← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
How to Build Brand in B2B with Marissa Kraines, VP and Head of Marketing at Webflow | Ep. 389
00:44:07
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- [00:02]
A
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 up. We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials podc. Today I have Marissa on the podcast. She's the VP of Brand Marketing at webflow or head of brand marketing. And we're going to all the above, all above multiple things. She probably has other titles we don't know about, but we're going to talk about B2B world building, how to push the limits of B2B. And she's doing some cool things at Webflow. So we're excited to chat. So welcome to the podcast.
- [01:00]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I'm stoked to be here.
- [01:03]
A
I wanted to start. How did you get into marketing?
- [01:08]
B
Yeah, I think that my path into marketing was kind of natural in that I was always creative. I was always kind of a go getter wanting to like build things. Even in like high school, I was part of the newspaper writing about the music industry. In college, people would ask me what I studied and I'd say not very much, um, or very often because I had like 10 internships in the music industry, trying everything across marketing, booking, band management, but was always focused on how do I connect with audiences, how do I help the people that I work with connect with audiences. And when it really comes down to is in marketing, it is that connection, it is bringing people together, it's creating emotional connection. And so it kind of just built from there. And it was never an official like, oh, you're a marketer. But that, that path and that focus on the connection with people led me into marketing and having titles that were very specific to marketing.
- [02:06]
A
We talked a little bit about this, like behind the scenes. But you we want to talk about world building. And when they people think about world building, you think about like the Marvels, the Disney's. But what does it world building mean in like a B2B context?
- [02:23]
B
For me, it doesn't mean anything different. I mean when we think about B2B, I like to, I like to say like, if you're in social media and you're scrolling on your phone, are you a different human because you work in B2B marketing or are you the same human that you were when you're at home with your family or playing with your pets? And so I don't like to think of it as B2B. I like to think of it as P2P. It's people to people, no matter what you're doing. So while I am building marketing organizations for. For B2B work, you still have to think about how you relate to humans, and you have to build worlds where people can connect. And so when I'm building worlds, I'm thinking about campaigns as larger than just a single moment. Our most recent campaign, we're calling it the AI guy Owning your narrative. And it's the start of something larger. So we are showcasing a liminal space where AI is actually humanified. I think that's the word he's made into a human AI guy. And he is like the voice of what goes wrong with AI. And this is the start of something larger. We think about the characters that we can build within this liminal space that are representing other issues people are having with technology across the board and how well blow can fix that. And the reason I get really excited about having this world within the sliminal space is that it's ownable. It's something that I can say, we own this liminal space, and every time that we bring character to life in that our audiences and new audiences can recognize it. They can recognize that these people are living in a similar space. We don't necessarily need to rebuild that initial narrative of where they are. And so it allows us to do a lot more further down the road because we don't always have to rebuild and retell the story at the beginning. I was at Salesforce for about 12 years, and they did this incredibly well with their characters. It started with a single character, Astro, who was a representation of the practitioners at Salesforce, and they built it into a world of characters. It was the Salesforce Landia. And each different type of practitioner had a character that represented them. And people felt so connected to these characters. We saw tattoos, we saw haircuts with designs of these characters. We saw everything. People were so connected to this world, and they felt that it not only defined what they were doing in their work world, but it helped them define themselves and how they were going to further their careers. And so seeing. Seeing that world really inspired me to build them for my future career.
- [05:03]
A
So I know Salesforce built this world over time, and it's crazy. And it comes like it's in product, in irl, on social, everywhere. But let's go back to you just came to webflow six months ago. Like, where do you even start with a world building? I mean, do you start with the character? Do you start with because even like Salesforce example, you have to have multiple parts of the business Bard and like product, like sales, everybody needs to be built into how, where does this all start building this, this AI guy and how does that work?
