Episode 44: Establishing New Categorization and Humanizing Technology | Jamie Gier

In this episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers podcast, Steve and Jamie Gier, Chief Marketing Officer of DexCare, discussed a variety of topics including building a new category in the healthcare technology industry, humanizing technology for branding purposes, marketing lessons from their past experiences, current changes in marketing and the qualities they look for in B2B marketers. 

They also talked about the importance of establishing a personal board of directors in order to gain insight and feedback from experienced professionals. Their conversation provided valuable insights into the world of B2B marketing. 

Connect with Jamie Geier and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn.

Transcript

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Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Studio 26 and the interesting B2B Marketers podcast. I am excited about the show today. Jamie, welcome to the show you. 

Jamie Gier: I'm happy to be here with you. 

Steve Goldhaber: All right, so cool. Before we jump into the case studies today, give us a quick overview of your background.

Jamie Gier: Jamie Geier. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for DexCare.

I have 25 years in this profession, primarily in B2B SaaS companies, PE backed all the way to Fortune 500. I consider myself a growth marketer. I tend to enjoy the companies that are on that high growth trajectory and in helping to feel that for them.

Steve Goldhaber: Awesome. I love growth marketing. I mean, it's been around as a term in the industry for maybe like eight, 10 years or so, but I love it.

I love it that it's just a, it's a grounding term that. That's connected to the business as opposed to maybe the traditional CMO role, which was all about the advertising and the brand. So I'm, I'm glad you embraced that. Okay. So, First case study. This is gonna be all about the value of experiential marketing and creating physical experiences, so go ahead and take it away.

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Jamie Gier: First case study. I was working for a Fortune 500 company with and very long sales cycle, multi-million dollar product. And it's not something that you can just sell online. And at the time, digital was only getting started, but that wasn't a way to sell in this industry was healthcare tech. We were trying to figure out a way to really showcase the value of our enterprise system, and the best way to do that was to actually show it in its real environment, but that wasn't very practical in this case.

Walking into a hospital and being able to demonstrate your technology across the various departments. So we actually created a replica hospital that was mobile. And yes, as we tried to do, we tried to be where our customers are and we took it on the road. And it was a combination of bringing in actual employees who played actors.

And at this time we had hired a number of physicians and nurses and pharmacists who decided to join the commercial side of their profession. And so they actually played roles. But we basically created a replica of the health system and we scripted it. So it was largely a day in the life of a patient based on different scenarios.

So whether they're entering into the emergency department and then they get triaged to the I C U. But it was a day in the, in the life of the condition that they're being treated for, but how technology was supporting all of the clinicians. And it became very, very popular because it was mobile. So we ended up taking it to trade shows.

We took it to really fun event locations, but it was a way for us to really demonstrate the value. Yeah. Based on the replica of the environment that people would be using our software. And it was a novel idea. You didn't really see that in our industry so much so that when we were doing business with the National Health Service in the UK and they saw this.

At that time, they were deploying Nationwide electronic medical records, and they saw this and they went, oh my gosh, we want to replicate this to show to our own community, medical community what we're trying to undertake here. Because it was a, a very big initiative to roll out a, a nationwide e M R system.

They loved it. And when we would take people through the tour, they could imagine themselves actually in that role. But we did it based on the value that we're providing to the providers, to the health system and to the patients.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. So, all right, I gotta. I gotta jump into logistics, which is not normally my background, but now I'm fascinated with how do you do this?

Do you have like four semi-trucks and you just unload it and build it or give us a, like, help us visualize what the whole thing looked like. 

Jamie Gier: Yeah, it was, we brought in actual architects to help us design it. And then we had a, a traditional exhibit house build it. Once we came up with the concepts, we used graphics, but then we also found a vendor on the East coast that would supply all of the hospital beds, the actual things that you would see in a hospital setting, so that it was, wow, it was believable.

And the initial build, yeah, there was an investment in it, but when your technology is a multimillion dollar in, you know, technology that you're selling, it was an easy value prop to really pitch. Yeah. But it was, it was like taking your trade show booth on the road. It just happened to be a non-traditional trade show booth.

It was a replica of a hospital and we would have people come in and build it, and pretty soon we knew how to do it ourselves. But it did require a little bit of orchestration, but it was. Very, very, very valuable in, in selling our product.

Steve Goldhaber: How big was it? So like how many square feet and how long did it take to set up?

