Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Dan Simmons: B2B Marketing Lessons from His Novel, The Terror, with JumpCloud CMO Micha Hershman
Every B2B brand voice sounds the same. Let’s mix in some drama, a bit of comedy, maybe even suspense.
We’re here to convince you to blend genres and create something new, unique and attention grabbing.
We’re taking notes from author Dan Simmons and his book The Terror with the help of our guest, JumpCloud CMO Micha Hershman.
Together, we talk about mixing genres, using persuasion, and basing your narrative on a true story.
About our guest, Micha Hershman
Micha Hershman is CMO at JumpCloud, where he scales JumpCloud’s go to market (GTM) strategy and creates programs to deeply engage JumpCloud prospects, partners, and customers. He is a marketing leader with over 20 years of experience in steering marketing initiatives for category leaders such as Eventbrite, Envoy, and Heap Analytics. He has played a pivotal role in scaling organizations, notably contributing to the global demand engine that facilitated Eventbrite’s successful IPO in 2018. His strategic prowess extends to category creation efforts, resulting in Envoy’s unicorn valuation, and platform positioning strategies that culminated in Heap’s acquisition by Contentsquare.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Terror:
- Mix genres. Borrow from action and sci fi and fantasy and romance and bring it all together to create unique content. Don’t feel like your content has to fit into a box or a category. And your content doesn’t have to be fact-based (as long as you tell your audience it’s fiction.) Give yourself room to play. Micha says, “[Dan Simmons has] a reputation of writing on the margins in general. Like, yes, he's written science fiction and horror books, but they all bleed into each other. This book, Ilium and the Companion, Olympus, is Greek mythology and Shakespeare and Star Trek all smashed up together into this bizarre duology. And I really love the way that he writes on the fringes and smashes all the stuff up together that he's interested in.”
- Persuasion is key. It’s a top must-have skill for any marketer. Otherwise no one is gonna click on your content, read your blog, or subscribe to your newsletter. Micha says it best: “You can have great ideas, you can make big pitches, but if you're terrible at presenting it, your great idea for how you're going to save 126 people and get your ship out of the ice and get back to civilization is going to get washed away by some loudmouth who's a really brilliant orator.” Practice writing authoritatively, quote clients, speak to your audience’s deepest cares, concerns and values. And get them hooked.
- “Based on a true story.” These are magic words that give you a foundation to build a Remarkable story from. Meredith says, “It gives you the bones of the story, but then it gives you freedom to imagine the rest and make it what you want.”
Quotes
*”You can have great ideas, you can make big pitches, but if you're terrible at presenting it, your great idea for how you're going to save 126 people and get your ship out of the ice and get back to civilization is going to get washed away by some loudmouth who's a really brilliant orator.” - Micha Hershman
*”I can't tell you how much effort I spend trying to talk my team down from doing more work. Like we don't have to go this big. We don't have to spend this much time, money, effort… It's not going to require it. And actually like, well, how little do we have to invest in this feature launch or this acquisition or whatever? Because marketers will add 10 billion bells and whistles. Nobody cares. Nobody wants them. My aim would be to work 35 hours a week because we're so good at the 80 20 rule. We know what 20 percent drives the business.” - Micha Hershman
*I think on the procurement technology side, buying is relatively straightforward. You've got a couple suppliers, you've got cash in your hand, they've got a cost, you're negotiating. It's a pretty straightforward process that it comes down to math in many cases. On the creative side, a totally different animal. There's no procurement team in the world that can help you. Your CFO is going to shrug their shoulder and say, ‘I don't know, you're the marketer.’ So much like Dan Simmons, you're going to have to have some kind of vision. You have to trust your gut. You're going to have to get bold and go places that maybe other people aren't really ready for you to try.” - Micha Hershman
*”On the classic B2B SaaS side, the parallel I often draw is about the vision. The founder has this idea for what [the product] can be and how it will disrupt and change the world, even though there's no appetite for it at all. There's no comparable products out there. And then there's the super prosaic, ‘Our customers ask for this feature. We have to build this feature,’ right? Which is a hundred percent data driven and to find that right balance between like vision and satisfying your customer data driven needs is that pressure that’s always on. Finding that right balance, there's some kind of art in it.” - Micha Hershman
*”As B2B marketers, we're dry, just so dry. It's just like, ‘This is the facts, and this is the information. And there's not a lot of packaging or storytelling or creativity or visual design. But we're not companies who buy, we're people who buy. And so, you know, storytelling is intrinsic to our nature. We all like beautiful things and we're all interested in creative expressions. So I do think that there is more room to explore there.” - Micha Hershman
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Micha Hershman, CMO at JumpCloud
[12:10] Exploring JumpCloud: A Glimpse into the CMO's Role and Company Vision
[13:54] The Creative Journey of The Terror: From Rejection to Success
[25:41] Breaking Down the Story of The Terror: A Blend of History and Fiction
[28:27] Exploring Dan Simmons' Unique Literary Style
[29:38] Leadership and Creative Problem Solving Insights
[31:28] Balancing Fiction with Reality: A Deep Dive
[36:03] The Power of Storytelling in B2B Marketing
[49:58] Leadership, Hubris, and Survival: Key Themes Explored
[53:08] Advice for CMOs
Links
Connect with Micha on LinkedIn
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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