Remarkable Content with Ian Faison – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Playing it safe doesn’t cut it anymore. If you want to grab eyeballs, you need to be bold, unexpected, maybe even a little chaotic.

That’s the magic of Taskmaster, a competition show where thinking sideways often beats playing it straight. And in this episode, we’re taking a page from its playbook with the help of our special guest, Vanessa Hope Schneider, Head of Brand at Descript.

Together, we explore what B2B marketers can learn from chaos, creativity, and knowing when to follow the rules (and when to completely ignore them).

About our guest, Vanessa Hope Schneider

Vanessa Hope Schneider is Head of Brand at Descript. There, she leads brand, content, product marketing and community. Her focus is growing the community of creators and communicators using Descript to make videos and podcasts. She’s working to drive engagement and success through feature announcements and community education, and is developing campaigns that illustrate Descript’s perspective on creative work, and the role AI should have in it.

Vanessa has previously served as Director of Host Community at Airbnb, Head of Marketing at Clara Labs, and VP of Marketing at One Medical.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Taskmaster:

• Think laterally. Lateral thinking is about solving problems creatively rather than relying on the most direct or traditional approach. Vanessa encourages marketers to lean into that mindset: “Sometimes your goal is most efficiently achieved by just doing the best practice... but other times you need to break out in your approach.” In B2B marketing, that might mean reimagining how you run events, pitch your product, or tell a story. It’s not about copying what others are doing, but finding the unexpected angle. Like in Taskmaster, the real wins often come from knowing when to be efficient and direct, and when to be bold, playful, or completely off-script.
• Know when you're the picture and when you're the frame. Sometimes your brand should be the star of the show. Other times, you should be supporting someone else’s spotlight moment. Vanessa explains, “It doesn’t always have to be your brand. It shouldn't always be your brand. Sometimes it's the voices of your customers. It's their success stories.” In the same way, Taskmaster contestants might earn points by hyping up the host, marketers should recognize when to uplift others for the bigger win.
• Develop your signature style. In Taskmaster, contestants approach identical tasks in wildly different ways, and that's the fun of it. Over time, you start to recognize their unique flair. The same is true for brands. Vanessa says, “It is valuable and compelling to find your style and stick to it, and then approach each new challenge from that perspective.” A strong, consistent style becomes part of your brand identity and how your audience remembers you.

Quotes

*“ One of the keys to success on Taskmaster and when making content is committing to the bit. If you're self-conscious, if you're mugging for the camera, if you're trying to do too many things at once, if you're distracted, the audience isn't gonna go there with you. Your readership isn't gonna go there with you, your customers aren't gonna go there with you. You have to summon the will, the courage, the focus to go all in, and that's when exciting things are gonna happen. And you might be able to find different types of creativity because you're blocking all that other distraction out.”

*” B2B marketers should enjoy lateral thinking. So, sometimes your goal is most efficiently achieved by just doing the best practice, doing it well, and task faster. That would be reading the task and just doing what the task tells you to do. But other times, you need to break out in your approach. You need to be more iconoclastic or more unexpected. You're not gonna win Taskmaster or marketing if you're only doing one or the other. You have to know when to be literal and direct and when to think in new directions. Sometimes you're gonna get the most points if you just speed run the task, but other times you're gonna get points for creativity.”

*“ There are instances when you are, as a contestant on Taskmaster, absolutely the star of the show, and you wanna be boisterous and you wanna be attention-grabbing. And of course, we as marketers all can think of instances where we wanna do that with our brand, but in other instances. You kind of wanna be a supporting character. So in Taskmaster, sometimes the best thing to do is make it about Greg because he's a taskmaster and he is very ego-driven…And so the analog for marketers would be. Who are you uplifting in your work? It doesn't always have to be your brand. It shouldn't always be your brand. Sometimes it's the voices of your customers. It's their success stories, so find opportunities to do both.”

*“ Your style is your brand…It is valuable and compelling to find your style and stick to it, and then approach each new challenge from that perspective.”

*“ The challenge of making content about content is knowing when should I be specific and speak directly to those priority audiences and their priority use cases? And when should I pop up a level and speak in a more generalized way about capabilities and benefits, and trust that the audience will know how that applies to the specific thing they're trying to make?”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Vanessa Hope Schneider, Head of Brand at Descript

[03:38] Why Taskmaster?

[04:47] The Role of Head of Brand at Descript

[07:09] Empowering Creatives With Descript's Tools

[08:15] Descript's Company-Wide Film Fests

[09:21] The Origins of Taskmaster

[16:43] Understanding Taskmaster's Production Value

[21:37] B2B Marketing Takeaways from Taskmaster

[32:31] Importance of Investing in Content

[41:31] Importance of Video in Modern Marketing

[48:27] Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Links

Connect with Vanessa on LinkedIn

Learn more about Descript

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Head of Production). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Simon Sinek says that a lot of organizations can talk about what they do and how they do it. But he says, “Very few organizations know why they do what they do.” 

And it’s the ‘why’ that is the most important. 

In this episode, we’re taking this lesson and more from Simon Sinek with the help of our special guest, Guru Sundar.

Together, we talk about finding your ‘why’, looking for inspiration in unexpected places, and timing your content so it feels fresh. 

About our guest, Guru Sundar

Guru Sundar is VP of Marketing at Abridge, a leader in generative AI for healthcare. Guru has been with the company since September 2023. He previously served as VP of Marketing at Looking Glass Factory and Butterfly Network. Guru holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Simon Sinek:

• Find your ‘why’. Figure out the reason your work is important and use that in your content. Guru says, ”Every company should have a ‘why’ that's rooted in a large problem. And it may be broken into a subset of problems that you tackle over time, but like really focus on that ‘why.’”
• Look for inspiration in unusual places. Inspiration for your content can come from unexpected places. Guru says, ”Drawing inspiration from outside is culturally ingrained in how we do what we do at Abridge, because if you look at who's next to you, you're not going to innovate. But if you look way far out and break down like, ‘Oh, that brand or that person is having similar challenges, but they're making t-shirts, but I can draw some inspiration from them,’ or like ‘That person over there is making music, or they're making some form of art that no one's ever seen before.’”
• Time your delivery so content stays fresh. Finesse is everything when delivering content to your audience. Guru says, ”No one likes fatigue. And so you have to keep fatigue, freshness, innovation in mind as you're generating these pieces of content. You could have like four or five different content streams. And people need to hear things multiple times, but they don't need to hear it seven times in a row. A lot of the content is developing the right things for your audience that are innately interesting. If you just ask someone, ‘Hey, is this interesting? Is this useful?’ They say yes. But then serving it at the right frequency, at the right time, in the right form factor and package, is what I think differentiates okay marketers from incredible marketers.”

