Remarkable Content with Ian Faison

Corner! Sharp! Behind! For anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant, you know these words mean a lot. It’s your language. For marketers, this is more like KPIs, ABM, ICP, Demand Gen. Using the lingo, the jargon, the correct terminology, is a powerful tool when you’re trying to reach and resonate with your target audience. You want to speak their language.

This means doing some market research to learn industry terms and how they’re used. This will also tell you a lot about what your audience cares about. And when you get it right, you’ll know. Your engagement will rise and so will your ROI.

This is what we’re talking about on today’s episode with JP Lespinasse, VP of Brand Marketing at Lightcast. JP and the Remarkable team are watching FX’s The Bear. Together, we’re talking about speaking the language of your audience, serving your audience what they crave, using familiar story recipes, and much, much more. So make yourself a sandwich and tuck in for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, JP Lespinasse

JP Lespinasse is VP of Brand Marketing at Lightcast. He has over 25 years of marketing, communications and partnerships experience. Previously, he served as Head of Content Marketing at PayPal and Executive: Director of Content Strategy and Management at IBM. He has also worked at companies like Gap/Old Navy, NOKIA, and the NBA.

About Lightcast

Lightcast, which is the merger of Emsi and BurningGlass, is the largest integrated data provider of jobs, skills, roles, and occupational data in the world.

They are a global pioneer in the collection and big-data analysis of information on the labor market. Their data provides the world’s most detailed information about occupations, skills in demand, and career pathways. 

Their tools collect real-time data from over 40,000 sources every day, contributing to a database with over 1 billion job postings and billions of other data points. They combine that with curated input from dozens of other statistical sources, like government agencies, to provide the most complete view possible of the fast-changing labor market. They put that information to work for businesses, communities, and education providers by showing them the granular details and big-picture trends they need in their organizations.

Whether you’re interested in software salaries in Seattle, need new skills in New Zealand, or looking for anything in between, Lightcast data can provide the insight you need.

About The Bear

The Bear is a show about an award-winning chef who leaves his Michelin star restaurant to go back to his hometown after his brother passes away to take over his brother’s sandwich shop. And so while struggling to keep the rowdy staff and messy kitchen running, he’s also trying to process and grieve his brother’s suicide. A lot of people who have worked in food service have said it’s a realistic depiction of what it’s actually like running a professional kitchen. At any moment it feels like it’s going to all fall apart, and it deals with the health inspections, payroll, dirty floors, plumbing and all of the tiny details that make it seem real. It stars Jeremy Allen White as “Carmy” Berzatto, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the restaurant manager, Ayo Edibiri as the new sous chef, and more. The show was created by Christopher Storer for FX and has two seasons out on Hulu. The first season received 13 Emmy nominations including outstanding comedy series.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Bear: 

• Serve your audience what they crave. Do research to understand their wants and needs. Then aim for continuous improvement. In The Bear, JP says that the main character, Carmi, knows that he can’t keep making Michelin star-level food when he takes over his brother’s sandwich shop. The customers just want the sandwich they know and love from The Beef. JP says, “For us as marketers and for Carmi and the staff at The Beef, it’s so important that in those first few episodes, it wasn't about changing anything. It was just about really focusing and listening and understanding the audience. What do they want? What do they come back for? How do I continue to serve them that?” This is especially true for marketers joining a new company where you see room for improvement. Don’t try to change everything at once. But make small changes along the way that will raise the quality of your output without alienating customers.
• Use familiar story recipes. We know the rags to riches, or in this case, riches to rags storytelling recipe. Because it works. Using these known recipes reels in your audience more easily because it feels familiar. It’s something they can immediately relate to. Yet it doesn’t mean the rest of the story is formulaic or that the ending is obvious. It’s just a place to start and hook your audience. Plus twists and turns in the storyline later will be even more of a surprise. When it comes to The Bear, Ian says, “Everybody and their brother has been to Chicago. And everyone has been to a sandwich shop in Chicago. So this idea that is so familiar, which is like, ‘Person moves back home to Chicago and takes over a sandwich shop, even though they're Michelin star.’ We just all immediately are like, ‘Okay, I've been to a sandwich shop in Chicago and I totally know how that feels.’” 
• Make it feel real by showing the good, the bad and the meh. You will speak most effectively to marketers by acknowledging the less glamorous and even mundane parts of their job. JP said it best when he said The Bear “took off because all of these folks who had worked at restaurants were like, ‘Yep, that's exactly how it is.’ It's just so important to speak authentically to your audience.” And Ian adds, “If you don't really care, if you want to do the Grey's Anatomy version of it, right? Like, that's fine too, and it probably will be really commercially successful. But you won't get the diehards. And in today's day and age where the diehards are so vocal, it's a much more valuable currency to get the little details right.” So The Bear doesn’t shy away from the feeling of losing sense of time when you’re in the weeds, swamped with orders, or the payroll, plumbing, and no-shows. That’s why it resonates.

Quotes

*”Marketers sometimes do ourselves a disservice. You’ve written 17 drafts of this webpage before it goes up. And so by the time it goes up, you're sick of it. And you're ready to change it immediately. The audience has never seen it before, right? The average person who comes to a webpage, they stay for a minute and a half, right? Like, so they're not going deep into all the individual words, the pictures and how you've architected it. So just let it sit. Let it breathe.” - JP Lespinasse

*”Back when I worked at IBM, we canceled and reworked a whole campaign because we'd done all this due diligence and were going to put some messaging out to the developer audience. And then at the last minute, we're like, ‘You know what? We should show this to some developers before we put it out into the world.’ And so we invited them over for pizza and a chat, and they're like, ‘Yeah, that's not how we talk. That's how the movies show how we talk, but that's not really authentically how we talk.’ And so we used all their feedback to rework the campaign.” - JP Lespinasse

Time Stamps

[0:54] Meet JP Lespinasse, VP of Brand Marketing at Lightcast

[1:23] What’s remarkable about The Bear?

[4:26] What does JP do at Lightcast?

[7:54] What’s The Bear about?

[20:11] How was The Bear created? Learn about its backstory.

[26:03] What B2B marketing lessons can we take from The Bear?

[30:57] How can you elevate your brand?

[33:01] Why is it important to understand the language of your audience?

[44:09] How does JP approach the challenge of measuring ROI in content and brand?

[55:58] What role does brand play in B2B?

Links

Watch The Bear

Connect with JP on LinkedIn

Learn more about Lightcast

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Selling to multiple customer personas is tricky. Can your marketing appeal to all of them at once? 