- [05:45]
B
Ah, so I launched the AI guy campaign on my four month anniversary. So I'm about four and a half months in right now, almost five. But I think that I was looking at a lot of what we were doing at webflow in terms of brand and it wasn't necessarily breaking through. And I was given some incremental budget in my second quarter at the company and I said go do something. And I think the freedom that's allowed when you're new is special. It's something I haven't had in a really long time. So it was definitely very special to have that trust and that being like, hey, you can break some things, you can try some things. And one of the things I first did was not breaking things. It was try and true. I brought in an agency that I've been working with, I worked with for years at Salesforce called New Motion. And I kind of, we, we really thought about what are the insights that we have around aeo which is answer engine optimization and what people are, are kind of dealing with because of how, how we're now, now searching. It's not SEM anymore, it's not SEO. It's people are searching on anyone, Chachi, BT or Claude or any of these. And so we were like, okay, so what's happening in the search? What is the insight that people are actually experiencing that we can bring into, that we can bring into kind of a human fold. And New Motion is just such a great partner and we were able to go back and forth with them. And again, I had that buy in initially from my CMO who he's lets me be autonomous, but he also asks some really great questions and we definitely worked hard with him to make sure that we are kind of positioning it honestly about what our product does for aeo, but also in a way that it connects to that emotional experience. The buy in that I had to get across the board for building this was, you know, as a new person, it was definitely kind of bringing along the executive team. It wasn't a surprise to our CEO when these came out. They had kind of been primed along the way and we were very thoughtful around how we did create like a feedback loop. And that included a feedback loop for the script, it included a feedback loop for the revisions. But I also again had that autonomy to Make a lot of the decisions up front. You know, I was like, I want this AI guy to be part of me, but, like, I want him to be punchable. I want to, like, I don't want him to be. I want him to be kind of that intern that has all the confidence in the world. Initially, we were thinking of cousin Greg as like the inspiration from succession. Like someone that just comes up to the podium and like, he says what he's going to say and like, he doesn't care if it's right or wrong. He's just like, I'm. I'm confident that this is what we have. And that's kind of how I think about AI in a lot of ways. Unless you're really creating an environment for them to have the right information. So definitely brought along the ESAF and was able to get that buy off. But also, really, I'm not gonna lie, took advantage of being new and trying new things and pushing the limits.
- [08:55]
A
Yeah. And I also think, I mean, obviously you came from a place where it's worked and you have prior experience where you could prove, hey, this did this. This did this. This lifted the, say, bookings or pipeline or influence revenue. It's not like it's a different company, it's a different. But it's kind of cool because you get a start from all the learnings you've learned over being at Salesforce so long and then piece them together to make this world. I want to ask, like, why do you think B2B companies get stuck with doing. Not doing stuff like this? I know it's a. Why aren't more B2B companies world building? You see Salesforce, but you can, like on your hand, you can't name. I couldn't name five companies that in B2B are trying to world building.
- [09:43]
B
I think it's not just world building, but it's bringing like, it's creating, making tech kind of human and how we think about it and how we talk about it. I think that a lot of people think that you need to give a. Especially at the brand level, they still think you need to give a demo. You need to do a full product demo for someone to care about your product. And that for me is. It like hurts my soul when they're saying top of the funnel. Right. When people don't even know your name yet, you need to give them a full demo. And again, where are they discovering you? They're discovering you in AI Search and they're discovering you in social media. No one wants an 8 minute product demo in social media, they're not going to follow you. So when you're thinking about building content for discovery, you have to stop them in their tracks. You need to actually build humor. You don't need to show exactly what the product does. That is why you create a full funnel of content and a full funnel of marketing. Because they know your name, they're interested, they stop. They're much more likely to go and learn more. They're not trying to get the create understand the entire world of your