Loading summary
Transcript90 lines
- [00:01]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Partnerize is the only partnership management solution powering profitable growth for marketers through an end to end software platform and comprehensive service practice. The Partnerize platform delivers a fully integrated, comprehensive suite of discovery, recruitment, optimization, payment, brand safety and fraud prevention capabilities supported by unrivaled service expertise. With Partnerize, you're in control of the entire partnership marketing lifecycle, all on a single platform.
- [00:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
For the first time in the history of marketing, the creative creates the reach. And not only is that true, if it creates reach, it earned it. We didn't plan and throw a lot of media at it and force it down people's throats. When you understand that truth, that organic social media creative becomes a starting point to saving a ton of money on creative risk campaigns and a staggering amount of money on both performance and brand media spend. When you understand that truth, it will flip this industry upside down, putting social creative at the starting point, not the matching luggage to a campaign we're doing at the end.
- [01:12]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
So this is a live Marketing Vanguard Podcast interview. So thank you so much for joining me. We're doing this live for Media Week and I'm excited to be here with Gary Vaynerchuk because we're at Media Week. We're going to kick it off with talking about or getting Gary to share a little bit about his view on media strategy, specifically social. Then we're going to get into some of the classic questions I ask as part of the Marketing Vanguard podcast, which is typically where I interview CMOs and CEOs on leadership issues. And then we're going to wrap it up with a buzz round. So that'll be fun.
- [01:42]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I'll be ready.
- [01:43]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
And just full disclosure, you're a guy after my own heart. I'm a Jersey girl. I love that the Jersey roots run deep. So we'll get into a little bit of that as well. Okay, so Gary, first of all we're going to talk about this concept, this thematic point that you, I think, want to make strongly for marketers to put social at the center and not at the side of their media strategy. So let's start with that.
- [02:06]
Gary Vaynerchuk
The AI algorithms that are behind the feeds of the seven social network platforms that dominate consumer attention are better than our human subjective opinions. I'll go deeper, but I'm really excited especially I'm just very grateful to be in this room with follow you in the industry and obviously knowing a lot of you are listening at home, I believe. And I'm empathetic to why people are in different sections of marketing. People have other things they're worried about clients. I think we forget brand managers have to worry about supply chain and customer relationship. They're not thinking about marketing all day either. But I think this has led to a very big gap of knowledge in a practitionership level of what's actually happening here. And let me explain what I mean. Social media, which I've obviously been very close to for a long time, is very different than it was 36 months ago. We have fully lived through the tiktokification of every social media platform from LinkedIn to YouTube Shorts to Twitter to Facebook Instagram, Snapchat Spotlight. I believe that Most people in Fortune 5000 land have not grasped the fact that individual pieces of creative now create the reach and the consumer insights in a way that we've all dreamed of as marketers to understand creative that the best creative testing module or framework in the world is now just posting organically on social and actually learning from the quant and qual data that comes from posting on these ridiculously advanced platforms that have a shocking amount of human beings consuming on the other side. When you really understand that, when you understand, for example, the social media I grew up with was much more like email marketing, right? Get as many followers as possible and then a certain percentage every single time would open My Instagram post three years ago would be consistently somewhere between a half a million and 800,000 views. Last week I had a post get 23 million views and the next three later, which I thought was going to do Even better, got 540,000. For the first time in the history of marketing, the creative creates the reach. And not only is that true, if it creates reach, it earned it. We didn't plan and throw a lot of media at it and force it down people's throats. When you understand that truth, that organic social media creative becomes a starting point to saving a ton of money on creative risk campaigns and a staggering amount of money on both performance and brand media spend. When you understand that truth, it will flip this industry upside down. Putting social creative at the starting point, not the matching luggage to a campaign we're doing at the end.
- [04:58]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Interesting. So let's get into those implications a little bit, obviously on the marketer side. And also what's the future agency model against that backdrop?
