Inception: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Academy Award-Winning Movie with Johann Wrede, Director of Content Marketing at Emburse

Imagine this: possessing the power to not only understand your customers' deepest desires but also plant ideas in their minds, making them believe it was their idea from the very start.

It may sound like something straight out of a dream, but it may not be as far-fetched as it seems. See, the genius of Christopher Nolan's Inception conceals marketing insights if you look close enough. It's the marketing movie you never knew was about marketing.

While we can't offer you a PASIV device to enter your customers’ dreams, we can provide you with the tools to craft marketing strategies that work like inception - subtly influencing, inspiring, and engaging your audience.

So in this episode, we’re deciphering the intricate layers of marketing with the help of Emburse’s Chief Experience Officer, Johann Wrede. Together, we discuss how to utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas’ in your customers’ heads, avoid fixating on initial customer expectations throughout the customer journey, and leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative to boost engagement. So grab your totem for this episode of Remarkable.

About our guest, Johann Wrede

Johann Wrede is the Chief Experience Officer at Emburse. He is responsible for leading a cross-functional marketing and customer success organization, with the goal of delivering a world-class customer experience from first awareness through subscription renewal.  Over the course of the last 25 years, Johann has written, implemented, sold and marketed a variety of customer database, CRM and customer experience (CX) products. An evangelist for customer experience, he has delivered keynotes and press interviews in 18 different countries, and written numerous articles on the topic.

About Emburse

Emburse is the global leader in spend optimization. Their expense, travel management, purchasing and accounts payable, and payments solutions are trusted by more than 12 million business professionals, including CFOs, finance teams, and travelers. More than 18,000 organizations in 120 countries, including FORTUNE 100 corporations, high-growth startups, public sector agencies, and nonprofits, count on their intelligent automation, sophisticated analytics, and unmatched spend control to streamline processes, increase spend visibility, enhance compliance, and deliver positive financial outcomes.

About Inception

Inception is a sci-fi action, mind-bending movie about a corporate spy who enters people’s dreams to steal secrets from their subconscious. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the main character, Dominic, or Dom, Cobb, who is basically gifted with this ability that’s made him extremely successful, but he’s lost everything because of it. Namely, his marriage and children. His wife is played by Marion Cotillard. And so he’s kind of haunted by her in his subconscious and she ends up sort of thwarting his every move. So anyway, he’s given a chance to redeem himself by planting an idea in someone’s mind, and having to go layers deep into their subconscious, which is of course, a nearly impossible task.

The movie was released in 2010, and directed by Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, latest Batman series with Christian Bale AND Memento). Nolan also produced it along with Emma Thomas - his wife and producing partner - for Warner Bros. It also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Elliot Page as Ariadne, and Tom Hardy as Eames.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Inception:

• Utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas’.  Emotions are your superpower to accessing the deepest corners of your customers' minds. People don't just buy; they invest for emotional reasons—this is an intrinsic part to our human nature. Johann says, “our whole mission is to plant ideas into customers' heads and convince them that it was their idea from the first. And the first time I saw [Inception], that is, it just jumped out at me and I thought, wow, that really sums up the marketing profession in a nutshell.”
• Don’t fixate on initial customer expectations. Customers evolve, and so should your strategy. What matters most in the end is if they are happy. Just as Inception leaves us with an ambiguous ending, Cobb’s happiness is undeniable. Whether it's a dream or reality, his happiness is the ultimate goal, mirroring how you should approach your customer journey. Johann emphasizes, “it doesn't actually matter if the value that they thought they were going to get is the value that they got. What's more important is that the value that they want right now is the value that they're getting right now. Are they happy with the result?”
• Leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative. This fuels customer engagement and is exactly what Christopher Nolan did when creating Inception. We witness this concept in two distinct ways: co-creation within the dream state, as the dream world is designed in a way that allows the subject to fill in details, and ambiguity in the ending, with Inception's enigmatic conclusion inviting audience speculation. Johann says, “All too often, we build these elaborate cities that we put our buyer into. And we orchestrate this narrative that is so complete and so full. And we try to be so precise in our language that we don't leave room for them to bring their own perception and perspective to it.”

Quotes

“One of my first sales mentors said to me, people buy for emotional reasons and then back it up with facts. That became really clear to me that what we needed to do as marketers was peel away those layers of the onion and get past the business person and down to the human, and speak to that person.” - Johann Wrede

“If you can create content that authentically seeks to inform and to add value, then you start to move into the trusted advisor quadrant, which is where you really want to be. And the other piece of this puzzle is that we have to look at the content we create through the lens of the customer journey.”  - Johann Wrede

Time Stamps

[01:00] Introducing Chief Experience Officer at Emburse, Johann Wrede

[1:34] Why are we talking about Inception?

[3:34] Tell me more about Inception 

[13:48] What are some marketing lessons we can learn from Inception?

[22:16] Marketing insights from Inception's mind-bending ending

[32:02] How to identify needs and craft messages that resonate

[45:53] How does Johann think about content marketing?

[54:49] Johann’s view on the ROI of content

[57:49] Johann’s favorite upcoming marketing campaigns at Emburse

Links

Watch Inception

Connect with Johann on LinkedIn

Learn more about Emburse

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction 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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