← On Strategy Showcase
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- [00:01]
Fergus O'Carroll
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O'Carroll in Chicago. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or reach us at hellonstrategyshowcase.com youm can also see all of the creative work associated with our episodes and connect with all of our guests on our website. And we have, I think it's roughly 250 episodes that are on the site that you can listen to. We are getting back on the road starting now in 2025. We are to be in Toronto recording live on Thursday evening, February 20th at rethinks offices. Super excited about this. The tickets go on sale this week. You can get them on our website under the live tour tab off of the homepage. There's a ton of great work coming out of Canada and we want to showcase the agencies and talent behind much of it. So we would love to see the strategy and marketing community, creative community, come out to Rethink on Wednesday evening, the 20th. I beg your pardon? Thursday evening, the 20th of February. Hope to see you all there. Here's a clip from today's episode.
- [01:16]
Greg Fisher
Everywhere you looked, everybody was talking about AI this, AI that. And the hype was so strong that putting some tension into that was going to be useful. And what we heard from CDOs and what the sales team reported back once the campaign was in market is that this was something that the CDOs love, that we were saying in front of executives, that we were saying in the Wall Street Journal because they needed boardrooms, they needed the C suite to know that their data isn't ready.
- [01:55]
Fergus O'Carroll
That's Greg Fisher. He is executive brand and strategy lead at Fred and Ted. He's joined by Brett Barash, who is head of brand and creative at INF. This is the first in a series of B2B episodes we're producing in partnership with LinkedIn. We're going to showcase some strong brands that reflect a more progressive approach to B2B marketing, either creatively or tactically. So I'm joined for the intro to this first episode by Irish actor Paul Mescal. You'll know him from Gladiator 2. Hello, Paul. Welcome.
- [02:33]
Keith Browning
Well, thank you, Fergus.
- [02:34]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. It's actually Keith Browning. He is the director of global brand for LinkedIn. It's easy to confuse.
- [02:43]
Keith Browning
It's not true, Fergus, I'm afraid. I actually only had a small role in Gladiator.
- [02:47]
Fergus O'Carroll
You did, man. But it's very easy to confuse these with these Irish accents, so forgive me. Hey, great to have you here. We are excited about this new series. And I wanted to ask you about B2B because we've heard a lot about waste in many forms in B2C. It's been talked about a lot over the last few months. Is it similar in B2B? I gotta assume that it is. And I'm just curious, how can marketers manage for that kind of waste?
- [03:18]
Keith Browning
I think it's fair to say ad waste is, you know, it's a problem across the industry broadly, whether you're B2C or B2B. But I think you could argue, you know, it's probably more pronounced in B2B. You know, when you. When you think of B2C products, whether you're selling whatever, soda or cereal or household cleaners, you know, whatever the case may be, they tend to kind of have, you know, broad appeal and can still reach large segments of people. So there's still often value in that waste. I think B2B products are just, you know, they're inherently more niche. So if you're selling something complex like a, you know, a CRM system or a, you know, HR platform, your audience is just much smaller and more specific. That's the reality of B2B. So there's probably less, like, less value in all of that waste.
- [04:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
When you think about what forms that waste comes in, what are one or two examples of that? I've got to think that creative idea. So it's not just the ad unit and where the ad unit exists, it's obviously got to do how you target it, but also what the message is. Right.
- [04:25]
Keith Browning
Our own B2B institute actually did a study very recently where we, you know, we looked at hundreds of B2B ads. I think was 600 in total, and we found that 71% are highly unlikely to drive ADI growth at all, meaning they're essentially wasted. So that clearly should be, you know, a focus for B2B marketers. Just, you know, developing great creative, which, you know, is emotional, will get attention, well branded, etc. So, yeah, creative, a huge contributor. Bad data, a huge contributor. You know, poor targeting, poor tools. There's a lot you could unpack when you talk about this idea of ad waste.
- [05:04]
Fergus O'Carroll
Thanks, Keith.
- [05:05]
Keith Browning
Thank you, Fergus. Appreciate it.
