The one with ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming about how buying happens, what B2C marketing can learn from B2B and B2C from B2B, and a case well made for doing less, exceptionally.

Summary

The CEO’s Guide to Marketing

Episode: The one with ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming
Date: August 27, 2025
Host: Seth Matlins (Forbes CMO Network)
Guest: Colin Fleming (CMO, ServiceNow)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Seth Matlins sits down with ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming to explore seismic shifts in marketing strategy at a high-growth B2B tech giant. They dive into why ServiceNow moved from a product-led to a brand-led strategy, how B2B and B2C can learn from each other, the perils of “more and faster,” and the business case for doing less—but doing it exceptionally. Fleming shares practical lessons about organizational change, the evolving buying journey, the importance of trust, and why brand is the last durable differentiator in a world reshaped by AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Product-Led to Brand-Led: Why the Shift Matters

• Context: Fleming joined ServiceNow and quickly pivoted strategy to focus on brand storytelling over strict product marketing.
  • “We had a world-class one-of-one product that was beloved by IT departments around the world. But it didn’t add up to a big enough story and so there wasn’t enough emotion around it. We needed to shift to tell that bigger story… especially in a time where all software companies are chasing the same AI dream.” — Colin Fleming [00:26]
• Many CEOs/boards still undervalue brand versus easy-to-measure product/task metrics.
  • “The brand is often the most valuable asset that they own in many cases, if not all. And so why would you not treat that with the same tender love and care that you might with your flagship product or your cash cow?” — Fleming [01:49]
• CMO’s role is to “educate” the C-suite on long-term value creation, not just short-term wins.

2. Educating the C-suite (Especially CFOs) on Brand Value

• Many top executives lack shared understanding of brand’s impact; it’s a CMO’s job to inform and advocate.
  • “Never have I walked into a CFO and just started from day one with a common understanding of what the value of a brand is. It is our job to talk about long term valuation and differentiating assets.” — Fleming [03:29]
• Tension: Companies can grow rapidly yet risk “strategic misses” by failing to articulate what they do or stand for.
  • “We’re growing 30, 40% year on year. But it’s not adding up to enough. It’s not building a long enough moat, it’s not building enough pricing power.” — Fleming [05:08]

3. Short-term vs. Long-term: Orchestration, Not Just Balance

• Marketers must invest in both immediate results and slow-moving, strategic brand building.
  • “Trust with the board or trust with the C suite is really job number one for CMO because there is so much art and science contained within it.” — Fleming [07:56]

4. Metrics that Matter: Quality over Quantity

• Fleming famously cut lead generation by 50% in his first year, shifting focus to quality leads and conversions.
  • “We moved the idea of a lead... from an outcome to simply a signal. I...dropped lead generation by about 50%...But we sort of knew that if we went for quality over quantity, we would see conversions up, we would see trajectory go more strongly and things like this. And thankfully all those things came true.” — Fleming [09:58]
• Stat: “Roughly 90% of the time, the first brand that comes to somebody’s mind is the one they end up purchasing.” — Fleming, quoting HBR [10:59]

5. The Death of the Funnel: Buying is Nonlinear

• The buyer’s journey, especially in B2B, is not a funnel but a loop involving “hidden and obvious buyers” and up to “20 or 30 people.”
  • “It is loops, it is not a funnel because you’re dealing with hidden buyers, obvious buyers. There’s a myriad of determinations.” — Fleming [12:31]
  • Instead, ServiceNow moved to a “buying group orientation.”

6. What B2B Can Learn from B2C—And Vice Versa

• B2B marketers excel at operational rigor, but lag in creativity and cultural impact.
  • “The best B2B companies are able to measure and optimize and build scalable, repeatable revenue systems better than B2C has...But comparatively, B2C marketers run circles around B2B when it comes to creativity and culture, the ability to shape culture and provocation.” — Fleming [16:17]
• His career “mission”: Reverse that, so B2B gets its fair share of creative, provocative, personality-filled marketing.

7. The Danger of Obsessing Over Attribution & Activity

• B2B’s craving for measurability led to “gate forms in front of every asset, PDF data sheets” and a focus on what’s easy to prove, not what drives buying.
  • “A B2B marketer’s desire for credit... almost dictates an outcome that is not aligned with how people actually buy products and services.” — Fleming [18:19]
• Avoid “activity over achievement,” focus on impact.

8. Doing Less, Exceptionally: Project Marie Kondo

• ServiceNow deliberately cut content by 50%, vendors by 63%, and campaigns from 200 to 6, prioritizing quality over quantity.
  • “We created this project inside the organization...Project Marie Kondo, where we just simply asked ourselves, what if we were to just take a step back and declutter and focus and measure the outcome instead of the input?” — Fleming [21:58]
  • Engagement rose by 66%, employee satisfaction increased.
• Time saved was spent on differentiation, technology, and strategic focus.
  • “We can take that extra bit and make this a little bit better of an asset, or write that brief a little bit more strongly, or do anything that is worth doing and take some time to invent new ideas.” — Fleming [24:20]

9. Accountability & Defensible Differentiation

• Every piece of work must answer “Why us?” and be unique to ServiceNow.
  • “If we can put any other logo on anything we produce, it’s wrong...differentiation and uniqueness and clarity of thought has to be pervasive.” — Fleming [27:09]
• Junior team members are empowered to contribute, fostering positive, self-critical culture.

