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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your employees have untapped star potential. Think about it.

We all love a little drama, some hot gossip, some spilt tea. And it happens in the office just as much as it happens in a high-end restaurant. We’re not saying you should stir it up for the sake of creating content, but it’s the personalities, interpersonal relationships, and social politics that attract an audience. And you aren’t tapping into that audience. Not yet.

If someone were to say, “Want to watch a show about waiters at a fancy restaurant?” You’d probably say no. Well, you’d be saying no to Bravo’s “crown jewel” with over 4 million viewers and each member of the cast earning at least $25,000 an episode: Vanderpump Rules. The show made celebrities out of their waitstaff and earned a dedicated following for ten seasons with an eleventh season on the way. 

So on this episode of Remarkable, we’re asking the question: “Want to make a series about the employees at your B2B tech company?” To do that, we’re joined by PandaDoc Head of Content Bethany Fagan. Together, we're turning to the reality TV sensation to learn about creating a series, leveraging divisible content, putting your talent front and center, and posting where your competitors aren’t. So pour yourself some rosé and put your feet up because we’re talking Scandoval-and-all on this episode of Remarkable.

About Vanderpump Rules

Vanderpump Rules is a reality TV show about former Real Housewives star Lisa Vanderpump and her staff at her high end restaurants and bars in West Hollywood, including SUR [Sexy Unique Restaurant] Restaurant & Lounge, Pump Restaurant and Tom Tom Restaurant & Bar. It’s a spinoff of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It focuses on the interpersonal relationships and drama among the employees, including Kristen Doute, Katie Maloney, Tom Sandoval, Stassi Schroeder and Jax Taylor. So there are blooming romantic relationships, cheating, divorce, marriage, betrayals, etc. The first season aired in 2013 and now there are 10 seasons out, all on Bravo.

About our guest, Bethany Fagan

Bethany Fagan is Head of Content at PandaDoc. She has been with PandaDoc for over 7 years, having joined in February 2016 as Partner Marketing Manager. Prior to PandaDoc, she served as Director of Content and PR at iQ media. She is a founding member of Sales Hacker, Inc. and an Associate Member of Pavilion. She is based in the Washington D.C.-Baltimore area.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Vanderpump Rules: 

• Create a series. Make a podcast or video series for your organization. Use the content in its entirety or cut it into smaller pieces and post it across social media channels. It diversifies your content asset production, spreads brand awareness and accesses new audiences. Bethany says that last year, they saw a 79% increase in their social media followers. And she credits that growth to the PandaDoc podcast, The Customer Engagement Lab, which Bethany’s team started in 2020. Lisa Vanderpump’s leveraging of reality tv has resulted in as many as 2,000 diners showing up to her restaurants on a busy night, and a net worth of somewhere around $90 million.
• Use the talent you have. People are drawn to companies they can relate to. Put faces to the company name and focus on the relationships to impart authenticity and humanize your brand. On top of this benefitting your company’s brand, you’re also leveraging the personal brands of each employee involved. If one of them gets fans, it magnifies your company’s brand and theirs. Likewise, Lisa Vanderpump features her employees in Vanderpump Rules. Each of them has a personal brand that they’ve built outside of the show that fans relate to. That’s why Jax, Stassi and Ariana all have millions of Instagram followers. And why Stassi, Katie, and Kristen were able to launch a wine company together. Because fans want to buy into their personal brands.
• Go where your competitors aren’t. Post your marketing content on Instagram if your competitors use LinkedIn and Facebook. Bethany says PandaDoc is posting to TikTok simply because the DocuSigns and the Adobe Signs of the world weren’t on it. And month-over-month, they see a 10 to 20% increase in followers. It's a winning strategy to grow your brand.

Quotes

*”Content marketing 101 is repurposing and getting more juice from the squeeze.” - Bethany Fagan

*”From a content team perspective, we just try to control the controllable. You know, what are some of the metrics that I know that matter that I can confidently report on and try to tie that back to revenue for the business? That's how I tell the story with my leadership team, and that's how I get them to invest in more content for us.” - Bethany Fagan

Time Stamps

[1:28] Get to know Bethany Fagan, Head of Content at PandaDoc

[2:38] Why are we covering Vanderpump Rules?

[3:31] Learn more about Vanderpump Rules

[7:20] Why is Scandoval so attention-grabbing?

[9:41] What contributed to Vanderpump Rules’ longevity?

[14:26] What B2B marketing lessons can we take from Vanderpump Rules? (And how has PandaDoc leveraged these lessons?)

[16:24] The power of diversifying marketing content and leveraging its divisible content

[24:01] About PandaDoc’s TikTok debut and how to measure success on a new social media platform

[27:23] Learn more about PandaDoc’s content strategy with their podcast, The Customer Engagement Lab

[32:27] How to get leadership on board to invest in new content

Links

Watch Vanderpump Rules

Connect with Bethany Fagan on LinkedIn

Learn more about PandaDoc

Check out PandaDoc’s podcast, The Customer Engagement Lab

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can you sum up your marketing message in three words? (And would customers “get” it?)

Like, can you write it in plain language—just a few words that would make sense to your audience? Because if you - the B2B marketer - get it, your audience will too, right? Maybe not.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re learning from the 90s classic movie Speed about keeping it simple. The movie can literally be summed up in three words: “Bomb on bus.” It’s a blissfully simple premise that rocked viewers, made Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock stars, and raked in $350 million dollars at the box office. 

And we’re bringing on board Director of Content Strategy at 6Sense, Chris Hutchins, to talk storytelling, using character tropes, and fictionalizing your B2B marketing. So grab your popcorn and buckle up for the wild ride that is this latest, greatest episode of Remarkable as we talk about Speed (“Not the drug, but the movie” - Ian Faison).

About the movie Speed

Speed is a 1994 action movie starring Keanu Reeves as young police officer Jack Traven who has to keep a bomb from exploding on a city bus by staying above 50 mph. It also stars Sandra Bullock as the female counterpoint, Annie, who ironically had had her drivers’ license revoked for speeding but steps in when the bus driver is shot. And of course the villain is played by Dennis Hopper as Howard Payne, the madman who rigged the bus with the bomb in the first place. Speed was written by Graham Yost and directed by Jan de Bont.

About our guest, Chris Hutchins

Chris is a versatile, deadline-driven content director, editor and writer with corporate go-to-market, creative agency and professional journalism experience. He uses nimble workflows to produce world-class content at scale. His agency work has engaged millions of consumers worldwide.

Chris is currently the Director of Content Strategy for 6sense, an ABM platform. He also provides consulting services for SMBs that need help with content strategy, content production, branding and messaging.

In addition, he helps craft award-winning immersive marketing narratives, screenplays and novels for companies such as 20th Century Fox, A&E, Cinemax, Discovery, FOX Broadcasting, Infiniti, Macmillan Publishers and Ubisoft. He has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR’s Weekend Edition, ABC Radio and the BBC.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Speed: 

• Keep the story simple. Use simple, straightforward language to explain what your marketing message is. Drop the jargon and boil down your message. Chris says that your audience needs a simple story, especially in the beginning, “to get the hook and begin to get an understanding of our content or product.” He says you don’t want prospective customers opening your site to find the content to be far over their heads. Speed does this with its simple premise that anyone can understand, that grabs attention and conveys a sense of immediacy.
• Fictionalize your story. Add fictionalized elements to your B2B marketing to grab your audience's attention, invite their curiosity, and inspire them to share their experience on social media. Chris shared an example of an event that incorporated a sort of online scavenger hunt. He says, “You just need to color outside the lines just a little bit to make it memorable.” And that the effect can be dramatic, especially in the B2B world. We see fictionalized elements in Speed as well, like when the bus has to cross an unfinished overpass, effectively leaping over a 50-foot gap in the road. Viewers are invited to suspend their disbelief to continue following the storyline. That fictional element is an invitation to go deeper into the story, deeper into engagement.

Quotes

*”When I think about blissful storytelling, it’s uncomplicated. Here is a movie done 30 years ago that is just pure bliss because you don't have to have a deep knowledge of X, Y, and Z. You are just there for the ride.” - Chris Hutchins

*”As B2B content creators and marketers, we often assume our audience has the same kind of comprehensive knowledge about our product, when in fact, we are the ones who are drinking the Kool-Aid. They need the simple story - at least in the beginning - to get the hook, and to get an understanding and become delighted and dazzled by our solution. Make it as plain spoken as possible. And make sure that our readers who are coming to our site, likely for the first time, find something that isn't overwhelming or over their heads.” - Chris Hutchins

*”The B2B equivalent of a blissful story is simply told and invites curiosity. It gets you from the beginning of the story to the end. And then keeps you engaged to investigate more.” - Chris Hutchins

*”When you are starting to get sick of your messaging, that means that it's probably starting to sink in with your audience.” - Ian Faison

*“Don't try to be every single thing. Just try to focus and say, ‘This is exactly the utility that you're gonna get from this thing.’ It's not gonna be 50 other things. It's just gonna be this one.” - Ian Faison

“The first 30 minutes of the movie is not set on a bus. And the last 30 minutes of the movie is not set on a bus. But all we remember when we talk about speed is the stuff on the bus. So what do you want your audience to remember? What do you want them to remember feeling?” - Chris Hutchins

“There are ways to enhance your narrative with fictional elements or fictionalized elements. You just need to color outside the lines just a little bit to make it memorable for them. It’s wildly, wildly experimental stuff in the world of B2B. But the path of creating these experiences, while it's a non-trivial thing to accomplish, it's absolutely possible and the promotional upside can be really dramatic.” - Chris Hutchins

Time Stamps

[1:20] Get to know Chris Hutchins, Director of Content Strategy at 6Sense

[2:41] Tell me more about Speed

[7:43] What makes Speed Remarkable?

[12:23] How to keep your brand message simple

[16:08] Ask: What do you want your audience to remember feeling about your brand?

[19:39] What is 6Sense?

[22:40] How does Chris use his experience as a narrative writer in his marketing work at 6Sense, and what can we learn from it?

[28:53] Why don't we use fiction more in B2B?

[35:28] How could you apply fiction to a B2B event?

Links

Watch Speed

Connect with Chris Hutchins on LinkedIn

Learn more about 6Sense

Check out Chris’ work and writing

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We’re willing to bet that you’re working on a new B2B campaign and require some new inspiration.

Because all B2B tech ads look and sound the same. They just melt into one shapeless, forgettable jumble of fingers typing and screens scrolling. But we see you plodding along in the B2B marketing marathon of sameness, and we’re throwing you some jet-boosted sneakers.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re daring you to do the exact opposite of your competitors, to outsource the authenticity of your brand voice to your customers, and much, much more. And we’re doing that with the help of our special guest, Senior Director of Brand at Axonius, Kaite Rosa. 

Together, we’re exploring the iconic and visionary 2007 Nike ad campaign featuring pro runner Lauren Fleshman. We look at how the ad deviated from the “tasteful nude” status quo of female athletes in ads, dismantled the objectification of women in sports, and promoted inclusivity by leveraging Lauren’s voice. And how you too can subvert expectations, make a statement, and do it authentically. So lace up your new sneaks and get ready to redefine B2B ads on the latest episode of Remarkable.

About Nike’s “Objectify Me” Campaign

Nike’s “Objectify Me” campaign was a 2007 ad featuring pro runner Lauren Fleshman. It’s a 30-second black and white slow mo video of Lauren running toward the camera. And we hear Lauren’s voice. She says, “Look at me, study me, understand me. I’m not a small, pink version of a man. Don’t give me small, pink versions of a man’s running shoe. I’m Lauren Fleshman. I’m a runner, and I’m a woman.” Then it shows her running out of frame, and the Nike logo pops up on screen. It’s a really understated Nike ad that deviated FAR from its predecessors.

Lauren is a decorated distance runner. She won five NCAA championships at Stanford and two national championships as a professional athlete. She’s also a writer, having been featured in The New York Times and Runner’s World. Lauren is now Brand Strategy Advisor for fitness apparel company Oiselle, and Co-Founder of natural food company Picky Bars. Her book Good For a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World came out in January 2023.

About our guest, Kaite Rosa

Kaite Rosa is Senior Director of Brand at Axonius, where she leads the team responsible for creating a $2.6 billion brand in less than five years. Cited as one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity brands in history, Axonius has been named one of the most valuable private cloud companies in the world by the Forbes Cloud 100, along with numerous industry accolades.

A life-long writer, she is passionate about using storytelling and creative concepts to define and build exceptional brand experiences. She has spent the bulk of her career at tech startups, and thrives on rapidly growing, fast-paced teams. Previously, she led brand and content at Payfactors, Virgin Pulse, and VentureFizz.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Nike’s “Objectify Me” Campaign: 

• Do the opposite of what’s expected. Look at what other companies in your space are doing in their campaigns and make a campaign based on the antithesis of that. Be the rebel in your industry. Subvert the expected. Kaite says so many brands feel like they have to join in on what’s popular or trending. She says, “There's a lot of, like, ‘Me too,’ right? Like, they're gonna copy it and try to make it their own, and look very similar. But what inspires me the most is looking at what your competitors are doing and doing the exact opposite.” It’s like how Lauren Fleshman was presented with a briefing inspired by Brandi Chastain’s “tasteful nude” ad, and advocated instead to be in her athletic gear and to write the ad copy herself. She turned the copy on its head, saying that if she was going to be objectified, it would be to design running gear specific to her physiology. And the campaign became iconic.
• Outsource authenticity to your customers. Make your customer’s voice your brand voice. Ian says marketers always want to control the narrative, but sometimes you need to let your customers take the wheel. Because he says that when you ask customers to talk about your brand in their own words, “They come up with something absolutely brilliant that you could never have written.” And how could that not be authentic? Nike was able to outsource the authenticity piece of Lauren’s ad because Lauren wrote the copy herself. For sure, there was a layer of brand approval, but the words are Lauren’s. So outsource the authenticity piece of your ad copy to customers, and it will resonate.

Quotes

*”Whether you're working in a bootstrapped company or publicly funded company. any budget can accommodate your customer voice.” - Kaite Rosa

*”If you're doing a high-level brand campaign, the approach shouldn't be, ‘Let's sell you all the features and benefits.’ It should be, ‘Let's get you in the store. Let's get you remembering who we are so that the next time you need those new sneakers or you need a B2B SaaS solution,  you remember the ad.’” - Kaite Rosa

*”What is memorable and where storytelling really comes alive is when you look at what's out there and say, ‘We're gonna do something that is disruptive, that is different. And I think that you can do that on any budget.” - Kaite Rosa

*“People latch on to the authenticity of brands. That's what drives you emotionally to a brand, is that it feels authentic. It resonates with you. And I think living and breathing your values in everything you do, if you're at a company with a culture that encourages that, that ties your values into everything you do, it comes naturally. Good marketing and good brands tap into those values.” - Kaite Rosa

Time Stamps

[1:37] Get to know Kaite Rosa, Senior Director of Brand at Axonius

[2:14] Tell me more about Nike’s “Objectify Me” campaign

[8:04] About athletic advertising before Lauren Fleshman’s campaign

[12:23] About the timelessness of the “Objectify Me” ad

[14:23] Why challenging the status quo is important

[23:27] How to ground your message in values

[24:53] What does Axonius do?

[25:42] What’s Axonius’ brand strategy?

[26:41] How does Kaite think about the ROI of content marketing?

[27:14] Learn more about Axonius’ “Controlling Complexity” campaign with gymnast Simone Biles

Links

See Nike’s Objectify Me ad with Lauren Fleshman

Connect with Kaite Rosa on LinkedIn

Learn more about Axonius

Check out the Axonius campaign with Simone Biles

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The role of the marketer is changing. 

Scott Galloway, aka Prof G, says that to be successful today, marketers have to act as “coaches, advisors and strategists” to their company.

That’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode with the help of our special guest, VP of Marketing & Corporate Strategy at Verbit, Michael Rosman.

Together, we talk about finding the right channel, being bold, and avoiding clickbait.

About our guest, Michael Rosman

Michael Rosman is VP of Marketing & Corporate Strategy at Verbit, having joined the company in April 2022. He has extensive work experience in Corporate strategy and Marketing. Prior to this, he worked at Amdocs, where he held various roles including Customer Business Executive, Director of Corporate Strategy, and Manager of Corporate Strategy from May 2016 to April 2022.

Before joining Amdocs, Michael worked at Degania Medical as the Head of Strategy, Business Development & Innovation from May 2015 to May 2016. Michael also has experience at Biometrix, where he served as the Head of Strategic Planning and subsequently as the Interim COO from November 2011 to May 2015.

Michael started his career at Tefen Management Consulting in July 2007, where he worked as a Senior Consultant for over four years. During his time at Tefen, he successfully led cross-functional and international teams on various projects in industries such as pharmaceuticals, automotive, chemicals, and healthcare.

Michael Rosman completed his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Tel Aviv University between the years 2004 and 2008. Later, between 2011 and 2012, he pursued an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Scott Galloway:

• Find the right channel. Test different channels to see which one your content achieves the best reach and resonance on. People on LinkedIn might engage with your content way more than on your blog. Use that to your advantage by creating more content gauged for your LinkedIn audience. Michael says, “Finding the right channel is a big takeaway for me. So I know everybody has the standard channels of paid ads and events and SEO and whatever is, but find a channel that maximizes your impact. Figure out your puzzle. Figure out who you are and something that might be unique [to you]. Maybe it's a channel that doesn't exist for anybody else.”
• Be bold. Know what you stand for and express it clearly and without fear of losing your audience. Michael says, “Go all in on something. [Scott Galloway] has so much conviction and so much belief in doing what he does, he can really go all out.” When you express your message authentically and with clarity, your content will resonate with your intended audience.
• Avoid clickbait. Make sure the meat of your content is valuable to your audience. Don’t just give it all away in the title. Michael says, ”So many times, people have a hot take-y headline to lure you, to get you in, but then there's nothing else. All of the content that you wanted to consume is in the title and everything else is meaningless. [But] Whenever I tune in [to one of Scott Galloway’s podcasts], I always feel like it was worth my time. I came in, I came for value, and it consistently delivers value. It's always interesting. There's always substance behind the title.”

Quotes

*”I really think about niching down, and about the shorts, shows and moonshots sort of positioning. You want to create stuff that your people can tap into for a minute or two. You want to create stuff that they can subscribe to and get like an hour a week. And then you want stuff that's definitive, could be viral and bingeworthy. If you have 15 different personas that you're selling to, if you could create a single bingeable asset for those 15 personas, that's far more valuable than creating 150 pieces of content for those 15 things.” - Ian Faison

*”The world changes every minute. What was published a week ago is now no longer potentially relevant. So it's your job as a brand to reach forward into the future and say, ‘I think that based on what we know, what we're saying on our proprietary information and what our customers are saying, I think that this is where the world is going.” -  Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Michael Rosman, VP of Marketing & Corporate Strategy at Verbit.ai

[2:19] Verbit's Marketing and Customer Insights

[7:29] Scott Galloway's Marketing Philosophy

[10:42] The Journey and Impact of Scott Galloway

[19:31] The Power of Serialized Content

[24:52] Marketing Takeaways from Prof G

[29:42] The Value of Definitive Works in Content

[31:07] Challenges in Content Creation for Multiple Personas

[32:04] The Importance of Niching Down and Binge-Worthy Content

[39:39] Balancing Quality, Speed, and Cost in Video Production

[42:16] The Future of AI in Content Creation

[45:48] Verbit's Content Strategy

Links

Connect with Michael on Linkedin

Learn more about Verbit.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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marketing is generally a one-way conversation. You tell your audience what to buy, period, end of story. But what if we could change that dynamic and actually give our audience some control over our campaigns?

You might argue that you already listen to the voice of the customer through surveys and testimonials. But have you ever really used their feedback to make a game-changing decision in your business? Well, today's the day we flip the script and let the audience take charge.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re soaking up marketing lessons from the UK hit series Love Island. Because Love Island is a show that relies on its audience to make those critical decisions, audience members can literally decide whether an islander will stay or go. This might be why the show earned itself a dedicated following. Without that audience participation, it wouldn’t be the Love Island we know and…well, love. 

So tune in as we unpack the marketing gold that is Love Island. We'll show you how to hook your audience on your content by tapping into the power of their input. Get ready to learn how to make your customers an integral part of your decision-making process and create an unbreakable connection with them. It's time to let your audience take control and revolutionize your marketing approach.

About Love Island

Love Island is a reality tv/dating game show where beautiful single people are invited to stay in a tropical villa together in search of love. Drama unfolds when new islanders arrive, they’re given challenges, or contestants fail to match up and get kicked off the island. One couple will win a cash prize. ($100,000) They often also leave with sponsor and branding deals, and lots of new Instagram followers.

It was originally a popular series in the UK created by ITV Studios (2005 and 2006 was Celebrity Love Island, then returned in 2015) The U.S. started its own version in 2019. Now 22 versions of Love Island exist worldwide.

About our guest, Kailey Raymond

Kailey Raymond is Director of Enterprise Marketing at Segment. There, she is building a full-funnel Enterprise Marketing motion including ABM, thought leadership, upsell/cross-sell and outbound programs. Prior to Segment, Kailey started the Customer Marketing team at AlphaSense, built local communities and revenue at Hired in both Sales and Field Marketing roles and grew a global community of career transitioners and partners as the second employee of a STEM bootcamp.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Love Island: 

• Give your audience agency in your brand. Ask for their feedback and incorporate it into your marketing. By showing them you’re listening and taking action based on their feedback, you show that you care about them. It creates a mutually beneficial relationship and forms a connection. Love Island actually has its own app. And people watching can vote for their favorite couples, as well as decide on who stays on the island and who gets kicked off. So every viewer has some power over the fate of each islander, so much so that the show becomes quite addictive. Ian says, “Giving the audience agency is ridiculously powerful.” Get your audience involved in the decision making and they’ll be hooked on your marketing.
• Engage with your audience in real time. The goal is to respond and interact with your audience in as quick of a timeline as possible. So build the muscle of quick response times on your marketing team. And leverage AI to speed up that process. Being able to interact with your audience provides a personalized, human experience. On Love Island, producers are sourcing viewer tweets in real time and showing them on screen to add dimension to the show. So as a viewer, the chance that your tweet could be part of the show makes your participation all the more appealing.

