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Foreign.
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Welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. Now, in this episode, we're going to be talking about B2B and A Company and a CMO that knows all about how to make effective B2B marketing. I'm joined by Jen Chase, who's the CMO of SaaS, and we're going to be talking about all the ways that she's been leading the company to be more effective when it comes to B2B. So, Jen, welcome to the show.
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Oh, thank you for having me.
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B
Oh, thank you for being here. This is great.
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A
I know it's a long time coming.
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B
It is a long time coming. We met in cannes, didn't we, 18 months ago. Go. And I was, I was really. You delivered one of my favorite can presentations of all time. I have to say this right? Honestly, I was really. Honestly, it was great. I mean, look, there's things you expect in can, right? Like obviously talking about the craft and creativity and all that kind of thing. The things you don't expect, which is seeing a presentation where you've got your CFO talking about how to do B2B marketing. I just thought it was such a clever idea. It really, it really stuck to me. So I was really keen to have this conversation with you. But before we get into that, because I want to get to that and some other things as well, just give a bit of background to SaaS. What do you do and how does the company get to where it is today?
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A
Sure. Well, SAS is a global leader in data and AI software. And 50 years. This year we're celebrating our 50th anniversary as a company, which is such a significant milestone, particularly in technology. And while we're not a household name, those in the industry know us really well. So just to give you an idea of our footprint, 92% of the Fortune 500 use SaaS. We have a presence in nearly 100 countries and we're a part of your day to day life and you probably don't even realize it today. So we're working with banks to protect your identity from frauds. We're making you financially safe. Every drug that comes to market in the United States is tested using trusted SaaS analytics to ensure that it's safe and effective. One of my favorites is, you know, many retailers are using SaaS. So when I go to one of my favorite stores, Ulta Beauty, I know I'm getting a personalized experience because of SaaS. So we're really behind the scenes in so much of everybody's day to day life. But we're not that household brand name now.
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B
Something I learned today about SAS is you're still led by your founder. You talk about being 50 years old and your founder is still involved in the company. I can't think of many businesses in the world that have got their founder after 50 years. That's astonishing.
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A
There's a lot of things that are unique and I would even say contrarian to what you see in the business world about SaaS. And that wonderfully starts with our CEO and founder, Dr. Jim Goodnight. And he has had just a remarkable career. He's really an icon in the technology space. He's been called the godfather of AI and analytics in many ways. So he's active in the business today. It's an honor that I get to work with him. One of the things I find about him is when he started SAS and started in his career, we were using punch cards in technology and now we're pioneering areas of quantum computing. Like what an arc in technology. And along the way he has always led us with this understanding that like history, technology rhymes. And it's important to understand that what might be a hype today is that, is that really the hype that we need to jump on? Is that going to help customers? Is that where innovation should be happening for our company and are we doing it in a responsible way? And so his guidance is just truly remarkable and I consider it an honor that I get to work so closely with him.
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B
You're absolutely right because the technology has changed, but the principles underlie how businesses see probably haven't. And he must have an amazing sort of pattern recognition of seeing, almost anticipating how things will evolve.
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A
He does. It's remarkable how he can draw a connection to when we move from PC to more, you know, mainframe type computing to cloud computing, to where we are right now with AI. There's a, there's a lot of similarities there and some of the same risks. And I think that's where we like to think of ourself as a 50 year old startup. So we've got this notion of pace and innovation that you see in a startup, but we're also going to bring a little bit of wisdom to the table of we've seen a lot of these things before, we understand those patterns and I think that's where what's unique to SaaS is we build really trusted relationships with our customers in that way because that's something we can offer that maybe a startup that's been around for a couple years can.
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B
Now you've also been A company a reasonable length of time. I couldn't quite believe this, actually. You must have started very young, I'm assuming, but well played.
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A
Well played. I like to say I started when I was 15, still at school. Alas, I've been there. This'll be my 27th year at SAS and I know that's an unusual journey and it has its pros and cons. I've probably had four careers at the company and I've had the chance to work in our R and D organization and better understand our product requirements process. How do we listen to our customers? How does that get turned into a requirement for the product and ultimately delivered? I've had the chance to do more customer support. So what happens after we've marketed and sold the product? How do we ensure our customers are getting the support they need? How are we hearing them? And then I've had a variety of roles within marketing and everything from starting off in industry analyst relations, where I really got to cut my teeth to understand our products and the portfolio deeply, to leading the building of our Martech stack. When we realized in the mid 2000s we need a Martech stack, we need to really build this up to global field marketing and really starting to understand different cultures and how SaaS needs to be translated in a consistent brand fashion, but locally relevant because how we show up in Singapore or Stockholm or here in the United States, it looks different.
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B
Now, I think from our conversation. You were running kind of what we describe as performance marketing, you know, direct response up until Covid happened.
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A
That's right.
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B
And then your role changed around Covid. So how did you get the role you currently have today and what happened?