10. Leading With the Company’s DNA

• Find and amplify the brand’s true DNA—don’t import culture, surface it.
  • ServiceNow’s “helper” mentality inspired by its founding story of “Phyllis”—always focus on making customers’ lives easier.
  • “Our job is not to bring a culture or a DNA to the organization. It is to find that intrinsic DNA within the organization and extrapolate it from there.” — Fleming [29:34]

11. Inspiration from Unlikely Sources

• Examples include Marie Kondo and Mr. Rogers—simplify, declutter, and be helpful.
  • “Every brand and every business is ultimately in the quality of life business, which is you’re making somebody’s life easier on some metric.” — Matlins [31:19]

12. Lessons from Racing: Finding the Last 1%

• Fleming’s background as a race car driver taught him the importance of grit, focus, and incremental gains.
  • “Anytime you compete on the world stage, you are quite adept at finding that last 1% of 1% to find ways to differentiate or stand apart or outperform.” — Fleming [32:59]

13. Risk-Taking and Reinvention

• Even rapid growth (30%+ per year) shouldn’t preclude reinvention; strategic risk is essential.
  • “You’ve got to reinvent yourself as a company over and over and over again. Microsoft is a different Microsoft, it was. Apple’s a different Apple. Nvidia is a different Nvidia... So even the best and brightest companies in the world have to continuously find ways.” — Fleming [36:27]

14. AI & the Future of Brand and Trust

• AI will automate the mundane, but brand remains the final differentiator.
  • “When AI does the work, brand is the work.” — Fleming, quoting Vineet Mehra [39:01]
  • Efficiency gains from AI level the field, making brand and trust even more vital.
  • “It’s created more of an emphasis on the things that still make the great companies great... automate the things that are mundane... pointing it towards things that drive highly differentiated brands.” — Fleming [39:01–40:36]
• Fleming is bullish on brand’s endurance even as marketing evolves.

15. Building Trust in a Fractured World

• Trust is especially critical in B2B, where decisions can make or break careers.
  • “Literally, as our content strategy has always been, be helpful, that is the whole documented content strategy.” — Fleming [43:22]
• Example: 1974 IBM ad—“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”—trust as risk mitigation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Whoever that CFO is, remind me never to work for them.” — Colin Fleming [03:22]
• “We did less work at higher quality, and we increased engagement by something, 66% or something to this effect.” — Fleming [21:58]
• “If we can put any other logo on anything we produce, it’s wrong.” — Fleming [27:09]
• “Our job is not to create or bring a culture or a DNA to the organization. It is to find that intrinsic DNA within the organization and extrapolate it from there.” — Fleming [29:34]
• “Every brand and every business is ultimately in the quality of life business, which is you’re making somebody’s life easier on some metric. Right. And, and you know, if you’re not helpful, you’re just taking up space and time.” — Matlins [31:19]
• “When AI does the work, brand is the work.” — Fleming referencing Vineet Mehra [39:01]
• “If we have large organizations that are trusting of ServiceNow or any brand that we’re representing, that’s better than any great advertisement or great data sheet you might produce ever, right?” — Fleming [44:43]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:26–01:14: Fleming explains his move from product-led to brand-led at ServiceNow
• 03:29: Educating the C-suite about the true value of brand
• 09:58: Why and how he cut lead gen by 50%; focus on “quality over quantity”
• 12:31: The funnel is dead; buying is a loop, not a linear path
• 16:17: What B2B and B2C can learn from each other
• 21:58: “Project Marie Kondo”—cutting content, campaigns, and vendors to do less, exceptionally
• 24:20: Impact of decluttering: quality, focus, and more creative bandwidth
• 27:09: Differentiation test: “If you can put any other logo on it, it’s wrong”
• 32:59: Race car driver lessons: find that extra “1% of 1%”
• 39:01: AI and its implications for brand (”when AI does the work, brand is the work”)
• 43:22: Building trust when trust in institutions is at an all-time low

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Tone & Takeaways

This conversation blends candor, practical wisdom, and optimism—rooted in Fleming’s personal journey and ServiceNow’s transformation. The hosts don’t shy away from uncomfortable truths: resistance to brand, measurement myopia, or the pressure to do more. Instead, they propose ruthless prioritization, radical focus, and cultivating trust as both a personal and organizational asset.

For CEOs and other leaders: Investing in brand is not a soft ambition but a strategic, measurable asset. In an AI-driven, noisy world, stand for something real. If you can’t answer “Why us?”—and answer it in a way that only your brand can—go back to the drawing board.

For marketers: Less is more, if what remains is exceptional, differentiated, and aligned with who you really are as a company. Trust is the currency; brand is the vessel. AI will change how you work, but not why the work matters.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. So you get to, you get to ServiceNow 16 months ago. It's May of 24 and amongst the very first things you do is evolve company strategy from being product led to brand led. Why did you do it? And what does a CEO need to understand about the differences between the two approaches and when it may make sense to choose one over the other?

[B]

You know, I think it's one of those examples of, it's a, it's a perfect example of what got us here won't get us there. I think, you know, you see a lot of companies when you reach that 10 billion some odd threshold where you just have to become a bigger company and tell a bigger story. And that's what this was in service of. One of the reasons why Bill hired me was to, to do exactly that, to build a bigger story. And I do think a couple things were true. We had a world class one of one product that was beloved by IT departments around the world. But, but it didn't add up to a big enough story and so there wasn't enough emotion around it. We needed to shift to tell that bigger story. And so it was about connecting the platform's brilliance to real world transformation. And we did that especially in a time where all software companies are chasing the same AI dream. So we needed to find relevance and we needed to tell a bigger story as a result of that.

