Remarkable Content with Ian Faison

Founder & CEO of Omnia Strategy Group, highly experienced in B2B marketing, discusses IBM's Outthink campaign, capitalizing on the moment, venturing outside branding, and taking high quality photos and videos

When new competition pops up, you gotta be ready to pivot in a fresh and sparkly direction. You’re adapting fast, staying relevant and realigning your content strategy to outshine competitors. Especially if you plan to stick around for nearly 80 years like Mattel, you’re bound to see new brands enter the market. And sure, Bratz and L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls are cute and trendy. But they didn’t just release a record-breaking movie with an all-star cast that won the first ever Golden Globe for cinematic and box office achievement. But for Mattel, the Barbie movie was a big pivot. So in this episode, we’re helping you prepare to pivot and take on the competition with marketing lessons from Mattel and Barbie, the movie. And we’re doing it all with the help of special guest Kylee Swenson, Director of Content Development and Owned Media at Autodesk. Together, we discuss being ready to pivot, the importance of inclusivity, and expanding your addressable market. So reminisce about your childhood weird Barbie as we get into this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Kylee SwensonKylee Swenson is Director of Content Development & Owned Media at Autodesk. She leads a global team of writers, editors, designers, illustrators and video producers creating content in multiple languages for the Webby Award–winning publication, Design & Make with Autodesk (https://www.autodesk.com/design-make) for the global design-and-make technology company, Autodesk (Autodesk.com).Her editorial vision is fueled by the awe-inspiring things people create with innovation and technology, from building resilient infrastructure that mitigates the impacts of climate change to designing 3D-printed skull implants that save lives.Prior to joining Autodesk in 2012, she was a music journalist and magazine editor at publications where she interviewed artists such as Björk, Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Robert Smith (The Cure), and Del the Funky Homosapien (Hieroglyphics). She’s also the author of The Recording Secrets Behind 50 Great Albums; was once nominated for a Grammy as a collaborator with the group, Nortec Collective; and is a former Governor for the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy.About AutodeskAutodesk is a global leader in software for architects, builders, engineers, designers, manufacturers, 3D artists, and production teams. From greener buildings to smarter products to more mesmerizing blockbusters, Autodesk software helps their customers to design and make a better world for all. Over 100 million people use Autodesk software like AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, 3ds Max, Fusion 360, SketchBook, and more to unlock their creativity and solve important design, business and environmental challenges. Their software runs on both personal computers and mobile devices and taps the infinite computing power of the cloud to help teams around the world collaborate, design, simulate and fabricate their ideas in 3D. They are headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and have more than 10,000 employees worldwide.About BarbieBarbie is a live action movie based on the Mattel toy. It was released this year, and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken. It’s about Barbie — who lives in an idealized, plastic world — having an existential crisis, which manifests as her feet going flat, getting cellulite and bad breath. And so she goes to see weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, who tells her she has to find the girl who plays with her in the real world so that she can be cured. Director Greta Gerwig said with the movie, she “wanted to give people –- and girls — but people the sense of you’re okay and you have value, just as you are. It is not something you earn or you need to achieve. Symbols like Barbie are an important way to reflect back the enough-ness of just being a girl, being a woman, being a person. And that’s what I wanted to explore in this movie, because Barbie’s for so long has been a symbol of the thing you could never be.”It’s become the highest grossing movie of the year with over $1.4 billion globally, making Greta Gerwig the most successful solo female director ever. There’s speculation that stock for Mattel may rise by up to 25% because of the movie. What B2B Companies Can Learn From Barbie:Be ready to pivot. Kylee says, “Companies can't wait to be disrupted by other companies. And CEOs like Ynon Kreiz need to be able to see around corners, so to speak.” So when Bratz and L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G. dolls became popular, Mattel decided to capitalize on their intellectual property to make the live action Barbie movie.Be inclusive. Barbie, the movie, has Barbies of all skin tones, shapes, sizes, abilities, professions, etc. And