- [05:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
And thanks to LinkedIn for sponsoring this B2B series. So this is episode number one. It's Informatica with Brett Barash and Greg Fisher. Enjoy. And I'm excited to have Brett and Greg here. Greg is out of Richmond, Virginia, where I used to live for a few years, and Brett is out of San Francisco. Great to have you on the show, Brett. Thanks for being here.
- [05:32]
Brett Barash
Thanks for having us, Fergus.
- [05:33]
Fergus O'Carroll
Really excited to be here and good to talk to you, Greg.
- [05:36]
Greg Fisher
Yeah, thanks for having us.
- [05:38]
Fergus O'Carroll
Have you found in your career coming up in B2B that it used to be harder to get to great work, or is it still challenging to make the business case with inside organizations to. To push for stronger, more unique, more emotive work?
- [05:53]
Brett Barash
It's always been a challenge. And I grew up on both B2B and B2C. You know, I worked on AT&T for a long time and some other consumer brands before. I really just focused on B2B starting about 10 years ago. And I think it's always been a challenge to produce great work on on either side. Right. The difference with B2B is there's a level of demand and pipeline generation that's super important to a business on the B2B side. And so creativity comes in different forms. But if you have a CEO and a CMO and executives that really believe in brand building and how to do that with creative and really powerful creative, it's always been a great place to be. I don't think that's ever not been there. And so I'm just as excited as ever.
- [06:42]
Fergus O'Carroll
But it's tough, though. I think we have to admit that it is tough to find executives because B2B hasn't been thought of as being typically a creatively driven segment of the business world. It's relied on a sales culture rather than a marketing culture. Have things changed?
- [07:06]
Brett Barash
I don't think things have changed in the industry. And maybe I'm just fortunate enough to be at a place where we do value that and we value creativity. We've also gotten lucky with some of the things we've done. I know we're going to talk about that with some of the creative that we've developed because it's working really well and we can show success. And so by doing that, we're given quite a long leash to make great creative, add humor to some of the things we're doing, do things that are really going to have an emotional impact on our audience. And so the work that we do in that space has been really fun.
- [07:37]
Fergus O'Carroll
And do you. Have you found that there's been a North Star out there or an example of a brand who has done great work, that you're able. That you were able to kind of say, hey, look, it does work, because look, brand X did it. Do you. Is that a tool that you use internally to make your case back Back in the day we don't, we don't.
- [07:58]
Brett Barash
Have like a North Star, but we look at brands across the industry to some of the things that Salesforce is doing to Workday and some other big brands that are growing like we are and exponentially growing and building really powerful, creative again using humor, doing things that are making an impact. So it's not been one North Star. We kind of look across the spectrum.
- [08:19]
Fergus O'Carroll
Let's orient the listener by explaining what Informatica is. Brett, tell us about what it is and what it sells.
- [08:28]
Brett Barash
So Informatica is the leader in enterprise AI powered cloud data management.
- [08:34]
Fergus O'Carroll
Okay, let's slow down on that right away. So it's enterpr and start again. Enterprise.
- [08:39]
Greg Fisher
Yeah.
- [08:39]
Brett Barash
Informatica is the leader in enterprise AI powered cloud data management.
- [08:46]
Fergus O'Carroll
So what does that mean?
- [08:48]
Brett Barash
Right, so when you manage an enterprise, enterprise data is crucial to a business. So data that's governed, structured, holistic, trusted and that's extremely important to an enterprise business. Now what makes Informatica the leader in that are really three things. One is we're the only true platform. So we have many data management categories from integration to master data management to governance and all of those things we sell using IPUs, which means it's consumption driven. So you pay for what you use. So that's one. The second part is where we consider ourselves the Switzerland of data. So we work across any multi cloud or hybrid environment. And then the third part is we're validated by analysts. So industry validation across Forrester, Gartner, idc, we're the top ranked across all of the products within our data management platform.
