Episode 35: Driving Innovation in B2B Marketing: AR, AI, & CX Insights | Joel Harrison

On the latest episode of Interesting B2B Marketers, Steve Goldhaber sits with Joel Harrison, one of the founders of B2B Marketing, an information services organization focused solely on B2B marketers. 

He discusses two award-winning marketing campaigns, one utilizing AR technology to connect with customers on a social impact level and another that focused on customer experience using a book club. They also delve into the evolution of marketing and how AI is changing its role in content creation. 

Lastly, Steve and Joel emphasize the need to stay creatively curious and continuously learn in this field as well as the value of humility for successful marketing endeavors. 

Tune in for insight into how agencies have adapted over time, how creativity is important in marketing, and how technology has impacted customer expectations.

#marketing #b2b #b2bmarketing #marketingtips #interestingb2bmarketers

Connect with Joel Harrison and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn.

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Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody. This is Steve. Welcome back to interesting B2B marketers, as well as Studio 26. Today's gonna be a really cool show. It's a little bit different in that we are still gonna lead off with case studies, but I'm joined with Joel here today and he's in a unique role because he's actually works for a company called B2B Marketing.

Where they have insight over the entire industry. So I thought that would be a good twist for today's show. So Joel, give us a quick 60-second intro about your background. 

Joel Harrison: Thanks,Steve. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me on the show. So I'm one of the founders of B2B marketing. We're an information services organization focus specifically and purely as the name suggests on B2B marketers. It's a bit of a general name. And the reason for that is that when we launched in 2004, we were a magazine. And having a generic name works very well. It's for masters of a magazine, but when you are in the post magazine, eight is a bit more challenging. So we could call ourselves B2B marketing.net and lots of things in that period. Since 2004, we've run had a magazine until about three years ago, but we've don't do conferences, awards, programs, training, leadership, networking, group advertising and content services. We had a very well known podcast and most recently we launched a community called Prop called props, which is a closed exclusive community for senior client side B2B marketers where they can learn and show, share, and connect and grow, and, and get insight in networking from their peers about what works and how to address common challenges. And that's kind of a 2023 or 2021 when we launched it, version of how to cater for the information needs of today's B2B marketers. And it's really exciting because you are operating in this kind of safe space where they feel they can be candid and talk about the challenges they're facing rather than having to perform a brave face for the world. So yeah, very much passionate about B2B marketing over the years. Yeah. And excited about catering for those needs in a new environment. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Awesome. All right. Good background. This reminds me of years ago I had the chance to be a judge for the Effy Awards. To this day, I have no idea how I was nominated. It was a mystery nomination that came from the sky. But the coolest thing about going through that process was I just spent a day reviewing all these case studies, so I learned so much about different brands. I got to see some results normally that I probably wouldn't have access to just because it's published usually confidentially and. So the reason why I share that story is that your career is so much in a similar vein in that you have access to all this information. You see these award submissions. So today we're gonna focus on two of the award submissions. Man, I'm just gonna have you take it away. Let's jump into the first case study.

Joel Harrison: So I've chosen these particular case studies because they're two of the most successful and most prominent winners from the BT mock team was 2022. We were doing it for 20 years, and it's a great way of identifying. So the best stuff that's going on at b2b, and I'm really flattered and I always love the opportunity to get behind under the skin of what's gray and what's going on. Good in, in B2B marketing, in this very changing world. So the two are chosen for you are really interesting because they're quite traditional in lots of ways because we're in this digital era.

And digital technology seems to be spinning out of control all the time. And new platforms, new techniques. You know, AI has exploded this year and chat GPT and stuff, but these two. Campaigns in their own way are very traditional. The first one is from an international law firm and it's a global organization and it's in a very competitive environment. Lots of content being created and lots of organizations, the seeking to compete with them. So legal services, I dunno if it's the same in the States, but in the UK certainly there were historically, there've been lots of laws or regulations that guide how law firms are allowed to market. And they, and consequently, of all the areas of b2b, Legal has been one of the ones which has been kind of furthest behind. And I think it's partly because of the nature of the relationship, which of the FI earners have the partners have a, have with a, they, they want to own the customer. And so marketing's been the last baier of, you know, the coloring in team, et cetera. Yeah. Which was very much a historic thing in my opinion and all parts of that. But the marketer responsible for marketing in this organization, he said, I know, I know him pretty well. He's got a background in technology and he was he wanted to find a way of improving the. Firms brand awareness. They're not one of the biggest or best stone global firms, or even indeed in London, which is a very, very competitive legal market. And they were looking to get a significant amount of engagement online, but also engage with a number of potential customers directly and get those connected. And in-house lawyers are time pressured people with their big responsibilities lost on their plate. They want to reach them. They also wanted to, as an inevitably happens of the brand awareness campaign these days, is that they did half a mind on themselves as an employer brand because it's a competitive employment market. And so they were thinking about how does this position them, how many the minds of people who are looking at 'em in the future. So this campaign was fantastic because it focused around poetry, which is not something that I've ever really seen before in B2B marketing. So it was quite unique and they invited a diverse set of professional poets to spend time with clients and influencers such as journalists from some of the leading publications. Law students and a youth charity. And there's a number of kind of celebrity poets, including a guy called Brian Belson who is the, what is they refer to as the poet laureate of Twitter. I wasn't aware there was such a thing, but I'll take their word for it on that one.

Steve Goldhaber: Sure. And there is, now, if you claim a title like that, you are now the King.

