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Making It with Jon Davids
164 - "This is How I Run Marketing at a $1B+ Company" | Carolyn Sarnoff, CMO at Pattern
00:37:28
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- [00:01]
JD
What's up, guys? JD Here. And today I've got a special episode I'm calling this corner office. So here's the deal. On the podcast, I tell a lot of founding stories. I talk about how businesses started, how they grew, what you can learn from them. But this is the number one marketing podcast in many countries across the world. I know I have a lot of marketing executives, a lot of people who want to build businesses and learn from the best. So I thought, why, why don't I talk to the biggest marketers in the world or the chief marketing officers at the biggest companies in the world? And so today I'm gonna do that for you. My guest is Carolyn Sarnoff, the chief Marketing officer at Pattern. This is a $1.3 billion revenue company. Those are 2023 numbers, probably a lot bigger than that now. And we're gonna learn from Carolyn, see what she's doing, what she's thinking, what she learned spending 13 years at Amazon, running big businesses there, and now what she's doing to grow this big technology company serving the biggest e commerce companies in the world. That's coming up in just a second. If you like the show, make sure you get on my newsletter@johndavids.com of course, hit subscribe, comment, review wherever you're listening to this. And now my conversation with Carolyn Sarnoff. How do you get in touch with people? Just on the very first kind of top of funnel, you're selling something that I'm guessing is very expensive to people who are getting sold to a lot and marketed to a lot. How do you even think about getting someone's attention when you're selling a super high ticket product to a super busy person?
- [01:39]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Yeah, it's a super, super good question. First, we think a lot about just what are the really big challenges that are facing our target audience? And so, for example, right now we're right in the middle of Q4 and holiday, and that's one of biggest shopping, you know, time, seasonal times in the entire year for a lot of brands who are selling, whether it's D2C, whether it's in, you know, brick and mortar, whether it's on e commerce marketplaces, supply chain and logistics are like a huge pain point. Right. And so just making sure that your products are in stock in the places that your customers are shopping. I think this has been a super, super disruptive year. You know, Amazon has new fees, they have new requirements. And so one of the ways we've gotten attention is just by saying like, hey, anybody having a problem with this because, like, you know, we're hearing from a lot of our customers or just a lot of our partners that this is really a big pain point. And so just by saying, hey, like, we are listening and we hear what is going on and we actually get it. And here are some thoughts on it. Like, ask us any questions. Here's how we can help. Showing some empathy for what are some of those big challenges. You know, that's just. That's just an example, but I think you can find those throughout the year. It's like what feels really relevant to your audience.
- [03:00]
JD
Quick break. So I can tell you about Influicity. That's the little marketing agency I started in my apartment about 10 years ago. Well, fast forward, it is not so little anymore. Influicity works with some of the biggest brands in the world, building customer communities that drive revenue. We do this through influencers, podcasts, paid media, social media, content, AI and so much more. You can learn more@influicity.com and hey, while you're there, check out our case studies. We have a lot of them. That's influicity.com I think you hit on a really important point and there's a rookie mistake. Unfortunately, it's not a rookie mistake. A lot of very experienced people also make this mistake is where they start with the product, where they should always be starting with the problem. The instinct is always to say, oh, here's the thing I sell, or here's the way I can help you. Yeah, but you haven't outlined the pain yet. And as you said, starting with something as simple as, hey, is anyone else feeling this? Anyone else feeling like we can't get our products in on time? Or anyone else realizing that, you know, ad costs are soaring and we need to find better ways to get in front of our customers. And when you start with that, you get attention and then you can go into the solution, but if you reverse it, you're never going to get anyone to listen to you.
- [04:12]
Carolyn Sarnoff
That's exactly right. You have to build some credibility. It's like, why should you believe you are so busy and you get so many different folks reaching out and trying to get you to use their product or their solution. And so it's like you kind of have to earn. You have to earn the right for them to listen to you. And it's showing that you understand and then building some credibility.
