A (4:39)

I mean you're just. It's like a storybook every time you tell a little bit more like so the, the car accident, I mean sounds dramatic and I'm so thankful you're here today to tell the story. And the, the, the places that you're going to hike are amazing. And then this off the grid vehicle. Yeah it's, it's. You put all those things together and it's almost unbe.

B (5:05)

I mean I think you know, like for me I'm not, I'm really into nature. So just anything that can get me to close to nature makes me happy. So.

A (5:16)

Yeah. Well, I will share a little nugget is not as grand as anything that you're doing now. I have a new bar to go try to attain but my wife and I, for probably three months now we've been walking every Sunday, like you know, many miles and it's, it's been really just fun. You know, like sometimes it's in the woods, sometimes it's just around town. But you. Long, long, long walks and it's, it's been amazing. It's been amazing.

B (5:44)

So you know, it's really good. Great way to kind of decompress and relax and you know, start your day with lots of energy. So. Yeah.

A (5:53)

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, from hiking I'm going to transition us to career. You are the CMO at Synopsys. Where did you get your Start in your career. And how'd you end up at Synopsys?

B (6:06)

So my career actually back really from the very beginning I was really my, my career goal was to become a doctor. Well, actually more like my mother's career goal for me was to become a doctor because she was a doctor. And so I started off in college doing pre med, but I was always interested in sciences. So I, I took on a. I also completed a degree in computer science, ended up going to medical school. And then I realized that I really did not like it. I couldn't stand blood, I did not want to jab anybody with a needle. I'm like, this is not a career for me. So I, a few months into medical school I quit and I ended up becoming a software engineer for a year. And I did okay, but it wasn't really like a passion of mine. One thing I realized from that one year as a software engineer is that I was not detail oriented or patient enough to be a good engineer. And then I realized I spent more time chatting with people than sitting in front of the computer doing what I was said to do. And I decided, okay, maybe marketing is a better career for me. So I ended up going to mba. And then that's how I started my career in marketing. So the first job in marketing was in semiconductors. I had no idea about semiconductors, but my first job was in semiconductors doing a branding for the company. And that role started to evolve from a regional role to a more global role. And then also some. All the companies that I work for, with exception one, got acquired, not including Synopsys. So all these roles, which is interesting because it allowed me to learn about different companies. So every time we get acquired and learn about a new company, learn about new way of doing things, we understand a little bit more about the semiconductor industry. And then the last few companies, the four companies, I had this similar situation where we had a new CEO, they had a new vision, they have a new business strategy. And so I was fortunate enough to work with these CEOs to reposition the company and to engage with a much broader audience or new customer audience. And so that had been a very, a great experience. So coming to Synopsys, I was hired two and a half years ago, almost two and a half years ago. Time flies so fast. And so at the time, succeeding our CEO, today he was going to become the CEO, right? So he needed help from marketing. He, he has, he wants to be able to tell his vision for the, for the new the company and so wanted to do A rebranding. And so that's why I was hired on to do so. The first thing I did coming into the company was repositioning of a Synopsys brand and defining the company's corporate narrative. What is our story? And so that's how I started on this journey.

A (9:30)

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, many of my listeners may or may not have heard of Synopsys, so I would to love, love if you could help us understand what Synopsys does and how you, how you, how you work in the semiconductor industry today.

B (9:44)

