Renegade Thinkers Unite: Marketing Tips From Cmos And Expert Marketers

In last week’s episode, we traced the career of Noah Brier from a copywriter who didn’t know what copy was, all the way to co-founder of an immensely successful content marketing platform that’s, to date, received north of $100M in funding. On the second part of the interview, Drew and Noah take a closer look at brand positioning and content marketing. Noah shares his thoughts on where brands are going too exclusive, and how orchestration is a thorn in content’s side. He also dives into the key storytelling alongside the customer journey, and in one ten-minute stretch, shares a veritable boatload of illuminating advice on how to improve your content. Listen in!

Percolate, a software company, has received north of $100M in funding. Not a number to be scoffed at. In this episode—a fairly atypical one—Noah Brier, the founder, recalls and examines the path he followed to get to this point. Noah started with a job at American Demographics, a now-defunct marketing and advertising magazine, moved into a copywriting position (despite not knowing what ‘copywriting’ was) at a familiar agency (Renegade LLC!), and wound his way through a few other roles and side projects, twists, turns, ups and downs before reaching the point he’s at today. Now, Percolate is making a name as a leading enterprise content marketing platform, and he can lay claim to a true wealth of experience.  Noah’s journey is, in many ways, extraordinary. It follows unconventional routes, shows moments of peerless creative intuition and spark, and can ideally help guide each and every aspiring marketing leader out there. Listen in to hear about Noah’s entry into marketing, how he advises developing and managin

Millions of data points. A singular vision. Those are at the core of the new NetApp campaign, and the results were pretty significant. Over 70% of folks who saw the campaign saw NetApp as “a new company,” while website traffic tripled. So, yeah, pretty successful. So how’d they pull it off? A blend of tactful digital rollouts, account-based marketing, and more. It also came down to the idea of being a data visionary, and that, as CMO Jean English puts it, “everyone wants to be a visionary.  On this episode, Jean further explores the notion of being a visionary, and the crucial role boldness played in shaping this successful campaign. In forming the campaign, and the marketing mindset, Jean wanted her team to stretch the idea as far as it could go, and then go a little bit further. She wanted to make sure people had far-reaching ideas, and then she wanted to test and experiment. Listen in to hear more about her fail fast and move forward mentality, about aligning her vision across the company, and more.

How do you become a $4-billion company by selling free software? It almost sounds like a trick question, but it’s been done. Just ask Tim Yeaton, CMO of Red Hat, a $4-billion, open-source software company. The marketing’s been a major driver of success, and as Tim Yeaton puts it, has been the glue that permeates across the company and enforces everything—from product, to community, to end user. Though Yeaton starts out by discussing how marketing supports large tech companies, and how it has fostered a community as unique as Red Hat’s, he starts to break down the individual elements that can be applied to any B2B brand looking to get their marketing gears turning: simultaneous brand building and demand gen, developing a collaborative, meritocratic culture, effective agency collaboration, and perhaps most importantly, the benefits of simply telling a great story. Lastly, though it may not be the most critical driver of success, it is probably worth mentioning that Red Hat is likely the first-ever company with

How can a brand save the world? They could do something flashy, like repel an alien invasion or topple Godzilla, or they could do something real and substantive, like the World Surf League. When the WSL isn’t helping pro surfers shred the next big curl (are we saying that right?) or giving sports fans a great way to soak up some rays, they’re preparing for the future. As a sport deeply intertwined with the environment, that means committing to going carbon neutral. Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of the WSL, has helped this goal permeate the entirety of the organization, and has noted how crucial it is to have a brand purpose worth rallying behind. On this episode, she discusses her athletics-centered marketing career, from Adidas, to the World Tennis Association, the NBA, and Rugby Football Union, as well as her commitment to brand purpose, engaging with the customers, effective company leadership, and more.

What does a B2B brand’s website have in common with a SuperBall? A significant bounce rate! Okay, maybe not the funniest joke, but it does transition well into discussing a pretty real issue with many B2B brands: they’re boring! There are plenty exceptions, of course, but far too often, B2B brands end up being, as this week’s guest puts it, “B2Boring.”  Ryan Urban is the CEO & Founder of BounceX, a company that helps brands optimize their websites (and ditch the high bounce rates). In examining countless B2B brands, Urban has gotten a great sense of where these companies tend to go wrong, and so much of it ties to these brands being dull, playing it safe, and failing to show any personality. Their websites and content too often lack story, and end up being “coagulated, congealed buzzwords” that’ll just bounce prospects away like a trampoline. So, if you’re interested in hearing about how brands can be a little more exciting, what landing pages need to be successful, and more, tune in to this week’s Renega

Email is still innovative...right? One might argue that email marketing has become the Facebook of marketing strategies— It was cool at first, it hasn't declined yet, but everyone and their grandmother is now on it. So what are the trendy marketing kids using now? Erik Huberman, CEO & Founder of Hawke Media, gives us the answer: SMS. As it turns out, customers only engage with marketing emails about 3% of the time, while the average click-through rate for SMS marketing tallies up to 30%. That's a number to write home about.  Erik knows that these statistics are too important to ignore and knows that they're indicative of a larger shift in B2B. Acknowledging that shift, and moving with it, has helped Erik's young company grow from 7 to 160 employees in just about 5 years. On this week's episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew chats with Erik about the shift in traditional advertising towards more efficient digital strategies, and how B2B marketers can navigate it artfully. Learn about how this shift isn'

