Interesting B2B Marketers
Interesting B2B Marketers
Episode 29: Aligning Brand & Business Strategy: Navigating Change & Biases | Rissa Reddan
In this episode of Interesting B2B Marketers Podcast, Steve sits down with Rissa Reddan, Partner and Chief Marketing Officer at West Monroe, to discuss the challenges of rebuilding and dismantling a brand after an acquisition. Rissa shares her personal experience of reviving a company's brand only to see it disappear after a few months, highlighting the emotional attachment that marketers can have with their work. Steve also shares his own story of working on a rebrand and the lasting connection he had with the brand book he created.
The conversation then turns to the importance of aligning marketing strategy with business strategy and the need for marketers to adapt to changes in the business context. Rissa and Steve reflect on the challenges of staying ahead of the curve in online education and the power of AI in generating insights for marketers, while also addressing the ethical concerns surrounding biased technologies. They conclude with tips for staying connected and learning in the fast-paced world of marketing, with Rissa giving advice to her younger self to focus on what really moves the needle in business. Tune in to this episode for valuable insights on branding, marketing strategy, and staying relevant in the business world.
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Steve: Welcome back to Studio 26 and another episode of interesting B2B marketers. Today I am joined with Rissa. How are we doing today?
Rissa: Awesome, Steve. Thank you so much for having me on. And a big thank you to Penny Gill House for Introduction.
Steve: Yes, shout out to Penny. All right, so like we always do in the podcast, we do a quick 62nd intro before we start with your first case. So give everyone an understanding of your background. Sure.
Rissa: My name is Rissa Redden and I serve as partner and chief marketing officer at West Monroe. We are a digital services firm, and marketing is often described as one part art and one part science. I was born on the upper west side of Manhattan to a father who holds a PhD in inorganic chemistry, and a mother who is an artist with perfect pitch making me literally one part art and one part science. So marketing has always been a great for fit for me, and I'm a great fit.
Steve: I like that your parents came together to create the perfect marketer.
Rissa: We are all that's, that's what a great way of looking at it. Absolutely. Yeah. That's what they did.
Steve: All right, awesome. So we're gonna jump into the first case. This one is all about. Something that I'm sure we've either been on the side of being acquired or we've been the company acquiring another company and what to do. How do you, how do you handle different brands and how do you integrate them? So take it away on the first case study.
Rissa: Sure. So let's go back to 2018 and I was brought into a role where it was a marketer's. It was one of those things that you wake up and think one day will it be possible? And I was brought in to reimagine the brand and really to rebuild the brand from the ground up. And I was super excited about it. I got to put my fingerprints all over and the way that I had introduced that particular project to the company was, I used a picture and it was a picture of my niece and it was her first picture day picture. And you can see in the picture that she had cut her own hair the night before, picture day. And I feel like as entrepreneurs we often are cutting our own hair. But where you don't wanna do that is from a marketing perspective that, you know, in this instance, I felt that the company wasn't presenting the face to the world, if you will, that needed to be shown to really demonstrate the expertise and the value of the people.
And so I came in, I worked on the new brand. And we rolled out this beautiful brand and the beautiful new website and we had a, a treatment for the logo that was a spark and everybody became very attached to this spark. And it was where in the world is the spark? And we'd had pictures coming in of people on their vacation with the spark hat on. And January is when we rolled out the new brand. And then in April we announced that we were being acquired, which is fantastic. That was fantastic news. It was fantastic validation for the business. There was so much good news about it, but as a marketer it was, it was a challenge in that I'd created something that I thought was so beautiful and so meaningful, and then began the dismantling of that brand, and it felt a bit, Moving through the stages of grief that on the one hand there was this exciting event that had occurred, but yet it began the sort of unraveling of that beautiful brand. And I think that there is attachment that we can have an emotional attachment to a brand, but it really had served its purpose. And in hindsight, I wish that I had recognized that sooner, but it was something that I really dug my heels in on in hindsight. And I, I think you need to move through those stages of grief. And in this particular instance, I moved into a new role with the company that had acquired us. I mean, often a leadership team has let go as part of an acquisition. And in this instance mm-hmm. We became the leadership team for a broad. Business unit within the acquiring company. And then I was invited to take on a new role there. And I really think that there is so much opportunity in marketing and I, I feel like at times it was focusing on the past instead of embracing the future, if that makes sense.
