
Loading summary
A
Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. I'm Tamara Gorminski and I'm stepping in as your guest host while Daniel's out on pat leave. I'm a career product marketing leader and the former VP of PMM at high growth startups like Kajabi and Embezz. Now I'm the founder of PMM Camp, a community and newsletter for product marketing leaders. And while Daniel's off doing dad things, I'll be here bringing you fun combos with some of the smartest marketers I know. Today's episode is all about brand. I'm joined by Kevin Branscomb, the senior director of brand marketing at Typeform. Before joining the tech world, Kevin worked at Michael Kors, Blue Nile and Uniqlo. Companies where brand is the business. It's not up for debate. And now he's bringing that same energy into B2B. In this episode, we talk about what marketers can learn from industries where brand leads the way, the biggest mindset shifts Kevin had to make moving into SaaS and his lessons from building beloved brands across fashion, e commerce, and now tech.
B
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off.
A
Kevin, welcome to the show.
C
Thanks so much for having me.
A
So you have a super interesting career because you've seen the inner workings of both fashion brands as well as maybe a bit more boring B2B software companies. And so I want to pick your brain a bit. Take us inside. You know what that company looks like. If a tech marketer were to shadow a fashion CMO for a day, what do you think would shock them the most about what they would see?
C
That's a really good way to frame that question. I've answered it in so many kind of ways, but not like that. I think what they would see first and foremost is probably the very kind of self aware realization that what you're making is not very different.
A
Okay.
C
So I think, I think that's kind of catching up in the sass or tech world. In the fashion world, especially like the mass market fashion that I was in. Like at Michael Kors and such, we recognized that the products we were making were literally not different from our competitors, save for the label you put on the bag or the tag.
A
Sure.
C
Which it kind of signals the brand, which is kind of where I come from. And I think that's a realization you just kind of know. So you go about your day figuring out how to be distinctly different from them in every other way. So in the way you market, the way you run your social, the way you just kind of come out as a personality or as a brand, if you will. I think in that world that'd be the biggest shock for a tech marketer. They'd be seeing the brand marketing team at the kind of tip of the spear, at the helm of the ship, driving a lot of strategy, making a lot of the decisions, setting the kind of the framework, being responsible for the kind of overall marketing calendar that is typically always within the brand marketing team. Whereas, you know, you probably know in the tech world there might not even be a brand marketing team. There might be an afterthought. It's sometimes seen as like added value when you get to a certain point of revenue. So that'd be a big shock. And I think the reason that it does exist in that way and kind of is at the tip of the spear is because they recognize that that really is what's making them get purchased over their competitors.
A
That's so interesting. So as a product marketer, obviously differentiation is something I keep top of mind. But I agree that probably like that brand marketer, like I'm constantly the one urging to be like, we need to talk about our competitors. We actually aren't that unique. And that's an uphill battle in a tech company actually, because I think everyone thinks they're special. What they're building, no one else could build. So it's interesting because it sounds like they really recognize that brand is the business. How does that actually change the way that they go about their day to day? Because you mentioned that that really impacts.
C
Everything, I think the day to day. And I was thinking about this recently, like in how my like meeting schedule or each week is slightly different. I think brand marketing teams or brand marketing kind of at its core is so focused on people and behavior and psychographics and kind of emotional resonance and making sure you kind of get remembered and resonate with the end user or people in general, even prospects. It doesn't have to be the user. So I think I've noticed looking back even at my three years at Typeform and then before that at Smartsheet, there's very few meetings about the people that you're trying to reach. There is sometimes in terms of like product usage or very kind of problem solution, which I get. But I think there's this kind of overemphasis on like being super logical and people being super efficient. And it's like, what is their problem with this tool? How do we solve it? But at the end of the day, regardless of how they're using the tool or the problem you're solving with your solution or software tool or whatever, like they're still out there in the world being inundated with messages, marketing and typically connecting with things that make them laugh or make them cry or make them remember. And I think that is where brand marketing steps in, where I think is. And look you, it's. I'm glad you actually have a product marketing task because I have, you know, shifting feelings about brand versus product and I don't think they should ever be versus it should be very much overlap. But I think the product marketing direction typically what I've seen is very like, let's explain this thing, let's explain the logical side of this thing. Let's make sure we hammer home on the differentiation and the efficiency. Whereas that's not necessarily how people, whether they're in a business or not, behave or react to things out there in terms of like stimuli. So I think a lot of it depends on like what you're trying to get them to do, where in the funnel you are. But I think sometimes what is logical and what is efficient is not necessarily what gets a product chosen or purchased.