[A]

So Bill obviously understood something, if only implicitly about the importance of kind of the bigger story. And I'm not sure at least the premise of this show is that not enough CEOs, CFOs, and for that matter, boards do understand that. If you were going to explain the business building value, the strategic efficacy of story and narrative to a huge company's chief executive who doesn't understand it, where would you start?

[B]

You know, I think there's a few ways to accomplish it, but I do think when you look at any large organization, the brand is often the most valuable asset that they, they own in many cases, if not all. And so why would you not treat that with the same tender love and care that you might with your flagship product or your, you know, your cash cow in that context. And so we really try to treat it as an asset.

[A]

Can I, can I ask you, forgive me for interrupting. Let me ask you however, to answer the question you posed, which is why not treat it like the asset that it is? But we know that a lot of massive enterprises don't view their brand, or brands for that matter, in the same way they may view the corporate brand in that context. But the brands within a multi brand portfolio aren't necessarily understood to, to be that and to do that. And I mean, in fact I'm thinking right now about one of the biggest CMO jobs to have been filled in one of the biggest categories globally over the past couple of years. I know a number of people who interviewed for it, when they were interviewing for it, the C CFO said to them first, first note, I don't believe in brand. And so let's just use that CFO as, as an example. Why, why not? Given that and to your point, you know, intangible asset valuations are driving M and A activity and brand and goodwill and the goodwill engendered by brand are the biggest part of that.

[B]

Well, whoever that CFO is, remind me never to work for them because for.

[A]

Sure I'll tell you offline.

[B]

Fair enough. You know, I think a couple things are true. I think when you look at any sort of business there's a couple things have to be true. You have to make sure you treat your valuable assets with all the love and care that you want that you need to as a business. And it is a CMO's job to educate said CFO about the long term strategic importance. CFOs have their surface area they've got to cover and many of them are brilliant at what, doing what they do. But it's a CMO cannot go in there and just make assumptions. And what seems obvious to a CMO is obvious to everybody because there's context shifting that has to happen. So it is our job to educate. And never have I walked into a CFO and just started from day one with a common understanding of what the value of a brand is. It is our job to talk about long term valuation and differentiating assets and distinctive assets and think about these kinds of things. And so I do think it is a two way street and you have to get them there. Not only the CFO but the board and in some cases the CEO. So I do think it's number one the job of the CMO to sort of put that on the table and those that choose not to do or just go in with click through rates and multi touch attribution models. That's not a way to live and you don't see outcomes that way.

[A]

It's certainly not a way to succeed. And I'm wondering if you have a story about one of the times you've had to educate. And I don't mean that pejoratively, but informed perhaps is a less Pejorative word in this context, a CFO about the the value of what you're doing or what you want to do and how that went. You know, what have you used that you find works with this audience?

[B]

There have been some inconvenient truth motions where you come in and present a set of data points that is like a narrative violation of. I've worked for a few now, but the last two have been incredible growth stories of almost insatiable growth. And sometimes you have to come in there and say cool, look at what's happening. We're growing 30, 40% year on year. But it's not adding up to enough. It's not building a long enough mode, it's not building enough pricing power category optionality. And you've got to present the long view and some day in some cases is true. With ServiceNow today we've done a really great job at telling the story of, of who we have, you know, sort of the company itself, ServiceNow. But very few people can actually articulate what we do. That is a long term strategic miss for the company that we have to remedy. Presenting, let's say negative data points when the company's growing as rapidly it is sometimes can be a bit of a faux pas in a large setting, but it doesn't make it not true. And I do think that that's being, you know, being confident, a confident CMO and realizing that your job is there to drive current trajectory and current growth of the organization. But also positioning for the long term is really, really important. So balancing those short term and long term objective is pretty critical. So being comfortable, able to tell those stories and you know, there have been moments when I've been told to never bring that data point back again, let's say in the past. And foolish Colin perhaps, or foolish any of us really stays steadfast on what it really means.

[A]

Yeah, you got to have the courage of conviction. So one it occurs to me that I should A quick disclaimer for our audience let everyone know. I have been a ServiceNow shareholder for, I don't know, six years, five years, seven years, years and years and just want to say that more or less up front. I'm also wondering because you brought it up a couple of times about what advice you have for our C Suite friends in the audience about the relationship between the short term and the long term. I don't want to necessarily use the word the balance between them because I think it's an orchestration between them. I think it's never losing sight of either of them. What's your perspective on it? Because with a CFO in particular, CEOs too, of course, so oftentimes myopically focused on this quarter and for this quarter's earnings and next quarter's numbers and how you're going to communicate the same to the street. You know, long term can sometimes perhaps seem a luxury that doesn't have a return on investment in a calendar that matters. So how do you talk to them about it and what advice would you give them on how to think about it?