of course we can’t forget weird Barbie. Kylee says inclusivity is an important value at Autodesk as a global company. She says, “We have something called the culture code and every year people are evaluated not just on what they do, but how they do it. And they're evaluated on inclusivity as a value. So, part of this code is looking at ways to check our biases. To learn to work with people from all walks of life. I have somebody on my team who's in Tokyo, somebody in Munich, somebody in Detroit. We've got people all over the world, so that culture code is very important to the company.” That inclusivity in the makeup of your company will be reflected in your content, and resonate with more people.Expand your addressable market. Kylee says, “The Barbie movie doesn't just appeal to young girls and mothers. I was really surprised that grandfathers, dads, boys, non binary people [like it]. It's really meant to be universal for everyone.” Because the movie is about existence, it appeals to everyone. So create content that speaks to the human instead of to the customer.Quotes*“We can't outgrow this notion that we are the AutoCAD company if we can't become more of a known brand that people can equate with a broad set of capabilities across architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and media entertainment. We're a B2B company. We're probably not going to become a household name like Barbie, but we definitely have a lot of room to grow, and that's something that we always have to be mindful of.” - Kylee Swenson*“What do we feel the audiences want to read about? We have to think about customers and prospects and what they care about. We also have to think about what Autodesk is. You know, what are our business goals? Connecting those things together is really, really important. But at the same time, you can't sacrifice quality, you can't sacrifice the journalistic integrity that we've been betting on for so many years.” - Kylee SwensonTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Kylee Swenson, Director of Content Development & Owned Media at Autodesk[3:22] Learn more about Design and Make with Autodesk, formerly known as Redshift[5:29] Why are we talking about Barbie?[7:32] What’s Barbie, the movie, about?[10:58] Why is Barbie remarkable?[11:34] What are the marketing lessons in Barbie, the movie?[18:21] How does Kylee think about and address the different customer personas at Autodesk?[21:48] How does Kylee prove the ROI of content?[33:37] What is Kylee working on now that she’s excited about?[36:43] What advice would she give someone entering her position for the first time?LinksWatch BarbieConnect with Kylee on LinkedInLearn more about AutodeskCheck out Design and Make with AutodeskAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

There’s nothing like a B2B event. Right?…. Right? [[ *crickets* ]] That is, there won’t be anything like a B2B event after you apply the lessons in this episode of Remarkable to your events. It’s like how Deadheads say “There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.” That’s because the Grateful Dead were selling the experience. It was a place to go with people to meet, and all of the sights, sounds, and good vibes that made it an experience of a lifetime. So in this episode, we’re listening to the Grateful Dead with our guest, Director of Content at LeanIX, Matthew Grant. Together, we talk about giving away content to build an audience, selling the experience, and recording the event. So grab your tie dye tee for this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Matthew GrantMatthew Grant is Director, Content Marketing at LeanIX. Over the last 14 years, Matt has created content focused on a wide range of B2B technologies including cloud management, cloud security, content management, product lifecycle management, data center cooling, generative design, quantum computing, and edge computing. He has also written and spoking on user experience design, content marketing strategy, social media strategy, and patent law, among other things. Matt has hosted podcasts on data in the enterprise, B2B marketing, and cloud computing. He has a PhD in German Studies.About LeanIXLeanIX’s Continuous Transformation Platform® offers SaaS solutions to help IT architects, IT asset managers, business leaders, and DevOps teams achieve transparency and control over their enterprise architecture, SaaS, and microservices landscapes. They offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for managing Enterprise Architecture and multi-cloud environments to enable organizations to take faster, data-driven decisions in their IT. About the Grateful DeadThe Grateful Dead is a psychedelic band that got together in California in 1965. The founding members included Jerry Garcia (vocals, guitar), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (vocals, organ, harmonica), Bob Weir (vocals, guitar), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and Phil Lesh (vocals, bass). Their home stomping grounds were the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. And they got their musical careers started off around the time of the Summer of Love and the counterculture movement.About the Grateful Dead Europe 72 Record AlbumThe Grateful Dead’s Europe 72 Album is a triple album (17 songs split across three vinyl records) that was recorded in 1972 while the band was touring in Western Europe (England, Denmark, Germany, etc.)  