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Jamie Gier: It was 40 by 100. Okay. 40 feet by 100 feet. All right.

Steve Goldhaber: I'm trying to think of all the hospital jokes now. Did it have bad music in it? Bad jeans.

Jamie Gier: We had you know, 10 by 10 spaces that were partitioned off, so walls and each one represented a different department, including the physician's or the patient's home.

So if a patient was searching for care, we even had a setting based on that scenario too.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Clearly something like this is a pretty interesting idea. It feels like it makes a big impact. How do you measure the effectiveness of it? Was it, did you do any survey data? Did you have any like, Markets where, hey, we took this experience and we closed tire.

Help us understand how you measured the success of it.

Jamie Gier:  We measured it based on, on revenue impact and so whether it was at an event, we also hosted our own executive summit, so we started to couple. Different types of events with this as a demonstration tool. And we basically measured it on who went through it and what business did we, did we land.

So, you know, we in, when we think of it today, we think of a demo as a big conversion opportunity. If somebody gets to a demo stage and then they become an a legit opportunity. This is a demonstration on, on steroids. Yeah. But we had, we calculated based on revenue coming in. But the other piece of this though is, Other people started to replicate what we had created.

And so when you have the National Health Service outta the uk, they wanna do it. We even had a major trade show association start to replicate, but they were bringing in other industry partners. It really got a lot of traction. There was a lot of buzz around it because up until that point, Steve, if you had any such thing, a lot of the times you had it at your corporate headquarters, people had to come see you.

To see your vision center. We said, well, that's not very practical. Not a lot of people aren't gonna travel into your headquarters. We're gonna take this on the road and show it. And I think by doing that, we had more people going through our demonstration of the the enterprise technology. Yep.

Steve Goldhaber: No, I think it's a great idea.

I wonder if today would you test like a virtual reality system? But I am with you on the, there's just something about physical spaces that capture attention. It's tangible. You're touching things and it's just you've got someone's attention. You know, like someone spends 10, 20 minutes in there. That's a great brand experience.

Jamie Gier: Yes, and it's the show. Don't tell, but think about it from the standpoint of the metaverse. So now we're trying to replicate physical experiences. In the metaverse at, at the time that we were doing this, we didn't have the luxury of advanced technology where you could create this in a digital way. And by the way, you, you just hit on something else, which is.

The physical interactions that we have, the face-to-face, the relationship building is us being in the same physical location. We should never underestimate that no matter how advanced technology gets, and I think in this case, creating this experiential in environment where it was hands-on, you could ask questions.

You are following a story and the story. Just showcase the value at different moments in time based on this patient. It's very, you know, I'd like to see marketing get back to really valuing that, especially for enterprise software. There's no replacement. For being in the same physical location and doing that.

But it is interesting to juxta suppose that over the metaverse where they are creating these digital worlds and trying to make them as real as possible. So it was one, you know, in our case it was physical. You know, now you've got the metaverse where you could basically just build this out in that environment.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. All right, cool. Let's jump into case study number two. This is all about how to go about creating a new category the right way. This is another large company, so give us an understanding of kind of what you're up against with this one. 

Jamie Gier: Yeah, this one was really interesting, so very well known software company that serves many different industries.

They're both B2C and b2b. This company was developing a stronger vertical in healthcare now. It didn't have the best reputation in healthcare. I think at the time. It was easy to just really, you know, it, it almost became like a cult. To bash the company again. So, yeah, honestly, Steve here, I thought I was gonna really leverage the brand of the company and be really effective, but in reality, we really, we weren't leaning on the brand equity that they had.

Maybe in other industries. We were also building a, and had built a platform that solved some big challenges in healthcare, namely around interoperability. We wanted to distance ourselves and distinguish ourselves. From other big enterprise systems that couldn't do what we were doing, but a lot of financial investments were being placed in there.

And what do marketers love doing? We love creating new categories, but it's a very difficult thing to do. And so our approach, and we knew that we would need to do this, is we needed to make sure that there were other players, meaning we had competition. Because that would help legitimize that we do have something unique here and we needed to make sure that we had customers that could actually endorse and substantiate that yes, what this company is providing or is a newer classification of healthcare technology.

So we had to align all of this. It was an interesting process to reach out to two of your competitors and say, Hey, we think. That there is a new category of healthcare technology. We're uniquely different from these other big enterprise systems that say that they can do all of these things but cannot.