Yeah, so Synopsys is we, we are the engineering solutions leader in terms of silicon design and system design. So think about anything that has a chip in it, whether it's a car, whether it's a mobile phone or there's a medical device, most likely they are designed with Synopsys tools. So Synopsys started 40 years ago. In fact this year is our 40 years anniversary. So in the 80s Synopsys pioneered the synthesis software. What it is is really a design compiler. So before that happened, the design engineers had to manually design every piece of a silicon, every piece of a chip manually. Very labor intensive process. And so the design compiler synthesis software allows the engineer to shift lots of the manual work to be done more automated through software. This was a big deal because imagine so the first commercially available processor in the 1970s had 2,300 transistors on the chip. But if you think about today's advanced chips, they have, you know, 80 billion transistors. Right. You think about without a Synopsys technology, those things just cannot happen. Right. So Synopsys really has helped to push the industry forward in way of, you know, building advanced chip faster to allow us to do a lot more technology innovation. So that's from the chip design perspective. And of course now we have integrated AI capability into our own tools that allow our customers do a lot more right in terms of design the chip. The other thing that we've done is providing pre designed IP building blocks. And so lots of times there are certain features like memory blocks, interface modules, you know, we provide them pre designed, pre validated so engineers don't have to design them from scratch. Right. This allows them to reduce risks because these are tested, validated, allow them to build their products faster and reduce cost. And so Synopsys is number one in terms of the software eda, electronic design automation tools. Like I talked about, you know, for chip design we're number two in ip. So that's so we are really consequential in the whole semiconductor design ecosystem. Now, fast forward now we have Ansys. You've heard of our Ansys acquisition, right? It's one of the biggest acquisitions. And so what that does is as you think, especially today, if you've gone to ces, you hear all about physics, physical AI, right? You have these robots, you have these flying taxis, and you, you have all kind of sort of physical AI devices are being shown there. So we're now in this era of physical AI. When you think about designing a physical AI or this, we call them intelligent systems. Right. They're very complex. Right. So they all have chips, they definitely are based on chips, but there's also kind of mechanical other software functions for this thing to do what it needs to do. How do you bring them together? And that's really complex. Right? That's where like, you know, in order for the physical AI product to be done with the least cost and, and be successful, like you need to do use simulation. Because you want to simulate these products before they go to production. You want to make sure they work before they go to production. So this is where Ansys comes in. Right. So Ansys does physical simulation and analysis. So the acquisition of Ansys expanded Synopsys business from silicon design to system design. And so we now have the entire portfolio that allows customers to design not only the chips, but the entire systems.

A (14:14)

That's amazing. I mean, I'm kind of struck by the complexity of the business, to be honest. I mean it's, it's like if you, this is my layman's term, so apologies if this is not appropriate, but it's almost like you, you put in a melting pot software, like a CAD with building blocks, with your pre designed components, and now you can simulate all of that stuff in terms of how it's all going to work together with larger systems.

B (14:44)

Yeah. And also like these physical AI products, not only all the components working together, also in the real world, how do they interact with the real world? Right. So you know when you have a flying taxi, what happens when the air pressure drops, what happens when it rains, when it's super cold? And also how do they all interact with each other in the real world environment? And so simulation will help you with engineers and think through all of these different challenges.

A (15:18)

Yeah, well, with all that complexity and like the technical depth of what Synopsys Solutions does, like what does marketing look like at your company? You talked about repositioning and repositioning it early on. But like how does marketing come to life?

B (15:34)

I Think marketing. Yeah, we are a really highly technical business. Our products is really deep, deep tech. I think marketing is more of a bridge between engineering and the market. So inside of the marketing organization, I have this core product and solutions marketing team that they are deeply technical. They work closely with engineering and product management to kind of translate that technology into value propositions that customers care about. Right. And then we have a brand, brand and creative team, communications and content team would take that content and then create derivative content that appeal to the various target audiences. Because we all know, you know, different audience have different care abouts, right? So the engineers care about whether this product you have has the right feature for me to do what I need to do design my product. The technical executive care about might be do I have all the right technology to complete this product in time and on budget, et cetera. And so investors have different care about. And so these communications team and content team, they will create the right content for each of the target audiences. And also we need to understand the type of format that these audiences like to consume and where they actually go and reach read these content. So you know, the marketing of these content, the creating of these contents for the various target Personas is what they do. And then we have a field marketing team that works hand in hand with the sales team to really reach the target customers in all the different regions. And so I think one part of our marketing team that is becoming increasingly critical to us is our martech team. So especially in today's world, right, we all talk about AI. How do you implement AI into the process so that it allows the team to be more efficient. But more importantly, we live in such a digital world where there's lots of intense signals. So this team really brings all the data from different kind of platforms together to analyze the customer's behaviors, like where they've visited our website, which piece of content they've read. Then we can bring all these insights together to help us make more informed decisions about what kind of content that is more relevant and what kind of campaigns we should run. I think that this team, that kind of data insight really help us to change how we do campaigns far more broadly approach anybody that we think might be that'd be interesting or to more precise targeting. And so that team is very important fundamentally. I think my belief is, maybe it's because of my engineering background, is that everything we do needs to be data driven and need to be measurable. So if something is not measurable, it's very hard to tell if it has any impact. So that's uh. So with a martech team and building out the data, different data collection, data analytics, it allows us to measure each of our marketing programs by quantifiable metrics. So what we are, we're getting to is for the marketing programs, we can understand the lead quality from these campaigns, we can understand how much of pipeline expansion we've achieved, we can understand how many new customers we've acquired. And so that's kind of where I'm taking the marketing team to, is to instead of being a cost center, be a more of a strategic business partner that provides a strong impact on the business output.