Joel Harrison: Exactly. If no one else is claiming it, so you're all yours If you grabbed it. And so what they did together is they wrote 16 poems about how the law impacts people uncovering things from diverse range of topic, including things like what it's really like to be involved in a major litigation, why people from less privileged backgrounds are critical to the future of law, the vital role that law plays in the economy. And they even went as far as talk about the laws, the Santa Clause needed to watch out for. So they kind of like, there was some very serious things going on there, some kind of broad minded things, but they were trying to be humorous and fun at the same time. And they were all told, written in the creative video form and you know, and using kind of props and characters like babies and dogs and fire extinguishers and stuff like that to tell 'em.

So they were brought alive, you know, via video. They posted organically on the traditional social media, like YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn and things like that. But they also have some paid inclusions in things like ft.com or the lawyer.com, which in law.com in the UK certainly is a leading legal professional publication.

Very well known. I'm not sure if it's the same in the us. And they sent a limited edition of the books of poems to some key contacts and they were invited to an exclusive poetry, Ben, kind of a skyscraper venue. And the, the in if then invitation itself was written as a poem and guest attendees were invited to have a personalized poem written about them.

And their job and their interests. So it's, it's very lyrical. It's very literary, very unusual. I've never seen anything quite like that in B2B marketing. The size of the budgets for the campaign were not incon not insignificant, but they certainly weren't substantial. There were nothing like what you see for kind of a global high media intensive marketing campaign.

They might see, for example, in the in ache industry. Yeah, and, and that we have a lot of details of results. In the case study because we're, they required to provide that for the awards and they've requested that I can't, I'm not gonna reel them out and one by one because that's confidential. I know we don't know the name of the brand, but still amongst the many achievements, they got three times the number of online impressions they were looking for, and they got seven times the number of the, the target audience actually reached.

They had 110,000 poem reads and it was the most popular event they've ever run. And our legal firms, it's all about FaceTime with their potential customers. And so it's all about events and there are loads of events going on. So how can they make their event more interesting and better? And, and clearly this was huge powerful.

So loads and loads of content on, on various and great results in terms of the activities they did. And that resulted in a 16% of increase in number people who are actually searching for the firm's name on Google. And that's pretty significant, right? Cuz that's people who are seeking around trying to find them and the firm.

It boosted them from being kind of outside the top 20 in terms of the law firms in the UK to being inside the top 10 in terms of the kind of the rankings of legal firms. So it did a significant job on their brand and some of the feedback they got around kind of, which again is anecdotal within non attri, within a non Attri case study, but it's their thing saying things like, yeah, hands up.

Hands down. This is my favorite. Law firm of the year, you smashed debt as a marketing director. Very emotive, very impactful from a league senior legal council. You know, it just changed the game in terms of what people expect from legal services marketing, and it's all credit to the team responsible because, you know, they didn't see.

Convention is being restriction and they wanted to do things which were emotive and and crazy. So really exciting. And the judges just loved it. Absolutely loved it. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, legal is a category that all you could imagine is like conservatism just in the hallways of these law firms.

And it's nice that they also found a way. You know, so many times the challenge of creating a great marketing campaign is getting that consensus, right? There's the idea and then the, can we actually approve it? You know, can the key. People at the firm approve it. And I feel like this was such a unique place.

If you were doing a regular thought leadership, you know, it would be scrutinized, maybe watered down, but I think going into this area of poetry was just such a nice, freeing approach to the campaign. Yeah.

Joel Harrison: You see that so often. The creativity though, is at the heart of what they wanted to do originally just gets watered down and diluted to the point where it's unrecognizable and the impact is removed from it.

So credit to them, cuz I don't think that it was an easy sell either having Berg, anecdotally, some other people involved, but they got there and they did it and it worked. And you know, all power. To them Cause it's inspirational stuff.

Steve Goldhaber: I assume that you get to judge some of these awards, right? Are you sitting on like the team that reviews them?

Joel Harrison: I don't judge. I don't get involved for objective sake because often these campaigns are by agencies and I know some of the agencies are friends and some of the agencies are advertisers and it's not appropriate for me to be in the room. And that means that other awards night when they chase me around the room and go, why haven't I won? I can objectively say I wasn't in the rooms. It's not, that's alright. You don't wanna.

Steve Goldhaber: That's right. That is funny. I do remember, I've won some awards over the years for companies I've worked at and going to the, like, you always wanna know why, why did we get second place? I wanna know under, you know, and you just can't win that battle. All right. Awesome. I like that case study. Let's jump into the second one.

Joel Harrison: .Okay. So the second one is a campaign again, did very, very well in the awards one, two categories. And this campaign, again, I'm not gonna tell you as agreed who the, what the name of the company is, but this brand is a technology company and it's a household, it's not just a B2B, well-known B2B tech company.

It's very well known B2C as well. And many people will use it on a daily basis on their desktop. So I'm, you know, I'm narrowing it down to a handful of companies. So this company, and this is again, has a traditional component to it, and this company's very well known for not only doing incredible digital marketing, but also enabling incredible digital marketing through their technology, their services they provide.

They're a Marsha pioneer and the people you expect to be at the forefront, but at the same time, yeah, this was done. On the back end of the pandemic in an environment where events were still quite hard because, you know, I think we we're probably a bit more back in the groove with events. Although I understand the states it's probably possibly a bit slower in the UK because of the geography of of the US as a place to get on a plane and go to places.

But this was a campaign sought to try and increase the kind of engagement you get around events. Not only outta the event, but also in the buildup and in the kind of the long tail afterwards as well. And it wanted to encapsulate the brands'. Value proposition and also one of their core areas of focus, which is customer experience, which I, if I'm not giving too much away, and they're looking for a mechanism that would do that.