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A
I think when you're at a company in the longevity of the career that I have, I often say you're actually interviewing for your next job every day. You just don't realize it. And I always, I've been fortunate to have probably people who believed in me more than I believed in myself throughout the arc of this journey. And when the company was. Was ready to make some changes in, in leadership, they tapped me on the shoulder and said, what do you, what do you think? My initial reaction, and I'm, I'm not proud of this, was, oh, I'm not ready for that. And then I thought about like, of course I'm ready for that. I'm bring it, I can take this. So I took over all of marketing in January of 2020. And I thought I had a plan, I had a team, we had a plan. We were going to just do amazing things in 2020 we still did, but it was different. And so six weeks in the world changed, right? Of course my, my roots at that time were very much performance marketing oriented and when we looked at the, the contributions, the impact that marketing was making to the business and something to know about SaaS, we're about 95% direct sales from SaaS. So working with our sales teams, critical, critical part of the stakeholder management that I do, 60% of our leads were coming from live events. Well that there's no live events anymore in Covid. And so it really forced us to think about how do brand and demand need to work together differently. How do we, how are we going to reach our audiences in a way that's going to have an impact to the organization? So yeah, it was an interesting time. Like I said, for six weeks I thought I had a plan.
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B
To what extent did Covid oddly help though? Because in some respects you were forced to think differently and forced to kind of rethink how you market the brand 100%.
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A
But I mean it was a forcing function for us to take a step back and say what's going to be the most effective way to reach our audiences. And so in that way it was, you know, it was a gift, a horrible time in our, in our society. Please don't mistake that in any way. But you know, sometimes those forcing functions give you a gift and you need to take it to say I need to look at this world a little bit differently.
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B
Now this brings us to Cannes, of course, and your, your first, am I right in saying you did your first brand building campaign for 20 years?
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A
It was 25 years actually. So we launched a campaign in 2000 that was all around the power to know and talk more about that as well. But then we didn't touch brand for a while. We just, we left it out there but we didn't put any energy behind it and we really focused on those product centric demand gen, very geo based programs. So I mean if we looked at how SaaS showed up prior to 2000 in every country, you might not think it's the same SaaS. So we, we really were decentralized and inconsistent.
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B
Now I think this will resonate with a lot of people because a lot of people working particularly in tech where it's product led and it's all kind of, you know, marketing team get involved very late in the process and it's all about executing with customers. So how did you take the business on the journey then to switch investment over to brand? Because that was the thing that really captured my attention in can because you did it in a very clever way.
- [09:43]
A
So at SAS being a data and AI company, data is our love language. So for me to have that conversation of how we need to invest our resources differently, I needed to come with data. And so this is where our partnership with the B2B Institute and bringing data to the table from Ehrenberg Boss Institute, just talking about things like the 955 rule, right of the people, our buyers, only 5% of them are a market. We still have to reach that 95 or the long and short of it, how demand generation efforts and brand building need to be balanced a little bit more. So I brought all that data to the table and I really worked across all of my stakeholders. My CEO was on board. That was his task of me when I took over as cmo which was being build the brand, change the perception of SaaS. We're perceived as a legacy vendor. The how we do it is always something that we continue to debate. But I and I had a great relationship and with our chief sales officer, chief chief revenue officer, we definitely partner very well there. I would say I did not have the relationship I needed with the finance team. And so I really worked on how can I. What we have, where we're kindred spirits is we're looking long term where my CSO and a lot of the performance marketing are very quarter and calendar year focused, very important. But we have to be able to have both of those and in fact those short term objectives are going to be more easily reached if we're able to do more of this long term. And so I brought finance in and I said all right, I need to better learn about your world and would you do that in the reverse and learn about mine? So I improved my finance literacy that the finance team came to the table improving their marketing literacy and then we partnered with the CFO to understand all right, if we're going to take I didn't get a gift of a bigger budget to invest in brand. It was all right, this is the portfolio. Now I'm going to manage that portfolio a little bit differently. Which brought a whole host of change management that was needed as part of this. But the CFO was and his leaders were working closely with us to say, all right, if that's the investment you're going to make, what does the return look like and how do we look at measurement? That is not going to be an immediate lead or pipeline created in the next 30 days. It has to be a different Measurement. And so one of my favorite clips from can that I continue to use is the CFO saying, well, marketing spends a lot of money and it's an investment and so it is perceived that way. And fast forward to today. I have a finance business partners that reports into the finance organization, but sits on my leadership team. He is in my leadership calls. He's working with me as we're building our strategy. He's helping me as we think about our budget allocation. He represents me when I'm not in the room. And so I know that when I'm having conversations about the large pot of the budget, he's advocating because he understands how we're going to use that in a fiscally responsible way.