product on social media and they're not trying to understand all of the abilities of a product when they don't even know if they need the product yet. They don't, they're not even in the market. I mean LinkedIn's B2B Institute is like one of my favorites to quote. But when it comes to brand, they say it's a 95, 5 rule. So 95% of your buyers are not in market yet, only 5% are. So if you only focus on that 5% and give them like here's exactly what our product does at the top of the funnel, you're missing the long game. You're missing the ability to build your business for the long terms. You want to be top of mind and you're competing with kittens and babies and politics in your timeline. So if you're not standing out and you're not creating something's something that is relatable and people are actually interested in stopping and looking at, you're missing a huge audience that can be your future buyers. One thing that I actually, I worked really closely with Colin Fleming at Salesforce and he is now the CMO at ServiceNow and I see them world building and I am like, I wonder if I inspirate was I kind of helped inspire that from conversations I've had with his team and work that we'd done at Salesforce. Because they're, they're also saying, hey, these are the humans that are interacting with your product. And yes, they have Idris Elba as the, as the main guy within these commercials, within these, within this content. So that's definitely a reason to stop, stop your thumb on a piece of content. But then they're building out these other characters that represent the users of their product and the situations that they're going through and really building out what are their concerns, what are their comments, what are the reasons that they are actually interested in ServiceNow and how ServiceNow is actually helping them. So I'm seeing it more and more. It's exciting. And it also just like creates a larger group of characters that you can play with, play with. And like, you don't have to just consider a single character, a single element, a single campaign. It can be built out over years. It can create familiarity. And it goes back to that 95% of people that are not in market yet, if they're familiar once they get into market, you're the first in their mind.
- [12:59]
A
So you have AI guy, like, what is the strategy to start getting him into parts of campaigns, parts of channels, parts of ads? Like, how. How do you set that up for. For. So you have this character. Now I want to start adding, making sure the character is in our world, in our assets, in our product. What is the checklist for that? Is it a slow build into different places? Is a fast build. Like, how does. How does a character get introduced in a way that feels natur, easy and human?
- [13:37]
B
Well, I think that first part is. We had. We actually created, I think it was like 37 assets with new motion, which is kind of insane. And we're using them across paid media and organic as well. But we were also not just thinking video sizing. We were thinking about what are the memes that we can create from this. What are. Like, we work closely with our social team to be like, how are we utilizing stills from this? How are we creating memes from this? How are we creating this? An ongoing part of our community management across all of our social touch points as well. Future, we're definitely thinking about how do we build out additional characters for our additional product releases and kind of have that reference back. We used an actor named Richie Moriarty who is an incredible improv artist, but he also is in the show Ghost. If you've seen that, he's been in a bunch of different things, but he is hilarious. Again, he's filming Ghosts. They're on all the time. So I'm not gonna be able to use him in every single area. But we're thinking about how do we build in that character while maybe not exactly him into things like our events. We have a big user conference in September and we're thinking about how do we create photo opportunities, how do we create interactive opportunities that use that character? And they're really allow. Allow people to identify and have takeaways that are kind of built off of the character. So both visually and in interactive content using him. So we're definitely looking at all our touch points and all of our kind of the ecosystem of content that we're going to be putting out. Into the world and how we use him, but also how we use the idea of him. The idea of an AI guy, that confident intern that may not have everything right, but it's going to come to the table like he does.
- [15:28]
A
So I want to take us a step back too and say, like, as a brand person, what are your thoughts about where AI is at, where AI is going? Because, I mean, you must have thoughts because the AI guy is kind of like the people who are pushing the limits too far with AI and not being human and being robotic. So what are your thoughts on the current state of AI? Where do you think it's going? Especially from like a brand lens?