Quotes

*”The show requires engagement, it requires the audience to participate, or it would destroy the fabric of the show. Like, I can make a difference in getting this person voted off. Giving the audience agency is ridiculously powerful.” - Ian Faison

*”The real-time audience interaction that they've embedded within the show allows you to feel like you're a part of their journey. It makes you want to watch. Every episode you have vested interest because you could be helpful getting somebody you don't like watching booted off the island or giving them the chance to win a hundred thousand pounds. So I think that they created this special sauce with being able to bring in multiple different channels with social, going along with video at the exact same time, and getting the audience interaction live.” - Kailey Raymond

*”You absolutely have to have an on-demand component. You have to have a live component to some of your stuff. But if you're not creating on-demand content that's easily streamable, accessible, multi-platform, you are missing out on a massive demographic.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[1:28] Get to know Kailey Raymond, Global Executive Content Marketing Lead at VMware

[5:00] Tell me more about Love Island

[6:44] What’s the story behind how Love Island was made?

[10:27] How did Love Island rise above the noise of other reality dating shows?

[16:29] How can you leverage key storylines to create interest for your audience?

[18:56] What marketing lessons can we glean from Love Island?

[25:21] What does Love Island teach us about responding in real time?

[30:12] What we can learn from viewer statistics

[33:58] How does Love Island use partner marketing?

Links

Watch Love Island

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn

Learn more about Segment

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Remarkable team is hard at work on Season 3. And hold on tight because it’s gonna be a good one. This upcoming season, we’re taking B2B marketing lessons from the likes of Mad Men, Survivor, the 90s Keanu Reeves classic, Speed, and much, much more. And we’re doing it all with the help of new guests every episode! We’ll be speaking with marketers from companies like G2, ClickUp, ActiveCampaign and ZoomInfo. And through their expert lens, we’re giving you - the B2B marketer - tips, tricks and tools to use in your own campaigns. So keep an eye on your podcast platform of choice for brand new episodes of Remarkable coming your way very soon.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Imagine your marketing team working on a project with clear guidelines. They know what their end goal is. Everyone’s executing their role, communicating seamlessly, and meeting deadlines. The result? Marketing perfection. This could be you, after you listen to this.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of working on a project where expectations and roles aren’t clear. Some people put in more effort than others, work is sloppy, deadlines are missed. There’s an imbalance that makes getting any work done nearly impossible.

But there’s a magic that happens when you foster a culture of communication, trust, and cohesion; working together as one. And through this culture, you can power amazing results.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re getting in the groove with the help of Webby Honoree and Global Executive Content Marketing Lead at VMware, Yadin Porter de León. Together, we’re exploring how to foster internal cohesion for B2B marketing success and taking lessons from The Mandalorian. So you can take your marketing team by the hands and say, ‘This is the way.”

About The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian is a Star Wars TV series that launched in 2019. It’s created and executive produced by Jon Favreau, who we know on Remarkable for also directing and executive producing Iron Man. Jon Favreau partnered with Lucas Film and Disney for the production of the series. It’s considered a space western and is the first live action TV series in the franchise. It stars Pedro Pascal as the main character, Din Djarin. And the show premiered on Disney+ on November 12, 2019. It’s now in its third season with a fourth in development.

The Mandalorian takes place after The Return of the Jedi and the fall of the Galactic Empire. Din Djarin is a lone bounty hunter who’s hired by Imperial Forces to go get the child Grogu aka Baby Yoda. Instead, Din Djarin ends up going on the run to protect Grogu and reunite Grogu with his kind.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Mandalorian: 

• Align across the C-suite about your strategic go-to-market strategy. Once leadership agrees on the strategy, messaging, channels, and target customers, they can direct the rest of the company. But Yadin says it’s not just about creating a doc or a presentation. It’s about building relationships, gaining trust, and getting buy-in from people. He says, “That agreement takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of alignment across so many different stakeholders and interests. And then once you have that, you have everyone who's bought into it able to move in the same direction.”
• Give your marketing team guardrails and the end goal, and then let them decide how they get to the finished product. You’ve got a brilliant team of marketers at your service, so trust their ingenuity. Give them the autonomy to use their creativity and problem solving skills to achieve the end result you’re looking for. Ian says, “The idea of ‘This is the way,’ this is our marketing strategy, allows people to be very creative within those left and right limits." And Yadin adds, "Don't tell them how to do it, but tell them what the vision and the outcome is and then see what amazing things they create.”

Quotes

*”The mantra of, ‘This is the way’ demonstrates the way in which multiple different people can follow the same path and produce great results, and create great value when they don't have to be born in the same area or be brought up in the same way.” - Yadin Porter de Léon

“That mantra applied to B2B marketing can be extremely powerful if you have messaging and branding consistency. Where you go to market in the same way across all of your geos, across all your departments, across all of your business units instead of having all these weird, crazy, fragmented things that may seem cool at the time, but not actually showing up in the market in a way that will actually tell a consistent story.” - Yadin Porter de Léon

“There are bad things too. Like, you can get stuck, lost in cookie pulling and retargeting and brand ads and all the things we've always done the same way. And so ‘This is the way’ means basically, you know, get on board, or else,” - Yadin Porter de Léon

*”Create a vision and then inspire those people who want to be creative to be creative, because now they have the guardrails. Don't tell them how to do it, but tell them what the vision and the outcome is and then see what amazing things they create.” - Yadin Porter de Léon

Time Stamps

[1:40] Get to know Yadin Porter de Léon, Global Executive Content Marketing Lead at VMware

[2:19] Tell me more about The Mandalorian

[8:52] What’s the story behind how The Mandalorian was made?

[12:11] What are the core truths behind the Mandalorian?

[14:58] How can “This is the way” be applied to B2B marketing?

[17:52] Learn more about OneVMware

[18:18] What role does leadership play in establishing internal alignment

[19:44] Tell me more about the podcast CIO Exchange 

[28:52] How to bring your brand to market in a way that will resonate with your audience

Links

Watch “The Mandalorian”

Connect with Yadin on LinkedIn

Learn more about VMware

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you feel like you’re struggling to differentiate your company from a sea saturated with similar brands, this is the episode for you. 

You want to market your brand to make it pop, yet it can feel overwhelming trying to nail down a winning idea for your next campaign. That’s because out of 100 factors, you might have 99 in common with your competitors. But that one factor that your competitors don't have, THAT is the one you market. 

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re relaxing to the soft, soothing music of the Vrbo ad campaign, “Only Your People.” We’re chatting about how the campaign helped Vrbo, a brand that’s been around for nearly three decades, to grab audience attention as a major competitor to Airbnb. 

Vrbo repositioned itself through a single message: only your people will be at the rental. It’s responding to a pain point specific to Airbnb customers who don’t want to share a space with the host or other guests. And the campaign is getting talked about in marketing circles everywhere. So follow along as we talk about how you, too, can position your brand as a major name in your industry. 

About Corporate Bro

Vrbo is a vacation rental company similar to Airbnb. So homeowners list their properties directly on the Vrbo site; beach houses, mountain cabins, treehouses, villas, boats, and more.

It started in 1995 as an independent company acquired by HomeAway in 2006, and then again in 2015 by Expedia Group.

The name V-R-B-O is an acronym for Vacation Rentals by Owner.

VRBO is Airbnb's biggest competitor with over 2 million listings and vacation rentals in more than 190 countries. Their website sees over 15.9 million unique visitors per month, and listings are posted on the Expedia site, which sees 730 million unique visitors per month.

The big difference between Vrbo and Airbnb is that Vrbo only offers entire properties for rent. So renters have the whole place to themselves, whereas on Airbnb, renters have the option of house shares. This means they may be renting a room within a house and the owner is there at the same time. Because of this, Vrbo tends to attract larger, higher-end property rentals and cater to groups of people, whether whole families or friends, or simply folks with higher budgets.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Vrbo: 

• Study your buyers to find their pain points and create messaging for each of them. This shows your audience that you’re listening to them and that their opinions matter. And it helps build trust! An example of this is Wix, whose ad, “The Power of Wix Infrastructure,” reassures users their websites are backed by four data centers and tens of thousands of servers. In other words, there’s basically no way their site could go down. This is different from other hosting providers, where a site might run on one dedicated server, increasing the risk of the site crashing. They also have an ad called “Security’s On Us,” highlighting how they offer enterprise-grade security that’s fully managed for users. It has lots of bells and whistles to prevent hackers and bugs from gaining access to the site. So users won’t have to worry about either hackers or their site crashing, which may happen with other hosting sites.
• Identify what your differentiating feature is from your competitors and create a campaign around it. Run it as a single-feature ad on a key position. The simple, straight-forward messaging and clear benefit of your brand over others will resonate with your target audience. Ian says, “the point of positioning is to focus on the one thing that your competitor can't. A great positioning campaign like this allows there to be no wiggle room at all. You cannot get around this. If [customers] believe that this one feature is so important, then you're guaranteed to earn their business.” CRM Platform Monday.com ran a campaign that’s a great example of this. They have an ad that shows up in Google search results that says, “CRM Without the Frustration - No-Code CRM Software.” The ad acknowledges and validates a pain point of other CRM platforms - that they are hard to learn how to use - and offers a solution.

Quotes

*”Vrbo is just an overall, generally more predictable experience. You know what you're going to get. You don't know what you're going to get with Airbnb. And for some people, that is the delight of going to Airbnb, it’s like there is a little bit of serendipity there. Whereas for Vrbo, nope, you're not paying for serendipity.” - Ian Faison

*“It's really understanding the pain points as well. You really have to study the buyer’s thought process to understand the super common pain points.” - Colin Stamps

*”[Monday.com] took all the pain points and they were like, ‘Let's create messaging for each of these to stand out from the other search results that are currently showing up for our competitors.’” - Anagha Das

Time Stamps

[1:29] Tell me more about Vrbo

[3:51] About the "Only Your People" ad campaign

[6:33] How Vrbo differentiates itself from Airbnb with new ad campaign

[11:48] The importance of messaging to make your brand stand out from competitors

[14:42] How to identify customer pinpoints to market to

[15:00] How to choose a single feature to market

[21:54] B2B examples of single feature ads that recognize customer pain points

Links

Watch Vrbo Commercials

Learn more about Vrbo

Read April Dunford’s book on product positioning, Obviously Awesome

Check out Monday.com and their positioning against other CRMs

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We don’t have to convince you, a B2B marketer, that S.A.D. (Sales Are Dope). You live, breathe, and dream in analytics, KPI’s, and conversion rates. You count impressions in your dreams instead of sheep. 

But you may actually be taking yourself too seriously. It’s time to have some fun with your work and use satire in your marketing.  

The irony, sarcasm, and parody of satire in your content, hits your target audience hard, and differentiates your content from the sea of corporate handshake stock photos and banality that B2B marketing materials usually consist of. 

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re binge-watching Corporate Bro videos on YouTube. Listen in as we show you why a portion of your marketing budget should be used to make world class edu-tainment content. 

We also cover how you can take a multi-channel, multi-format approach, and partner with a well-known content creator. So you can A.B.C. (Always Be Closing.)

About Corporate Bro

Corporate Bro is a sketch comedy character that satirizes corporate sales life. Ross Pomerantz is the mastermind behind the character. Ross is a content creator, corporate speaker and entrepreneur from Atlanta, Georgia. He writes, produces, and stars in the sketches. He started making 6-second videos on Vine in 2013 when he started his first tech sales job at Oracle. He has now performed for companies like Dropbox, Smartsheet and Salesforce. And his YouTube, which he started in 2016, has 25M subscribers. Ross holds an MBA from Stanford University, and his full-time day job is on the leadership team at Bravado (as of 2022).

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Corporate Bro: 

• Use a percentage of your marketing budget to make funny stuff. Comedy, edutainment, whatever you want to call it. Make something just to connect with your audience, and make them laugh. Because, Colin says, “You probably have some white papers, some webinars, et cetera, and that's fine. You should have all that. But there's also that angle of, ‘All right, let's put out some other content that's a little more entertaining and relatable and fun.’” Let’s face it - not many B2B companies are making their audience laugh. But there are cheeky ways to get your audience to crack a smile! The sales engagement company Sopro made a campaign called “We Love Our Clients.” The video shows a slew of clients making difficult requests, and ends with the phrase, “Sopro makes finding clients easy. You just have to deal with them.” This kind of satire creates impact and makes your brand stand out.
• Use a multi-channel, multi-format approach. Distribute content across multiple social media channels. Go where your audience is — whether that’s Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. And do both short and long-form videos. A great example of a multi-channel, multi-format approach is how Scratch Pad created a podcast called Beyond Quota that they collaborate on with Corporate Bro, and share episodes both on podcast streaming platforms as well as on YouTube. So, no matter what platform your audience spends time on, they’ll see your content there. 
• Partner with a well-known content creator. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s a content creator for you. Find somebody whose messaging would resonate with your audience and create a campaign with them. Ian says, “There's a million examples of times where people just try to borrow a celebrity's audience and that doesn't work. It's not about that. It's about co-creating something with them that is unique and special.” A great example of content co-creation is when marketing automation company Klaviyo partnered with Eli Weiss, Senior Director of CX and Retention at Jones Road Beauty, on their Less Stalking, More Talking campaign. Weiss is not just a relevant and trusted name in e-commerce, but he also shares the same customer-first philosophy as Klaviyo, making him a perfect fit for the campaign. By working together, they’re leveraging both of their audiences, spreading brand awareness, building trust, and creating memorable content. It’s a win-win-win…win situation.

Quotes

*”What you can control as a marketer is [being] consistent and repeatable. That's what [Corporate Bro] has done for a decade and that is a pathway to winning.” - Ian Faison

*”What makes Corporate Bro so good is it connects with you in a way [that reminds you] not to take yourself too seriously when perhaps your job is on the line if you don't close this deal or if you don't have a good quarter.” - Colin Stamps

Time Stamps

[1:25] Tell me more about Corporate Bro

[3:02] Why are we covering Corporate Bro?

[6:09] What is satire? What's the psychology of satire?

[11:11] How do you run multi-channel, multi-format campaign? 

[13:38] What are examples of companies who have partnered with content creators?

[15:42] Why is it important for companies to make funny content?

Links

Watch Corporate Bro videos

Check out Corporate Bro’s website

Read about Corporate Bro in the press

Follow Ross Pomerantz aka Corporate Bro on Instagram

Connect with Corporate Bro on LinkedIn

Follow Corporate Bro on Twitter

Check out Beyond Quota podcast with Corporate Bro

Tune in to Sales Are Dope (S.A.D.)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You - yes you - as a B2B marketer are trained to be PERFECT. You’re a well-oiled machine hell bent on accuracy, precision, and aesthetics. 

Chances are you might not like what we have to say in this episode:  sometimes it pays to be imperfect. That’s right! We want you to embrace your mistakes.

Mistakes are part of the marketing process. Everybody makes them! It’s time to accept your mistakes and be transparent about them. Your audience will be attracted to your authenticity, and you’ll have an edge over legacy brands in the industry.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re wallowing in the sarcasm, quick wit, and irreverence of the YouTube show You Suck at Cooking. We’re showing you how embracing mistakes will only level up your marketing skills, and how being real goes a long way at winning over your audience.

About You Suck at Cooking

You Suck at Cooking is a YouTube channel that satirizes classic cooking shows. Instead of being a picture-perfect set with the whole mise-en-place on a pristine kitchen set, the videos are clearly made by some dude in his own kitchen, for fun. He uses decidedly unprofessional terms — for example, he calls stirring “wangjangling,” and once mistakenly called his oven “onion.” He often burns whatever he’s making. But chef or not, the videos do have their own flair, including (but not limited to) original songs, stop motion animation, voicemails from his dad, special appearances of his dogs, and much, much more.

The videos are shot from overhead as a pair of disembodied hands make the food in an everyday kitchen and a narrator walks you through each step. In fact, we never see the creator’s face. He’s totally anonymous. He even released a book called You Suck at Cooking: THE ABSURDLY PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SUCKING SLIGHTLY LESS AT MAKING FOOD: A COOKBOOK. The author is listed as…You Suck at Cooking. But according to a thread on Reddit, his name might be Mel. Anyway, the channel was started in 2015, and now has over 3 million subscribers.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From You Suck at Cooking: 

• Accept that getting things wrong is part of the process. It’s part of the journey to getting better at marketing. You could even say that if it weren’t for the mistakes, you’d never improve. Ian says, “In the B2B world and the tech world, when you're trying to create content, you want to create, like ‘This is the best way to do something.’ But the truth is, you figured out the best way by making 5,000 mistakes.” It’s all about how you pivot, think on your feet, and adjust your workflow based on what the mistake taught you. A good example of this is when Sony fell victim to one of the largest data breaches in history back in 2011. The breach exposed 77 million PlayStation users’ information. In response, the CEO personally apologized. Sony offered victims of the breach identity theft insurance, as well as a free month of PlayStation Plus. The CEO reassured users that PlayStation was taking additional measures to protect personally identifiable information. In other words, the company acknowledged the mistake, offered compensation, and promised to do better.
• Position yourself as a disruptor in the industry. Set yourself apart from legacy or traditional brands in the industry, and do it through humor! Make fun of the differences between your company and competitors. For example, Swatch made Swiss-made watches accessible and relevant to younger consumers with their playful branding, that set them apart from legacy luxury Swiss watch brands like Hublot or OMEGA. Another example is life insurance company, Dead Happy. They invite customers to “Make a Deathwish,” or in other words, make a wish for what you want your payout to be spent on when you die. It could be anything from sending your ashes to the edge of space to paying for someone to take care of your pets. The dark humor sets them apart from conventional life insurance companies and earns them a following, especially with younger generations.

Quotes

*”In the B2B world and the tech world, when you're trying to create content, you want to create, like ‘This is the best way to do something.’ But the truth is, you figured out the best way by making 5,000 mistakes. Like, you either get it right or you or you learn. And I think that that part for B2B marketing makes it way more real if you understand the mistakes, and if you make the case study. And if it's just the good stuff and not the bad stuff, then it's not gonna feel as real.” - Ian Faison

*”It gives you an edge if you're the one who's saying what everyone else is thinking but doesn't have the guts to say. When it comes to B2B, we're all in the trenches together. So if we can level with each other and just be real, that's a better way to make relationships because you're trying to schmooze someone that’s in the business of schmoozing. It's like we can see through it. It just makes it feel more genuine” - Jaz Zepatos

Time Stamps

[1:15] Tell me more about You Suck at Cooking

[4:10] What makes YSAC remarkable?

[15:24] Why you should share anti-case studies

[17:50] How does this apply to B2B?

[21:00] What are some examples of irreverence or embracing mistakes in marketing?

Links

Watch You Suck at Cooking on YouTube

Visit YSAC Website

Get YSAC Book

Check out YSAC Instagram

Listen to original YSAC music on SoundCloud

Qualtrics and their irreverent film series

Life Insurance Company Dead Happy wants your Deathwish

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

B2B ads can feel pretty soulless. But if you’re pulling your hair out and  struggling to connect emotionally with your audience, never fear. 

We have the key to build a deep emotional connection with your audience instantly. That key is NOSTALGIA. 

Take your audience on a trip down memory lane, and they’ll associate your company with something from the past that they already know and love. It’s a winning tactic that taps into feelings of familiarity, comfort, trust, and security. And on top of that, customers are more willing to pay for your product. 

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re talking with podcaster and comedian Jaz Zepatos aka Jaz Zapp. We cover how she connects with her millennial audience, why they’re all lactose intolerant, and going viral. Jaz is a content creator on Instagram and TikTok, and is the host of the Millennial Movie Club podcast. And with her help, we’re teaching you how to use nostalgia in your B2B marketing.

About Jaz Zapp

Jaz is a full-time podcast producer, creative director, and host of the Millennial Movie Club Podcast. A life-long storyteller and comedian with a flair for human connection and edutainment, Jaz enjoys making people laugh, networking with like-minded creatives, and trying to rollerblade without falling down.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Jaz Zapp:

• Define “nostalgia” for your target customer. Nostalgia is specific to different age groups. What’s nostalgic to  your parents will not necessarily be nostalgic to you. So, talk to your customers about what work was like for them 10 or 20 years ago, and create a marketing campaign using their stories. Whether it was handing out physical checks on payday or the vending machine selling out of everything but plain Fritos, there’s content there that’s ripe for the picking. Apple tapped into nostalgia targeting many generations of Sesame Street fans when they ran an ad with Cookie Monster using Siri. Apple was able to appeal to a few different demographics by bringing in a universal childhood favorite, Cookie Monster, and taking us back to the good old days. For Jaz, it started with a memory about crushing on the red Power Ranger and imagining he had fallen in love with her.

“I was like, look, maybe this is just very niche and weird to me. Or maybe there's somebody out there who also gets this. And nine times out of 10, there's a bunch of people that are like, ‘Oh my God, I thought I was just this weird.’ And suddenly you have this community. And it’s people that just want to be reminded of a simpler time. They feel seen and that they weren't so isolated in their experience growing up.” - Jaz Zepatos

• Get weird, get cringey, get real. The closer your ad can get to a nostalgic memory for your target audience, the better. That even includes all of the weird, cringey details. From getting the attention of work crushes, to in-office pranks, or stealing parking spots — sprinkle these personal details into your marketing. As Ian put it, there’s so much pressure as a professional marketer to be serious:

”I think part of the problem for marketers is that we feel like our job is to be a boring adult. If you're selling accounting software or whatever it is, you just feel like, ‘Well, I can't really do anything creative.’” 