Steve: Yep. Yeah. Sorry. Take us back to the day that it happens because. It's just the shock of it all. And I imagine that part of you is almost like, no, we're, we're still gonna keep it. Like you're, you're probably still fighting for it. What goes through your mind the day that you realized the branding is gonna need to be disassembled?
Rissa: But what was interesting to me is how it came to life. That what we ended up seeing were salespeople trying to reconcile. Old brand and new brand and, and, and going out and having conversations with customers that were meaningful and having the two brands in the mix made it difficult for them and, and, and that. Wasn't something that was top of mind for me, but sort of the, on the one hand, well, the brand should live on forever, but there was a practical element to it of, well, how are we gonna sell this combined set of products that you can't have half of the product set in one brand and half of the product set in a different brand? And so there's some real practical elements to that that. I, I definitely have a different perspective on today as I think about acquiring another company, and I appreciate the feelings and the opinions on that, that brand, but I feel like I have a very practical sense of what needs to happen next as a result of my own experience.
Steve: It's amazing. As marketers, you can get so attached emotionally to the work because your heart is in it, and I remember. I worked on my first rebrand. This is a 98, and we had these beautiful brand books made. There was, I think there was 75, like really high impact brand books. The rest were just regular printed like brochures. And I, I have moved several times over my career and I always get to my marketing box of stuff. And to this day, that brand book has survived every time I've thought about moving, because it was the first time I really had done a real rebrand and I'm just proud of the work. I didn't. Now, looking back, I didn't even have a big role in it. Like I've worked with some other companies where I was helping to roll the entire brand out. I just had one small piece. I share that because the thing that I do love about marketing is that it is such an emotional role that you, that you have, you, you know, the accountants and the lawyers I, I imagine are not having as much of their, of their tears in the work, right? Like it is just that's what makes it fun. That's, that's what kind of makes it hard to hear the news that brands in their harmonization or integration process sometimes just have to go. Well, and it's
Rissa: interesting to think about what goes in that box that you bring with you. And, and I am with you, I've got brand books from, from that particular brand that I, I flip through every now and again as a little bit of inspiration, but it is interesting. As a marketer, what do you choose to, to bring with you? I've got, you know, a few ads that I was in love with. I've got the brand books, I've got, you know, a handful of things that do come with me wherever I,
Steve: I. Yeah. What what's some advice that you could give to the marketers listening when they're in this similar position where the business context just trumps what we want as marketers and, and you know, from what you're sharing, you understood it. You got it, it made sense. What, what's your advice to them as they're, as they find themselves in a similar position?
Rissa: I think that there is importance around acknowledging. There's the rational brain and there is the reptile brain of, you know, I, I'm in love with this thing and I never wanna see it. It go. And I think it's important to recognize that both are true and but at the end of the day, we're, our work is in service to the business. And when the business context changes, so too must the marketing context. And, and I, I think that that's an important one. Marketing strategy follows business strategy at the end of the day. And when that business strategy shifts, the marketing strategy must, otherwise marketing becomes irrelevant.
Steve: Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. It's a good lesson and not being selfish, you know, like when you can, when you can combine. What's fun is marketing with the business objective and the marketplace. That's where, that's where it really happens. If you're doing just selfish. It's not gonna be as impactful. Great. Like the case study. Thanks for sharing the one We're gonna jump into the second one. And this one has to do with the online education space. And it's a, it's an interesting thought here. I think as marketers, when things go right or things go wrong, we, we figure out why that is. And sometimes as part of that evaluation process, The broader business context or the marketplace. Is someone ready for an idea yet? And you're gonna walk us through a case that kind of talks about where you were onto something really good, but the context or the climate at the time just wasn't there and, and how do you reconcile that?