A
I've been thinking a lot about our conversation and I think we're going to take this in an interesting way because I was thinking about, okay, what is product marketing? Product marketing for a long time marketed features, right? Which is like here are a set of features you can use to do something. I think typically what we would say in the industry is good product marketing, markets outcomes and benefits. But I think what you're saying and where I was thinking about it ahead of our chat is like you're almost saying brands and brand led marketing like markets feelings or like not just the actual outcome of I'm now able to do my job better, but it's the emotional outcome that more of a fashion direct to consumer brand might market rather than a more software product. Am I getting that right?
C
Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, yes, but I'm not suggesting that brand marketing is always focusing even on what the product does, if that makes sense. So like, yes, tell me more. Let's say I think you can do brand marketing that is like really hyperbolic examples of what a product does. Like I don't know whether it's project management tool or form builder like Typeform And I've seen this happen internally where I've kind of pitched something that is, you know, maybe wild or like the response is, but that's not how our product is used. And I'm like, but that doesn't matter because it's a hyperbolic version of it. People will be able to. People aren't as dumb as you think. They'll draw the conclusion. The point is that this is, you know, let me think of the example. Like in ClickUp, I think I remember there, one of their commercials was like, if only you would click up during like the declaration of independence. And like that. And I can, I can imagine the conversation internally. I'm sure someone was like, but that's not, that's not the, that's not the use case. It's like, but it's okay. It's still, it's still related. So maybe on my answering question, but like my point there is like, that's a very brand marketing play. It's not really outcome focused. It's not really like super solution or use case focused. But it is like almost nodding to the use case but like being really hyperbolic, like exacerbating it a little bit.
A
Yeah, well. And what kind of comes to mind for me is coffee. But I don't know why, but it just has like, for example, if I go to Starbucks or any other random coffee shop, I'm getting a cup of coffee. But like when I'm in a city where there's a Ralph's coffee shop, which is like the Ralph Lauren coffee shop, like I will go out of my way to go there. The coffee is not any better than anywhere else I would go. But I immediately feel different drinking it. I feel like maybe I could be on the east coast in a cottage environment, you know, on Cape Cod or something like that. So I think that's what you're getting at here.
C
Yeah, I mean at the end of the day what you're saying is like you, the logical choice is go to the cheapest option that's closest to me, that's the closest to you. That's the same quality of coffee. But you let your like non logical human self kind of dictate your choice in that moment. And I think in B2B there's assumption like businesses need to be efficient, they need to be logical to make money. Therefore the people that work in businesses are efficient and are logical. But that's not true because we are, as you know, we are working. I work in B2B, but I'm also a consumer of things, and I'm influenced by those things. So that's kind of what we forget a lot in B2B is that the B2C companies and the B2B companies are going after the same people just for different reasons.
A
Totally. We're all people on the other side of the sale.
C
Yeah, I was trying to avoid saying like business to human because I've heard that so many times.
A
But, yeah, I'm curious about what customer or market research looks like in these two different environments. So, obviously my background is in B2B. I've done a lot of voice of customer research, a lot of customer segmentation. But to your point, it does often focus on, like, what are your desired outcomes? What functional benefits are you looking for? Sure, we do like to understand some, like, firmographics, psychographics, different things, some behaviors. But I don't think it's quite the same type of research that you're hinting at. So maybe walk us through how you might approach research differently in that scenario.