- [04:31]
JD
Are you guys. I'm guessing it's sort of a longer sales cycle that people are coming on board and using pattern. Are People, are you thinking about how to speak to them in different ways at different points in the purchase cycle? Or is there a certain point at which, hey, they know who we are now, it's the job of my sales team to figure this out. Or are you actually trying to nurture and educate and bring them down that funnel the entire time?
- [04:53]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Oh, my gosh, no, for sure. We are trying to be, you know, we have a, a, a motto. And this is across our sales and marketing teams. And that's to be what we call KHP squared. And that's knowledgeable, helpful, present, and personalized. And so that means that we are showing up, you know, in the right places at the right times in a way that, you know, isn't overly salesy. It just, it feels like, hey, look, like we, Whether you actually want to work with us or not, like, we are here to help. We want to engage with you. And so it's actually really, really fun to think about that full kind of journey that a customer might take with us and how do we engage them in different ways? And so obviously, at the very top of the funnel, that is through often digital ads or emails or invitations to webinars. And it's really about, hey, it's about what we talked earlier. Like, hey, is anybody else seeing this? Here's kind of our take, and here's how. Here are some important things that you might want to be thinking about as we get through the funnel. You know, we do a lot in terms of live events, and so we love that community building and so bringing folks together. And so sometimes that's us going out, you know, doing a field event, going into a city where we know we have a number of kind of prospects, sometimes that is bringing folks here to Utah and having them meet with a number of our executives. But all across that funnel, our intent is very much to just, like, have some really interesting conversations we have. You know, I think as with any company and any marketing team, you talk to far more folks than you end up actually selling to or that you end up actually working with. But we love that journey, right? Like, we learned so much, you know, talking to people that we never end up working with.
- [06:38]
JD
And there's also a long tail effect. People that you talk to today might become customers in two or three years from now. So the, the reason as companies grow, their sales pick up and their momentum picks up is because their fulfilling deals with people they started talking to two and a half years ago.
- [06:53]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Exactly. Yes. One interesting thing that I have found in my time here is you know, particularly as we think about being present throughout that sales cycle, which to your point, can be very long. You know, it can be months sometimes. To your point, it can be years. Cause someone comes back around and things have changed and just the timing is right to partner. As you think about having all those different touch points across channels, across kind of points in the funnel, one thing that I think is super important to say, okay, are we showing up really, really consistently across all of those touch points? And so when I joined Pattern, it actually seemed super clear to me, like who we are, right? We are, we're E commerce experts, we are knowledgeable, we are friendly, we're approachable, we're pretty casual, we're super data driven, a little bit nerdy. And so I think we were very much showing up that way in person. And so like I said, we have a very successful events program and we would have folks come and be like, oh my gosh, you guys are so great. And this is such a conversation. And you know, but our digital engagement was actually quite low. And so, you know, folks were coming to our website and they weren't staying for long or they were only, you know, they were landing on a page but not kind of navigating across the site. And that was really a trigger to kind of say, what's going on here? Why are we getting such great engagement when we can get people in person? And we were spending a ton of money, you know, on creating these compelling experiences just to get people to show up, like more so for the, they would like show up for the experience and then stay for the conversation. And I was like, oh, I'm kind of pleasantly surprised that this was actually worth my time. And I think in going back and looking at some of our digital assets, it was like, you know, this actually isn't consistent with who we feel like we are and how we show up in person. If you looked at our website, it was a much different tone. You know, it talked about being premier and you know, it was just actually like a much more kind of like elitist tone, if you will. And that's not at all who we are. And so over the last, you know, year or so, we've done this pretty big, like digital transition transformation in terms of how do we align our digital strategy with like, who we truly feel like we are and what our real brand essence is. So I don't know. So this is a very long winded way of making that point. But when you want to be present throughout that journey, it's like, how do you also audit for showing up consistently when you have different folks who are responsible for different elements of those activities and different points in the funnel.