But we know that in order to get the analysts to recognize, And to start reporting on this new category, we gotta have other players. And you're the closest. And it was kind of an interesting process because three companies came together. We went out and we talked to some of our customers who were very genuine.

They saw it as something new, unique in their organization that was solving a problem that other technologies cannot. And we banded together. We went out to the top-ranking analyst firms. Specifically for healthcare, and we made a case. And they ended up writing a report on this newer technology and their use cases.

And you know, they interviewed some of our customers. They had the three companies in the category and then they had like some secondary companies as well. And it was a little bit of a process to do that. But there was two things. One, you, I couldn't lean on the brand equity of the company-specific to this vertical.

Yeah. And two, we had to have the courage to go, look, we know that we can't be the only company in this category and there are others that are doing something similar, so let's just work together and may the best company win ultimately when we're in the market together. 

Steve Goldhaber: That's interesting. I saw, I mean, one, I love the approach of just talking to your competition.

That's unheard of in so many marketing campaigns. I'm also curious about the analysts now, analyst companies. My background isn't in healthcare, so I don't know the space. Right. But the analysts who cover maybe more of the service industries or the software side of it, they moved into this like pay-to-play zone, right?

So they have their, like their regular business, you know, with the whole, Hey, this is church, this is state, they're two different worlds. And then, you know, that's the other side is obviously the paid side. So, hey, if you pay us this amount of money, we will write a report and we'll co-brand with you. So how did you work with the analyst?

Was it pure? Just, you know, You were sharing information and it and it was up to them, or was it more of a partnership with, you know, you're essentially funding their research of what the category is that you were trying to create?

Jamie Gier:  Yeah. This is, I think, one of those things that we all wonder about how analysts actually operate.

But in having spent a lot of time with them, I think that they do try. To make sure that there is a clean separation because it's gonna destroy their business model. If buyers are the people whom they serve with their research, start to doubt how that research came about and if there's been any, any influence because of money.

It's no different than journalism. Yeah. Are your biggest advertisers influencing what gets reported now? I don't know. There's a big question mark, and I've got a PR background, so I probably have a perspective on that, but I think the. The firm that, that did report on this ultimately. And then we had others that were coming in and, and poking around at it.

You know, they maintain high integrity as to how they, they keep those things separate. So did we pay for it? No, absolutely not. But it did take, I mean, this was kind of the long view. We had to approach them with other players. We had to get customers from, Very well known health systems who would go on the record and say, yes, this is something new.

Everyone's credibility is on the line when they're doing that, and I don't think anyone wanted to walk into it and, and have that tarnished by no means.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. So what was that journey like? Like how long did something like this take from. Understanding the category implications to working with your competitors, to talking to the analysts.

What did that look like?

Jamie Gier: It was about six to eight months to do that. Okay. Because once they were like, okay, we think that there's a, there, there, and, and they had seen multiple demonstrations. They had talked to some of our clients, well then they gotta go out and they have to actually talk to the customer organizations and make sure that.

You know, they're validating what these vendors or these tech players are saying. And so that kind of takes a little bit of time and, you know, there's always, you know, follow up reports and so on and so forth. But it did land, some of the reporters, trade reporters came out, started looking at it. So they do their own investigations too, so it didn't just stop at the analyst.

Then you get the reporters who are reading these reports and going, oh, I, I wanna go explore this a little bit more. So then it just continues to roll out. So, yep. When you think of it from that, from beginning to end, then you're starting to creep into a year, year and a half.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. So fast forward in this story for the case, like two years later.

What's the outcome? Was it, yep, we did it. We created a new category. It was legitimized and all the other competitors. It was a little more traditionally competitive and that you weren't collaborating on it. What happened ultimately?

Jamie Gier:  Well, ultimately it helped us get into the door because these health systems pay attention to these reports.

And so instead of us having to make a case and defend, you know, the, the category itself and the research that had been done on the category was helping us just to, to be able to have conversations. What's interesting about that is the category has kind of morphed a little bit, so in this case, there was in this category, then it became the extensibility of it, and so there's offshoots.

Based on use cases. Once you have a system like this in place, then it's starting to support other important initiatives within the the healthcare community. And so you start seeing little offshoots from it. So the category is actually morphed from this platform play to what are the various value use, value-based use cases that came out of it.