You probably think, “Well, each persona has different pain points and things they care about.” But once you start thinking about all of the personas as just being people, you realize that they do care about the same things. Success at work, their family, and their quality of life, to name a few. So when you can appeal to the things your prospects care about most, you unlock the secret to creating an emotional bond with your audience that will place you above your competitors.

To explore this idea, we’re watching the hit animated series that The Guardian called, "arguably the best television series in the world," Bluey. It appeals to parents just as well as kids. And is a great example of how to market to multiple customer personas. Here with us is content master Nate Bagley to help discuss evoking strong emotions in your marketing, captivating your audience with relatable stories, and how to build trust to propel sales. Now it’s time to tap into that inner child for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Nate Bagley

Nate Bagley is a content leader who has served in media and marketing roles at companies like Clozd, OrangeSoda, Mindshare Technologies, Romacorp, and Bold Academy. He founded relationship coaching company Growth Marriage in 2017, co-founded “date-in-a-box” subscription service Unbox Love in 2014, and started a podcast called Loveumentary in 2012.

About Bluey

Bluey is an Australian animated tv series about the daily life of a blue heeler cattle puppy and her friends and family. As blue heelers are known as super energetic dogs, Bluey is always turning things into an adventure and using her imagination to do it.

It premiered in 2018 and is currently on its third season, and was created by Joe Brumm. It stars the voices of David McCormack as the dad and Melanie Zanetti as the mom. Bluey, Bingo, and some of their friends aren’t credited because they’re voiced by children of the TV production crew, and it’s to protect their identities.

It’s the #1 Australian children’s TV show, Nominated for the 2023 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Children’s Program. 2022 AACTA Award winner for Best Children's Program. 2019 International Emmy winner for Kids: Preschool. The Guardian has called it "arguably the best television series in the world".

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Bluey:

• Tap into emotion. Think of your audience as human, and appeal to their very human needs, wants and desires. It could be that your product saves them time to go enjoy more family time, time outside, or time doing literally anything other than working. Appeal to that. Nate says, “”In marketing, emotion is the number one tool that we have to use. I think especially in B2B marketing, it's probably the most underutilized tool, is trying to elicit some sort of emotion in the content that you create.” And Bluey does this by exploring real life situations like a boy who has ADHD and struggles with sitting still in school all day, or Bluey’s dad making a mistake and feeling inadequate as a father. B2B marketing isn’t for robots; use emotion and see engagement hit the ceiling.
• Make it quick. Boil your story down to create maximum impact in a short amount of time. Bluey episodes are a few minutes at most. Which makes them insanely digestible, and they still draw tears from parents watching with their kids. Of course, this masterful storytelling isn’t easy to do. Nate says, “How can you tell the most compelling story that evokes the most emotion in the most efficient way possible? And that requires a lot of work.  I don't think most people are willing to do that work. I think it's much easier to write out a list of features on your website and say, ‘This is how we can help you.’ But the alternative is more powerful.” Spending time to craft a campaign that tells your story efficiently and with emotion pays off.
• Show that you understand your audience to earn their trust. Research your target buyer to figure out what they care about. Then leverage that in your marketing as a powerful trust-building tool. Nate says, “If you can describe the problem, the life, the struggles that your buyers are facing better than they can describe it themselves, they will automatically assume that you have the best solution. Having that empathy and understanding, and being able to communicate that back to them through your marketing messaging is going to accelerate the buying process and help you win business faster than anything else that you can do.” It’s like how parents have learned to trust Bluey to thoughtfully explore real life topics in a compassionate way that children will understand. So when kids want to watch something, Bluey is not just a safe option, but an educational one as well. Bluey then becomes an easy go-to. Just like your product will be.

Quotes

*”Accounting, a great example. Accounting might be boring,  but accountants are not, because accountants are people. And people are not boring if you ask them the right questions. If you're trying to sell accounting, then you're going to fail. But if you're trying to solve a problem for accountants and you do a really good job understanding them, understanding what they're struggling with and what they want out of life, and you have empathy for their situation as an accountant, then you can find some really compelling stories to tell. But it's curiosity about the people that creates the good story. It's not what the people do. It's not the activity that's interesting in and of itself.” - Nate Bagley

*”Focus. Focus more of your time and energy on learning how to tell good stories, and learning how to tell good stories in a really powerful way that evokes emotion and makes people feel understood and seen. And they'll trust that you have exactly what they need to take away the pain or increase the rate of success around what they're doing on a day to day basis.” - Nate Bagley

Time Stamps

[0:50] Introducing Content Leader Nate Bagley

[1:22] What makes Bluey impactful?

[3:33] What’s Bluey about?

[7:45] Why is Bluey Remarkable?

[10:54] What B2B Marketing lessons can we take from Bluey?

[20:06] How does Bluey use emotion?

[26:03] How can we applying Bluey's storytelling techniques in marketing?

Links

Watch Bluey

Connect with Nate on LinkedIn

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino and Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marketers are trained to create targeted content for specific personas. But creating a message that’s open to interpretation is a highly effective strategy that strikes a cord across personas.

Because your audience will fill in the blank with how the message is meaningful for them. So instead of speaking to pain points specific to one role, speak to the human pain points. Maybe your product is a solution for a task that takes too much time or is overly complex, for example. Nobody likes feeling like they’re wasting too much of their workday on one task. So talk about how your product saves time or simplifies their work. 

So in this episode of Remarkable, we’re listening to Zach Bryan’s song, “Something in the Orange,” the hit song that resonates with a wide range of listeners. That’s because Zach Bryan’s lyrics are open to interpretation. And we’re talking with Todd Raphael, Head of Content at SkyHive, about how you can use this strategy in your content marketing to resonate with a wider audience. We’ll also cover the best time to brainstorm content ideas and why you could easily double your output with one simple idea. So grab your cowboy hat and stare off into the sunset while you listen to this episode of Remarkable. 

About our guest, Todd Raphael

Todd Raphael is Head of Content at SkyHive, a cloud-based workforce management and reskilling software provider. Todd joined SkyHive in November 2022. He previously served as Head of Content at eightfold.ai. He also worked as Editor in Chief at ERE Media for over 14 years, and prior to that, Online Editor at Workforce.

About SkyHive

Recognized as a top AI innovation by Forbes, a Gartner Cool Vendor in HCM, and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, SkyHive is cognifying the world’s labor economy and fundamentally changing how we work, learn, and live. SkyHive has built the world’s only Quantum Labor Analysis platform to optimize human economies in real-time for companies, communities, and countries. Essential to global economic empowerment, SkyHive allows people to future-proof themselves and their workforce faster than ever before. By marrying economic theory with workforce modeling and human analytics, SkyHive illuminates the reskilling journey and builds a capable and future-proof workforce that closes the skills gap with speed and efficiency unleashing human potential for individuals, organizations, and governments. SkyHive supports customers across all industries and geographies globally, and is focused on strengthening the overall economic resilience of workforces and communities.