A (19:59)

Yeah, one of the, one of the things that, I mean, I love the, the notion of content and marrying that with data and martech and then also the, the stuff you're doing to connect into the sales cycles, if you will, and make sure that all of that is being measured and, and optimized, if you will, as you go forward. I, I've been thinking about that in terms of like what I would call like a content supply chain. Right. Like you, you've got all of this material that needs to flow through, but it's, you've, you've got to have the right data, you got to have the right people, you got to have the right process, and then you've got to have the right technologies. To your point as well, do you think about it like that or you. Because it is almost an optimization problem to get each one of those components operating at the same level.

B (20:51)

I, I think of it marketing almost as a. Always from an outcome standpoint, right? What where we were trying to go, what do we need it start with where we're trying to go, what is the ultimate goal that we're trying to achieve? And then work backwards as to what we need. And then every step of the way we measure, right. So certain contents you can decide. You know, you run something, you realize, oh, there's a webinar with a customer together to talk about a solution attracts lots of attention, but actually yield lots of leads. We should do more of that, right? If you just write a piece of content that is, you know, just talk about something that somebody else has already talked about. You know, it's not gaining any traction. You have to wonder, is this the right topic we're discussing or is it the right kind of format? Right. So maybe we need to do less of that. So there's a lot of analysis going on. So I think I probably talked to the Martech team and then demand generation team on daily basis where Are we with this one? What are we seeing? And that help us to tune our campaign. So I have to say that coming to for many of the deep tech companies, semiconductor companies is also a mindset change. I think when I came to this organization, even the previous companies too, the way the marketing was ran was we have a product campaign. Okay. We're going to do pay search, we're going to do a blog post, et cetera, et cetera. And then the, the, the results that we get is we got X millions of impressions. We get this like I mean does it really matter? Right. So I think it really need to get down to what is the tangible business outcome. Yeah, I'm able to expand the sales pipeline by X million dollars. So what we've seen in pharma demand generation is that the pipeline that we were able to generate, you know, we're doing it in a smaller scale. Hopefully we'll do it in a bigger scale in the future. But we can see the conversion rate from the expansion, the pipeline opportunity to close one is quite high. We are also seeing that, you know, we're able to engage with a lot more new customers. I think this from in today's age is, that's very important because you have so many new companies that are innovating. Right. So many companies that are, maybe they weren't on our target before and they should be. And so we're able to uncover a lot of these new opportunities.

A (23:34)

I love that. Well, you almost can't mention anything today without mentioning AI. So I'm curious how AI is changing marketing for you and the team.

B (23:44)