Quotes

*”Drawing inspiration from outside is culturally ingrained in how we do what we do at Abridge, because if you look at who's next to you, you're not going to innovate. But if you look way far out and break down like, ‘Oh, that brand or that person is having similar challenges, but they're making t-shirts, but I can draw some inspiration from them,’ or like ‘That person over there is making music, or they're making some form of art that no one's ever seen before.’”

*”Every company should have a ‘why’ that's rooted in a large problem. And it may be broken into a subset of problems that you tackle over time, but like really focus on that ‘why.’”

*”You can break marketing down into two mainstreams. It's like  amazing content that resonates with your audience, you know, your buyer, your end user, and then you have to serve it on all the right channels with the right frequency, usage, et cetera, like cut it up the right way. But content is everything. So it's like, what is it that's going to inspire your buyers? What is it that's going to inspire your end users? And it's keeping it provocative.”

*”No one likes fatigue. And so you have to keep fatigue, freshness, innovation in mind as you're generating these pieces of content. You could have like four or five different content streams. And people need to hear things multiple times, but they don't need to hear it seven times in a row. A lot of the content is developing the right things for your audience that are innately interesting. If you just ask someone, ‘Hey, is this interesting? Is this useful?’ They say yes. But then serving it at the right frequency, at the right time, in the right form factor and package, is what I think differentiates okay marketers from incredible marketers.”

*”If I was to give advice to others, like, really understand your personas, and make sure you know what they need and do it in the most authentic way. If you don't believe in the content, don't serve the content.  And I think a lot of people in marketing just check the box. ‘We need to do emails. We need to do ads. We need to do a white paper,’ but like, why are you doing it? And then assess like, ‘Did this work? Did this not work?’ And use that as impetus to drive the next thing. But you have to really believe in your content. And I think a lot of people are very tactical and that's where I think it falls flat.“

*”The way we operate at Abridge is like you almost have this mentality that this is the last time you're ever gonna create a piece of content. So make it last, make it meaningful.  At some point, you gotta pull back and appreciate everything you've done. Take stock of it. But in the moment, like, don't look back. Don't look too far forward. Focus on today and crush it. And when you think about content that way, it's like, ‘I'm going to really focus on this piece of content. I don't really care what we've done in the past. I don't care what we're going to do in the future. I want to make this count.’”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Guru Sundar, VP of Marketing at Abridge

[1:53] Guru Sundar's Journey into Marketing

[4:31] The Role and Vision at Abridge

[7:35] The Importance of Brand and Inspiration

[16:37] Simon Sinek's Golden Circle

[19:29] Personal Mission and Healthcare Innovation

[23:25] The Impact of Transparency in Healthcare

[25:20] AI and Deeper Understanding in Healthcare

[25:46] The Importance of Patient History

[27:53] Marketing and Storytelling in Healthcare

[31:41] Challenges in B2B Healthcare Marketing

[33:09] Clinician and Patient-Centric Solutions

[43:12] The Role of Content in Marketing

[50:34] Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Links

Connect with Guru on LinkedIn

Learn more about Simon Sinek and “Starting with Why”

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

How are you celebrating your hero product? Better yet, how are you activating your audience to celebrate your hero product?

7-Eleven has a lot to teach us about that with their Bring Your Own Cup Day. 

If you’ve never taken part, they encourage customers to bring in a vessel of choice to fill with Slurpee.

They’ve seen people bring in cowboy hats, kiddie pools, even a prosthetic leg, and fill them to the brim with that slushy, cold, refreshing fizzy iconic drink.

And customers are posting about it. It’s ALL over social media. 

Having your customers post to their own social media about your product is just about any marketer’s dream.

So let’s talk about how to do it! In this episode, we’re talking about marketing lessons from 7-Eleven’s Bring Your Own Cup Day.

With the help of our special guest, Chief Revenue Officer & Head of Marketing at Black Crow AI, JoAnn Martin, we talk about activating your community around your hero product, leaving it to the internet, and increasing the value of your engagement with customers.

About our guest, JoAnn Martin

JoAnn Martin is Chief Revenue Officer & Head of Marketing at Black Crow AI. Prior to joining the company in November 2023, she served as VP of Marketing at Electric. She has also held marketing leadership roles at Searchspring, Hanzo and Provenir. She serves as an advisor to UserGems.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Bring Your Own Cup Day:

• Activate your community around your hero product. Create opportunities for your audience to celebrate your core product. JoAnn says, “ It's finding the product and the fit with the market and figuring out how you put that in front of the right customer, which is really foundationally strategic marketing.  And that gives you great opportunities to have those celebrations or to create those experiences.” And Ian says, “It’s important to have a day,” like 7-Eleven’s Bring Your Own Cup Day, which celebrates their hero product, the Slurpee, by having customers bring in their own vessel of choice. It’s silly and fun and highlights the Slurpee as an iconic product.
• Leave it to the internet. Ask your audience online for input on your marketing. For instance, have them name a product, or get ideas for your next campaign. JoAnn says, “ When you leave things to the internet, great things can happen. But also it can go wheels off very fast. But that's part of the beauty of it, right? Is the wheels off-ness, is why it's novel and fun and you feel part of something. So you never know where it's going to go.” So maybe put some limits around what you ask for, but it’s a resource ready to be tapped into.
• Increase the value of your engagement with customers. Think about diversifying your offerings within the same vertical or to appeal to the same target buyer.  JoAnn says, “A lot of companies struggle with, ‘How do we find something else that increases the value of our engagement with a customer?’ Or ‘How do we build in an upsell strategy with our B2B SaaS company?’ You've launched a core product for your customers. And customers love that core product. But as you grow as a company, you need to be able to develop more value for them. And you need to be able to develop more value to broaden your addressable market. And one of the learnings I take away is that they went and found that value. And for us as B2B marketers, maybe we can be a little more creative about the way that we find that additional value we can bring to our customers all the time.” Like 7-Eleven was already appealing to kids with their penny candy and video games. Add on to that an option for sugar-caffeine-fizz fix and the Slurpee was bound to become a hit too.

Quotes

*” How do I better partner with my product teammates? What's this Product-Marketing relationship? How do we get away from Product builds a thing and throws it all over the wall and Marketing figures out how to talk about it?’ And it's a challenge. And I think this is a great example that those two disciplines are actually very tightly intertwined. And as marketers and product leaders and startups, we have to figure out how we're coming together to figure out what is that thing that celebrates our core product? What is the core product we put in front of a customer that has great fit for that customer and how do we figure out how to talk about it with them?”

*” The concept of really tightly intertwining your product and how your customers experience that product and how you talk about it is really inspiring.”