And then that starts a whole nother classification in different types of, you know, niche players coming in.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. All right, awesome. I like this story. We've got one more case study, and this one is gonna be a little bit more on the branding side. This is something that a lot of companies are stuck with and like it's tech and we're just gonna talk tech, and it's very cold and impersonal.

So this case study is all about how do you humanize that?

Jamie Gier:  So I think as marketers, sometimes we fall in the trap of being so in love with our technology. But that becomes the central focus of the story. And that isn't the story. The hero of the story is the beneficiary of the technology. So in the case of this particular brand project, it was common for brands to really center on the interaction that the person, whether it's a consumer or in this case, it's a, it's a learner, it's an education, them interacting with the technology and that always became a.

The central, you know, visual or the storied components. And we ended up, you know, seeing it as well, there's an opportunity here cause that's not the story. And the technology's not the hero, the real brand essence of this is what value does it provide to the person who's using it? And so we shifted from the use of the technology.

To bigger and better aspirations and what does it lead to? So in this case, we had an online digital math program for K through pre-algebra kids, and we thought about, well, what are their future aspirations? We have kids that may wanna be a construction worker, a child that might wanna be a pilot, or maybe a software engineer.

Well, math learning is central to all of those different occupations. So instead of showing a brand that's. Focused on the kid and the technology. We started to focus on the child and their future selves. Them dreaming big about, yeah, becoming something. And that way the child and all of the different stakeholders in their lives that are focused on their learning, everyone could, you know, embrace and circle around that.

When we launched this campaign and we did it at a big company meeting, we had almost everyone in the audience in tears. Because it was such an emotionally charged brand campaign, and they're like, we got it. We finally, finally got it. And that was, it's the future dreams of a child and what math learning can do for them.

And it became, we called it the Dream Big campaign. But I love this one because number one, it was a lot of fun to work on. And two, I'm a mom, so I understand that. And at the time I was a mom of a child who was in the later years of elementary school. And had used the product, but to be able to show kids regardless of environment that they might be in, giving them hope and showing their spark was a big deal to our brand.

But it got us to focus on the, the beneficiary of the technology and not the technology itself. Yeah. And I, I still see marketers falling in this trap. We just, we get so enamored by the things that we build that it's like, no, it's the value that it provides to bettering someone's life. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the joy and delight factor.

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Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I totally agree with you. I, I had worked on a brand campaign, it's a bigger company, and we had done a traditional, like 60, 92nd brand anthem video that was gonna be showcased to everyone in the company. And I remember we were pretty close to being done, and I shared it with my wife just saying like, Hey, what do you think of the, this video?

And now granted she was, she was pregnant with my second son at the time, so her hormones may have been out of whack, but like she started watching it and she started crying. Right. And I was like, okay, like this is working. It's tugging at those emotional strings that just connect better with people, right?

And it's, you get those connections at the human level, the emotional level, and then that opens someone's up for a, oh, that's what you guys do now I get it. So, I buy the thing over here and then that gets me to the, to the magical stuff, and not enough companies do that. I think they're just complacent in the, Hey, it's a safe way to go.

Let's just focus on tech and features and benefits. But when you can bring it up to something bigger, that always faires.

Jamie Gier: Well, I think we just have to remember that brand is around how you make someone feel. It's not words, it's not imagery, it's all of those things, but it's, it's how you really pull at.

Not necessarily the mind as much as the heart. That's what's going to hook somebody into embracing what you're providing to them. And we, we just lose sight of that sometimes.

Steve Goldhaber:  Was it Maya Angelou who had the famous quote about saying, people don't remember what you say, but they remember how you make them feel?

And that's, it's so true on an individual level. Everyone we remember for a different reason, and we have feelings associated with that. So that's a good reminder. All right. Let's do this. We're gonna jump into q and a. okay, let's do it. I'm excited to hear about your first job in marketing. Tell me what you're, you were up to.

Jamie Gier: My first job in marketing was not actually with the company. I'm gonna go back in time, Steve. It's 1980 and there was a big event that happened in the Pacific Northwest and that was the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I am a Washington State native. I remember that day very vividly. I was riding my bike and all of a sudden I thought I was in a dust storm and it wasn't.

It was just, Ash coming down that summer, we went on a road trip to Iowa and my sister and I had an idea of taking buckets of ash and putting 'em in little vials and selling them along the way. Because you have to remember, this was a big international event and everyone had seen it on the news and we thought, let's take a piece of the big event and let people have some kind of access to it.