- [09:49]
Fergus O'Carroll
So when you talk about data management, I look at it and I go, well isn't that what Salesforce does? Isn't that what Oracle does? Isn't that what Google, Microsoft, all these others are doing? For me as a business, where am I wrong in thinking? In my thinking?
- [10:08]
Brett Barash
So you're not wrong when you say that we have two types of competitors. We have the large cloud service providers like you mentioned in aws, Microsoft, Google. And we work with them and partner with them. So a lot of times they'll bring us in as the data management provider. Then we've got what we call our point solution competitors which are smaller data management companies who can only do a little bit of what we do.
- [10:29]
Fergus O'Carroll
So Greg, let's talk about it from a strategist lens. You come in to work on this business, what's your take on the landscape?
- [10:38]
Greg Fisher
You know the question you asked, well, what about IBM, what about Salesforce? I think that's a really interesting and important question and challenge as you're looking at this because you do have these major players, household names, who project this ability to handle your data, right? You look at AWS and you see what they're doing with the NFL and they cut to the chase of how they're helping companies use data to, they're helping the NFL to actually solve big problems. And really they're not doing all of that work. There's a lot of bits and pieces that go into making, transforming data into insights and insights into innovation. And so part of this is helping people to see that these solutions can't do it all, that you're not really ready. And this is a problem that's been happening for these enterprise businesses for a long time, right? They've been struggling to get their data ready, to get it harnessed. It's chaotic. There's a lot of chaos in your data. It's a challenge because these major companies are partners of ours and they're competitors. And so there's this fine line of understanding our difference in a nuance, in a way that doesn't hurt the partnership, but make sure people realize that there's more to data management than meets the eye. One of the things that was happening at this moment in time was every, every executive and Wall street was really demanding AI. And so there was this call to action across, across the board of what are you doing with a, what are your AI plans? How are you going to be driving a competitive advantage with AI? And what you see is executives are going onto earnings calls and saying, this is what we're going to do with AI. We're making really bold, ambitious claims. And then what's happening is that cdo, the chief data officer is then tasked with making those ambitious claims reality. And that's a big challenge. And part of that challenge is, is data problems that are as old as data themselves. So it's really elevated this problem from a back room problem to really a Wall street problem. And that's created a great opportunity and a challenge for us.
- [13:30]
Fergus O'Carroll
Do you feel that those chief data officers were under the impression that Salesforce, IBM, et cetera could offer that full package? Or were they aware that also needed some point solution providers to sort of plug and play?
- [13:46]
Greg Fisher
I think they really understood the need. And this was some of the tension is that maybe at the C suite level people think you can just turn this on and it's easy. And really, even if you talk about simplicity, that's a red flag because these CDOs understand just the chaos that's happening with their data. And it's really frustrating when someone says, hey, just turn on some new AI. You know, it's like, let's just get this going. Why isn't our AI plan moving faster? And the reality is it's because it's really hard and our data is a mess and it's all over the place. And often that data is sitting inside of a lot of these different, these different competitors. So there's data in Salesforce, there's data in aws, there's data in Azure. And the problem is all of those brands have walled gardens with their data. So the data doesn't talk to each other, it doesn't work together. One of Informatica's secret weapons is that they're a data unifier. So they can work with all those disparate sources of data and pull it all together in one unified source.
- [15:07]
Fergus O'Carroll
We'll be right back. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. For example, when am I ever going to need a 55 gallon 3 point hitch produce sprayer? I don't need to be seeing that ad. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, even company revenue. All the professionals you need to reach in one place. So stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com onstrategy. That's LinkedIn.com, terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Now back to the show. I remember when Brent and I first talked, I made a note here, Brent, that you said that you guys gather and package data so that others can use it, right? And so the bigger brands that we all know, the more popular major brands, salesforces, IBM's AWS, that my understanding was you're needed by them because you can package the data in a way that they can ultimately use it and that businesses can ultimately use it, is that foundationally what you're doing is you're making data accessible and useful.