- [05:06]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Well, I think, and again, just knowing a lot of you are paying attention to different things. What I just referred to is the reason so many companies like cakes, the Spanx for bras or Liquid Death or Poppy or Elf, like there's a reason we're seeing a lot of Brands come out of nowhere and get to 100 to $300 million in revenue with very small venture capital behind it. So the implications to the brands is they're starting to lose market share. The reason VaynerMedia probably has its most significant new business win year since the earliest days going into 2025 is not because all these Fortune 500 companies finally believed me. It's because they're in pain by companies that are doing what I've been saying. And so the implications are we're going to have to adjust quickly. And as far as agency implications, there's a lot the agency implications of us. You know, I'm competitive, like I like sports and all this, but I think the world is abundant. So when I think about other agencies, I actually think of them as like my macro teammates, not like who I'm competing with. Right. We're going to win some pitches, they're going to win some. I think when I talk about my hopes and dreams for agencies, it comes out of the requirement of has anybody been paying attention? A ton of this shit is going in house because we've been mad, like it's not happening for kicks and giggles. It's happening because they didn't have the optionality. The reason so much social went in house is every above the line creative agency had no fucking clue what to do with social. And so the implications are significant. If you do not provide value, you will eventually lose no matter how good you are playing politics or drinking canned. And so I think there's a lot of pressure on the industry. I'm excited because the thing I just referred to is something we call SMA excellence. Social media ads excellence, meaning. I actually loved that vaynermedia will be put up against incredible creative shops like Nischev or Droga. Internal shops, PR shops, influencers. This framework of measuring creative through what I just referred to in the opening thing is going to create a real clarity to the merit of creative and is going to actually be beneficial for the best players at the craft. But we will not be able to trade on good headlines from this incredible magazine or awards or just our charisma in a boardroom anymore. We are in the era of measuring creative for real and that is going to change our industry a lot.
- [07:28]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Can you come back to Social Media Week in the spring and we'll do a part two on this? Because you can imagine that between now and then things are going to change even more.
- [07:36]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, I mean, so live shopping is going to be the buzzword of our industry next year.
- [07:40]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Well, you're jumping to my buzz round. Well, let's talk about it. Let's talk about live shopping.
- [07:45]
Gary Vaynerchuk
This was the year that we all decided we were going to say the word AI a lot. A couple years ago it was blockchain and nft.
- [07:51]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Technically it's an acronym.
- [07:52]
Katie Mizzarini
Yeah.
- [07:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes. Next year, the word at this week there will be a ton, and I mean a ton of conversation around live social shopping. It's tipped. A lot of us who are watching things globally are aware of that. This has been going on at scale in China is finally now a European and North America reality. TikTok shop is real as shit. Whatnot is real as shit. Meta's not going to sit around and let them have it, so they're going to figure out what they're going to do.
- [08:18]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Can you talk about whatnot a little bit? Because I know you did a session last week. You did a recording on this.
- [08:23]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. I own a intellectual property called Me Friends. It's like my Pokemon meets Sesame Street. I'm building the brand. It's really happening. Five Mondays ago in the conference room right next to my office, I sold $150,000 worth of hoodies and sweatshirts and beanies and socks in four hours on whatnot. There's a reason that QVC and HSN still work. There's clearly something in the entertainment value shopping impulse, the way we're wired, that we enjoy buying from a live environment. And I think these social networks especially you think about what happens on TikTok. On TikTok, you go live. Any of you, let's say you have a side hustle or your significant other has a side little business and you're doing scarfs or chili or whatever you might be doing. The fact that you could have no followers on TikTok 0 go live tomorrow and start doing a show from your kitchen and your live will start to show up randomly in random people's for you page awareness distribution that you've not earned yet, that it's providing for you is a value that is so extraordinary. And then the fact that consumers on the other side have a higher propensity to buy than they would from, let's say, a classic cac ltv Shopify infrastructure, best practices, e commerce. And I mean much higher, by the way, that $150,000 of inventory that was dead inventory that was sitting in my VIPR and Shopify. So I think that one thing that I do, and I would highly recommend all of you doing this for your own careers because I think it's Very effective. The reason I'm doing live shopping is because I don't want VaynerMedia to sell anything that I don't know how to do. A lot of people are starting to ask me. We've become pretty big. Like, I think it's funny, I'm loud, but I'm quiet about Vayner in a little way. VaynerX, the holding company, is now 2,500 people globally. It's one of the largest independent advertising holding companies in the world now. And when people really dig in and say, like, how'd you do this? I always say practitionership. I think when you have a CEO founder that she or he actually does the thing, it really helps. Like, I wrote the copy to my Instagram post a couple hours ago before I was taking a stage to somewhere else. Just now I'm in it. And so I think that our strategy is always extremely strong because it comes from practitionership, not learning from the outside. And so I'm in live social shopping very heavily doing the thing.