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B
I love that so much. I mean, that was the thing. I really struck me listening to you in Cannes when the CFO was explaining the marketing thinking, I'd be like, that's such a move. Right? Because suddenly the CFO goes from sort of like, you know, marking your homework, checking you're doing it properly, to actually an advocate and that's that, you know, you're flipping the relationships, becoming a supporter rather than a challenger. And I looked at some statistics on this, actually, because I think it's a key topic actually for. For CMOs and the shocking stats. 35. Only 35% of marketers say they regularly work with the finance department.
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A
Wow.
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B
One in three. That's astonishing. And then CFOs were asked how collaborative is their relationship with CMOs? Almost half described it as somewhat collaborative. So not very, but somewhat. So that's the bit in the middle. I mean, somewhat is like basically no, isn't it?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right, yeah. Because if you're somewhat. You're just being polite. It's a polite no, isn't it?
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A
100%. Yeah.
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B
Don't have a good relationship with the CFO.
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A
I think that's something marketers could absolutely work on to improve, to improve the profession. And I would imagine that that 30%, it's probably still a very transactional relationship. And so that's a big shift that we made along. This is. It used to be transactional where I'd get my annual budget and then at quarterly reforecast, we'd look at the number again. That has to change. You have to start pulling the finance team in. As you're thinking about the marketing mix, as you're thinking about just all of the more strict strategic elements of the investment and make that a much more strategic relationship. It can't be transactional now.
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B
What was the reaction when they saw the brand campaign that you came out with. Because if they've not seen a campaign for 25 years, this is obviously a new experience, isn't it, for the business? They're not used to kind of the different type of marketing. What was the reaction to the campaign?
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A
There was excitement and pride, and I loved that. And so there was elements of that campaign. The first round of the campaign we focused on, just given the nature of. Of where we were in, I think the pandemic. There was, at that time, there was very much a focus on purpose led marketing as a way to introduce ourselves, reintroduce ourselves, I should say, into the market. We focused on curiosity and the role that curiosity plays in innovation. Because what we were finding from our research was we weren't getting the credit that we felt like we deserve for how innovative our products are. And so that's a value that we appreciate as one of our corporate values is curiosity. We also know that for data scientists, that we are our technical users, that's one of their superpowers, is how they think curiously about the problems that they're trying to solve for their businesses. So that was our first wave. And so there was a lot of pride from our employees and it turned out to be effective for us relative to what we were doing in the past. Then what we realized is, all right, we now need to say, how are we enabling curiosity? So we wanted to get a little bit down the. We found that there was just this turbulence. We were at this kind of 40,000ft level with curiosity. And then we take you down into demand generation, talking about products, well, that's a bumpy change in altitude. So what we decided to do was lean into Viya, which is our new data and AI platform, as that vehicle for curios. And it was actually being at Cannes that inspired this for me. And hearing from ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, talking about how B2B doesn't need to be boring, but you don't have to talk about the product, you can talk about the promise. And so Viya was really our promise. And so that became our next wave in this campaign was talking about Viya. What we found when we launched that, again, a lot of pride from our employees. They liked seeing our products show up. But then I had to do more stakeholder management, expectation setting of we're going to talk about Viya because it is going to help companies with productivity. Not all of the features and functions, which are amazing, but features and functions don't belong in a brand campaign. They Belong in the downstream, further down the funnel conversation. And so I actually felt like we had a lot of work to do to describe those altitudes and why they are all important and they need to coexist.
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B
Now, being a data company as well, how did you kind of measure the effectiveness of the campaign as well? Because performance marketing is really easy. Right? Because you just immediately you see the attribution. Although of course, you know, the attribution, you know, is a lot more than, you know, the last click. But how did you measure the effectiveness of the campaign?
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A
Yeah, and this is an area I think we continue to mature. And I actually, you know, I talked about some of the change management between performance marketing and brand marketing and the work that we still continue to do today. Because I feel like there's sometimes still a chasm between those two types of measures. What we started off with was some of the things you might imagine aided and unaided awareness. The challenge with that is those take a long time to move the needle. And so that was our long term measure and continues to be our long term measure. In the interim, we began to look at things like how are we evolving our nps? How are we a customer net promoter score? How is our news favorability? What's the gravity we're creating into our organization? Are we seeing a lift in engagement on our social channels? Are we seeing lifts in traffic? We're getting to our website. Are we bringing in new responders? Like that's marketing's job, bring in new people. So those were some of the metrics that we continue we focused on there. I still had that chasm though between brand and demand is what we called it at SaaS. I've got a bone to pick with the term performance marketing. So we called it brand and demand.
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B
That's good. Yeah.
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A
And it used to be brand versus demand. And so we got to a place that's brand and demand in our organization. So to try to connect, we began to do more analytics, some deeper analytics. This is a great partnership with LinkedIn. We did a clean room project to understand the connection of exposure to brand advertising to one revenue. And what's the lift that we see on that? That extremely valuable. I mean what we found is five times lift on that, on the one revenue, ability to win if they've been exposed to our brand. So getting that being able to connect the dots there was, was really significant and important to us. We've done more sophisticated market mix modeling which begin to show us how brand and demand work together and that it's one plus One equals three. Right. And so that's, I think we've got a ways to go there. I think. Look, if anybody in the marketing profession has, has unlocked this entirely, call me up because I would love to have this conversation. It, it continues to be a challenge, but I do feel like one of the maybe superpowers we have at SAS is we've got some data chops and some analytics chops and we're bringing that to bear here.