- [09:19]
JD
I see this actually more often than you'd think. So at Influicity, we have a lot of big clients. And I was just thinking the other week I was talking to one of our clients in the, in the finance space. So it's a big sort of a hedge fund or investment type firm. And the funny thing is in their events, and they do a lot of speaking events and a lot of seminars, they're sort of a very jovial group and they're, you know, they're funny and they make jokes and when you're with them in person, this, you know, the company that the culture is really sort of, that's the tone. And then you look at the content they're putting out on LinkedIn and it's like you're in a, you know, academic boring. And I said, and I noticed the disconnect and I was talking to the CMO and I said, why is it that when I go to your events, I get this experience, but when I go to your LinkedIn, I feel like it's a whole different group of people who's making this content and why isn't it these people who seem to be, you know, getting all the business and it's that disconnect because oftentimes it's just, it's different folks that are managing these channels. The channels maybe were created at different times. We started LinkedIn nine years ago, we started events three years ago. And, you know, we just have this legacy. And I think a lot of companies would, would do a service to themselves to look at all their different channels and just make sure it's like the same person or the same tone, at least across all channels. You don't need to be this guy here and that guy there, and it's like two different people.
- [10:37]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Yes. I, like, just could not, like, I mean, you're preaching to the choir, but like, yes. And, you know, one of the things I think that helps with that. And this sounds so obvious, so at risk of kind of stating the obvious, just to have brand guidelines for your voice and tone, we did not have that. And so again, like, there was something that we were doing organically that was just coming through our people versus, like, what, you know, some of the marketing teams were doing. And so creating that like, hey, here's actually who we are and here's actually like an articulation of that and making sure that everyone on the team has that because I think particularly as companies grow and scale and marketing teams get bigger, I don't know that it's possible to have one person really, you know, kind of overseeing every single thing. Obviously that's your role. You know that I feel like that's my role as cmo. But how do you enable people to go, you know, act independently and autonomously, but also doing that in a way that feels very on brand and very consistent?
- [11:32]
JD
That's a big company tactic that I think a lot of, a lot of small companies should actually adopt. Even if you're a 5, 10 person marketing team, totally just taking a piece of paper and writing down, hey, here's who we are. If, if I was a person and this is, you know, why you use an avatar and you know, my core customer is Dave and he works at this company, writing it down and just having that document from day one, it becomes so much easier when your team is 10, 20, 30 people. It's like, hey guys, here's who we are and maybe we're going to update this document periodically. But everybody sort of knows just writing it down is a great exercise. I want to ask you because you mentioned twice events, so I'm curious. You've got a big marketing budget spread across a lot of different buckets and obviously big goals because your 2023 revenue was well over a billion dollars. How do you attribute sales or revenue or whatever that KPI is for you to, hey, events, digital, whatever. Do you think about it on that kind of a granular level? Or do you just say, hey, our marketing spend was this, Our revenue is this cool, we're doing fine?
- [12:35]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Obviously, like the very high level is our, you know, our marketing budget was this, our revenue was that. But I think actually one of the most fun things about being a marketer, it's also one of the hardest things because, you know, attribution is like notoriously hard. But one of the super things about marketing is that it can be so data driven and you can say, okay, I spent, you know, X dollars on events and I can then measure, okay, I can measure things like how much faster did a deal close for, you know, an account that attended an event versus one that didn't, or out of all of the accounts that kind of made it to an active opportunity, how many of those, you know, attended an event? So you can start to do some statistical analysis on kind of positive influence and how much more likely is an event or how much more likely is an opportunity to be created, how much faster does it close how much more likely is it to close when they've attended one of our events? So that's one of the reasons I love being in marketing, is because you do get to kind of measure some of these things or to say, okay, I spent X dollars on a LinkedIn campaign, and it drove, you know, x new Y new leads. Um, and so was that actually. And then did those leads not just did it create kind of quantity of new leads, but did those leads turn into opportunities and ultimately convert? So you can kind of trace, okay, for leads that were generated through this particular channel, what happened to them? Right. Like, I think you're. You're sort of doing yourself and your fiscal responsibility a disservice if you're just saying, hey, I spent this and got, you know, X leads out of. Or why revenue out of it. It's like, okay, what actually happened to those leads? Did they end up becoming, you know, customers? And so how effective are we? And I think that's really, really fun because then you can learn what's landing, what's totally not landing, or like, hey, that thing generated a ton of leads, but none of them panned out. And so it's like, let's maybe not, on the face of it, it looks really good, but, like, let's maybe not do that again.