- [10:43]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Last quick question on this point. Imagine all of us are a CMO at a bar sitting next to you or at lunch, and you need to give them your best advice specific to what you're talking about right now.
- [10:54]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Overall, I would say die on your own sword. My biggest sadness, because I've really come to love this industry and many of the people in it, my biggest sadness is that I know a lot of you don't say in boardrooms and in meetings exactly what you actually believe because you know it won't land with the organization because you know it doesn't get measured. It's not in the reports. And I will tell you that what's been devastating for me now that I'm 15 years in is watching people that really knew bit their tongue and then they get blamed when shit doesn't work and they lose anyway. And I think that, I do think that there's a lot of change coming. I do think that the pressures of the reality of how the industry is changing will put pressure. Like, there's a respect. I'm lucky I have no board. I'm not public. When I fuck up and like do something stupid and we lose a client. I just look at myself in the mirror to make fun of myself and move on. So I lack the fear that many have when they know if they make a mistake, they may lose their job. I get that. I'm not confused by that. But I promise you, there is a respectful way for you to say, are we going to continue to Buy these programmatic banner ads on dot coms that nobody goes to. Like this is not good, even though it might look good on the report. Or is it a good idea to spend $700,000 to make a 30 second video that nobody on earth gives a fuck about? There's a respectful way for you to say that in the room. And I believe if you're a CMO or VP or in a company on a brand, at an agency that you speaking up to truth has a funny way to play out well for your career. Somebody's always watching and being right historically matters.
- [12:33]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Let's now shift to talking about you as a leader. Let's talk about you're an open book. In fact, you wanted to do this interview and didn't want to look at the questions in advance, didn't want to know, just completely wanted to go in.
- [12:43]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Like all those holding company leaders.
- [12:46]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
So your life is really largely an open book. But what's one thing that nobody knows about you?
- [12:52]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Almost everything about my personal life. I think this is something that I wish more people paid attention to. I think a lot of people here could contribute a lot more to. Kids that look up to you, want to be like you to the world. I think negativity and fear is very good at marketing and positivity and happiness is not. I've taken on the responsibility and all the judgment and all the razzing by putting myself out there because I know that I put out what I want to put out. So people know where I sit on business. They know where I sit on my beloved New York Jets. They know where I sit on professional stuff. But when you look at the entire world of people that have created content and I've been creating daily content since 2006 at scale, there are very few people that have as much content out in the world as I do that have almost nothing about their personal life. And so what do most people not know? They don't know my real life, my family, my kids, my parents. Like they don't know that because I think that's a scary thing to give away. But I think professionally wise, I'm very comfortable. I think one of the things when I think about professional back to sports, I think it's like sports, like we're all supposed to lose. And one thing I wish all of you would really consider is like to not demonize the loss. One of the things that school does really poorly is they judge us every 90 days with a report card. And a lot of us, because of how we were parented and especially the era we grew in, some of the kids now, I think are getting a little bit more fortunate. But we overvalued it and we became really structured in overvaluing potentially subjective opinions of us every hundred days. And it became our framework. The reason I'm an open book is I'm not scared to lose. I wish we weren't scared of each other's judgment so much. I really like people, but I'm not going to live my life based on your opinion. That would be silly. It's not because I am disrespectful. It's actually the reverse. I'm empathetic that you have an opinion with almost no context. One of the reasons I tend to not judge a whole lot is I don't know people like that. How would you judge someone that you know almost nothing about? Intent is taken out of context. There's so much that comes along with it. So the reason it's an open book professionally is if we lose on something I make, if we end up sucking at live social shopping, my self esteem is not going to be crushed because you're going to be like, ha, you suck. And I think too many people are and I'd like them to stop doing that.
- [15:15]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
You say you're competitive, love sports. We're going to get into that in a minute too. A question I typically ask. I was a soccer player growing up and I just used that as a framework. What kind of player are you on the pitch? Are you the striker who is full on trying to score the goals at every cost? Are you the midfield trying to be that connective tissue between offense and defense? Or are you at the back protecting your goal from competitive onslaught at every turn?