About “Something in the Orange” by Zach Bryan

“Something in the Orange” is a song by American singer-songwriter Zach Bryan, a 25-year-old from Oologah, Oklahoma. Zach Bryan started writing music when he was 14, and putting it online when he was still serving in the Navy. His song “Heading South” ended up going viral after he posted a video of himself playing it on TikTok. He has two self-released albums, DeAnn and Elisabeth, and is now signed to Warner Records. His first studio album, American Heartbreak, debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 with over 70,000 album-equivalent units. The 34-song triple album has been certified Platinum as of June 2023, with over 1 million units sold.

“Something in the Orange” was Bryan’s first charting single. He told Today’s Country Radio that the song wasn’t about “some deep, dark thing.” He came up with the idea while sitting in a cabin in Wisconsin watching the sun set. It’s now certified 4x Platinum.

His video for “Something in the Orange” starts with a message, saying, “Thousands of videos were submitted by my listeners for the video of Something in the Orange. I decided to make this myself because it’s a feeling I know we’ve all shared at some point. Thank you guys for contributing and thank you guys for listening.” His idea to crowdsource videos reflects an appreciation of his fans, a sharing of energy, and a homegrown, grassroots effort true to his roots and the nature of country music. The video is a compilation of sunset videos taken by fans.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Something in the Orange”:

• Leave room for interpretation in your marketing message to resonate with a wider audience. Create a marketing message that lets your audience fill in the gaps. “Our tool saves you time to do more of what you love.” Could mean spending time with loved ones, walking their dog, doing a hobby…your message doesn’t have to be specific to strike a nerve. Todd says when he was looking at comments on Zach Bryan’s video for “Something in the Orange, “the song means all of these different things to different people. It's a song about their grandma. It's a song about their dog. It's a song about their ex-boyfriend. It's all these different things.” So let your marketing speak to multiple personas by leaving room for the imagination.
• Create two versions of your content. One is the typical kind of B2B, serious, technical content. The other is conversational and human. Both can be your brand voice. Ian says, “We make content and we write it in a certain way, in a certain language and a certain approach. And then we just say, ‘Well, this is our brand voice,’ as if that's how everybody just automatically wants to read stuff. You could get way more mileage by creating a second version of that same piece of content and writing it in an extremely conversational, approachable voice that's actually tied to a human being.” Zach Bryan wrote two versions of “Something in the Orange,” So create a second, conversational version to humanize your brand.
• Brainstorm content when you’re doing everyday routine tasks. Todd says it’s when people do their best thinking. He says, “We're walking the dog, we're riding a bike, we're doing something that's mindless and repetitive. It's always when we think of our best ideas. It's never during a brainstorming meeting.” Zach Bryan was sitting at a campfire when he wrote “Something in the Orange,” and it’s during that contemplative time that the lyrics came to him easily. So take notes when you’re out and about, and have a great idea for content.

Quotes

*”We choose the words for what words work best for SEO, instead of what emotions we want to provoke. People used to think of two different audiences, right? It was like pain avoiders and pleasure seekers.  Like, this car will keep you safe, versus this car is so much fun and so cool. And I think maybe sometimes we get away from that.” - Todd Raphael

*”There's a lot of B2B content that is just done one cookie cutter way. And we always talk about repurposing for a different medium. But some people want the creative to feel different, to read differently.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[00:55] Meet Todd Raphael, Head of Content at SkyHive

[1:36] What’s Zach Bryan's song 'Something in the Orange' about?

[2:39] What does Todd do at SkyHive?

[4:10] Learn more about Zach Bryan's musical journey

[8:01] What was the impact of 'Something in the Orange'?

[11:30] How can you harness the power of storytelling in marketing?

[24:00] What’s the content strategy at SkyHive?

[29:08] How does Todd prove the ROI of content?

Links

Listen to “Something in the Orange”

Watch the music video

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn

Learn more about SkyHive

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

B2B marketers aren’t creating serialized content. But you should be. 

We felt so strongly about this that we literally wrote a book about it. Well, not “we”. Ian wrote it. And we’re sharing key insights from that book with you in this episode of Remarkable. 

Because you, the B2B marketer, could be capitalizing on a more efficient content strategy proven to boost sales and improve ROI. Stop making one-off pieces of content. Make a series and make marketing not only easier and more productive for you, but more bingeable and more addictive for your audience.

So tune in for an exclusive sneak peak of The Serialized Content Framework, by Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. And get ideas churning for your next new content series. This episode is going to revolutionize the way you do content marketing.

About Ian Faison

Ian Faison is CEO of Caspian Studios, a video podcast-as-a-service company. Ian founded Caspian Studios to help CMOs and marketing teams to create world-class podcasts and video series. Caspian Studios now produces and manages over 60 podcasts and video series across a variety of industries.

About the Serialized Content Framework

The Serialized Content Framework is an ebook three years in the making, written by Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. It answers the questions:

1. Where is B2B marketing headed?
2. How is Hollywood-style storytelling evolving?
3. How do you drive pipeline from B2B content?

What B2B Companies Can Learn From the Serialized Content Framework: 

• Series>one-off pieces of content. You spend so much more brain power trying to come up with the newest, freshest material for every single piece of content than in creating a formula for a content series. Series are a more productive, more efficient use of your marketing team’s time and resources. Ian says that content powerhouses like Disney, Mattel and Marvel are capitalizing on this tactic. He says, “Each of these franchises is multiple seasons. It's multiple episodes within a season. And a lot of times they have other types of shows that are similar in either format, characters or universe. Then you get to market the entire franchise and your marketing is more productive over time.” B2B companies should do the same to multiply productivity and ultimately revenue.
• Don’t always try to sell to your audience. 95% of the time, people are not in buying mode. They don’t want to be sold to. So instead, continually and consistently put quality content where your audience is. Ian says, “You want to create really good, really impactful content in that 95% of the time so that when they go into the research phase, they're already thinking of you and you're already top of mind.” This is why top of funnel content is important. Because it builds brand awareness and affinity that leads to sales.
• Niche down. Your product is not for everyone. It is for a specific persona. So create persona-driven content for greater impact. Ian says, “The more segmented and targeted on a specific persona, the better off [your content will] be. Look at industry, look at role, look at geography.” 
• (And much, much more.)