*” Great companies lean into the kind of messy pieces, but you have to be willing to lean into the kind of absurd, messy parts of the business.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet JoAnn Martin, Chief Revenue Officer & Head of Marketing at Black Crow AI

[2:49] The Concept and Impact of BYOC Day

[5:50] The Backstory Behind Slurpees

[11:24] Marketing Strategies and Customer Engagement

[15:09] Innovative Marketing and Product Development

[28:32] Upcoming Exciting Projects at Black Crow AI

Links

Connect with JoAnn on LinkedIn

Learn more about Black Crow AI

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Are you a chaos muppet or an order muppet? Knowing the answer to this very important question can help you unlock your B2B marketing potential. Here’s why.

There’s magic chemistry that happens when a chaos muppet joins forces with an order muppet. (Replace the word “muppet” with “marketer” in this instance.) It’s like a marketing power couple. You need the wildly outside-of-the-box thinking of the chaos side tempered with the composed, organized, planning mind of the order side to create truly remarkable content. It’s these two energies that work synchronistically to create content worth talking about.

So in this episode, we’re looking back at nearly 70 years of Muppet history and one Slate article that made us ponder, “What kind of muppet am I?” And break down all of the wild and wondrous things muppets can teach us about B2B marketing with the help of CircleCI’s Director of Content Marketing, Gillian Jakob Kieser. Together, we talk about allowing some of that chaos into your campaigns, developing useful and evergreen content, and how to work through the riskiness of creating something original in this episode of Remarkable.

About CircleCI

CircleCI lets teams build fully-automated pipelines, from testing to deployment, allowing them to focus on the real work of innovation. Using CircleCI, engineers can automate their entire testing suite for new commits, reducing the potential for human error, while using orbs to automate deploys.

About The Muppets and Muppet Chaos Theory

The Muppets is an American television show featuring a cast of puppets performing various skits. The beloved characters include Kermit, Miss Piggy, Rowlf, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Beaker, Animal, The Swedish Chef, and more. It was created by Jim Henson in 1955, and has been around for nearly 7 decades. It was originally a short-form tv show called Sam and Friends, and it’s now grown into a media franchise with lots of spin offs including movies, music, and tv appearances. The franchise was owned by The Jim Henson Company until 2004 when Disney bought it. Jim Henson once suggested that the term “muppet” comes from combining the words “puppet” and “marionette.”

Muppet Theory is a theory posed by Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick that everyone in the world is either a chaos muppet or an order muppet. Chaos muppets are crazy, volatile, unpredictable. Like Animal, Cookie Monster, or The Swedish Chef. Order muppets are anxious, neurotic and don’t like surprises. Like Kermit the Frog, Scooter, or Sam the Eagle. Order muppets often choose Chaos muppets as lifelong partners, like Bert the order muppet and Ernie the chaos muppet or  Kermit as the order muppet and Miss Piggy as the chaos one.

About our guest, Gillian Jakob Kieser

Gillian Jakob Kieser is Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI. She has been with CircleCI for over six years, having started in June 2017 as Content Marketing Manager, and their first content hire as a growing startup. She has also served in marketing roles at companies like Prismatic and MAKE Magazine.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Muppets and Muppet Theory: 

• Incorporate both chaos and order into your marketing. Team up with your chaos or order counterpart to make new content. Or create some content that’s very structured and some that’s very unstructured. Gillian says that it’s these different energies that make successful collaborations in marketing. “They really need to have both the order aspect and the chaos aspect to make something feel alive and authentic. If you over plan it, it's dead in the water. It's dry and predictable. And if it's too much chaos, you never can get it out the door because no one knows what time anything is happening. So you always need to have both order and chaos on a team or in a program.”
• Mix the real and the fantastical. This creates playful and captivating visuals, and engages the viewers’ willing suspension of disbelief. Gillian says, “There's this aspect of these fantastical creatures in a real world scenario that appeals to adults as well as children. Because children really have a sense for the authentic, and they know that there's something about this world that is real and that they can learn from, that it's not just watered down and catered to them. There's something about that that I think has set them apart and has always been really appealing.”
• Trust the intelligence of your audience. The Muppet Show is not just for children. There were signs in the cigarette-smoking, Studebaker-driving scenes that Jim Henson was appealing to more mature viewers as well. Like Jim Henson, give your audience all the information you have for them, and don’t oversimplify it. Gillian says, “Jim Henson and his crew never played down to their audience. There was so much intelligence and so many references, and it was very high reaching for something that could have conceivably been, ‘Oh, this is just for kids.’ It feels like Jim Henson was the first one in exploring that space, of elevating this art form to something that had a lot of depth that you wouldn't expect to see coming from puppets.”

Quotes

*“[The Muppets is] a testament to taking risks, just going for it and not knowing. It might not have worked out, but it did in the long run. Some of our efforts at creative projects, branding or anything else like that are sometimes a little bit of a shot in the dark.” - Gillian Jakob Kieser

*”I was thinking, ‘Okay, where is there order and chaos in our current content strategy?’ The blog is very orderly. We've learned a lot about SEO and how to answer people’s questions with technical tutorials. And then we've got a podcast with our CTO interviewing folks. That's much more of a chaos aspect because you never know where the conversation's gonna go, but he's standing in and asking the questions that the audience wants to ask. And it's very funny and we're not selling in that show at all. We're creating affinity, trust, informing, educating and being able to share our perspective on how our industry works with others.” - Gillian Jakob Kieser

*”The ad copy is another place where we test wildly. There's been times when we throw in something that's ungrammatical because you know it's gonna catch someone's eye. Or put a question mark at the end of something to get their attention. And then you can make the connection. But that order and chaos marriage shows up everywhere.” - Gillian Jakob Kieser

*”There's a time and a place for things. There's concentric circles of stuff that needs to be really on brand that the legal team needs to look at and everyone has to check off on it. And then stuff that as you get further out has more of a buffer of forgiveness for being off-brand at times.” - Gillian Jakob Kieser

*”If you want to feel like your entire brand is super buttoned up always, and it's only on official channels, you have to know that your marketing is gonna be boring. Because there's no humanity in it. People buy people. If you're trying to get people to commit to you with emotion and you're using the opposite of that, how effective is it really gonna be?” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[0:54] Introducing CircleCI Director of Content Marketing, Gillian Jakob Kieser

[1:39] Why are we talking about The Muppets?

[4:03] Learn more about Gillian’s role as Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI

[5:33] What are The Muppets?

[8:37] How did Jim Henson create evergreen content in The Muppets?

[10:54] How do you work through the riskiness of making original content?

[15:04] What is Muppet Chaos Theory?

[16:59] How does Muppet Chaos Theory apply to collaborative work and marketing?

[21:00] How does CircleCI use chaos and order in their marketing strategy?

[31:09] How to humanize your content, and the value of human-generated content in the age of AI

[34:24] What’s Gillian’s content strategy at CircleCI?