- [15:38]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I think I play the way I operate as a human being, which is I was born in the Soviet Union. I was the oldest kid. My parents both lost a parent very young. My mom lost her mom at 5 and my dad at 15. My mom probably too much in my deepest therapy sessions, but she always at a very young age was like, if something happens to us, you're in charge. There hasn't been many moments in my life that I don't recall where I wasn't ready for responsibility. It's who I ended up being. And so when I heard that question. First of all, I predominantly played basketball at this point in my life. And I'm a hacker. Like I foul very aggressively mainly because I'm inspired by the 90s Knicks. You're a hardcore basketball fan. Like the basketball that's played now is like, very different than the way we grew up. So I foul on every play. No refs can't get fouled out. But I play hard and I play. I really want the ball when it's tied, but I want to be the connective tissue. I love being a teammate. I'm blown away by athletes. I have a very big sports agency now. Athletes that are happy about their individual performance over the outcome of the actual game confused the shit out of me because I'm very binary on the team part. And then I love defending too, because I'm, like I said with the story, that's just very in me. I appreciate and like being the last line of defense. I love taking pressure out of my team. It's my biggest pride. The number one way I promise all of you can tell if you're working for a good leader. Watch very carefully. Does she or he contribute to the fear or eliminate it? If you are lucky enough to work for someone who eliminates fear in every scenario, missing the numbers, their boss's behavior, anything. If you are fortunate enough to work for what's sad, a rare group of people that are leaders that at all cost eliminate the fear, you are very fortunate. Yeah.
- [17:30]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
That's so fascinating. Just side note, my daughter plays soccer. She's 16. The minute I saw that moment, that tipping point where she got rid of her fear as a player and everything changed overnight.
- [17:42]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's the biggest issue in our society. Yeah. Fear has been weaponized on all of us at the highest levels. The entire political framework is 100% fear. 97% of the the corporate infrastructure and energy is around fear. Fear is having a good fucking moment and I fucking hate it.
- [18:02]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
We all need to kill fear.
- [18:04]
Luz Corona
Yeah.
- [18:04]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
So the Marketing Vanguard podcast. Who's next? Who next should I have?
- [18:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I like Mike Cesario, the founder of Liquid Death. He would be good.
- [18:11]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Love that.
- [18:12]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yep. Okay.
- [18:13]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
We'll reach out. I'll say Gary sent me.
- [18:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I'll help you.
- [18:15]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Thank you.
- [18:16]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You're welcome.
- [18:16]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Okay. Now there's the buzz round. Okay. Some industry stuff, some fun stuff, so don't judge.
- [18:21]
Gary Vaynerchuk
But principal media buying, another framework to create margin for the person that should be providing value.
- [18:29]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
We did live shopping, so I can cross that one out.
- [18:32]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I could not recommend you more to put in 10 hours of homework into what's going on in live shopping. There's just so many good things, both professionally and potentially. Your side hustle or your next chapter? Please do it. It's crystal clear.
- [18:46]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
NFTs.
- [18:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
NFTs are exactly where I had them three years ago if you were really paying attention, not just one of my headlines, I said 99% of them were going to go to zero. Because what was obvious in that summer was what had happened to Internet stocks in 2000 hit NFTs. And what ended up happening is the greed clouded the macro technology. NFTs are incredibly important technology. The blockchain is wildly important. I'm sure people that follow crypto can see it's gaining steam in the last couple of weeks. Obviously the US government has not given clarity on how we should handle them. And so I think that's stopping innovation. But once we get clarity on that, which I'm sure will come sooner than later, the technology is amazing. I think where people got confused is NFTs are not beanie babies. NFTs are stuffed animals. They're stuffed animals. It's a macro thing. The individual projects in NFT land and most of them ended up becoming Beanie Babies. But the blockchain is one of the most significantly important technologies in the world. And I really hope the US gets to a leadership role in it the way we did with the Internet. Because if we don't, that won't be as good. When in sports finally. So awesome. I grew up very fortunate where I was an 80s kid. One of my best friends, unfortunately she passed away several years ago. But one of my best friends growing up was a girl by the name of Marissa Bird. And her favorite player was Larry Bird, as you can imagine. And she was just so instrumental in my childhood. And because of her and because of Lindsay, who was also one of my dear friends, but she moved fairly early. I just went to a lot of her games. I always supported her. It was really a big part of my life. Plus I always just wanted everybody in my neighborhood to play sports. So like we were always very mixed. We played everything like football. I mean like most of the girls in my neighborhood, this is very Jersey would like do WWF wrestling with us. We would like pile drive girls and like, like it was just very politically incorrect by today's standard. But that's how 84 was for everybody. Nonetheless, for me it's always been of interest. My high school skewed where the women's sports was stronger than the male. And to me, I've always said this about women's sports because I've talked a lot about it because of the way my life went.