Whereas Jaz found a niche audience of nostalgic millennials and cultivated a community there: 

”[I wanted to] just get more in touch with who I was. This was the kind of kid I was. And I like to harness that now because I don't wanna just be a boring adult. I wanna keep some of that with me.”

It’s easy for Jaz to take the lessons she’s learned on social media and apply it to B2B marketing:

”Behind that CRM platform, behind Salesforce, or behind whatever, is a bunch of people that also made their Barbies cheat on each other. I think it's remembering the humanity side of it, where it's like that's what you're appealing to, really. And then once you're in the door, then you can work together and get strategic on SEO and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it means nothing if you're not striking a very human chord with somebody.”

Quotes

*”If you're playing to everybody, you're playing to nobody. Niching down is always a good idea.” - Jaz Zepatos

*”[I wanted to] just get more in touch with who I was. This was the kind of kid I was. And I like to harness that now because I don't wanna just be a boring adult. I wanna keep some of that with me.” - Jaz Zepatos

*”I think part of the problem for marketers is that we feel like our job is to be a boring adult. If you're selling accounting software or whatever it is, you just feel like, ‘Well, I can't really do anything creative.’” - Ian Faison

*”Behind that CRM platform, behind Salesforce, or behind whatever, is a bunch of people that also made their Barbies cheat on each other. I think it's remembering the humanity side of it, where it's like that's what you're appealing to, really. And then once you're in the door, then you can work together and get strategic on SEO and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it means nothing if you're not striking a very human chord with somebody.” - Jaz Zepatos

*”The cringier you can get, the more accessible you become. The same thing if you're pitching your company or your product, you want people to feel comfortable with you. You don't wanna walk in like the jock down the hallway and make everybody feel self-conscious. You wanna level with people. And so like for you to be like, ‘Hey, I'm not that cool, but like none of us are that cool. Let's have a conversation,’ is a lot more welcoming.” - Jaz Zepatos

*”People just want to feel some sense of comfort and relatability, and feel like they're a part of something bigger. So I think finding those moments from history and pop culture, TV, or movies, and just figuring out what collectively a group of people were into, and then bringing that back 20 years later is such a smart move.” - Anagha Das

*”Nostalgia isn’t nostalgia for everyone. Like Jaz's content wouldn't be nostalgic for boomers. So you have to identify who your audience is and who you're going to market to.” - Meredith Gooderham 

*”Nostalgia allows you to transport the person instantly back to that feeling. Whether it's a vulnerable feeling, or fun or excitement, or any of those things. It can engender real emotions so quickly, and that's why it's so powerful. So if you're putting it into your marketing, it's a much faster, much deeper connection.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[2:42] Tell me more about Jaz Zepatos aka Jaz Zapp

[3:11] How did Jaz tap into millennial nostalgia?

[8:03] Why marketers should embrace nostalgia as a powerful tool

[10:00] How can you use nostalgia to make your brand feel accessible?

[13:44] How do we apply nostalgia to B2B marketing?

[20:45] The emotional power of nostalgia and how you can use it in your marketing

[21:30] Examples of how nostalgia could be used in B2B marketing

Links

Check out Jaz on:

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

TikTok

Spotify

YouTube

The Millennial Movie Club Podcast

eBaum’s World article on “Plant Daddy”

See how Apple tapped into nostalgia with their Cookie Monster ad

Listen to Ep. 4 of Remarkable on Mean Girls and how it uses nostalgia to connect with viewers

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your marketing budget is limited. It might even be bare bones.  And, believe it or not, that could be a really good thing for you.

Here’s the thing about limitations: they inspire creativity. Limited resources force you to figure out how to take advantage of what you have in order to create the most impact. When you lean into those choices, you can create something stylistically unique and compelling – and become the stuff marketing legends (and Remarkable episodes) are made of.

On this episode of Remarkable, we’re taking lessons from one of the most iconic scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: the coconut scene – aka the very first scene of the movie.

For those who haven’t seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the movie opens with the distant sound of a galloping horse heard through thick fog. But what emerges from the fog is not a horse. It’s King Arthur skipping around on foot. His squire Patsy is following him, rhythmically knocking a pair of coconut shells together to mimic a horse’s trot.

There’s a reason this knight is using coconuts to stand in for a horse: the film couldn’t afford real horses. Instead, they improvised one of the funniest scenes in film history. They grabbed a couple of coconuts and knocked them together to sound like the gallop of a horse. This absurd yet brilliant idea is just one of the many reasons Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a cult classic. Today, we’re going to show you how you can embrace your own limitations – and hopefully create a cult following of your own.

About Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1975 low budget British comedy that satirizes the legend of King Arthur. It stars the Monty Python comedy troupe in key roles: Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin, and Eric Idle. Carol Cleveland and Sandy Johnson also star in the film. Gilliam and Jones directed the movie, and Gilliam also did the animation and artwork.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Monty Python and the Holy Grail: 

• Acknowledge your limitations and brainstorm creative ways to work around them. Don’t dwell on your limitations. Embrace them! Think outside the box about how you can tell your story with what you have. Monty Python thought WAY outside the box with their coconut solution, but it worked – and according to co-director Terry Gilliam, it even helped set the stage for the film: "We would never have got through that movie with real horses,” he said. “It makes a wonderful leap, because with that opening shot you accept the kind of lunatic logic that's there." Caspian team member Dane Eckerle gives us another example from his work producing an independent film:

“We could only afford stunt coordinators on a certain amount of days, which meant that a lot of the action needed to get consolidated into those days. But we wanted the action that we did have to look really good, and we didn't want to have to stretch ourselves too thin trying to cram in 50 stunts in two days. So we decided to do 10 stunts really, really well in those two days. Then we leaned into the emotion of it. And so instead of showing the action, we captured the first part of the action. And the cameras slowly push into the character’s face, and you hear the carnage.” - Dane Eckerle, Producer, and Head of Development at Caspian

• Demonstrate self-awareness about your workaround. Emphasize your workaround to let your audience know that it was truly a choice, not some mistake or half-baked idea. They’ll feel like they’re in on your secret, and it can help create audience awareness as well. For the premiere of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the comedy group advertised that they would give out free coconuts to the first thousand people who bought tickets. The next morning, fans were lined up as early as 5:30 in the morning to get their hands on a coconut!

Quotes

*“I just feel like when you have the money, when you have all the resources - and this isn't to say that big movies or big commercials or big marketing campaigns are bad, but there's no limitations. There's no box that you're put in that breeds a new level of creativity or outside-the-box thinking. It's just, you do what you can or what's been done before, or what you can afford, which is anything. I think it robs a little bit of that DIY scrappy thinking. You lose a little bit of that inventiveness when you have it all. It's easier to stand out from the crowd if you're embracing your limitations.” - Dane Eckerle

*”’Do more with less’ is really interesting to me because it implies two things. Number one, that you need to do more. So, you need to push the boundaries of what you have done in the past. So if you had a million dollar budget and you achieved X results, now you need to surpass what you used to do. And then the second piece is that you have less to do it with, which means you have less physical dollars that you can invest.’ - Ian Faison

*”When you don't look at it realistically and just go, ‘Okay, this is what we got and this is how we're gonna have to work with it,’ When you fight the tide, it actually ends up looking bad. Like if you try and stretch something and make something that you really don't have any business making, everyone can feel it.” - Dane Eckerle

Time Stamps

[2:02] Why are we covering Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

[2:52] Tell me more about Monty Python and the Holy Grail

[4:02] Learn more about the making of the movie

[5:59] Where did the financing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail come from?

[8:20] Exactly how tight was the budget for this movie?

[9:28] Why did the troupe use coconuts for the horse sound effects?

[12:30] How do you manage being on a super tight budget?

[17:22] How does a tight budget affect creative decisions in videos or movies?

[21:25] How do you apply this to B2B marketing?

[28:23] How does NY-based clothing company Minted embrace their limitations?

[31:21] How does Bionic do more with less on their glassboard videos?

Links

Watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”

Check out Minted New York on TikTok

Take a look at Bionic’s glassboard videos

Follow Alex Willis and see the studio Caspian Studios helped him build for Leadership Surge

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marketing is already pretty difficult. But when you can’t get buy-in from your boss, it becomes near-impossible. 

So what happens when you have a bad boss who doesn’t understand what you’re doing? Well, you have to learn to communicate with them. You have to learn to market to them.

This week, we’re looking at HBO’s “Succession.” Its main character, Logan Roy, is about as bad of a boss as it gets. His toxic leadership drives a cruel culture of power, hunger, and cold-blooded backstabbing. But whether his employees – who are also his children – achieve their goals is another thing altogether. 

Here to talk us through the marketing lessons from “Succession” is Tom Butta. Tom is a nine-time CMO and current Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Airship, a mobile app experience company. Aside from being a fan of “Succession,” Butta is an experienced executive who has worked to create billions of dollars of enterprise value for companies like SignalFx, Sprinklr, and RedHat. He’s also had his fair share of bad bosses.

With his help, we’re showing you how to put your message in terms your boss will understand, paint a picture of the future state, and choose the right person to pitch the idea to your boss.

About “Succession”

“Succession” is an HBO drama/comedy series that premiered in 2018. Its fourth and final season premieres March 26.The show stars Brian Cox as Logan Roy, with Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck and Sarah Snook playing his children, Kendall, Roman, Connor, and Siobhan, respectively. Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun also star in the show as fan favorites, Tom Wambsgans, Siobhan’s husband, and Greg Hirsch (lovingly known as “Cousin Greg”). 

“Succession” follows the story of Logan Roy, who is the head of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco. As he surpasses his eightieth birthday, he’s considering who will take over for him. The obvious choice is his eldest son, Kendall, who struggles to solidify his place as heir. But the remaining children also vie for the top place at Waystar Royco, pitting them against each other.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Succession”:

• Put your message in terms your boss will understand. You can rattle off whatever marketing jargon you want to your boss, but all the acronyms in the world may not be enough. Instead, you need to tailor your messaging to your boss. Learn what’s important to them, familiarize yourself with their priorities, and put things in terms your boss will understand. In “Succession,” each of the Roy children struggle to convince their father they’re the best heir for Waystar Royco – because they don’t know how to relate to him. The same thing happened to Butta: when his former employer was in danger of going out of business, Butta knew he needed to appeal to his boss with an idea to save the company. Butta did some reconnaissance to learn just what made his boss tick. Butta says he figured out that his former boss was a competitive salesman at heart – and that his boss was frustrated because his company didn’t have “a seat at the table” with big companies like Salesforce and Oracle. When he spent time talking to his boss to understand where he was coming from, Butta could then appeal to this desire in order to get him on board with the idea that ultimately saved the company from going under.

“When you visualize what a future state can look like, sometimes you can feel very alone in that. And so you have to figure out a way to get others to actually not just accept the idea, but in many ways make it their own. And so that means that the way in which you approach the work is to do a couple things. One is to appeal to what matters to them, and then secondly to actually use their own vocabulary and their language as you are presenting this sort of change path.” - Tom Butta, CMO, Airship

• Paint a picture of the future state for them. Don’t tell your boss what your idea looks like in practice – show them. Make it come to life. Butta had a vision for how to save his former company, but he needed to get his boss to agree. So he  mocked up two articles to look like they were from The Wall Street Journal. One said the company had gone bankrupt, and the other said the company rebounded. He showed the articles to his boss, presenting them as two paths forward. By painting the picture of two future states, he got his boss to change the company playbook. Butta pointed out that in “Succession,” “Nobody is pointing to an outcome. Nobody in ‘Succession’ has a path or a playbook. They’re just trying to advocate for themselves. And that’s why it fails.”
• Bring on a trusted partner to pitch your idea with. Behind every successful pitch is a great communicator – or two! In fact, it’s best not to do it alone. Find a partner who is whole-heartedly onboard with your pitch can confidently back you up when questions are asked. It’s also important that they’re a great public speaker – and hopefully even better than you are. Need an example? Look at Kendall Roy in “Succession.” Kendall struggles to solidify his place as successor to CEO of Waystar Royco because he’s insecure, lacks the charisma required to take on the role, and most importantly, he doesn’t have anyone to advocate for him either. Butta says, “It's not just about the idea, the logic, and the compelling evidence. It takes a certain type of an individual who can actually make it work.”

Quotes

*”When you visualize what a future state can look like, sometimes you can feel very alone in that. And so you have to figure out a way to get others to actually not just accept the idea, but in many ways make it their own. And so that means that the way in which you approach the work is to do a couple things. One is to appeal to what matters to them, and then secondly to actually use their own vocabulary and their language as you are presenting this sort of change path.”

*”You can't present the idea of doing something. You actually have to present it. Like, you just have to show it. People don't have any imagination. And so you need to tell the story.”

*”It's not just about the idea and the logic and the compelling evidence and all of that. It takes a certain type of an individual who can actually make it work.” 

Time Stamps

[1:35] Introducing Tom Butta, CMO at Airship

[2:14] Learn more about Airship

[8:02] What’s “Succession” about? 

[11:01] The making of “Succession”

[15:05] The keys to pitching an idea to your boss

[15:59] How do you effectively use change vocabulary?

[18:04] How to speak your boss’ language

[28:07] How do you choose the right people for your change agenda?

[30:09] How do you paint a picture of your idea for your boss?

[38:19] Why you should rethink the slide deck as your go-to presentation tool

Links

Watch “Succession”

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn

Listen to Marketing Strategies that Led to Billion-Dollar Acquisitions with Tom Butta on the Demand Gen Visionaries Podcast

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Humanizing your brand is one of the most difficult challenges in marketing.

But there’s a proven solution to getting people to associate your business with more than just its logo: a spokesperson.

A spokesperson is the voice and face of your company. It can’t just be anybody. You need someone with a trusted voice. Someone who can speak about your product with authenticity. Someone who can talk to your customers in the language they use. And it doesn’t have if that someone is a little charming, too.

This week, we’re taking lessons from comedic actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds, who has become the face of his own brands like Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile. 

Here to help us is SaaS SEO thought leader Liam Barnes, Head of Demand Generation and Programs at Bionic, an application security posture management platform. With Ryan and Liam by our side, we’re showing you how to choose an effective spokesperson, why hiring a celebrity isn’t so far out of reach, and why you shouldn’t gatekeep your content.

About Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is a Canadian-American actor, producer, and entrepreneur whose career took off after he starred in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. He’s also starred in Waiting, Adventureland, Free Guy, and the Deadpool franchise.

Ryan’s track record as an entrepreneur may be even more impressive than his work in film. Three businesses he has either invested in or owns have sold for incredibly impressive figures: Aviation Gin ($610 million), Mint Mobile ($1.35 billion), and film production and digital advertising agency Maximum Effort (undisclosed). He also has financial interests in the Wrexham Association Football Club, 1password, and Wealthsimple.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Ryan Reynolds:

• Choose an in-house evangelist for your brand. There’s no one who knows your product better than someone who lives and breathes it on a daily basis. Your ideal evangelist is someone who can vouch for your product and speak the language of your customers – and has a stake in the business's success. Ryan Reynolds is not only the owner of Mint Mobile, but also the company’s in-house evangelist. He has the authority, investment, and understanding of the product to share the benefits of becoming a customer. And because one of Mint Mobile’s values is that they’re cheap, he highlights it by, for example, featuring his family in the ads as “barely paid spokespeople.” Chances are that you already have some great brand evangelists in your B2B company. This could be a CXO with a strong social media presence who’s established as a thought leader in your industry, someone on your product team who is consistently engaging with your community in popular forums, or even the new hire who’s documenting their journey at your company.
• Hire a celebrity to be your company spokesperson. We love internal brand evangelists. But we also love influencer marketing, and what’s hot right now? Getting a celebrity to be the face of your brand. They’re more accessible than you think. Partnerships come at a range of price points, and you don’t need a mega A-lister to make a big impact. According to an article in the Journal of Advertising Research, celebrity endorsements can increase a company’s sales by an average of 4%. Ping Identity hired actor and athlete Terry Crews to be their “chief identity champion” for a brand awareness campaign that launched in October 2020. According to Ping Identity CMO Kevin Sellers, the company’s website traffic increased 1000 percent after the launch of the campaign. So dig deep into your brand’s voice and mission and find a celebrity or influencer who can embody your brand. The results speak for themselves! Bonus points if they bring a little humor into it!
• Make your content accessible. Distribution is key! There is a lot of great B2B content out there – but too often, companies limit their audience by gatekeeping their content. With his businesses, Reynolds takes a different approach. His businesses don’t spend heavily on advertising, but the ads they do create are funny, engaging, and accessible to everyone. The ads often go viral, further expanding their reach. (If you want to see a textbook example of what we’re talking about, check out this Mint Mobile ad!) And while we understand that not all B2B content can be a quirky one-minute advertisement, the key here is simple: unlock the gate. Don’t keep your best ideas in an email newsletter or in a hotel conference room. You’re limiting your audience when you do.

Key Quotes

*“He has this sense of ownership and everything is tongue in cheek. When we're buying his stuff, we're buying a little bit of Ryan. He vouched for it. And it's just really novel, how he productizes himself. A gin is just a gin. But when Ryan Reynolds is behind it, now it means something more.” - Ian Faison

*”It’s important to surround yourself with good people who are very good at their job. And with Ryan Reynolds, he has George Dewey as his business partner, who is that creative genius, that ad genius. He understands marketing, he understands culture, he understands people.” - Ian Faison

*”It’s important to have someone who is likable, charismatic and engaging as the spokesperson. Someone who's very close and tied and invested into the company driving the story and driving the thought leadership of the company. Especially in security, we have a really hard time getting founders, getting evangelists, getting technical people to want to push the story forward. And it's because they just don't have that advertising expertise, the marketing expertise. They’re engineers, they're not writers. And if they were writers, they were like research-based writers, so the creativity side of it was lost. And so it's important to do both things. Partner the front running technical people in your company with solid marketers, and help them push the narrative forward. - Liam Barnes 

*”Something that Ryan Reynolds understands is the distribution of the content that he's creating. He could definitely go and headline user conferences or go and do features where he goes and shows up at certain places where people ask him questions and pay attention to him for an hour. But then there's nothing after that. And something that companies get really wrong is they put all this time and energy into a user conference and then they gate it. They put it behind this paywall, or they make you give your information to them and then nobody sees it after the conference…Honestly, what most people would react more positively to is, go ahead and have the user conference, then go spend time distributing the content correctly. It's just something that's a completely missed opportunity. It's an interesting kind of dynamic that you see a lot in b2b, where everything's gated and nobody has access, and they're wondering why they're not getting the returns from it. It's because nobody ends up actually seeing it.” - Liam Barnes

“To make your ads better, make the creative more memorable and funnier. And then just put a little bit of that marketing engine behind it, retargeting and AB testing, and all the stuff that we have at our disposal to supercharge that really good creative. Because at the end of the day, if you're just promoting bad creative and boring creative, it's never going to get legs.” - Ian Faison

“It's less about trying to make your chosen spokesperson charismatic. It's more about trying to make that person relatable to who we're selling to. So our CEO and CTO are engineers and security folks. And we're selling to engineering and security folks. So I don't have to make them the most charismatic people. I just have to make them relatable. They have shared experiences with those people. They've been in security before, they've been through writing code and building systems and doing DevOps and running security teams, and doing the security research. And so just talking about those personal experiences and relating it to what those teams are going through. That's all you really need.” - Liam Barnes

Time Stamps

[1:31] Introducing Liam Barnes, Head of Demand Generation and Programs at Bionic

[2:13] What’s Bionic?

[4:05] Who’s Ryan Reynolds?

[5:55] What makes Ryan Reynolds an effective spokesperson?

[12:14] How did Ryan Reynolds become a marketing powerhouse?

[18:50] What can we learn about B2B marketing from Ryan Reynolds?

[23:54] How can B2B companies use celebrity spokespeople?

[36:22] How can companies make their CEO an effective spokesperson?

Links

Listen to Demand Gen Visionaries with Liam Barnes

Tune in to Everyday Demand Gen with Liam Barnes

See the Axonius x Simone Biles ad

Check out IBM Watson’s collaboration with fashion designer Gaurav Gupta

Take a look at Microsoft’s collab with National Geographic in their “Make What’s Next” initiative 

Create your own business thriller starring an A-list celebrity

See Coinbase’s $7M Superbowl ad that got people talking

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The marketing terrain is rough out there. In many ways, traversing the roots, rocks and mud of extreme trail running is like navigating the shifting marketing landscape.

Both demand endurance, adaptability and a strategic mindset. Those are a few of the things we’re talking about today. 

In this episode, we’re taking marketing inspiration from extreme trail running with the help of our special guest, DeepL CMO Steve Rotter.

Together, we talk about being agile, stepping where others have stepped, how to plot your own route, and aiming for progress over perfection.

About our guest, Steve Rotter

Steve Rotter, an entrepreneur, evangelist, and author, brings over two decades of tech marketing leadership experience to his role as CMO at DeepL. With a track record as a two-time founder with two M&A deals and three unicorns under his belt, Steve is deeply passionate about innovative marketing, AI, and brand building. Prior to DeepL, Steve served as CMO of FourKites, where he spearheaded remarkable growth and revenue increases through targeted account-based marketing and PLG strategies, serving industry titans like Coke, Walmart, and Ford. His expertise extends to CMO roles at OutSystems and Acrolinx, where he drove unicorn growth, established category leadership, and facilitated successful acquisitions. He's also held leading tech-industry marketing positions at Adobe, Motorola, and Brightcove.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Extreme Trail Running:

• Agility is key. Be on the lookout for disruptions, like changes in buying pattern, that mean you may have to change course. Steve says he was out running “and we had a couple of days of rain because of the recent hurricane. And all of a sudden a trail that was normally a certain way had about a 10 foot river running through it, and you had to cross it and not try not to get too wet and fall over. And the course that you thought was one way is different.” This is true with marketing as well. The landscape is always changing. You have to adapt to what’s in front of you to keep going.
• Step where others have stepped. If you’ve seen others have success with a particular marketing strategy, try it. Use their success to your advantage. Ian says, “If you have somebody's footprints right there in front of you, you can just stay right in their footprints.” Like in extreme trail running, you know stepping in the same place as the person in front of you is a safe bet.
• When there is no path, slow down just enough to plan your route. But don’t take too long to do it. Ian says, “There's this balance of speed versus slowing down to plan your route. And I think that like a lot of times, in my opinion, B2B marketing teams slow down and plan way too much. And they're way overly concerned with the perfect plan rather than running. At the end of the day, you have to move. You have to keep moving. So many people are just crippled by indecision.”
• Progress over perfection. Don’t wait for perfect data to make great content. Use what information you have to move forward. Steve says, “In many cases, you have very data-driven businesses and by definition, marketing has become almost a data-driven skill set that has to be present. But in many ways, it's that analysis paralysis that slows them down because they're waiting for perfect data. We can't wait for perfection. We have to show progress.”