[37:30] The difference in making remarkable evergreen content versus sensational content

[39:09] How did Gillian grow her team and advocate for the value of more content creators?

[41:57] How do you choose the channels worth posting content to?

Links

Watch The Muppet Show

Read the Slate article

Connect with Gillian on LinkedIn

Learn more about CircleCI

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Picture this: tens thousands of fans screaming from the top of their lungs for more content from you, the B2B marketer.

It may sound more like how people react to superstars like Taylor Swift; there are tactics she uses in her branding that inspire intense fandom, like how Swifties can wear red lipstick, make beaded bracelets or decode hidden messages in her Instagram posts to own a bit of her brand for themselves. It’s all a part of a culture that Taylor Swift and her team of amazing marketers have meticulously cultivated over time. But who’s to say B2B marketers can’t borrow a bit of that marketing magic? 

In this episode, we’re turning to the artist with more #1 albums than any other woman in history: Taylor Swift, and seeing what new B2B marketing ideas we can learn from her. What about her brand has inspired such passion; the kind of passion that is expected to bring in more than $1 billion in ticket sales from her current tour? Joining us is Senior Director of Content Marketing at Lob, Kim Courvoisier. Together, we’re talking about the marketing behind Taylor Swift’s record-breaking tour, creating a shareable brand, and refreshing content to give your audience even more value. So layer on your Swifty bracelets and maybe a little something sparkly for this episode of Remarkable.

About Lob

Lob is the only direct mail automation platform for the digital age. Lob's platform automates the direct mail execution process for enterprises at any scale - from creation, printing, postage, delivery, and sustainability with end-to-end analytics and campaign attribution. Over 12,000 businesses trust Lob to transform their direct mail into intelligent mail. Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Lob is venture-backed by Y Combinator, Polaris Partners, Floodgate, and First Round Capital.

About Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter who has more #1 albums than any other woman in history after her album “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” debuted at #1. The 33-year-old artist from Pennsylvania who was originally known for country music is known for her musical versatility and reinventing herself as an artist. As a cultural figure, she has had several high-profile news stories, including her dispute with Big Machine Records over ownership of the masters of her first 6 studio albums which led to her re-recording all of them, and another legal battle with Apple in 2015 over protecting artists’ rights to fair compensation for their work. She currently has 10 albums, and has sold 114 million albums worldwide. She’s won 12 Grammys, 19 Billboard Music Awards (the most of any woman), 40 American Music Awards, and more.  She has many trademarks, including hiding messages in her content, frequently using the number 13, wearing red lipstick, and going barefoot. Her fans call themselves Swifties.

The Eras Tour is a journey through all of Taylor Swift’s studio albums. It’s 131 concerts across five continents, and is expected to be the highest grossing tour in history. Tickets bring in more than $13 million a night, for an expected $1 billion+ overall. The average ticket costs $254. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve even reported that the tour is boosting economic growth, specifically related to hotel revenue. Taylor Swift has a 44-song set list and the concert is 3-hours long. The tour started on March 17th in Glendale, Arizona which was officially renamed “Swift City” for two days. The tour will wrap up on November 23rd, 2024 in Toronto.

About our guest, Kim Courvoisier

Kim Courvoisier is the Senior Director of Content Marketing at Lob, the only direct mail automation platform for the digital age. Kim is an experienced senior-level digital marketing leader with over 12 years of experience in SaaS marketing, specializing in B2B and B2C content marketing, social media, email marketing, customer lifecycle marketing, AI, and SEO. She is based in San Francisco, California.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour: 

• Re-use, recycle, repurpose your classic content. Look back at your past marketing content that did really well and see if you can get more juice out of it. Kim says, “A lot of times, I'll write an ebook, and it's like, ‘Okay, that was great for that campaign. Moving on,’ And I'm like, ‘No, no, no. That's all perfectly relevant content. We should reuse that, we should recycle it, we should repurpose that.’ And that's exactly what Taylor Swift is doing when she is re-releasing these albums because she's now driving eyeballs or ears back to that content.” So make the most of the content you’ve invested time and effort in in the past, and refresh it to give your customers added value today.
• Create a shareable culture around your brand. For Swifties, it’s making beaded bracelets, wearing the number 13, going barefoot, putting on red lipstick. And it inspires fans to create their own content or even make their own bracelets and sell them. Kim says, “It's helping this whole little generation become entrepreneurs, which I think is so incredible. I talk about marketing and [Taylor isn’t] keeping it for herself. She's sharing it with everyone, and I think there's no greater power as a marketer than to empower others. And she's absolutely doing that.” So extend your brand to include free elements that fans can own, get added value from, and make their own.

Quotes

“If your content isn't adding value, then you're just creating more noise.” - Kim Courvoisier

 “When [Taylor Swift] re-releases an album, she actually adds new content to it. Like content from the vault that wasn't on the original edition. And so it's adding more value. So that would be like if I took an old ebook that I had written and then put on an extra bonus chapter and re-released it. So I think there's a ton of lessons we can learn as marketers to go back and refresh and repurpose our content. And I get a ton of inspiration from that.” - Kim Courvoisier

Time Stamps

[0:54] Meet Kim Courvoisier, Senior Director of Content Marketing at Lob

[1:32] Why are we covering Taylor Swift?

[4:04] Tell me more about Taylor Swift

[10:32] Learn more about the record-breaking Eras Tour

[16:54] How do you create a shareable culture?

[22:39] What are marketing lessons we can learn from The Eras Tour?

[24:58] How to repurpose classic content and give your audience added value

[33:55] How to make content appeal to people who aren’t currently in the “buying mode”

[36:34] How does Kim think about the ROI of content?

[42:57] What are Kim’s favorite pieces of content she’s made at Lob?

[45:15] Tell me more about Lob’s 2023 State of Direct Mail and Consumer Insights Reports

Links

Listen to Taylor Swift

Learn more about The Eras Tour

Connect with Kim on LinkedIn

Learn more about Lob

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

If your audience isn’t engaging with your posts, they’re not opening your emails and your webinars are empty, it’s time to tweak your marketing strategy.

Your marketing strategy has become a pattern; a pattern your customers are used to. They know what’s coming, so they tune it out. And the last thing you want to be is part of the noise.

So we’re going to show you how to pattern interrupt. According to a Mailchimp article, pattern interrupt is “a neuro linguistic programming (NLP) tactic used to disrupt a customer's usual thought process or behavior… [around] cold calls and other marketing and sales strategies to change how they think and feel.” In this episode, we’re going to share how pattern interrupt is a key tool in re-engaging your customers as well as catching the attention of new potential customers. And we’re learning about pattern interrupt from a show that does it so well: “Archer.”