- [21:03]
Luz Corona
For all your meeting event and workplace needs, convene is a partner, not just the place. A preeminent global hospitality company within the meeting event and shared workplace industries. The company and its portfolio of brands provide clients with concierge style service in house, food and beverage in house, event production resources and dedicated service staff, all to ensure a seamless and memorable experience.
- [21:30]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Partnerize is the only global partnership management solution powering profitable growth for marketers through an end to end software platform and comprehensive service practice. The Partnerize Platform delivers a fully integrated, comprehensive suite of discovery, recruitment, optimization, payment, brand safety and fraud prevention capabilities supported by unrivaled service, including the category's only in house support program. With partnerise, you're in control of the entire partnership marketing lifecycle all on a single platform. Partnerise gives marketers a better way to.
- [22:10]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Partner All Sports is about Superhero all sports is about the superhero. Like you cannot misunderstand how much Joe Namath meant to American football in the late 60s. You can't misunderstand how much Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Jordan meant or what Steph Curry means for everybody under six feet. Like it matters so much. And luckily Kin and Reese and they came along. And the right superheroes came along. We saw a glimpse of it with the Women's World cup team years ago when Abby took off her we saw a glimpse of it. But Caitlin and Reese and the rest of them at a time where basketball was ascending fast and you got superheroes and it boxing's at its height when Mike Tyson is there. UFC was built on Conor and Ronda Rousey. Like superheroes matter in sports. We finally got them in the WNBA and that's why we watch, because we like comic books more than we realize.
- [23:10]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
That's a good segue to my next one, which is Aaron Rodgers.
- [23:13]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love Aaron Rodgers because I am a diehard New York jets fan and I don't give a fuck what you think. And as long as someone is a Jet, I love them. And the second they're not a Jet, then I can reassess the situation. But as of this moment, I fucking love them with all my heart. Even though I'm devastated. And I mean devastated. Victoria, who runs my life, knows this. Like the last couple Mondays were weird. Like I go into like this weird little micro depression, canceling meetings on Monday morning. I'm busy as fuck. That's devastating to us. But I'm still 1% optimistic that they can turn it. But I don't know.
- [23:49]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
I know my husband and son and daughter are all massive jets fans. Have been for years. In fact. My husband grew up just down from the wine library as a matter of fact.
- [23:57]
Katie Mizzarini
That's awesome. In Melbourne.
- [23:59]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Favorite varietal.
- [24:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Favorite Varietal, probably Nebbiolo. Right now I'm drinking a lot of Barolo. It's still fairly underpriced for premium red wine compared to, let's say Napa Cab or Bordeaux. I also really like Vermintino, which is a white Italian varietal. I think a lot of people in here drink bullshit Pinot Grigio and below average Sancerre and think they got it but they haven't explored enough in the wine world. I think the wine world actually reminds me of the marketing world. I think in marketing people get too locked in. For example, I have no emotion towards social media. I actually can't wait to see social media become less effective and overpriced because it'll give me an opportunity to discover something that's underpriced and different. I have zero love for social media over any other distribution or marketing tactic. It just happens to be the one that I think is disproportionately underpriced in comparison to the other options at this second. If network television dropped the cost of commercials by 90%, I would buy them. If billboards dropped their cost compared to when you have to buy them now or print, even print, I would buy a full page ad in a newspaper for a couple hundred bucks. And so in wine, as some of you, I know some of you are drinking Sancerre over and over and over. And a couple years ago it was Pinot Noir over because fucking a movie told you and over. And the best part about wine is discovering different stuff. If you're drinking Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio for 25 bucks a bottle, when there is verminos that are 15 times better, that's an opportunity. Same with media. If you're buying the same dumb shit you bought seven years ago because the report says so, there's other alternatives.