Quotes

*”Serialized content is so important because it compounds. By the time you get to episode 40, 50 or 60, you have this valuable back catalog of content that has been working for a long time. As you continue to grow and expand with more and more episodes, all of that back catalog starts to perform even better over time. And you can cut it up to use as derivative content. ”

*”If you're creating serialized content, for example, a video podcast, and every single week a new episode comes out, this is something that is a consistent, repeatable process to drive brand gen. It is constantly fresh, but it also is evergreen, and it impacts various parts of the funnel.”

*”If serialized content is not nested right in your go to market, then it's never going to get approved, and it's never going to get any results. It's never going to get the support and the effort that it needs. So we need to make sure that this fits right into our go to market strategy.”

Time Stamps

[1:35] Part 1: What’s the Serialized Content Framework about?

[3:52] Part 2: How do you engage prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet?

[7:11] Part 3: Why should you niche down?

[15:33] Part 4: Where do series fit in your GTM?

[21:29] Part 5: How do you create a video podcast series?

[32:44] Part 6: How do you drive pipeline with a video podcast?

[43:46] Part 7: What KPIs should be you be tracking?

[50:54] Part 8: How does content shape community?

[53:50] Part 9: What are some examples of serialized content portfolios and video podcasts?

[55:20] Part 10: Advice and resources

Links

Check out the Serialized Content Framework

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

Learn more about Caspian Studios

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s easy to feel like you’re on your own lonely marketing island. You’re so focused on what you’re doing that your process starts to feel stale. Wouldn’t it be helpful to hear how other marketers are driving sales?

Especially if those marketers are at companies like G2, Deel and Gigster; successful names in B2B that know what works, and are pushing the envelope for what B2B content could look like. That’s what we’re bringing to you this week. 

In this episode, we’re wrapping up Season 3 by highlighting the winning content strategies from top B2B brands. You’ll leave with new ideas and insights to use on your very next campaign. So all aboard, we’re getting you off that lonely island on this episode of Remarkable.

About our guests

Kim Courvoisier, Senior Director of Content Marketing at Lob

Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI

Anja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at Deel

Martha Aviles, Vice President of Marketing at Gigster

Palmer Houchins, VP and Head of Marketing at G2

Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo

Johann Wrede, CEO at Emburse

Chris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at Celonis

Jérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at Tenable

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Season 3 of Remarkable:

• Provide some free, valuable content to your audience. It proves that your product is worth the investment and helps you establish domain authority. Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI says, “When we were smaller, we were really banking on utility. So we invested a lot in single pieces of content that people would share because there was nothing better than it. So once you saw it, you would have to pass it on. An example is our team open sourced our entire competency matrix and wrote about how we developed it. And that's a document that is like five years old and it's an open Google doc. Every time I go on there, there's still like 12 Anonymous Raptors on there using the content. And that was worth it because they've become tools. And that's been a great marketing strategy.”
• Create content for people at different points in the buying process. Your content should look different for people who are just exploring their options vs. people who are ready to make a purchase. Anja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at Deel says, “The readiness to purchase is very important when you think about content marketing.” She says you can think of it like the marketing funnel. “Top of the funnel content is informational, it's educational. It's a lot of articles or listicles, and lighter content. Closer to the middle of the funnel, your content needs to be a bit more product heavy. It needs to talk about specific solutions, specific questions that your prospects may have. But not all of it has to be salesy and pushy, because they're just considering. They're exploring their options. And then the very bottom of the funnel is where you really push them over the edge. They're really thinking about it. They're considering your product, and know enough about it.”
• Make something different. Get away from the B2B content formula. Jérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at Tenable says the risk in making something outside-the-box is overstated. He says, “Notably in an industry where marketing, the marketing practices are very mature and very identical from one company to another, there's very, very little downside in standing out, in doing something that is entirely different.” He says, “Worst case scenario, it’s not going to get a lot of engagement. But I don't think anyone would laugh at you or discard you as a company because you did something different. I think people respect the originality, the boldness, in doing something entirely different.”

Quotes

*”A lot of what we think about with content marketing is how do we show a bit more of the heart behind what we do? How do we make us not just a brand, but show that there's a real company and people behind that? If you are choosing a provider, you're actually going to choose those guys, you're going to bet on them.” - Chris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at Celonis

*”Without trust, you can't do business. And today, buyers are really sophisticated. If we don't produce excellent content that genuinely seeks to inform, educate and help the customer, then they're just going to ignore it and they're going to go somewhere else. If you can create content that authentically seeks to inform and to add value, then you start to move into the trusted advisor quadrant.” - Johann Wrede, CEO at Emburse

*”We are all bombarded with content every day. And so we try to cut through the noise and provide content that can help our audience do their jobs better. That's the overarching goal of everything that we create.” - Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo

Time Stamps

[0:58] Introducing the Season 3 Roundup! Content strategies from…

[1:22] Kim Courvoisier from Lob

[2:38] Gillian Jakob Kieser of CircleCI

[4:38] Anja Simic of Deel

[7:17] Martha Aviles of Gigster

[8:28] Palmer Houchins of G2

[10:39] Meghan Barr of ZoomInfo

[12:09] Johann Wrede of Emburse

[16:44] Chris Sheen of Celonis

[19:37] Jérôme Robert of Tenable

Links

Listen to the full Season 3 episodes, featuring:

Kim Courvoisier, Senior Director of Content Marketing at Lob

Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI

Anja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at Deel

Martha Aviles, Vice President of Marketing at Gigster

Palmer Houchins, VP and Head of Marketing at G2

Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo

Johann Wrede, CEO at Emburse

Chris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at Celonis

Jérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at Tenable

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hear us out. A children’s book, a novella, a fictional crime podcast, but make them B2B. 

Because B2B marketing doesn’t have to be a webinar, a blog post, an email newsletter… Every B2B company does those. Today we’re challenging you to rise above the noise and make radically different content. 

In this episode, we’re learning from a company that has created B2B content as all three: children’s book, novella, and fictional crime podcast. That company is Tenable. We’re chatting with their CMO and Chief of Staff, Jérôme Robert, about the art of creating fictional content that feels realistic, lived in, and resonates with your audience while also improving brand affinity. So grab a coffee from your local barista, tip well, and settle in for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Jérôme Robert

Jérôme Robert is CMO and Chief of Staff at Tenable. He previously served as Managing Director of Alsid’s U.S. operations. His responsibilities included enabling users to harden their Active Directory and detect attacks. and supporting PSG. Prior to Alsid, he served as SVP of Product and Marketing at EclecticIQ. He has also worked at companies like Orange Cyberdefense and Arkoon Netasq.