It was recorded in April and May of that year, and released in November. The hope was that proceeds from the sale would help them recoup what they spent while on tour. Especially since they toured with an entourage of 43 people. Most of the songs were new, but it also included some live renditions of songs from studio albums. It has songs like “Brown-Eyed Woman,” “China Cat Sunflower,” and “Cumberland Blues”. Notably, it marked the last time Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, one of the original members, would play with them before passing away from an autoimmune disease that affects the liver. The album charted in the U.S. for 24 straight weeks after its release, and it was one of the first triple-record rock albums to be certified gold, and has since been certified double platinum.What B2B Companies Can Learn From the Grateful Dead:Give away content. Your content provides value to your audience while driving brand awareness. So when the buyer is ready, your brand is the one they think of. Matt says, “You could argue that the model for content marketing comes from the Grateful Dead. Which is, you give away content to build an audience. ‘Hey, Deadhead, send us your postcard!’ And then you get them to pay for something that can't be commodified, like an in person live experience that's only happening once.”Sell the experience. Create a unique experience for your audience around the product. When talking about the Grateful Dead, Matt says, “Music on some level is a commodity. There are better musicians than the people in The Grateful Dead, there are better songwriters than the people in The Grateful Dead, especially now when you have Spotify and all those other things, your access to music is unlike anything I had in my earlier part of my lifetime. So you've got to give people something else. The music is almost secondary. What they're really selling is an opportunity, or a space, for you to be yourself, or do your own thing, or be a freak, or be weird, or whatever, and it’s a non-judgmental zone.” So sell your audience an experience. Especially if it has good music.Record the event. So people who missed out can see it, and fans can re-live it. Ian says, “It’s a fan service to create a live album. It’s like a time capsule. And the idea that at any point in time, you could transport someone back to this moment is really interesting. Even if you weren't there, you still get to have that moment.”Quotes*“It was more about the cult than it was about the actual music.” - Ian Faison*“When people say they like The Grateful Dead, what they're remembering is this show they went to. And that time, you know, in Southern California, and it was outside, and it was at night, and everyone was chill, and we had a lot of fun. That's why they like it.”  - Matt Grant*”It's this experience. You have to give people more if you want them to come back. If you play the same songs every time and it's a cookie cutter thing, maybe they'll see you once. But why come back?” - Matt Grant*”In B2B tech, you can focus on content and the message. But if you don't have a product that can deliver on it, it doesn't matter.” - Matt GrantTime Stamps[0:56] Meet Matt Grant, Director of Content at LeanIX[2:11] What makes the Grateful Dead’s Europe 72 album remarkable?[27:41] What can the Grateful Dead can teach us about authenticity in marketing? [28:35] How did the Grateful Dead build a community of Deadheads?[30:50] Where did the Grateful Dead bear come from?[34:25] What do the Grateful Dead and HubSpot have in common?[38:51] What we can learn from the Grateful Dead about knowing your audience? (And more marketing lessons)[46:32] How does Matt think about content at LeanIX?[56:04] What does Matt think about AI when it comes to building content?LinksListen to the Grateful Dead’s Europe 72 albumBrowse the Grateful Dead Collection on Archive.orgRead Marketing Lessons from The Grateful Dead by Brian Halligan and David Meerman ScottConnect with Matt on LinkedInLearn more about LeanIXAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