- [25:48]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Lemonade stand or paper route?
- [25:50]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Lemonade stand, because lemonade stand has marketing in it. My favorite part of my lemonade stands on Tingley Lane in Edison, New Jersey by Bishop R. High School was making the signs and trying to figure out what pole or tree to put them on. That's cool. I think so. I didn't know it at the time. Years later, when I was in my 30s, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm a marketer. I was like, wait a minute. No wonder I didn't want to stay behind the lemonade stand and spend four hours making signs and sitting on the grassy knoll trying to see which eyes is that pole better than that tree. I was infatuated I have been following attention my whole life. Attention is what I care about. And where is it? Overpriced and underpriced. That is where the opportunity is. Is it? Actualize the tension. This is a really important sentence in a room like this. Our industry loves to buy potential reach, not actualized reach. We must bring common sense back into the boardroom. We must bring common sense back into the boardroom. We are buying things that look good on paper that you know, as a human being are straight dog shit. And if it was your own money and your own business on the line, I have a funny feeling your media plan will look a little different.
- [26:59]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
I think that's a great place to end. Please join me in thanking Gary. So Jets.
- [27:04]
Katie Mizzarini
So Jets.
- [27:05]
Luz Corona
Thank you.
- [27:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Thank you.
- [27:08]
Luz Corona
The most innovative marketers are the ones who dare to ask the questions that matter and encourage a culture of curiosity in their organizations. That's the essence that distinguishes the 10 marketers who are being honored as winners of the inaugural Survey Monkey Curiosity Awards. The premise of the awards is simple. Celebrate extraordinary marketing professionals working at SurveyMonkey. Customer companies who are driving innovation and shaping what's next for their businesses, industries and communities. I'm Luz Corona, Community Editor at adweek, and I've had the pleasure of chatting with so many of these winners and folks from the SurveyMonkey team. And today we conclude the series with a final conversation with Katie Mizzarini, SVP, Chief Communications Officer and Chief of Staff at SurveyMonkey. Katie, hi and welcome. Hi.
- [27:59]
Katie Mizzarini
Thank you for having me.
- [28:00]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
We were talking a little bit about.
- [28:01]
Luz Corona
This before we started recording, but it's just been so great getting to know everyone. Everyone has such interesting stories, and this award really just celebrates the spirit of curiosity, which everyone kind of has their own meaning and definition of. But before we get into that, can you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do at SurveyMonkey?
- [28:24]
Katie Mizzarini
Sure. So I lead the communications team, as you mentioned, which includes internal comms, external comms. We actually just added social media to that mix, so I'm excited to get in there. And then the chief of staff stuff, it's kind of internal comms on steroids, where you're really just trying to help the CEO shape the strategy, communicate it out to the company, make sure it's aligning with what our customers want to see from us. It's a really fun job. I feel really lucky.
- [28:48]
Luz Corona
That's awesome. Yeah, social media, that'll be a fun one for you guys, too. So I'm excited to see how that.
- [28:53]
Katie Mizzarini
Goes, as an elder millennial, I will be diving into the tiktoks of it all.
- [28:58]
Luz Corona
I love it. Now, you had the pleasure of getting to interview most of these winners personally. I spent a few minutes with them, but you got to really chat with them. What were some of the common themes that stood out with these winners?
- [29:12]
Katie Mizzarini
Yes, they were all so amazing. We did several rounds of webinars or different panels with some of these winners. So that included one that we had Alicia Capelli from ebay, Abby Forsyth from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. That's the company behind the Maple Leafs, obviously, but also the Toronto Raptors and our soccer team, Toronto fc. We had Elizabeth Montvon from Parity, and if you're not familiar with them, they give women athletes sponsorship opportunity. So they had a huge year with the Olympics, the explosion in the WNBA with all these amazing rookies coming through. And these women were incredible. They just had so many examples of really powerful integrated marketing campaigns where all the different channels come together to share the same message. And one of the examples that comes to mind is actually Abby's work. She was tasked with integrating social impact into marketing for Maple Leaf, and she launched this really cool program. It was an Raptors hackathon. And you wouldn't normally associate an MBA team with innovation and stem, but she found this way to bring interactive STEM programming into the community. They were targeting teenagers, 15 to 18 year olds. And at the actual event, the vast majority, 80% of attendees identified as people of color and almost half as young women. So they were really reaching this audience that STEM can be so challenging for through their affiliation with the MBA and being such a major entertainment player. They had all these social media elements that all came together and actually won Abby the NBA Inclusion Leadership Award for how cool this marketing campaign was. So what really resonated, I mean, you have Elizabeth, who is actually a professional athlete, She's a professional water skier and works at Parity, and then you had Abbie on the call. So there's a lot of metaphors about how marketing is just such a team sport. And they had so many examples of connecting the dots across their organizations, pulling together marketing, social impact, data product. It really had this vibe of great marketing requires the entire organization and nothing great is done alone.