And also obvious they want to enable sales and they wanted to kind of encourage people to gauge with the organizations and the messages and to consume, to learn more about this from the couple of the core messages. And in a kind of a, an in-depth way, but an engaging way. You know, we've all had enough white, white papers, right?

So what they created was a book club, and they recruited well an author who'd done, who's done a lot of work on the particular, Topic in question and the aim was to, and they also leveraged one of their own internal people to be responsible for this. The aim was to get to engage existing executives who were existing customers, but also to rework and dorm accounts and, you know, build new opportunities with secret, top level senior clients.

And I wanted to do something creative and outta the ordinary, which kind of stood out. Because we've just got to this, there's a degree of digital washing, you know, where stuff washes over you after a while, so they wanna do something different. So they had a book club and they organized it around 250 page book on this topic of customer experience, which is again, a really compelling topic in, in marketing in a B2B particularly as well.

And they wanted to kind of encourage you to read that and to digest the learnings and the and the nuances of that as relatively common. They took the kind of call messages and do and, and whittled them down to. Kind of snackable bits of content and they, they delivered in different formats, in different ways of create of delivery.

These aspects were delivered through multiple different channels, both before the event, you know, on stage when the event was actually running live and then afterwards as well. You know, lots of stuff that was going on There were, there was kind of physically sent the book to people. There did podcasts, they did email marketing, packaging, print, social media.

All kinds of things were delivered to kind of get across the message, both during and after. And then they had video highlights to show the kind of the key aspects of what was going on. So if they really. Understood the power of big event they were gonna have. But this was designed to augment that, but also bring it back to a tangible, physical, real world thing and do something that was unexpected.

And I think a book is probably not quite as brave as poetry, but at the same time, you know, these things aren't cheap and they, they require some kind of commitment. So it was a 14 week campaign and, you know, they kind of like consider all aspects of it and to try to work out how it, how it leveraged across.

Different areas, different audiences, and touch difference, different information consumption needs. In the UK there was the event, which was the focus of this leveraged a, a very well known TV presenter slash personality to bring the event alive. The vendor was, the focus of the whole campaign was a live virtual event leveraging not only of the author of the book, but also a very well known TV news and current affairs presenter with a, whose kind of funny, humorous personality called Steph McGovern.

Was she. I don't know if you're in the uk, but she's a great host cause she's got some enthusiasm and she's quite unconventional in in various ways. And yeah, they'd leveraged the book at EV every stage and really brought to life Lou Lost Technology, deliver it, and it was very powerful in terms of the kind of the impact.

The budget was surprisingly modest for this. Brand, which I say is a household name because the core results is around generation of MQs and they overachieved their target by 60% and they had significant number of engagements on social media and kind of all aspects of what they were doing. So it was very, very successful and, and it just demonstrates to me that as we become more and more digitally orientated, having something offline that engages people but and compliments that digital real world channel mix is  really powerful.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. You know, it's interesting, this case study in the last, when I look back at the themes between the two of them, it has to do with courage. And a lot of brands are not comfortable taking a risk like this and, and you could say, well, it's a book. It's not that risky. We've been doing books for a while.

But I think just using that as like the definitive moment where most campaigns would just be that, well, it's all, they're digital assets. We can turn them up and down and play with them around. But when you're anchoring it in a book or an event, I think it's just, it ups the stakes. But then also from the customer experience, you now know how to focus.

You know, like you now have your attention. I mean, that's the beauty of an event is it happens on a day and you have to rearrange your schedule to attend the event. And if you can't, then you can also, you know, you can capture all that content and replay it. But I like how this case study also kind of did the unconventional and the power of giving someone a book.

Right. I've never seen someone take a book and throw it in the trash can. Like, even if that happens, they will, out of just courtesy, let it sit on their desk for a couple weeks and then maybe say, all right, I'm not reading this book. But you have someone's attention for a couple weeks cuz every day they're going in and they're seeing that book on their desk.

Joel Harrison: And I think, and that's absolutely right and I think finding that mix where the physical and the digital in harmony and compliment each other and, you know, it's one on one equals three is, is so powerful. Just another example that I heard of. Last week where not to go do a full case study, but there was a DM piece that someone was sending and they were part of it was a piece of a kind of a desk toy, but they can only afford to send so many when they had the audience of a thousand let's say, and they're gonna support to send a hundred or something.

And what they realized is they could send a digital version as an ftp, which is actually amazing cuz it's the first time I've heard of a B2B application for ftp. So that's something unique and special and so I think that's exciting and it's the stretching, the credibility and the possibilities of what technology can do and yeah, stuff like that's really exciting.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Have you seen the awards. Over the years, you know, and like you said, you're not judging them, but you have access to all these awards. What are some of the themes that you're seeing of the people who tend to do really well, not just from a, we won the award, but here's the business impact as a result of the campaign. What are some of the themes that you see?

Joel Harrison: Well, I think what does well with the judges that they like seeing something different because marketers, it feels to me, all want to feel like we're creative and pushing the boundaries. And the reality, as you said earlier on, is that quite often we're not really able to as much as we might like.

So the judges will already resonate doing something different. You know, I've gotta be honest, sometimes, When you have something that's really different, the results don't necessarily back it up, but it was the best strategy in terms of kind of demonstrable results, things like MQs, but sometimes those things just don't align particularly brilliantly.

