If a company is competing against sort of a guorilla kind of you've been talking about, are there ways that can be thinking or approaches that are most effective? I think creativity, obviously, is huge. And i don't think that kind of thing that i just described from two thousand two would happen necessarily now in the same way. But i think being creative on digital and really understanding their weaknesses and achilles heel and really pushing against those is an awesome way to try to get them. In a pr sense.
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