Rissa: Absolutely. So Steve, I'm gonna take you back to the year. 2000, and this is an online education company that had partnered up with major academic institutions for content. And it was an all-star roster of amazing minds and really luminaries in education and. The challenge there is exactly what you articulated. I, I think that the company was ahead of its time, and I think often we want to be ahead of the curve or we wanna be ahead and out in front. But at what point are you too far out in front such that people don't understand what you have on offer or what the benefit of it is? And so it's been interesting to me more recently in, in to think about education and online education. And so much of what you see today is, is what we were doing back at that time. But timing is everything. And I, I think while we want to be as market, Educators and we wanna help people see benefits and attributes and it, at the end of the day, if you are in a situation where you're too far out in front, I think it's really hard to bring the world along with you. Yeah, and I think often we point to examples of of game changing technology or game changing platforms, but they're probably, for everyone that we know about, there were probably hundreds. Failed for whatever reason. So it's, it's, it's easy to point to the ones that we know and love that change the world, but what does it mean if you're one of the other hundreds?
Steve:
Yeah. So what wasn't ready about it? I mean, is it, is it a combination of technology? The marketplace, like the end user just wasn't there yet. What, what do you think made it so that it just didn't get the traction that you wanted?
Rissa: I think that, Education is an interesting animal and so much of it is the motivations of people to learn. And how do you market for that? I don't know that you can market for motivation. But it was an interesting time because the, the company took various approaches and was at times B2B focused and at times B2C focused. I think that's also a challenge to try to, to. Swing. The pendulum between those two can be challenging that on the B2B side, you need to be able to integrate with learning management systems. That's different than if you're focusing on individual consumers. And so I, I think also not knowing what you wanna be when you grow up can also be a, challenge that when I think about startups or I think about that startup, when things change every day, it makes it difficult to drive long-term.
Steve: Yeah, tell us about how you knew that it, the idea was too soon for a time. I mean, you, you've got business metrics which ultimately are gonna make that decision. You have marketing metrics, ma, which might give you some good indications that something's not working, whether it's poor conversion rates, like how long did that take for you to start understanding the traction? Wasn't there. It
Rissa: was always interesting to me that, that the conversation would be, oh, love this. Amazing, fabulous. But the numbers, to your point, didn't support that, that the adoption numbers or registrations or enrollments. And it's interesting too, cuz then I, I've certainly learned a lot more about higher education, more broadly that The rate of completion of degrees is not nearly as high as I might have thought. That we make assumptions based on our own experiences of, well, I completed an education in four years, doesn't everybody, but there are a lot of different paths for education. And I think there's also yeah, I, I, I lost my train of thought, so we can please edit that out. Yeah,
Steve: no worries. I was gonna say, I. I remember being a freshman, so I went to Purdue. I remember being a freshman and there, and there was a maybe 500 people in the lecture hall, and the professor made it a point to say, all right, and we were evenly split into three sections, and he was like, everyone in section one, congratulations. You're graduating. With this degree from this like school within the, with that Purdue, and he said, the other two thirds of you are going to drop out or you're gonna change your majors. And it, it holds true. Like the stats hold true of, of just people going another path not finishing or, or saying, I don't wanna do this. I'm, I'm gonna jump over here. So it is fascinating how. The I guess I don't know if the professors are talking about conversion rates when they talk about degrees, different, different, different nomenclature, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a tough space.
Rissa: I think persistence is a term that is used. Do you persist through the program?
But I'm curious, when you had that experience, how did you feel like, well, that's not gonna be me, or, you know, I, I would think that people were probably puzzled at that point. Like, I think as a later in life, looking back on that, it makes all the sense in the world. But would it have made sense to my 18 year old?
Steve: Yeah, I, I remember feeling a sense of like, I don't believe it and I'm gonna prove him wrong. That was my first, like, you know, cuz you're all excited, it's your, it's your first week on campus and then this person is like, you may not graduate from here. So I don't know. I, I took it as a, as a challenge. I, I I, I wanted to step.
That's awesome. Who knows? I'm re
Rissa: who knows? I'm reminded of a, a story of being brought to an event with an association that's in Chicago that's fabulous. And I remember thinking, oh, I love this. I [00:15:00] wanna join this. And the person who had brought me said, well, I don't think you have the right profile.
And I will tell you, I got into that organization in, in pretty record speed. So you never know how things are gonna motivate some that to be told no for some might be the end. And for others it, it's, the Gatlin has been thrown and I'm gonna prove you.