But I applaud anybody to try new channels, and I think the halo effect you get around stuff like that, pushing the boundaries is brilliant. I think there is a way of having your cake and eating into an extent where you'd have some of the more workman-like tools. You have the more kind of creative end of the spectrum as well, which can make a difference and make your campaign and your brand stand out, not just to a marketing audience, but to your, to an audience of marketers, but to an audience of your customers, which obviously is the only one that really counts.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. And I do like that strategy of, hey, we can only send a hundred things out. And I've had, in my career a couple times, I've, I've sat next to the cmo, this is earlier on in my career, and I say this because purely the amount of large scale mailings that the CMOs will get, it was like every week it was almost like a contest of like, all right, sometimes it's food.

Sometimes I, you know, the traditional. People would send mannequins with like arms and legs saying like, they'd given arm and a leg to work with us. Right. So like after you see like the third or fourth leg coming through, you're like, oh geez, this is, this is not that original.

Joel Harrison:  Yeah. It's like one thing to go, okay, I'm really gonna do this. I'm gonna commit to doing something that's gonna catch someone's attention. But you've gotta be clear that it's not just expensive.

Steve Goldhaber: It's actually good. All right, Joel. So those were some great case studies. Thank you for sharing those. We're now gonna switch over to the second part of the show, which is getting to know more about you as a marketer in terms of like how you got started.

So give us a quick understanding of your first gig and how you found it.

Joel Harrison: Well, massive spoiler alert. I'm not actually a marketer. I'm a journalist. Who, who writes about marketing? So how far bad do you wanna go? My, my dad was a Dragon marketer in the eighties and nineties. I worked for agencies, people like The Urban, which I think Chicago agencies I suspect, suspect you know them quite well and Rs C G and Wunderman and people like that.

And so Marketing Guess is kinda in the blood, but I wanted to be a journalist getting publishing. I. And so I worked at, did journalism or university do or part-time, then left, graduated, and was working for companies and was talking with a friend of mine about who became a professional marketer and, Hey, wouldn't we great to set up a company by ourselves?

Great. What would it be? And we had this crazy idea and discussing things, and we hit on the idea of B2B marketing because it was in the uk, in Europe, it was completely underserved. This is back in the mid nineties. In the US It's been a re professional, mature industry For a really long time in the uk, it really, really wasn't.

It was kind of poor relation and ignored, and underserved, all those kind of things. And so we had this crazy idea, let's launch a magazine. What a great idea. And then we did that. And then, yeah, my experience in marketing has been as an observer, Of marketing and of marketers passionate about it, interested in it and, and I kind of know a lot about it, but not in the kind of executional kind of role, but it becomes, it is endlessly fascinating.

Kind of a lifelong study, I suppose.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Well, you know, you mentioned Wonderman. I'm gonna share some useless personal trivia with you. Here is one of my first jobs out after college. I was doing some direct marketing and I got invited to this conference and I knew nothing about the history of the direct marketing or anything like that at the time.

And the speaker was Lester Wonderman. He was in his seventies and he got up there and gave like a very traditional state of the union on the industry. And someone sitting next to me was like, you have no idea. Like this guy's experience is incredible. Like he is one of the founders of it. So I, I, looking back, I was very fortunate to kind of, I hear his perspective very late in his career. You know, it, it was, it was great. 

Joel Harrison: Those people, those kind of interest agency founders are, I mean this, the whole, obviously the whole Mad Men thing was done about them. Lesser the direct marketing world, but they're fascinating personalities. Yeah. And kind of bombastic, creative.

He was an era. Right. And so lots to learn from them or possibly somewhere is not left. There was some bad behavior that went with it.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, I mean, in many ways, like what they were doing with the power of writing really powerful. Whether it was a print ad, direct response, or an, you know, like an outside envelope for a mailing like that was really, I think when the industry was like, wow, writing can be incredibly powerful.

Like you can build a business. With amazing headlines and, you know, the traditional sales letter because, you know, you couldn't transac online or years and years ago it was catalog driven. So like, if you can make a very compelling pitch and a letter and a catalog, great, like you were all good to go.

Joel Harrison:  I think it's hard for us now to think ourselves back into the place where we didn't have this incredibly fragmented media picture that we do now.

And the things like advertising. One of the, the very few games in town advertising was one in direct marketing was another exhibition to another, and there was a book that I stumbled across about eight years ago, which was about, The world of industrial musicals, and there's this fascinating book that's been published about in the, in the sixties and seventies and kind of into the eighties, but I think it tailed off then.

People like Ford and Massey Ferguson used to produce musicals for their sales kickoff events where they'd have people from Broadway shows writing musicals about tractors, and you, it like, it's mind boggling. Oh my god, now. But it was a real thing. And I've actually got a family friend who was, who was in the music industry and, and she works on some of those things.

But sometimes you have to remind yourself of how much communications have changed and how spoiled we are, but also how challenged we are in terms of the tile. But to your point, you, you really focus your creativity to be really make those immediate, those channels sing and get the best out of them. And, and the purity of the creativity that was used that was, is phenomenal.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, you think about the modern day webinar, not that hard to pull off. So you could appreciate when a full musical is happening. That's great. I mean, one thing I also want to touch, you know what's fascinating about your background is you're an observer and you've observed the agency world, the client world, the provider world, whether it's like data companies or ad platforms.

What has it been like to sit in the middle of that and you know, some people are like, you know, Hey, I've always been a client. I've always been an agency. You probably have an amazing, well-rounded background. And you can kind of look at something and kind of shake your head at it with a little bit more skepticism sometimes. Describe what that's like.