- [16:55]
Brett Barash
That's right. That's one of the things. We have a product called Claire and in particular Claire GPT. And what that allows you to do as a customer is to use our ChatGPT, our LLM function, to run data reports, things that used to take weeks, months, having to go to it and say, I need these now you can gather insights in almost real time using that as a function.
- [17:17]
Fergus O'Carroll
And so for data chief data officers, what did they think of you? Were they aware of your brand before this campaign and what was it that you needed to say to them?
- [17:28]
Brett Barash
Yeah, so they did know us. And this is where our challenge really came into play, is that informatica is a 30 year old company so most of our customers and prospects know us already, but they know us as an older legacy on prem solution. Oh, I know Informatica. We use them before. They're expensive, they're a little, they didn't know us as what we refer to as the new Informatica. You know, we've moved entirely to the cloud. We're powered by AI, we have been since 2016. So we had to modernize our brand. We had to do something to introduce us as the new Informatica. We had to, you know, as Greg, I think put in the brief he wrote was shock the system.
- [18:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
So Greg, what did you mean by shock the system?
- [18:09]
Greg Fisher
This was a unique awareness problem. Our awareness problem wasn't lack of awareness, our awareness problem was massive awareness for a wrong product. Right. So Informatica was always kind of known to be the on premise solution back when everybody's data was just sitting in a data center in their office. And so when we were initially doing work and doing qualitative work with CDOs, they would say, oh yeah, I know Informatica, but they're irrelevant. They don't do this. We need somebody that's modern, we need somebody that's in the cloud. And the reality was Informatica had completely reinvented itself and spent billions on innovation to become a cloud first cloud native data partner. But we had to get out there and make sure that if someone saw the name Informatica, they weren't saying, oh I get them, I already know them, I don't need to pay attention. We needed to do something that really demanded investigation.
- [19:22]
Fergus O'Carroll
Take us through the journey of getting to this simple proposition because it is absolutely stripped down to its pure essence and it's repeated. And I'm just curious, how did you get it that simple in a sort of a space of tech and tech solutions where it's so damn complicated if you let it be?
- [19:46]
Greg Fisher
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, one of the great things about Informatica is that they spend a lot of time with CDOs, both because they have a massive sales force, but they're also doing a lot of their own research. And as we were going through it and we were thinking about what, how do we elevate this, how do we elevate ourselves and get out of the fray? What we just were noticing at this moment of time was just how data was taking the center stage and how frustrated and concerned CDOs were that their data couldn't scale, that their AI couldn't scale, that if they started to do AI, the garbage in, garbage out would become a major problem. And so as we were seeing that, we were just pushing back and forth with Brett and with Jim, the cmo, of trying to get to that higher order message, something that really could just resonate on a billboard. And in that, in one of the conversations, in the back and forth and back and forth, maybe I just flippantly said, look, everybody's ready for AI except your data. And that really sparked a lot of heat and interest with Kevin, the Chief Creative Officer and with Jim the cmo.
- [21:27]
Brett Barash
Greg's being humble here. It was fun. We were sitting in a room. I remember when we were going through the brief and Jim and I were in a room on a conference call with Greg and, and Kevin and Matt from friend Ted, and we're going through the brief. We're like, yeah, it's kind of like you're not ready for AI if your data is not. That's the key takeaway. And we're sitting there talking about it and then all of a sudden Greg says, it's like everybody's ready for AI except your data. And as soon as he said that, Jim and I kind of looked at each other and Jim was like, that's it, that's our line.
- [21:57]
Fergus O'Carroll
You make the smart decision not to represent yourself as an AI solution, but to lean back on what you do well, which is the data. You don't claim to be an AI solution. You claim that companies can't take advantage of the future if they're not doing the fundamental things right. So you're in essence making them question those cloud service providers ability to optimize.
- [22:26]
Greg Fisher
Exactly. Everywhere you looked, everybody was talking about AI this, AI that. And the hype was so strong that putting some tension into that was going to be useful. And what we heard from CDOs and what the sales team reported back once the campaign was in market is that this was something that the CDOs love, that we were saying in front of executives, that we were saying in the Wall Street Journal because they needed boardrooms, they needed the C suite to know that their data isn't ready. And we really had the positioning idea on this is if your business wants AI, your data needs Informatica.