- [20:00]
B
It's a challenge for everyone. I did a study last year actually with analytic partners Walk System one and it demonstrated your point basically that basically brand plus performance delivers more. What was interesting about it is everyone was celebrating. Yes, of course, it's ands, not versus. But what was interesting about it is that brand did more of the heavy lifting. So basically adding brand onto performance had a much bigger impact than adding performance onto brand sort of thing. So the direction you went in was, was absolutely right. 1. And of course what people forget, I think is that all your short term measures go up as you improve your long term measures. It has a halo, you know. Absolutely. I think my colleague Orlando talks about rather than long and the short of it, the lasting benefits rather than long. Because it's not that you have to wait a long time, it's that they last rather than sort of, you know, disappear after short term.
- [20:49]
A
Sure. Well, and I think what we were finding too is we were doing demand marketing and continue to do it really well. And I'm proud of the work that we do there. But we were also beginning to hit this plateau and I don't think we were going to break out of the plateau until we did the brand advertising and we talked about SaaS a little bit earlier. But we have some challenges. There's brand confusion because we're SaaS, the software company. Well, there's SAS, the shoe, SAS the airline SAS the British secret Service, the San Antonio spurs. We get called SAs, not SAs, which is always painful for me. And then there's software as a service SaaS. And so we aren't going to be able to improve short term performance until we really stake our claim in that area of kind of brand confusion.
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B
That's a really good point actually. I forgot to mention that that was the first thing I thought of actually before this conversation.
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A
It's a challenge.
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B
Well, you Google SaaS and you do get the British Secret Service and I know you get an airline and there's quite a few things that come up.
- [21:47]
A
Oh, John, I'm just painfully aware of this. Painfully aware of your Life. It is, it is. Which was another bonus for why we thought about elevating SAS Viya to a brand level. Because when we can start to associate SaaS and SAS Viya, that just gives us a little bit more distinctiveness.
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B
It does. Now, of course, your new campaign just come out as well, haven't you?
- [22:09]
A
That's right.
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B
Which leans into humor, which I love actually, because I think humor's one of the best things you can use, particularly in B2B, which can be, let's admit, you know, rather boring sometimes.
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A
It can be. I mean, there's a sea of sameness in B2B for sure. So when we thought about this next part of our campaign and how we think about SAS Viya as a tool to help improve productivity in organizations and people are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data that's coming at them, we wanted to be able to tell a story in a way that would break through or at least get us out of our comfort zone. So I would say I don't know that we've completely broke through yet, yet, but I will. But we're getting ourselves known differently. So a couple things. We wanted to lean into humor and we thought that's not used as much in, in B2B, but we wanted to be thoughtful about humor. There's a lot of nuances to humor, so we didn't want dark humor, we don't want mean spirited humor. But, but there's some things about office life and the, the I think the pain you feel around needing to be more productive and wanting to have something to help you, and that's SaaS and SAS Viya. We also really leaned into having some brand devices and we hadn't done that before. So we introduced a pink cube which represented Viya and insights you get from Viya. And then we used white spheres, balls to represent the overwhelming amount of data coming at you. So some of the first ads had people in a glass conference room that was full of white balls and you feel like you're just drowning in all of the data, but you could alleviate that by, by, by SaaS. So that was really fun. And gosh, what we found is it was one of those things that was so extensible and fun globally. So not only did we have the brand campaign, how we saw it brought to life in areas like our events, whether it was an owned event or at a third party event, we had ball pits like we had, I got adults getting into ball pits, acting like kids. So it was just fun and just unexpected. And that is something that we want people to think about when they think about SaaS.
- [24:15]
B
I think it's so good. I mean everyone can relate to being overwhelmed by data. I mean it's a problem, it's a universal problem. Everyone can relate to it immediately. You don't, it doesn't need explaining that you know that idea, does it? It's immediately obvious and then tackle it with humor. Makes it more memorable. Yeah, yeah. Very, very exciting. You've also signed up a new sponsorship, haven't you which has for particularly anyone in the UK listening to this. You've just done a sponsorship with Liverpool Football Club.