Steve: Yeah. I personally, I, there's nothing that motivates me faster when someone says whether, you know, as, as applied to marketing, we're stuck.
This hasn't been done before. This can't be done. I love that. I, I lean into those conversations because I feel like it's just such a great challenge. You know, it's, it's a, someone has thrown down the gauntlet and I want to, you know, not, not to say that like, yeah, I can definitely fix. Solve it, but like maybe there's something I've thought of that hasn't been done before, so that, that does get me excited.
Rissa: Have you ever found yourself leaning in and you weren't able to fix
Steve: it? I think so. I mean, there, there are many times where I think on the marketing side, I, I had it all figured out. That's certainly a part of my. Career journey is, my big lesson learned is it doesn't matter your marketing knowledge. I don't care how technical you can get, you can, you can explain how you're gonna set up the most complicated program, but if, if culture or business structure doesn't align with what you can do it, it won't happen. So I've, I've definitely learned that lesson where, Even though I think I can solve it, it cannot be implemented or it cannot be bought into. And I think that's, that's something that marketers face that challenge with of what should you sell and what should you not sell? It's, it's, it's hard to sell something to people who just don't wanna buy. You've, you've gotta be very good at attaching your solution to a pain that they may or may not be aware of. Well, and
Rissa: I, I, I do think as, as marketers, a challenge is always what not to do. And I, I don't know about you, but my default tends to be yes. Like, oh, that sounds like a great idea. Let's figure out how to do that.
And you can't pile so much, you, you can only pile so much onto the plates of the, of the team before you're gonna burn people out. And you need to, strategy is, is what you're gonna say no to, is, is saying no to.
Steve: Yeah. So for the online education company, what point did we realize that it just wasn't working?
What was the company like, we're running low on cash, we can't raise money. Like at what point did they say. It's not gonna work out.
Rissa: I think that it was telling when we had a number of new leaders being introduced to the business and it became a bit of a not revolving door, but there were certainly a lot of changes in leadership thinking, well, this person can get right, what, what the person before them wasn't able to get. Right. And I think when you see that over time and it's multiple people, you know, you, you, you realize it's not about a person. It's, it's about something bigger than that
Steve: individual. Yep. I'm gonna call that the, it's, it's not the jockey, it's the horse problem. Exactly.
Rissa: That's exactly, that's exactly what
Steve: it is.
Yep. All right. Awesome. Anything on the second case study that you wanna share before we jump into q and a?
Rissa: I think that the, there's something about that timing and, and I feel like as well, there's, how do. Think about a rubric for when is it time to leave that, you know, when have you decided that you've, you've done all you can do, you've thrown everything you can at, at a problem, and it, it's time to move on to your next challenge.
And I think, you know, that escalation of commitment that you put time in and you wanna put more time because you wanna see it turn around. But that's not necessarily the, the logical thing to do.
Steve: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it, I've been in environments. We could have done bad marketing and got amazing results.
And then I've been in the environments where we've done amazing marketing and got horrible results, and it's, it, it does take [00:19:00] wisdom to remove yourself from that and not fully take all the credit or blame for something. The, the, the broader context of what's happening is gonna shape more of that. So that's a good lesson.
All right. We're gonna jump into Q and a now. So, Tell us about your first job in B2B marketing. So, my first
Rissa: job in B2B marketing was actually with this online education company and I fell in love with marketing and business school at, at University of Chicago. And I felt like it was the perfect marriage of creativity and, and data and took it then to this online education company and I've been in B2B marketing ever since.
Steve: Have you ever had dreams of going to the B2C world? Usually it's people starting in B2C and then converting over to b2b. At least that was my, my path. Have you, have you just always loved it or have you thought about doing something different? I've
Rissa: always loved it. I've always been b2b. Yeah. And I, I grew up in professional services and that's where I am today with West Monroe. So I I love it.
Steve: I'm gonna talk about a theme that's come up on our show before, and. Proving the value of marketing. And when all the marketers are in a room, we're in a little bubble. We, we get it, we don't have to talk about the value, but the challenge becomes people outside that bubble. And I, I'm interested to get your take on through your career, how have you worked with non marketers who are, you know, usually in leadership roles to help them understand the value? What are, what are some things that you've seen that work really well?