So I think AI is changing marketing in so many different ways from a campaign standpoint. I said, I mentioned earlier, we used to be okay, here is the type of Persona, the kind of company want to, let's just go after them and then we will promote our product and solutions based on the funnel strategy. You, you first and send them content about that is help them to increase awareness and then you give them more detailed content so that help them to be more interested. They will consider, you know, our solutions and then eventually they become sales qualified leads. But lots of times in today's world the customers don't think that way anymore because they have, there is so much information available out there and so they just go and, and you know, they don't necessarily go through this sort of the journey if you will. So the journey is a little bit randomized and so you have to. And the AI allows us to understand lots of the intent, customer intent where you know, help Them help us to see where they are by their, based on their search behavior, by their content consumption behavior, then we can be more targeted with our campaign and with our campaign dollars too, right? So that also help us to be more efficient with how we spend our campaign dollars. And so more position in reaching customers is one of the key benefits from the campaign standpoint. The other is you think about from the customer experience standpoint. When the customers come to the website, their expectation is they don't want to do a lot of clicks and see where they want to go. They expect you to feed them the information that they want to see. Right. And so which means this hyper personalization reconfigure that requires you reconfigure the website on the fly. For example, if we see a customer that is looking at automotive content, right? When you look at where you know where they are, what companies they're in, you know, we have to make the judgment, say, oh, this is a automotive customer. The next time when they come to the website, instead of sending them to the homepage, what they see is the automotive specific content, right? And the second time, the third time they come in, we say, oh, they've seen this piece of content already. We need to serve them a different content. So you kind of have to rethink about your web design, your web strategy to be a much more one on one offers a one on one customer experience than in the past. And then along the same vein is how you think about, you know, making sure that your website is surfaced when people are looking for information. So in the old days we just need to focus on SEO, search engine optimization, right? You guys search and you know, you send people email promotions with a link to our website. So, so that was the old days. But today many customers, instead of searching for something, they're really asking with, you know, in, in in the prompt, right? How do I do this and that versus looking for a specific keyword. So all of that kind of implies that we need to think about our content web design differently because the AEO or Answer Engine Optimization, they really, you know, they benefit companies that really have more structured data. Right? So you have to think about when you create content, you almost need to think about how people would ask what is the prompt that they might use to ask that. So there are lots of considerations. I think it's making web design and content development for website a lot more challenging and complex. Right. There are also other different sort of credible sites that you have to consider. In the past we never thought about do we need to be on Reddit. Well, we never did anything on Reddit, but now with AEO, you know, YouTube is very important, Reddit is very important, and Wikipedia. So you have to think about different kind of social media platforms that also you need to consider in, you know, sharing your content. So that's that. And of course, implementing AI in what we do. Right. So in my team, every function is using AI in some ways. One is really as a way to augment our human experts with AI. So we use AI to generate first draft press releases, we use AI to do competitive analysis summaries and use AI to write campaign briefs and all that. So we're doing all of that. But I think for us to become much more efficient users of AI, we have to think about how to build AI into the whole marketing workflow. And so, you know, every. So AI will actually work. All the different AI of tools will work together versus them being point solutions. So. So, but we are getting there. We are kind of. You're definitely seeing the benefits of AI in our work.

A (29:38)

Yeah, I mean, you're doing a lot, it sounds like. And I love the mention of those other information sources out there. You mentioned Reddit and a few others, because they're also source material for many of those LLMs that we might be typing our questions into.

B (29:53)

Yes.

A (29:54)

And it's almost. You have to think about, I think old school, you would think about earned media. Well now, like maybe the new earned media, are those platforms Right. Where they go or the engines are going to search for information.

B (30:06)

It's kind of interesting. Yeah. Because they are considered to be more credible. Right. So I think those are the different platforms we need to consider. But I think still at the end of the day, people are gravitating towards content that are more like human generated. Right. So means high quality content, original content, those are still very important. So I think that will still be our focus. Then we just need to consider, well, how do you package this content, you know, in ways that it can be cited more by all those different, other, you know, platforms.

A (30:49)

Well, it's been fascinating to hear what you're doing with marketing at the beginning of this. We got to know a little bit about your hiking passion.

B (30:55)

Yeah.

A (30:56)

It's also important just to go a little deeper with you. And my favorite question to ask everybody that comes on the show is, has there been an experience of your past that defines or makes up who you are today?

B (31:08)