- [14:30]
JD
It's the trick of actually watching a lead from start to finish, because if you just look at the top of the funnel and say, hey, I spent $100 and I got 50 clicks. Oh, cool, that works out great. But if none of those clicks close, I'd rather you spend $1 and get one click and close that deal. And then, you know, okay, this is actually the true, you know, the cost of the customer. It's not just about the vanity metrics, impressions, clicks. I actually think it's kind of funny that you said you're looking at other metrics like speed to close. How did this influence the deal? Hey, maybe they were going to spend $100,000, but they came to an event and that deal actually then closed for $250,000 because they discovered a new product they didn't know beforehand, and we got a chance to talk to them. So it actually is a much more textured conversation, or I should say a textured analysis versus just the quantifiable. You know, dollar in, dollar out. It's. Yeah, but what's the quality of those dollars? What's the lifetime value? There's a lot more to it.
- [15:29]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Yeah, for sure. And I have a hard time saying, hey, we did a really Good job. To your point. I love your point on the vanity metrics, right? Like, there is nothing that makes me cringe more than the thought that we might have a joint marketing and sales meeting. And marketing stands up and says we did xyz. And the sales folks are being like, well, none of those were good. Right? Or like you didn't actually help me. It's like in addition to, I talk about that a lot is like you're sort of looking for. It's so important to be data driven and to look at the metrics you also need to complement that with anecdotes. Right? And you have to complement that with feedback from your stakeholders because like, who are you ultimately here to support and help? And so it means less to me even if our metrics look really good. It means less to me if I don't have a sales team that's being like, oh my gosh, that was awesome. I never would have closed that deal, you know, if I hadn't gotten to bring them to this event or if you hadn't, you know, organized this briefing or you know, just that I think complementing the metrics with the feedback from your stakeholders is so incredibly important.
- [16:30]
JD
You have this really beautiful gold plated resume. So you were at Salesforce and then you were at Amazon for a long time. And these are two companies where people go and they learn and they, you know, they work hard and if they're, they do well, they, you know, their careers can accelerate, you know, just as yours has. So I'm talking, I'm curious about Amazon. You were there for 12 years and you kind of went up the ranks. I mean you started as, let's see here, I'm scrolling down your LinkedIn. So senior vendor Manager Software. Okay. But then you end with the title of Director Global Softlines Private Brands, which I would guess at Amazon to be a director is a, is a very high position. Can you talk about what you learned at Amazon and maybe how they do things differently?
- [17:12]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Yeah, I mean, do you have all day?
- [17:16]
JD
Can you sum up 12 years in the next two minutes, please?
- [17:19]
Carolyn Sarnoff
So yeah, it was actually, it was actually 13 years, believe it or not. So, you know, sometimes I, sometimes I can't quite believe I made it that long. But I think one of the really interesting things about a career at Amazon is that it's not always about bringing that specific domain expertise to the role that you're in. Amazon really, really values taking smart, motivated, driven people who can come in and just love to problem solve. Right. And so I think that Amazon's philosophy is that it is better to have those smart people who are really motiv to solve hard problems, but will also bring a unique perspective and maybe a new way of doing things. They value that over someone who has done that thing, you know, for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. And so that, how do they show that?
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JD
So when you say they value the problem solving, the personality, is that part of the interview process? Is that part of the incentive model?