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Joel Harrison:  Well, it's been fascinating to watch it unfold. I mean, when we launched, you know, there was a really, wasn't much of a community in the, in the UK as I say, because there wasn't anything to coalesce around. Now we've got this situation whereby there is kind of 150, 200 BTB agencies here and there's a lot of consolidation going on.

Well then to your point, you've also had the kind of supply side as change by recognition. You had the data companies, the experience and the DMVs who are still around, but they've massively diminished in terms of their kind of dominance, should we say. They're not insig, they're significant, they're less dominant, and you've had this explosion, Marek, and so, and that was an incredible change to experience to go through to see.

The likes of Qua and Marketo emerge, and then on the coattails of that, I guess you could probably say Salesforce first, but that was more sales platform first obvi and still is, but mm-hmm. But significant for marketers as well to watch. So watch the Marketo's Eliquis emerge, evolve and transform what we think of.

And then all of these different platforms come on their coattails and it's changed the game. It's injected so much energy and dynamism and money into the whole game. And that's great. It raises the stakes and it's professionalized marketing. It has complicated things as well because tech vendors are greatest selling tech and sometimes it's not always.

The answers to your problems. In fact, a lot of times it's not necessarily the answer to your problems, but it's been a real, you know, I feel privileged to have seen the changes that I've seen and there's no side of it slowing down. I think arguably we're going into a bigger transformation than ever, which has been kind of fueled partly by, in the wake of Covid and now the kind of cost of living crisis that we're certainly seeing over here.

And this. Ongoing change in buyer behavior and what they want, and what they need, and what they expect. So it's endlessly fascinating and, and I, and I don't have enough hours of day to write about it or study or seek to kind of communicate it, but it's a great, a wonderful industry to be involved with.

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Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Let's go back 20 years, right? So the traditional structure of a client, And then agency. You know, the agency was very much in the middle and the agency controlled media relationships. Now as you discussed, you know, MarTech and its growth over the years, MarTech is kind of in there, right? So like MarTech has a seat at the table, the agency has a seat at the table.

Sometimes the MarTech is driving the agency, others. They go the other way around. So I, I'd love your perspective on, from the agency's perspective, what type of innovation have you seen? Whether it's like just different offerings, like how has the agency evolved and the ones that are doing a good job of it, how are they positioning themselves with a more complex ecosystem that you need to, to be a b to meet marketer today?

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Joel Harrison: I mean, there's alot of different answers to that because there's a lot of different. Flavors of in agency in terms of how they position themselves and what they do. I think that, as you say, rolling back 20 years, a lot of what you had not sure of the same in the States or North America as it was in the uk, but all the agencies didn't have a degree of confidence in terms of their particularly dealing with global brands in terms of their.

Kind of ownership of the client and of the, the communication strategy. They were kind of third or fourth tier at a party of lots of different providers. That's changed. You know, you have B2B agencies very much in the forefront because of the nature of the transaction and the competency of the agency.

There's the two things that kind of aligned together. You've had some agencies and one of the things we had until recently, which again, is starting to change now, is very much a focus on the on on lead generation. And then too often to the exclusion of anything, any conversation around brand. We're starting to see that pivot back a bit now and there's lots of reasons for that.

I, some of them good, but some of them bad as well. And partly of just around, as I said, the kind of buyer journey and the kind of, you know, the rise of account based marketing and is it an MQL worth anything? Anyway, you know, there's probably podcast series in its own. And, and different agencies have found different ways to position themselves in and around that challenge.

You know, a b m is, feels like, was, felt like it could have been a flash in the pan five years ago. It's still here. And a huge amount of investment from the benefit side. Mm-hmm. And the agency side as well. The kind of, I think that we're seeing you also seeing some agencies. Kind of very much specialized in the technology and disappeared down that kind of rabbit hole as it were.

You know, you're seeing some agencies very much starting to understand the kind of brand challenge much more and, and align with that and deal with the fact that the kind of nature of communications is changing. Things like influencer marketing coming in. So there are lots of different answers to it and agencies have been very nimble and fleet of foot and I think it's, to their credit, I think they are the reason I love talking to agencies cause they're the barometer for the health of the industry.

Yeah. If agencies are doing well, agencies are thriving and growing. Then you know that the industry as well because that's where, where spend their money. But I think one of your points, sorry I'm going on a bit, but one of the points you made earlier also is around the centrality to the relationship and what, what you see increasingly is the amount of marketing activity.

It's less so now, but there's a lot more marketing within the function with actually being executed by the larger marketing team themselves and the agency roles pivoted and, and, and changed slightly. I know. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. And technology is enabler to do that. So at the same time, the agency agency model is still growing. So agencies sector is still growing. So it's ongoing evolution and one's great to watch.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah, the in-house agency is fascinating, right? Like it was 20 years ago, it wasn't really a thing, but now you have to make that decision as a client. You know, do I, you know, especially the brands that are more content driven, is it better to hire these writers?

And say, Hey, we've hired three, five writers and we know that they can produce this and they'll get to know our brand more intimately so the work would get better. Do you still see companies struggling with this? Do we insource, do we outsource? You know, and, and I would say part of that discussion is the CMO making a recommendation, but oftentimes it really is a C F O or c e o driven thing where they say, look, you're spending x million.

With an agency, you know, we could save 40% if we just bring that in-house. Right. So like as you observe those things play out, what are some of the themes that you've seen?

Joel Harrison:  Well, I think one of the things to say about that point is given the mind, the per the climate we've got now, whereby there's a few challenges, a few economic headwinds going on, and often you're getting CFOs.