So in this episode, we’re having a watch party of the Emmy Award-winning series "Archer" with Head of Content Marketing and Customer Education at Apollo.io, Josh Garrison. And we’re chatting about how to engage your audience with pattern interruption, why you should spend time developing complex characters, and how to provide value by teaching your audience a new skill with each piece of content. So stick on a fake mustache and strap on your Omicron Spymaster watch for this episode of Remarkable.

About Apollo.io

Apollo.io combines a buyer database of over 250M contacts and powerful sales engagement and automation tools in one, easy to use platform. Trusted by over 160,000 companies including Autodesk, Rippling, Deel, Jasper.ai, Divvy, and Heap, Apollo has more than one million users globally. By helping sales professionals find their ideal buyers and intelligently automate outreach, Apollo helps go-to-market teams sell anything. In the last year, they’ve grown ARR 3x, quadrupled their active users, and closed a $110M Series C led by Sequoia Capital in March of 2022. They continue to grow faster each month with record months of sales and added ARR.

About Archer

Archer is an animated tv series parodying espionage culture about a James Bond-esque spy named Sterling Archer in a dysfunctional intelligence agency headed by his own mother. The show is set in a sort of Cold War era universe. The highly stylized animation is inspired by classic comic books. The animators describe the style as “puppety,” in that a limited amount of drawings are made, and then they put rotation points from which the drawings can move.  The show was created by Adam Reed and made by Trinity Animation with the voice of Archer played by H. Jon Benjamin. It also includes the voices of Jessica Walter of Arrested Development, Aisha Tyler from Criminal Minds, and Chris Parnell from SNL. It originally aired in 2019 and is currently in its 14th season. It has won at least 3 Primetime Emmys among other numerous awards and nominations. 

About our guest, Josh Garrison

Josh Garrison is Head of Content Marketing and Customer Education at Apollo.io. He joined Apollo.io in December of 2022. Prior to his current role, he served as Head of Revenue at Teamflow. He has also held leadership roles at Autodesk and inDinero. He co-founded SpotMe Lending, an alternative to payday, auto title and pawnbroker loans, and Ledger Leaders, a bookkeeping and accounting services business.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Archer”: 

• Use pattern interrupt. Use a familiar interaction but pivot suddenly to catch your audience off-guard. Josh says that in “Archer”, “they do the thing where they set up a joke and then the punchline of the joke is a cut scene to someone else saying it.” It helps with pacing, and moving the story line along while making the audience laugh.
• Develop complex characters. Characters simply feel more like people when they have flaws, preferences, history… And building believable, relatable characters takes time, intention, and thought. The characters in Archer immediately feel lived in from the first episode. Josh says, “The first time you meet every character, you get the essence of that character. There's no wasted time there.” The characters are multi-dimensional, neither purely good or bad. They’re human. Ian says that Archer “is the best spy in the world. But he's super narcissistic and he's pretty mean and self-serving. But there's this element of heart to him. Like he loves animals, he has a real affinity to certain people at his work. He’s an a**hole, but he's our a**hole.” As a complex character, he’s much more interesting and relatable than if he were simply a good person, good spy, good protagonist. So before you create content, spend time thinking about your characters’ backstory, personality, motivations, and more, to flesh out a character that will resonate with your audience.
• Borrow from nostalgic content. The artwork of Archer is inspired by classic comics and 1960s superhero cartoons. The show borrows from James Bond and espionage culture. So the show has elements that feel very familiar while at the same time being quite modern. Josh says, “It’s very unique, but it also feels familiar because they're calling back to things that you've seen and read throughout your early life.” So it draws people in with its nostalgic artwork but creates super fans with its modern tone, fast pacing, and cutting humor.

Quotes

*”Marketers are bored of our own playbooks. They're like, ‘Oh man, I'm doing another webinar.’ Or they're like, ‘Oh, we gotta write another ebook?’ Those are old ideas. But that doesn't mean that those things don't work anymore. When I explore pattern interruption, I'm still gonna run a webinar. But in that webinar, how can I subvert the expectation? How can I set people up to think they're gonna get one thing, and then give them something that's way more than they hoped or bargained for, and just go beyond?” - Josh Garrison

*”Salespeople will engage with anything that will make them money. That's the guiding principle of our content marketing strategy. Put yourself in the shoes of a salesperson and ask yourself, ‘Would I read this? Before I commit to reading it or watching it, am I convinced based on the headline or the title or the description, that this is gonna bring enough value to me to help me improve my ability to make money?’ So we start there. That's actually a pretty high bar. It's really hard to do. It means that you can't make any fluff, because fluff doesn't make anybody money.” - Josh Garrison

*“What we try to do is go two steps further than [typical content,] and it's like, ‘I'm gonna open up Apollo. I'm gonna show you exactly what to do.’ Something that's so actionable that by the time somebody finishes engaging with a piece of content, whether it's a video, webinar, or article, they have gained a new skill.” - Josh Garrison

Time Stamps

[0:58] Introducing Head of Content Marketing & Customer Education at Apollo.io Josh Garrison

[1:59] Why are we covering Archer?

[3:13] What makes Archer remarkable? And what is “pattern interrupt” or “pattern interruption”?

[6:05] How does the animation style of Archer draw an audience?

[7:54] Tell me more about Archer

[10:34] How does character development play into Archer’s popularity?

[15:02] How can marketers think about using pattern interruption in their marketing?

[17:32] What can we learn about pacing from Archer?

[19:38] What’s Josh’s content strategy at Apollo.io?

[26:14] How did Josh rebuild the webinar program at Apollo.io to the point where people were asking when the next one would be?

[35:08] Who did Josh hire to produce their world-class videos?

[40:21] What are the keys to good marketing?

Links

Watch Archer

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn

Learn more about Apollo.io

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Characters in your B2B marketing are polished, smooth, suave, always smiling. They never feel awkward, even when they’re asking for more budget or getting negative feedback. Stop that.

Let your characters be and feel awkward in those moments. Because you want your audience to think, “Oh, they get me.” And because we’ve all felt awkward at work. Today, we’re taking notes from a show that has made us all cringe: The Office. 

Alison Herman wrote for The Ringer that cringe comedy resonates with the audience because “Cringe often comes with a reassurance that we aren’t alone in our crippling insecurities, without the sometimes insurmountable hurdle of disclosing our own inner thoughts.” It’s a reminder that other people get sweaty and shaky when they ask for a raise too. 

So on this episode, we’re chatting about the Benihana Christmas episode, from Dwight flopping a dead goose on Pam’s desk to Andy’s efforts to cheer up a heartbroken Michael with an onion volcano. And we’re bringing on Director of Content Marketing at ActiveCampaign, Jakub Rudnik, to talk about what makes the episode so iconic, why you should consider bringing in experts from other industries to help create content, and why it’s time to embrace the awkwardness. So deck the halls with twinkle lights and order yourself a sushi boat for this episode of Remarkable.