[B]

It's challenging because many of the brand level long term measures take quite some time to move, but you do see behavioral distinctions that happen in that period of time. And so one of the things that I've tried to be really clear about in the organization, even in the interview process was I'm going to bring you data that might have holes in it, or I'm going to bring you data that shows directional trajectory but not a matter of fact trajectory. And if you look at awareness or consideration or purchase preferences, those show movement. But in some cases it could take years to actually show much movement. And so one of the things we've been able to garner in terms of where we choose to invest is like, look, I'm making this decision to invest more in brand as I have with ServiceNow based on these five behavioral things that I am seeing in this gap in the data. And I do think what CMOs can do more and more of is come back around after we've made that decision and show has it actually, is it actually earned credit or not? Did our hypothesis come true? And I do think that that trust and transparency, even if the data is flawed, even if you were wrong, does earn transparent, does earn trust along the way. And I do think that trust with the board or trust with the C suite is really job number one for CMO because there is so much art and science contained within it. I won't use the word balance, but you've got to showcase both. And I think that many marketers, and I've been foul of this myself in the past, it's easy to go into the factual short term measures and say that is the full story. But we all know by looking at buying trajectories and buying patterns, that is.

[A]

A much more complex onion in the shift. Going back to the first question from product led growth to brand led, what metrics have you left to the side and what have you renewed or begun a focus on to make sure that the trajectory is heading where you want or to know that it's not, which is, you know, in inevitability sometimes. So that you can course correct.

[B]

Yeah. You know, a couple things we did was we moved the idea of a lead, which is obviously the lifeblood of many B2B organizations. We've moved it from an outcome to simply a signal. And I, you know, perhaps famously now dropped lead generation by about 50% of the company in my first year, which is usually a recipe for being fired as a cmo. But we sort of knew that if we went for quality over quantity, we would see conversions up, we would see trajectory go more strongly and things like this. And thankfully all those things came true. And so what seemed like a short term measure, Collin should be fired, ended up being a long term boom for us as a company. And we did that by realizing a few things. Number one is that it's not an individual lead that buys a product in B2B. It's a buying group of upwards of 20, 30 people that come together to make these purchasing decisions. That's a critical thing. Right. We know that roughly 90% of the time, the first brand that comes to somebody's mind is the one they end up purchasing.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

90% of the time, according to Harvard Business Review. So if you're not part of that initial consideration set, you're not getting bought. And what we found is we simply weren't top of mind. We didn't have that mental availability. And so we needed to focus more on telling the bigger story and being more relevant in the AI conversations, instead of just chasing leads down a funnel and optimizing that within an inch of its life. We're still highly proficient at that, but it's not in service of itself. It's just in service of the broader goal. Yeah.

[A]

Which is, I think, an important lesson for the marketers in the audience as well, which is you gotta measure what matters, not just everything that you can measure. And at the end of the day, there are only so many things that matter. And I think that the perspective that the lead is an input and for leads to be down and conversions up is quite a justification of this strategy. You talked about the funnel just a moment ago in passing. And I know like many in our global marketing community, you have the perspective. I share it, for what it's worth, that the funnel, such as it has been, has, has been laid to rest. Actually, I don't know if it's been laid to rest, but it's dead. Talk about the end of the funnel from your perspective and what that means. And what the implications are, how's it changed things in a way that the rest of the C suite needs to understand.

[B]

You know, I have built a lot of funnel slides in my day and it's a very convenient mechanism for communicating a much more complex story that actually exists. It's not a linear trajectory. We talked about those 22 people that influence on average a B2B buying journey. Those people are not at the same place. Some of them are early indicators, some of them are highly adept and maybe have experience with your product or service. And so it is loops, it is not a funnel because you're dealing with hidden buyers, obvious buyers. There's a myriad of determinations. And so I do think that the more you look at actually how buying happens, the more you realize that you can't use. It's not linear. And when you, when you take it back at. When I look at how people buy ServiceNow, if I look back at a deal we won, there's some hundreds if not thousands of touch points that happen over a given buying cycle that all add up to something meaningful. But it doesn't mean that it happens in a linear trajectory. And so we've moved to what we call a buying group orientation where we just make sure that we communicate the value of servicenow at certain points. And they don't happen at the same point, they don't happen at the same time. So a CFO may be, well, who the heck is servicenow? And the platform administrator may say, this is where I've spent my life. You have to treat them equally because the equal hold influence. And I do think that's a different mindset. And I do think those that have taken the time to really understood, understand how people buy in B2B blatantly disregard the idea of a funnel.

[A]

If, if we think about how buying happens and B2B B2C just amongst human beings, what can you tell us is, is you know your, what are your thoughts on how buying happens and then how do you manage planning in a non linear buying universe?

[B]

It becomes more gray, that is for sure. It's, it's easy to draw funnel slide. And so we're gonna invest X, Y and Z at certain stages. The funnel, it's much more complex than that. I think, you know, this is where as much as we try to separate or drive some separation between B2B and B2C, the same components are true. Do you trust the brand? Is it the right place for you? You know, all the same qualities are true. They just maybe happen over long term. Longer term cycles and there's more people involved but it's not too dissimilar. And so I actually spent a lot of time taking tips and tricks from my friends in B2C just how we might learn about building brand making sure you have that type of top of mind mental availability. Because if that HBR summary I shared with you before 90% of the people buy the first brand that comes to mind when the game is totally different. The attribution model tells us that we should spend all of our money in down funnel activities to convert those that are already made up their minds. But human behavior and actually observing the buying cycle says it's a brand game. And I don't think a lot of B2B marketers have figured that out yet. And maybe we're misled, but every data point that I've seen in the last 10 years tells me that's the place to go. Which is why we've invested much more on the brand side and rebalance that materially because I just do believe the game is on that mental availability.