Not just what they saw on the news, but they could actually see the. Know something tangible from it. So every little stop that we made along the way, even all the way to Iowa, where we went to this marketplace, we sold vials of ash. But we learned early on that when we were charging 10 cents a vial on how quickly they were going, we kind of did this whole, Hmm, maybe we can sell 'em for a quarter, which was a big deal.

Quarter will buy you a candy bar. So we increased the price and we sold out on everything of it. I probably, I don't know that you could actually get away with that today, but I do sometimes think, did people actually hang on to those little vials of ash that we sold across the, the country? I don't know.

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Steve Goldhaber: I would think so.I mean, it, it's such a keepsake, right? I wouldn't throw that away.

Jamie Gier: Yeah, it was a keepsake. But anyways, we quickly learned. The idea of supply and demand and what you can charge and price, even though we didn't know, but we kind of caught onto that. And I, I like to tell that story because I think it is the earliest recollection of kind of getting into marketing and sales.

And so that was my first foray into it. But later on, got outta college. And you know, I say Steve, that I, I really found the profession that fuels me and that I love, and that is, That's marketing and every aspect of it, whether it's brand strategy, public relations, digital marketing, any way that you can take a novel idea or product and bring it to market so that people can enjoy.

And I intentionally set out to be part of different industries that I felt would have some kind of social impact, whether it was healthcare or education where I've. Spent, you know, those two are where I spent the majority of my career. I knew that as a marketer, whatever I did, I wanted to make sure that I was bringing something to better another person's life.

And I kind of stayed with that.

Steve Goldhaber: So, all right. You and I have similar marketing, d n a, and I'm gonna share why now, going back to your ASH story. Okay. This is last year I went to Purdue University, so they've had a pretty good basketball team. They won the Big 10, the big 10 conference. And my family, we go to the United Center in Chicago where the Big 10 tournament was being held and Purdue wins.

It was a, it was a bad win, but I'll take it as a Purdue fan, I, I just will take the win and my sons and my wife are down near the floor. At the end of the game, most of the people are gone, but the players are kind of there. They're celebrating all the confetti is, you know, everywhere. And then the cleaning crew comes in.

And they start cleaning up all of the confetti, right? So this is like golden black confetti with big 10 champs all around it. And I call over, one of the people who's cleaning up has a big bag of confetti, and I go, this is a strange question, but like, can I have that bag? Like you're just gonna throw it away.

So in my office now we have a large bag of confetti from the Big 10 championship that will one day be some type of cool keepsake, or maybe I'll market it like you did. But I had, I had to share that story because it instantly took me back to, you know, you saw the opportunity, it was some memorable moment, and you're like, Hey, they're just gonna, it's just gonna sit there.

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Jamie Gier: I'll take some, I mean, there was plenty of it all over the place,but yeah,

Steve Goldhaber:  I don't remember the look. She looked at me like, what? Why do you want this? And I'm like, It's the Big 10 championship. Like this happens very rarely as a Purdue fan. But alright, so back to you. Sorry to, to, to digress on that story.

Jamie Gier: No, I love that story. And by the way, my nephew is going to Purdue

Steve Goldhaber: Nice and Zach Ededie. I know this isn't like a news podcast, but he, he just announced he's going back for his senior year, so I'm excited to watch Zach again. Alright, so let's jump back into you as a marketer. What are some things that you just absolutely love?

About marketing today versus, you know, going back 20 some years when you and I were just getting started in marketing.

Jamie Gier:  What I love about marketing today is the visibility that we have, the quantifiable results that we can bring back because I think that there was always a perception that marketing is a cost center when in reality we're a revenue.

Generating team, and now today we have better ways to really quantify the contribution that we're making, whether it's to brand equity or to pipeline. That's very exciting because I do tend to, you know, I'm, I'm pretty full funnel balanced marketer in terms of right brain, lap brain, the softer side of brand versus the harder ROI around demand generation.

I think that's what's exciting about. Digital. So I like that aspect of how advanced marketing has become, as long as we don't lose sight of the basics of what really is our power and our magic. And again, that is winning over the hearts of the people that we are serving. And sometimes that cannot happen in a digital environment.