- [24:39]
A
That's right. Very exciting. So we just announced that in December of 20 so we're just a month into what is going to be an amazing at least five year partnership. We have worked with sports teams before. What I like about us in the sports category is it's something that we all can appreciate. I think people you can relate to our audience in just a very human and authentic way. So we've had a partnership with the Orlando Magic that dates back back 10 years. We recently also announced a partnership with the LA Football Club. Liverpool is by far the largest and honestly the biggest bet that I'm taking in my role. The largest one I brought to the table. What's unique about how we think about these sports partnerships is we're not just going to put a logo on the club and walk away. The partnership is two way. So we're an official global AI marketing automation provider and partner. And then the club, Liverpool club is using SaaS for fan engagement and so we'll be able to tell stories that are really authentic and just some, some great IP around how we're improving the club. And so yeah our approach to that was again data being our love language. If Liverpool fans were a country they would be the third most populous country in the world. That's how big the fandom is for Liverpool. And then we looked at the data around what's. How does that index, how do those fans index on business decision makers and technology users? That's our audience and that's probably why we haven't done partnerships like that in the past because there are a lot of people who are not in that audience in that group but they, Liverpool, you know spiked on both of those, those categories and then they had a desire to want to, to engage with their fans and they recognized that data and AI was, was the approach they wanted to take. So that's where we landed. And I would say also throughout this process what we realized is the Values of our organizations are so aligned. I love the club's ethos around you never walk alone. And we think about one of the unique things for SAS is just how we've been a long term TR provider for so many organizations. So there's just such great synergies there.
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B
I love that. Well, connecting to that and your can conversation. What would be your top tips then for selling in the big ideas into an organization?
- [27:17]
A
I involve the C suite decision maker stakeholders early. So when we went down this process and I said I believe we need to do a larger sports partnership to tell the story of SAS in a more effective way. We partnered with an agency, we've got a long term relationship with an Octagon and they did the analysis with us and I brought the C suite along at multiple steps of that so they could understand this is how we're thinking about this partnership. This is the data behind why we should do it. This is the investment it's going to take from all of us in order to make it successful. And then I involved the CFO and the finance team very closely to say how are we going to measure the ROI on this? And one of the things that we did after the announcement, we had a video internally that was the anatomy of the decision. So I wanted our employees to understand how do we get to this like this? This thing we're launching right now is 18 months in the making. So how did we get here and show the intention and the vision that we have? And so to do that, while I hosted the video, I wanted people to understand the strategy for the market presence that we want to have. I had our partner from Octagon on there describing the sports landscape and why this made sense for SaaS. And I had our CFO on there to talk about why this makes business sense. And one of the things, this is not a marketing partnership, this is a SaaS partnership. And I really want the organization to feel that sense of ownership and pride for this. And I'm super excited. I think it's going to change the way more people think about SaaS. And we're already seeing just the excitement. It was one of our top performing organic posts for the year in just December and it hasn't even had a chance to really breathe right. So I think we're striking a chord here and I'm excited about that.
- [29:10]
B
That's great. I think the understanding how decisions get made in organizations is a real skill, isn't it? And I love the example you've given there because I think because you can Come up with the best idea. But if you can't navigate the organization and align everybody and make it happen, then it's not going to go anywhere.
- [29:25]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I think there was probably some doubters within the organization of this is a big one. Is this really going to happen? And it took time. I think stakeholder management is one of the least understood capabilities of a cmo. I think of myself as a chief collaboration officer within the company.
- [29:42]
B
Totally. I remember early on in my career actually someone I didn't. I was going for this high potential application to join this kind of cohort and I failed it. And I remember getting some feedback from my mentor and she was basically saying you need to work out in the organization who are people supporting you or not supporting you and are they influential to the outcome and just do this basic grid and go.
- [30:05]
A
A stakeholder map.
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B
Exactly. Do a really simple thing. I hadn't thought about it like that before. It's really obvious because I kind of, I put it down to politics, you know, but actually if you just plan it and just go, well, who would need to be on side for this decision to go through? Where are they today, where they need to be tomorrow and what steps should I take to get them from here to there? You know, it sounds so easy but we don't often think about relationships in quite that kind of that way. But it's helpful, isn't it?
- [30:29]
A
It is. And I would say I've spent a lot of time in the past five years really understanding change management and what's the change management needed at SaaS. What are change management best practices? I think one of the most effective tools when you think about change management is a change curve and understanding where you might be on a change curve and maybe where some of your stakeholders are. And as marketers we have to be ahead.
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B
Right.
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A
We have to be thinking much further out than oftentimes many other parts of the organization. And so what I find is I'm often way I'm at a different place in the change curve and I need to make sure that I'm bringing everybody else along, otherwise I'm going to be out there by myself. Not effective. Right. And so this notion of a change curve and really understanding where you are on that change curve and where your team is, where your stakeholders are, is. Is critical.
- [31:20]
B
Yeah. Well, I did a confidential survey last year called Confessions of a CMO where we basically interviewed 30 CMOs and said what would you confess to off the record that you wouldn't say, you know, wouldn't say because the idea came. There are things people obviously happy to say on camera, but then there's things that they say off camera. So we thought, well, maybe we'll interview them off camera and see what they say. And then we deconstructed the role of the CMO based on those responses. And one of the things was the. We call it Chief Momentum Officer that actually to create momentum in the organization is so critical. And it is the change curve you talked about. But it's not just about the idea. It's about how do you then create the momentum for it to stick in the organization. And you need to put as much effort into that as you do into the planet.