Striving to drive cost reductions and sometimes the, the ops opposite is happening. They're thinking, let's lose headcount, let's outsource more. So even though it's a long-term challenge, it's something which ticks a particular box in the short term. So, you know, you may see agencies better profiting from that environment.

And I've forgot the crux of your central question. Can you remind me the crux of the question? Cuz I've obsessed my answer there now.

Steve Goldhaber: It is just where that insourcing or outsourcing, you know, like you said, is it economically driven? Is it, you know, no, this brand has made a commitment. To original content and we can't get that through an agency.

We have to hire the writers themselves like, and two, it's like, I'm sure it's just sometimes it's right to do it, and then three years later you may say, we're not doing enough innovation. You know, like we're just heads down producing content, but there's no interesting idea. Yeah. So the question was really just around like, As that ball shifts, what are the different factors that, you know, a company would tend to say, ah, you know what, it's time to shake up our approach.

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Joel Harrison: And I do think that a lot of it depends on the status of the organization, what the organizations are trying to achieve. For example, if it's going over ipo, it might be focused more on its brand or some, you know, they're looking at through that particular lens as you, you know, you, you again made a very good point there about the, yeah, the role of the challenge, about getting stuck in a groove and not being able to innovate, and that's, Where agencies are brilliant because they've got that thinking baked into who they are.

You know, I think we're seeing a greater sense of brand voice and brand purpose and organizations having to kind of build that themselves, which is great. That doesn't mean there's no role for the agency in that they often can help set things up or, or run certain aspects of it. But there's so much podcast explosion speaks to this, doesn't it?

You know, then the proliferation of podcasts and and from brands is demonstrative of the, an understanding of the importance of this kind of brand voice, and that is, That's something which, because you can outsource, but it plays very well as part of your internal voice. And then also the kind of challenge of creating sales ready materials.

You know, having that proximity into the sales function to be able to do that, which is to get harder for an agency to do so. Yeah, there are lots of factors involved with it, and it does tend to be cyclical as you say. But I do think that organizations benefit from having the capacity to do at least a degree of this work internally because it provides objectivity and something for.

Agencies to critique rather than just seeking to offload towards them. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I wanna touch on change now. So I've been in the business over 20 years now, and hands down tech changes. It will continue to change. Right. Besides tech though, I sometimes get this perspective of, you know what, nothing has changed.

It's still buyers with problems. There are strategies, whether that's, you know, a pricing strategy, a marketing strategy. Maybe I'm trying to recruit you with this question, like, is it true that yes, the strategies are all the same. It's really just the toolbox that has changed over the years. Do you believe in that or is it no, like the technology has enabled strategies, you know, whether it might be retargeting doing account-based marketing more seamlessly.

I'd love to get your perspective online and just change looking back over your career.

Joel Harrison:  Well, I see it's a great question. It all comes down to the customer. Has the customer changed? I think the customer has changed. And I think there's definitely a collision between technology being created and shifting expectations, and then expectations changing on the part of the bay.

The two things kind of smash together all the time. And then you have demographics changing as well. You know who five years ago, oh, I don't even know TikTok even existed, but we certainly wouldn't have been considering as a PTB marketing channel. So new facts. New, you know, market, come on board. You know, the kind of critical nature in terms of the difference between B2B and B2C is the engagement with the role of sales and sales was hugely challenged in the pandemic and it shifted, I think, an accelerated a change in buyer expectations in terms of how it engage with salespeople dramatically and required sales to come to market and go help.

I need to help. How do I do this? How do I work these new channels? Yeah. And that's been marketers. It's been a positive thing for marketing. I don't think we're gonna go back to what we were before. Even though meetings, physical meetings are possible, but that has a dramatic impact on what gets done to whom and when, and what the expectations are.

So the crux of it, the problem with the channels are still the same. Right? We need to sell more stuff, but at the same time, the live scan, which you're doing, it, is changing all the time.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. It's funny. I do wanna touch on what you said about the pandemic, because I look at that as. It was almost like a renaissance of marketing.

It had nothing to do with technology, right? It was the same technology a year before the pandemic started. Yet now there was a need for it. It was fascinating for me, like in the early stage of my career, I always felt our ideas were bigger than the tech. And today the tech really doesn't limit you in what you're doing.

I mean, I'm sure there's some limitations, but like it's rare that you find yourself in a meeting and saying, great idea, but we did. There's no way to execute it. And I'm curious as like, where do you go from here? Like, are you ever gonna face a limitation? I mean, I certainly, you know, privacy, gdpr, like there are things there that you can't cross the line on, but do you see it just being so much easier for marketers to get things done?

Joel Harrison: I think one of the problems is the tyranny of choice. There are so many platforms, there are so many ways to do things that it becomes challenging to know which way to go. So that's, that just presents a different iteration. The same problem. But just to your point before around explosion and functionality and the were tour, were the tours the same?

Some of them were, man, six Zoom. Existed before we all became addicted to it. I mean, you, one of your questions you asked have asked is what's your be marketing tour? I think it's Zoom because I just use it like all the time. And in my role, I'm not executing execution. There's another way actually, which I've pull on, but that was there.

But what we'd also saw on the same time was the explosion and functionality of the event marketing platforms. You know, like you've saw people who, who've been in the round mm-hmm. Been around for 20 years, like on 24 just going. Bananas and other companies coming all the time, like hop in, they're not allowed to use to use the names, but they've exploded in terms of their usage and you can saw the map funding they were getting as well.

It was just extraordinary. So I think that there was a definite inva streak of innovation going on there. But I do think we also see, I mean some of the platforms which we have used, which I won't name, you sometimes see functional challenges where you have to try and go, well, we need to try and hack that.

