly in regard to better aligning the efforts of product, sales, and marketing teams. Martin summarizes the presentation he made recently at the Ignite B2B conference in Chicago entitled "Transforming Your Go-To-Market Strategy Through a Converged Growth Lens."

They explore the mistakes that marketing and sales teams make when KPIs don't correctly estimate the true value of a given lead, the fact that many KPIs are arbitrary, and the roadblocks of group decision-making on the part of B2B buyers. They trade notes on how marketers and sales teams might change their game in a recessionary environment, and likely indicators for organizations that they might more fully embrace go-to-market strategies.

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Kevin Lee interviews Andy Batkin, CEO of Duration Media, whose Sequency™ product reduces carbon emissions while offering buying efficiencies and also increasing the time that ad units are in view.

Digital advertising has a nasty carbon footprint -- according to a 2016 study, online advertising consumed between 20 and 282 terra-watt hours of energy per year (1 terra-watt hour is enough power to fully power 70,000 homes for a year) -- and it's likely that consumption is much higher now than it was seven years ago.

Kevin and Andy discuss the degree to which sustainability is now a value in the advertising business and get a deep-dive into how his system works to eliminate digital waste. They discuss other benefits of using Sequency™, particularly its ability to allow brands and publishers to better choreograph the delivery of storytelling ad units.

Andy has high hopes for 2023 and will be talking up Sequency™ at the forthcoming Cannes Lion 2023 Festival of Creativity, an event Kevin will also be attending. "Now, almost every agency has a global head of sustainability. The brands are really asking for it and so they've got to deliver. The big thing for us is that we've figured out how to actually reduce carbon, versus selling offsets. And the IAB European definition literally states that we have to focus on carbon reduction, and only use offsets when carbon reduction is not available."

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Kevin Lee interviews Dan Swift, CEO of Numentum (formerly Empire Selling) a consultancy advising sales teams on how to up their game. Numentum's mission is to help sales teams better understand the actual buyer's journey that B2B buyers go through. As Dan notes, few salespeople have actually made any corporate purchases, which hampers their performance. The good news is that with appropriate training, they can rapidly improve. Dan is candid about the fact that most salespeople fail to fully leverage social media, in particular, LinkedIn, and conveys some very useful tips about making better use of social media channels.

The conversation then turns to ABM, and the mistakes that many sales pros make when they focus too much on acquiring new "fresh meat" leads at the expense of cultivating relationships with those who've already successfully dealt with the enterprise. Kevin and Dan discuss the importance of salespeople using "micro moments" to stay top-of-mind, delve into the potential of AI to improve the selling experience, explore the "myth of the single decisionmaker" and chat about what salespeople should do should they discover that a "single disrupter" is opposing change that could benefit corporate well-being.

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In today's increasingly collaborative digital workplace, where remote and office-bound workers routinely share files on a variety of different digital platforms, including Google Drive, Sharepoint, Box, DropBox, and others, it's still too difficult for teams to find the files they need. The result is wasted time, file duplication, confusion over which file is the "final" version, and an elevated chance of error and file loss.

Jessica Storry is CEO and Co-Founder at Stockpress, a Boston-based technology company whose Digital Asset Management (DAM) software addresses this problem. Kevin and Jessica discuss Stockpress' origin story, how the software works, and the features that distinguish it from other DAMs on the market, including the fact that all of its pricing tiers -- even its free tier -- provide for unlimited users.

They trade notes on file management best practices, how the WFH and hybrid office trends have accelerated the need to more easily track and access files, the degree to which DAMs can improve team productivity, and the different types of businesses currently using Stockpress.

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Casey Cheshire, founder, CEO & Podcast Architect at Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a New Hampshire-based agency, is a fascinating guy with a true passion for podcasting. He’s spoken at many conferences, is an author, and runs the Hard Corps Marketing Show podcast, which offers “fun and mind blowing conversations with the smartest, most badass marketers out there.” Casey is also a US Marine Corps Veteran and active outdoorsman who recently joined the Crotched Mountain Ski Patrol.

I wanted to spend time conversing with Casey about podcasting, particularly for B2B. I was curious about what the catalyst was for him to take the jump into podcasting, and relate my own journey into it. We both agree on the fundamental precept that B2B podcasting is primarily an educational endeavor, where the host functions as connector, not the exponent of his/her own brand or service, making the podcast itself a “pitch-free” zone.

At the same time, however, it’s clear that podcast hosting can sometimes open the door with prospects that would otherwise remain closed. As Casey observes, “You can technically get your whale/dream client on a call with you. We’ll routinely do that with people, where they’re like ‘here’s 100 a companies that I’d freak out if they signed up with us. They don’t want to talk with us, they don’t want to get on a sales call.’ But we can get them on a podcast. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to trick them and try to pitch them a demo and take, take take. One of my favorite quotes from Dan Sullivan is ‘everyone’s competing to get your attention. But nobody’s competing to give you attention.’ So if you can become one of those people — giving attention — making it about the guest, not the host… then that really resonates with a lot of people.”

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Zack Rosenberg leads CatapultX, a company seeking to bring the same level of contextual targeting long available to search and direct advertising search to video streams. He also writes a weekly newsletter titled “AI in Advertising.”

CatapultX’s AI engine — called the “Moments Targeting Engine” — parses video streams and programmatically arranges for non-interruptive ad units to appear in relevant channels. In so doing, it unlocks value in video streams whose potential was hitherto unrealizable.

I caught up with Zack to explore issues relating to the state of video advertising. I wanted to hear his company’s interesting origin story, learn about what CatapultX’s technology does, the results that using it has made for publishers, and also talk about the degree to which video advertising, particularly CatapultX is relatively immune to the plague of bots and fake views that afflict other advertising modalities.

I also probed Zack on a recurrent choice that brands must often make with respect to creating video ads: should a single ad be made to serve multiple target audiences or a single one? As Zack notes, this decision is often dictated more by the channel than by the audience itself. 

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