About ActiveCampaign

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management platform that provides wall-to-wall solutions for teams to manage all types of work, collaborate on tasks, and streamline multi-step workflows. It’s an all-in-one tool that lets you plan, track and collaborate on any project. Founded in 2017 by Zeb Evans in San Diego, ClickUp is now used by Google, Netflix, Airbnb and Nike.

About The Office

The Office is a mockumentary about the daily lives of employees working for Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The U.S. version is based on the original U.K. series created by comedian Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant which was  adapted for an American audience by SNL writer Greg Daniels, and co-produced by Deedle-Dee Productions and Reveille Productions in association with Universal Television. The original cast included Steve Carrell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fisher, and B.J. Novak. There are 9 seasons, which aired from 2005 to 2013. It has won many awards, including Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series.

About our guest, Jakub Rudnik

Jakub Rudnik is Director of Content Marketing at ActiveCampaign. He joined ActiveCampaign in March 2023. Prior to his current role, he served as Head of Content Marketing at Scribe. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University where he teaches Journalism courses, and a content marketing consultant. 

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Office: 

• Bring in the experts. Cross-pollinate B2B and B2C by contracting experts or specialists to help you level up your content. Iconic actor, comedian, writer and director Harold Ramis directed the Benihana Christmas double-episode, making it a standout comedic performance from everyone involved. Likewise, the Dinner Party episode will go down in history as being one of the most uncomfortable episodes to sit through. Part of the magic was that they brought in cameramen from reality TV to follow the action like in a reality TV show. So it creates the illusion that the audience is getting an inside look at some real drama. Ian says that you don’t have to sacrifice your brand voice or consistency when you bring in outside voices. He says,, “I love keeping things consistent with structure and flow and all that. But I do think that bringing in other people to give a second look, or to just give them the reins and say, ‘Hey, do it the way that you want to do it,’ is something that they do a lot in Hollywood and we don't necessarily do as much in marketing.” So next time you want to make some fresh content, bring in an expert from outside your team to collaborate, put in their two cents, and give it that B2C flavor that will set you apart from the pack.
• Lean into the awkwardness. Highlight customer pain points by leaning into the discomfort and cringiness caused by them. This shows that you’re empathetic to their situation, and are acknowledging their frustrations. Jakub says,”The Office takes those awkward cringe things and makes them more extreme to play it up. But that’s why we connect to it. It’s real. I’ve been there.” And Ian says, “We don't strive for really awkward, tense moments in B2B marketing. It's very rare. Whereas our work is full of super awkward, tense moments. There are so many moments that are extremely personal and awkward in work and we never talk about it.” So it’s time to talk about it. Lean into the awkwardness that happens in real workplaces, and you’ll hook your audience.

Quotes

*”The biggest successes of my career came from an inflection point where something was broken, something was failing, we were flatlining, a competitor was emerging, and we went a different way. We scrapped everything that we thought we knew about content and we went a different route. Let's not replicate what our competitors have done. Let's go find something brand new or a different way of executing this completely. And so to me, that's Darryl being like, ‘Don't worry about that. We don't need the karaoke machine at all. We're gonna go print off lyrics from the internet and I'm gonna go grab my keyboard and we're just gonna have more fun.’ And it was a better party because of that.” - Jakub Rudnik

*”There are so few scenes in The Office that are about work. We want to do a great job. We wanna get better at work. But we also just have these very human moments.” - Ian Faison

*”The Office takes those awkward cringe things and makes them more extreme to play it up. But that’s why we connect to it. It’s real. I’ve been there.” - Jakub Rudnik

Time Stamps

[0:56] Introducing Director of Content Marketing at ActiveCampaign, Jakub Rudnik

[2:53] Why is The Office remarkable?

[3:50] Tell me more about The Office

[10:57] What are marketing lessons we can take from The Office?

[13:10] What’s the best way to manage obstacles?

[18:54] How do you focus on the customer’s pain points, not the KPIs?

[21:47] Why is it important to bring in people from outside your team to pitch in to the creative process?

[32:28] Why should you embrace awkwardness in your content marketing?

[33:21] What’s Jakub’s content strategy at ActiveCampaign?

[39:21] How does Jakub use marketer influencers?

[45:57] How does Jakub track the ROI of influencer marketing?

Links

Watch The Office

Connect with Jakub on LinkedIn

Learn more about ActiveCampaign

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

B2B content feeling a little limp and lifeless? We have the answer. The one thing that will give it life, improve brand recall, and make it universally appealing: Put it to music. 

A Harvard study found that music is truly a universal language. Harvard correspondent Jed Gottlieb says, “Across societies, music is associated with behaviors such as infant care, healing, dance, love”...and work. And listening to music activates wide swaths of the brain, especially areas related to emotion. Simply put, using music in your marketing is your ticket to engaging and connecting emotionally with your audience, whoever and wherever they are. Including when they’re at work.

ClickUp is proof that music works in B2B marketing. They created the first ever full studio album from a tech company, and it took off. Featuring artists like Clever, who previously collaborated with Justin Bieber and Post Mallone, as well as Michael Minelli and Philip Good, the album has had over a million streams. 

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re taking a beat to talk with Chris Cunningham, Head of Influencer Marketing at ClickUp, about the creation of their studio album, Work Flows. We’re learning from him about what it takes to make an album for a B2B company, how to make viral content, and the best way to leverage influencers. So put your headphones on and turn up the bass for this episode of Remarkable.

About ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management platform that provides wall-to-wall solutions for teams to manage all types of work, collaborate on tasks, and streamline multi-step workflows. It’s an all-in-one tool that lets you plan, track and collaborate on any project. Founded in 2017 by Zeb Evans in San Diego, ClickUp is now used by Google, Netflix, Airbnb and Nike.

About Work Flows

Chris released the first song, “ClickUp to Keep Up” in June 2018. In 2023, they released a full-length album, “Work Flows” featuring 21 songs about project management and features artists like Clever, who has previously collaborated with Justin Bieber and Post Mallone, as well as Michael Minelli. It’s the first full studio album from a tech company. It was released during ClickUp’s LevelUp Conference in February. Within a week of its release, it got over half a million streams.