We can't do what we think we should be able to do, so we need to find a way of doing something which is equivalent. So I think there's an element of of hacking that still kind of goes on, at least in my experience. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I'm gonna take us to the unknown. The crystal ball AI is just kind of torn up the headlines for the last couple months I've experiment with with ai.

I think there's a ton of applications. I think people are quick to just automatically assume, oh, content creation. That's what AI is. And I think that's just such a small part of it. I think there's way more on the research and the insight and automation side of ai. That's interesting. But we'd love to get your perspective on ai.

What are you seeing as far as like real use cases besides the, the more comical, you know, I asked it to do this and it came up with this little funny thing, like how are you seeing AI change the role of the marketer?

Joel Harrison:  I mean, in all kinds of ways, and I guess the real power of it is just in terms of its proliferation and it's ubiquity across all platforms because, I dunno if you've seen this Steve, but it felt like.

About three or four years ago, you'd go, vendors would be going, and our solution is powered by ai. And that is if you go, oh, well if now you said that I'm gonna buy it, I wasn't before, but now you said that I'm definitely gonna buy it. And then, then they kind of stopped doing that because everyone was doing that and there was no commercial advantages to it because it seems like I.

Any marketing technology solution of its all is gonna have AI or machine learning somewhere in meeting its objectives and graduals empowering and augmenting and improving what we can do with it. So it's just fascinating to have got to this point where chat GTP explodes, everyone goes, oh my God, let's just forget everything.

We knew it's here, we're all gonna, it's the robot apocalypse, you know, we're all gonna get taken over and things like that. But, you know, on a, on a more minor level, you know, you've seen things like AI involved in stuff like Chatbox, which I think is actually quite. Profoundly transformational, but in a subtle way in terms of you're starting to see this kind of focus on websites as data capture mechanisms, you know, starting to kind of bleed away, whereas you're actually going and it's all about the change in the buyer because the buyer wants to go to the website and get an answer the question as quickly as possible.

They don't wanna have to fill informed, download something they know, they know, they don't understand the nature of the transaction. They just wanna get served the right thing as fast as possible. And AI or machine learning has been doing that job for quite a few years now. It's nothing particularly new in that.

So definitely we're gonna see that. I do think, you know that my understanding the output, Steve, you've probably seen this. The output you get is from content creation. Is is all right. Probably better. A lot of marketing out there, but it's definitely not brilliant. Would it get better? I'm sure it will, but it's the analysis of data, which seems to be where you hope that it would generate more advances.

But we've still gotta be interpreted by somebody and I don't think it's at that point where it can do that. And then applied in particular places and that's where the human touch is still. I said that will be for a while. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, I'm with you. Then. I think that the model for AI that works is it's a model that the content creator embraces.

It, knows when to use it, knows when to not, and kind of like, I'll use an analogy here, right? It's the art and science of content is like an ice sculpture. You start with a block. And you have a vision in your head and you like, oh, I know I can create this. I've done this before. So here I go, I'm gonna start using tools.

And you get to a point where you say, well, how can I do this faster and get the same outcome? Or how do I design something that I couldn't do before knowing I might be able to get better data? So I, I think everyone is in this big debate right now. Are you winner out? You know, are you pro ai? Are you anti ai?

I don't think that's the winning argument. I think. You have to embrace it and just know when to use it because you know, it is so powerful. I would even do things like this, like I may have work that I'm creating and you know, let's say I'm doing a subject line and I will say, all right, generate 50 different subject lines that do X, Y, and Z.

And I will say like, I think I got a really good subject line. Can AI beat it? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And it's not a jury trial where you have to say like, Nope. AI's not working. It's kind of like, I tried it this time, it was amazing. I'm gonna go with it. You know? And there's always a good healthy amount of skepticism with, with technology.

I did a po, it's kind of funny, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see that there'll be a good rant every now and then on there. It's my therapy when I just talk to talk to LinkedIn and it went something like this. It said, stop sitting on the sidelines when it comes to AI and tech. If you're skeptical.

That's fine, but you cannot be skeptical on the sidelines. You need to roll up your sleeves and play around with it, have an opinion, and then go out and tell me why it's bad or why it's good. And I think that, you know, there's so few people who are actually in it and playing with it. Maybe not with the jy, you know, the, the chat G P T stuff is a little bit more easily accessible.

Yeah. You know, you can start in two minutes with an account. What are your thoughts on that? Like what is the right model? As it relates to like AI and marketing?

Joel Harrison:  Well, I still think if you've got a problem, you've got a marketing challenge that you believe technology can address or your first port of course to Google it.

And you'll get then, or possibly if you'll be particularly exhausted, you can go to Scott Brinkers, Mar Tech Martin, try and research all the possible million 9,000 solutions that no one's got the time to do that apart from Scott. So, and what you'll get back is a load of solutions and they're probably saying in the Google script says, powered by AI Ryan, you'll go fine.

But you know, I think be an idiot to say, I'm, that one says AI in the fifth word, rather than the. 21st word, so I'm gonna go with the first one. You know, it's like, it's part of a compelling set of reasons about why you would use me platform, and I think AI in content creation is clearly as you just brilliant.

The evidence of the opportunity to use that and really nicely augmenting what you're doing rather than taking over what you're doing or re or retiring what you do. There's opportunities all the way down the kind of the stack. But you know, at the same time, we've gotta remember as in content as a particularly, you know, we've still got scenarios where in sales teams.