Yeah, I can't think of a single experience, but I would say is more my past experience. The way that I Grew up and it helped to shape who I am today. So I was born in China and, you know, I kind of traveled and lived in many countries. So in that process got me thinking. I think it helped to give me a global perspective on things, you know, so I have this tendency anywhere I travel. It's like I pay attention to little things like, you know, why is it that in Chinese you can write a letter in red? You know, why is that? I will ask all the different questions in different countries, why certain things is done certain way. I think it helps me with giving me this a broader global perspective and the different cultural nuances that helps with thinking about how to market our product in different regions. Because something that works in one region might not work in another region. And the other is, even though I wasn't successful as an engineer, but it did give me this very sort of analytical, data driven mindset. Right. So I always feel in the past, marketing was always been treated as a call center. They say, oh yeah, marketing, you know, not really that important. So I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted to say, here, here's the tangible output that marketing can deliver. So in the last four companies, I initiated this data driven, demand generation marketing and that you could actually measure the output that, you know, that ties to revenue, ties to pipeline, ties to business impact. So you, you know, people can see, oh, actually marketing is important. So. And then I think the other is growing up in a very highly disciplined family. My father was always like, you need to do more, you need to do more. So in our family, we would say, if you get a B, B equals a bad, A equals acceptable. And so the mindset is you have to always kind of challenge yourself. And so for me, it doesn't matter how much I've done, you know, like in this last two past two years, my boss, our CEO, has reminded me how much impact our team have delivered to the company in terms of getting our brand out there, you know, so. But for me is past accomplishments are not good indicators of future success. So I feel like I have to always do better, you know, do better next time. So then that kind of I, in my mind, I feel like I'm always on probation period in any job that drives me to think harder, to do something, taking more risk and do more. So I think that kind of all that different background and experiences got me to where I am today. Really impacted how I think about work and think about, you know, always achieving something more. Yeah.

A (34:37)

So, well, what advice would you give that younger Ann if you were to you know, look back and give, give her some advice.

B (34:47)

I think I would tell myself. So one thing I regret about my, you know, I, I love, I, I'm very happy where I am, my career. One thing I really regret is not picking up an instrument, musical instrument. So I dabbled with piano and violin, but I never really kind of, you know, stuck with them. And so I kind of regret, I think in my life I wish I had mastered some kind of instrument that gave me a little bit more a new dimension to creative expression. That's, that's kind of something that for me I would tell my younger self. But as a career advice, you know, I have two kids that just graduated from college and so what I advise them is, you know, you need to own your own career. So I think for me, as I was growing up in my professional career, I tend to lean on my management to tell me what to do to help me grow my, grow my career. But I think, you know, I think as a young person you need to think about, you know, don't, don't ever be complacent, right? You always want to learn more does not mean career development, does not mean upward. You have to be a manager, this and that. But I think even like a horizontal growth and learn more about a different aspects, even for marketing, different elements of marketing that will help you get better at your job and help you with your career development. So I tell my kids, you need to think about your career in three year chunks, right? So like where do you want to get to in three years? And then every year you think about how far you've gone towards your goal. If you haven't gotten there, maybe you need to talk to your manager about, hey, maybe there's something new I need to try and, to help me to kind of grow, right? So that's one big element. The other is be really be curious. I think for younger people, the world is moving so fast and just always talk to people, learning, listening, reading. You want to be on the train, you don't want to be left behind when things are moving so fast. I think those would be the advice I, I have for a younger me.

A (37:10)

That's wise advice. Well, as a, as a marketer, what are you trying to learn more about or what are you, are you trying to learn yourself these days?

B (37:22)

I think is there are two things. One is work related, one isn't so work related. Obviously there is a huge pressure for marketers to leverage AI to increase productivity, right? So we have, we see data or consulting firms citing numbers like 30, 40% productivity gain in marketing through AI, right? I'm not anywhere near that yet. You know, it's kind of like we need to find a way to get there. So what I think about is as I mentioned before, how do you integrate AI into the entire marketing workflow? So AI tools that they're not just the point tools to make it more streamlined in the sort of the marketing system. The second is how does AI impact the talent requirements or the way that the marketing team is structured? Do we have the right talent? You know, what kind of talent is actually needed today? And then also third is how do you bring the team along on this journey? Right. So now everybody is interested in, you know, lots of marketers they like there's take pride in the way that they create, you know, story, the storytelling and, or the how great a writer they are. But they, everybody has to learn leveraging AI in their work. How do we bring the whole team along on this journey so that you know, people feel that they are keeping up with the modern way of doing marketing. And marketing is done differently now too. Right. We mentioned earlier lots of the platforms where people used to get their answers weren't ones that we cared about or we paid attention to. So we have to kind of constantly monitor the customers behaviors. Right. So what their content consumption behaviors to fine tune our messaging the way that we, we do marketing. So yeah, so I think the a more like the AI impact on marketing, all the different elements, you know, how I want to make sure that we are staying ahead of the curve, not as a follower.