- [31:59]
A
Well, and make it stick too. I mean, I think about this Liverpool partnership. It's one of the biggest things I've certainly done in my tenure here to bring this to life. It is going to be a sustained effort and with milestones and continued education along the way. There's no. There's no one, no set it and forget it.
- [32:18]
B
When it comes to marketing now, talking about change, of course we must talk about AI and the impact AI is having. And you're in a really good position to kind of have a point of view on that. So where do you think in marketing AI is having the biggest impact?
- [32:30]
A
Generative AI brought so much attention to the AI space. But the fact is, we've been using AI for a long time, and AI has been around for a long time, and most marketers have been doing things around. You know, if I think about B2B marketing in particular, we're doing lead scoring, we're doing propensity models, likelihood to respond, likelihood to attend. So I feel like we came into this generative AI space with something we should feel really proud about in terms of understanding AI. We did a study on this at SAS to understand how organizations are adopting AI, and this was fascinating. It found that marketing organizations were adopting generative AI more than any other part of the business, which I find. At first I was fascinated. Then I thought, well, of course we are. We're wired for experimentation and you have to experiment with generative AI. So there's more to AI than generative AI, as I think maybe one of the things that I want marketers to take away from this, like, there's. There's a lot we can do within generative AI, but there's more to AI than generative AI. I think what I'm finding right now is we're all going on this curve where when generative AI first came into the market it really expanded the aperture of people who could touch AI and get involved in it. Right. Because the lead scoring or propensity models of the past, you probably had a small group that were working on that and you worked on your personal productivity. Now where we're going and where I see a ton of benefit is moving up a maturity curve, if you will, from personal productivity to department wide productivity. And that's where we're focused right now and ultimately driving enterprise wide productivity. And we're very much marketing is involved in our corporate SaaS's corporate strategy around enterprise AI adoption. And that's where we're going to see more benefits of customer experience improvement to you know, I look at the department wide, we're going to see better time to market. And so I think table stakes now is the content generation piece and everybody's doing that. Where some areas I'm excited about that we're personally doing are messaging. We need to get messages to market faster that are more relevant. Our messaging process, we've reduced that from 30 days to 10 days. So now we can get just be more agile and more relevant in the market. We're doing things like scoring our creative briefs. The humans creating the creative brief that has to happen. But then we've created an agent to say how effective is that brief based on our measures? And give us a score and make our briefs better. Because if we make a better brief, we're gonna have a better outcome. We're automating some things I think about industry analyst relations and how detailed your participation in something like a Gartner Magic Quadrant or a Forester Wave is. We're using AI to gather the RFP information human fact check, because a human in the loop. But that allows our teams to think more about. All right, how are we going to show our software in a way that really articulates our capabilities. So those to me are when we can start to focus more on the productivity in a way that allows our marketers to focus on more meaningful tasks. And how do we get time to market time to customer improved.
- [35:43]
B
What I love about your little brief example there is that a lot of AI is being used to kind of save cost and save time. Right. But actually you've applied it to making something better, which ultimately that's where the game is going to be changed because everyone can apply the same productivity benefits. But if you can make make marketing better, then there's a huge gain.
- [36:03]
A
Absolutely. And I mean I think we're at this pivotal point with AI in society where we need to Take a step back and say, how are we going to be using AI? Are we trying to drive cost down and just do cost takeout with AI? Is that what we want as a society? I don't think so. I mean, I think we're going to have. I think the implications of doing that is probably not the world we want to live in.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah, totally agree. Now, going back to the Confessions of CMOS survey, so much of it, it that came back was actually not necessarily about the functional leaderships of a cmo, but actually general leadership ability. Because at the end of the day, I think I was interviewing Mark Ritson about this and he said there's more chief than there is marketing in a CMO role. Which is true, isn't it? Because a lot of it is about change management, leadership, negotiating, all those kind of things. And I know you told me last night that you got to interview Brene Brown, which I thought was amazing. So I just thought I'd pick your brains on kind of like leadership. I mean, I'd love to hear what you thought about meeting her as well. Cause that must be pretty special. And then more generally, yeah.