- [18:17]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Both. I mean, I think, you know, you, generally speaking, Amazon hires people that have, you know, some aptitude for that job. Right? Like, I think your very first job at Amazon, you are likely to have some type of relevant experience. For me, I actually really didn't. It was my first post MBA job. And so I just came in as part of a leadership development program where they're like, you know, you've, you've graduated from business school and surely you've learned something. So contract being a vendor manager within the software business. But I'd never worked with software manufacturers before, software publishers before. I had never done, you know, negotiations before. I'd never done retail pricing before. But really it was like, okay, come in, ask a bunch of questions. We are confident that you will figure it out. And so, yeah, it's a lot about the interview process. They are looking for people who embody, you know, what they call the Amazon leadership principles. And so that's more about how do you do things rather than like, what specifically have you done, function wise? So it's kind of like fit within those Amazon leadership principles. And you know, there's a lot of case studies to just understand how do you think and how do you problem solve and how do you get along with others. So it's, it's, they're certainly interviewing for it. And then as you're internal, there's this culture of rotation. And so, you know, every 18 months to two years or so, you're looking for a new job internally. And that was something where it was like, okay, come tell me what, what have you done here? You know, like, what have your accomplishments been? What results?
- [19:49]
JD
They encourage you to do that. They want you to find a new job every 18 months.
- [19:52]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Oh, yeah.
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JD
Wow.
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Carolyn Sarnoff
Isn't that interesting?
- [19:55]
JD
I've never, I didn't realize that. What if you're really good at the job you have.
- [19:59]
Carolyn Sarnoff
What's so funny is when I was interviewing because, like, I am not someone who likes change. And so I remember when I was interviewing, I was like, if I really love my job, can I just like stay there? And they were like, well, sure, but you probably won't want to. And they were. They were right about that. And so I think one of the really, really cool things is that you get to go learn and you get to go think about how do I want to build out my skill set and what's something that I want to really, really good at. And you can go find a role that enables you to do that. And so my personal approach was, okay, let me go find a new role internally that leverages something I've already done or that has some similarities to what I've already done, but also has something new. Right. And, you know, I for sure made mistakes. Like, I made some. I mean, I could go on and on about some of the mistakes I made.
- [20:48]
JD
Can you share one? I'm so curious now.
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Carolyn Sarnoff
Oh, gosh. This is. Yes. So I. This is my third role at Amazon. I became what's called an in stock leader. So I was responsible for the forecasting and the buying and, you know, just the inventory management and kind of in stock for the patio one and garden category. And I had never done anything like that. It was it for me. It was a little bit of like a let me prove I can do that thing and show everybody, you know, that I can figure this thing out. And in my first few months, the mistake I made was I bought $30 million worth of pool and spa supplies that arrived in our warehouses in September, which, as you might imagine, is exactly like the wrong time to be stocking up for pool and spa supplies a.
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JD
Little late or a little early, depending how you look at it.
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Carolyn Sarnoff
So that was inventory that we, like, there's no price elasticity. Right? Like, you just cannot sell that out of season. And so, you know, I got called in and I was like, well, you know, this is maybe this is my day. I've had a good run. You know, this, this. If it's over today, at least I can say I've had a good run up to point. But I had this director who. He was kind of like, okay, so, like, tell me exactly what you were thinking. Like, walk me through your thought process here. And I did. And he's like, and, you know, what did you learn? And I, you know, I luckily done a lot of reflecting on, like, what did I do wrong and what would I do differently? And how could I make sure somebody wouldn't come in? The next person who does this job doesn't come in and repeat my mistake? And he's like, well, that's the price we pay for your Amazon education. And I was like, really? Like, that's it.
- [22:24]
JD
That is one expensive $30 million.
- [22:27]
Carolyn Sarnoff
It feels like private school. Yeah.
- [22:31]
JD
Wow, that's amazing. And so. And so they tolerate. Not just tolerate, but they actually use mistakes like that as key learnings. And I'm sure you never made a mistake like that again. And yeah, it's a way for them to ensure that they put the checks and balances in place that no one else makes that mistake either.