What do you need to make a big splash? A big ship, one would assume, is a terrific place to start. So that’s exactly what Agari used to launch their new brand, the purpose of which is written loudly and proudly on the walls of their headquarters: “Agari protects digital communications to ensure humanity prevails over evil.” That’s a pretty bold way of explaining that your company is an advanced cybersecurity firm for email. But a bold mission statement is exactly what companies need to grow. At Agari, this statement is deeply woven into the community fabric, from the board members down to rank-and-file employees. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Armen Najarian, CMO, discusses how they made the mission real, and how having that meaningful guidance of saving and protecting the world of digital communications, helped drive brand, product development, company growth, and more.

How do you effectively lead the marketing efforts of a 20,000+ employee tech giant well enough to make it into the American Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame? Sure—the question may sound a bit specific, but that journey is chock full of valuable takeaways for marketers at any sized company, in any line of work. Lucky enough for RTU listeners, this week’s episode features Ann Lewnes. Ann is a recent inductee into the AMA Hall of Fame and is currently the CMO of Adobe, a company that doesn’t really need much of an introduction. In her time at Adobe, she’s established herself as a trail-blazing, “flag planter” who gives great attention to the big picture. Listen in to this episode to hear about how she does that, her own marketing journey, the content strategy for Adobe, building brand trust, inspiring the people around you, and more.

Customers: What are they? Where do they come from, and what do they want? These are some of the great, cosmic questions we humans may never be able to answer. Just kidding, it’s actually (from a high-level, conceptual viewpoint) pretty simple. We’re all doing business with people, and people matter. If you keep your customer happy, great things happen. Going a little further, companies need to spend more time focusing on customer activation. Customers can and should be advocates for your brand, but to achieve that, they have to be treated well. Simple enough concept, but execution will take a little work.  On this episode of RTU, Kevin Spurway, SVP of Marketing at Appian, an enterprise application development platform, talks about the high level of commitment and effort required to really engage with customers, especially existing ones. He discusses what he calls “post-sale marketing,” which is how Appian has been so successful at developing meaningful relationships with its client base. Tune in to hear about

When you order a pizza, you want it delivered quickly. It should prepared, placed in one of those fancy heat-retaining delivery bags, and be at your door within the half hour. Boom. Simple. A brand transformation is not a pizza (stop the presses!). Most marketing endeavors, in fact, benefit immensely from first slowing things down. Do your research, let ideas cool off while you consider them, and make sure your efforts are built on a strong, deliberately crafted foundation. Then, order your team a pizza to celebrate a well-executed campaign. That's part of what Dawn Colossi, CMO at FocusVision, a customer insights company, preaches. Research is absolutely key. No matter how tight the deadline, how urgent the project, it'll always be beneficial to start off with the research, even if a light, initial round. Tune in to hear more about effective researching, tactful surveys, and how to be more deliberate in your marketing efforts. 

What’s your brand truth? Actually—let’s pull back a bit: what is a brand truth? You could give it a few different names, but in essence, your brand truth is a concise guiding principle that informs virtually every aspect of the company’s operation and, importantly, can’t be dismissed. In the case of UTAK, a toxicology quality control provider (serving chemistry labs, forensics experts, and more), they nailed it in two words: “Control Freaks.” On this episode of RTU, CMO, and Chief Control Freak, Matt Kopp joins the show to discuss the origins of “Control Freaks,” and how two simple words have influenced every arm of the company, from product development, to customer engagement, to marketing. He also dives into the benefits of bringing in an outside agency (Renegade LLC) to develop the idea, the importance of internal buy-in, how to stand out in a crowded B2B market, and more.

About 5 years ago, Rebecca Stone joined LiveRamp and the CEO said, “I want you to be as sophisticated as possible in advertising, and how you use it.” At the time, the company had two sales development reps, a funnel that wasn’t necessarily feeding leads properly, and a young tech stack and tons of potential, so Rebecca got to work on the company’s digital transformation. Now, the company has a tech stack built from roughly 40 different tools, broken into different operating nodes, a marketing team that supports 20 sales development reps, an in-house data lake, and data analytics models that can accurately predict how marketing spend will translate to revenue—a sort of holy grail for marketing analytics. On this episode, Rebecca shares her journey at LiveRamp, a platform that helps brands get personalized ads in front of users across the web, and how she helped build the well-oiled marketing machine that her department has become.