[A]

You're very much on the record about your thoughts on how B2B marketing needs to change and I want to get to that in a second. But before going there, you just said you try and take some tips from your friends in the B2C world from B2C marketing methods and madness. I'm wondering what tips you think B2B might have to offer the B2C marketers in the audience, B2C CEOs and CFOs in the audience that perhaps they've not considered.

[B]

That's interesting. We usually work the other way around, but it's interesting on the last. You know, I think having spent nearly my entire career after some time with Red Bull, my entire career has been essentially been in B2B. And I do think that the best B2B companies are able to measure and optimize and build scalable, repeatable revenue Systems better than B2C has. If you look at the direct to consumer model, it's SaaS from 15 years ago or software as a service. And that's the idea of subscription modeling and whatnot. So I do think that the operational rigor and how we connect marketing to that is probably pretty adept and pretty advanced in B2B that I think B2C can can learn from. And one of the things that's sort of misunderstood in Our world is B2B represents 70% of the GDP, but the marketing is not good in comparison. And you know, as much as get into that. As much as we try to, you know, be best of breed in that sense, the comparatively B2C marketers run circles around B2B when it comes to creativity and culture, the ability to, you know, shape culture and provocation. And I do think that it's really been a personal career mission of mine to simply reverse that and say if B2B is 70% of the GDP, then we should have our fair share. We should be able to communicate in the same way and drive the same level of provocation and creativity and personality. And so, you know, my, my charter has just been to rally an organization to help us think like that and taking advantage of whatever we may have in stride as well.

[A]

If you look back, right, which is say over time, why do you think B2B marketing has been what it has been like, what was the fundamental miss or misunderstanding for that matter about, about its, its functionality. It's, it's functionality. It's not the word I mean, but it's how it should, how you should go to market as a B2B brand. What wasn't understood.

[B]

I think there's probably a few things. One thing that I have become sharper in my. As my career has grown, has become more and more apparent to me is a B2B marketer's desire for credit. Through things like attribution models and stuff like this. It almost dictates an outcome that is not aligned with how people actually buy products and services. And so therefore you run to a common misconception of gate forms in front of every asset you have and PDF data sheets and things like this that are usually positioned at the later stage of the funnel. So therefore they get a lot of the credit and marketers end up chasing that and it makes it, it's a self fulfilling prophecy in a way. But reality is when you take a step back and you do even more research about the buying journey, it's pretty clear that it's more up funneled than that. And so I do think it's a pure desire for credit and proof that marketing is valuable.

[A]

I don't know that that's particularly different than any other part of marketing. Right. Which is to say, and I'm going to punch myself in the face when this is over for even bringing it up, but in the brand performance conversation, right, why performance, the language of which just makes me crazy because I, I believe as this audience knows, the brand is the greatest performance engine in the history of performance engines. But there's been such a migration to quote unquote, proving based on going back a little bit, but based on a last click. As if that last click was proof of anything but, but itself. Right. It was proof of nothing that preceded it and led to it. Which kind of brings me back, I think in some ways to, to again your, your line about how buying happens. And I, I can't help but as I listen to you think that maybe B2C to offer my own answer to my question, maybe some B2C marketers can in fact learn from how B2B approaches the, the, the buying cycle. Right. Right. Because there is, there seems to be a great, I mean obviously, or typically the purchase size is significantly different, but so there's an order of economic magnitude that is exponentially greater. Of course, but I think, I think as a consequence there's sometimes a greater understanding or disposition of kind of the economic buyers in the chain that may be some B2C marketers could benefit from, from considering. Right. You know, we talk about purchasers and influencers and I don't mean influencers in a creator economy way. But you know this, the old trope is, you know, the serial parent would buy, you know, they, they're the buyer, but the kid's saying get me the sugar one. So purchaser and influencer and, and I wonder if there aren't ways to think about it differently. And so I will leave that to the audience.

[B]

But.

[A]

So you come in 16 months ago, as I said in the upfront and as you know, because it's your career and, and you make these changes and you, you begin these shifts and I'm wondering what resist. Obviously Bill was on board, but I'm wondering what kinds of resistance you might have gotten even from within the marketing org and how you, how you overcame it.

[B]

I mean, of course, you know, it's. When you, when you join an already successful company, there is a natural sense of what got us here will continue to grow us. Right. And I do think that like a lot of high growth companies, we built up a sense of incrementality inside the organization. We're growing 30%. So therefore we need to do 30% more things next year. And you know, that's a natural answer to a lot of the questions when it comes to marketing strategy. But that growth can also hide inefficiency. And we chose to just, and there wasn't a lot of resistance here, but we chose to take a second to say, okay, if we've grown almost unbridledly 30% year on year, what's working, what's not and really take a second to step back and say, okay, what's, you know, what should we be investing in more? And we found that a lot of our measures were oriented towards activity instead of achievement. And so we created this project inside the organization. I'll probably get in trouble for this, calling it Project Marie Kondo, where we just simply asked ourselves, what if we were to just take a step back and declutter and focus and measure the outcome instead of the input? And we found that a lot of what we were doing was not as effective as we thought it was. We were doing it just because it felt right, instead of it was actually what the customers were asking for. So we ended up cutting content by 50%, we reduced our vendors by 63%. We moved from 200 campaigns down to six this past year. We did less work at higher quality and we increased engagement by something, 66% or something to this effect. So it showed that the link between activity and achievement was not exactly the same and it was broken. And so it rarely is, it rarely is. But it's human nature for us to just add more as we scale the companies. And so we've proven that, you know, it doesn't, that link doesn't have to exist. And what an eye opening moment for us to give time back to the marketing organization to say, hey, we can take that extra bit and make this a little bit better of an asset, or write that brief a little bit more strongly, or do anything that is worth doing and take some time to invent new ideas. And I do think that that has been a breath of fresh air to the team and our employee survey results show it as well. And I do think that there's a lesson learned in that that I hope we can continue to learn from ourselves.