- [31:22]
Luz Corona
You're so right. And I remember those conversations. I think what struck me the most about Abby and Elizabeth and the rest of the team is just how excited they were about their work and making that kind of impact. So I love that we're talking now. And the recognition continued. You guys were ahead of it first. You guys saw Abby first, but that's really great.
- [31:41]
Katie Mizzarini
That's fantastic.
- [31:43]
Luz Corona
So I know that after I chatted with the winners, I was left feeling really inspired. What did you learn from the winners personally?
- [31:50]
Katie Mizzarini
Yeah. In addition to that panel, we had another one that was really. The topics that emerged that day were about creating value and community for customers. And I think the person who really drove this home was Francisco Brown. He's from Albertsons, which is a grocery store pharmacy. You know, like, neighborhood. It was my grocery store growing up. But he led this initiative. It was a digital initiative called Sincerely Health that allowed Albertsons customers to set health goals and then earn rewards and discounts through the app for taking steps toward those goals. So if I was like, I want to eat healthier, and then I was buying food and logging it through the app that was healthier, a ton of fresh produce that day or something, I would get these rewards and even discounts through Albertsons for it and talk about putting the brand squarely in the center of customer value. It literally asks you, what do you care about? What are your wellness goals right now? And how can Albertsons serve you in achieving those goals? I thought that was so cool and so inspiring. And then kind of at a totally different end of the spectrum, but still digital. We had Irina Efremova. She's from Roblox. If you're not familiar with Roblox, you either don't have kids or you're not a gamer. But it is this entire Metaverse game where it's kind of role playing and you can create these avatars and characters. And they wanted to show how Roblox can be a community for people outside of that traditional gamer idea. So Irina, who is extremely fashionable herself in this creative powerhouse of a person, partnered with the Parsons School of Design to create a Metaverse fashion trends report. They used SurveyMonkey to do it, but it really explored how Gen Z, in particular, show up and express themselves on immersive platforms like Roblox. And if you think about it, if you watched Project Runway, Parsons School of Design is this bastion of fashion in New York. It was a dream partner, and it allowed them to attract these other brands that are now investing in creating fashion in the Metaverse through Roblox that everyone from Gucci to Nike, it was just such a cool, inspiring idea that's really, again, focused on customer value. And then the last person I think of in that category was Susannah Cantelon. So she's from the University of the People, and in her Title on paper, she does social media and community. One of her most exciting channels was actually email marketing. And she talked a lot in the interview we had about the difference between email and social media and how in social media you're giving these quick hits, you're trying to engage people on platform, but you don't have as much space for ideas to breathe. And so she uses the email newsletter to really dive into in depth content that matters to her audience and again, just creates this value for them. So that's what really drives brand glow and creates community. And it was so great to hear those stories come to ice.
- [34:44]
Luz Corona
Yeah, I bet. It was fascinating to kind of get a peek under the hood at how exactly they're using the SurveyMonkey product and driving innovation in their own companies. So there's so much good stuff in here. Why collaboration is key. The focus on building community, meeting the consumer where they are, amplifying that value. But this was a new initiative for SurveyMonkey this year is what I'm understanding. So what did you learn from this year?
