i feel like these fnctions all now are highly dependent on each other. So, waigt watchers is a life style brand that people hopefully love and get some success from. They did a lay off over video. And the note that the ceo, who i really respect and admire, sent out, didn't necessarily resonate very well with the employees who had been laid off. If all of those things, marketing coms, internal coms, employer branding, executive colms, had been more knitted together in a story like that, you would actually have realized you can't lay people off for a life stylebrand in a two minute phone call.
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