[A]

You know, one of my biggest concerns, I have many concerns about, about where the world of marketing is going as, as it is transformed by the practice of marketing, I should say, as it is transformed by everything that it is being transformed by. But there seems to be this, this great emphasis on more and more faster that I can't help but think anybody actually needs because there's been, there's so much marketing, you know, that, that speaking kind of globally, universally and broadly across every single category, every brand, every product, every service. Who the fuck wants more marketing? Like there isn't a consumer, a buyer, a customer, a marketer out there who wants more marketing. And yet there does seem to be a focus on quantity, like the focus on efficiency over effectiveness. Quantity presupposes quality and that math just doesn't line up. What'd you guys do with the time you got back?

[B]

You know, I was, I have a young daughter who is of course obsessed with Taylor Swift, as we all are. And what she's done to me is, it's just truly amazing. In her recent podcast, she made references to somebody like, you're just saying words at this point. And we sort of use that as an analogy, which is like we're creating marketing that's just saying words, but it doesn't stand up for anything. And so, you know, one of the things we did was we found ourselves with the time and ability to say, how do we show up as one company? How do we show up as with a common message and a common language that when you add it up, when we add it all up, it adds up to something that's greater than some of its parts, because that wasn't the case in prior. So I do think that it allowed us more time to be more planful and a little bit more focused on what we ultimately wanted to say and making sure that it was highly differentiated. It gave us time to experiment with technology like artificial intelligence that allowed us to be even more efficient and therefore more, more impactful along the way. So it was really just a, it was just a time back gain and allows us to put more time and emphasis into finding that relevance we talked about at the beginning and making sure that everything we did moved the message forward instead of just repeated it unnecessarily.

[A]

How do you, how do you hold yourselves accountable Is the right word, but it, it feels a bit more punitive than I intend for it to do. But, but how do you, how do you hold the work accountable to always answering the question, why us? When every single piece of work, every post, every promotion, every. Everything has to answer that question over and over again?

[B]

You know, there's the proverbial sign believe sign over the door at ServiceNow, we say now do less exceptionally. And I do think that a couple things that I think are really, really important for us. Is it exceptional? Is it elite? The phrase elite level execution is literally the name of our communication groups. And so we hold everything up to a certain common standard and we sort of judge ourselves by the quality of our work, not by the outcomes or the, or the volume of content we create. And I do think that's been a fundamental mindset shift along the way. But, you know, another thing that we look at is can we put our logo on? If we can put any other logo on anything we produce, it's wrong and so that level of differentiation and uniqueness and clarity of thought has to be pervasive. And so I do think that less bureaucracy and putting more people in charge of approvals, but giving us a forum to share work and in the most positive intent way possible, communicate whether or not we think it achieves that goal. And I do think that we get the best input from some of the most junior members of the team by doing so. And it's created this little awesome environment inside the company that just gives us the ability to be self critical along the work. And I think that's been a big cultural shift for us as well.

[A]

So I want to push a little bit on what you just said about, you know, the, the evaluation of, you know, if you could put anybody else's logo on the work, it's the wrong work. That's a pretty fantastic aspiration. But I think in my experience, having been client side, agency side in particular, it's from the agency side, my whole career, it's, it's kind of a, if you'll allow me, I think it's, it's a, it's a bit of a foolhardy expectation. Great aspiration, silly expectation. Because, you know, I think about all the times, you know, a client would have said to us at the agency, you know, is this ownable? And we're like, if you do it first, it is, but otherwise, no. Right. Like, you know, and, and, and so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you create that, that diff. Defensible differentiation so that you're like, yeah, only this and only us, like unpack that for the audience.

[B]

I think our job as CMOs or any marketing leader is to find the DNA of the company and just point a big shining light on it and find the best and best parts of it and just extrapolate that to the best degree. The things that we're doing here at ServiceNow are much different than I've done in my past. It's not like we repeated the same playbook. And if you look at some of the things we've done, it's really driving off the optimism of a San Diego based company that just truly wants to help. The company was founded on simply being helpful. And I do think that that's a, that's a huge part of everything that we do is making sure that the DNA roots of ServiceNow. And there's a story about a woman called Phyllis that was really the reason why we created the company. That, you know, pointing back to Phyllis would Phyllis find this impactful? Would Phyllis find this helpful? And making sure that as the world goes to artificial, we give it an optimistic concept. We're going to put AI to work and we're going to do it for people where everybody's talking about speeds and feeds, about large language models and rag and all these things. We're going to say we're going to help you put it to work and we're going to do it to make your people better than what they are and better what they can actually do with their time in their lives. It's just taking a mindset and what the journey that we're all facing and finding an optimistic bent towards it. I do think that a lot of the work went from hiring Idris Elba to this cast that we've represented in our work that actually represents the buying groups that we talked about before to a T and just giving it a wink and a nod with optimism behind it has been the way we have found to differentiate ourselves. And ever for every company, it's different. In my past, it was another lens that we pull on it. But I do think that our job is not to create or bring a culture or a DNA to the organization. It is to find that intrinsic DNA within the organization and extrapolate it from there.

