Creative testing (or choosing not to)

#287 Brand Marketing | In this episode, Matt is joined by Amrita Gurney, a veteran B2B marketing leader who has scaled some of Canada’s fastest-growing startups and now works as a fractional CMO. At Float, she led bold offline campaigns, from billboards and buses to TV spots, that helped the company stand out against major banks and build lasting brand recall.

Matt and Amrita cover:

• Why offline ads like billboards and transit campaigns are making a comeback in B2B marketing
• How creative choices — bold colors, emotional messaging, and relatable personas — can make or break brand campaigns
• What B2B marketers should know about budget allocation, measuring recall, and balancing brand vs. performance marketing

Whether you’re running your first brand campaign or rethinking your spend mix, this episode will give you fresh ideas on how to stand out in B2B marketing.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro
• (03:08) - – Amrita’s background and career journey
• (04:28) - – Why Float invested in offline ads
• (06:08) - – Launching their first billboard campaign
• (08:08) - – Taking bold risks with creative
• (10:08) - – Human-centered messaging vs. product copy
• (12:08) - – Expanding into buses, subways, and airports
• (15:08) - – Testing (or not testing) creative concepts
• (16:08) - – What brand recall really means in B2B
• (18:08) - – Measuring lift from offline campaigns
• (22:43) - – Balancing brand vs. performance spend
• (24:43) - – Lessons from consumer marketing in B2B
• (26:43) - – How they chose cities and placements
• (29:43) - – Budget breakdown and allocation
• (33:43) - – Tracking TV ad performance
• (35:43) - – How long to run campaigns for impact
• (36:43) - – Advice for marketers considering offline ads
• (38:43) - – Closing thoughts and takeaways

Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today's episode is brought to you by Knak.

Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time.

It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience.

But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever. 

That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks.

• Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak.
• Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first.
• Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak.

And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time.

See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five. Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five.

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more