- [15:57]
B
Okay, so I'm just gonna say it. I love AI as a partner. I don't think that it can be that final output. It's definitely someone that I work with, someone I like. Again, I'm like. It's like a human to me. Claude's my buddy. I'm like working with Claude all the time. I'm giving him feedback. We're going back and forth. And so I think that that's. It's actually been so exciting and so helpful to kind of have that. But I think in general, there are notable ways that AI has been going too far. I think I just saw that there is a Super bowl commercial that's like built completely on AI and that is actually a press piece that they're putting out into the world and they're showcasing it. I don't know if I could say that AI is necessarily a shortcut though. And I think that that's something that people are a little bit afraid of. It's like people are just going to AI and use AI and there's not going to be a human in the loop. And I see when people. It's notable when people do that, you see the copy, you say, okay, no one came back and read that. They just put it out into the world. And it is so obvious that it became. Comes a really a big detriment to people that do that. So I think that as long as there's a human in the loop and you're having a conversation and you're going back and forth and you're reading what's being written or show or seeing what's being showcased and giving feedback, it becomes not a. It's not a shortcut, but it's also. It's not human free. And from a brand perspective, I mean, we use it all the time. One of the things that really excites me actually is in like Surveying. We, of course want to survey and see how our content is doing. We want to get a lot of information on how our brand is doing overall. And yes, we can do a large qualtric survey with humans, but there's also synthetic AI surveying. Now they have synthetic humans that can relate and like, be part of your survey. It's a lot less expensive and you can do it a lot more often. So that's a. I think that that's a really cool way that AI is being used to actually measure how your brand work is doing.
- [18:01]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, like you said as a partner, I mean, a lot of us don't want to take, like, there's a lot of things to read over. There's a lot of data coming in. And to even have like a quick way to summarize and, and take out what AI thinks is the key takeaway versus what I think is the key takeaway. And also because now as a brand team, you can sift through a lot more touch points than you did before. Before, you had to go through everything manually, get a spreadsheet, maybe hire some interns or someone to go through it and clean it up. And it's just this whole. But now you could just feed something through AI, get common messaging points, common something. It's just so much better to have it. But I do agree. It's just that I always say you can teach taste and a human's taste.
- [18:57]
B
Yes. I'm like, high five on that one. It's like that's the biggest thing.
- [19:01]
A
You can't teach it. It's so hard. And also like, someone who's been in brand a long time will know what looks good for brand. Someone in social long time would look what is good. For sure, someone content who's written for a long time knows what good writing looks like. You need that, that extra eye to know, hey, this doesn't look right. This doesn't look. This doesn't. It won't hit on social because I've tried tested make a meme idea here versus a meme idea here. And I would say 90% of the time my meme idea beats AI and I'm trying hard to beat myself, which is because I think it's just taking things that's already on the Internet instead of coming up with original thoughts. And so I think I'm excited for the days where it does get more and more better. But I think the taste element is still not something that could be taught a million percent.
- [19:53]
B
And even when you are using like Figma AI or Canva, you still have to decide do I like this? Do I need to keep going and keep working through it and keep on. It's not quite at a place that is good enough. Canva and Figma Buzz are great to have like easy creation but again you have to know like is it just easy or is it good? Like you can. I'm like so on board with the idea that like taste matters more than ever. I really think more than ever. It, it matters one thing. It's like I don't know about you but like so many marketers I know, including myself, it's like my brain is just going a million miles an hour. So I'll just like type out like every thought in my head in Claude and I'm like, can you organize this and make it make sense? Okay, thanks. And it's like, especially when I'm like giving feedback for creative, for written, for anything, I will just like be. I'll take my notes, my feedback notes in Claude and then they'll come back and they'll be like here's what you actually meant and here is what you can share that can be useful. And as someone that like has a lot going on, my brain is everywhere like that is. That has been just so helpful.
- [21:07]
A
One thing I wonder is how do you measure world building? What are the points that you look at to show that AI guy is a success versus a failure?