- [22:49]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Exactly. And I think that's. That's very. That was very much true of Amazon. But I think I've seen that throughout my career. It's. It can be such an accelerant to go take some risks and try new things and do things that feel outside of your comfort zone. That can be such an accelerant for your own learning and career. With those risks come the real propensity to make a mistake. Right. And I think that what I have found, and this is how I feel about my team too, is that's totally okay. Right? But there are some ways of approaching it that make it more okay than others. And so I think one of those ways would be really owning it and saying, hey, I made a mistake. Right? Like, if you just come clean and you're like, I did this thing. It was not the right decision, but let me tell you why I did it, right? Like, here was my thought process. Looking back on it, I can see what I did wrong, and here's what I would change. I. You know, that's the approach I've tried to take. When people have done that, coming to me and saying, I've made a mistake, I'm like, okay, like, how do we move forward? Right? Like, this was actually bound to happen at some time. You figured this out for us and now, you know, we're making sure nobody else does it, where it starts to fall down a little bit. If. If someone is like, finger pointing or not really owning it, it's just like, no, just own it and come clean and let's have a conversation about it. And I think that's how we all get better.
- [24:10]
JD
Mmm. I'm hungry. You guys hungry? I could go over some fried chicken right now from Jollibee. And no, this is not a commercial for Jollibee. This is a commercial for Influicity. That's my marketing agency. And Jollibee is one of our amazing clients. You can see how we help drive more foot traffic to their restaurants across America. @influicity.com Check out the case study. And hey, while you're there, check out all the other case studies from the amazing clients we work with, influencer marketing, podcasts, social media content, AI and so much more. And if you want to work with us, just hit the let's talk button over at the top of the website. That's influicity.com and I'll see you there. It's so true. And I've actually dealt with this many times with people who report to me is that there's a couple things. So like you said, there's the defensiveness which you don't want to get right, there's the blaming response. I mean, all that is sort of not. It doesn't work for obvious reasons. But then the other, the other thing that I found which is equally as frustrating and something you want to nip in the bud is when it's apparent that the person is just being absent minded. If I say, hey, here's what happened, it was clearly wrong, why did you do it? And the answer is, I don't know. You weren't thinking at all. So I mean, that reveals a whole lot too. So what you really want in anybody, you know, who wants to climb that ladder is you want to make intentional moves. You can be right, you can be wrong, sometimes that's fine, but you better have a reason to back it up.
- [25:35]
Carolyn Sarnoff
That is such a good point. Exactly. It's like as long as you have something, as long as you can show you really thought about it and again, you might have gotten it wrong, but as long as you actually thought about it and you had good reasons for making the decision that you made, I think there's a bunch of, I have a bunch of tolerance for that and I have found that I've been given a ton of grace when that's true.
- [25:54]
JD
So I've got two, two more Amazon questions here. So you rise all the way up in Jan 2022. You're director of Global soft Lines, private brands. What does that mean at Amazon?
- [26:05]
Carolyn Sarnoff
So Amazon has a number of private label brands. Amazon Basics is probably the most well known within soft lines. We have a brand called Amazon Essentials. And so that's, you know, apparel, that's some accessories, that's shoes. And so I got to lead this like, like really wonderful, amazing team that was responsible for identifying what's new selection that we should build, right? Where is their customer demand and where can we offer selection at great quality at a really compelling price point. And so that was identifying the new selection opportunities, that was identifying the designs and the materials, that was identifying manufacturers who could create it. At our quality level and at the cost we needed, it was kind of forecasting how much of this should we buy. And then it was really driving the customer experience on site. So everything from, like, the photography and the shoots and the content on the detail page and the. And the pricing and what are the great deals to delight customers over the holidays? So kind of everything from what's the selection, who do we partner with to make it, to what's the experience of customers who are shopping for it and ultimately buy it. So it was a really, really fun job.
- [27:15]
JD
That sounds to an outsider like you're basically the CEO of your own business. I mean, it's, it's. And I'm imagining. I mean, I have to imagine the scale is going to be in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars that you're actually managing, right?
- [27:26]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
- [27:28]
JD
And so did you at that point, did you sort of reach the height, I mean, had you stayed at Amazon, What's. What's above that?