- [23:15]
Brett Barash
And just to jump in there, I mean, we thought we had something there, like a real connection. And our CEO loved the line and he started using it, which was great. And all of his presentations we activated in market. But when we really knew was after our earnings call in Q1, our CEO and CFO gave the earnings call. And then they take questions from analysts. And one of the analysts, his question was, he said, hey, before I ask my question, I just want to say I heard you say something. You said, everybody's ready for AI except your data. I really like that line. You guys should use that in your marketing.
- [23:51]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah. It actually leads me to a thought which is you were talking about the evident overt parts of this campaign, which are the display ads and the films. But were you also trying to activate this somewhat subvertly through public relations, through placed media, through place surveying, to have this bubble up in media as a topic that they could see that this issue of data quality was really a critical ingredient and a critical problem in the performance of AI?
- [24:28]
Brett Barash
We did and we, we didn't. It's a great question. We didn't want to just launch with a bunch of banner ads. We did that too. Right. And, and we started measuring those over time. But we wanted to get this out there once we knew we had something. And so it goes back to having a CEO that really values brand and loves what we're doing. He uses it in every presentation. If you go to our Informatica World conference, it's used by him, by others. Last May, at Informatica World, which is our big user conference every May in Las Vegas, we had a chief digital officer from a, from a large enterprise company up on stage, said the line, it's being used by partners who are posting it. We have a trademark now. So the answer is yes. It's not just about getting it out in the campaign. We're doing all kinds of things in different channels to make sure that it's being used, that people are resonating with it and it's working.
- [25:21]
Fergus O'Carroll
So I'm going to, for the listener, just drop in a brief description here of these three spots from the campaign. If you want to see them, you can go to our website@onstrategyshowcase.com the message throughout these three spots is consistent. It's the idea that AI won't get anything right if your data isn't right. And the structure of the spots are, each of them is set up with a problem or a question and then a consequence. So the second half of each spot is the consequence of this setup not being what you hoped it would be. So the first spot, it actually what I describe as golf clubs, but it actually is about what happens to the ball flight when the driver's design isn't just right. So you're opening up with an executive loosely, casually swinging a golf club in front of the engineer who's also sitting in the conference table with him, and you'll hear the conversation that happens there. The second one is what happens when shipping doesn't go right. So this is a snowboard and a snowboard company. You're opening up an executive and she's walked out to the back shipping department to ask a question of the shipping manager. And it actually turns out that all of the wrong products are getting shipped to all the wrong people. So you've got snowboards that end up getting delivered to surfboard shops. The last one poses the question, what happens when you don't get your language models right on different products? So you're opening a factory, sort of in a factory product testing facility, and you see an executive who is opening and closing the refrigerator door to test that it's triggering the right language when it's opened for language preferences. And then the consequence, you're hearing a homeowner reacting as all of the appliances in his house are going crazy with the wrong languages. So those are the three spots. You can check them out on our website if you'd like. Give them a listen here.
- [27:20]
Brett Barash
Hey, Brad, did you optimize the driver design with the new data yet? Yep, and I used AI to do it.
- [27:25]
Fergus O'Carroll
Atta boy.
- [27:30]
Brett Barash
Everybody's ready for AI except your data.
- [27:34]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yoo hoo.
- [27:35]
Greg Fisher
Hey, you optimized our logistics with the new data, right?
- [27:39]
Brett Barash
I did, and I used AI to do it. Excellent.
- [27:44]
Greg Fisher
Bruh.
- [27:45]
Brett Barash
Everybody's ready for AI except your data. Hello.
- [27:51]
Fergus O'Carroll
Goodbye.
- [27:52]
Brett Barash
Hello.
- [27:52]
Fergus O'Carroll
Hey, did you update the language models.