Quotes

*”I think that's actually a really healthy discipline for marketing teams, is not just to be on that hamster wheel all the time, but to take some time out and say, ‘Look, what do we really want to do? What do we want to say? What's our message? What's our story? What's our creative angle?’ And rarely do you achieve that in moments of extreme distraction, right? It's that focus time that kind of drives those light bulb moments.”

*”A leadership approach that is acceptable has a tolerance and there's no fear of failure. If you have marketers that are afraid, like if they make a mistake, they're going to get yelled at or fired, then of course they're going to take time because they're going to just wait for perfect. Whereas if you build a culture in your marketing team around speed, velocity, and learning from your mistakes, then you got a good recipe.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Steve Rotter, CMO at DeepL

[1:48] The Connection Between Trail Running and Marketing

[6:42] Psychology and Support in Extreme Trail Racing

[12:54] Preparation and Training for Trail Running

[16:56] Marketing Strategies and Team Dynamics

[22:15] Balancing Speed and Planning in B2B Marketing

[23:55] Overcoming Analysis Paralysis

[24:24] The Importance of a Fearless Marketing Culture

[25:05] Navigating Unpredictable Terrain

[29:12] The Little Things in Marketing

[31:46] Educating the Market on AI

[34:37] Leveraging Customer Stories

[37:54] Advice for CMOs on Content Strategy

[40:04] Uncovering Hidden Stories

Links

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn

Learn more about DeepL

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What do the best marketers and coaches have in common? It’s not an emphasis on wins and losses.

They’re good listeners.

If you want to make an impact on your audience, you’ve got to get to know them and engage with them. And today, we’re taking hints from one of the best listeners out there: Ted Lasso himself. We’re coaching you on social listening and incorporating creative details into your UX. 

Forget about trying to sell to your audience for a minute. We realize this is counterintuitive for marketers. But marketing isn’t only about selling — we’re going to show you why it’s worthwhile to get to know your audience as more than just customers. To engage with and entertain them on their favorite platforms, and to show them appreciation through little moments of surprise and delight.

This week, we’re reining in “Ted Lasso.” So don’t bring an umbrella to the brainstorm. Because we’re coaching you on social listening, incorporating creative details in your UX, and building in elements of edu-taining in your B2B marketing.

About “Ted Lasso”

“Ted Lasso” is a comedy series about an unwaveringly positive and wholesome American football coach played by Jason Sudeikis who gets hired to coach a British soccer team, fictional team AFC Richmond. The series has run for two seasons which aired in 2021 and 2022, and its third season will air this spring. It also stars Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard and Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Ted Lasso”: 

• Use social listening to learn about your customers as people. Learn what matters to your customers by tuning into their Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other social platforms. Then, use that information to personalize their customer experience. A little surprise and delight goes a long way! Here’s an example: at Brandweek 2019, experience management company Qualtrics asked conference attendees to tweet them a wish that the company’s Dream Team would deliver in real time. And deliver they did. Whether it was a fishbowl margarita, a Popeyes chicken sandwich, a comfy pillow, or a fresh pair of Nikes, guests were surprised and delighted to see their wishes come true at the conference. By doing so, Qualtrics catered to their guests, got them talking, and created a lasting impression that would inspire diehard customer loyalty. Internet provider Spectrum also monitors Twitter for messages by customers, responding to tweets about outages and offering to help restore services. As for Ted Lasso, listening is like his superpower. Players mentioned that the water pressure in the locker room showers was “rubbish”, so Lasso repaired it. A seemingly simple gesture reminded players that he was listening and cared about their experience.
• Build small details into your UX to bring your customers joy.
  In the first season of “Ted Lasso,” Ted bakes shortbread cookies for his boss Rebecca. It’s a small gesture that gives the two a chance to connect – and it’s a powerful lesson for your UX. Baking in these little moments to build connection is essential. When you complete a task on Asana, a unicorn flies across the screen – and that simple animation gives a straightforward project management tool a sense of personality and whimsy that isn’t easily replicated. In your B2B marketing, incorporate personalized touches into your website that speak to your brand and values. 

Key Quotes

“Everyone loves random acts of kindness. And when it comes to marketing, it's the same thing. Like if a brand is able to show that they understand the wants and needs of their customers, they can gain that customer loyalty. And that's where surprise and delight come in. Like if they execute a surprise and delight idea really well, customers are more likely to be brand advocates and stick with the brand, especially on social media. So using surprise and delight helps increase brand awareness but also companies can use it as a retention strategy.” - Anagha Das

“Companies now are using the power of social listening to really understand where their customers are, what they're super interested in, what they're listening to, what they're watching, what trends they're really into that are not related to the company at all. It's literally just like, what are your customers into? And like, how can you play into that to show that you're listening and that you understand your audience and show that you care and want to do something that makes them feel good about whatever they're passionate about.” - Anagha Das

“It's really just becoming a little bit more human and thoughtful about your audience, and realizing that everyone doesn't wanna be sold to 24/7. And I think surprising and delighting your audience, even for a B2B audience, it can be as easy as, ‘All right, today, we're not gonna post promotional stuff on LinkedIn. We're gonna just send out like a have a great day post.’ Like it's something as simple as that. Just to show that there's people behind the brand and they're acknowledging their audience as people as well.“ - Colin Stamps

Time Stamps

[5:13] Tell me more about “Ted Lasso”

[6:20] Learn about the marketing behind “Ted Lasso”

[8:44] How does Ted Lasso use surprise and delight?

[15:28] What can B2B marketers learn about using surprise and delight in their marketing?

[17:00] What’s social listening? And how are companies using it to tune into trends in their customer base?

[22:38] What are simple ways you can use surprise and delight in your B2B marketing?

[27:58] What can we learn about marketing from the “dart scene” in “Ted Lasso”?

Links

Watch Ted Lasso

Check out how the Qualtrics Dream Team delivered Popeyes, a dog, a margarita, and more to their event attendees

See Asana’s Celebration Critters that emerge when a task is completed

Read tales (pun intended) of Chewy’s epic customer service

Learn more about Custom Ink’s unusual money back guarantee on customized goods  

Find out more about social listening and how it could benefit your business

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s easy to think of the people in your ad as characters that exist in those 15 seconds alone. But you can create a stronger bond with your brand by focusing on what those characters are like outside those fifteen seconds. But creating multi-dimensional characters is easier said than done. 

This week, we’re taking a page out of “Schitt’s Creek.” We’re exploring the roles of relationships, flaws, and real-life experiences in relatable character building for your B2B marketing.

About “Schitt’s Creek”

“Schitt’s Creek” is a Canadian TV sitcom created, written and executive produced by Dan Levy and his father Eugene Levy. The show aired from 2015 - 2020 and starred Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy.

The story follows the wealthy and privileged Rose family, who suddenly find themselves broke after their business manager was convicted of fraud. The IRS stripped the Rose family of all of their assets, except one: the small town of Schitt’s Creek, which they had only purchased as a joke years earlier.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Schitt’s Creek”: 

• Find inspiration from real-life experiences. “Relatability” is a subjective term – some people might relate to certain things, while others might shudder at them. But there’s no better shortcut to capturing your audience’s attention than drawing from actual experiences. Schitt’s Creek was inspired by the lives of the ultra rich, particularly families like the Kardashians. They even drew inspiration from actress Kim Basinger, who once bought a small town in Georgia – only to go bankrupt. But the emotional core of “Schitt’s Creek” was something very personal to Dan Levy: his own personal experience of coming out. When describing writing the show, Dan puts it better than we ever could: “I just wanted to write something that I had experienced, and that people could relate to.”
• Reveal your characters’ flaws. Don’t make them too perfect. Exposing the full spectrum of human traits makes it that much easier for your audience to say, “Oh, I’ve done that before,” or “I’ve felt that way before.” Like how self-absorbed the Roses are, the sibling bickering between David and Alexis, and Moira’s detachment from those around her. But it’s also balanced by authentic emotional journeys for each one of them through the six seasons. So by the end of the show, they’re all much closer, much more likable human beings. A complex, real person includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. 
• Develop relationships between characters. Give them depth by exploring the dynamics with other cast members. Close characters may have nicknames for each other while others may have unsettled drama. By giving them a past and a future, you’re extending their believability past the ad itself. From David and Stevie being frenemies to Alexis and Mutt’s romance, the ever-shifting interpersonal ties explore universal themes like love and friendship that anyone can relate to. Look at how Zendesk highlighted their customer relationships  through this ad styled like the couples interviews in When Harry Met Sally. Or at how Adobe showed the relationships among people in their supply chain. By doing so, the characters and world they exist in feel a lot more realistic and multi-dimensional.

Key Quotes

*”[The Roses] exaggerate and accentuate some of the traits that we can find in ourselves. Like some of the things they say are the things we do. We're like, ‘Ooh, I've done this before.’ In a way they're very human. And I think you see all their flaws and how they interact with each other, like the brother-sister relationship, the mom-son relationship. I think we can relate a lot to those moments and it makes it funny.” - Gwen Lafage

*”When David Rose becomes friends with Stevie and they have this frenemy relationship, you're just like, ‘We have all been there,’ where you're a stranger in a new place and you need to make a friend, and there's one other person who, it turns out, is kind of like you, and maybe you don't like him at first, and then you grow to be friends together. And I feel like it's just such a part of the human condition to be an outsider. And they've never been outsiders in their entire life. And so when you are an outsider and you just get that first friend, it matters so much. You can see those friendships matter more to them than all the money that they used to have.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[1:32] Tell me more about Schitt’s Creek

[3:06] How did Dan Levy come up with the idea for Schitt’s Creek?

[5:37] What makes Schitt’s Creek characters relatable?

[9:35] How does the planning behind the six seasons set up the characters for an authentic emotional journey?

[15:58] How do you make B2B content relatable through your characters

[20:34] Examples of relatable characters in B2B marketing campaigns

[28:06] How to build out a character’s story to make them feel real

[30:58] What have we learned about using relatable characters in B2B marketing?

Links

Watch Schitt’s Creek

Look at how Zendesk highlighted their customer relationships

Check out how Adobe showed the relationships among people in their supply chain

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marketers are always focused on what’s next. We’re constantly planning the next campaign, predicting trends, and conducting research. Always onward! 

But there’s a critical piece of content from the past that you’re probably overlooking: your company’s origin story. It’s a powerful tool you can leverage to detail your company’s mission and align customers with your values to get deeper buy-in and drive sales.

This week, we’re taking inspiration from the origin story that launched an entire cinematic universe: the origin story of Marvel’s Iron Man. We’re showing you how to apply the structure of the hero’s journey to your company’s origin story so that your customers become superfans.

About Marvel’s “Iron Man”

Iron Man is a 2008 superhero movie based on the Marvel comic book character created by Stan Lee. The film stars Robert Downey, Jr., as Tony Stark, Gweneth Paltrow as his personal assistant Pepper Potts, Terrence Howard as James Rhodes, and Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane. 

The storyline follows rich businessman and inventor Tony Stark after he’s kidnapped and forced to build a deadly weapon. Instead, he builds himself a high-tech suit and escapes – only to uncover an evil plot to cause devastation around the world. He then vows to fight evil as Iron Man.

The Hero’s Journey

The hero’s journey is a narrative structure in which a character goes on an adventure, faces a crisis, comes away victorious, and returns having undergone a transformation. Author Joseph Campbell analyzed the hero’s journey in his seminal 1949 book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” He defined a hero as “someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” This structure is one as old as storytelling itself; it has been used from The Odyssey to Star War to Harry Potter – and Iron Man, of course!

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Marvel’s “Iron Man”: 

• Share your company’s origin story. Attract your ideal customers by showcasing your company’s journey. Telling your story demonstrates your company’s mission and fundamental values, and most importantly, it helps you distinguish yourself from your competition. This is especially important as consumers trend towards aligning their values with their spending. How does this apply to Iron Man? We wouldn’t appreciate his character without seeing his growth from self-absorbed jerk to the selfless hero he becomes. Even though Iron Man is a billionaire genius living in a Malibu mansion, we are invested in his compelling emotional arc.
• Show both the successes and the struggles. Let’s be real. Starting a company isn’t easy. It’s a journey – and dare we say it, a Hero’s Journey! But part of the Hero’s Journey is that you will make mistakes – and no one is immune from this. For example, back in 2015, Apple got negative publicity – notably from Taylor Swift – for offering a free one-month trial of streaming in which artists wouldn’t receive royalties. Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services tweeted an apology: “#AppleMusic will pay artists for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period,” and, “We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple.” Not long after, Taylor Swift struck a deal with Apple to stream her latest tour exclusively on the platform. Apple owned up to their mistakes quickly and transparently, allowing them to be on the public’s (and Taylor Swift’s) good side again. But being transparent about your values also means living up to them as well. The founders of tech company Basecamp have made improving work culture an integral component of their brand. They have published five books related to the topic and make resources like their company handbook publicly available. “Treating people right is fundamental to how we do business,” they write on their website. However, their actions didn’t line up with their values. A third of their employees resigned after Basecamp put in place a policy banning “societal and political discussions.” The takeaway? Posting your values on your website is only one step. Living up to them is even more important. And if you fall short of your standards? Apologize and make it right. That’s what Basecamp did.
• Keep telling your story. Every time you make a big decision, make sure it aligns with the values embedded in your origin story. Communicate your reasoning with your audience. Your transparency will strengthen your audience’s trust in you – and help you continue to build a loyal group of sidekicks!

Key Quotes

*”With business storytelling, we focus on the timeline of accomplishments and not the thought and the rigor, the difficulties and the struggles that go into those middle pieces because we don't want to air dirty laundry. But if you illuminate the process a little bit more, you'd get a richer story.” - Ian Faison

*”Another element to explaining what your mission is and bringing people on that mission is bringing them on the journey with you and continuously giving them updates on things from a business perspective. I like when there's an emotional connection between me and the brand. And a lot of times a good way to do that is through social media, for example. So, like I use Canva, as an example. And I follow them on LinkedIn. It's the only business account that I follow on LinkedIn. And I actually care what they post because I feel like I'm going on a journey with them. You feel like you're a part of it. And I think that's a really key element to building a relationship with your audience.” - Colin Stamps

“If you anchor back to your origin, it shows the reason for your mission. This is why we have these values as a company. This is why we believe in the vision that we're trying to achieve, is having this foundational element of a company that we set out to solve. It feeds into a future looking assessment of where you want to be. And that's why the origin story is so important.“ - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[1:30] Tell me more about Iron Man

[4:14] The backstory behind the creation of the 2008 movie

[7:28] What can I learn about telling my origin story from Marvel?

[11:31] Why is it important to share my company’s origin story?

[14:39] Do I need to share the messier side of the origin story? Why?

[16:37] I already have a timeline sharing my company’s story. That’s enough, right?

[19:54] So what framework should I use?

[21:41] How does the origin story apply to marketing?

[22:47] What are some examples of the origin story in marketing?

Links

Watch Marvel’s Iron Man

What’s the Hero’s Journey?

See how Canva connects with customers on LinkedIn

Read Dick’s Sporting Goods origin story

See how an ice axe inspired the founding of REI

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So many marketers use dialogue as a crutch. They spell out what their product is, how their audience could benefit from it, and wrap things up with a run-of-the-mill CTA.

But you don’t need dialogue to make a powerful B2B marketing campaign. In fact, you might not need words at all.

This week, we’re looking at the iconic opening montage from Pixar’s “Up.” The “Married Life” scene tells the story of the film’s main character, Carl’s marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Ellie. We follow them from youth to old age – and Ellie’s death. These moments have no dialogue, instead letting the music, color, and shape tell Carl’s backstory. The animators didn’t tell us about Carl’s life – they showed it to us. The result? Perhaps the most iconic scene in Pixar’s storied history – and that’s no easy feat.

And we think your B2B marketing can leverage these same techniques to communicate your message so much more effectively than a voiceover ever could.

About Pixar’s “Up”

“Up” is a 2009 animated movie by Pixar. It was directed by Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson, who also wrote the story along with Tom McCarthy. The original score is by Michael Giacchino.

“Up” follows 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen as he rigs up his house with balloons in an attempt to fly to Paradise Falls and fulfill a promise to his late wife. He is joined by Russell, an 8-year-old Junior Wilderness Explorer, who has stowed away by clinging to the porch as the house lifted off its foundation. Together, they navigate the treacherous journey to the falls.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Pixar’s “Up”: 

• Let music do the emotional heavy lifting. The “Married Life” montage tells the story of Carl’s marriage to Ellie. Though the two tragically discover they can’t have children, they find hope in their childhood promise of trekking across the world to Paradise falls. The scene ends with Ellie’s funeral – and the promise left unfulfilled. These emotional moments are even more powerful because of composer Michael Giacchino’s score. In an interview, Giacchino said that the “Married Life” montage was the most difficult scene to write for. In order to make the scenes most effective, he wrote simple music for the scenes – or even opted not to score some of the most emotional moments. This restraint gave the scenes a gentle, melancholic feel, rather than a melodramatic one.
• Tell a story with color and shape. Whether they know it or not, viewers use basic visual cues to put together and understand a scene nearly instantaneously. So much of a scene can be told through these basic visual cues like color, and shape. In “Up”, each character is designed around a shape and color that conveys something about their personalities. Carl is blue and a square, Ellie is pink and a circle, and Russell is yellow and egg-shaped. The animators also adjusted the color palettes for scenes based on their emotional content: they used saturated colors in joyful scenes and drab colors in sad scenes. These visual cues may seem basic, but the connotations of specific colors and shapes will create instant context for your ad’s viewers.
• Focus on facial expressions and body language. We don’t just communicate with our words. The “Married Life” montage uses body language to show Carl and Ellie’s feelings towards each other. When Ellie points at a cloud, we see Carl’s blissful expression. We watch Ellie flinch as Carl smashes their savings jar again, telling us everything we need to know about how Ellie feels at that moment. Through intentional camera composition, editing, and directing, you can communicate a story with no words at all.

Key Quotes

*”By showing, not telling, especially in this example, it forces you to fill in the blanks with words that you understand or emotions that you can connect with.” - Dane Eckerle

*”When you show a story without any V.O., we have no idea where we're going. So each thing happens sequentially and it builds on itself. You don't know where it’s going. But by the end of it, you totally get it.” - Ian Faison

*”If you go on TikTok, they're telling, not showing at all. There's someone speaking to you, there's captions, there's big text on the screen and you're seeing and hearing everything [being] spoon fed to the point where now, moments like this land that much harder, because I'm not used to using my imagination as much. This technique will work better now than it would've 15 years ago because people are so used to being spoon fed stuff. So it's all the more relevant today.” - Dane Eckerle

*”It comes down to B2B companies seeing their audience as people first and not just other businesses. You are talking to people who have real needs and different personas and different target audiences.” - Anagha Das

*”You’re marketing a journey. So as a marketer, take a snapshot of your target customer at the midpoint of their journey, and then show the story of their journey.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[2:12] Tell me more about Pixar's "Up"

[5:35] How did Pixar get audience buy-in within the first few minutes?

[10:37] How did composer Michael Giacchino craft music to tell a story?

[13:07] How did the storyboard artists use color and composition to convey meaning?

[14:55] Why is showing-not-telling more powerful today than ever?

[16:45] Examples of show-don't-tell in marketing

[19:27] How do I market a customer journey?

Links

Watch Pixar’s Up

Learn more about how Michael Giacchino wrote the score

How did Pixar design the characters?

See how Apple used show-don’t-tell in their accessibility campaign

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your audience doesn’t have time to read a novel. Say more with less. 

You want the text in your campaign to impact viewers, so that it stays with them. So that they think about it later. So that they’re sure to talk about it with their team. So that they’ll buy what you’re selling.

And what better Man-of-Few-Words to learn from than Ernest Hemingway. He is the master of the short, impactful phrase. Today, we’re talking about the legendary six-word story that Hemingway supposedly wrote: “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” And how you, too, can pack a punch in a few words – but maybe make it a touch less sad.

In this episode we’re keeping it short and sweet. (Sort of. Depends on your definition of “short” and “sweet.”) And showing you how to use the economy of words in your B2B marketing.

About the 6-Word Story

Legend has it that American writer Ernest Hemingway was having lunch at The Algonquin hotel sometime in the 1920s with his writer friends when he made a ten-dollar bet that he could write a short story in just six words. On a napkin, he wrote, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” He then collected his earnings from his incredulous friends. 

It’s a great story, but it’s likely apocryphal. According to an investigation published in The Journal of Popular Culture, there’s no proof Hemingway actually wrote those six words. 

There are a few places the legend likely originated. One possibility is literary agent Peter Miller, who wrote about it in his 1974 book, Get Published! Get Produced!: A Literary Agent’s Tips on How to Sell Your Writing. The tall tale may have been inspired by a newspaper urban legend: the story of a classified ad from 1906 that read: “For sale, baby carriage, never been used. Apply at this office.” A 1917 essay by William R. Kane profiled a woman who lost her baby, and it was entitled “Little Shoes, Never Worn.” 