- [21:20]
B
So the guy says less of world building yet because we're still in the process of building. We just have this one guy in the liminal space and a few different characters coming in. But I mean we are really working on measuring pipeline. Initially we did a lot of paid media for this. So it's if you see it on your TV when you're watching anything on like Paramount or Peacock. So not only are we you know, measuring pipeline, we're measuring like click throughs into our website and usage. We have an AEO assessment on our webpage which is like you put in your website and you're like how, how are we doing on ao? And we give you feedback. So those kinds of measurements of people actually doing that. But we are working on surveys. We are doing surveys and it's something, we're creating a kind of a baseline in this quarter and then we'll be building it off of that. But my goal coming in was to build brand and I think one thing about webflow that's really interesting is that it's been around a while, it's still a startup but it's been around a while and it has a reputation. Like there's definitely people, a lot of people in the creative world know webflow because they use it to build their portfolios. And so they think of it as maybe it's similar to like a wix or a squarespace. And the truth is that we're not, we are much more in competition with AEM and WordPress. So my job is not only to build the brand, but it's to change the brand narrative that it is an enterprise product. And so I'm being measured on how not only is the brand known, but is it known as an enterprise grade product. So those are the things that we are measuring for in like with Qualtrics and with other surveys. And it's kind of also showcasing that we are doing a production grade campaign and we're not just doing something like simple. And so having that be across your TV screens and your social across the board is like hopefully showcasing to people. Like we not only understand the issues that people are going through because of AI search and how it's changed how people are kind of building their websites and how people are getting referenced on these, but also like we take ourselves seriously in a, in a funny way. Like we take our humor seriously and that we actually are really moving up market.
- [23:34]
A
One thing I know at Salesforce and I webflow as well as you both have a lot of partners that help like with webflow and Salesforce, they have a lot of partners. So how, how does that work when you have a lot of external people talking about webflow versus Intern? Like how does the brand team work to get that message out to these partners to make sure that they are on the same page as well and get them excited about what you're building.
- [24:04]
B
You know what, we have an incredible partner team. We have both a partner team and a partner marketing team. And honestly, you're absolutely right. Our agencies are like one of the biggest ways that we sell. We go to market. As noted, we are not a wix. We are not a squarespace. You do need professionals to build your website in this in webflow. So having agency partners be there and build that build be like they're selling webflow for us because like we build in webflow and we are. So it's like a two way street there. So we definitely are working closely with our partner marketing team to make sure that we are providing them all the necessary assets. I think one thing that's interesting is we are actually working with specific B2B influencers that are focused on Agencies. And so we are working with folks that are speaking directly to agencies. One that we're working with is called Breaking and Entering. And they're agency guys that have like humor that they're like very humor forward in their content. And they are, their content for us is built specifically to speak to agencies. And so we, we want to provide them with as much information as possible. We want to make sure that they know that we care about them. We also want to represent their work as much as possible. But we also just, we recognize that it's not necessarily the same message. They don't want the message that hey, webflow is easy to use because their job is to make webflow and if it's too easy to use, they're not necessary. You don't see the wix and Squarespaces partnering as much with agencies because that's not necessary. So agencies are not that we need to like alter and like our messaging when we're speaking to them because they need to know that their value is still in building those websites.
- [25:56]
A
And also one of the common threads I'm hearing from what you said throughout this conversation is the element of humor. And I just want to know like how that plays and why should more B2B brands include humor? And what are your thoughts on how it should be included in, in marketing to feel authentic to your brand, to feel the doing right? Because I know you've said memes a couple of times. There's a lot of things that you're doing. You're working with a funny agency, influencers and you have a hot take about influencers. We could talk about that too. But I just want to know how you think about humor incorporated into marketing.