- [27:54]
Brett Barash
With our new data yet? I did and I used AI to do it. Perfect.
- [27:58]
Fergus O'Carroll
Hola, Ciao, Gutena.
- [28:00]
Brett Barash
Shut up, you appliances. Everybody's ready for AI except your data. Goodbye.
- [28:05]
Fergus O'Carroll
Let's talk about the issue of targeting. We've had the same conversation with Salesforce. We've had the same conversation with Workday. The question of targeting. Such a narrow audience, you're going after primarily chief data officers. How did you play media in a way that you were able to feel that you were getting to do that efficiently and effectively through media channels. What did you do and how did you do it?
- [28:36]
Brett Barash
There's a couple things. We know the publications that in particular chief data officers and data engineers go to, so we did a lot of direct with them. We did some programmatic. One of the things that Informatica has though that we appreciate is we've got a really sophisticated growth marketing team. And so when we started this whole journey of building this new brand platform and activating this, we had to partner really closely with our growth marketing team, with demand gen, with events, with sales enablement, with everyone. And so it was critical for us to work together. We didn't even call it our brand campaign when we launched and still to this day we call it BrandGen. So bringing those two things together and so what we do on the demand side is super sophisticated. We work closely with them and we've got some things that we're doing to tie those things together to make sure our audiences are starting at the top of the funnel. And then once they get into the more content heavy work and some of the demand gen, they're working together hand.
- [29:36]
Fergus O'Carroll
In hand, meaning that they can go to your site and get more information, they can go to the salesperson. And so the story and the convincing and the consideration generation, the messages shift and evolve.
- [29:49]
Brett Barash
Both that, but also what they get served in market. Even if they don't go to our website, we're still serving the same people. Here's an example of one of the proof points is that we do a lot with LinkedIn, obviously. And what we found in Q3 and into Q4 was when you look at our form fill for lead generation on LinkedIn, the form fill completion was over 40% higher when someone had seen one of our spots on CTV.
- [30:20]
Fergus O'Carroll
On CTV platform within LinkedIn.
- [30:23]
Brett Barash
Yes, exactly.
- [30:24]
Fergus O'Carroll
Interesting. And what did that say to you?
- [30:27]
Brett Barash
Said it's working. We knew it was working. We didn't know if we were measuring the right things because the first half of the year, to be honest, this year when we were looking at brandgen and is it working and are we connecting the dots? We worked so hard to do it. I didn't know if we were measuring it the right way because we weren't necessarily showing results. That was one of the first times where we were like, oh yeah, this is working.
- [30:49]
Fergus O'Carroll
And so when you say it wasn't showing results, what were you looking at there as indicators that weren't performing at.
- [30:55]
Brett Barash
That point, driving a ton of traffic to our landing page. So we have a dedicated page for this campaign. It's informatica.com AI and we've been optimizing that page for the last year. And in fact, for the last six months or so, we're driving more traffic to that page than we are to our homepage. So we knew we were garnering interest. We knew people were doing that. What happens next? We were serving them the right ads and moving them farther down the funnel, but we weren't showing the results. That said, okay, this percentage of people who have gone to your website who have expressed their interest, now we're getting lead generation out of those people, or driving demand and driving pipe through that. What started with them engaging with our brand campaign, now we're actually starting to do that and starting to see those results. We do a brand tracker and we run it twice a year. We just had our most recent results at the beginning of November. One of the things we were really proud of was in terms of awareness and perception. So the question is, what cloud data management provider comes to mind first? And Informatica jumped two points, which was a huge lift for us. We're more than double any one of our point solution competitors, and that's from April of this year into November of this year. So we're really proud of some of those results and some of those are the things that we're really looking at, especially when you look at chief data officers.
- [32:17]
Fergus O'Carroll
So help me understand, because at two points in very mature categories, two points means a lot, but in sort of emerging, it doesn't necessarily. So was 2 percentage point increase a significant percentage lift off of where you were?
- [32:33]
Brett Barash
Very significant. I mean, we're talking from like 7 to 9. And now we're more than double any of our point solution competitors, which we weren't before that.