But it doesn’t actually matter where this story came from. What matters is what we can learn from it.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Ernest Hemingway: 

• Be intentional about word choice. Embrace the economy of words – use fewer words to say more. It’s a technique that likely came from journalism, where there was limited space on a newspaper page. In marketing, it’s a means to stand out from your competition.
• Trust your audience to fill in the blanks. Don’t spoon feed your audience the message. Make them think and engage their critical thinking skills (Sound familiar? We’ve talked about this before). Trust that they’ll make the necessary inferences, associations, and assumptions to get the message. Hemingway doesn’t say, “A baby passes away, selling shoes.” He says, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” This version is more emotionally compelling, because the audience has to make their own deductions about why the shoes are for sale.
• Tug at your audience’s heartstrings. Use words that evoke an emotional response. They make your readers feel something and/or push them to take action. It’s a common technique, especially in the B2C world. Think De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” campaign, reflecting the idea of everlasting love. Allstate’s “You’re in Good Hands” evokes a sense of comfort and security. Without saying much, these brands made us feel something in just a few words. And you can, too, in your marketing.

Key Quotes

*”Words on a page and words spoken to you are the ways that you can paint an extremely vivid picture in your audience or customer base's mind.” - Ian Faison

*”In a day and age where people's attention spans are limited and there's constantly a million things going on, like a million ads being sent your way, emails in your inbox every second, the fewer words you use to get your point across, the more valuable.“ - Anagha Das

*”It's a testament to the human imagination. The human mind is a lot stronger and smarter than people give it credit for. It takes so little to inspire someone's imagination to fill in the blanks or to latch onto the essence of what you're trying to say. To now cut through the noise almost involves saying less to be different than everybody else.” - Dane Eckerle

Time Stamps

[1:49] Tell me about Ernest Hemingway’s 6-Word Story

[4:07] How is brevity used across all forms of media?

[5:03] The history of the 6-word story, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”

[8:20] Why is it important for marketers to be able to tell a 6-word story?

[12:55] How do you optimize character count in social media marketing?

[15:33] Examples of the economy of words in B2C and B2B marketing

[21:44] What are character limits across social media platforms?

[24:39] Caspian 6-Word Stories

Links

Demystifying Hemingway’s 6-Word Story

Hemingway’s 6-Word Sequels

Learn More About Power Words in Marketing

Examples of Economy of Words in Marketing Campaigns:

De Beers

Jared

Kay Jewelers

Snickers

M&Ms

Dunkin Donuts

Allstate

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If your marketing team keeps talking in circles about what to do next with your B2B marketing initiatives, then we have an idea for you. Stop talking in circles and start telling stories in circles. That’s right – circles. Stick with us here. 

Hollywood has a tried-and-true method for hooking your audience from the first frame: circular storytelling. If you can leverage this technique effectively, your marketing content can stand out from the crowd – no matter if it’s a case study, a white paper, or a social video.

In this episode, we break down the use of circular storytelling in Slumdog Millionaire and discuss how to apply this technique to your B2B marketing.

About Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British drama directed by Danny Boyle, co-directed by Loveleen Tandan, and starring Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. Simon Beaufoy wrote the screenplay, which is based on Vikas Swarup’s novel, Q & A. The story follows orphan Jamal Malik, who is selected to be a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire – only to be accused of cheating when he’s one question away from winning the grand prize of 20M Rupees. The movie has won numerous awards, including Academy Award for Best Picture, Music, Writing, Directing, and Sound Mixing (2009) and many, many others.

What’s Circular Storytelling?

Circular storytelling is a mechanism in which the story literally ends where it began – with the same exact scene. This device hooks the audience at a point of high tension and personal crisis for the main character. Then, the movie flashes back to the opening of the narrative.

Slumdog Millionaire opens with Jamal Malik being interrogated and tortured after being accused of cheating on the game show. Through the use of flashbacks, we discover exactly how he knew the answers to each question.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Slumdog Millionaire: 

• Start your customer journey at the end. Document customer stories from the very beginning. By doing this, you can show prospective customers real results you’ve achieved with current ones, and how you could benefit their business. Give them customer success stories, so that they can envision their future as your customer. In Slumdog Millionaire, we know that Jamal will get to the penultimate question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire – because that’s where the story begins. By spelling out the many benefits your company has to offer, you are providing your new customers proof that your organization creates results.
• Hook ad viewers with a high-intensity intro. Bring them in the middle of the action to grab their attention. For example, you can highlight a common pain point your business can solve – and then use circular storytelling. Slumdog Millionaire starts with Jamal being brutally interrogated on how he knew the game show answers. From this moment, the central mystery of the film is established: if Jamal did not cheat, then how did he know all the answers? Similarly, highlighting a pain point Just like viewers wondered how a slumdog could know the answers, you’ll have them wondering how you can solve all their pain points for them.

Key Quotes

*”That's always a plus point in any movie, TV show, story or ad that you're reading or watching. If you're thrown right in the middle of it, chances are you’re going to be engaged from the start. - Anagha Das

*”Everything has to start on a bang. And whether that takes you back to where you started or whether it's more just a great hook, jumping in on a bang is just something that works. If you don't have [a hook,] you're hard pressed to actually keep people along for the ride.” - Dane Eckerle

*”I've seen this in case studies where they have the results at the beginning. And then it unfolds as to how they got those results. There is a huge opportunity to do this kind of storytelling in B2B marketing.” - Colin Stamps

*”You should be doing circular storytelling with your case studies, with your customer stories, with your demos, with your prospect journey.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[3:19] Tell me more about Slumdog Millionaire

[7:05] What is circular storytelling?

[10:13] Are there any drawbacks to using circular storytelling?

[11:46] How do you apply mystery to your marketing campaign?

[16:31] What are examples of circular storytelling in B2B?

[18:30] How can you apply this to your B2B marketing? 

[22:12] Other examples in B2C marketing

Links

Watch Slumdog Millionaire

See how Mr. Beast hooks viewers

Look at how Gary Vee uses flashbacks on his predictions

Check out how we’ve used circular storytelling ourselves in The Hacker Chronicles podcast

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do you think of your customers as simple consumers of your brand? If so, you’re missing out on the opportunity to turn them into diehard brand ambassadors. 

The key to inspiring impassioned brand loyalty is simple: engage your customers more deeply. Get them talking about your brand. Get them asking questions. And what better way to get your customers engaged than to instill a little mystery in your content?

In this episode, we’re looking at the award-winning hit series Only Murders in the Building for lessons on incorporating some mystery into your marketing. We’ll show you how to use interactive marketing, engage your audience’s critical thinking skills, and get people talking about your brand.

About Only Murders in the Building

Only Murders in the Building is a mystery-comedy series released in 2021. Created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, the show is about three residents who live in a luxury apartment building in New York City. The trio becomes unlikely friends after they team up to solve the mystery around the death of one of their neighbors – and start a podcast to document it. The award-winning series stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. Only Murders in the Building is the most watched comedy premiere on Hulu to date, ranked in Nielsen’s top 10 for weeks following its release, and the first season is rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you're looking to add a little mystery in your marketing, there's no better example to follow.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Only Murders in the Building: 

• Create an interactive experience for customers. Offer them access points across different platforms or mediums to engage with your brand. Only Murders in the Building gives viewers several opportunities to become detectives themselves. The Emmy award-winning series hid clues relating back to the series across multiple platforms — including at an in-person pop-up event. To promote the show, Hulu also created “ambient rooms,” or video scenescapes of each character’s apartment where viewers could spend time looking for clues to the murder mystery. Clues were hidden in the music, ambient noise, fleeting images, or were even items within the room! It’s this level of audience engagement, suspense, and storytelling that led to the show’s incredible success. 
• Don’t reinvent the wheel…entirely. Martin Short and Steve Martin are a well-known comedy duo and have an amazing on-screen chemistry. Only Murders in the Building took their existing relationship and created something entirely new with it. The addition of pop icon Selena Gomez to the cast as the show’s final detective adds to the promise that viewers will be watching something new. If you’ve created ads, or marketing campaigns that have been successful in the past, take elements of what’s worked well and spin them to create something new. No need to completely reinvent what has already resonated with your audience! 
• Intrigue your audience with mystery. Engage your audience’s critical thinking skills by leaving room to the imagination. Only Murders in the Building builds layers of intrigue with the mysterious death of Tim Kono. But as the show goes on, the mysteries only deepen, and the series slowly reveals that each of the three main characters have dark secrets of their own. In your B2B marketing, create storylines that are playful, suspenseful, and leave some room for your audience to fill in the gaps themselves. Everyone loves a good challenge and piecing together clues to get to the bigger picture.

Key Quotes

*”Fans are really into mysteries and theories. They like little surprises that involve them and make people feel like they can be a part of the show, a part of solving these mysteries.” - Anagha Das

*”Having the show turn into like a bit of a puzzle just creates for a more activating, interactive experience where you're not just sitting there passively consuming content. You actually have to turn your brain on and activate, becoming essentially a part of the show. Your own detective.” - Dane Eckerle

*”Every company is presenting some kind of solution that's solving a problem. I wonder if there's some opportunity to make some content around solving that problem, in making that into some kind of mystery.” - Colin Stamps

*”One huge benefit and advantage of utilizing mystery is just getting people to discuss things and have a conversation, to talk about what they're seeing or what they're feeling.” - Dane Eckerle

Time Stamps

[1:23] Tell me more about Only Murders in the Building

[5:26] Why should you use mystery in your marketing?

[8:05] How do you get deeper audience engagement?

[11:46] How do you apply mystery to your marketing campaign?

[17:32] What other companies have used mystery in their marketing?

[21:04] What's the key to a great mystery? 

[23:01] How can comedy and mystery be used together for greater impact?

Links

Watch Only Murders in the Building

See how Dove used a sense of mystery in their Real Beauty campaign

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

[Cue Latin jazz music] It is the content that sells itself. It ranks #1 – no matter what you Google. It is the most interesting B2B marketing content in the world. And it’s yours.

Or at least it could be, after listening to this episode. Because we’re showing you branding tricks from the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World campaign.

In this episode, we break down the slogan that helped triple sales for Dos Equis. According to PRNewswire, about fifty percent of customers rely on your slogan when considering doing business with you. Few things are more important for B2B marketing, so we’re here to help you ensure your slogan is as amazing as your product is.

Why Dos Equis?

The brand’s slogan was a key part of the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign that nearly tripled business for Dos Equis. During the campaign, the number of cases of Dos Equis shipped increased by nearly 35%, and Heineken estimated that around 25% of its growth in the future would come from the Dos Equis brand. The ad also became a part of the cultural zeitgeist, inspiring countless memes, spoofs, and Halloween costumes. So the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign has paid off for Dos Equis. Could a similarly bold campaign pay off for your B2B marketing?

About Dos Equis

Dos Equis is a Mexican lager-style beer made by the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, based in Monterrey, Mexico. The brewery was founded by German immigrant Wilhelm Hasse in 1890 and  is currently owned by Heineken. The same brewery also produces Tecate and Sol. 

The Most Interesting Man in the World ads were created by Karl Lieberman and Brandon Henderson for an agency called EuroRSCG, New York. They aired in the U.S. from 2007 to 2015. Jonathan Goldsmith played the titular character, and the spots were narrated by William Lyman. The campaign features the Most Interesting Man in the World, Hemingway-esque character whose worldly larger-than-life exploits include bench-pressing women, sewing his own stitches, and swan diving from cliffs. The Most Interesting Man would end the commercials by saying the brand’s two-part slogan: “Because of the campaign, the two-part slogan, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis,” and “Stay thirsty, my friends,” the Dos Equis brand decidedly set itself apart. It wasn’t just for the leisurely beach-going dude – it was for the dudes who aspired to be something more…interesting.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Dos Equis:

• Your slogan should speak to your customer’s aspirations. Do consumer research to get to know your customers. Whether it’s your current or target customers, find out what motivates them. Is it wealth? A desire to belong? Getting a thrill? The team behind the Dos Equis slogan got wind that their male customers wanted to feel like they were more sophisticated. Working from this, they devised The Most Interesting Man in the World campaign.
• Would I wear the t-shirt? This is self-explanatory. But let's dig deeper into what that means. If someone wants to wear your brand's T-shirt, then they also feel an emotional investment in your brand. So remember, a catchy slogan isn't enough. You've also got to figure out how to create brand ambassadors through your campaigns.
• Make it a CTA. Call your customers to action with your slogan. Many of the greats do this: Nike tells its customers to “just do it," Subway challenges theirs to “eat fresh,” and Toyota extends an invitation by simply saying, “Let’s go places.” These CTA’s are incredibly simple, and that’s also why audiences respond to them. An effective CTA gets potential customers’ attention and deepens engagement with current customers. Ultimately, it guides them to your marketing funnel and leads them to conversion.

Key Quotes

*”The slogan is, ‘Stay thirsty, my friends.’ And like that's a key differentiator, right? Is like the aspirational part of your slogan, which is, you want your community or your fans or whatever, or the people who purchase your product, uh, to do X, Y, and Z, to live a great life, to explore, to, you know, innovate, to do whatever it is that you want them to do. Like that is aspirational. Talking about your company is very different. And like, this is what I call the wear the t-shirt moment is like, would you wear a t-shirt that says, I prefer Dos Equis?” - Ian Faison

*”When you talk about creating an iconic character to deliver the slogan and the message, it's like people dress up like this guy for Halloween, the actor, the actor slash in in character was invited to the White House to sit with Obama. I mean, that's insane.” - Dane Eckerle

*”Here always has to be something that you're telling your audience to go look at, to go read, to go watch, to go like follow up on or talk to someone. And I feel like this is probably the most like natural, like funny, relatable cTA that's been part of a brand's slogan, like, just stay thirsty, my friends like go out like, like Ian said, like go out, like have adventures, like do all these cool things.” - Anagha Das

Time Stamps

[2:51] Tell me more about Dos Equis

[5:30] How successful was the campaign?

[6:56] How did Dos Equis differentiate their brand with the slogan?

[14:48] What makes a great slogan?

[16:39] How could a good slogan affect your bottom line?

[19:48] Why should you make your slogan a CTA? 

[27:18] How do you apply the takeaways to B2B Marketing?

Links

Get nostalgic! Watch the Most Interesting Man in the World ads

Learn more about Dos Equis

Take a look at Liquid Death’s Not a Water Boy campaign

Other slogan ideas: 

Coca Cola “Open Happiness”

Apple “Think Different”

Slack “Where Work Happens”

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you want to make a big impact in a 15-second ad, there’s one trick of the trade that instantly gets an emotional response: place your ad in a relatable setting.  

It could be the DMV, an airport, or a drive through —what matters is that it’s a place your audience has been to. They know what it’s like getting a bad driver’s license photo, or struggling to find an outlet to charge your phone while you wait for a connecting flight. By putting your story in a familiar setting, you don’t need to do very much explaining – and you can capitalize on those precious seconds to highlight your message. 

This week, we’re talking about Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a perfect example of what it means to have a relevant, reminiscent setting. In this episode of REMARKABLE, we talk about how to do the same in your B2B marketing.

Why Mean Girls?

Mean Girls is a modern classic that introduced the word "fetch" into our vocabulary. But we picked it for this week's episode because it's an excellent example of a film taking a common setting and building off it. You know what setting we're talking about: high school. The movie's production design evokes the all-too-familiar feel of the American high school. But it's not just that; it's also the scenes in the movie as well. We’re talking about high school — the physical place as well as the experience. Mean Girls perfectly captures both, so you watch the movie and go, “I’ve been there. I know what that’s like.” The high school feels familiar because it’s pretty generic. Everything from the hallways and lockers to the cafeteria and classrooms in the movie look like ones in real high schools across the U.S. But it’s more than that — it’s the experience of going to a new school, trying to make friends, having crushes, getting bullied…there’s something for everyone.

Did you know that Mean Girls is based on a self-help book? That’s right, Tina Fey wrote the screenplay after reading Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman. The book was written for parents who wanted to help their teen daughters better navigate the social complexities at school. Fey took key components of the high school experience from the book, along with unforgettable characters and a juicy plot, and Mean Girls was born. 

Mean Girls became a state-of-the-art classic because of how Tina Fey elevated the high school genre. With her cutting sense of humor and subversive voice, she made Mean Girls one of the most quotable and enduring of its kind.

A Quick Mean Girls Refresher 

Mean Girls tells the story of Cady Heron, who gets her first taste of public high school after her scientist parents move from Africa to the Chicago suburbs. Outcasts Janis and Damien show Cady the ropes, but Cady winds up going her own way. Despite her friends’ warnings, she is drawn into the cool girl clique, “The Plastics,” led by Regina George. Cady finds out how cutthroat The Plastics truly are after making the mistake of falling for Regina’s ex. So Cady, Janis and Damien plot to bring on Regina’s downfall.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Mean Girls: 

• Set the stage. We know it’s important to choose a memorable setting, but don’t forget to give it some history. On Cady’s first day in class, she was told not to sit in a certain seat because Kristin Hadley’s boyfriend sits there. Do we know who Kristin Hadley is? No. But we’ve all walked into a situation where we accidentally took someone’s seat. B2B companies can take common themes and everyday elements to create a familiar setting for their audience.
• Use compelling visuals. Use imagery that's authentic and tells your brand’s story. Mean Girls is set in a real school that’s still functioning today. The interior shots of the high school in Mean Girls were filmed at Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey. There’s a reason why the style of the halls, the lockers, the cafeteria and classrooms look like the ones at your school. MHS was built in 1959, during the baby boom that followed World War II. In order to efficiently meet the needs of a growing population, school architecture designs were standardized, and the components pre-fabricated. That’s why the school in Mean Girls looks so real to all of us – and don’t forget that it’s also a real, actual school! That’s why we identify so much with the film, even if it takes place in a heightened, comedic world. Bottom line: in your B2B marketing campaigns, pull visuals that will have an emotional impact on your audience.
• Make it entertaining. Here we go, talking about edu-tainment again! Don’t forget to add some humor to your marketing. It’s an understatement to say that Mean Girls is a prime example of this – after all, Tina Fey wrote the screenplay. But she uses comedy to explore the bullying that happens among teen girls – while also keeping the audience engaged through tight plotting, intelligent pacing, and well-drawn characters. Do the same with your B2B work. Create ads that will immediately captivate your audience and leave them wanting more. Entertaining tidbits can be weaved into assets like LI ads, social posts, video campaigns, and blog posts. Remember, the shorter the asset (think short social posts or 30 second video ads), the higher the chances of engagement and viewership are.

Key Quotes

*”If you only have 15 or 30 seconds in the age of TikTok to grab somebody, if you're leaning into something that people know, to establish a setting, a time, a place, then you free up your runway to talk about the things that you really want to get across because those things are already built in.” - Dane Eckerle

*”When it comes to setting, it's about being really relatable but also super relevant to your audience. When B2B marketers split up their target audience into personas, for example, know that they're people first, and more than just personas. They’re professionals who want to make better impressions and build stronger relationships. You have to be relatable to sell to them as a marketer, but also show your true self and be authentic. And I think that comes with knowing exactly the groups that they’re in and what they care about.“ - Anagha Das

Time Stamps

[1:13] What’s Mean Girls about?

[3:41] What does it mean to be relatable?

[7:10] Mean Girls’ box office success

[8:54] Why is the high school setting important in Mean Girls?

[12:05] Is there a psychological reason consumers gravitate towards relatable content? 

[14:25] What are our marketing takeaways from Mean Girls?

[18:48] How do you apply the takeaways to B2B Marketing?

Links

Watch Mean Girls

Check out #LifeinsideDropBox

Take a look at how HubSpot highlights employees

And then there’s Corporate Bro

Vidyard is doing cool stuff with videos too

About the Show

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the B2B world, we think about growing our customer base. But one thing B2B marketers often overlook is how to transform your customer base into a community. 

You may be wondering, isn’t a customer base and a community the same thing? Not exactly. A community is your customer base taken to the next level, with a lot more engagement. It’s a network of relationships based on passion, instead of transactions. And it’s this passion that brings like-minded people together to form a dedicated community that outlasts and outperforms any regular customer base. 

In 2017, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986. It was this devastating low point that birthed a community that was so determined to see the underdog make a big comeback. Enter the Scuffed podcast.

Scuffed was started by Adam Belz and Greg Velasquez out of pure love for American soccer. And in the last five years, they’ve created, grown, and nutured a robust community of listeners who are engaged across a variety of platforms.

In this episode of REMARKABLE, we explore the nuances of community-building, and how you can use it in your B2B marketing.

Why the Scuffed Podcast?

You’re probably wondering why we picked the Scuffed podcast for this episode. Welp, for one, our CEO, Ian Faison, is a member of the community himself. He doesn’t just listen to their podcast; he also subscribes to their Patreon and hangs out on their Discord!. Ian was drawn to The Scuffed podcast team’s genuine love for American soccer. These guys are INTO IT. And that authentic passion is like a community-building magnet.

Scuffed brings together a community of American soccer lovers and lets them choose their own adventure when it comes to accessing content.. They have their weekly podcast episodes, with over 300 episodes that are currently publicly available. Then, they have an additional layer of content for those who want to support the show by paying a little every month. Patrons gain access to exclusive episodes along with Scuffed’s exclusive Discord channels where subscribers chat about recent games, favorite players, stats, share memes, etc. 

The members of the Scuffed podcast team (Adam, Greg, Vince, Jordan, and Watke) are all actively engaged on Scuffed’s Patreon and Twitter accounts. They frequently interact with followers, chat with them about the show, and even arrange in-person meetups. 

That right there is a hat trick when it comes to building a powerful community.