C
Yeah, I think that's right. I haven't seen much by way of psychographic or behavioral research unless it's about the product usage specifically. Like, we had a meeting, a customer sync meeting yesterday, where we were hearing from the voice of the customer and we were listening to people and watching people walk through our onboarding process. So it's very centered around the product, which I totally get. I think in where I've come from, B2C. I just spend so much more time talking about, like, what are they watching, what are they, like, listening to, like, kind of what's happening in the world as it relates to these people. I think it's to give a bent, like, that's a little bit. Because those products are like, lifestyle products. So we're looking more like, what is their lifestyle. But I do think it's important to just kind of stay with your finger on the pulse of, like, how people are behaving. Like, socioeconomic things that are happening, geopolitical things that are happening. Movies, culture, books. Like, you don't have to be. I think there's a misconception. People think you have to be chronically online to be a good, like, brand marketer or B2C marketer. Not true. Just follow the right sub stacks. Like, get a couple of them that you read to stay up to date. But I think that's the difference is, like, there's. There's almost too much emphasis on how the product is being used by the people and not enough information about, like, but who are these people? Are they, you know, is it. Are there certain geos that maybe that's how we can like market to them differently? Is it a type format, such a widespread. So it's actually really hard. But like, is there a certain, like gender, age, whatever that might dictate a little bit on how you like, personalize your marketing or the color palette you choose on your homepage? Like, I think I don't see a lot of that at my previous company, not necessarily at Typeform as much we're doing a little more of it. But yeah, I think most of my time in B2C world was talking about stuff like that.
A
Yeah, it's super interesting because I think even if we're doing, we feel like we're doing good customer research and we're immersing ourselves in customers, often it is from behind a screen. I remember I did pragmatic marketing courses like Earth early in my marketing career. And one of the things that I think they get right is this idea of like getting out of the office. And that's something I've always tried to have my teams do, which is, yes, research customers in all of these different ways, but just immerse yourself with those customers. Not even as like a researcher. Just be in those places, see what they talk about when they're not talking about work, see what words they're using on their own, what conversations, what feeling is happening in that room. And honestly, that's where I've learned the most about my customers.
C
Exactly. I mean, one of our, at Typeform, one of our main segments is the marketer, which is such a dangerous place to be in when you are marketing to someone who you think looks like you. You can make so many assumptions and so, so much so that we for the longest time were like treating our customer like the B2B SaaS marketer. And I'm like, no, no, no. We have B2C marketers using Typeform, B2B marketers, all types of industries, all types of sizes. And so especially when it comes to like, competitive marketing or things like that, I actually don't like it. I don't look at competitors much. I hope my boss doesn't hear this. Or if I do, it's to what to avoid. Because, you know, I think when you look at them, it's very easy to be like, oh, we have to do that also. And then you're just all sounding alike, but it's actually the first person to kind of deviate. That's better.
A
Yeah.
C
So in general, when it comes to like, more top funnel Brand campaign type marketing or social things. I actually encourage my team to look outside of our space. But, like, what are. If we're talking to the marketing audience specifically, like, what's happening on ad week with, like, fast. Fast food or fast fashion or whatever. Just, like, absorb everything and you'll find something, if that makes sense.
A
I love that I say that all the time too. I'm like, just think about everything that you are buying throughout your day and what made you buy that thing, and you will learn so much just about human psychology that way. Right, Exactly. Okay, so one of the things that, you know, Daniel always says on the pod is stories or it didn't happen. And when I was looking at all the different places you worked, I was like, wow, you've had some really cool experiences. So I thought what we could do is a little bit of a different format where maybe you share, like, a lesson learned from each of, like, the buckets of work that you've done. So I've gone ahead and bucketed your work for you. You might tell me that this is wrong, but I want to start from kind of the fashion. So you were at Michael Kors, you were at Uniqlo. Those to me, are completely different spaces than where you are today in type form. And I want to get to that a little bit later too. But for me, those are companies that prioritize brand. Like, brand is the business. As we talked about earlier, what's one lesson that you took away from those experiences that still impact how you approach building brands today?
C
I think I kind of been talking about it, which is like, what's happening in the world? Like, what are people? What's in the zeitgeist? Like, how can you use that in any sort of subtle way or maybe a more direct way? It doesn't matter. But how can you use that to kind of influence your tone or how you're talking on social or the imagery you're showing? I think we used to always have swipe reviews, which is swipe in this case was like, inspirational imagery of, like, what. What's out there in the wild? And like, our creative directors and our brand team would do, like, swipe reviews of what. What's happening? And just so we can all feel like we're up to speed on the times, if you will. That was just common. I started at an ad agency, actually. So before Michael Kors, I was at an ad agency and I had clients like Revlon, Banana Republic, Jimmy Choo, and that sort of process happened at all of those companies. So, yeah, I would just say like, stay in the know what people are consuming, listening to, hearing just like what's happening in culture. Like you have to be culturally kind of up to speed to be a good brand marketer.