- [27:35]
Carolyn Sarnoff
That's a great question. You know, I was at Amazon for so long, the company was so much bigger by the time that I left. And one of the really hard about leaving Amazon was the people there are just incredibly smart, motivated people who, because of what I was talking about earlier in terms of how we hire, come from all different walks of life, all different experiences. And it's so fun to get into a room with someone, with a group of people and be like, I think I know the answer to this problem. And then have someone else be like, that's interesting. I came at it from a totally different perspective. And you're like, oh, my gosh, that's totally valid too. Right? There was something really, really fun about that, I think, for me, once you get to a certain size, you know, a company gets to a certain size, there's just your risk tolerance and your risk profile is different. You know, there's a ton of scrutiny on Amazon from a regulatory perspective. And so whereas in the early days of my career at Amazon, there's a lot more freedom to experiment and try new things and test because there just wasn't the same level of scrutiny and attention versus, towards the end, it was like, okay, if this goes wrong, right, There are. There might be a massive ripple effect. And so that was, for me, why it felt time to leave. I wanted to get back to a place where I could do more of that testing and experimentation without as much red tape. And so I wouldn't trade my experience at Amazon for the world. It was amazing. But as you think about your career, you know, there's, it's a very different experience working at a smaller or mid sized company versus a big company and there's trade offs to both of those. And I just got to a point in my career where I was, what I was really kind of hungry for was being able to do more of that experimentation and testing.
- [29:19]
JD
So let's, let's finish off with some tactics here. You sit on top of pattern. You obviously serve a lot of E commerce companies, large E commerce companies, and I know there's so much in your product that could help a lot of people. What are some big things that you're seeing? Whether it's across AI, we talk about personalization. What are some big tips that you can leave people with for 2025?
- [29:40]
Carolyn Sarnoff
You know, I cannot go anywhere and I'm guessing a lot of folks feel the same way. I feel like I can't open my inbox, I can't go to a meeting, I can't go to a conference or a trade show without hearing talk of AI. And it's this very interesting experience because it's everywhere and everyone wants to know what are you doing with it and how are you using it? I personally found there to be a bit of a gap between the hype of AI and then what it's actually like to use it. You know, I don't know, have, this has been my experience. There have been a couple of times I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to use AI to like automate this thing and it's going to be so awesome and so fast and then I end up spending like longer and come out with a worse outcome than if I had like just done the thing manually.
- [30:21]
JD
So yes, yeah, been there.
- [30:25]
Carolyn Sarnoff
And so, yeah, you know, I think AI is something that is so well suited to marketing. Marketing is so content driven and unlike something like, you know, I don't know, self driving autonomous cars where you cannot be wrong because that could be a life or death kind of situation. AI is actually really great for content generation. And so I have found even just using free tools like Chat GPT to come up with the first draft of something. It's like, you know, you can usually tell when something has been written by AI, but it can get you much faster to something that you can work off of. But I think back to your, to your question, you know, I think a number of us in marketing are getting hit up with, you know, here, use this AI power tool or use this AI driven tool and I think what I've learned through some of Pattern's products that leverage AI is that what really differentiates one tool from another is the data set that that tool is trained on or the data set that that tool uses to generate the outputs or uses to generate recommendations. And so I don't know, for folks who are kind of wading through a sea of AI options or who are kind of being encouraged to use it, I guess my kind of aha moment has been it's not necessarily the tool itself. It's far more about the data set that powers that tool. And so again, as you're evaluating things, it's like that's a really important question to ask.
- [31:44]
JD
Yeah. The data set that powers it is like the layman's way of thinking about that is if you were talking to a person, getting advice from somebody, you'd want to know, hey, do you have experience in the area that I'm seeking advice? Right. I wouldn't ask my accountant how to bake a pie, you know, if I had no experience cooking. And so the data set, to your point, we were talking before the mics heated up, you guys have 37 trillion data points on E commerce. And so, and I said, you know, couldn't I go to ChatGPT and just ask it e commerce questions? And you said you could, but does it have our 37 trillion data points? Probably not. And that's proprietary. And so thinking through, and I actually think this is interesting in terms of thinking about who the winners of AI are going to be. And there's going to be lots, I'm sure, but it's not just the engine or the interface or how popular it is, it's what's the data underlying this? So that when I ask it a question about something, it's not just, you know, doing a Google search and giving me the first, you know, result, it's actually going through proprietary data and giving me a knowledgeable answer as though I went to that world class expert.