- [37:04]
A
Oh, gosh. I mean, a career highlight for me was getting to meet Brene Brown. She's really been a mentor to me and she doesn't even know it. Dare to Lead is probably one of the most impactful leadership books I think I've ever read. So we chose her as a speaker, knowing that so much of the work that she does around leadership, around vulnerability, how she's thinking about AI, AI and how we have to be thoughtful about it, is something that our audience cares about. So we brought her and it was an honor to get to interview her. We talked about everything from how do you think about taking risks in your organization? To leadership. And a funny story that I have as part of that conversation, I shared with her a personal moment of my own vulnerability last year. And you and I know this because this is a long time coming. But I had struggled with some health issues last year with some eye surgery, seven to be exact. That really made me think about my prioritization a little bit differently. So I shared that with her. And her comment was, that's where you move from somebody who's a get shit done person to a GSSD person. Get strategic shit done. I love that I've joked, I think that's my next tattoo. But that idea of just making sure you're prioritizing your time on the things that only that you are equipped to do, that the organization needs you to do is really important. Important. And sometimes that's hard. I certainly had a situation last year where it really forced me to do that. But another thing I will say, I learned from Brene. She was so thoughtful in some of her responses. So a question I. We were talking about AI and I came back and asked, well, can we trust AI? And she paused for what felt like a extremely uncomfortable amount of time for me as the interviewer. And I thought, what do I need to do here? Do I. Do I jump in? Do I just let it hang? And she paused for what was probably a good 20 seconds, which is a long time in a setting like that. And her response was so thoughtful. So I've learned a lot from that to say, all right. Oftentimes, as an extrovert, I talk to think, maybe not do that all the time.
- [39:22]
B
That's a really good bit of feedback. Actually. I'm probably the same as you. I. I respond and I'm thinking in my head at the same time and then coming up with the answer. But a pause can be very powerful. And also it's uncomfortable for you as an interviewer, but it's not uncomfortable for the audience because it's just growing this anticipation of what's gonna be said. And it lands with more gravitas then, doesn't it?
- [39:40]
A
It does now. I would say what she did that I have to aspire to is her comment after her pause was just so thought provoking. So if you're gonna take that long pause, it better be worth it.
- [39:54]
B
Yeah, build the expectation right up. So what would you say are the top skills needed to be a successful cmo?
- [40:02]
A
Stakeholder management. I would say collaboration. And you have to be listening to not only your organization, but the market. And having those strong listening skills allows you to be the champion for the customer in the room. And those are the things that I look to continue to hone in.
- [40:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating, actually. I mean, I talk to so many CMOs, and it is the skills that enable you to be a success are very different to the skills that got you to that role in the first place. Because you come up through a function, you become an expert at what you deliver, and then you're leading everybody. And you're also part of a team where no one else knows what marketing does as well. Which is weird, isn't it? You're representing marketing in a room full of people that are used to tech or supply chain or finance.
- [40:51]
A
Absolutely. I would say know some of the challenges in marketing. It's lonely at in the CMO role. And I'm not, you know, I'm not complaining, I'm not asking for a, you know, a pity party on that. But it is, yeah, it is lonely. And then I, I joke often that I, I do take it as a privilege that I am leading a function that everybody thinks they can do. That's true because everybody thinks they can do. They can, everybody thinks they can be a marketer because they've attended event, they've, they've, you know, they've seen other brands and so I, I, and I, I that internally with my peers.
- [41:27]
B
I mean the other thing I find is like when things go well, it's everyone's responsibility. When things go wrong, it's marketing's fault 100%. You have to get used to that.
- [41:36]
A
But I'm very intentional about like for example, one of the events that becomes just this big forcing function for our organization is our annual data and AI event. It's called SAS Innovate and it takes the entire company to make happen. Now marketing is a driving force in that and I want to make sure that I'm acknowledging the effort that is, is year round and the passion of so many of my marketers to just put on fantastic events every year. But we couldn't do it without the entire organization. So I do feel like I want to give credit everywhere for the work and I'm very intentional about that.
- [42:09]
B
That's really, really good, isn't it? I mean, another bit of advice came through in the confessions is the ability to make everyone else feel like it was their idea as well is key, isn't it?
- [42:16]
A
Oh yes, yeah, yeah. You know, to that end I would say I am outcomes oriented and so I care less about who's going to get the credit along the way. Are we going to get the outcome that we need and if we can get focused on the outcome, nothing else.
- [42:32]
B
It's very empowering. If you can let go of the need for credit. It's a really empowering thing because I love that bit of advice. If you can think about what matters is how we get this done, not who gets the credit. Because so much of politics is around ego and who's credited and where the attribution is. I mean, I know constant sales versus marketing issues. Probably the number one kind of friction isn't there between sales and marketing is who gets the credit. And if you can get to a point where it doesn't matter who gets a credit, then you're in a great place maybe to round off then what Would linking then to this what creates a good culture and how can culture be an advantage?