[A]

Yeah. And do it in a way that matters to the audience you're trying to reach and influence. And I, I have to say, I, I love the simplicity of being helpful. I, I've, I've, I talk a lot about more brands, more businesses needing to think like Mr. Rogers, which is to, to point to, you know, if you remember, he used to say, you know, in times of trouble, look for the helpers. And he would encourage his, his audience to be the helper. And, and I think, I think more brands and businesses would do well to consider that every brand and every business is ultimately in the quality of life business, which is you're making somebody's life easier on some metric. Right. And, and you know, if you're not helpful, you're just taking up space and time.

[B]

It's true that, that inspiration can come from everywhere. Look at what we just covered. We covered Mr. Rogers and Marie as inspiration in a marketing conversation. Do not tell me that they're not sources of inspiration anywhere you look. It's pretty phenomenal, actually.

[A]

Yeah. All right, well, you know what? I was thinking about starting here, but I obviously did not. But as, as you and I were talking about right before I hit record and clapped us in 14 times, I didn't know until recently that you used to be a race car driver, you were a racer. And I'm wondering what inspiration you take from that that we can add to Mr. Rogers and Marie Kondo. How has your experience as a driver influenced what you do?

[B]

You know, I've never seen it asked that way, which is really interesting. A couple things come to my mind. One of the things that I love about former athletes or professionals in this context is anytime you compete on the world stage, you are quite adept at finding that last 1% of 1% to find ways to differentiate or stand apart or outperform. And I do think that that is something that is almost missing, that grit, that determination, that focus. If you look at like Nick Drake at Google, who I admire, or a Kobe Bryant or somebody that just, just, well, adept at just out working and out.

[A]

By the way, Nick, you owe Colin thanks for putting you in the same breath as Kobe, but you deserve.

[B]

But I mean, you know, there's countless examples of these. Caitlin Clark is another one that's sort of reinvented the sport. I think there's just, there is a mindset that I think we can, you know, there's textbooks, there's Ivy League school, but then there's the mindset. And I think that mindset is, is I do not have a Navy League education. I do not have a world class marketing background. But I can tell you there's a lot of passion and great determination along the way. And I do think that that's something that I have carried with me from my, my background that maybe has helped along the way.

[A]

Yeah. And it does occur to me that some in our audience may not know that Nick was a professional rugby player in his, in his youth. Thus does the reference. You know, I had breakfast probably like six weeks ago now with Joe McEwen, who's the CMO of the McLaren F1 team. When I was in London and she was talking about. And I'm sure this is very common to fans of the sport, I happen not to be a particularly educated fan of the sport, a very casual one. But how even sponsored decals on the car, like literally the smallest amount of weight can influence the fraction of a fraction of a second that can be the difference between first place and second place. And, and I'd not thought about kind of the, the sometimes very large effects of very simple and small things. And, and I'm kind of wondering. This is a terrible segue, but. Sorry, that wasn't even a segue. It was a tangent. It occurred to me. I shared it she's wonderful. She's great. Doing a brilliant job. I've been thinking quietly since our conversation began about risk and appetite for risk and appetite for strategic risk. And I think about the growth trajectory that the business was on, growing 30% year over year when you got there, and kind of the. A. What would have seemed a very natural. Yeah, this is so not broken. Let us not with it. What's your perspective on the embrace of strategic risk and does it bring us back to kind of the relationship between the short and long term and what happens in between them? And what are. What are some of the bigger strategic risks beyond moving from product led to brand led that you've taken in your career?

[B]

You know, I think that there's a myriad of things that we could have done, joining the organization that would have kept the lights on and moved us forward. But I think there was a pretty common understanding into the leadership team's credit and Bill's credit. Like you've got to reinvent yourself as a company over and over and over again. Microsoft is different Microsoft, it was. Apple's a different Apple. Nvidia is a different Apple. So even the best and brightest companies in the world have to continuously find ways.

[A]

Nvidia is a very different app. Apple, I think you meant Nvidia is a different Nvidia.

[B]

Fair enough. That's what I meant. Yes. Thank you. You're. But yes, it's. I do think that the, you know, what we saw before the market saw it for us was just an opportunity in front of us to continuously reinvent ourselves. And, you know, one of the things I love about working within Bill's organization, it's just he believes, he trusts, he lets you go. And so I do think that the reason why they hire people is to come in and do new and exciting things, not just to keep the lights on. And so I felt like it was an inflection point. And, you know, I do think that we are on this earth for a very short period of time. And, you know, one of the things that I've tried to make as my career has grown, maybe make a legacy for Colin, whatever it might be, is a reinvent, hopefully helping reinvent the B2B distinction, because I do think that that's got a stigma that is unnecessary and not required. And why not? You know, a few of us take a stab at changing it. So that's where the risk taking comes from.