Marketing producing content that the sales team just aren't using. They're using their PowerPoint deck from three years ago, which is off brand, and they don't even look at it anymore. But that's the one they quite like because they can sell to it easily. So, you know, it doesn't, you don't necessarily need to be embracing all these new AI won't help you with that problem.

I think that's what I'm, that's what I'm getting at. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. You know, the other view of AI was, which is, this is a little bit more maybe of like the evil utopian society is if you think AI is powerful, now you have no idea what the real AI can do, because the theory goes something like this is there's something way more powerful than what's been publicly released.

And the only reason why they released that was because, oh, there's something better and we're holding onto it. We're using that for the really proprietary stuff. Who knows, it's more conspiracy theory oriented. But the, it is kind of fascinating to say, it has been proliferated by, you know, companies like OpenAI, and that's what's really fascinating is the, in five years, what does it look like?

Yeah. And I think there's also implications for, you know, today's world. It's fine because you have a generation of marketers who know how to do what the, you know, I don't wanna say the old way, but like, they understand the process, the sourcing, the validation of facts, and they can live in this old world and new world.

The real fear of mine is five, 10 years from now when you have new marketers, brand new in their job, they're not gonna, you know, the art of it isn't gonna be taught necessarily. Maybe that's the role of college, but what are your thoughts on like the longer term implications for newer folks in this industry?

I'm sure they're good and bad things from it, but do you have a similar fear? Do you have other concerns about long-term effects of ai?

Joel Harrison: I think that you don't have to. Necessary pin to technology. I mean, a process has changed. Technology changes and drives, changes behavior, and means that we focus on some skills and forget others.

Some of the things which, some of the disciplines, which I remember lamenting 10 years ago, some of the disciplines which people would've learned in the nineties were no longer understood, and they were regarded as foundational. But marketing hasn't stopped, and I don't think it's necessarily a worse as well.

I do believe it's actually much better, which is. Our foundational skills have become slightly different and I am sure that your right AI is gonna continue to evolve and change. I'm sure that that's true. I wouldn't not gonna claim to behalf of an expert to be able to tell you what that's gonna mean, but I think that the opportunity is there for marketers to leverage and to be as successful as they as they can be.

You know? And I think there is no point sitting in the corner and kind of fearing for the future, and you've gotta just get on with it and embrace it and, and utilize this energy as it is at the moment and take opportunities that are there. Otherwise, if you don't do the next person well.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. I'm gonna ask one more question before we wrap up, and it has to do with, you know, your advice to the marketing community out there as it relates to the best way to be informed, to be educated, to learn from others.

What do you think the best balance is to do that? You know, like how often should they be, you know, doing, whether it's networking or attending webinar? Going to certain websites for the folks who you feel are like, these are the people who really are dialed into the industry. What are they doing better than other people?

Joel Harrison: I think that we've all got a juicy, I mean, I think one of the things I say when I speak to marketing teams is one of the critical things that you have to do is to be creatively curious and just to kind of see what's, to keep seeing what's over the horizon, to keep looking at what's going on. Because as you, to your point earlier on, you get so easily stuck into a wrap where this works.

We're just about well enough, so I'll keep doing it. How do you learn. It's all of the things that you said. It's about understanding. It's about going to conferences regularly or, or at least a couple times a year, and getting your head out of what you're doing and looking at what's going on and be challenged and inspired, or at least have your expectations or your thinking affirmed that that's valuable as well.

But it's the inspiration going to those things which makes a difference. Work out people who. You think are interesting? Follow them on social media, read their books, you know, read their social feeds, you know, and I also think that one thing that's critical is not just about proactive or reactively consuming.

I really think that the best, the marketers that I know that are most effective are the ones that go out of their way to spend time, to communicate back and to build their own voice and to communicate their knowledge. They're learnings, they're, and they're, they're ignorance as well. If they don't know something, it's great to say, I don't know it, or, I wants to answer this question.

So, you know, we feel that community intelligence is a critical part of. Success in marketing, whether it's within our platform or more generally in things like LinkedIn. That's really, really powerful. And, you know, we we're, we're increasingly seeing that a mechanism to drive better results because we have the ability to access that information and those insights from our peers in a way that probably never did before.

And yet it's, and it's so powerful. So all of those things together, you know, learning in a structured fashion, taking training is also important. We've gotta keep learning, taking, having more ad hoc things, engaging with our customers, being in the office, if you ca you've got an office is important. All of the above.

And finding your. People who you admire and you aspire to it, you respect and following those people is really important. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Awesome. I love it. I love the themes of curiosity. I, I do think curiosity is, you know, when I interview folks to work with curiosity is really hard to teach and some people are just, it's in their brains and they want to figure things out and they like, to your point, they have the humility to say, I don't know.

I think the most productive meetings I've ever been in is where, You hear, I don't know, several times, like it's less posturing or speaking in jargon. It's just someone saying, great question. I have no idea. You know, how do we answer that question?

Joel Harrison:  And one of the things I hear time and time again from CMOs is how do I get my team to think differently? I want 'em to be challenging themselves, and it's so important. So being able to admit that you don't know something, or not being afraid to ask the obvious question. As a journalist, that's a critical skill. Yeah. And you go, you ask me and then pre-AP knows what would it, what would advice would I give myself?

And it's just, don't never be afraid to ask that question. Cause if you are thinking of charts as somebody else's thinking, you or the person talking hasn't probably knows they haven't explained it well enough. Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: All right. Awesome. Well, Joel, thank you for your time. I really enjoyed having you on the show today and for everyone out there, thanks for tuning into Studio 26 and listening to another episode of interesting B2B marketers.

Take care, everyone. Thanks. Thank you.

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