About our guest, Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham is Head of Influencer Marketing and a founding member of ClickUp. He has previously served as VP of Business Development at Elevator Studio and Head of Business Development at Mango Technologies, Inc.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Work Flows:

• Build internal influencers. Encourage and support employees in becoming thought leaders in their industry. And become an influencer yourself to relate to them, build trust, and collaborate more effectively. Chris says, “If you're someone who's at a smaller company and you want to learn, you're going to look for someone who's at a large company, someone who's done it before.” And he says at ClickUp, they’re building several internal influencers, and not just within the C-suite. Chris himself is working to become one, and it makes him more effective at being Head of Influencer Marketing, because he says, “ I understand their struggles. I understand how hard it is to create content every day and, and put that out. I understand how to talk to them and how to work with them because I'm trying to be one. So one of the last things I learned is that a very strong value point if you want to get in this space and you want to do influencer marketing in tech, you should probably actually do it yourself to learn from them and earn their respect.”
• Get your influencers to go off script. Give them the trust and autonomy to create authentic content. When you give influencers the stage to express themselves, they’ll forge real connections with followers. Chris says that if he offered to pay an influencer to talk about ClickUp, “it’s not natural and people can smell it out.” But if he gets an influencer to try ClickUp’s platform and it improves their workflow, then he works together with them to create content. He says, “I give free reign to the creator. I'm not going to give them a script. What I want them to do is go tell the world how we save them time.” And then he uses their endorsements as ads across social media platforms. He says it’s a tactic that has been really effective for ClickUp.
• Make a song. Think outside the B2B marketing box and embrace unconventional engagement. ClickUp’s creation of the first studio album from a tech company challenged the status quo and raised the bar for what B2B marketing could be. Chris says he made a studio album to stand out. “Everyone listens to music. So many people listen to music while they work. It's a new way to get in front of people that no one's done.” And it paid off. With over a million streams and maybe - just maybe - another album on the way.

Quotes

*”The best move I could ever make was trying to become an influencer myself. I think [influencers] are more apt to get back to me because they see me doing the same thing they are. I understand their struggles. I understand how hard it is to create content every day and put that out. I understand how to talk to them and how to work with them because I'm trying to be one. So I think one of the last things I learned is that a very strong value point if you want to do influencer marketing in tech, you should probably actually do it yourself to learn from them and earn their respect.” - Chris Cunningham

*”It's not like everything we do goes viral. So I think it's more of a long-term process, testing and learning your audience, but to me, going viral is just getting tons of shares, tons of comments. Likes are a small vanity metric. It's people talking about it, and then they're getting articles and news talking about it. That is what I care about and what my goal is every time we do anything.” - Chris Cunningham

*“One thing I think that I would like to be known for, and that I've always tried to do, is just testing new things. Does everything work? No. Like I've had plenty of failure. And that's what everyone will tell you, right? Fail, fail, fail. But I think you gotta go into things not caring about failure. I think it's just seeing what happens and having fun with it, and having some belief. So that's how we handle everything in marketing. I'm gonna keep trying new things.” - Chris Cunningham

*”The big piece of advice I'd like to leave everyone with is to not overthink, just start doing things. It's so easy to have a full plan and to type things up and get approvals. Just start doing things. Like, don't worry too much. Who cares about outcomes? Outcomes happen and sometimes they don't. And it's perfectly okay.” - Chris Cunningham

Time Stamps

[0:55] Introducing ClickUp founding member and Head of Influencer Marketing, Chris Cunningham

[4:24] How does influencer marketing fit into ClickUp’s overall marketing strategy?

[9:03] How does influencer marketing work?

[13:37] The art of interviewing influencers

[16:43] How did ClickUp make a studio album?

[23:34] Where can you find the Work Flows album and other related content?

[24:00] How do you set KPIs for content like a studio album?

[25:25] How do you measure the ROI of content?

[31:32] How do you make viral content?

[35:03] When did Chris make the first song?

[40:12] What are Chris’ favorite pieces of content or campaigns?

[42:38] What’s something Chris is working on that he’s excited about?

Links

Listen to Work Flows

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Learn about ClickUp

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Does it feel like you’re flailing for ideas ​​every time you’re starting a new campaign? 

It’s good to have a place to start every time. To have a framework for your story that gives you loose benchmarks to meet so you’re not starting from scratch every time. It’s the answer to all the hard and repetitive work that goes into storytelling. It’s the antidote to marketer’s block. It’s marketing, codified.

Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon came up with the “Story Circle,” an 8-step journey the characters go on in each episode akin to the Hero’s journey. And Harmon has used this framework for any new story, including for his work on the show Community. He says, “I can't not see that circle. It's tattooed on my brain." This structure enabled Harmon to write over 60 episodes of the show, which has become the most watched TV comedy for adults between ages 18 and 24 as well as a hundred-million dollar media franchise. 

So on this episode of Remarkable, we’re looking to the Emmy Award-winning Adult Swim hit TV show for lessons on storytelling structure, the delightful use of absurdity, and much more. And chatting with us is Cube’s Director of Content and Brand Strategy, Sarah Frazier. Join us as we talk Pickle Rick and all things content marketing on this episode of Remarkable.

About Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty is an animated series on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim about mad scientist Rick who takes his grandson, Morty, on sci-fi misadventures including things like inter-planetary travel. The series was created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland. Both Rick and Morty were voiced by Justin Roiland until 2023. (Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland following news that Roiland was facing felony charges for domestic violence. The charges have since been dropped.) It also stars voice actors Chris Parnell as Jerry Smith, Spencer Grammer as Summer Smith and Sarah Chalke as Beth Smith. Rick and Morty started airing in 2013, and It’s won a slew of awards, including 2 Primetime Emmys. 

About our guest, Sarah Frazier

Sarah Frazier is Director of Content and Brand Strategy at Cube. She joined the company in February 2023. Prior to Cube, she served as Head of Content Marketing at Podium, a platform for local businesses to get more reviews, collect payments, send text marketing campaigns, and centralize their communications. She has also held content marketing and demand gen roles for Drift and CustomerGauge.   

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Rick and Morty: 

• Create a framework for your storytelling. Map out the stages of your story structure to give yourself a foundation for each campaign. It gives you a basis to build campaigns from instead of having to start from scratch every time. Co-creator of Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon says creating the story circle was his “attempt to remove all the hard and repeated work from the task of breaking a story.” So do yourself a favor and create a framework for each campaign to start from.
• Employ absurdity. Be ridiculous and wildly unreasonable as a way to grab audience attention. When blended with seriousness, clever humor, and creative ideas, it’s a surefire way to keep your audience interested. Sarah says, “The inherent randomness of our own lives makes us feel better to see it played out on the screen. The ability to see like you are maybe not solely responsible for the things that happen to you, that there is inherent randomness in the universe. But ultimately the lesson is like you are responsible for how you react to those things. Very similar to how you deal with customers and potential customers. They're going to come at you with all sorts of questions and comments, things that you didn't consider. It’s how you react to those things that creates remarkable moments for them where you are a memorable vendor in their head and you define the journey for those folks.”
• Speak to the pain points of the employee, not the organization. Connect with your audience by sharing relatable stories, and by showcasing your solution as the answer to their personal growth. Sarah says, “Some of the best storytelling that happens today is where you're talking about someone late at night in front of their laptop, elbows deep in trying to solve a problem, and it's like something that's a lot more personal. You're talking about like someone saving their career versus someone using tech to solve a problem for their organization, which is such a boring narrative that we hear all the time. I think where people are succeeding is where they can lean a little bit more into that, ‘How can I help you further your career?’ versus like, ‘How can I help your company do this?’”