- [32:43]
Fergus O'Carroll
Nice. Okay, just a couple of final things. I think a lot of companies, and I think it's a factor in all segments, but I think it can be very pronounced in B2B, which is a fear of how your competitors are going to react if you say something or do something, especially when you're a smaller player amongst a lot of Godzillas. So my question is either how did your other point solution providers react, or how did the IBM Salesforce's AWS react? Did they come back and say, hey, we already do that. In what ways did they respond?
- [33:19]
Brett Barash
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And so all of our competitors are talking about having your data ready for AI. We think that's a good thing. It's almost like a rising tide. And when you look at our hyperscale partners, aws, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, when they talk about it, it only helps us. And so we do more with our partners. And the more that they're talking about AI ready data, the more they're bringing us in. And not just those partners, we're also talking about databricks, snowflake companies like that that we partner really closely with. So we're not afraid of having competitors and partners who are also competitors sometimes talk about it. We think that helps us.
- [34:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
So what does that do for 2025? Because that imitation could also be the doom. Flattery might just kill you. My question would be, does that mean in 2025 you've got to dramatically increase your spend or you've got to sort of evolve the message? Greg, I mean, what's your take on that?
- [34:27]
Greg Fisher
Well, you know, it's interesting that Informatica has been really great and Jim has been really focused on us keeping the drumbeat and keeping the message and getting it to break through because we are considerably outspent by the major players. Right. We're, it's, it's another stratosphere.
- [34:52]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [34:52]
Greg Fisher
And so the idea of, you know, we can't compete head to head with any of those major brands, they're just so huge. But the consistency has been paying off. But one of the things that we are doing right now and it's in work is okay, we've been talking about that. You're, you know, you're, everybody's ready for AI except your data. But we haven't really, we're really starting to show, well, what does it mean to have AI ready data? What could AI ready data do for you? How can we tell the story of our, of our customers in a way that shows a path to getting there or accelerating your AI readiness? And that's, that's part of the direction for next year is just continuing to get more in the showing. What's in it for me for these chief data officers?
- [35:54]
Brett Barash
Yeah, Just to add on to that too, one of the things that we are really focused on, we've already started, but we're going to be leaning heavily into it in next year is using customers to help tell our story. And so AI ready data stories of our customers are going to be a big part of evolving the campaign next year. And not just like the boring talking head videos that every B2B company does, but real storytelling that's going to be impactful.
- [36:18]
Greg Fisher
When you ask about measuring success on brand campaigns on B2B. This truly is the holy grail or largest challenge with B2B that I believe has made brand building challenging. Because as a B2B organization, you're only as good as your last quarter. And you have your salespeople on, you know, on the ground, knocking on doors. But the sales process is very long. And so the things that we're putting in motion at any time could take 12 to 18 months to start really showing fruit. And it requires an executive team that has the patience to play through until the result. You know, you're pumping the well, but you have to pump the well for a while before the water starts flowing. And I think that's where we are now. And we're starting to see the fruit of that. More website traffic, getting people like analysts talking about the campaigns, having customers seeing the campaign as a badge of honor and a rallying cry within the organization. Those things are great, but it takes time for that to really turn into pipeline and revenue. And so I feel like that is the challenge that we see and that everyone sees is can you be patient enough to see the results? It's different than buying Oreo cookies. It's a very considered expensive product. That has been something that I've really appreciated about Informatica is that they've been willing to be patient and we felt the results both quantitative with the traffic and what have you. But allowing the qualitative feedback to be an encouragement, I think takes a lot of courage for a client to do that.
- [38:27]
Fergus O'Carroll
It is Brad Barish, head of brand and creative at Informatica in California. And it's Greg Fisher. He is head of strategy BE at Fred and Ted. And we're delighted to have both of you here. It's a great story, guys. Thanks for enduring my interrogation.
- [38:48]
Brett Barash
Thanks for bringing us on.
- [38:49]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And we will see everyone on the next episode.