Rissa: Well, I think everybody always wants to talk about the data, but I think there's such importance around context for the data or what is the story of the data that I think you really need the story and the data, not just the data. But I, I've had a lot of conversations around putting marketing investment into context.
So for every $1 of, of spend on marketing, are we returning $3? Are we returning $5 in revenue, $10 in revenue, but how can we create. Metrics that are a little bit more contextual versus a straight conversion rate or you know, something that we all know as marketers, but some that are perhaps outside of marketing may not be as familiar with those metrics.
Yeah,
Steve: I've, I think metrics are always a fascinating thing because in today's digital world, there's a ton of data. I tend to advocate for two or three core business metrics. To your point, like we just can't speak in marketing and then focus on those, but then look at 10, 15, 20 other indicators that the marketing people know and that that's kind of like the craft of, of refining the mouse trap that you're building.
But too often marketers get caught up in all the engagement data and they use that to report and show value to non marketers who then look at it and. Half the times I think they look at it and they just don't believe it or question it. They're just like, okay, I got 10,000 of those. That must be good.
What, what's, what's been your approach when it comes to metrics? You know, how do, how do you, how do you balance like the business metrics, the brand, the engagement.
Rissa: You know, the two metrics that I, I pay the most attention to are marketing originated and marketing influenced revenue. That at the end of the day, what revenue are we delivering to the business? But I think you're exactly right on the metrics that, you know, when we think about our marketing scorecard, you know, certainly those two have a prominent place on the scorecard, but I think that the, the questions that we get, if we were to share, for example, website traffic, Give me context. Is this good? Is this bad? Is it better than it used to be? You know, if we give year over year progress, that's directional, at least, but it, it still may not land depending on the, the audience. And so I think that we need to not stay away, but we need to be careful about. What we share because I, I've noticed a tendency to wanna put everything on the page, you know, 78,000 different metrics or, you know, different things that we're looking at. But I do think that at the end of the day, how do we move the needle on revenue, is the fundamental question. Yeah.
Steve: So, question now about the evolving approach to marketing specifically for service businesses. So you, you've been in service businesses for a while. Traditionally they were very academic, meaning all the thought leadership was written, like we were standing behind a podium, giving a, an announcement to a, you know, a graduating class or something like that. How, how has that evolved? I see myself more humanity being put into the B2B space. So it's not just content from the brand, it's content from individuals. And you know, that line creeps around. We don't have to be old and stodgy. We can have some fun, we can have some personality in our materials. Where do you see that today? And, and maybe where do you see that going? You
Rissa: know, it, it, I'm, I'm reflecting on your, the beginning of, of your question around thought leadership and people have ideas when they hear the term thought leadership of what that means. And I think, you know, many of us go to the white paper that's 10 to 15 pages long. I do think that there's a, a time and a place for a, a deep dive into a topic, but I think more often than not, it's more focus on infographics. It's, it's more focus on how do you quickly communicate a trend or a new offering or a new approach to solving a problem. But I, I think there's also much greater focus, I believe today on what's the problem that we're here to. I think that, you know, thought leadership tended to be a little bit more academic of here's something that we think is interesting, but if it's not connected to a pain point, then it's less relevant than, than something that is. And so how do we start with the pain point and build out Yeah. The thought leadership agenda from there.
Steve: Yeah, I love that. Love the, I love the pain, I love the problem. There was a, A person I used to worked with at LinkedIn who had a great saying, he's like, I wanna, I wanna take prospects through the glass. Meaning there has to be pain uncovered, right? That, that the cutting of a glass is like, ah, that's bad.
What's going on? And, and he always wanted to figure out what's their pain, you know, what are they what keeps them up at night? And that, that was a great way in from a content perspective because, If you lead with pain, that is way more interesting than with capabilities. You know, I, similar to what you said, there's a time and a place, right?
So yes, you have to have a capability song and dance available, but someone needs to walk through that door and ask for that because if you lead with it, it, it's a turnoff. They're just not gonna be interested. No, that's exactly
Rissa: right, Steven. It's, it's the journey that, you know, where is somebody on their journey that maybe they are ready to hear about a capability.