- [26:35]
B
I think humor is one thing. I think it's emotion in general and it's understanding the human experience. Again, humans don't care to see an eight minute demo. They want to have something that they can emotionally relate to. If it's humor, if it's sadness, if it's warmth and understanding those moments that people are feeling that and really kind of digging into those, that's the biggest thing. I mean you think about, I think I see this post on like LinkedIn all the time. It's like the. Is it not Twix? It's maybe it's not Twix, but it's one of those, it's like who you are when you're ma. When you're angry, when you're hungry. And it's like we all know that moment when we're hungry. And so it's like, when people. When they're like, here's something that you can do. You can eat a Twix or whatever. I probably not the best act because I can't remember the name of. Of which candy bar it is, but I do remember this is who you are when you're hungry. And because it is a human emotion that you have empathy for and feeling empathy for your audiences and the moments that they are feeling these things, that is what you need to dig into. And then you dig into it with humor. You dig into it with warmth. I think a few of. In terms of our AI Guy ads, one of the people was asking for lotion and they're like, I just want lotion for me. Give me recommendations for lotions for me. And AI guys going off on this tangent of all these lotion options that are not good for her. And similarly with I need Wide Shoes. And AI Guy is like, here's what I found on Wide Shoes. And it's like, no, no, no. But I need one for me. And I think that that's just like a very. It's a moment we all have been in where AI has answered us in a way that it's like, no, this is not the answer I'm looking for. Like, are you. Are you dumb? And like, like, we've all felt that. We've all been there. I mean, like, I even was like, I finished a book recently and I was like, I can't understand the end of this. And I was like, can you guys help me understand then this book? And they're like, we don't know what that book is. We'll go research it. And like. But then they're also like, we. We can't figure it out. I'm like, wait, you really are like, you can't figure it out. That's the first time I've heard that. And so we all have been in these moments that it's a moment that are like, human reaction to what it is. And I think, especially because I'm actually marketing to marketers, which is like, the most fun ever, I get to be my own personal, like, guinea pig and be like, do I react to that? How do I feel when I. When I see that? Or I hear that? And like, it's. I personally, again, I react to humor. So, like, I'm like, all right, I'm going to dig in. And humor, we all know, like, the. Is it Anya that or Sarah McLaughlin ad for the pets? Like, we all know that ad that, like, song. I'm not going to sing it. But like, you know what, you know the one I'm talking about? Like save the animals. Like we all know that because it like pulls at our heartstrings and like just those emotional moments. And if it's human humor or if it's sadness or if it's love, like if you can identify those moments and identify the things that are like in real people's lives, that's what you're hitting on.
- [29:44]
A
No, I, I like that. I think like you said, there's different ways of pulling on hard strings and I think humor is one way that's just low lip that everybody does every single day. And if you can take a problem like you said someone's having with AI slot, like the AI slop that comes out or the AI answers where you get annoyed and you keep going down the rabbit hole and they keep giving you the wrong thing. Like remove M dashes and it doesn't remove M dashes and like why is it still EM dashes and you just like keep going down that rabbit hole of that. It's funny, but everybody's really like the people who use AI are relating to it and that's your audience and you just.
- [30:27]
B
And who is not using AI?
- [30:29]
A
Like exactly. I mean my mom. I feel like there's like levels to it and yeah, there's crazy uses and there's asking people asking AI. We just got my mother in law on it and now she's like talking to it about doing everything. It's so funny. It's just AI's her new like life thought partner. It's hilarious.
- [30:52]
B
I know. And we thought that like they would be slow to catch on. Like, like it. And like honestly, it's so great. I like, I don't have to like, oh my, my biggest one is my dad will send me these texts and like he's very smart and I'm like, I have no idea what you're saying. I'm like, I have like a project that's like, help me understand what my dad is saying and I'll just put it in. I'm like, this is for my dad. You know everything about my dad. Like tell me what he is saying. Like help me respond in a meaningful way. And I, I know that it, it's like, it's just helpful for relationships as well. It's helpful for so many things. But again like it can, it can go down a path that can be very frustrating and doesn't actually give you the information that you need or want.
- [31:34]
A
And yeah, and also every different. Every different like Claw, Gemini, Chad, they're all going to give you slightly different answers site different ways of doing things and you can get annoyed here you don't get annoyed here you don't. This is just, it's a relationship.
- [31:52]
B
You have relationships with of these.
- [31:54]
A
Yeah, it's. It's crazy. I'm scared to see what like my kids relationship with AI is going to be in a few years. But. But I also want to ask you because I, I honestly believe that we're like in A not saying this wasn't it was always in consumer but in B2B we're in more of a resurgence of brand because that AI needs brand to be able to be picked up in LLMs and you need people to talk about your brand more and more and more. So I feel like for brand out there, I don't know what you're seeing but I, I'm seeing that you need to be mentioned, you need to be talked about on the Internet. You need, even if it's AI guy as your entering point or something like that, you just need to be talked about a bunch of to be able to show up in an LLM and people have to be using your name and that brand and that didn't matter before because you could outbid someone maybe on.