A (39:55)

And you mentioned something on the, and maybe you, you touched on it already but you mentioned there was a personal thing that you're trying to learn more about too.

B (40:02)

Oh yeah, personal thing. I think that in today's environment it's a, it's a very stressful environment. Right. So things are moving so fast. You know, whether is from the technology standpoint, from the geopolitical standpoint, everything is just, there's very sometimes can feel a little bit more chaotic if you will. So I've been trying to practice, you know, meditation. Right. So, so it's not something like I'm in, I'm not a very patient person so. But that's something I realized that I need to kind of find new ways to recharge and block all, all the noise. And so I do you know, things like try to practice meditation. I do yoga to help me calm down. I stay in, go in nature and so try to do more of that to kind of make sure that I'm mentally sort of, you know, you have mental resets. You definitely need to do that from time to time.

A (41:12)

Yes, yes you do. And it's a dizzying pace that the world is moving at right now too.

B (41:17)

Yeah.

A (41:18)

Well, I have two last questions for you. First, are there any trends or subcultures that you follow or you think people should take notice of? I'm really curious about what you're curious about going on in the world.

B (41:30)

Yeah, what I'm curious about, there are a couple of things I'm super curious about. One is I have this debate, you know, when I, when I go hikes, I, I, I go with a group of people and it actually, you know, this particular friend of mine that we, we often debate a lot of various things. So one thing that we both kind of paying attention to is this, the concept of, you know, up until now intelligence has been a scarce resource, right. Which makes it so highly valued. But now with AI, intelligence is becoming more abundant and accessible. Right. What does it mean to, you know, does it mean that the human intelligence will lose value? What is the sort of the relationship between humans and AI in the future? And so this actually got me to where I say I wish I had learned the instrument before. I feel like in the future the human creativity will become much more important. You know, the emotional intelligence, the human creative, it will become more important. So I pay a lot of attention to any kind of research and discussions on this topic. It's just very curious of what's going to happen to us, you know, 10, 20 years down the road. The other topic is also not work related, is all about space exploration, space colonization, space tourism. And I, I read about this startup that actually created a refueling station in space, right. Like a gas station in space. And so, and then there's also the talks about building data centers in space. Right. You know, so that is super fascinating to me. Not that I have any answers, but I pay attention to this topic a lot.

A (43:34)

Yeah, well, you're, you're, you're on your path with that, with that truck that you have that can go off grid for two weeks. Right. Like now you just need to figure out how to make it space, space worthy.

B (43:46)

I don't know if I want to go into space. It doesn't look, I mean, it doesn't have the nice trees and flowers and. Yeah, I think I'm probably going to stay on Earth.

A (43:59)

Well, my last question for you. What do you think is the either the largest opportunity or potential threat facing marketers today?

B (44:07)

Again, this definitely is like back to AI, right. I think we all Nobody has the right answers today to say nobody. I don't. There's a very few company to say we have the best practice. We know everything about AI in marketing. I think we just need to lean in, be curious and try to adapt to using AI. Learning how to use AI without it. I think it's not a matter of whether you should or should not use AI. I think you have to, you have to embrace it. You have to get on board with this and this is really the biggest opportunity and also the biggest threat to any marketers.

A (44:50)

Yeah. Well Ann, it's been fascinating conversation. I've learned a lot and I need to up my game in my hiking pursuits but to hang with you. But thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it.

B (45:03)

Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Alan.

A (45:11)

Hi, it's Alan again. Marketing beyond is a Deloitte Digital Podcast. It's created and hosted by me, Alan Hart, and produced by Sam Robertson. We have even more cutting edge marketing insights headed your way. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with our latest episodes. I love hearing from listeners. Share your thoughts about the episode, the topic covered, or the show by commenting on this video or emailing me@marketingbeyondeloitt.com if you're interested in more conversations with industry visionaries, we invite you to explore other Deloitte Digital podcasts@deloittigital.com US Podcast. There you'll find the Marketing beyond webpage with complete show notes and links to what we discussed in the episode today. I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Deloitte. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and does not imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product or service.