About Tenable

Tenable® is the Exposure Management company. Approximately 40,000 organizations around the globe rely on Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. As the creator of Nessus®, Tenable extended its expertise in vulnerabilities to deliver the world’s first platform to see and secure any digital asset on any computing platform. Tenable customers include approximately 60 percent of the Fortune 500, approximately 40 percent of the Global 2000, and large government agencies

About The Hacker Chronicles

The Hacker Chronicles is a podcast about a barista named Alice who’s struggling to make ends meet, and that’s when a friend suggests buying a Ransomware-as-a-Service kit. So she starts exploring the Dark Web as a way to make some extra cash and ends up becoming America’s most wanted hacker. It’s now in its second season, “Digital Nomad”. It stars Chloe Taylor as Alice Mitnick and Michael C. Hall as John Doe. And it’s presented by Tenable.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Hacker Chronicles:

• Create marketing content in a non-marketing genre. Like a children’s book, like a fiction podcast. Because not only will you appeal to marketers, you’ll tap into a much broader audience who enjoys the story. Ian says, “What I heard a ton of when we launched season one was, ‘I don't normally listen to podcasts like this, but I binged it with my girlfriend,’ or, ‘I listened to the entire thing in the car.’ We talked a lot about, ‘How do we make it bingeable?’
• Ground your fictional characters in a real world. Make your content resonate with your audience by creating hyper realistic scenarios. Accuracy in the details is key. Ian says in creating the storyline, “The characters had to experience the world in a certain way in order for it to feel real. Like, they need to have real stakes. They need to have real relationships. They need to have real pressures.” And Jérôme adds that, “W​hen you see a movie and there's a supposed hacker, but you see their screen and it's a dumb script that they are running that has nothing to do with cyber security, when a cyber security person watches this movie, we're like, ‘This is awful. I can't stand it.’ That's exactly what I didn't want. So everything [the main character Alice] does has been thought through and is realistic.” The Hacker Chronicles is based on a lot of real hacks, and so anyone in the cybersecurity industry would believe it.
• Get rid of ads. Try entertainment instead. Jerome says, “Everybody believes that the opportunity for ads is shrinking dramatically. People don't like interruptions. You have to provide something that is enjoyable. That rewards your audience.” And he said after bringing this up, his team no longer got pushback from the leadership on updating their marketing strategy.

Quotes

“Tenable was one of the founders of cybersecurity as an industry. And there's a lot of good things that come with that heritage. But there's also the tendency to not try new stuff from a marketing perspective. And there were people at the company when we joined that had an innate desire to challenge that.” - Jérôme Robert

“You have to be self-critical about what you're doing all the time. It's not easy, I think, from a brain gymnastics standpoint. It involved a lot of effort, but it's very rewarding. You're very happy when you end up with something that you think cannot be attacked, cannot be challenged. I mean, yeah, they could say they don't like it, but they can't say it's wrong. You have the eureka moment when you think, ‘Yeah, we got it.’ It's very cool.”  - Jérôme Robert 

*”You do something that is fundamentally different from the rest of the industry, you are going to stand out. Which is, as marketers, what we're looking for. But as a company that is managing their risk doing something that makes the company stand out creates mixed feelings. They think, ‘If the outcomes are not what we hoped for it's a huge risk, it could backfire, and you don't have any ROI to put in front of it, so, no, I'm not going to do it.’ There’s too much risk in being different, somehow. And I think that's totally overstated. I think, notably in an industry where the marketing practices are very mature and very identical from one company to another, there's very, very little downside in standing out, in doing something that is entirely different.” - Jérôme Robert  

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Jérôme Robert, CMO & Chief of Staff at Tenable

[1:57] What does Jérôme do at Tenable?

[5:45] What is The Hacker Chronicles?

[11:26] About the inspiration behind The Hacker Chronicles

[17:17] The importance of realism in a fictional piece of content

[19:39] How scary is it to make a primer on hacking as a cybersecurity company?

[35:30] How do you prove the ROI of content?

[40:02] Why does Jérôme have a long-term approach to content like a podcast?

[44:40] How does Jérôme tie the podcast back to Tenable customers?

Links

Listen to The Hacker Chronicles

Connect with Jérôme on LinkedIn

Learn more about Tenable

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Imagine this: possessing the power to not only understand your customers' deepest desires but also plant ideas in their minds, making them believe it was their idea from the very start.

It may sound like something straight out of a dream, but it may not be as far-fetched as it seems. See, the genius of Christopher Nolan's Inception conceals marketing insights if you look close enough. It's the marketing movie you never knew was about marketing.

While we can't offer you a PASIV device to enter your customers’ dreams, we can provide you with the tools to craft marketing strategies that work like inception - subtly influencing, inspiring, and engaging your audience.

So in this episode, we’re deciphering the intricate layers of marketing with the help of Emburse’s Chief Experience Officer, Johann Wrede. Together, we discuss how to utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas’ in your customers’ heads, avoid fixating on initial customer expectations throughout the customer journey, and leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative to boost engagement. So grab your totem for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Johann Wrede

Johann Wrede is the Chief Experience Officer at Emburse. He is responsible for leading a cross-functional marketing and customer success organization, with the goal of delivering a world-class customer experience from first awareness through subscription renewal.  Over the course of the last 25 years, Johann has written, implemented, sold and marketed a variety of customer database, CRM and customer experience (CX) products. An evangelist for customer experience, he has delivered keynotes and press interviews in 18 different countries, and written numerous articles on the topic.

About Emburse

Emburse is the global leader in spend optimization. Their expense, travel management, purchasing and accounts payable, and payments solutions are trusted by more than 12 million business professionals, including CFOs, finance teams, and travelers. More than 18,000 organizations in 120 countries, including FORTUNE 100 corporations, high-growth startups, public sector agencies, and nonprofits, count on their intelligent automation, sophisticated analytics, and unmatched spend control to streamline processes, increase spend visibility, enhance compliance, and deliver positive financial outcomes.

About Inception

Inception is a sci-fi action, mind-bending movie about a corporate spy who enters people’s dreams to steal secrets from their subconscious. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the main character, Dominic, or Dom, Cobb, who is basically gifted with this ability that’s made him extremely successful, but he’s lost everything because of it. Namely, his marriage and children. His wife is played by Marion Cotillard. And so he’s kind of haunted by her in his subconscious and she ends up sort of thwarting his every move. So anyway, he’s given a chance to redeem himself by planting an idea in someone’s mind, and having to go layers deep into their subconscious, which is of course, a nearly impossible task.