- [32:47]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Exactly, exactly. And that's really going to be what differentiates one tool from another tool. And so as you know, as folks are thinking about how do I use AI? That's not the most important thing. The AI driven is sort of like almost the least important part of it. It's like, what data is that AI driven tool making accessible to you?
- [33:09]
JD
How important as a marketer is AI both as part of the product that you're marketing? So like, you know, putting AI as the face or as a, you know, prominent feature in the thing that we're selling like customers are demanding it, we have to have it. And then also the flip side of that, how important is it to you that your team is using it to do their jobs?
- [33:28]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Such good questions. I think as we're marketing, you know, Pattern has a number of products that, that do leverage AI models. And we have not, we're not building a lot of our own proprietary AI models. You know, we're using publicly available LLMs. And again, it's about that, it's about that data set. And so I worry that a lot of consumers and customers actually have AI fatigue. And so for me, as we're looking to tell that story, it's, it's, we have to find other ways of like explaining what is powerful about it. And it's like, okay, you know, a person could never go and analyze, you know, hundreds of different competitive detail pages. You know, I think we, we have a product called Content Brief and we had a beta customer say, you know, we actually tried to do this a couple of years ago and it took, you know, four people like a month to come up with something that wasn't as good as something we could generate in like an hour using this AI tool. Right. It just like it harnesses this just computing power that's just kind of impossible for a human to generate. And so for me, it's about, as a marketer trying to sell these AI powered tools. It's been about telling the story of what does the AI enable, not just the fact that it is an AI tool, as for how important it is.
- [34:45]
JD
Let's pause for a second because I think you actually just dropped such a golden nugget. What does the AI enable? In other words, this is going back way to the beginning. There's the pain and there's the product. The solution has to come second. And I think you kind of just drilled on a point there, which is saying, hey, we have AI. It's like, cool, get in line. So does everybody else. But hey, are you experiencing this problem? We have a solution and we've augmented it with AI so you can do things faster, better, cheaper. That's a smarter way of framing it versus the generic. This is AI. Because in 2025, like that doesn't matter. It's table stakes.
- [35:20]
Carolyn Sarnoff
Exactly. Oh my gosh, you're speaking my language.
- [35:25]
JD
We're jiving here. So you use it, I guess you're using AI internally too.
- [35:29]
Carolyn Sarnoff
We, and it's, it's been very trial and error. Right. I think there are, like I said, there are some times when we've tried to use it, and it ends up taking longer, and the output is just not very. Is not as good, or it still needs so much rework. And so we're still very much trying to figure that out. But what's been kind of fun is, is using AI to generate content. And sometimes that's emails, sometimes that's a blog post. And to kind of train it on what's been actually really fun is to say, hey, what are some. Like, how do you train an AI model on voice and tone? And so it's actually been really fun to feed some of these models. Like, hey, here are some pieces that we really think are spot on in terms of our voice and tone. Make it sound like this, right? So that's been actually a really fun way of using it is, okay, take something that anybody on the team wrote, and then you kind of feed it through this tool, and it's like, add some voice and tone to it. You know, it's like, make it sound consistent with the pattern brand. And it doesn't work exactly right every time, but it can give you a really, really nice start. And it makes the, you know, the finite resources we have on the team, you know, much more efficient. So we have this, like, incredibly talented art director for, you know, writing copy and everything. She comes out that she writes just sounds, like, magical and special and so fun. And I'm like, I just feel. I just love it. You know, she can't write every sing piece of content that we put out. And so it's like, how can we train that model on how she writes so that it can come up with something that approximates something that she would do? So it's been really fun, actually, to just experiment with what are different ways. And some of them are a total bust, but some of them are really fun. And again, it can make us a lot more efficient.
- [37:13]
JD
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave a rating or review on Apple and Spotify. We're wherever you listen to podcasts helps other people find the show, and it lets us know that we're doing something right.