About Scuffed

The Scuffed Podcast is a weekly show about American soccer with a focus on the U.S. Men’s National Team. On the podcast, hosts Adam Belz and Greg Velasquez recap games, talk strategy, chat about their favorite soccer personalities, and do occasional interviews with players and coaches. Adam and Greg founded Scuffed in 2017 after the USMNT failed to qualify for the World Cup. Since then, they added a Monday Review with Chris Russell and Vince Irvin, a Discord, and a newsletter.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From the Scuffed Podcast: 

• Be authentic. We know it sounds cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason. If you center your business around a product or service you truly believe in, chances are, other people will believe in it too. And a community will be born naturally! The Scuffed guys just love soccer, and they want to see the U.S. Men’s National Team qualify for (and win!) the World Cup. They’ve followed the team for years, analyzing their every move, and can give expert insights about their progress because of it. B2B companies can learn from this by building a brand/product/service that emanates passion and has a common goal audiences can rally behind. 
• Release consistent, timely content. How has Scuffed stayed so relevant for so long? It’s not just that they’re passionate about soccer – it’s also that they’re consistent. By creating a regular and consistent content schedule, they’ve built trust amongst their community. People know when the next episode will drop, when in-person events will happen, and when Adam and team will be responding to replies on Twitter. The Scuffed team also goes the extra mile for their audience and creates reaction episodes for special events, like the release of the World Cup roster. The Scuffed team knows their fans (do you want to bet they’re called Scuffers?) will want to hear about it. So, bottom line: be sure to release relevant, relatable content on a regular cadence, and your audience will steadily grow (and the real fans will be stoked for any bonus content). 
• Interact with your audience. Guess what? Community is a two-way street! So as long as your audience is responding to your social posts, posting in your Slack or Discord channels, or even sending you emails — leaders should be engaging with their clients just as much. It’s this two-way interaction that sets the tone for a community. More times than not, community members (think mega fans of your business) end up creating their own content. User-generated content validates both the work of the contributor, and adds more material to your usual content roster. Scuffed community members often make their own videos and highlight reels that the Scuffed team re-posts on the Scuffed channels, giving credit to their community members. This helps build trust and a stronger relationship with community members. Engaging with your audience across multiple platforms will only help you as you grow your B2B community. 
• Meet your community where they are.  A lot of Scuffed’s success can be attributed to the numerous platforms and channels they offer content to for their community. Whether it’s the weekly podcast, email, newsletter, social media, Discord, videos, and more, Scuffed fans enjoy having options for how to tune in to content. So, give your audience the power to choose how plugged into your B2B community they can be. For example, some people may love interacting with your business every day, via Twitter and Slack channels. Others may prefer to check into the community once or twice every few weeks by reading your newsletter or watching video content. Giving your community the choice on how they plug in allows them to consume your content the way they want.

Key Quotes

*”When I think of community outside of the context of making a podcast, I think of old kinds of communities. Like rural farming communities or urban communities where people are living together and suffering together, and sacrificing for each other. And so I don't know how to relate that to a Discord server. Like, I don't know what the connection is between those two things, because they're both technically a community. But when you're living online with people, how do you suffer with them or sacrifice for them? Do we even know how to do that yet as humans?” - Adam Belz

*“Repeatability is so crucial because you can have a good idea and maybe even execute it once. But if it's not something you can just go back to and be able to do over and over again, it's not something you can offer as a promise to the listener.” - Adam Belz

*”We're not very calculated when it comes to building a community or maximizing our reach. We're just kind of doing our thing. We're just some guys making a podcast because they love soccer and they love the national team. And I think the chillness of it was appealing to people.” - Adam Belz

Time Stamps

[0:55] How to build a community

[2:00] Introducing Adam Belz of Scuffed

[3:47] What are our takeaways?

[8:00] How did Adam start the Scuffed podcast?

[13:40] What’s the difference between building a virtual vs. in-person community?

[16:48] What assets does the Scuffed podcast have?

[19:48] How did Adam grow the Scuffed community?

[24:58] How is Scuffed offering different levels of engagement for listeners?

[30:20] How do you differentiate yourself from competitors?

[33:49] How do you manage negative interactions within the community?

[43:37] Why does being authentic attract community engagement?

[48:54] What does Scuffed do with user-generated content?

Links

Listen to the Scuffed Podcast

Check out the Scuffed website

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn

Follow Adam on Twitter

Follow the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team

About the Show

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 Adam Belz (Co-Founder and Host of Scuffed). 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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A three-tier showstopper cake may have beautiful pipework and neatly done icing, but if it’s overbaked and dry on the inside, it’s not a good cake.

The same is true for marketing. If it has no message but it’s beautiful, it’s not good marketing. 

Focusing on substance over style is one of the many lessons we’re taking from The Great British Baking Show in this episode.

Together with the help of our special guest, VP of Corporate Marketing at Trellix, Sara Aiello, we talk about being brand classy, going for substance over style, and trusting your gut.

About our guest, Sara Aiello

Sara drives impactful brand and communication initiatives that inspire, inform, and elevate global businesses. At Trellix, she led the brand launch of Trellix from FireEye and McAfee Enterprise. Previously, as Head of Growth & Engagement for Amazon’s large item business, she accelerated business growth and customer engagement. At BlackBerry, as Vice President of Field Marketing, Sara led global marketing and sales enablement teams, enhancing the company’s technology recognition. During her tenure at Cisco, she spearheaded the security customer experience practice, significantly advancing customer adoption. She also led the successful marketing strategy for a billion-dollar service rebrand. As Director of the Executive Briefing Center for Cybersecurity at The Boeing Company, Sara’s expertise in customer experience played a pivotal role in securing critical contracts.

Sara holds a Master of International Business from Seattle University and a Bachelor of Science from Clarkson University.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Great British Baking Show:

• Be brand classy. Create content that has integrity and stands proudly for your brand. Think about making something that’s evergreen instead of trendy or reactive. Sara says, “You can never go wrong with being brand classy. Something that lives on, endures. Sometimes you'll want to take a quick hit at a competitor or something like that, but that's not going to age well. And so always be kind of brand classy in what you do.”
• Go for substance over style. Every so often in The Great British Baking Show, a contestant will create a beautiful confection that doesn’t taste as good as it looks. That’s when Paul Hollywood says, “Style over substance.” In content, you want to make something that has meaning while also being visually attractive. So always think about your message first before focusing on the beauty of it. Sara says, “You have to actually know what you want to say first before you start thinking about how beautiful or whimsical you want it to look.”
• Trust your gut. Tune in to what feels right and rings true to your brand. In The Great British Baking Show, contestants have to navigate the technical challenge often based on their gut alone, having to make a cake based on directions like, “Make a genoise sponge.” You may not always have all the information in marketing either, but Sara says, “Be comfortable with not having all your information.” Trust that your gut will lead you in the right direction.

Quotes

*”One thing we haven't hit on is the storytelling aspect. You really identify and make memories with the bakers and the way that the show tells their backstory. And so you feel really connected. And I think that marketers should remember the power of storytelling. A lot of times, we want to go into stats and figures, but that's really not going to engage our emotional side of our brain, which is what we need to be persuaded.”

*”ROI, marketers love to talk about this. I think it really comes down to setting clear goals. A lot of times, especially when it comes on the brand side as opposed to the demand side of marketing, it isn't super easy to see and have metrics, so it's really important to set clear goals from the start. So then you can see if you're succeeding or not.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Sara Aiello, VP of Corporate Marketing at Trellix

[1:00] B2B Marketing Lessons from The Great British Baking Show

[5:10] Behind the Scenes of The Great British Baking Show

[11:11] Relating The Great British Baking Show to Marketing

[17:52] The Importance of Visuals and Positivity in Marketing

[23:24] The Human Element in B2B Marketing

[25:46] The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

[34:25] Building the Trellix Brand

[38:04] Engaging Content Strategies

[46:35] Final Thoughts and Advice for Marketing Leaders

Links

Connect with Sara on LinkedIn

Learn more about Trellix

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The word “ensemble” might make you think of a group of performers all working in tandem. But what happens when we apply it to B2B marketing? 

In 2001, an ensemble of all-star actors outdid any other cast…maybe ever.

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck – actors at the top of their game.

Each one could draw their own crowd. But together? They’re unstoppable. 

Add in the sparkling backdrop of the Vegas strip and the tension of a high-stakes heist, and you have yourself a blockbuster. 

That blockbuster is Ocean’s 11, and it upped the ante for what a star-studded ensemble could be.

In this episode of REMARKABLE, we take a look at the power of the ensemble in Ocean’s 11 and how you can use it in your B2B marketing.

The house always wins. Unless you bring together a powerful ensemble. And today we’re taking the house with some B2B tips on bringing together an ensemble of high rolling sharks.

Why Ocean’s 11?

Alright, so we all love Ocean’s 11. But why’d we pick it for this week’s Remarkable episode? 

Because of the insanely hot cast – and we aren’t just talking about their cheekbones. Ocean’s 11 is packed with the best of the best, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Bernie Mac, Eddie Jemison, Casey Affleck, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, and Andy Garcia. Even Viola Davis makes a cameo – well, sort of. Remember Danny Ocean’s exit interview from the prison scene? Viola Davis voices the officer. Any of those actors featured in a film would sell out opening night at the movie theater. But all of them billed together is unprecedented! 

Aside from the star-studded cast, the characters they play have huge personalities of their own. The eleven-character ensemble of criminals boasts a myriad of talents, from pick-pocketing to con-artistry to speed racing. In other words, they have all the important skills needed to pull off a heist.

A Quick Ocean’s 11 Refresher

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades…

Ocean’s 11 is a heist movie about a string of Las Vegas casino robberies. The OG movie was filmed in 1960 and starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. 

It was remade in 2001, with a cast just as star-studded as the original. The film was one of the biggest hits of the year, bringing in over $450 million in box office. But it wasn’t just the cast that made the movie such a success. Behind the scenes, the craftsmanship was just as impressive. Ocean’s 11 was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who had just become one of only three directors to be nominated twice for Best Director in the same year (he won the Oscar for directing Traffic and “lost” for directing Erin Brockovich). It’s a classic movie formula: an amazing cast + a director at the top of his game = instant classic.

Who’s Who?

Danny Ocean: The Mastermind (George Clooney)

Rusty Ryan: The Right-Hand Man (Brad Pitt)

Tess Ocean: The Love Interest (Julia Roberts)

The Malloy Brothers: The Drivers (Casey Affleck & Scott Caan)

Livingston Dell: Electronics (Eddie Jemiston)

Basher Tarr: Munitions  (Don Cheadle)

The Amazing Yen: The Grease Man (Shaobo Qin)

Linus Caldwell: The Pickpocket (Matt Damon) 

Frank Catton: The Casino Employee (Bernie Mac)

Reuben Tishkoff: The Bankroll (Elliott Gould)

Saul Bloom: The Con Artist (Carl Reiner)

Pick Your Teams Carefully 

Why do we connect so much with the characters in Ocean’s 11? 

Their backstories and skillsets are both distinct and relatable, a combination that helps us empathize with them. But Danny Ocean has also picked a team that compliments each other perfectly. Each character brings a unique set of skills to the table that no other character can do –  imagine if Linus tried to pull off one of The Amazing Yen’s stunts! The characters each have their special talents, and they work well together. That’s what makes them a great team, and it’s why people who’ve watched this movie across the globe root for them. 

The cast also has amazing chemistry. While watching Ocean’s 11, we wonder – who in our own friends and family is our Danny Ocean, the smooth-talking romantic? We all know rambunctious brothers like the Malloys – and we all wish we knew Don Cheadle!

But we relate to characters in movies all the time. Heck, that’s what makes a great movie! But creating chemistry on screen takes intention, effort, and talent. It’s not just the actors working together – it’s the writing, the directing, the costume design, the editing…all of it comes together to create what we in B2B would call a high-value touch point. And the strength of the connections onscreen is what makes this film  Remarkable.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Ocean’s 11

• Make characters for the personas you’re marketing to. There’s a team member for everyone among the Ocean’s 11 crew. Whether you like the Malloy brothers because they’re jokesters or you relate to Linus Caldwell because he goes against the grain, there’s a character in here for everyone to latch onto. Plus they all have a robust, shared history, which makes them feel more real. So, how’s this applicable to your B2B marketing? For your next campaign, make characters or personas your customers can identify with. Progressive does a great job creating characters to bring their business to life in their ads. They have Flo, their staple insurance spokeswoman; Dr. Rick, a parental life coach who advises people on buying homes; and other characters who tell Progressive’s story. Salesforce is a B2B company that creates characters for their brand narrative, and they’ve created characters so recognizable that people line up to take photos with life-sized versions of them at Dreamforce! That’s the power of harnessing storytelling in B2B marketing – by creating characters that speak to your audience, you have the opportunity to create powerful brand loyalty.
• Build the best team. Find people who are specialists in their field to fulfill their role in your project or marketing team. Did you know The Amazing Yen, played by Shaobo Qin, was discovered while performing with the Peking Acrobats? Ocean’s 11 was his first acting role. Crazy, right?! In other words, no stunt double required – he actually pulled off that flip in the vault to avoid setting off any sensors near the floor. This casting is a perfect example of finding the right actor and also finding the right role within the heist team. The bottom line: In your B2B marketing, match each of your team member’s strengths to their role, and you can successfully pull off any project.
• Create a sense of purpose. Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan bring together their team around a sole mission: a massive heist. Together, they go over the plan and each of their roles within it. Because there’s a reward for successful completion of the mission (about $13M each), it motivates each of them to do their part. There’s also a major caveat that if any one of them messes up, no one will get paid (and worse). So bring your team together around a clear mission with defined roles for each member of the team. Define a shared set of KPIs with clear expectations and work together to achieve your goals.

Key Quotes

*”There's a lot of different ways there that B2B companies can pull from A-list talent or just creating an ensemble, by having these different characters tell the story of your brand” - Anagha Das

*“There's a cool opportunity [for] a business to make an ad where they have their own characters and there's like a story that they build with each one. B2B companies can do the same concept with their personas and create a character based on each persona. Similar to Ocean’s 11, they can even incorporate some of those cinematic storytelling aspects and play that out among the characters.” - Colin Stamps

Time Stamps

[1:17] What's Ocean's 11 about?

[1:55] What's an ensemble?

[3:10] How successful was Ocean's 11?

[4:31] Technique of the week: The Ensemble

[5:59] Why does the technique work when it comes to B2B marketing?

[9:17] Why is the ensemble an effective storytelling mechanism? 

[11:04] Who's who in Ocean's 11?

[14:15] How do you use the ensemble in your marketing?

[18:45] More examples of using an ensemble in B2B marketing

Links

Watch Ocean’s 11

Check out the Salesforce characters

Take a look at Duolingo on TikTok

Meet Dr. Rick, Flo, and more at Progressive.com

And here’s the Old Spice guy

Look at how State Farm is partnering with athletes

About the Show

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is puffery? How can you use it in your B2B content?

In the mid-2000s there was a King of Puffery. 

He soared into our lives as the SHAM-WOW guy. 

But his tour-de-force was the SLAP-CHOP. 

His name was Vince Offer, and he changed infomercials (and quite literally our lives) forever. 

In the first episode of REMARKABLE, we examine his use of puffery in the SLAP-CHOP commercials and how you can use it in your B2B marketing. 

Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life! 

Let's slap those marketing troubles away and chop up some B2B marketing and content morsels for all to enjoy.

Key Quote

"There’s an opportunity to do this (for B2B companies). It’d be super interesting if I went on LinkedIn and there was a video from a technology company I follow and it was a fun, infomercial style video instead of a boring product demo…Just to engage with the audience in a different way. I think there’s an opportunity for that.” - Colin Stamps

Time Stamps

*[1:38] What’s the Slap Chop?

*[3:33] Who is Vince Offer?

*[3:50] The magic of infomercials

*[4:55] Why Vince Offer’s marketing technique works

*[6:23] The use of exaggeration or “puffery” in marketing

*[7:07] Remarkable Technique of the Week: Puffery. Why does puffery in marketing work?

*[8:37] How to frame the Before / After in your marketing 

*[10:08] Other marketing examples of puffery in B2B and B2C

Links

Watch the Slap Chop Infomercial

Read the Fair Trade Commission Act

About the Show

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

B2B marketers are always looking for inspiration and ideas. On Remarkable, the Caspian Studios team is bringing you B2B content ideas from Hollywood, B2C and beyond. In each episode we will explore elements of storytelling, design, and production, from studios like Pixar, Marvel, Lucas Films and many more. Then we will apply those lessons learned to how you can improve your B2B content. Welcome to Remarkable! 

Key Quotes

“This is a great podcast that you should definitely listen to!” - Ian Faison, CEO, Caspian Studios

“You should tell all of your marketing friends to listen to every episode” - Fian Flason, Anonymous

“I like all the different speakers, they are so fun and funny. Especially Meredith.” - Meredith O’Neil

“Ian, why do we need quotes for this section?” - Meredith O’Neil

“Are you making up quotes and recording our conversation?” - Meredith O’Neil

Key Takeaways

Well, since the trailer is only one minute and 18 seconds long, the takeaway is LISTEN IN.

Don’t swim on a full stomach.

Beer before liquor, never been sicker.

Podcasts are good for the soul.

Episode Highlights

Again, it's only one minute and 18 seconds so there aren’t a lot of highlights. We had to make up quotes already. Our first episode is Slap-Chop! Remember that? Choppy chopper thing? Crazy guy chopping stuff? Okay just head over and listen to it.

About the Show

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Making big marketing investments is a huge deal. But lucky for you, we’re here to help.

We’re bringing you five keys to deliver on a big investment.

And we’re taking those lessons from the Olympics with the help of our special guest, VP of Marketing at AppsFlyer, Carolyn Bao.

Together, we’re talking about capitalizing on a cultural moment, committing to the long haul, ensuring activation is fully prepared, and so much more.

About our guest, Carolyn Bao

Carolyn Bao serves as the Vice President of Marketing for AppsFlyer, for the North America region, driving multi-channel efforts for the AppsFlyer mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform. She is an accomplished marketing executive with over 20 years of leadership experience at technology companies, specializing in software and SaaS marketing go-to-market strategy, data-driven business innovation and building high-performing marketing teams. She has deep domain knowledge of marketing tech stack and advertising technologies. 

Beyond her commercial role, she nurtures the entrepreneurial spirit as an MBA@Rice faculty member and a founding board member of Silicon Valley Leadership Community.

Recognized with accolades such as LinkedIn’s “Top Voices” and Product Marketing Alliance’s “Top 100 PMMs,” Carolyn is celebrated for bringing products like Facebook Attribution to global markets, building high-performing marketing teams, and thought leadership in ‘women in leadership,’ ‘marketing management’ and ‘mobile growth strategies’ through key speaking engagements for educational and professional events. Carolyn built her career portfolio through leadership roles at technology powerhouses including Moomoo, Facebook, Visa, and Yahoo.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Olympics:

• Capitalize on a cultural moment. Pick something in the cultural zeitgeist to inspire your content. If it’s already resonating and getting talked about, your content will too. Carolyn says, “I think leveraging critical cultural moments is one of the key growth drivers for any marketing department.” And she adds, “Really think through for your category, what is that cultural moment that we really want to capitalize on? In B2B marketing, not everybody competes in the Olympics. But we do compete in terms of how many in-person interactions we have with other practitioners. And that's where these in-person conferences immediately became popular again after we came out of COVID. So I think that's maybe something to really think about, is what is your Olympics equivalent.”
• Commit to the long haul. Big investments in content mean lots of planning for the pre-, during and post periods. How can you maximize the campaign and make the most of the big investment? Carolyn says, “Not a lot of companies have the ability to plan in massive time horizons, like every four years. A lot of marketing teams are probably working one to three quarters out for most of it. But I do think it's interesting to think of like, what are the big, massive bets that you can make that you might not be able to make every year that can show who you are as a brand.”
• Ensure activation is fully prepared. Don’t sell yourself short by creating content without planning through distribution and activation. Make sure it’s fully considered and you’re making the most of that investment. Carolyn says, “To activate marketing around the Olympics at this scale is massive. This is sort of our Coachella for marketers, because we don't get to have this many dollars to spend for the majority of us. And meanwhile, even if we are with a huge brand, it is not often that we have this kind of massive celebration. So the scale is super important. The second piece that's very interesting is in terms of how to ensure marketing is done right. There is a great deal of discipline in running a smooth marketing operation, which I think everyone can still also relate to because no matter big or small, for our marketing campaigns to be successful, we have to also wear that operational hat. And I think there's a lot to be unpacked from studying how the Olympics have been done.”
• Commit to the production cost. Big ideas come with a cost. Follow through with the full potential of the project, including the price of it. But the good news is that marketers have become a lot more efficient. Carolyn says, “Savvy marketers are not doing marketing content production the same way as old time marketers. Because they create these stories, they run it on mobile marketing channels, they run with a very small dollar amount, and they already got data to tell them what stories resonate with who. It pulls their feedback loop a lot shorter.”
• Know your ICP. Ensure your content will land with its intended audience by truly knowing your ICP. This means understanding their values, what motivates them, and the value you can offer them. Carolyn says, “Deeply understand whom it is you're really trying to influence. Knowing your ICP and knowing what you want your ICP to think or do differently from your storytelling is critical.”

Quotes

*”With constraints, creativity really differentiates a good storyteller from a mid storyteller, leveraging the Gen Alpha language. The more you understand the limitations, the better it is you stay focused and think about within all of these constraints, what else could we do?”

*“If you are building a B2B brand, really make sure that there is a founder side of the humanized story. So that it's not just this brand, but it's actually the why the company was founded and how the founders have built the company.”