It has to come through relationship building because it's about trust and no one's gonna trust you because they saw your ad on Google. They're gonna trust you. Because you have expertise and authority and you're building a relationship with them. And so, you know, I'm all behind a lot of the advancements, but we always have to stay core to really what our magic is, which is why I highlighted the three case studies that I did in this episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think it does get back to some of the basics.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I am a big believer in the basics. I feel like there is no such thing as any new marketing strategy. They've all been done over the last a hundred years and it's really just the tactics and the mediums that have changed, but the strategies are all the same.

Maybe that's right. Maybe it's wrong. I do feel like I'm one of the two old Muppets in the balcony. When I get to my, my cur mudgy marketing state, it's already been done before. I don't want to hear of new marketing strategies, but anyway,

Jamie Gier: I might be an unal with you, Steve.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. All right. You have your vial of volcano ash, and I have my big 10 confetti.

We're just up in the balcony. What drives you nuts about. Marketing today. And that could be, it could be on the technology side, it could be, you know, you've worked at really big companies, so you have experience in like making the sausage per se is like, it's not easy. Like it's a lot of people. It's a lot of levels of buy-in and alignment.

Like what's been challenging for you?

Jamie Gier:  Oh, over complicated. We've made things and I think part of that is, We now have access to so many different types of technologies to do our jobs. Those technologies are designed to simplify, but in reality, they can overcomplicate what we do. I also think that it allows us to go to market in faster ways that we didn't have before.

That going faster sometimes means we're living in the short term and we're not appreciating the. The long view of the work that we do. Also, I don't feel like we have gotten to a point where we can really quantify the value of brand, and I'm not sure that that's even necessary. There's been a lot of research done on this just in terms of, you know, a lot of brand marketing is the thing that gets somebody to come to your website, for example.

You may not know that, but as long as we don't lose sight of the long view. Then I think we'll be okay, but we also have to figure out how do we just simplify our reach to buyers?

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Quantifying the brand is so tricky. What's really interesting is when companies are valued, there's actually a line item on their sheet, right?

And it will say like, what's, what's the equity that you built up? And I I, when I saw that, it was the first validation that like, oh no, when companies are bought and sold, like it's part of the equation. And I think that's always. People don't look at marketing that way. Like they just think it's, well, it's, it's the marketing stuff, but building brands are, you know, it, it's not just a, Hey, look, we did this to increase awareness, or we've changed perception from X to Y.

It's a physical asset on a balance sheet. That's always, to me, been the most interesting thing when it comes to managing and showcasing the value. That brand building has. Tell me about like how you're looking at marketing going forward. Today. We're in this world where the last 10 years it's been about the maturity of the tech stack.

There's so much of it. There's consolidation. We've got AI being this new, sexy thing on the side. That is gonna disrupt. If you had to like come up with a, a marketing plan to say, Hey, this is what's gonna happen in three or four years, how would you look at that?

Jamie Gier: I would say that there's two things that I'm looking at right now.

It's the bridging of the physical and digital worlds again. So we don't lose sight of where people are as you're trying to engage them and doing a better job of that. I think. During the pandemic, and I hate, I hate even using the P word, but I've, I've got to, because everything did shift to a very digital environment for all of us.

I think we missed each other and the physical spaces that we shared. Now it is how do we, how do we bridge both worlds to have the best impact that we can as we're building relationships, as if we're building trust? And so that might be a marketing mix. Conversation. I know that for my team, we're putting more investments into physical events and opportunities to break bread with our customers because we as a lengthier sales cycle, particularly for B2B marketers, by the way, because we we're not in a transactional and environment, people are not making decisions in a matter of 20 minutes.

They're actually making purchasing decisions in three to six months. And so you have to develop and nurture the relationships and it's not always in a digital. Space. And so I think the bridging of those two things is something that I am really focused on. The other is, you know, based on one of the case studies is how do we continue to humanize our brands and really keep focused on who the hero of the story is?

We've gotta continue to really get that right. And it's not just about technology and I'm a technologist, but at the end of the day, we're using that to better or improve somebody's, you know, their job, their personal life, their family life, and that's what really matters. So making sure that that is always showcased in how your brand represents to the marketplace.

Yeah. And yeah, is the conversation around ai. Well, and there is the conversation around ai, and I know it's getting a lot of attention, just like. You know, a year ago was a metaverse and now you don't really hear a lot about that. Now it's, you know, what OpenAI it has come out with and yeah, I use chat G B T I experiment cause I have to experiment with different things.