A
And I think that also implies that like you are iterating and evolving your brand regularly.
C
Yes.
A
Which is something I do not see in B2B or at least not as often. Like, and even in my experiences, all the companies I worked at, like we will do a big brand overhaul where we will do some of that, then we will roll out the brand, then we, you know, we might adjust a few words on our homepage as we're testing different. But we don't change the brand again for years sometimes when the reality is like, yeah, the markets are changing weekly, monthly. Right. How do you think about that? Like, how do you think about iterating a brand but also within the constraints of like, well, we're running a large business as well. We can't maybe just change.
C
It's such a good point. We actually have an always on project that we call the brand refresh. And for when people, new people start, they're like, when is that? What is that? When is it ending? Like it's not ending. We assume there's always going to be sort of tweaks, adjustments, things we add, like to create new brand assets. Like for example, some new parts of our brand refresh right now is like kind of updating and evolving our motion library. We're creating these things that we're calling miniatures, which is essentially like data personified into like little human figurines to kind of replace this like, you know, vector illustration style that every single B2B company has. But yeah, I think we're doing that in response to what we're seeing out there in the world and like for. And sometimes to keep up with it or sometimes to intentionally deviate from it so we can stand out a little. Because I think half the battle in marketing at this point is just standing out for better or worse because we're all, there's just so many of us and so much happening that we're all starting to look and sound the same. So yeah, I think that's, I think that answered your question.
A
Definitely. This is the first time I've ever in my entire career heard of an always on brand refresh. I am here for it and I'm going to be stealing that. I think that's great. It's just like a habit that you bake into how you work. Right. That's what I'm hearing exactly. Amazing. Okay, so then if I'm looking at your resume, you were at Blue Nile, which to me I think of Blue Nile as like engagement rings. I know they also sell some other products, but I'm thinking high ticket item. It's probably an item you only are buying one of. Maybe you come back to buy a wedding band. But when I was starting to think about well how does that change brand, brand marketing, I'm thinking, well trust, because if I'm going to give you $10,000, $20,000, I need to really trust that A you're going to mail me this item that I'm buying from you, B, that it's high quality and better than what I could get from like my local jewelry store. And also high stakes, like if I mess up this purchase, this could ruin the rest of my life. Right. That's probably the feeling that someone feels. How did that frame change? You know, how you thought about brand marketing or maybe like did you learn something about brand marketing through that role that you hadn't experienced earlier in fashion previously?
C
Yeah, I think I'm gonna zoom out from just talking about brand marketing. Cause I kind of wanna talk a little bit about content marketing at TypeFrom. Actually content falls under brand. So I guess it could be relevant depending on where you are. But at this Blue Nile was, you're right, it's. That is the bread and butter is engagement diamonds, engagement rings, diamonds, things like that. It was the first time I realized how bad it was to make an assumption about who you're audience was. Because something we did at Blue Nile, when you started, you had to go to the call center and shadow someone like basically be on the floor and shadow different calls for two weeks, which I love. I would recommend that actually at Uniqlo did the same thing. We had to work the sales floor for a week. So I love companies that kind of force you into that because you really are getting involved with the customer right away. But I noticed, I don't want to pat myself on the back because I was the first to notice this. But all the calls I was shadowing were now this is very like heteronormative were men and but our marketing on our website was very feminine because it's diamond rings, it's engagement, it's jewelry. But most of the people that were actually searching, browsing the website and talking to customer service were people buying gifts or buying engagement rings for their loved ones or their girlfriends or wives. And I was like, that's odd. Like on the website, every single Page is very flowery, very feminine, very like aspirational. Look at this ring. But it seems most of the calls that I was shadowing for were what cut do I get her? What cut is most popular? What's more important? Carrot versus clarity. And it was a lot of this like education need. And so we actually did a campaign where, where it was called, we just called it the diamond education campaign where we created parts of the website and we worked with an illustrator to almost like draw the different cuts and explain the four Cs. And it became a hugely traffic part of the website because people were going and looking for like self serve information on what someone else wanted because they're not looking for themselves. So I think it's not really brand marketing specific, it's just marketing in general. Like almost like I was saying earlier, don't assume, assume just because, oh, we're selling engagement rings. Women care about engagement rings. Let's make it flowery and aspirational. Like yeah, they do. But the people spending 10, 20, 30K are typically the significant others looking for information, not caring about the quality of that photo shoot that you did or some of these more flowery lifestyle aspirational images. They're just looking for like information and then kind of confirmation that what they're selecting is what the other person wants. And it's especially tricky in that world because they're not asking, you know what I mean? Like you're for the most part trying to surprise this person. So they're just like hoping for the best. It was, it was almost like a social experiment on like marketing because you had two audiences. One was hidden and couldn't speak to the other part of the audience because it was the recipient of the gift or their engagement ring. And again, I think it's just a reminder of listening to what people are thinking and feeling and saying. Which goes back to kind of my point about brand focusing a lot on psychographics and hearing from people and not just in the context of how the product is used.