When does your “audience” become a “community?” The word “community” might make you think of the relationship you have with your neighbors; a sense of friendliness and having something in common. It’s a word that relates an emotional closeness or bond, even loyalty. We’re talking about how to build that bond with your audience today.And who better to talk about it with than Automation Anywhere’s SVP of Community and Learning, Kristen Engelhardt. Together, we’re chatting about driving content to one part of your TAC (and what the heck is TAC anyway?), arranging a forum for deeper audience listening, and starting small. So get ready to upgrade your growth strategy with this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Kristen EngelhardtKristen Engelhardt is SVP of Community and Learning at Automation Anywhere, having joined the company in September, 2021. Prior to her current role, she served as VP of Trailblazer Marketing and Community at Salesforce. She has also worked for companies like PeopleSoft, Cisco and Gartner.About Automation AnywhereAutomation Anywhere is the leader in intelligent automation solutions that put AI to work across every aspect of an organization. The company’s Automation Success Platform is infused with generative AI and offers process discovery, RPA, end-to-end process orchestration, document processing, and analytics, with a security and governance-first approach. Automation Anywhere empowers organizations worldwide to unleash productivity gains, drive innovation, improve customer service and accelerate business growth. The company is guided by its vision to fuel the future of work by unleashing human potential through intelligent automation.About Community in MarketingThe idea of community in marketing suggests that customers are more deeply engaged than just purchasing from a company. These customers are aligned with the company’s brand values, mission and brand promise. They are loyal to the brand, recommend it to friends, family and colleagues, write reviews, post about it on social media, and generally evangelize the brand. Like the Apple community where users offer suggestions and answers to customer questions separately from Apple Customer Support. What is a community flywheel? It’s a community-centered approach to building a brand, in which your brand joins or creates relevant communities that promote amazing experiences and engagement, translating into sales.To use the community flywheel approach to building your business, there are five key techniques:Know your communitiesMake your brand story talkableZoom in on hero productsFuel the conversation across channelsMake transactions effortlessAccording to McKinsey, when you’re successfully leveraging the community flywheel approach…More than 75 percent of content about the brand is user generated.The influencer engagement rate—that is, the percentage of viewers who go on to like, comment, or share the content—is greater than 2 percent.More than 4 percent of online traffic is converted to sales.Brand-related posts by either the brand or a consumer go viral at least twice a year (triggered, in some cases, by marketing support).What B2B Companies Can Learn From Automation Anywhere’s Community-Building Strategy:Focus on driving content to one part of your TAC. You get better payoff with a focused approach to community-building. Kristen says, “The most successful communities we've seen are when you identify what part of the TAC you need and want to focus on to drive transformation together. It may be we're going to focus, like in Salesforce on the administrator, and we are going to surround them with the input into the product and the career support and the peer ecosystem to make them wildly successful in their role. And we found out by listening, by hearing what they're trying to solve for, that we could advance their careers and their companies through an investment in them. And in return, they share their expertise, they share their content, they speak on stage for us, they tell our brand story through theirs, but they also help us drive the business. And you get that magic flywheel.”Arrange a forum for deeper audience listening. Create a space to talk with customers and ask questions beyond your product. At Automation Anywhere, they created their Pathfinder Workshop, which is now scaled globally and has had a massive payoff. Kristen says, “We have a bright, hard line between that program and our upsell, our pipe gen, and our version of the ACV. And all of that came about the community workshop as our number one go-to-market lever because we took the leap and listened beyond the product: ‘What are you trying to do as an automation leader?’ So I love that example and the team did a phenomenal job listening, building, iterating together.”Prioritize the four pillars of community building: Destination, programs, content, and learning. These depend on how mature your business is. Kristen says, “For an early stage company, don't go out and build a destination right away. Start with the product tour or the dinner series. If you are already mature and you have so many connections and your community, your part of the TAC is saying, ‘Where do I give and get help? Where do I connect with more thought leaders? Where do I get that content?’ That's when you want to invest in the destination. So make sure you're prioritizing your pillars based on where you are and where your community is.”Quotes*“Community is a category creator and an enabler that allows a company like Salesforce, like Automation Anywhere, to build an ecosystem and a job economy. And whether it's in CRM, or it's in automation, or AI, at the end of the day, community is essentially your constituency of people, regardless of role, region, market, title, that you want to use more of what you have to offer, buy more of it, and tell others to do the same, and that's the magic of community. ” - Kristen Engelhardt*“Who you go and talk to and invest in will be different in an early stage than when you are in hyper growth and you are scaling and you want to make sure that you have a nurtured relationship with your most strategic partners and your most strategic customers. It’s a growth spectrum.”  - Kristen Engelhardt*”The key is just to know when you're starting out, ‘What problem am I trying to solve, for which stage of growth I'm in, and which sliver, slice, piece of the TAC do I most need to invest in, understand, know, and serve?” - Kristen Engelhardt*”You do need to invest in yourself first to create that reach. It's just that the level of investment is much lower. It's very low lift and you can pick and choose some very easy start by starting strategies before you have to go and build a 15 million member trailblazer community to drive the type of impact that McKinsey statistics are sharing.“ - Kristen Engelhardt*”There's a push and a pull. So like, your content is supposed to push your community to react and engage and to talk to each other and to spur conversations. Whereas for community, you have to be listening, you have to be responding, you have to be doing those sort of things.  And it's a very different sort of emotion. ” - Ian FaisonTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Kristen Engelhardt, SVP of Community & Learning at Automation Anywhere[2:55] Learn more about Kristen’s work at Automation Anywhere[4:54] Why are we talking about building community?[6:17] What is TAC?[17:02] Tell me more about building community in marketing[30:41] How do you engage with your customers beyond asking about the product?[41:40] What is Kristen’s playbook to building community?[48:25] What’s the ROI of community?[52:01] Who are the critical hires in building community?LinksJoin the Pathfinder CommunityConnect with Kristen on LinkedInLearn more about Automation AnywhereAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

If a friend of yours said, “There’s a new show you have to watch about a mid-size paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania,” would you want to watch it? The crazy thing is we’re talking about the most popular sitcom of all time. But it sounds boring as heck. So what makes it so good? The actual content.The Office was relatable, cringey, absurd, and lucky for us, chock full of B2B marketing lessons. And that’s what we’re talking about today with our guest, VP of Content Marketing at Crayon, Sheila Lahar. Together, we’re chatting about B2B marketing lessons from the U.S. version including holding a writers’ room, recognizing when your marketing playbook is stale, and making every word count. This episode of Remarkable is sure to leave you satisfied and smiling. That’s what she said.About our guest, Sheila LaharSheila Lahar is Senior Director of Content Marketing at Crayon, responsible for making sure that everything they publish is unique, compelling, and valuable. Prior to joining Crayon, she built successful content marketing programs at a number of B2B SaaS companies, including Flatfile, Datto, and Eloqua.About CrayonCrayon, the leading competitive intelligence platform for mid-market and enterprise businesses, brings a complete, real-time picture of what competitors are up to—delivering valuable insights to key departments in a range of formats that can be easily accessed and acted on. So companies can quickly see and seize opportunities, and build a sustainable business advantage.About The OfficeThe Office is an Emmy Award-winning mockumentary about the employees of a paper company called Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was originally a U.K. series created by British comedian Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. But we’re covering the U.S. version, which was adapted from the original by SNL writer Greg Daniels. It was co-produced by Deedle-Dee Productions and Reveille Productions in association with Universal Television. Members of the original cast included Steve Carrell as the Scranton regional branch manager, Michael Scott. Assistant to the regional branch manager, Dwight Schrute, is played by Rainn Wilson. John Krasinski is Jim Halpert, Jenna Fisher is secretary Pam Beasley, and B.J. Novak is the temp, Ryan Howard. The 9 seasons aired from 2005 to 2013.What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Office: Hold a writers’ room. Brainstorm ideas with your colleagues. Sheila says, “This works really well in person. One person will have an idea that’s funny. And then you just build off that. By the end of it, you're suggesting the craziest, wackiest things, which seem like The Office in some of the scenarios and situations. I've seen that play out in B2B marketing when you just get a creative group together and you're kind of like, ‘All right, this is what we've got, but what can we do here to make it funny or more appealing?” It’s how you elevate your