The movie was released in 2010, and directed by Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, latest Batman series with Christian Bale AND Memento). Nolan also produced it along with Emma Thomas - his wife and producing partner - for Warner Bros. It also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Elliot Page as Ariadne, and Tom Hardy as Eames.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Inception:

• Utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas’.  Emotions are your superpower to accessing the deepest corners of your customers' minds. People don't just buy; they invest for emotional reasons—this is an intrinsic part to our human nature. Johann says, “our whole mission is to plant ideas into customers' heads and convince them that it was their idea from the first. And the first time I saw [Inception], that is, it just jumped out at me and I thought, wow, that really sums up the marketing profession in a nutshell.”
• Don’t fixate on initial customer expectations. Customers evolve, and so should your strategy. What matters most in the end is if they are happy. Just as Inception leaves us with an ambiguous ending, Cobb’s happiness is undeniable. Whether it's a dream or reality, his happiness is the ultimate goal, mirroring how you should approach your customer journey. Johann emphasizes, “it doesn't actually matter if the value that they thought they were going to get is the value that they got. What's more important is that the value that they want right now is the value that they're getting right now. Are they happy with the result?”
• Leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative. This fuels customer engagement and is exactly what Christopher Nolan did when creating Inception. We witness this concept in two distinct ways: co-creation within the dream state, as the dream world is designed in a way that allows the subject to fill in details, and ambiguity in the ending, with Inception's enigmatic conclusion inviting audience speculation. Johann says, “All too often, we build these elaborate cities that we put our buyer into. And we orchestrate this narrative that is so complete and so full. And we try to be so precise in our language that we don't leave room for them to bring their own perception and perspective to it.”

Quotes

“One of my first sales mentors said to me, people buy for emotional reasons and then back it up with facts. That became really clear to me that what we needed to do as marketers was peel away those layers of the onion and get past the business person and down to the human, and speak to that person.” - Johann Wrede

“If you can create content that authentically seeks to inform and to add value, then you start to move into the trusted advisor quadrant, which is where you really want to be. And the other piece of this puzzle is that we have to look at the content we create through the lens of the customer journey.”  - Johann Wrede

Time Stamps

[01:00] Introducing Chief Experience Officer at Emburse, Johann Wrede

[1:34] Why are we talking about Inception?

[3:34] Tell me more about Inception 

[13:48] What are some marketing lessons we can learn from Inception?

[22:16] Marketing insights from Inception's mind-bending ending

[32:02] How to identify needs and craft messages that resonate

[45:53] How does Johann think about content marketing?

[54:49] Johann’s view on the ROI of content

[57:49] Johann’s favorite upcoming marketing campaigns at Emburse

Links

Watch Inception

Connect with Johann on LinkedIn

Learn more about Emburse

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don’t need to have an unlimited budget to make remarkable marketing content. In fact, it's better if you're working under some constraints. We have proof.

The folks over at Wistia did a little experiment they called One, Ten, One Hundred. They made an ad for the same product (Wistia’s Soapbox video recorder) on three different budgets: $1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 dollars, to see which one would perform best. And in this episode, we’re giving you the inside scoop on what they found. You’ll be surprised at the result.

Today, we’re showing you how combining a bit of inventiveness with a touch of resourcefulness is more powerful than just throwing money at your marketing. Because when cash is a bit strapped, that’s when you’re forced to get creative. And it’s that creativity that resonates with viewers. That’s what we’re talking about today with Chris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at Celonis. So take out your scissors and craft paper for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Chris Sheen

Chris Sheen is Director of Content and Social at Celonis. He joined Celonis in February of 2022. Prior to his current role, he served as CMO at Sideways 6 and SaleCycle. He has also worked at Teradata and Experian. He is based in London.

About Celonis

Celonis is the global leader and pioneer in process mining. 

They pioneered the process mining category 10 years ago and the company is now valued at over $13 billion dollars - decacorn status no less. 

About One, Ten, One Hundred

One, Ten, One Hundred is a Webby Award-winning four-part documentary in which video software company Wistia challenges video production company Sandwich Video to make three ads on different budgets: 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000-dollars. The goal was to explore the impact budget has on creativity in video ads. Wistia then measured ad performance and audience reaction to gauge success of each. It was also a way to advertise for Wistia’s tool, Soapbox, which is a video creation tool for SMBs.

The metrics they tuned into were traditional demographics, engagement data, cost per customer acquisition and return on investment.

The idea for Wistia’s documentary came about because their production team realized they didn’t have a good understanding of the money-in-money-out ratio. Wistia Founder and CEO, Chris Savage said, “Our production team felt that creativity was the single most important element in producing an effective video and this fits in with our vision to grow through creativity.”

What B2B Companies Can Learn From One, Ten, One Hundred:

• Show the “making of” process behind your product.  There’s an appeal to seeing a transformation from beginning to end. Ian says, “We like to know the process of making something. The making of something is just as interesting, or even more interesting, than the final asset. People like to watch transformation. They like inside information.” Chris says that it also shows the humanity behind the product, behind the company. He says, “I think B2B companies can just feel like a faceless organization that has a product, that has software. But when you show the making of things, like one of my favorite easy tricks is showing an outtake at the end of a video. It's a, you know, a five second outtake. It shows the human side, it shows the mistake and it completely changes how you feel very quickly about the brand, about the company.” Showing the process humanizes your brand and makes it more appealing to potential customers.
• Play up how long your product was in development. This conveys to your audience a sense of your specialty and standards of excellence in the industry. Chris says, “Apple and Dyson really show you the level, the hours, the days, years, months, they've gone into making their products, really crafting what they do and the art behind it. Like, ‘We've perfected this. We weren't going to ship it until it was ready.’ This is so powerful as a marketing technique. Because it works. It really makes you feel like, ‘Okay, this is going to be something special.” So show the rigor that went into crafting your product.
• Edutain your audience. Don’t just try to educate them. Make it fun. Chris says, “Great content marketing is like entertainment. You've got to know your audience to do that well. Wistia really does. How many companies sat there thinking, ‘We'd love to have a great explainer video for our website, but we just don't have the budget’? I watched [the documentary] and I'm literally thinking, ‘I need to get my craft papers out. I'm going to steal my daughter's school stuff and start making stuff to help sell Celonis.’ Because it brings it to life in so many different ways.” So when you’re creating content, ask yourself, “Is this educational and is it entertaining?” A good way to measure this is to ask, “Would viewers watch it in their own time?”
• Create something that you enjoy. Because it’s likely what your audience would enjoy too. Chris says, “With Wistia, they're clearly doing it as much for themselves as anyone else. They're clearly loving it, enjoying it, learning a lot themselves. And at the end of it, you kind of feel that they've got as much out of it as I have watching it. And I think that in itself is a great sign of content. If you can do something that, when you look back, you think, ‘I think I would enjoy this if someone else had made this,’ I think that's a really strong point if it fits your target market.’