[A]

Yeah, I like that. And I tend to have the perspective that prefixes get marketers and marketing in too much trouble. B2B, B, 2C, digital this, that. It's all just marketing. Figure out what levers are going to work and the prefixes wind up creating a certain myopia that I've yet to see serve anyone. All right, I got a last question for you. As we come on time and arguably it's its own week long conversation, but you've been very explicit in talking, very direct about how AI is rewriting how marketing runs. I'm wondering what you can share with our audience generally, but in particular for the CEOs and CFOs in the audience to understand what, what that rewriting means kind of from what to what from your perspective. What's. What's changing fundamentally?

[B]

I mean, everything's changing fundamentally. It's hard, you know, what's not changing is. Is the ultimate question, probably. You know, I do think that what you've built, Seth, and I think what exists today is this incredible network of CMOs that I've only recently been welcomed into, but it's just floored with the brilliance that exists within it. Vineet Chime mentioned this the other day that just kind of floored me, which is a quote. I think he said something to the effect of when AI does the work brand, is the work. Something to this analogy. I think that's a phenomenal takeaway that we should be thinking about. And in the context of we can automate more and more now with AI, more than we've ever been able to do before. It's driving great efficiency and speed in ways that we candidly never saw possible. It's leveling the playing field of things that big companies used to have advantages in that do not. But what has not changed is the brand you build and the trust you build in and the creativity that surrounds it is still present, possible and highly differentiated. And so it's created more of an emphasis on the things that are, that still make the great companies great. And I think that's where we've tried to focus our energy, automate the things that are mundane, that suck the life out of us, let's be honest. Segmentation and tagging and taxonomy and market research and these things and pointing it towards things that drive highly differentiated brands. And that's where we have focused our time. We believe if we adopt it and address it now, it will, we will be part of writing in the future and instead of being relegated to the museums, if you will. And we still think that there's a human at the, at the driver's seat, if that makes sense.

[A]

Well, if you're in America. Apparently museums are starting to rewrite history, so. So there's that.

[B]

Are you gonna go there, Seth?

[A]

I just did. I'm sorry. The unfathomable is suddenly fathomable. So, you know, I'm interested. As you know, I love Vineet and it's Vineet Mehra for those listening. And I'll drop, I'll drop in the show notes the conversation Vineet and I had on this show some months ago. I, I'm a brand person through and through. I'm a brand marketer. I began my career brand, brand, brand. I worry. I, I both worry and don't know because I probably don't understand enough to know if, if brand actually, and this is not true in every category, but I wonder in many if brand survives the machine era, which is to say, if we are bots marketing to bots, how do, how do we translate the emotional resonance and relevance of a brand, a good brand, to something functional that can be interpreted by a machine? And can we. And what does that mean about brand? What does that mean about how brands are built, how they're communicated? These are the questions that I don't know. They keep me up at night because I have the fortunate position of not actually having to do that work. But I think about it a lot for CMOs like you and those who make up our global community.

[B]

I'm still a believer, my friend. I'm still a believer. I do think that when the machines automate the mundane, there are a few, there are less and less things that we can own, and it is still one of them. And it is still going to be the buying cycle doesn't change that much when there's still a human at the other end of it. At the end of the day, that mental availability, that passion, that trust, that emotion, trust is being a critical word there. And, you know, perhaps naively, but that's been the focus is, you know, if we can choose to own one thing, it should be what ServiceNow stands for and how we're highly differentiated and if we can do that really well. I still remain pretty bullish on the company, no doubt.

[A]

And, and I, I said that was the last question. But you, you used a word that I also think a lot about, which is trust and kind of the end of trust. Back to kind of, you know, that which was inside my comment about museums rewriting history. How do you think about how to build trust in any brand in a world where trust in institutions is, is at its lowest point and maybe ever?

[B]

I think about Trust a ton as it relates to the company and the brand. And what's unique about B2B, and I didn't mention this earlier, perhaps I regret it, which is what's really different about B2B is that careers are made or ruined by decisions that are made in large B2B journeys companies have made. People have made careers by choosing ServiceNow and become CIOs as one reference, and there are many other examples, of course, but when you're talking about multi million dollar year long deal cycle type of transactions, trust becomes the factor in these considerations. And so how are we showing up with all the ways that we'll earn trust and be helpful? Literally, as our content strategy has always been, be helpful, that is the whole documented content strategy.

[A]

When you talk about making careers, that, that's pretty helpful. And it, it brings me to something that I've, I've probably shared 30 times. And on this show, which is, you know, one of my favorite pieces of work of all time is that 1974 IBM mainframe ad that simply said nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. And while it tied, you know, pretty directly into real risk mitigation, not getting fired, pretty helpful.

[B]

It's pretty darn good.

[A]

Pretty darn good.

[B]

That's what we're looking for, right? I mean, that's ultimately what we're chasing. Because if we have large organizations that are trusting of ServiceNow or any brand that we're representing, that's better than any great advertisement or great data sheet you might produce ever, right?

[A]

That is absolutely right. Colin Fleming, thank you so much for being with us.

[B]

Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

[A]

Absolutely. And to our audience, thank you too for being with us. And if you're listening on the pods or watching on YouTube, thanks for hanging. And please smash that subscribe button and give us a review because that is, if it's a good one, don't give us a review. If it's a bad one, ain't nobody needs that. But give us a review if you got a good one or a bad one. Let's be honest, truth and truth in podcast producing because that helps other people find the show. Thanks and we'll see you next time.