A
I think that's a really interesting case study. And actually so when I was at FreshBooks, they did the exact same thing with the customer experience. So my first month of FreshBooks I needed to sit in support. And the first week was like in depth training. And then weeks two to four we had to be on the phones, like actually taking these live calls, not just shadowing. And it was super immersive. But then I had so much empathy for the customer and same as you. Like I kind of went into that job thinking that Maybe the customer was one thing. And then coming out of those four weeks being like, oh no, that's not the customer or I just have a better understanding of who that customer is.
C
Totally. And look, I hated it at the time. I'm not the most, I'm not the best customer facing person. But it is invaluable in terms of actually doing it.
A
Yeah, same. I feel that question for you about your time at Blue Nile. Were you there during the time when like lab diamonds were becoming a thing?
C
Yes.
A
Was that ever part of. Well, I guess I should rephrase that. Tell me more about what that experience was like because I've thought a lot about how diamonds are positioned and I've heard lab diamonds be positioned as like artisan diamonds. Lab diamonds. How did you approach that as a brand team?
C
So I was there definitely during the conversation and more so just from like a kind of media monitoring social listing like what's happening because we weren't at the time. I don't even know if they are today selling lab grown diamonds to my knowledge. And it's almost, it reminds me of the AI conversation now. It's like how to take advantage of this thing and then. But from what angle? You know, there was discussions like oh, lab diamonds are like, are ethical diamonds. Because diamond mining isn't the most like positive thing. Has a lot of. It's very polarizing. But from a brand marketing perspective, we didn't do much with it. I think there was more. Our PR team just had the kind of, kind of pre written statements and idea about loud diamonds, you know, in case our CEO were ever to get interviewed and asked about it. We kind of have these canned responses but I wasn't there long enough for it to make its way into like what I was working on day to day.
A
That's fair. I thought I'd just pick your brain if I could because it's something I've thought a lot about. Okay, I want to move on now from your experience in the consumer market because then you went into software first. I want to know what drove you to make that change. What were you looking for in that space?
C
I was poached. I will say I didn't necessarily make the decision to look. I also didn't out of college wasn't like I want to go into fashion. So I knew I wanted to be in marketing. I think in my ideal world when I was younger it probably would have been consumer tech. So now I've kind of done both separately but I just happened to use at three companies in a row at the ad agency at Michael Kors and then at Uniqlo. I use Smartsheet for like campaign management, project management and they happened to be based out of where I'm from. I was wanting to move home from New York and then I got reached out. They smartsheet wanted to start selling and kind of marketing to the marketer. So they started hiring what they called solutions, what they call it strategic solutions managers. So we were essentially like subject matter experts who worked with our product marketing team, sales team and sales engineering team to help sell to people like us essentially. So that's. So they. I got asked to join as like create this new team at smartsheet and I wanted to get out of New York and fashion at the time. So I was like you know what, let's, let's do it. So I kind of fell into it and it was a crash course in you know, kind of traditional B2B enterprise marketing and sales.