Quotes

“When you watch [One, Ten, One Hundred], you don't feel like you're watching a piece of content marketing. And that's probably the ultimate B2B marketer’s goal, or any marketer's goal really, is to make that content not feel like it's selling something. It's just selling entertainment and education.” - Chris Sheen

“We always strive for perfect, don't we? We want perfection in the market. We want it to feel great and look great, sound great. Sometimes it's worth taking a step back and thinking, ‘Actually, what's going to get the message across the most authentically?”  - Chris Sheen

*”Creative work has to have constraints.” - Ian Faison

*”[The documentary] really was binge worthy, which is the ultimate goal for content marketing. It passes the driveway test. That’s when you're listening to a song, you get to the end of your journey, you're sitting in your driveway. Do you get out of the car and just walk away, or do you stay to finish it?” - Chris Sheen

Time Stamps

[00:54] Introducing Director of Content & Social at Celonis, Chris Sheen

[1:48] Why are we talking about Wistia’s One, Ten, One Hundred documentary today?

[3:21] What is Wistia’s One, Ten, One Hundred documentary about?

[5:50] What makes the documentary remarkable?

[12:51] What are some marketing lessons we can take from One, Ten, One Hundred?

[30:22] What’s Chris’ content strategy?

[36:15] What are some projects at Celonis Chris is proud of?

Links

Watch One, Ten, One Hundred

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Learn more about Celonis

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nailing down your brand voice is tough. Especially when you’re writing content for videos, blogs, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok…we could go on forever. 

Because a strong brand voice helps you stand out, drives brand affinity, and improves conversion rates. But where do you even start? What tone do you use? How wordy or concise should you be? We have answers for you. 

We’re tuning in to the Queen of brand voice today: Taylor Swift. Along with VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo, Meghan Barr, we’re exploring how Taylor Swift listens to her audience, how she defines her writing style, and how that changes with each reinvention. So grab your glitter pen and take notes on this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Meghan Barr

Meghan Barr is VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo. She joined ZoomInfo in January 2021 as Senior Director of Content and Communications. 

After nearly two decades as an award-winning journalist at The Associated Press and The Boston Globe, Meghan joined the tech world at ZoomInfo, a software company that is modernizing how businesses go to market.

During her journalism career, Meghan covered some of the biggest breaking news stories in the world, including Occupy Wall Street, Superstorm Sandy, and the Boston Marathon bombings. As a reporter based in several Midwestern cities and, later, New York City, she broke news about serial killers, witnessed a death row execution by lethal injection, followed politicians on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, drove through flooded roadways, chased ambulances and tornadoes, climbed to the top of the World Trade Center on a rickety ladder, interviewed famous athletes, and generally had a lot of amazing adventures. Over the years, her areas of expertise included crime, income inequality, transportation, and tourism. She also became one of the AP's trained video journalists capable of shooting and producing my own video reports streamed globally to clients for AP Television News.

As an editor, Meghan directed metro news coverage on Boston.com for several years before becoming an editor at The Boston Globe Magazine, where she commissioned and edited longform narrative features and adapted excerpts from forthcoming works of nonfiction.

Meghan is passionate about telling impactful stories that resonate. She’s also dedicated to helping working parents succeed in a world where the odds are stacked against them, particularly for working mothers. At the Globe, she was part of a fierce committee of women who successfully lobbied for a better family leave policy. At ZoomInfo, she launched a caregivers employee resource group to help support and advocate for employees who care for children or elderly relatives.

About ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo (NASDAQ: ZI) is a leader in modern go-to-market software, data, and intelligence for more than 30,000 companies worldwide. ZoomInfo’s revenue operating system, RevOS, empowers business-to-business sales, marketing, operations, and recruiting professionals to hit their number by pairing best-in-class technology with unrivaled data coverage, accuracy, and depth of company and contact information. With integrations embedded into workflows and technology stacks, including the leading CRM, Sales Engagement, Marketing Automation, and Talent Management applications, ZoomInfo drives more predictable, accelerated, and sustainable growth for its customers. ZoomInfo emphasizes GDPR and CCPA compliance. In addition to creating the industry’s first proactive notice program, the company is a registered data broker with the states of California and Vermont.

About Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is a singer and songwriter and all-around music industry phenomenon who is currently on her much-talked-about Eras Tour. She was originally known for country music but is overall considered a pop artist. She has collected Grammys, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and more #1 albums than any other woman ever. She has a strong, defined personal brand that fans tap into, namely the red lipstick, wearing the number 13, and wearing friendship bracelets. She’s also a strong advocate for artist’s rights. 

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Taylor Swift:

• Decide who you are as a company. What are your values? What’s your mission? How would you describe your company? Answer these questions first, and that will inform your brand voice. Meghan says, “Which brand archetype are you? You can be the hero. You can be a helper. It’s an important question of like, ‘Who do you want to be as a company? Who do you want to be as a brand? What are you all about, basically?’
• Lurk on your audience. Tune into their social media to find out what matters to them. Then create content that plays to your audience’s values. Taylor Swift calls her approach “Tay-lurking.” She investigates what fans are doing and saying on social media, and that’s how she understands what they care about. She then builds it into content. This way, she gives fans what they want (another concert, hidden Easter eggs, etc.).
• Put effort into building your community. Community doesn’t build itself; it depends on give and take. (Emphasis on the “give” part). The energy and attention that you invest in your community comes right back to you in the form of brand affinity. Taylor Swift is constantly engaging with her fans, whether it’s at her concerts and giving away her black fedora to a special fan, on social media, or at meet and greets. She gives the impression of being very accessible, and that she “gets” her fans. So put some effort into building that emotional connection and reap the benefits.
• Reinvent your brand to renew audience interest. As your company grows and develops, refresh your brand to reflect the change. Taylor Swift has reinvented (aka rebranded) herself many times, from country music to pop, album to album. Each has had a different feel and look. Even the name of her tour - The Eras Tour - plays to this. She has grown and changed through each era, each album. And her fans have grown with her, gaining momentum. Taylor Swift even uses different voices in her songs. At the 2022 Nashville Songwriters Association International annual ceremony, she said she has three styles of lyrics: quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics, and gel pen lyrics. The important part is that Taylor Swift is the one writing them. And it’s her personal brand fans are attached to. She already made a psychological bond with them, and they are always looking out for new content from her. So keep your branding feeling fresh, including your brand voice, so your audience stays invested.