*” Let's ground our work back to marketing fundamentals. Our marketing fundamentals is storytelling and we really need to understand whom we're talking the story to, what we want them to think or do differently. This is the first. The second piece is, please do not be afraid of developing that left brain as a marketer because the tools to help us measure our work and tell us the feedback of how well our storytelling did are becoming a lot more available. If you don't know, search it up, use chat GPT, but really, really deeply understand marketing measurement and the data that is at your disposal to make you a better marketer. The third piece that's super critical is do not forget stakeholder management because with the village that supports us is what we can work on our day to day, the blocking and tackling, but also when the time is right, advocate for big activation like the Olympics and really make history. Have fun with it.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Carolyn Bao, VP of Marketing at AppsFlyer

[2:54] B2B Marketing Lessons from the Olympics and AppsFlyer

[4:14] Olympic Marketing Campaigns and Sponsorships

[36:09] Human-Centric Storytelling in Marketing

[42:28] Key Takeaways

Links

Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn

Learn more about AppsFlyer

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“A rare thing.” That’s what co-creator Steve Levitan called “the incredible alchemy of elements coming together” that was Modern Family.

He and Christopher Lloyd, who he’d worked with on Frasier, wanted to create a show that felt real. A show with heart. 

And it took the right writers, characters, and actors to play them to make it happen. And it happened for 11 years, winning 22 Emmys.

And in this episode, we’re taking B2B marketing lessons from it with the help of our special guest, CMO at Altimetrik, Jeff Fleischman.

Together, we talk about being passionate about your brand, showing persistence and grit, and the art of making “a rare thing.” 

About our guest, Jeff Fleischman

Jeffrey Fleischman is a seasoned senior executive with over 35 years of experience spanning the financial services, banking, insurance, and technology. As CMO of Altimetrik he manages the company’s brand, marketing, lead generation, public relations, and communications functions. Jeff brings a wealth of expertise to the role. Previously, he served as Chief Marketing & Digital Officer at Penn Mutual, driving omni-channel campaigns and advancing digital initiatives. His leadership journey includes key roles at renowned companies such as Citi, American Express, TIAA-CREF, and Chase.

Jeff’s passion lies in creating innovative, customer-focused strategies and experiences that integrate data, technology, and design. His extensive expertise covers areas like omni-channel marketing, data analytics, product management, and business transformation. He holds a B.S. in finance from Syracuse University and an MBA in finance, investments, and banking from Hofstra University. He has or held board positions with Artemis, Zenmonics Inc., Hornor, Townsend & Kent, Telera, and IEP Youth Services.

Jeff is an author, advisor, investor, and speaker. His book, "Advice To My Younger Self," reflects his commitment to empowering others to achieve their aspirations.

Beyond his professional achievements, he expresses creativity through painting and crafting unique art pieces, breathing new life into old furniture, and has a passion for music.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Modern Family:

• Be passionate about your brand. Jeff says, “On the passionate and competitive side, Jay Pritchett’s archenemy was Earl, his former partner of Closets, Closet, Closets. And they were at odds with each other, trying to outdo each other, trying to out-innovate each other. It’s that competitiveness and that passion that you need as a marketer. That passion really does have to come through.”
• Show persistence and grit. A lot of marketing is about trial and error. You find out what works with your audience by keeping things fresh and building your momentum. So don’t let the things that don’t work slow you down; just keep going. Jeff says, “Both Jay and Phil shared that kind of grit to be the best of what they can be, to beat everyone else out, whether it be another realtor, whether it be Earl from Closets, Closets, Closets. And as marketers, it's a very noisy world out there. Everyone's pushing content out. Everyone's trying to be everything to all customers. So how do you stand out? Not everything's going to be a home run. Not every piece of content, every blog, every white paper is going to resonate. But you need to just stick to your focus on how you take your brand and elevate it. And you don't stop trying. And if it works, great. If not, move on to the next one.”
• Focus on the heart of your content. Work on the emotion you want your audience to feel when they experience your content. That’s how you know your message will hit home and stick. And then you can start to chop it up for use across channels. Ian says, “So often in B2B marketing, we get so caught up in trying to create the asset and then chop it up and do all these things that you’re trying to do all the motions of the thing rather than the actual sentiment that is in the clip.”

Quotes

*”You need to create opportunities for your community and your audience to talk about you to other people. They're not just sitting around all day thinking of your software. The number of people who are just thrilled with [your product] are not just going to sing it from the rooftops every second of every day. You need to cultivate those things and allow them to share it as much as you can.”

*”For marketers, tie what you're doing back to the company strategy. And if you do that, you don't have to push people. They're going to be pushing you to do more, and want more from you. If you don't know numbers, you don't know how to measure, you don't know ROI, it's a serious blind spot. Bring back what you're doing to numbers, bring back to ROI, talk like a CFO.”

*”Take a bite-sized approach. We never start off with a big bang. Our approach is tiny. Let's do a proof of concept. Let's get a quick win. We won't disrupt your customers. We won't disrupt your business. It's within your environment. And I can tell you, 99 percent of everything we started out with was a small project. And now we have extremely large engagements. They trust us, they know us, and those relationships grew over time.”

*”You're basically in a newspaper business. You have to invest in content, it's 24/7, it never ends. If you think putting a PDF up on a website or, you know, putting new colors onto your website is the idea of content, you know, it's a big miss. So, content is an investment, it's an asset, and it's very dynamic. You have to put the right content at the right place at the right time on the right, you know, device or environment. And it just never stops. Technology's gotten better, data's gotten better, AI is now in the mix. So as you think about B2B marketing and where you really can make a difference, it's taking content that gets noticed. And, you know, the more you do that, the more you'll get noticed.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Jeff Fleischman, CMO of Altimetrik

[5:41] Learn about Jeff's Role at Altimetrik

[7:43] About the Creation and Success of Modern Family

[10:59] Casting Challenges and Character Development

[15:17] Marketing Takeaways from Modern Family

[27:48] What Marketers Can Learn from Jay Pritchett's Competitive Spirit

[29:12] Grit and Persistence in Marketing

[33:48] How to Build a Strong Social Media Presence

[34:49] The Role of Earned Media

[46:14] AI in Marketing: A Game Changer

[52:02] Jeff’s Advice for First-Time CMOs

Links

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn

Learn more about Altimetrik

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What do a marketer and a racecar driver have in common? You’re about to find out. 

One thing we can say is that going as fast as you can leads to burnout. That’s one of the things we’re talking about in this episode.

We’re taking marketing lessons from the 1990 Tom Cruise flick Days of Thunder with the help of our special guest, Director of Content Marketing at Fictiv, Ricky Frohnerath.

Together, we talk about being strategic instead of fast, speaking the same language as your team, and building contingency plans in case your campaigns don’t go as expected.

About our guest, Ricky Frohnerath

Ricky Frohnerath is Director of Content Marketing for San Francisco-based Fictiv, leading comprehensive content strategy and execution for all marketing campaigns, across all funnel stages and audiences. He specializes in building and managing cross-functional marketing teams for manufacturing and technology organizations. He's the A proponent of agile marketing methodology, servant leadership, self-management principles, and empowerment, his focus is on people first, then process, and then technology. A longtime resident of the Tampa Bay area, his education includes the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, St. Petersburg College, and the University of South Florida. Ricky is an amateur racing driver and avid enthusiast of electric vehicles, who believes in the power of uniting personal and professional values to drive positive change. Thus, he's passionate about accelerating sustainability by sparking and sharing conversations with leaders in electrification, motorsport, and industry.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Days of Thunder:

• Be strategic, not fast. If you try to go as fast as you can, you burn out or make mistakes. Slowing down just a bit to make sure your work is high quality and highly effective actually means you’ll work faster in the end. In Days of Thunder, Ricky says that Cole Trickle’s “quest is to find ultimate speed. He's actually over driving the tires and he's driving faster than [his competitors] can. And what happens when you're over driving the tires is that they get greasy and they start to degrade faster. So this is a problem because if you destroy your tires, then you have to come into the pits and that takes time.” So instead Cole learns to drive more efficiently by speeding up or slowing down strategically based on his coach’s advice. So slow down to work more efficiently and effectively.
• Speak the same language as your team. Communication becomes so much more efficient and effective when you share shorthand and jargon. Ricky says, “When you're on a team, you need to be speaking the same language. You need to have a shared lexicon so that there is this transmission of understanding. You need to know what's working, you need to know what's not working, and you need to know what you're talking about.”
• Build in wiggle room in case things don’t go right. If you hit a bump in the road, giving yourself a little extra time in the planning process for your campaign takes the pressure off. Ricky says, “Things are not going to go according to plan. You need to build in some agility and the ability to kind of compensate when it comes time to actually execute.” So give yourself room to breathe with your next campaign timeline. That way, you can correct any issues without stressing over deadlines. In Days of Thunder, it’s like when they plan, design and build Cole Trickle’s car and then it gets destroyed in an early race and they have to figure out how to pivot.

Quotes

*”I think it's fairly common for there to be conflict, especially between marketing and sales. One of the ways that you can overcome this is by having a shared language. Understand and adopt the KPIs that the sales team are going after. So, for example, one area where marketing and sales become misaligned is marketing likes to talk about big metrics, like impressions, eyeballs, even things like conversions. But these are KPIs that really don't translate well into the sales world. Like they are interested in leads and they're keeping an eye on sales and revenue and things like that. So make those metrics, your metrics and understand how the marketing activities roll into those KPIs. It's not to say that you don't keep track of impressions and a lot of other things that kind of get labeled as vanity metrics, but understand how you go from an impression down into revenue.”

*”If you're overdriving the tires, you're effectively leading to burnout. I think the same is true when we think about high performance teams. The best that somebody can perform is at the limit of their abilities. There is no 110%. You can only do the best that you can at the peak of your ability. You can't give that extra 10%. So forcing you to do that is actually going to have a detrimental effect. So I think that's super important to keep in mind for marketing teams.”

*”Marketers in general just need to have a very good understanding of who you're connecting with, who you're marketing to.  And I think in general we do a pretty good job of that. I think that authenticity is so important for a very targeted audience and especially one that is  extremely cognizant of inauthenticity.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Ricky Frohnerath, Director of Content Marketing at Fictiv

[7:05] Behind the Scenes of Days of Thunder

[12:32] Passion Projects and Marketing Lessons

[21:35] The Story of Days of Thunder

[23:44] Marketing Lessons from Days of Thunder

[25:33] Planning and Agility in Marketing

[28:40] Communication and Trust in Teams

[32:54] Burnout and High Performance

Links

Connect with Ricky on LinkedIn

Learn more about Fictiv

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s an athlete right now that uses, knows and loves your product. 

So why aren’t you partnering with them to promote your brand? 

The global sports sponsorship market is expected to grow to almost $108 billion by 2030.

And there’s around $1.3B in projected revenue this year from pro women athlete sponsorships. 

Feel like you’re missing out yet? The message is clear: sponsor a pro woman athlete (or two). 

In this episode, we’re talking about B2B marketing lessons from professional women athlete sponsorships with the help of our special guest, PARITY CEO Leela Srinivasan.

Together, we talk about experimenting with new channels, finding your match, and much more.

About our guest, Leela Srinivasan

Leela Srinivasan took the reins as CEO in May 2023, when Parity had amassed a network of over 800 women athletes and paid out over $2 million in sponsorships. Under her leadership, the company is poised to increase both numbers exponentially – and become a household name – as it enters its next phase in the fight against gender pay disparity in sports.

Prior to joining Parity, Leela served as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for three-high-growth companies: digital payments provider Checkout.com; Momentive, the maker of SurveyMonkey; and recruiting software company Lever. She developed her initial passion for community, customer centricity and data-driven marketing earlier in her marketing career at LinkedIn and OpenTable. She serves on the board of Upwork and on the board of advisors for the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where she earned her MBA.

Leela lives in North Carolina with her husband Joel and three middle-school girls. There are no dull moments.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Pro Women Athlete Sponsorships:

• Experiment with new channels. Keep a budget to try new things. Whether it’s simply posting to a different social channel or sponsoring a pro athlete, the Leela says, ”As a marketer, your livelihood depends on being able to find new channels to replace channels that were once working really well that suddenly stopped working, to find ways to stand out from your competitors. Because what happens is if you're doing one thing, then six months later, everyone else is probably trying to do it too. So you have to keep things fresh. It doesn't mean you have to devote your entire budget to experimentation, of course. You need to certainly put money where you know things are working, but over time that mix is going to change as a marketer. And so I think it's smart. It's actually self preservation in some ways, to keep trying to just find ways to experiment on the edges and tap into something that can really give you a fresh perspective in the market.”
• Find your match. There’s an athlete out there right now who would align strongly with your brand values. Use them as the face of your brand to humanize the name. Leela says, “Find something that really feels right for the brand and allows them to kind of carve out their own space. There are so many directions that you can now run in; New leagues springing up, new sports coming to the fore, new athletes with incredibly interesting stories.

Quotes

*”When you get those people, those athletes, those influencers talking very naturally about something that they find joy in or that they believe in, it's just another level of awesomeness when it comes to ambassadorship or testimonial.”

*”There are so many stories waiting to be told. If you're willing to be creative about the types of athlete that you work with, there are always athletes that can be within budget that can do some incredible storytelling for you.”

*”I always had some money in what I called my rainy day fund or my slush fund. That budget was mine to make discretionary investments where I wanted to try things, where maybe the ROI was less proven or the path was a little less trodden but it was worth the opportunity, worth that risk to try something different because, God forbid you just become this terrible vanilla marketer that is doing the same as everybody else. You have to find ways to break through. I mean, that's the fun part of marketing. Why wouldn't you? So I always had some experimentation budget just tucked away for when these types of opportunities came up.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Leela Srinivasan, CEO at PARITY

[2:03] Leela's Journey to PARITY

[5:17] Understanding Pro Women Athlete Sponsorships

[9:55] History of Pro Women Athlete Sponsorships

[14:27] Current Landscape and Opportunities

[24:07] The Gender Disparity in Sports

[24:51] The Influence of Women Athletes on Marketing

[27:00] Creative Campaigns and Athlete Partnerships

[28:16] The Importance of Originality in Marketing

[29:56] Investing in Women's Sports

[32:38] Engaging with Brands and Athletes

[35:37] The Power of Authentic Athlete Endorsements

Links

Connect with Leela on LinkedIn

Learn more about PARITY

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 Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Morrissey, Taking Back Sunday, Alkaline Trio, Streetlight Manifesto…

For dedicated fans, these are bands that bring back memories of checkered Vans shoes, studded belts, and paper wrist bands from each show.

But some of them haven’t toured in years.

So to see them all on one festival poster 20 years after their heyday made fans think it was too good to be true. It wasn’t, and it lived up to the hype.

So in this episode, we’re talking about all the good - and questionable - marketing that went into the When We Were Young Festival.

With the help of our special guest, Head of Content Marketing at CoreWeave, Brooke Gocklin, we’re talking about painting the picture, building a community of advocates, and delivering on the hype.

About our guest, Brooke Gocklin

Brooke Gocklin is the Head of Content Marketing at CoreWeave. Prior to joining the company in July 2024, she was the Editor-in-Chief at Contently, where she led content strategy and editorial direction for The Content Strategist and The Freelance Creative. Brooke is a recognized expert in content marketing, with a particular focus on the evolving role of AI in business. At Persado, an AI-language generation company, Brooke honed her skills in content creation for AI-driven solutions. Her deep understanding of technical products positioned her as a subject matter expert in the evolving AI space. Her work, featured in Adweek and Content Marketing Institute, reflects her deep understanding of how to craft impactful content strategies and engaging narratives that resonate with target audiences.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From the When We Were Young Festival:

• Paint the picture. Show your audience what doing business with you would look like. When they’re able to visualize the tangible benefits of becoming a customer, it makes it that much easier for them to sign on the dotted line. For the When We Were Young Festival, the organizers made a poster with album covers of all of the bands who would be performing. Ian says, “[It’s] brilliant, right? You have to show people what it would look like. I have found over the years that if you can mock something up, it’s so much easier, right? It's much harder to get an idea of something in a Google doc.” So paint the picture. Mock up an idea of what your product looks like for your audience.
• Build a community of advocates. Bands like Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday have created communities of fiercely loyal fans. Brooke says, “And so that means that when you see all of these bands coming together, the reaction is, is this even real? But two, it gives you a sense of like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to be there. And I have to tell my friends about this.’ And so I think that for B2B marketers, you know, really leveraging customer advocates or people who are just really excited about your product or service to amplify your message builds trust in a wider audience. So choose customers who love you, who love your product, who love your service and leverage them to tell others about you.”
• Deliver on the hype. You can tease about a product or service as much as you want, as long as it delivers what it promises. Brooke says, “When We Were Young created a massive buzz with a huge lineup. They also did a lot of teasers, but most importantly, they really backed it up with a well organized incredible event. Credibility is so important. So you can't just hype something up whether that's your product or service. And not have it live up to expectations. So as marketers, I think it's really crucial when you're thinking about B2B, to build trust and credibility from the get go. So whether that means that you're creating content that is factually accurate and all of the products and features, functionalities live up to what you're selling them as. That is important, right? So you need to establish your brand as a go-to resource, but you do that by being credible.”

Quotes

*”As far as how I think about content, it's really like connective tissue. I think it's at the core and at the center of a brand story. So, you need content to be able to bring people into the funnel. You need content as they're exploring, getting to know you. You need content when they're at that purchasing stage, or even after they become a customer, you still need them to engage with you. And you need to be putting out ideas that provoke some sort of thought and that's valuable to them.”

*”Really good content marketing is about creating value for your audience and really helping them solve their problems. So my approach has always been: start with the audience. What do they care about? What are their challenges? And then craft content that speaks directly to those needs. I think that that is a key differentiator when it comes to content strategy.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Brooke Gocklin, Head of Content Marketing at CoreWeave

[3:10] When We Were Young Festival's Unique Marketing Tactics

[8:11] Nostalgia and Community Building

[19:39] Marketing Lessons for B2B

[22:31] The Power of Loyal Fan Bases

[23:14] Leveraging Customer Advocates in B2B Marketing

[24:09] Building Online Communities

[26:54] Activating a Community

[29:43] Delivering on the Hype

[31:40] Content Strategy and Its Importance

[34:11] Successful Content Campaigns

[37:16] Measuring Content ROI

[39:38] Exciting New Projects at CoreWeave

[41:06] Advice for New Heads of Content

Links

Connect with Brooke on LinkedIn

Learn more about CoreWeave

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hooking your audience is one thing, but keeping them emotionally invested in your content is another. 

So for this episode of Remarkable, we’re taking marketing lessons on doing just that from the Irish dark comedy, Bad Sisters.

It’s a show about four sisters who plot to kill their diabolical brother-in-law, and the season starts with his funeral.

Series creator, Sharon Horgan, says, “We had to keep an audience with us for 10 episodes and keep them wanting the same outcome." That is, the death of their brother-in-law, John Paul. 

So with the help of our special guest, D2L CMO Brian Finnerty, we’re talking about hooking your audience, knowing your target, and doing trial and error. 

About our guest, Brian Finnerty

Brian Finnerty is a B2B marketing specialist with over 25 years experience leading enterprise marketing teams. He currently serves as CMO at D2L. His expertise includes brand strategy, B2B demand generation, and global customer acquisition from mid-market to Fortune 500. He previously served as VP of Revenue Marketing for Udacity. Prior to joining Udacity, Brian served as VP of Growth Marketing at Demandbase, where he was responsible for demand generation, field marketing, and customer marketing at Demandbase. Brian has also been a marketing leader at two ad tech companies, Marin Software and Smaato. He co-founded an e-learning startup that specialized in software developer training, with a rules-based code judging engine. He is an active Customer Advisory Board member for both 6sense and Sendoso.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Bad Sisters:

• Start with a hook. Bad Sisters grabs viewers’ attention because it’s about four sisters plotting to kill their brother-in-law, and it starts with his funeral. So the question is: “How did he die?” This is what drives viewers to keep watching. So how can you get your audience invested in your content? What question do you want to inspire them to ask?
• Know your target. This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but just like the sisters truly knew their brother-in-law and all the ways they could potentially do him in, so should marketers get to know their audience so they can appeal to them. Brian says, “The sisters do a lot of research and they really know their target audience. Like, what does JP like to eat? What does he like to drink? If you were to poison him, how would you do that? So they really do research, like, ‘What are the ways that we can do this and get away with it, and free our sister from the prison of her marriage?’ So they really do their kind of their targeting and their research, which I think any good marketer does.”
• Do trial and error. Try different marketing strategies and keep dialing it in based on data you get from the tests. Brian says, “[The sisters] do that right throughout the show. Like, they're testing ways to bump this guy off. Some of them end in sort of miserable failure and some of them have some potential of succeeding and you're never quite sure. Not unlike a lot of digital campaigns, where you're trying to find that perfect balance and the right approach.”

Quotes

*”I think for marketers, if you're not pushing the envelope, testing new messaging and testing new approaches to your website, conversion, optimization, your customer journey, your buyer's journey, then you're not trying hard enough. You're not getting enough data from the market to optimize and improve.”

*”In a B2B context, it is tough to really identify a villain. And that kind of marketing turns me off. Some companies will identify their competitors as villains and really go after them. As a marketer, I would say instead of identifying your competitors as a villain, which I think is a mistake, you look at either the cost of doing nothing, or like, ‘What is the counterpoint to your mission?’”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Brian Finnerty, CMO at D2L

[3:02] D2L and Brian's Role as CMO

[4:04] How Bad Sisters was created

[9:30] Authenticity and Cultural Representation

[22:18] B2B Marketing Takeaways from Bad Sisters

[22:21] The Importance of a Good Hook

[23:00] Research and Targeting in Marketing

[24:08] Trial and Error in Marketing

[28:30] Creating a Great Villain

[33:48] Brand and Content Strategy

[36:10] Effective Content Marketing

[38:34] Leveraging Content Across Teams

[42:58] Favorite Campaigns and Final Advice

Links

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn

Learn more about D2L

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 Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI is changing so much about how we create content. 

So we thought we’d bring in the founders of a brand new tool for making rich, interactive 3D content using AI.