A
What was the thing that surprised you the most when you made that jump?
C
The like over fixation on the marketing versus sales process. It's still to this day kind of blows my mind like attribution comp. Like who gets credit for what it's. There's so much infighting on like because at the end of the day you're fighting over the money that comes in. I get it. But yeah, I think that was still to this day shocks me. It's kind of the brand versus demand conversation. But like including the sales team.
A
Yeah. It's an interesting world, that's for sure. Yeah. Tell me about a time when you were, you know, whether that's Smartsheet or Typeform where you were actually able to kind of bring a unique perspective because of your background in consumer and maybe how did that impact a really cool campaign you were able to bring to life or a project that wouldn't have otherwise been thought of.
C
Yeah, I mean I think I do. I'm lucky at Typeform before my time even it was a very kind of brand centric company for B2B SaaS. I think maybe in the first 10 years brand was equated to design. And I think brand is so much more than just the visual design of things. So trying to kind of expand the scope of brand. But so most of what I touched, most of the campaigns I've run there is some sort of inspiration or pull from my past. I think we just did a campaign called Get Real which is kind of a hybrid research in public content slash brand campaign. It's essentially us doing A survey and a report using our own product. And I think the B2C kind of inspiration, or where I drew from was again, I tell my team to like, just be out there in the world, draw inspiration from things other than competitors, other than this industry in this space. And that campaign in particular, I was inspired by reality tv. So in the product we have this thing called video questions and video answers. So essentially in a typical, like, survey, rather than like a drop down menu, you can respond like, if I was asking like, Tamara, what do you think about X, Y and Z? You could click respond via text or respond via video. And so we wanted to highlight this video feature because it's a premium feature, you pay more for it. And one day I was just, you know, kind of like couch rotting, watching reality tv. And notice, like across all reality shows, there's these things called confessionals where the person sits on a couch and talks to the camera. And it's where they're the most honest, the most real. And I was like, wait, let's just do a survey about a somewhat polarizing topic and then get people to optionally respond to some of the questions that are more polarizing on video. Just like a confessional. So it's not necessarily like a B2C example, but it's something that I don't think most B2B people would think to draw inspiration from. Like, I literally went to our leadership team and then our all hands, our whole company, and had a pitch slide that had different characters, screenshots from like Survivor, Real Housewives, Love island, like, and kind of posed the question, like, what do all these things have in common? It was, they're responding to a video like, and being and like getting real. So, yeah, I think that was inspired not from B2C but from the real world. But those are the things that B2C companies look at for inspiration, typically.
A
Absolutely. I love that example. And you don't know this about me because we have just met, but I'm a big Survivor fan, so anything. Yeah, you see reality tv, I'm like, my ears are perked.
C
Yep, same here.
A
That's fun. I think it's great though, because I do think B2B marketing can be really stressful. It is stressful. It's overwhelming. And so when you're off, when you're not working, we do tend to just like completely turn off and be like, I'm just in my real life now. But I've noticed to your point, this whole conversation, I think if you can stay on in all of those moments and just let all that inspiration kind of flow through you. It actually makes your day job a little easier, more fun, I think.
C
Yeah, absolutely. My notes app is full of things that are based off observations or ideas that are stemming from, like, the real. My real life.
A
Exactly. All right, so let's bring it all together. I think we've talked about a lot of great examples from your career. You've worked across so many different industries, different buyers, different brand playbooks, in your opinion, and this could even just be from the brands that you love. Personally, what do the best brands have in common? Things that we could steal as we're building our own brands.
C
I think the best brands, what they have in common is, like, a focus and appreciation for creativity, but in, like, a very singular point of view, like the best brands. And you've seen things on LinkedIn, right? Probably, where it's like, you can recognize this from one word or one silhouetted image. It's. They've been so consistent and so creative and haven't, like, wavered too much to cater to, like, the changes of the world or the changes of the market or what have you. So consistency and creativity, I think, for me, as a brand marketer, tend to kind of rise to the top.
A
I love that. Oh. So we like to end all of our podcasts with one final question, which is what's one marketing hill that you would die on on?