Quotes

*“The Tay-lurking thing is her listening. Like every good marketer, she spends time with the customers. She's out there listening to what her fans want and responding to that stuff. That's how she can layer in all these little hidden messages and hidden secrets and know that people are going to find them because she's probably reading how much people love that stuff.” - Ian Faison

*”She's investing the time in her fans that they are investing in her. She’s feeding the frenzy of her fans, of the community. You have to invest in your audience. You have to listen to them and actually put the work in.” - Meghan Barr

*”One of the big marketing takeaways from Taylor Swift in the totality of her career is her acknowledgement that ‘I know my fans better than you know them.’ She knows what she’s making and who it's for. And if you don't like it, it's not for you.” - Ian Faison

*"You can't be everything for everyone. You have to pick a lane, you have to decide what you're doing and commit to it.” - Meghan Barr

*”If you don't know your audience, you're going to fail. You have to know who they are, what they think about, what they're worried about, what they're stressing about… you have to really put in that time and effort. Because otherwise you can't get inside their heads. You can't figure out what's going to resonate with them." - Meghan Barr

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfo

[1:33] Why are we covering Taylor Swift?

[2:52] What does Meghan do at ZoomInfo?

[4:07] Learn more about Taylor Swift

[9:49] Why is Taylor Swift remarkable?

[13:09] Why authenticity is more important today, after the advent of AI in marketing

[24:14] More marketing takeaways from Taylor Swift

[38:45] Learn about the modern go-to-market index

Links

Listen to Taylor Swift

Connect with Meghan on LinkedIn

Learn more about ZoomInfo

Read the AdWeek article on ZoomInfo’s collaboration with Colossus

Check out ZoomInfo’s go-to-market plays

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can learn a lot by looking at the past. Especially at an era that shaped how we think of marketing today. Today, we’re traveling back in time. And we’re doing it in style.

Come with us to Madison Avenue in the 1960s, a formative time for advertising and marketing. It was the “Mad Men” that walked so the 21st Century marketers could run. And even though we’re equipped with technology, AI and all sorts of new digital tools, many of the cares and struggles feel familiar. But we’re not just turning to the past today to commiserate. We’re looking at case studies and learning from the classic masters of marketing…through the lens of Hollywood, of course.

In this episode, we’re turning to the series that brought marketing into pop culture and earned Lionsgate $26 million a year: Mad Men. Joining us is VP & Head of Marketing at G2, Palmer Houchins. Palmer and the Remarkable team are discussing how to balance delivering on your brand promise with connecting emotionally with your audience, being persistent with marketing ideas, and paying attention to all the little details. So put on your sharkskin suit and wingtip oxfords for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Palmer Houchins

Palmer Houchins is the VP, Head of Marketing at G2. He previously served as a senior marketing leader and G2 customer at Mailchimp (acquired by Intuit) and CallRail ($125M+ in funding).

He is a veteran marketer with 15+ years of experience growing businesses, scaling teams and building brands.

About G2

G2 is the largest and most trusted software marketplace, helping 80 million people every year make smarter software decisions based on authentic peer reviews.

About Mad Men

Mad Men is a drama series about a prestigious New York ad agency called Sterling Cooper in the 1960s focusing on debauched ad executive Don Draper, who’s played by Jon Hamm. It also stars Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks, January Jones, John Slattery and Vincent Kartheizer. The series was created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It aired from 2007 to 2015. According to the pilot episode, the name “Mad Men” is short for Madison Men, or the men that worked on Madison Avenue in New York City. It won 16 Emmys, five Golden Globes, a Peabody award, averaged 2 million viewers over its run, and made Lionsgate about $26 million a year.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Mad Men:

• Be persistent. If you have a cool idea for a marketing campaign, don’t let it drop. It’s only a matter of time before that idea becomes your next success. Writer Matthew Weiner wrote the script for Mad Men in 2001, but it didn’t get picked up until four years later. Palmer says, “Matthew Weiner was writing this script on his off time at The Sopranos where he was a writer and just had it in his back pocket. And he just kept trying to get it made, get it made, no one was interested. And then boom, this happens and it becomes one of the most successful shows of all time.” So hold onto those good ideas and advocate for them. If you believe they’re good ideas and worthy of being created, act with conviction.
• Pay attention to the details. Make sure every part of your design and marketing aligns with your brand. The logos, font, pictures, the messaging, are all a part of your image. Just like how every detail of the set and costuming in Mad Men are meticulously styled to make the viewer feel like they’re in New York City in the 1960s. According to an article by Zooey Norman on ScreenRant.com, “Every single secretary's desk included a small Rolodex in which each and every card was filled out with addresses and contact information. Their desks also contained documents formatted and filled out to appear like real notices, letters, and memos in order to create the illusion of a truly functional office.” That’s the level of detail you want to get into in your marketing. Every element matters.
• Deliver on your brand promise first, connect emotionally with your audience second. There’s a scene in Mad Men when they’re trying to win the Burger Chef business, and Peggy goes to the restaurant to do a focus group. Her goal is to hone in on the emotions of customers and what resonates with them. Palmer says, “you want that emotional connection, but your products also have to deliver on that basic thing. And so in a B2B context, we want to have that aspirational element. But we've also got to be able to just simply deliver on kind of a functional ROI level as well.” So focus on your brand promise first before tying it to emotional connection as well.

Quotes

*”Too often we fall into that trap, and the same thinking of, ‘Well, this is popular, so we're just going to keep doing more of that,’ and not going against the grain, or zagging when everyone else is zigging. And I think that [Mad Men] is a testament to that thinking, especially as it relates to creativity.” - Palmer Houchins

“You can spend weeks and months and years crafting the perfect copy, but in our world, it's going to get A/B tested, it's going to get split tested, and the distribution of getting that out in front of people [isn’t] linear. You have to know that that piece of copy that you spend so much time writing, that might not be the first thing they see about your brand. That might be the 500th. That might be after they've already talked to a salesperson. It might be before. There's so much more complexity to marketing now.” - Ian Faison

*”There's a lot of nostalgia in this show. They're using real products, like Coke, Heinz beans, Burger Chef, Hilton, Lucky Strike and Jaguar. Because they're real, it's cool to see an ad campaign for super common household brands. Giving the listener or the viewer some signposts that they're familiar with will go a long way.” - Ian Faison

“I think nostalgia is a part of it, but as someone who wasn't alive during the 60s, for me, it was almost like this exploration of history; a time to kind of live in that. And I think using real products, real elections and real world events is how they earmark it. It helps you tether to a different era.” - Palmer Houchins

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Palmer Houchins, VP & Head of Marketing at G2

[1:32] Why are we covering Mad Men?

[4:30] What does Palmer do at G2?

[6:09] What is Mad Men about?

[7:16] How was Mad Men made?

[13:47] What makes Mad Men remarkable?

[25:16] What are marketing lessons we can take away from Mad Men?

Links

Watch Mad Men

Connect with Palmer on LinkedIn

Learn more about G2

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

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