I think the value of it is going to be the speed at which we can produce content, but I will say it should never replace the art of a really good writer. The art of a really good designer, never.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yep. All right. I've got two final questions for you. The first one is about talent. So you've, you've been in marketing for a while.

Think about like, how do you identify a new B2B marketer? What are the things that you look for? If this was like an entry level job that someone could say, you know what, this person's gonna be a C M O one day. What are some of the things that you look for in people?

Jamie Gier:  Creativity is one, and their ability to really think about, again, the customer.

And what are the creative ways that we're either solving a problem for them or. How do we really tell a story? So there's the creative, the creative component, which by the way doesn't necessarily mean they go to need to go to school. Some of it might just be in their D n A, and having that, that skill, motivation and, and drive is another and wanting to go, as I tell my son every day, give more than expected.

So I'm always looking at talent from the perspective of, did you deliver what I asked you to deliver or did you go beyond that? Because those are the people that are gonna continue to really work strong and hard on behalf of the team and on behalf of the business. But it also just shows drive and motivation.

And I think the other is people who are just naturally curious. I'm a curious person, and I think curiosity leads to always learning and understanding the value of failure and just wanting to stay knowledgeable on the latest trends and technologies and, and, Ways of going to market, but the curiosity factor is, is big for me.

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Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I'm with, I think curiosity is, is one of those things that's is hard to, to teach someone. Curiosity. I've been obsessed with AI as it relates to generative content and. I talked to other marketers about it, and they just said like, oh, I've heard of that. I'm like, well, you've experimented, right? Like you've played with it.

And they're like, no, I haven't really looked at that. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, you know, curiosity is, is a thing that not everyone can have. I, I'm a big believer in that inherent curiosity to be effective at marketing. Okay. Last question before we wrap up the show. So you have to look back at your earlier self, maybe not the volcano marketer that you once were.

But your first job in marketing and looking back, what would you tell yourself to say, you know what, don't worry so much about this, or, you know what you're gonna, you're gonna do this. You may wanna approach it a different way. What's something you could share with the audience to kind of reflect back on how you've grown as a marketer?

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Jamie Gier: I think the number one thing that I coach early professionals on is it's never too early to establish your personal board of director. So identify people. These are gonna be your mentors. It could be a family member, it could be a friend, it could be a colleague, it could be a manager. But these are the people who will give you unfiltered feedback, but they're also going to be the door openers to future opportunities.

And I waited later in my career to actually develop one, even though I had people that I would reach out to. But I think it's never too early to start thinking about that because it's a competitive market out there. And to stand out, you need to have people who are willing to give you the feedback and that you have to be receptive to it.

As one c e o told me feedback is a gift. Yeah. It is probably the number one thing that I mentor young professionals on is, is to establish that, but it's not just what you get from them, it's what you can also give to them.

Steve Goldhaber:  Yep. I love the hold. Personal board of directors idea so much that get ready for this.

So I'm a, I'm also a LinkedIn product advisor in addition to running 26 characters. So I get to give feedback on products before they're released. And one of the ideas I suggested to them was for LinkedIn to actually have a structured. Part of their profile, you know, my individual profile to say, here's my personal board of directors, right?

Like, here are the people I associate with, and I just, I, I recommended they do that because the idea for a personal board of directors, like it's very hard to make that stick. But if LinkedIn institutionalized it, it would drive legitimacy and it would teach people like, oh, I don't have this established.

Therefore it's a good idea. And I think it would be just such a great exercise and like, you're not. Alone, whether it's marketing or any other professional, you're not alone. People have been there before. You have. That's certainly one of the lessons in my career is I was foolish enough to think that, oh, I have to figure this out all on my own because that's just the journey of of my career.

I have to figure it out and the more I learned, it's way more efficient and it's way better career pathing to just say, I'm gonna go seek someone out who's already done this, and they can probably get me there. In five or 10 minutes where I may take months or years to learn those same lessons. So I love the PORs, the personal board or director's idea.

Jamie, thank you for sharing everything on the podcast today, and people wanna get in touch with you. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you? 

Jamie Gier: Best way for people to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn.

Steve Goldhaber:  All right, awesome. Well, thanks again. Thank you to all the listeners for joining us today in Studio 26 and the Interesting B2B Marketers Podcast. Until next time, take care. 

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