- [35:10]
Katie Mizzarini
The idea really stemmed from the fact that we have millions of users. We're in this really fortunate position, millions of users in every single industry, startups to Fortune 500 companies, and they use us for any number of things. So we do everything from employee engagement to customers to market research. So the through line for everybody is they want to make better decisions, create these experiences people love drive business growth. But with that many users, it's hard to actually get the stories of these customers and to dig in deeper. And in order to do that, we just realized we needed to have more of a personal relationship. And so being able to say eBay uses SurveyMonkey, AmEx uses SurveyMonkey, that's amazing. That's a great logo on our website. But now I can say Alicia uses SurveyMonkey. Marcus, he's a SurveyMonkey at Amex and here are the things that he's doing where she's doing to drive customer value. So we were really lucky because as marketers and communicators, we learned a lot from these people, one on one. But it also just brought us so much closer to our customers. And it was really cool to see the high value work coming out of everything that they're doing with our product.
- [36:22]
Luz Corona
I love that because they can always be just like kind of a data point on your reports and things like that. So kudos to you guys for really wanting to dig deep and understand the people that are using your tools and how to make it better for them. So I'm going to ask you a question that I've asked everybody and the answer is kind of always embedded in the past responses. But what does curiosity mean to you? I mean, you just kind of wrapped this awards that was very much about this. But what does it mean to you?
- [36:53]
Katie Mizzarini
I think reflecting on all the stories from these amazing customer companies, curiosity is the beginning of inspiration. You get curious about something, you start to explore it, you ask the right questions, you build a new idea out of it. And I think it's inspiration that really drives meaning at work. So otherwise you're sending slacks and emails all day, but if you're not inspired, you're not going to have that sense of meaning. And I think at the end of the day, that's why curiosity matters so much to marketers, because marketing is equal parts science and art, and if you can't find inspiration, you're going to struggle with that. So it really is the beginning of it all.
- [37:33]
Luz Corona
Yeah, it's like a happy marriage of art and science and things like that. So today specifically, what are you curious about? What has kind of caught your attention then? You feel like pulling on that thread so much.
- [37:45]
Katie Mizzarini
I mean, I was having a really interesting conversation with our brand leader the other day. You know Mudang, the little pigmo hippo?
- [37:54]
Host (possibly a marketing professional)
Yes, yes.
- [37:55]
Katie Mizzarini
It's like captivating the Internet. Everyone's in love with her. There's so many zoos and aquariums that use SurveyMonkey to let the public name their baby animals. So just this year, in the last six months, we've had Pepper the sea lion at the Pointe Defiance Zoo and Aquarium shout out to pepper. They had 8,000 responses on their survey about what they should name this baby sea lion. It was amazing. There's also Mokane the baby giraffe at the Birmingham Zoo. So we're talking about Mudang. And I know she was also named using an online poll. And we were like, how much of her viral capacity was in her name, which actually means bouncy pork, which is so cute. And so we were like, should we be making templates at SurveyMonkey to help these zoos name their animals with this potential for some, like, really viral attention? Because Mudang is like a hot ticket. They have to limit how many people can see her at her zoo and everything. So anyway, I'm curious, all the marketers listening to this, should we be helping these dudes name their baby animals? Is this part of why Mudang is so amazing or is she just so cute? So find me on LinkedIn or at SurveyMonkey on social we want to know if marketers think we should be doing this as a public service to our zoos that are using us.
- [39:06]
Luz Corona
I love that. I vote yes. If I can contribute to that, Send me the SurveyMonkey link and I will put it on there. But that's a great idea and I can't wait to see how that story comes to life. Regardless, I trust you guys will know how to bring it to life.
- [39:20]
Katie Mizzarini
Love it. Well, thank you Luis yeah, thank you.
- [39:22]
Luz Corona
For joining us kd. And to our listeners, be sure to tune into past episodes where we chat with the winners of the inaugural Survey Monkey Curiosity Awards celebrate an extraordinary marketing professionals working at SurveyMonkey customer companies who are driving innovation and shaping what's next for their businesses. Stay curious everyone, and thanks for joining.
- [39:45]
Katie Mizzarini
Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Ad Week Podcast Network.
- [39:49]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And Acast Creator Network.
- [39:51]
Katie Mizzarini
This podcast was produced by Jordan Praetano, executive produced by Al Mannarino and John.
- [39:56]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Heil, and edited by Layne McGivney at Boutwell Studios. You can listen and subscribe to all.
- [40:01]
Katie Mizzarini
Of Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcast.
- [40:05]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter at.
- [40:10]
Katie Mizzarini
Adweek Podcast, and if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send.
- [40:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Us an email@podcastdweek.com thanks for listening.