- [43:12]
A
So when I think about the culture that we're creating in marketing for SaaS we've got two pillars to that. One is lifelong learning. Learning. The role of marketing has changed more in the past two to three years than it has probably in the last 10. So we need to constantly be learning and so we've invested in that. One of the things we introduced last year was this concept of my focus Friday where every Friday block two hours and use that time to learn to invest in strategy to take some of the training modules that we've put out in the learning paths that we've put out. So, so learning and really making sure that you're investing in that. I was really honest last year with the organization of this is how I'm spending my focus Friday. I need to learn about the changing role of AI search. I need to get into the weeds in this. This is not something that I can stay at a high level on. I need to understand the details and that I need to change course for the organization. So I was very transparent about I've got a gap in my knowledge and here's what I'm doing to close that gap and to better understand. The second is I found in our organization in, in marketing we were not as bold as really the organization wanted us to be. There was more risks we could be taking. We could be out there with sharper elbows about our capabilities. We're too humble and we're as a company we're humbled to a fault now because now we're in this market that everybody says they do data and AI. So we needed to, to get out of our comfort zone a little bit. So we introduced this concept of dynamic and that we want to be more dynamic in what we do stands for qualities we want people to bring forward. And we created almost like a Shark Tank dynamics mind contest where we had ended up being over 70 ideas brought to the table of how as an organization could we break our current way of doing And I'm excited about that. So lifelong learning coupled with providing this just this latitude for risk taking making is really core to the culture that we have within the marketing organization.
- [45:15]
B
Out of interest AI search, how big a change is it going to be?
- [45:19]
A
What's changed that I see is we used to focus so much on how do we win the hearts and minds of people in our target audience. Now we have to win the hearts and minds of people and of AI and of the machine and so we are thinking about everything differently. How we create content, what channels were going to show up in content based on how do we win both of those things. Now I think the challenge is going to be for brands is don't over index on the machine. Don't over index on how you're found in AI. You still have to. Once I get somebody to our website, that has to feel like a very human centered, authentic engagement. But the types of content that I'm putting out on our website now is very different because I'm trying to get the attention of the LLMs to get people to my site. So I think it's pretty significant of that shift of getting attention not just of hearts and minds of people, but of the machine.
- [46:14]
B
I love your balance on both. Not forgetting the website role because that's something that struck me in looking into kind of how many decisions get made before a person's even contacted. So the role of the website to basically be your pre sell is huge, isn't it?
- [46:27]
A
It is.
- [46:28]
B
That's doing the heavy lifting really often by the time they're contacting you, you, they've made up their minds 100%.
- [46:34]
A
And I think that's been an education that I'm having not only with our marketing team but also with our sales organization. I think there's too many opportunities that we aren't even considered in right now because we're not doing enough of that upper funnel type work, that 95 work. And it's just, I think it's exasperated because of AI. And we've seen this in all the data that's been published. LinkedIn's done a lot of great work on this. This that's, that's helping us think about. All right, we have to do more work around how we show up and do more intentional work to create gravity back to our brand. But the tactics that we used to do are, are changing.
- [47:12]
B
Yeah, I agree. A 9 to 55 rule I think is one of the most profound insights. It's so obvious when you think about it. I mean it's like when you deconstruct it like your own behavior. Of course I'm not thinking about every brand all the time.
- [47:22]
A
Right.
- [47:22]
B
Of course I only think about brands I want to buy at the time I want to be buy them. Yes, it's so obvious.
- [47:26]
A
It is, but.
- [47:27]
B
But it just profoundly changes where you focus your time and money.
- [47:32]
A
It does.
- [47:32]
B
And also explains to an organization why they should be balancing their spend in a different way.
- [47:37]
A
Well, and I think that's one of the Again, a superpower marketing can bring to the table is oftentimes your sales teams are focused on the recency of the conversation they just had, the deal they just had. And so, you know, an example that I often use is you don't buy a car typically every year. And so when you're buying a car, you are in that mode. But then you're after that you're going to drive and you want to make sure you've got the right support, that you are, you are loving your decision and feel good about it and that ultimately you're going to. When you get another car, you want that same brand. So it's that same thing. Like, we've got to. We've got to. Once the sale happens, we've got to think about that differently. But we've got to get to them before they even think about their car.
- [48:15]
B
It's a very old case setup, I think VW maybe in the 80s and 90s, they had invested all their money in the dealership experience. They thought, we're going to have the best dealerships. And then they realized that, I can't remember there's like 75% of people walking into a dealership knew exactly what car they wanted. And all the conversation with it was a bit of just pretense because they actually already knew. And then they flipped their spend and went. Most people are thinking that they casually think about cars and they narrow down their shortlist in their minds over three or four years because they see other, you know, see other people on the road driving cars, you know, what kind of thing, and they're mentally reducing it down. So by the time they got into the deal, the decision's almost done.
- [48:53]
A
Yeah, influence happens differently. Yeah, it does.
- [48:56]
B
Same in B2B. Jen, it's been amazing. Thank you so much. Love all your experience that you've been able to share and exciting times ahead.
- [49:04]
A
Excellent. Well, John, thank you. And I would say thank you for what you do for the marketing community. I get so much wisdom from you and the guests that you have. So, so.
- [49:12]
B
Well, I'm just doing exactly what you said about being curious and learning. So this is literally my vehicle to do that.
- [49:18]
A
I'm grateful for it. The marketing profession is amazing.
- [49:22]
B
Thank you so much.
- [49:22]
A
Thank you, John.
- [49:23]
B
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X at UncensoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.