When you look at a company and you have your own internal algorithm where you're assessing whether they're doing a poor job or an epic job, what sort of that algorithm looks like? Well, it's hard to know, because i do actually think that a great coms team kills a bunch of stories that we never end up seng. What facebook has is not a coms problem. They have a business problem that the coms tea is constantly trying to chase. So i don't love when people point to coms and say, well, it's a p r problem. We don't have great people"
Today’s episode is with Shannon Brayton, a Silicon Valley veteran with more than two decades of experience shaping corporate narratives and leading teams at companies like LinkedIn, OpenTable, eBay, Yahoo!, and Intuit. She recently joined Bessemer as the venture capital firm’s first-ever CMO.
In today’s conversation, Shannon shares the comms and leadership lessons she’s picked up along the way. In addition to sharing her broader philosophy around the role of comms and her thoughts on why it’s one of the more underappreciated functions, Shannon gets into the tactical weeds on everything from killing stories and creating new categories, to her frameworks for building relationships with reporters. There’s plenty of career advice as well, from how she approaches selecting companies to work for, to what the transition from head of comms to CMO was like, to what she’s learned from mentors and bosses like Jeff Weiner.
Here’s the reverse mentoring post Shannon mentioned on how she approached taking on the CMO role: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-tackled-first-100-days-my-new-role-reverse-brayton/
You can follow Shannon on Twitter at @sstubo.
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson