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- [00:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O'Carroll in Chicago. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and you can see all of our episodes and the creative work associated with them on our website@onstrategyshowcase.com I'm excited to announce that we're starting a new series in a couple of weeks called Spot On. It's going to be an episode a month that's going to be just a group of planners getting together to talk about work that's happening in the marketplace. We're going to talk about the strategy and what we think of it. We're going to talk about its objectives, we're going to give our opinions about how it might rate in ad testing. We're going to hear the realities of how it tested in ad testing and we're going to talk about how the brand might be tracking compared to its competitors. It's going to be just a fun, casual format, more like a talk show panel than it is about an in depth interview. It's not going to involve the people who worked on the campaign or the clients of the campaign. So it's a little different than what we've done in the past. It's going to be more built on what we did in the Christmas special and what we did for our super bowl episode a couple of weeks back. Just casual, fun planners getting together to know each other and to talk about their feelings about different work and different brands. So, really excited to start that. It is Spot on going to be debuting in a couple of weeks. It's going to be brought to you by Tracksuit and by our friends at System One. And I think it's going to be great. We're going to be doing it once a month throughout the year. I also wanted to Give thanks to LinkedIn for being a part of sponsoring this B2B series that we're running right now. So I'm joined for the intro to this episode by Keith Browning, director of brand marketing for LinkedIn. Great to have you back, Keith.
- [01:54]
Keith Browning
Great to be here, Fergus.
- [01:55]
Fergus O'Carroll
And so this whole conversation that we've been having in these different episodes about targeting, I mean, the whole conversation of targeting and those who are in market is pretty key in, in business to consumer, but it's also really key in business to business. Let's talk about this idea that John Dawes has of 955 and it's pointing to people who are in market when they're getting exposed to your communication or.
- [02:22]
Keith Browning
In that timeframe, the 955 rule was a wake up call for a lot of B2B brands, including ourselves, you know, only going back a few years. And it's this idea that, yeah, you know, it's not a hard and fast rule by any means, but the vast majority, like 95% of the people in your market are out of market buyers. So you know, these are individuals not currently in the process of purchasing what you're selling or looking to, to, to, to purchase what you're selling, whereas only 5% of, of buyers actually are. So really I think the implication there is, you know, as a marketer, you're mainly in the memory building business.
- [03:05]
Fergus O'Carroll
You know, if you're a peanut butter or if you're selling cereal, you probably, your rule's a little different. You might have 55% of people who are in market right now and 45 who are not. But if you're in, if you're in household appliances in B2C, if you're in the automotive category, you probably have 1% of people that are in market. And so it's the same in business to business. If you're selling equipment or tech infrastructure or transportation, you're probably looking at less than 5% of the people that are in market. But what does it say about LinkedIn ads? Because for me, I think about it as one provides an opportunity to convert in the short term for people that are in market, but for those who are not, there's still that opportunity to land a really good brand message, right?
- [03:52]
Keith Browning
Yeah, exactly. We're proud of the fact that we build tools specifically for B2B marketers. We've built it in such a way that you can target in market buyers and receive intent signals and so forth and build campaigns specifically for them. But also we've really interesting ways to target broadly and target those out of market buyers. And we're constantly introducing new formats to help with that. One of the ones that I'm most excited about is Connected TV. So you can start the process on LinkedIn. You can use our targeting filters, et cetera, to decide who you want to target. But then you can actually run the spot on connected tv. So you're watching ESPN on a Friday evening or whatever and it goes to the ad break and it's an ad for your company which shows up there using LinkedIn's professional targeting.
- [04:44]
Fergus O'Carroll
So here is episode number three in our B2B series sponsored by LinkedIn. It's Michelle Lisowski, Senior Director, Global B2B and Partnership Marketing at Uber for Business. Enjoy. So it's great to be doing this episode because a lot of focus recently on B2B in the marketing circles because we're all trying to elevate the quality of the product coming out of B2B. And one of the things I found really interesting about this case is that with Uber and this sort of extension of Uber into Uber for business, I thought this would make for a really interesting B2B play. What do you do when you have a strong consumer brand and you're trying to establish it in a business to business context? How much of it translates, how much of it doesn't translate and what do you have to then become in order to be more suited in that B2B world? So I am really excited to have Michelle on. Thanks for joining me today, Michelle.
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Michelle Lisowski
Absolutely excited to be here.
- [05:46]
Fergus O'Carroll
So we did Uber, the master brand Uber, a couple of months ago and we talked about a lot of the great work and it was a wonderful episode and people can go back and listen to what that is. But heading into this, you've come out, out of many years at Google. Was that also in a B2B role or how would you describe your experience?
- [06:06]
Michelle Lisowski
It was. I had a number of chapters at Google, but the I'd say kind of the second half of my career there was very similar. It was dedicated to B2B and it was really focused on taking kind of this consumer brand and really this consumer product. So I worked on what was then called G Suite, how we take that to companies and kind of reestablish our brand in a new space.
- [06:28]
Fergus O'Carroll
So were there similarities, you think, in terms of what you have had to do at Uber and what you did at Google?
- [06:35]
Michelle Lisowski
A ton of similarities. And in fact, the reason I came to Uber was very much because of my experiences at Google and wanting the opportunity to kind of go back to the beginning when you're at a much more nascent stage with your B2B offering and figure out kind of how do you start to build that brand and do exactly what you're talking about up front? How do you start to build that B2B brand, you know, attached to this consumer brand that so many people already know and love.
- [06:59]
Fergus O'Carroll
So help us understand as listeners, what is Uber for business?
- [07:05]
Michelle Lisowski
Yeah, that's a really great question because so many times we'll talk to our customers and they think that they know what Uber for Business is because people equate that with using Uber in a business context. And that's certainly a part of it. But Uber for business is really kind of a platform that sits on Top of our core services, that's enabling companies to bring kind of those consumer offerings rise and meals to the people they serve. And so that's often their employees or their customers. And so, you know, over the last decade, we've really kind of continued to build and evolve this product, and we're now working with over 200,000 companies worldwide.
- [07:39]
Fergus O'Carroll
So the offering is the same. It is moving people and it's moving goods or food or what's the other part of it that's not people centered?
- [07:48]
Michelle Lisowski
Yep, it's absolutely. It's moving food. It's really, you know, getting anywhere and moving anything. But it's using kind of our core rides and Uber eats platforms. So I would think of it as giving companies kind of the controls and the features that they need to offer those services to the people they care about. So, you know, if we think about some of the use cases, business travel is obviously a really big one. So employees are taking Uber to the airport when they travel to see clients. But when you. When a company has Uber for business, what they have now is kind of the controls and the transparency into all of that so they can ensure compliance so that they can ensure duty of care. It enables them to offer a more premium experience for their customers.
- [08:34]
Fergus O'Carroll
So for the listener here, I want to play two spots from this campaign. This is for the travel manager segment, which is just one of the segments that Uber for Business targets. We're going to open on a corporate travel manager in her office. She's trying to wrap up her day, but then we see a deluge of DM messages popping up up on her screen from different employees. One's asking, what's my meal budget? Another one's asking, can I get a black car? Another one's asking, do you have a minute to chat? And then what we do is we see her go to the Uber platform for business. At number two, the spot is opening on a travel manager in his cubicle surrounded by mountains of expense reports and paper receipts. And he's obviously frustrated.
- [09:34]
Unknown
With Uber for business. You can set budgets so easily. Your team actually sticks to them. Even Shane from Sales Travel managers, we got you with Uber for Business Traveler expenses are automated, so they're free from receipts. And so are you travel managers. We got you.
- [10:24]
Michelle Lisowski
So that's one of the big use cases. And then there's a lot of others that we're serving in the auto vertical for airlines, helping airlines move their crew, helping airlines with distressed passengers when they need to take an Uber to get to their hotel because their Flight was canceled. So there's a lot of different use cases that we're serving.
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Fergus O'Carroll
You mentioned earlier the idea of controls that sit on top of the consumer app. Figuratively, what are some of those controls that they new features and functionalities that exist in the B2B app.
- [10:53]
Michelle Lisowski
That's right, not, not within the app but within the Uber for business platform which again I would figuratively think of as sitting on top of that. So it's a separate dashboard that companies would log into and examples, you know, when you're offering our services to your employees, some of the examples of controls are spending limits, location restrictions. So you can only take an Uber from headquarters to the airport. For example, when you're thinking about kind of auto dealerships and calling a car for, for their customers, we have a dashboard called Uber Central that allows you to call an Uber for someone else and then you can also kind of communicate with the driver and track that Uber so the individual doesn't even have to go into their app and it's really kind of a full end to end service. That type of use case also applies in hospitality. So think of going up to a concier and they're using that dashboard to call you in Uber. So that's just an example of kind of some of the controls that we have that sit on top.
- [11:53]
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 onstrateg. That's LinkedIn.com onstrategy. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Now back to the show. So when you talk about the brand and the migration to business, to business, tell us about what are some of the things you're discovering about what the brand about how the brand is being viewed and how that is helping you, number one, and then hindering you, number two in Trying to sell into businesses.
- [13:21]
Michelle Lisowski
It always helps when you have a household, a brand that is a household name, it gets your foot in the door. So you have kind of instant credibility in that regard. Everyone knows Uber where it becomes a challenge, but frankly, kind of what motivated me to want to come and kind of help build this from a marketing standpoint is that people have existing perceptions of your brand. So if we go back to the beginning when I mentioned that, like, everyone will say they know Uber for business, what often is the case is that their employees are taking, taking, you know, an Uber to the airport, or they're taking an Uber to the airport. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the company has this platform that sits on top of that, that gives them all these additional kind of controls and features. And so what we have to do is really establish the Uber for business brand and help people understand that we do have this separate product that sits on top. It's really kind of the conversation you and I are having right now. That's what we have to educate the market on. But what we also have to do is build credibility and that space. And so Uber might get our foot in the door, but unless we understand the category in which we're playing and show these businesses that we understand kind of their pain points and that we're leaders in this space, they're not going to want to talk to us, they're not going to want to partner with us long term. This is kind of especially true when we're moving into completely new industries. So in some of our auto solutions, for example, we're working with a ton of dealerships across the US So instead of offering loaner cars, they can offer people, people a ride home. With Uber, they can either do that by calling them an Uber directly, or they'll give them an Uber voucher so they have credit to get around while their car is being serviced. This allows them to enhance their customer service. We are not known for that offering. We're not known in the auto space. So we have to establish credibility that we understand what these dealerships are going for, going through what their pain points are, how they're looking at costs and benefits to their customers. And so we really have to start to kind of rewrite the story, but also establish credibility that we understand this very unique space.
- [15:24]
Fergus O'Carroll
What advice would you have for people who are currently managing B2C brands? And like you, they're now having to evolve it to B2B as marketers? Is there any advice you'd have for them about what they can translate as they move into B2B and what they cannot.
- [15:41]
Michelle Lisowski
Yeah, I mean the first one, this might seem obvious, but I think that there's a lot of tensions that arise around it. But it's leverage your B2C strengths. So we've had so many conversations around kind of the Uber for business brand and where we want to take it and how much we want to lean into Uber versus how much we want to create something that feels really distinct. And what I firmly believe, and what I think has served us well is like, yes, we need to educate people that we have this kind of separate offer, but we do not want to be separate and distinct from Uber. We want to lean into Uber as much as possible. Whether that's creatively, from kind of a look, feel standpoint. We've done a lot around our visual identity. So you can tell like, hey, this is a little bit different, but it still feels authentically Uber. We also try to lean into Uber a lot, you know, internally in terms of kind of the learnings and the technology and the capabilities we have around the consumer offering. They don't certainly all apply. But I think the more you can leverage your B2C strengths, the better, especially if it's a consumer built company. Because I think most of those companies like Uber, the consumer car is probably a lot more mature and there's a lot you can learn. So number one would be leveraging, you know, leveraging the consumer side and brand as much as possible. I say the other one is just deeply understanding your core audience. B2B buyers have very different expectations. They expect, expect elevated levels of service. They expect when things go wrong, that you are there from them. And these are high stake decisions and these are their careers. And so there's a lot of kind of education and trust building that has to go into it and you have to invest there. You can't skip that step. This is not transactional. And so you have to really invest in deeply understanding them.
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Fergus O'Carroll
So that's an interesting point because that's not necessarily a key feature of the consumer app where it is easy to get a human being to talk to or response quickly. Is that an added layer of service that you've had to put on the B2B offering some version of that or a different version of that.
- [17:56]
Michelle Lisowski
100% customer support is a key differentiator on the B2B side. Because look, when something goes wrong for a company, the stakes are just a lot higher, right? So they need service and they expect service. And so that's definitely something that We've had to layer on top and something that we've had to enhance over time because it's not just that they expect customer service and they expect to talk to a person. They expect a different level of service and oftentimes their problems are a lot more complex. And so that's not just a feature that we've added on top. That's one that we've kind of really involved and invested in over time. And that's also kind of a feature that we talk a lot about. We go back to kind of our marketing and our value props that we often mention because I think it's something that's important on the B2B side.
- [18:45]
Fergus O'Carroll
How do you market it? How is that done? Does it require a lot of face to face or is there a role for communications?
- [18:55]
Michelle Lisowski
It's both. I will say how we market it is kind of true to any B2B setting, which is, it is very much a combination of, of kind of higher touch, what people often call field marketing, but kind of higher touch, which is meeting people where they are physically at events, doing webinars. Again, kind of higher touch motions. But we also do a lot of things at scale. We leverage digital, we leverage kind of above the line campaigns as you might see kind of traditionally on the consumer side.
- [19:27]
Fergus O'Carroll
What have you found from your experience both at Google and now at Uber? What have you found that works really well and what works less well?
- [19:37]
Michelle Lisowski
One thing that's been consistent, which I don't think is necessarily unique in B2B but I think there's a tendency to forget this more in B2B is that you have to solve someone's problem. And it is a lot easier and more effective to sell one thing than to sell multiple. So both at Google and at Uber, it's really a portfolio of solutions that's being sold. When we were selling G Suite, it's not just email, it's drive, it's calendar. It was multiple things. But the more things you try to sell, the less effective you are. So one of the key learnings kind of in both places is to be very pointed. Talk about one feature, kind of one value prop. One problem that you can solve for a company, go really deep on that. And then once you get them in, once you can kind of sell them on that, then you can start to cross sell and upsell. But it was absolutely the same at G Suite. Whenever we tried to sell the entire suite, this is 100% from kind of an advertising perspective. Our number one learning was it was a lot Easier to go in with one thing, to just go in with email or just go in with Calendar or just go in with Drive. Gmail usually won the day over there, but that was a big learning and it's the same thing here. And we even see that from a sales perspective. We have, you know, we have a lot of tools these days that could analyze kind of the conversations that our sales reps have. And when they are going in focused on a single value prop, they're significantly more effective than when they're trying to sell kind of multiple things at once. When we're briefing an agency, we brief against an audience and a use case. Now we might have multiple reasons to believe. So I'm not saying we literally only say one thing, but that single kind of audience decision maker and use case is what we will sell against. We do a lot of digital advertising. LinkedIn is certainly a big one for us because of the targeting capabilities we do a lot programmatically. We do connected tv. I'd say kind of from a channel standpoint, I don't think we're that dramatically different than what consumer does now are. We're probably not as above the line as the consumer side. I'd say the difference is the targeting that we layer on top of that. Everything we do, even when we're doing awareness campaigns, has a lot of layers of targeting. And when we're working with our media agencies and doing programmatic buys, we're working with networks that can kind of augment whether it's first party data like LinkedIn or other third party data that's helping us get to the right decision makers. And so if I think about kind of one of our superpowers, I don't think it's the channels that are different. I think it's the capabilities we have around targeting the right people.
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Fergus O'Carroll
Are there campaigns out there that you B2B campaigns that you think are great?
- [22:31]
Michelle Lisowski
I hesitate to say this because there's ones I really like and ones I don't like, but I think that Slack has had moments where they really nail it.
- [22:40]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, you're right. You're right.
- [22:41]
Michelle Lisowski
They have moments where they haven't. But look, I think there's B2B is often not very sexy and I believe that it still can be. And I think that the companies that take risks and really break through really kind of set a tone for B2B that I think is exciting. And so I think that there are, I commend some of the things Slack has done to try to do that. Volvo had one Kind of a while ago, this is more kind of in the freight industry. They had a really cool one that I think was just fun.
- [23:21]
Fergus O'Carroll
Jean Claude Van Damme.
- [23:22]
Michelle Lisowski
Yes. Yes. Thank you.
- [23:24]
Fergus O'Carroll
The splits.
- [23:24]
Michelle Lisowski
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that one was interesting, but I really kind of going back to what I was saying, like, kind of specifics aside, I had a manager early on who said that pretty doesn't perform. And I think that stuck with a lot of the team, especially when you're in B2B. And so much of what you do is very much kind of revenue driven. And there's already kind of this perception that, like, B2B work isn't as exciting or as creatively cool. And I've always felt it kind of my life's ambition that you can make things that are pretty that do perform and you can do it in the B2B space. And so kind of bringing all those things together is always exciting to me. I can't tell you how many, like, very similar ideas people have given back to me. And I just think about it as, like, B2B is just there might be more constraints and it might be harder, but it can be done. And I think that that's just more of a challenge to agencies to figure out kind of to what you're saying, like, how do you have more of this, like, kind of B2B style work? Because at the end of the day, like, these are humans, as we were talking about before. And so if you want to break through, you need something that's interesting, but it also needs to be relevant and it needs to. To teach them something. And so I just see these as constraints and a challenge for any creative agency.
- [24:39]
Fergus O'Carroll
Michelle Lisowski is Senior Director, Global B2B Partnerships in marketing at Uber Uber for Business. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today and being part of this series. I'm really thrilled to get the chance to meet you.
- [24:55]
Michelle Lisowski
I appreciate it. Thanks, Fergus.
- [24:57]
Fergus O'Carroll
And we will see everyone on the next episode.