If they're not there yet, then you know what is gonna be meaningful for them and how can you serve up what, what is meaningful versus what you wanna talk about.
Steve: Yep. All right. I'm gonna pause for a second cuz I have to turn off my heater, which just turned on, which is the most like loud heater I've ever heard of. Hold on one second. That is one thing I'm not gonna miss about this condo is the is the loudest heat. I'm like, yes, we have a furnace in the basement. That's, that's far away. That's nice. All right, so let's see. I'm gonna jump into my next question. Okay. We're back on. One thing I wanna get your thoughts on, you've, you've led large teams before and finding and attracting marketing talent is harder today. Marketers are being asked to do more. What are the things that have worked well for you in, and not just short term [00:27:00] hires, not just the, Hey, we have three open roles, let's fill them. What have you found is in terms of creating a good culture so that. You can look back, you know, three, four years from now and saying, wow, this is what we did to put this in place so that we attracted talent as opposed to just, we had a recruiter find someone and they were really good. Like, what are your thoughts on building that, that culture up? Something that
Rissa: I love about West Monroe and attracted me when I, I started having conversations with executives. There was our focus on the next generation of. And our mission statement is to develop the next generation of leaders. And I think that's pretty powerful for candidates that we exist to help you become successful is a, a fabulous message. And, and, and we really stand behind that a as well and put a lot of energy around training and developing our people that I do think people are looking for what's next and what, what their future may hold when they're talking to you about an opportunity. And I think to be able to. Speak to that level of focus on development and on helping people to become their best selves is really important. And I'm a believer in, I'm gonna be your mentor, whether you stick with the company or you, you move on to something next. That I think that the relationship transcends the company and that has been really meaningful for me over time, that I recently had a conversation with a woman that I had hired. 10, 15 years ago and caught up with her around where her career had taken her. But you just never know where people's paths will take them. And I love watching that over, over time to unfold. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. It's very interesting. It, it reminds me of the old saying that you join a company but you leave a boss, or in this case you follow a boss, right there, there's, there's rebound employees that you've, you connect with in future lives at different companies and.
That's al. I mean, it's fun. I've seen, I've seen senior leaders do that, too. It's kinda like they've left a company and then two years later they're, they're plucking some of their favorite workers. And th there's that chemistry there, you know, it's like, oh, we're doing this, we're running the same play there. So it's always interesting to see how these, these teams today sometimes get reunited down the road.
Rissa: That's right. That's exactly right. And I, I think there's a karmic element to it that when you invest in relationships, people will be willing to follow you or willing to seek you out to talk about new potential opportunities.
Steve: Yeah. I wanna talk about challenges that you face as a marketer. Certainly there are some. That are just around the whole ball of MarTech and this, the, the ever-evolving stack of stuff that we need as marketers. Some might be the craft of marketing, the storytelling, the problem solving side. What are some things that you feel are just like, man, these are the things that I wish would be made easier as it relates to the day-to-day life of a marketer?
Rissa: Well, for me it's, it's similar to. The conversation around proving your value as a marketer, that it would be fantastic to have, have a hundred percent or a thousand percent confidence in all the decisions and, and to not have to justify spend or to, to justify investment or, you know, the ability to recruit more dollars.
It, it, it feels a little bit. Perhaps being a politician where, you know, are you, are you spending your time on policy or are you spending your time on fundraising and mm-hmm. And you know, what's the right split? Because you can't have zero in either category, but you know, what's the right waiting in order to drive a successful program.
Steve: Yeah. It's a good way to put it. I, I similarly I've had other guests describe it as the problem is that I am a kid in a candy. And you walk into that candy store and you see a hundred different things and you want them all, you just, you need the sugar. I need the sugar now. Right. So this question has a similar vein in that, let's say there's a, there's a fictional marketer, right?
It's day one of their job, no marketing has been done to date. How would you advise them to kind of say, you can't do it all, you can't stand up 10 things in your first six months. What, what would be kind of your approach to say, Here, here's what I would do on day one to really figure out the type of marketing that would have the most impact.