C
I'm kind of going to double down on what I just answered and say that, like, the two most important things that a marketer should have or be good at, especially in this, like, AI slop that we're surrounded by is either recognizing or having creativity and then also having taste. I think taste is important more so than ever because, like, I use AI myself. But I think if you don't have good taste or you're not very discerning, you're the kind of person that just kind of uses the first output or you don't know how to, like, decipher if what the output you're getting is good. So I think taste is kind of rising to the top as a trait. It's one of those hard things to even talk about because it always sounds like, narcissistic if you're like, I'm trying to think of, like, in an interview. I could never be like, I just have really good taste, so you should hire me. But I do think it's important, and I think you can tell when someone has good taste by what they're putting forward.
A
I love that. I would agree with that. I mean, personally, my biggest takeaway from today's conversation is it's okay for me to watch more episodes of Survivor because it might infiltrate my work as well.
C
Exactly.
A
This was amazing. If people want to learn more about you, learn more about Typeform. Where should they go?
C
Well, Typeform, you can go to the website Typeform.com and for me, pretty much just LinkedIn.
A
All right, thanks so much for joining us today. This was fun.
C
Thank you.
B
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.
Date: August 22, 2025
Host: Tamara Gorminski (guest host)
Guest: Kevin Branscum
This episode delves into the strategic value of brand in marketing, drawing on Kevin Branscum’s unique experience crossing from iconic B2C fashion brands like Michael Kors and Uniqlo to B2B SaaS companies like Smartsheet and Typeform. The conversation explores how “brand is the business” in consumer worlds, what B2B marketers can learn from fashion’s branding-first mentality, the role of emotion and differentiation, what real customer research looks like, and practical lessons for building memorable, beloved brands in any category.
(01:26-03:41)
“We recognized that the products we were making were literally not different from our competitors, save for the label you put on the bag or the tag... So you go about your day figuring out how to be distinctly different from them in every other way.” (02:10)
(06:27-09:10)
“In B2B there's assumption like businesses need to be efficient, they need to be logical... But that's not true because we are...influenced by those things. So that's kind of what we forget a lot in B2B is that the B2C companies and the B2B companies are going after the same people just for different reasons.” (09:10)
(10:00-13:15)
“Just immerse yourself with those customers. Not even as like a researcher. Just be in those places, see what they talk about when they're not talking about work, see what words they're using on their own...” (12:34)
(19:37-22:57)
“It was the first time I realized how bad it was to make an assumption about who your audience was...most of the calls I was shadowing...the people buying gifts or engagement rings for their loved ones...” (19:37)
“Don’t assume just because, oh, we're selling engagement rings. Women care about engagement rings. Let's make it flowery and aspirational… But the people spending 10, 20, 30K are typically the significant others looking for information, not caring about the quality of that photo shoot...” (20:33)
(16:46-18:25)
“We actually have an always on project that we call the brand refresh...We assume there's always going to be sort of tweaks, adjustments, things we add, like to create new brand assets...” (17:25)
(14:05-15:36, 27:40-30:20)
“I tell my team to look outside of our space...Just, like, absorb everything and you'll find something…” (14:05)
“That campaign in particular, I was inspired by reality tv...There are these things called confessionals where the person sits on a couch and talks to the camera. And it's where they're the most honest, the most real...wait, let's just do a survey about a somewhat polarizing topic and then get people to optionally respond to some of the questions that are more polarizing on video. Just like a confessional.” (27:40)
(31:27-33:14)
“The two most important things that a marketer should have or be good at, especially in this, like, AI slop that we're surrounded by, is either recognizing or having creativity and then also having taste.” (32:18)
On standing out in a crowded market:
“Half the battle in marketing at this point is just standing out for better or worse because...so many of us and so much happening that we're all starting to look and sound the same.” (17:25)
On the power of immersion and empathy:
“I had so much empathy for the customer and same as you…coming out of those four weeks being like, oh no, that's not the customer or I just have a better understanding of who that customer is.” (22:57)
On creative inspiration:
“My notes app is full of things that are based off observations or ideas that are stemming from, like, my real life.” (30:57)
Summary by The Marketing Millennials Podcast. Join the conversation and subscribe for weekly actionable marketing insight from the field’s sharpest minds.