- [33:00]
B
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
- [33:01]
A
On Google to win. But now when AI is searching through the Internet finding mentions on credible sources, articles, Reddit, all over. So doing brand things getting talked about is the way to show up on these LLMs now.
- [33:20]
B
Yeah, and I think it's twofold. I mean this is one of the things I'm so excited about at webflow. Not to do like a product plug but we actually are the only web platform marketing platform that has a full circle for aeo. So again AEO Answer Engine optimization, it's like SEO, but it's for answer engines and we actually are able to measure it and give recommendations on how to optimize your website for aeo. So I think it's really exciting that there's a portion of this new world that I'm like, we're seeing like huge dips in people going to websites, like people actually going to your site. I think it's like a 25% like drop in people actually clicking through to a website. So your website, not only when people go there, it's like a very big deal. So you might need to make sure it's amazing but you're actually optimizing your schema now for AI vs for SEO for search. So it's like, we're able to showcase how you do that well, do it within the product and measure it in the product and optimize in the product. So it's a full loop. And so like, I'm like, heck, yeah, we are on top of this. We're the first to have that full loop. There's agencies that do it, there's other, like SEM that was just bought by Adobe, they're going to build in. But like, like right now, we're the only ones that can do that. So I'm like, I love being ahead of the game. But as you're saying, it's not just the website, the website is part of it. But again, it comes back to that community. Like, I think it's Reddit that's like the top place that people are actually getting information on AI from. So you need to make sure you're part of those conversations in Reddit. Reddit used to be a place that brands were afraid to go. If you were a brand and you went and you knew you were just going to get punched in the face like, sorry, like, people in Reddit, they're like, we're real, like, you guys are, are stopping brand people. But we're, we've seen. Really exciting to see that brand is actually having a meaningful place in Reddit now. Their advertising is really exciting. Like their advertising opportunities and the ways they're actually integrating, like, brands like they never had before into their communities and how actually brands are being part of the community. One of my favorite examples of that was Sonos. Okay. This was like the only upside Sonos has had in a really long time. But I think, do you remember they had a new app about, was it two years ago and it was the worst app in the world. They just screwed up everything. They launched this app and I'm a Sonos girl and it was just like, hell, Sonos still gives me issues. And everyone was in Reddit complaining about it. And they had someone from the Sonos Reddit that gave his name and he was like, hey, he was the blah, blah, blah from Sonos. And he went in and he answered the question. He signed off every single one of the questions. And that was the only, like, high point of Sonos for a long time is that they had a human from their brand in Reddit answering questions. And this is the kind of thing that all brands need to think about. They need to be part of these communities because that's what people, that's what's getting scraped for AI.
- [36:24]
A
Exactly. And I think that's a key thing is world building has to include community building. They go hand in hand. You can create a world and not be a participant in the world as well. You need other. You have the. And the key is like your job is to be connecting other people and also being an active participant. And if you're not that especially outside the world too. You gotta bring people into your world. So how are you creating that community outside and bringing people in?
- [36:55]
B
More than ever, people are also looking to be brought together in person. And I think that that's something like the touch and feel is something that people are like, they want more than ever. They know that it's not. It's not AI not that say everyone hates I. But they know it's not AI they know it's an experience. They know that they missed being around people for many years. So it's the in person element is bigger than ever before as well. So how do you optimize? We're having our conference this year is going to be three times the size as last year. Like. And our CEOs like, I want it three times the size the next year too. People want to be in person. Our wait list for our event this past year was like 2,000, 3,000 people long. So we know, we're not concerned that we'll fill this next like 3 times the size and the size after that. And that's because the community wants to be in person. People want to experience things. They want to touch and feel. They want to get to know people. They want to have those experiences that build a community not just around their personal life, but around their work life. Because let's be honest, we're at work more than within our personal life. More, more time than. Than ever. So it's how do you make that work experience community and how do we bring communities together to really care about our products so that in person experiences and events are more important than ever.