Rissa: I think day one, you really need to understand the business. How does the business make money? Mm-hmm. And you need to understand that at a very fundamental level because otherwise you're untethered. And I, I think. You know, at the end of the day, it's about growing the business or supporting the business or, you know, hitting the business objectives.
And you can't, if you don't have a deep understanding of, of the business and what the business is, is here to do. Yeah. And that, I think the next step then is, is often brand. I mean, it's so foundational that, that once you have that understanding of what the business does, then how [00:32:00] do you articulate that or communicate that to the people
Steve: Yep. Yep. Great answer there. All right, so we're gonna, I'm gonna continue our fictional questions. I love creating this fake world of marketing, right? Next week you get to delete every meeting from your calendar, and you, and you can decide what you're gonna do, what, what type of marketing, not the tactical part of it, but like, what would you occupy yourself with?
What would you spend your time?
Rissa: That's a great question. I'm still thinking about the joy of deleting all of the meetings on, on the calendar. I, I, you know, welcome the opportunity to have more capacity or more bandwidth to think the big thoughts, you know, what are the big ideas that are changing the world? And right now there's such focus on AI and generative ai.
You know, to have more time to think about all the implications and there is such a use case for marketing with ai and what could that look like? I recently had a conversation around expectations that new employees have around the ability to use generative AI in the workplace, and how will that become a competitive advantage for those that make it available?
And it's fascinating to think about these big ideas, but. Taking them into day-to-day life and, and what the world will continue to, to look like, I think is fascinating. But yeah, I love, I love, I would love study hall, that that would be my dream would be to have more study hall where you can think about these big ideas and, and how they are coming to life in, in the work world.
Steve: I like that. I like the study hall. No, that's another podcast that we should launch at the end.
I love that idea. And the AI stuff is, is incredibly fascinating. I saw a, a great quote. There's always a debate about any technology, right. Is it gonna displace us? Then you hear the Yes it is. No, it's not. And I, there was a great quote where someone said, AI is not gonna change your job, but a marketer who really knows AI will change your job.
Mm-hmm. So it's kind of like, what side are you gonna be on? You? You can't be on the grumpy old person's. Declaring, you know the craft of storytelling is still, and yes, that's right. But even then I've seen things in generative AI that you could say, I want you to use this storytelling structure, whether it's the hero's journey or others, and using this structure, I want you to craft this type of a story.
Here are the characters, here's the pain. Go. And there, there should almost be a contest where you have AI versus non-AI as it relates to storytelling or branding, and hmm, can you sniff which one is, which is real or versus fake? I think that would be a, a fascinating litmus test for ai. And it's, you know, there's clearly bad things with AI too.
Like every, every technology tends to. Take us way ahead. And then unintentionally we are stripped of one or two things. I mean, my, my thought is that the ability for marketers to think originally is really going to be impacted by AI because whether it's an interesting subject line that you have to create or a concept there is something nice about not knowing the answer for hours and just figuring it out as a team or by yourself.
That journey that your mind goes through to explore the solution. And I feel like that is a muscle memory that might get removed for new marketers who haven't had to do that in their career. Cause it is, it's scary how you can ask for conceptual things out of AI and they can be pretty good sometimes.
Rissa: I don't know if you're familiar with the book, life 3.0 from it's max tag Mark out of m i t and it's I think, a fascinating look.
The book came out in 2018 and it's different scenarios for an AI future and it was helpful to me cuz I felt like it was a bit of a primer on ai. But to start thinking about scenarios and scenario planning for AI I think is really interesting and I agree with you that you know, there is good and bad and how do you.
And, and I think it's an interesting comment around what should the process look like of work? That there's what we know, but then there are these new ways of, of doing it. And I, I, I think it's I think there's a really interesting question. I'm thinking back to Ian Rand and Atlas Shrugged of, you know, what's the idea of quality or how do we think about quality?
Will our idea of quality change with ai, it's, I just think it's fascinating. It's, it's such a fascinating time to be front row with this new wave of, of technologies.
Steve: It's interesting. I mean, I was first very much like Google. The, the fear of AI from a generative standpoint was always Google will figure it out and you're gonna get, you're gonna get hurt.