We’re talking with Co-Founders Charles Migos and Bharat Vasan.

And together, we talk about how to make the most out of AI tools, including mocking up ideas, iterating quickly and taking risks.

About our guests, Charles Migos and Bharat Vasan

Charles Migos is Co-Founder & CEO at Intangible. He has over 30 years of experience in the tech industry, specializing in UX and product design. He has previously worked for Microsoft and Apple. Prior to Intangible, Charles served as VP of Product Design at Unity Technologies, where he established a core design practice, principles and philosophy. He also founded a centralized design organization and drove double-digit NPS, CSAT, engagement KPIs and revenue improvement across their portfolio with product design efforts.

Bharat Vasan is an experienced investor, executive and board member with 15+ years of leadership in technology. He has a strong track record as a founder and operator in multiple sectors:

• Connected Sensors & Devices

• Consumer Software and Media

• Healthcare, Fitness & Wellness

• IoT Sensors / Smart Home

Bharat is currently a founder of Intangible.ai, which uses AI to build the world's simplest 3D storytelling tool for creators in games, film, web and XR.

Prior to Intangible, Bharat was an investment partner at The Production Board, a $450M venture capital fund, where he built on his experience as an angel investor with a deep network of founders. He helped invest in and create value at businesses ranging from foundry/seed, all the way to growth/IPO. As COO for fund, he also helped the firm fundraise and navigate market cycles in 3 of the most volatile years in venture capital.

Bharat also has a strong track record as a P&L operator for growth and early-stage companies, having led his businesses through multiple rounds of financing and acquisitions. Bharat has raised over $500m for his companies, with multiple exits (founded BASIS Science, acq. by Intel; President August Home, acq. by Assa Abloy; CEO of PAX Labs, achieved unicorn status).

Bharat is an active public speaker and Board member for venture-backed startups, and nonprofits.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Intangible.ai:

• Mock up ideas. You can make effective prototypes of a content idea with AI. It lets you get your idea across without having to invest a lot of time or money in a first draft. Charles says, “A storyboard is probably the most important artifact in the process after the script itself. Why? Because it is very low fidelity, but there is very high bandwidth in what it communicates. So like, I as the cinematographer, the director, the set designer, the costume designer, the visual effects supervisor, whomever, looks at A 2D sketch and understands exactly what it means for them creatively. So that idea that you can work from very low or coarse levels of detail, but get to very high levels of detail over time in the way that the process requires is super important. And is as enabling for those film creators or game creators as it will be for these other use cases we hope to activate around live event and architecture, urban design, live event productions and theater and all of that good stuff.”
• Iterate quickly. Something not quite right with the first version? Iterate quickly using AI. It can even give you multiple drafts or versions of the same idea. Bharat says, ” If you're trying to do a Pixar movie or a documentary, or you're trying to make an interactive game, that's the stuff that feels harder. And it feels like AI can simplify some of that. I can give you a first draft, I can give you a second draft, and I can do it in real time.” 
• Take risks. Because you’re not having to spend too much time or money mocking up your ideas with AI, it allows you to take some risks. Get really wild and see how far your ideas can take you. Bharat says, ”One thing that's happened to businesses because budgets have gotten so big, everyone's super risk averse, so you get more lookalike content. And one reason you don't see great content on channels like we used to, or the box offices, because, you know, when your budget is that large, you can't afford to take a lot of creative risks.  So one reason we started the company where we are is if we can make that beginning process easy, if it's easier for Netflix to review more pitches, if it's easier for them to get a better scent, maybe they start taking more diverse bets.”

Quotes

*” When we found ourselves in this moment around generative AI, I knew that the time had come. Like we could apply generative AI in a way that was designed for creatives to do their best work ever. And I'm an ardent believer that creativity is a team sport.” - Charles Migos

*” There's a lot of anxiety about, is AI gonna take over jobs? What is it gonna do to the creative industry? I see it slightly differently. I see it as a way to revert back to the original joy.” - Bharat Vasan

*” Those people who feel somewhat threatened by the technological advance, we want to re-weaponize them so that they have more tools and skills that they can employ in different ways to ensure that bright, creative minds are in charge of the content that we enjoy as lovers of the space and consumers of that content.” - Charles Migos

*” If you're trying to do a Pixar movie or a documentary, or you're trying to make an interactive game, that's the stuff that feels harder. And it feels like AI can simplify some of that. I can give you a first draft, I can give you a second draft, and I can do it in real time. But the agency that people feel when they're able to do that in real time is really, really powerful. And they share that with other people, other people give them feedback. At least when I build stuff, that gives me energy. I made something as a kid, you know, with my little Lego bricks. I shared it with my friends. They go, ‘That's really cool.’ They want to build it with me. That's the fun part about being in this business.” - Bharat Vasan

*”Now that AI has come along, we feel like that's the last unconquered thing. You can set up a 3D set, you can figure out how to film it before you spend a dollar on production. And then people know what it looks like, feels like, when you're pitching that to a client, to a movie studio, they get a sense of what that's like as well. And so everyone gets more confidence on the creative project before going into production. And one of the things that's broken about the business is everyone has to place that bet in millions and millions of dollars without knowing what's going to come out of it at the end of the day. And often it might not even be a storyboard, it might just be a script or a blurb. And then you're just hoping and praying that someone's going to do something good with it.” - Bharat Vasan

*”A storyboard is probably the most important artifact in the process after the script itself. Why? Because it is very low fidelity, but there is very high bandwidth in what it communicates. So like, I as the cinematographer, the director, the set designer, the costume designer, the visual effects supervisor, whomever, looks at A 2D sketch and understands exactly what it means for them creatively. So that idea that you can work from very low or coarse levels of detail, but get to very high levels of detail over time in the way that the process requires is super important. And is as enabling for those film creators or game creators as it will be for these other use cases we hope to activate around live event and architecture, urban design, live event productions and theater and all of that good stuff.” - Charles Migos

*”One thing that's happened to businesses because budgets have gotten so big, everyone's super risk averse, so you get more lookalike content. And one reason you don't see great content on channels like we used to, or the box offices, because, you know, when your budget is that large, you can't afford to take a lot of creative risks.  So one reason we started the company where we are is if we can make that beginning process easy, if it's easier for Netflix to review more pitches, if it's easier for them to get a better scent, maybe they start taking more diverse bets.” - Bharat Vasan

Time Stamps

[00:55] Meet Intangible.ai Co-founders Charles Migos and Bharat Vasan

[01:34] Charles' Early Inspirations

[03:26] Bharat’s Journey and Inspirations

[04:26] Founding Intangible AI

[04:30] The Vision Behind Intangible AI

[05:59] Challenges in the Creative Industry

[09:38] The Role of AI in Creativity

[20:42] User Experience and Design Thinking

[26:01] The Complexity and Fear of AI in Creativity

[27:53] Supporting Creative Intent with AI

[29:06] Generative AI and the Future of Content Creation

[30:33] Revolutionizing B2B Marketing with AI

[36:07] The Role of Taste in Creative AI Tools

[42:14] Simplifying the Creative Process

[46:44] Empowering Original Ideas and Risk-Taking

[51:19] Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Links

Connect with Bharat and Charles on LinkedIn

Learn more about Intangible.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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Each man carried, along with a sea chest, his own burdensome story.” - Excerpt from The Wager, by David Grann

This is true not only for the men that sailed on the HMS Wager, but your audience and customers (minus the sea chests). 

Just as David Grann took those burdensome stories from journal entries to write The Wager, so too can you use the burdensome stories of your customers in your marketing.

This is one of the things we’re talking about in this episode of Remarkable with the help of our special guest, former Director of Content Marketing at Authentic8, Shannon Ragan.

Together, we draw marketing lessons from David Grann’s book, The Wager, including going to the source, shaping your stories as stranger than fiction, and sourcing those stories from the smallest footnote.

About our guest, Shannon Ragan

Shannon Ragan is the former Director of Content Marketing at Authentic8. She joined the company in September 2020 as Content Marketing Senior Manager. She is also a producer and co-host of NeedleStack: the OSINT podcast. She previously served as Senior Marketing Communications Manager at Skybox Security. She has been blogging in the cybersecurity industry for ten years and vows to never write another Patch Tuesday update again.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Wager:

• Go to the source. Talk to your customers to understand what matters most to them. And use that in your messaging. Shannon says, “Experience it yourself, as authentically as you can. I think that is a huge thing in content marketing. I feel like there is often a lot of gatekeeping between sales and marketing to customers that it's like, ‘No, I don't want the marketing team to talk to my customers.’ It's the practitioners, the people using your tool, your product, that you need to talk to the most. And so any amount of time that you can get with them [is valuable].” In The Wager, David Grann actually sailed the same route that the crew of the HMS Wager did to see what it was really like. That was the only way he could write authentically about the experience.
• Shape your stories as stranger than fiction. When you do talk to your audience or your customers, get their war stories about the struggles they’ve had that your product will solve. Shannon says that having a podcast has been a great platform for sharing those stories. She says, “I think the true stories are the most interesting. And so getting  people that live it, walk the walk, do it every day to kind of tell their war stories and their learnings along the way, and be able to share those with our audience under our brand without really having to talk too much about ourselves has just been a great brand builder and gotten people into our orbit. And then once they know us and like us and love us, then it's really easy to be like, ‘By the way, we have this great product I think you'll like.’” It’s like how The Wager is a true story that, in David Grann’s telling, feels closer to fiction because of the detail and expressive voices he includes. And he was able to do that through the use of primary sources. So use your primary sources - your audience and customers - to write your marketing messages. 
• Stories can start with the smallest footnote. When David Grann was doing research for The Wager, he was looking through lists of people who boarded the ship. And next to many names, he saw “DD,” which he discovered meant “Dispatched Dead.” It was through researching the deeper story behind this two-letter abbreviation that he uncovered stories of scurvy and the overall human toll of the voyage. Look for the small footnotes that could tell you a much deeper story for use in your marketing.

Quotes

*”Kill your darlings. It is the thing that is most difficult to do to your own work, because it's the thing that you're like, ‘But I grew this babe in my womb. I can't get rid of it.’ And it's like, you do it in service of the rest of the thing that you have tended and grown. And it's such a hard lesson to learn and you have to teach it to yourself over and over again. Like David Grann had to teach it to himself again. But it makes a good writer.” - Shannon Ragan

*”One of my biggest pieces of advice is that part of your strategy should be co-creating content with your prospects and customers. Like, that should be a pillar of your strategy. And all of the people who can't give you testimonials, who aren't legal approved to give you a quote, who can't do all that stuff, can come on your podcast and talk about everything but the thing.” - Ian Faison

*”Think about where you want to end up. Like, do you want people to thank you for your content marketing? And if so, how do you build the path to get there? So yeah, think about where you want to end up, and then build your strategy and your editorial path to get there.” - Shannon Ragan

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Shannon Ragan, former Director of Content Marketing at Authentic8

[3:50] Content Marketing Insights from The Wager

[5:33] David Grann's Research Journey

[14:33] Crafting Authentic Content

[15:21] Engaging with Customers through Content

[16:11] The Power of Co-Creating Content

[25:30] Marketing Strategy Overhaul

[38:05] Character Development in Writing

[42:06] Final Thoughts on Content Strategy

Links

Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn

Learn more about Authentic8

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 Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Doctor Who has been around for over 60 years and attracted over 12 million viewers.

In our book, that makes it ripe with marketing lessons. 

Because wouldn’t you also want your brand to be around for over 60 years, and to have that many eyes on your content at once?

So in this episode, we’re talking about the long-running show with a cult following, Doctor Who.

Together with the help of our special guest, CEO of WorkProud & Online Rewards, Michael John Levy, we’re talking about keeping the essence of your branding through the years, using jingles, and using time travel in your storytelling.

About our guest, Michael John Levy

CEO Michael Levy leads both Online Rewards and WorkProud and has achieved 13 consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies list. His company is a leading provider of workplace culture and people success solutions who believe employees are a company’s greatest asset.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Doctor Who:

• Keep the essence of your branding through the years. As your company ages, refine and modernize your content. But keep the essence of what makes your brand or company unique. Ian says, “There's an importance of continuity that is a great lesson for Doctor Who, which is like, there's certain things that can change, and there's certain things that don't. And once you establish it, then that needs to be the way it is.” It’s like how the evil robotic beings, the Daleks, first appeared on Doctor Who in the 1960s. But then Michael says, “they then continued to exist like a multiverse, and they kept appearing over time. And as modern production techniques continued to improve and various doctors would appear, they would still, however, be stuck with the original form of the Dalek suit from the 1960s.” But they became iconic as part of the Doctor Who brand. So decide what is unchangeable, and what you can continue to dial in, refine and improve.
• Use jingles. Jingles aren’t used that much in B2B marketing, but in Doctor Who, music is an important part of the show. Michael says, “A small melody snippet as part of the intro and closure was a key anchor component.” And Ian adds, “Jingles are like one of the most underused marketing devices of our modern era. Back in the day, everything had a jingle.” The more senses you appeal to, the deeper, more multifaceted your brand identity becomes, and the more easily your audience will recall your company when making a purchasing decision.
• Elicit nostalgia through time travel. Send the characters of your marketing back in time and invite your audience to relive the good old days. Ian says, “We always talk about wanting to elicit nostalgia. Why not make a character, make your key persona, you know, CHRO, and send them back in time. Send them back five years ago. Send them back 10 years. You need someone who is doing the traveling to these other places so that they can experience it. It's ripe for discussion and you don't need to land the plane like you do like Marvel had to land the plane when they did the Multiverse and went back in time. As a marketer, you don't need to finish the story. You just need to start the conversation.”

Quotes

*”WorkProud is a 22-year-plus company of which this concept of recognition and appreciation and the corresponding tools that we've built have been a backbone of the culture of the organization. It's so foundational  that there are eyes on that stream and that feed on a daily basis with an expectation that you will read some positive things about somebody's joined the company, somebody's had an accomplishment, somebody completed training, somebody's celebrating some birthdays. We have a positive place inside the business and that is part of the culture.” - Michael John Levy

*”Once you've built that positive place where people can go, it's about capturing and accelerating the telling of those stories by helping them get crafted, and then sharing them. And ideally, those people want to share those things on third party sites or to their friends, in private group chats, or whatever it is. But as a marketing team, if you can help as the crafter of stories, it can help with retention. It can help with recruiting.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Michael John Levy, CEO of WorkProud and Online Rewards

[2:32] Michael Levy's Journey with Online Rewards and WorkProud

[4:02] The Power of Storytelling in Business

[8:42] The Origins of Doctor Who

[15:06] The Evolution of Doctor Who's Characters and Branding

[19:47] Comparing Doctor Who to Modern Brands

[27:31] Exploring Doctor Who's Production

[29:24] The Power of Soundtracks in Marketing

[30:39] The Impact of Jingles in Advertising

[33:12] Time Travel in Marketing

[51:48] The Role of Storytelling in Marketing

Links

Connect with Michael John Levy

Learn more about Online Rewards and WorkProud

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 Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if you created a campaign so good, so coveted, that users looked forward to it every year? 

And what’s more, non-users convert just to be a part of it.

We’re referring to the viral marketing campaign, Spotify Wrapped, and how they made their marketing masterpiece.

We’re doing it all with the help of our special guest, Head of Marketing at Postman, Justine Davis.

Together, we talk about making or buying exclusive content, sharing insights about your customers, and much more.

About our guest, Justine Davis

Justine Davis is Head of Marketing at API platform Postman. She previously served as  Head of Marketing for Atlassian’s Agile and DevOps suite of products. With over 9 years experience working with DevOps teams and tools, Justine is passionate about solving needs for customers. Outside of work Justine is a mom, avid reader, and loves to close the move goal rings in sunny Scottsdale, AZ on her Apple Watch.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Spotify Wrapped:

• Make or buy exclusive content. It’s like how you can only get your own Spotify Wrapped if you subscribe to Spotify. The campaign got people to convert from Apple Music and other streaming services just because they wanted to get their own Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year. Having exclusive content will get people to convert to your platform. Justine says, “Their strategy was: ‘Build for audio and not music.’ This was the HBO model a little bit, which is they acquired podcasts that were with them exclusively. So like, if you wanted to listen to them - and love them or hate them, Joe Rogan is one of the biggest in the game and it was exclusive on Spotify for a long time - you had to go sign up for Spotify. So it worked very well for them.”
• Share interesting insights about your customers. You’re gathering tons of data about your customers. Feed it back to them as interesting and informative insights. It can be useful or even entertaining for them. It’s like how Spotify made billboards highlighting unusual playlist names, and even how often someone listened to a particular song. Ian says, “You're finding data about your customers that is really funny and weird and interesting and unique. You're sharing that with other people. You're putting it on a billboard or somewhere, and then you're taking photos of it and then sharing the photos of the billboards all over.” Just those few data points make for a myriad of opportunities to share with customers who then will want to share with the world.

Quotes

*”Spotify Wrapped is the perfect piece of serialized content. You get to come out with it every year. People know what's coming. They know what to expect and they're looking to you, not only to tell them what their Spotify Wrapped is, but also to make funny jokes about all the other people who made ridiculous stuff.” - Ian Faison

*”You have to place your bets in a lot of different areas to grab attention. And understand that the user may hear it on repeat. So have that message be consistent across channels and in different formats.” - Justine Davis

*”We've invested very heavily in community as well as a big piece of brand marketing, because there's no better advocate than your customers.” - Justine Davis

*“The nirvana for someone doing content marketing is to create a little mini franchise, little mini brand of their marketing that people look forward to. I don't care at all about any other content that Spotify makes, but I care about Spotify Wrapped. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how your brand can be, where it's like people can care just about one thing that you make and not anything else. But the fact that you make that one thing is super valuable to them.” - Ian Faison

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Justine Davis, Head of Marketing at Postman

[12:16] Postman and API Marketing

[14:23] The Origin and Evolution of Spotify Wrapped

[22:29] The Power of Billboard Campaigns

[27:04] Spotify Wrapped: A Marketing Masterpiece

[27:53] Using Spotify Wrapped for Team Building

[29:21] Integrated Marketing Campaigns

[34:41] Investing in Podcasts

[38:58] Postman: Content and Brand Strategy

[47:14] Upcoming Postman Features

Links

Connect with Justine on LinkedIn

Learn more about Postman

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 Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Cena says that in the early days of his career, he struggled to break through as a WWE superstar.

Cena says that’s because “people didn’t know who I was. They couldn’t connect to John Cena coming out in different tights and boots every time. No one could attach to who I was.”

He says, “As entertainers, we kinda want to attach. You try to work on your character so people will relate to them and want to attach to them.”

And when we talk about edu-taining, entertainment is half of that. Getting your consumer to attach to you is what we’re all about on Remarkable. 

So in this episode, we’re helping you become marketing superstars and drive that brand attachment with your consumers.

To do that, we’re looking at parallels between the WWE and marketing. 

With the help of our special guest, US Market Brand Evangelist, Carlos Gil, we’ll talk about evolving with your consumer, giving your content personality, and much more.

About our guest, Carlos Gil

Carlos Gil is a marketing expert with over 15 years of corporate digital and social media experience, and the bestselling author of ‘The End of Marketing’. Specializing in driving ROI through cost-effective, organic growth marketing strategies aimed at fostering customer loyalty and leading digital innovation for organizations. As a trusted subject matter expert, Carlos provides impactful marketing strategies for C-suite executives and corporate brands seeking provocative approaches to stand out in today’s crowded digital ecosystem.

As the Brand Evangelist at GetResponse, Carlos leads strategic initiatives to boost the brand's visibility and foster partnerships in the U.S. Leveraging his expertise in brand building, digital marketing, and growth strategies.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From WWE:

• Evolve with your consumer. Adjust your brand messaging and content to fit your target consumer. Aim to resonate not just with them, but with the cultural zeitgeist of the time and place. Carlos says, “You've got to evolve in business or your brand is going to cease to exist long term. And the reason for that is because your consumer is not going to be around forever. I love how WWE has this magical appeal to bring back like the vets, right? Like The Rock, John Cena, Undertaker. Like every time they bring these guys back, they're bringing them back strategically to appeal to an older consumer. Same thing happens in the world of brand marketing, you know, brands find ways to connect with older audiences or audiences that maybe have left them. They do remarketing campaigns or retargeting campaigns.”
• Give your content personality. If your brand was a wrestler, what would they be like? What would their signature moves be? Don’t be afraid to be different, loud, and have catch phrases. Carlos says, “Randy Savage was one of my favorite wrestlers because he was out there. He was loud. He was larger than life and he had a very distinctive voice. He had the catchphrase, ‘Oh yeah!’ He was just different as a wrestler. And to stand out in today's noisy digital ecosystem, you have to be loud. You have to find ways to be different. You can't say the same thing that everyone's saying. Your content can't look like every other brand.”  

Quotes

*”I'm not a proponent of, ‘You have to go to my Twitter account to see a tease of a piece of content to then click outside of Twitter to then go to a website to give me your information to then get an email with a downloadable PDF that you really can't do anything with.’ It's too many steps. Remove the friction. Make content easily accessible to your audience.”

*”If your content looks like every other brand out there that you're competing with, you're going to just get lost. You're going to get lost in the noise.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Carlos Gil, US Market Brand Evangelist at GetResponse

[3:01] Wrestling's Storytelling and Marketing Parallels

[6:55] Evolution of WWE and Business Lessons

[8:48] Carlos’ Role at GetResponse

[10:53] Understanding WWE and Its History

[14:49] WWE's Business Model and Media Strategy

[19:26] Content Marketing Lessons from WWE

[26:52] The Art of Storytelling in Wrestling

[31:49] Marketing Lessons from Wrestling

[33:38] The Power of Storytelling in Business

[43:40] Be Different: Marketing Like a Pro Wrestler

Links

Connect with Carlos on LinkedIn

Learn more about GetResponse

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.