- [38:14]
A
I'll ask you one more question on that because we kind of mentioned at the beginning of World building includes like online and irl. So one of the best ways to incorporate World building is. And Salesforce did this very well. Is creating the event as the world as well. So how are you thinking now you have Runway to September to get this all. How are you thinking about including AI Guy into this world? The characters you're probably already thought of. How is that being incorporated for September?
- [38:50]
B
Yeah, so we are definitely in that Runway right now building out our brand experience for that right now as we speak. And I think a Lot of it is there are going to be photo ops as noted, but there's also going to be like, if AI guy's almost, he's not the bad guy because like, if you watch the videos, he's just adorable and you're just like, you want to punch him in the face, but you also like him. So how do we actually build in those kind of characters on site? If it's not, again, if it's not Richie, who do we bring on to actually personify that? Do we have those kinds of characters in interstitials? Even in our, in our keynotes, do we have a opportunity for people to interact with a kind of wannabe AI guy and create video content that's shareable? But also how do we get feedback on these folks? Like, how do we use the opportunity for people in person to give feedback on our brand and how we're going, how we're doing brand and the people in the worlds that we're creating. So I'm excited to integrate it in a, in a visual and creative way and a shareable way. But also I'm excited to get feedback on what we were doing in that world world.
- [39:58]
A
And then lastly, I asked this to everybody in my podcast, but what's a marketing hill you would die on?
- [40:04]
B
I mean, I think I've said it eight times. Like, so, like it is human to human. Like even in B2B, you're not talking to a business, you are talking to a human. And that is just like the biggest thing. And if you start thinking about who you're selling to as businesses versus humans, you're missing that emotional connection that's going to actually create a longer lasting relationship.
- [40:28]
A
It, it's so funny because it is so important what you're saying, yet sometimes even the marketers who get that, they need to be doing that. I think sometimes you just switch on that brain where you just forget that's a thing and then you have to kind of keep heading your head back and be like, hey, we're competing against cats, we're competing against babies, we're competing against this, we're competing in that. Just crazy to me. Sometimes I fall in trap too. I sometimes read my copy for an email wrote and say to myself, this does not sound like I'm writing to a group of humans. How do I make this more personal? So it's just crazy how we need to unlearn some of the things that in B2B pass, where we've been taught or best practices that. Best practices in air quotes that we need to do.
- [41:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I think for me it's exciting. There's B2B. There's B2C. Yes, our sales cycles are different, but the people we're selling to are often the same. So we need to take as many cues from successful B2C as possible. And because yes, we're a business, but we're talking to humans and like, we need to be human to do that.
- [41:47]
A
It's so funny because my wife always, she's in E commerce and she's, she looks at big B2B brands and she's like, like what I would do if I was a B2B, have a B2B budget in E commerce. Because some of these are throwing this huge amount of money all the way. And if she had that budget, she has to like, care about thin margins, money and brand at the same time and all these things. So that's why you should, people should look into how E commerce brands are marking because they're, they're doing this on thin margins. They are spending a lot, but they, every dollar has to work. They, they don't have, unless they're a bigger E commerce brand. They don't have this like free budget to just do things. So it's, it's hilarious.
- [42:34]
B
We still have, we still have budget issues. Ooh. And yeah, it's definitely, it's, it's an exciting time to, to think about how to market to people. And I think that it's, you're seeing more of it, you're seeing more human to human. And I'm excited about, like, while we're still using AI, that we are recognizing that humans are the buyers.
- [42:56]
A
Sweet. Now, last thing I'd like to do is give you a chance to tell people where to find you or what you're doing and all that good stuff.
- [43:06]
B
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Marissa Cranis. That is where I'm most active. And come say hi.
- [43:13]
A
Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to see how AI guy grows up, evolves, annoys people and all that. All that in between. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience.
- [43:27]
B
It was great chatting with you. Thanks so much for having me.
- [43:33]
A
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, 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.