Whether it was like SEO or user experience. And then all of a sudden it was like Google's announcing their own ai. Oh my God. What does that mean now? What does it mean to their legacy search business that has dominated the marketplace? Like to me, yes, AI has so many generative creation implications, but to me it's the real power in AI is in insights, putting things together that you couldn't put together on your own and.
Once you have those, as a marketer, you're in a better position to then generate whatever you're doing, whether it's with real people or ai. But to me it's like, that is the power of just putting a bunch of data into ai, having it solve your problem. And then you, you know, it's kinda like algebra. You got to solve the problem, but then you, you could take that answer and plug it in the formula and say, does it work.
And to me, that's, that's kind of the insurance policy as I see it as marketers can use ai. To, to vet or pressure test solutions and then say, oh, that it actually did solve that problem. That does work well. And I
Rissa: think it's interesting too to think about who architects what and what biases are being embedded in some of these new technologies that we're not aware of at this point in time.
But, you know, there are biases everywhere and, and how do you ensure. The system is working in a way that benefits everybody equally. I, I, I, yeah. It's, it raises all sorts of interesting Yep. Ethical questions.
Steve: I've, I've seen people actually, as they've created their prompt, they've tried to coach it to like, don't generate negative stereotypes, don't have biases, and it that's even more fascinating is.
How does AI respond to that? If it doesn't know what it is yet, it's a hundred percent.
Rissa: A hundred percent. Or if it, if there is a bias embedded, how do you, how do you reconcile that? Yeah. It's
Steve: fascinating. All right, two final questions before we wrap up. The first one is gonna be any marketer who's good at what they do has just subscribed to the idea that they need to continually be learning.
What do you do? To, to plug yourself into the world of marketing, to learn different things.
Rissa: I love I'm, I'm a connector by nature. I mean, if I could be a superhero, I would wanna be a connector woman. And I love bringing problems to people that I know and, and to me. If I'm ever feeling anxious or uncertain, my next step is always to phone a friend or zoom a friend, if you will.
But to stay connected to a C M O marketing community for sure. And, and also to you know, what books are out there, I tend to go for. Perhaps books that are not traditionally marketing, but an example for me would be, and I'm just looking at the title over here over my shoulder, is I love the 12 million stuffed Shark and it's about high-end art that there's such a brand component to it and you know, how do you find, seek out, you know, interesting ideas that have applicability from a marketing standpoint, I think is an interesting question.
Steve: It's interesting. I haven't, I haven't heard of that book, but I, I could see the parallels there. That that's a good, that's a good advice. Okay, last question. We're gonna get back in the time machine I've created and we're gonna jump back to your first job in online education. What would you tell yourself?
So what advice would you say, Hey, you're gonna go on this long marketing journey, don't worry about this, or, or do worry about this. Like, what would you tell your younger self?
Rissa: Oh, it's such a great question. I, I, I think that, Generally, I, I think as a when I was a younger person, I tended to believe that everything was of equal [00:41:00] importance instead of really being able to zero in on what was gonna move the needle.
And, and to think about that differently as a younger person, I think would be my advice. That what you think is important. It may not be as important as you think, and how do you create a way or an approach to zero in on what really is important, and it would probably, at this time, be anchoring to the business and where is the business going and how do we think about the
Steve: business?
Yeah, I, I really like that. I think what's important. Versus what's fun are often two very different things. Sometimes you can line both of them up and have an amazing time at a company. But I like your advice, focus on the business impact. All right, well I've really had a great time talking to you today and if you haven't already done so, I, I encourage you to go to LinkedIn and update your profile to say connector woman.
Cause that is, that is a great superpower and I, who knows, maybe Marvel will, will listen and buy the rights to connector. That's
Rissa: an idea, Steve. I love that. That's amazing. Thank you.
Steve: I maybe every guest gets a free t-shirt with a theme from our episode, so you get, you get connector woman. I love that.
All right. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for joining the show. I really love doing these episodes of interesting B2B marketers. I always, I always learn, I always listen and I always. I'm a smarter marketer as a result. So thank you again for joining and if you haven't already, make sure to like and subscribe the podcast.
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