You might think the first step to asteroid mining is get a rocket ship. Usually you would be right. But on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Sean Regan, Head of Product Marketing at Atlassian, is taking a different approach. To Sean, mining an asteroid speaks more to the idea that a portion of your marketing, or overall company strategy, has to seek out untapped, sometimes hard-to-reach areas, otherwise you’ll just be chipping away at coal in the same mines as everyone else, looking for small, incremental bumps in value. As Sean says about marketing, “if you’re not nervous about it—even a little bit—there’s a pretty good chance it doesn’t matter.” At Atlassian, a software developer aimed at improving collaborative productivity for companies, Sean keeps asteroid mining front-and-center when formulating marketing strategies. On today’s episode, join in as he and Drew talk about how to bring emotion and creativity to science-driven marketing, how product development and marketing is contributing to Atlass

If you were constructing a bingo board based on the lingo in tech company discussions, you’d have “disrupt” right in the middle square, as it’s basically a freebie. What’s far less common, is seeing a company actually follow through on that disruption, but that’s what SAP has managed to do. Alicia Tillman, CMO, has been hard at work trying to re-envision how SAP presents itself, largely driven by the CEO’s ambitious goal to crack the top 10 most valuable brands in the world. So, Alicia took the reins, set about repositioning the company, and has since seen SAP move from 21st most valuable brand to 17th—their highest growth rate since 2009. Quite a few cylinders have been firing to make this happen: Their commitment to rallying behind a bold, company-wide purpose, their internal buy-in and alignment, their dedication to creativity and storytelling, and of course, good old fashioned hard work, have all played a major role in kicking SAP into the next gear. For more of Alicia’s keys to effective marketing, and t

In the utopian holster of magical marketing bullets, employee advocacy is right up there with viral videos (think Ice Bucket Challenge) and real-time marketing (remember Oreo’s ‘dunking in the dark’ social posts?) But, unlike the last two options, employee advocacy is actually something most companies can execute consistently, assuming they follow a few critical steps. First, you have to run a company that employees actually enjoy working at and feel comfortable advocating for. Second, you need to allow your employees the latitude to speak in their own voice not just the brand’s. And third, it really helps if you have a tech platform that makes it easy for employees to advocate on the brand’s behalf. On this episode, Drew chats with Glenn Gaudet, CEO and founder of GaggleAMP, an employee advocacy enablement tool. In their conversation, Drew and Glenn dive into the issues most marketers face when developing these programs, how to build a culture of eager sharers and the importance of segmenting potential advoc

What the heck is a purpose-driven story statement and why are they so critical to successful marketing? These are the question Drew answers on the first-ever installment of Drew’s Takeaways, a special RTU episode where he distills and discusses key topics and themes of recent interviews. On this episode, Drew breaks down why and how a company can rally behind a powerful, purpose-driven story statement. Through the discussion of two such statements—one that worked, and one that fulfilled its promise—Drew helps shed some light on how a brand can craft a meaningful identity that engages employees, customers, and prospects, while helping drive the brand forward. To hear more about being purpose-driven, and to take a closer look at statements like Family Circle’s Where Family Comes First and SurveyMonkey’s We Power the Curious, tune in!

A true, purpose-driven brand doesn't happen overnight. What it really takes is a goal, specific actions, and at times, a bit of sacrifice. For Bank of the West, their mission meant, in the short-term, potentially leaving money on the table in the name of responsible investment of customers' money, and transparency as to what that money was doing. That initial cost was worth it, as the long-term benefits, like new customers, talent attraction, and differentiation, outweighed any money lost. Now, when high-profile job candidates ask, "Why should I join you? How are you helping the world?" Bank of the West has a great an answer—they're one of very few banks that has restrictive financing policies on things like coal, fracking, and arctic drilling. On this episode of RTU, learn how CMO Ben Stuart and his team helped shape this relatively small financial institution to become a competitive, purpose-driven company with marketing that doesn't feel like an uninvited guest. The discussion touches on crafting a tight s

Payroll tends to be a purely transactional moment between employer and employee, but Gusto is working to shift that to being a "life moment," potentially one of delight (as receiving a paycheck should be!). Effectively reaching their audience while balancing internal alignment, a hefty tech stack, and their mission statement—to create a world where work empowers a better life—can be something of a juggling act. Tolithia Kornweibel, head of marketing, and her team at Gusto, are up to the task. On today's RTU, Drew and Tolithia talk about how to effectively build a demand engine, how to demonstrate value internally to gain support, and how to keep track of your brand through a balance of qualitative and quantitative assessment, all while staying true to a brand mission. Tune in! Connect With Tolithia: On LinkedIn Via gusto.com Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram

Silicon Valley is home to thousands of B2B startups—and one of the the newest B2B  unicorns. Brex offers a corporate credit card more built around the ever-changing needs of a startup, and they've been valued at over $1 billion. One of the secrets? Champagne and chocolate. Brex's overall success has tied heavily into their bold marketing, and on this episode of RTU, Chief Sales Officer Sam Blond, and CFO/CMO Michael Tannenbaum, discuss it in detail. From identifying your targets, to orchestrating outdoor campaigns, to in-depth attribution models, Brex has been firing on all cylinders. Listen in to learn more. Be sure to listen. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher - or Podsearch What You’ll Learn How Brex found its current market Brex is located in Silicon Valley, where there are thousands of B2B startups. Brex’s founders stumbled upon the painfulness of managing corporate credit cards when they could not get a credit card for one of their own new business. Their experience demonstrated a business opportuni