Quotes

*”When you can ground things in a process, then you can use that mental energy to focus on creating something that's more interesting or more absurd. And if you don't have to worry about the flow and the process and the structure, then you can really use that brain power for something else.” - Ian Faison

*”We're always talking about scaling in marketing. And particularly in tech startups because we want to move fast and iterate. But what are those unscalable moments that we can create for customers that feel wholly unique to them?” - Sarah Frazier

*“Some of the best storytelling that happens today is where you're talking about someone late at night in front of their laptop, elbows deep in trying to solve a problem, and it's like something that's a lot more personal. You're talking about like someone saving their career versus someone using tech to solve a problem for their organization, which is such a boring narrative that we hear all the time. I think where people are succeeding is where they can lean a little bit more into that, ‘How can I help you further your career?’ versus like, ‘How can I help your company do this?’” - Sarah Frazier

Time Stamps

[0:55] Introducing Director of Content and Brand Strategy at Cube Sarah Frazier

[2:06] Why are we talking about Rick and Morty?

[2:54] What is Rick and Morty?

[4:10] What’s Dan Harmon’s Circle Story?

[5:21] What makes Rick and Morty remarkable?

[8:55] Why should you use absurdism in marketing?

[18:10] Why it’s important to feature customer stories

[23:24] What we can learn from Rick and Morty about making parodies in B2B marketing

[24:30] What’s Cube’s content strategy?

[27:19] How does Sarah prove the ROI of content marketing?

[32:06] How do you make a useful, bookmark-able template?

Links

Watch Rick and Morty

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Learn more about Cube

Watch Dan Harmon explain the Circle Story

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

It’s time to take a risk with your B2B content marketing. 

To create a top of funnel piece of content that’s truly unique. Because it’s easy to resort to the “safe” conventional strategies and industry jargon. With everyone using AI tools to pump out B2B content, you can’t afford to make one more thing that just fades into the crowd. 

So what if instead of a webinar or a slide deck, you made a murder mystery starring Kate Mara from House of Cards and Stranger Things’ Brett Gelman? We’re referring to the original podcast that debuted in the top 20 comedy fiction shows on Apple Podcasts: Murder in HR, presented by Gympass and produced by us here at Caspian Studios. 

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re showing you why it pays to take a risk in your content marketing. And how creative narratives can help your brand break through the noise, leave a lasting impression on your target audience, and revolutionize your B2B marketing strategy. So brace yourself for this very special episode of Remarkable where we talk with Gympass’ VP of Content Marketing, Chris Dean, about the creation of Murder in HR.

About Murder in HR

Murder in HR is a podcast about a woman named Jemma who just started a new job as Employee Experience Manager at a tech startup. On her first day at the company all-hands, one of her co-workers gets electrocuted. It’s while investigating his death that she discovers he was murdered. So she teams up with her Chief People Officer, Nicholas, to find out who the murderer is. So armed with her HR skills, Jemma investigates her toxic colleagues while trying not to become the next victim herself. Murder in HR is an original podcast murder mystery starring the voices of Kate Mara and Brett Gelman, produced by Caspian Studios and presented by Gympass. 

About our guest, Chris Dean

Chris Dean is VP of Content Marketing at Gympass, having joined the company in September of 2022. Prior to his current role, he served as Executive Director of Content Marketing and SEO at Ramsey Solutions. He has also served as Global Content Marketing & Public Relations Manager at Albemarle.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Murder in HR: 

• Take a risk. Create a piece of content that transcends expectations in B2B marketing. Infuse storytelling into your marketing efforts to create a compelling and relatable narrative that engages and resonates with potential clients. Chris says that the availability of AI along with the need to grow brand recognition for Gympass in the U.S. drove them to create something top of funnel and unique. He says, “We didn't want to do some crazy stunt that got us a spike of awareness for the wrong reasons. We wanted something meaningful. We wanted something that was going to resonate with HR representatives. We wanted to give them a reason to continue to come back to us.” And Murder in HR was born.
• Use brand integrations. Put your branding into the story in a subtle and seamless way to blend into the plot while hinting at the benefits of your product. Gympass wanted to use brand integrations like Steven Spielberg (e.g. Reese’s Pieces in E.T.), fitting marketing for Gympass organically into the story structure of Murder in HR. Ian says that the way they integrated Gympass in the story was that the company in the story uses Gym Pass as part of their benefits. It’s a proven technique used from B2C, Hollywood and beyond to drive business.
• Create an experience. Make every piece of content fit the customer journey. Chris says, “The worst thing that you can have in content marketing is a dead end piece of content. It all needs to be part of a longer experience.” And that experience pushes customers to your website. But the thing about Gympass is they’re not trying to rush it. For them, it’s about creating a more seamless, enjoyable, and one-of-a-kind experience. Chris says, “It's all about continuing the conversation and offering up the next logical step for them to take with us.” So sit back and enjoy the ride.

Quotes

*“If they're listening to the podcast, they might not even know they have an HR related problem at their company. We're introducing the problem to them so that now they're problem aware. And then they're solution seeking because it's like, ‘Okay, I don't want these toxic behaviors. What can I do about it?’ And then once Gympass is introduced into that, then they're solution aware and they know that Gympass could be a possible solution for them.” - Chris Dean

*”Our brand awareness activities need to be driving brand traffic. And so we should be seeing a continuous increase there from all of our activities. The challenge is associating one individual activity with that traffic profile. But whenever we have a launch of something, we can look on that traffic profile, and we see a distinct spike that perfectly aligns with that. And so that gives us an indication of the traffic impact of that activity.” - Chris Dean

Time Stamps

[1:55] Get to know Chris Dean, VP of Content Marketing at Gympass

[4:21] Why is Murder in HR groundbreaking?

[7:57] What was the impetus behind creating Murder in HR?

[8:48] Tell me more about Murder in HR

[15:45] How did the podcast incorporate brand integrations for Gympass?

[21:35] What was the inspiration behind Murder in HR? And how did they use experiential marketing?

[27:13] How do they think about the customer journey at Gympass?

[32:04] How does Gympass measure the ROI of top of funnel or brand awareness content?

[36:45] Chris Dean’s advice for other B2B content marketers

Links

Listen to Murder in HR

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Learn more about Gympass

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.