product or service with great content. Recognize when your marketing playbook is stale. And pivot fast to give your audience something new and better than the last. Sheila says The Office just wasn’t the same once Steve Carrell left, that it felt like the show ran out of funny ideas. She says it would have been better to pivot to a spinoff after five seasons to give their audience something new. So when it comes to marketing, it’s important to always think critically about your content strategy. To ask “Is my content stale?” And move on. Sheila says, “It's like we've got these playbooks that we've developed and we just go to the same thing. And we're all doing the same thing just because it worked.” Go on to experiment and find new things that work better than the last.Make every word count. When you’re writing ad copy with a 1,000 character limit, each word has to pack a punch. Sheila says, “It has to be so impactful or funny or something. You have to get that emotion. I think back to the writers for The Office. They were so good at writing one-liners, whether it was for Creed or Ryan.” So think about the impact of every word when writing your next copy.Quotes*”For so much of the stuff that's out there, whether it’s billboard ads or other types of ads, there's just such a lack of enthusiasm to be bold, to say something funny or interesting. Let's get back to the Creed joke where he's like, ‘I sprout mung beans on a damp paper towel in my desk drawer. Very nutritious but they smell like death.’ It’s that absurdity that makes his character so freaking hysterical. And that absurdity is also the stuff that stands out in your mind.” - Ian Faison*”We're in this noisy world where everyone's just scrolling really fast. You’ve got less than a second, you just have no time. The bold and the funny and anything that stands out, that's your chance. That's your only chance to get noticed.” - Sheila LaharTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Sheila Lahar, VP of Content Marketing at Crayon[2:02] Why are we talking about The Office?[4:15] What is The Office about?[7:34] Why is The Office remarkable?[14:12] What are some marketing lessons we can take from The Office?[28:28] What’s Sheila’s content strategy at Crayon?[30:38] How does Sheila prove the ROI of content?[34:55] What are some initiatives Sheila is working on for the future?LinksWatch The OfficeConnect with Sheila on LinkedInLearn more about CrayonAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

You may be sitting at your computer in sweats right now. But it doesn’t mean B2B marketers like yourself aren’t fashion conscious. There’s actually a lot the fashion industry can teach us about marketing.You were likely marketed those sweatpants. So think about what made you want them. Why did you buy from that particular company? And what was the deciding factor that made you purchase them?It’s likely the company understood their industry, personalized their message, and created original content. Those are a few of the things we’re talking about today with Edgio’s Director of Corporate Communications, Brand and Strategic Content, Sally Winship Comollo. Together, we’re looking at B2B marketing lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. So put on your Chanel boots (they’ll go great with your sweats) for this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Sally Winship ComolloSally Winship Comollo is Director of Corporate Communications at Edgio. There, she leads the development and execution of strategic content and communications programs that drive awareness for the company's innovative edge platform. Previously, she led content and communications at Equinix. She has over 15 years of experience in marketing communications, content marketing, PR, and events, spanning various industries and sectors, from consumer electronics to cloud computing to legal services.Her core competencies include branding and positioning, content creation and distribution, experiential marketing and events, media and analyst relations, internal and employee communications, and social media. About EdgioEdgio is a globally scaled edge-enabled software solutions provider that helps companies deliver extraordinary digital experiences — faster websites, more responsive applications, the highest quality streaming, and more consistent game and software downloads, to any device.About The Devil Wears PradaThe Devil Wears Prada is about new college grad Andy Sachs who lands a job at a prestigious fashion magazine in New York City, working as an assistant to the editor. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea “Andy” Sachs, Meryl Streep as the editor, Miranda Priestly, Stanley Tucci as art director Nigel Kipling, and Emily Blunt as Miranda’s other assistant. The movie came out in 2006 and is based on the book by Lauren Weisberger. It was directed by David Frankel and produced by Wendy Finerman. The screenplay was written by Aline Brosh McKenna. The book was inspired by Lauren Weisberger’s experience as an assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour.What B2B Companies Can Learn From The Devil Wears Prada: Know and understand your industry. As Andy is just learning about the fashion industry, she makes an offhand comment about clothing being “stuff.” Miranda Priestly is quick to remind Andy that she is, in fact, the target audience for that “stuff.” Miranda points out that Andy is wearing a cerulean sweater, a color blue made popular by the fashion industry. So knowing your industry means being able to make the discerning and nuanced choices that will speak more effectively to your target audience. So your message resonates with them above all others. You’ll even be so effective, your audience won’t even know they’re being influenced by your “stuff.”Personalize your message. Andy memorizes the guest list for the Met Gala so she can be Miranda’s reference when meeting them. So Miranda was able to personalize her greeting for each person. This small but critical tip is something we can apply to marketing. Sally says, “How do you personalize your message for your different customer segments or your different stakeholders?” You want each customer or each stakeholder to feel important and like they matter to your business. Personalization is a simple yet effective way to do that.Be agile. As Miranda says, “By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.” Marketers have to be moving quickly and working to stay ahead of the every-changing industry landscape. Ian says, “Just pacing in general is really important. How quickly you're doing sprints or project delivery, whether or not something is good enough to go out, versus how long you spend on it. Like that, to me, is the hardest part of marketing, is ‘How much time do you spend on the thing?’”Create original content. In other words, don’t recommend florals for your spring line of clothing. As Miranda says, “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.” It cuts to the core. Sally says when it comes to B2B marketing, “How do you break away from things that may seem easy? Like, ‘Oh, everybody's doing video now, so let's do video’. Well, video might not work for your audience, or how do you make videos, but better?” So don’t follow the crowd, but fashion your own content.Quotes*”Our sales team is going through a very similar transition from just selling solutions or selling the product to value-based solution selling and transparent selling. So being honest about what we can do for them and what we can't do for them. Because that creates that trusted advisor type of role. Our marketing is mimicking that. So not just creating content that shows the value that we bring to the customer, but then also creating content that's valuable to the potential customer.” - Sally Winship Comollo*”Ultimately, the intangible ways of tracking ROI are also important. With analyst relations, when you get to the point where analysts come to you and say, ‘Hey, we've got a report coming out on edge platforms and we want you to be in it,’ Then that to me shows that what we're doing is working.” - Sally Winship ComolloTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Sally Winship Comollo, Director of Corporate Communications, Brand and Strategic Content at Edgio[1:48] Why are we talking about The Devil Wears Prada?[2:48] What does Sally do at Edgio?[3:31] What’s The Devil Wears Prada about?[6:59] Why is The Devil Wears Prada remarkable?[13:52] What can Miranda Priestly teach us about leadership?[19:19] What B2B marketing lessons can we take away from The Devil Wears Prada?[23:18] What’s Sally’s content strategy at Edgio?[28:49] How does Sally prove the ROI of content?[33:49] What advice would Sally give others in content marketing?LinksWatch The Devil Wears PradaConnect with Sally on LinkedInLearn more about EdgioAbout 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 Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Changing your content strategy is - in business speak - “scary.” The market is ever shifting and it’s hard to know what platforms to be on, whether to make static images, videos, audio, or blog posts. What do you invest in? Don’t worry, we have answers for you. We’re giving you steps to shift your content strategy in a way that is grounded in research so you can build brand awareness, drive demand, and still sleep at night. In this episode, we’re learning from a company that’s already well into their content strategy transformation - HubSpot. Kyle Denhoff, Director of Marketing at HubSpot, is sharing with us how to use market research to drive demand, how to experiment to see what’s working, and about all the nuances to building a portfolio that gets people to your website and across the finish line. So get ready to dip your toe into new content in this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Kyle DenhoffKyle Denhoff is Director of Marketing at HubSpot. He joined the company in January 2019 as Group Manager of Marketing (Acquisition). Before he became a Marketing Strategist, Kyle played 7 years of professional lacrosse. He has also served as Director of Digital Marketing and Communications at Fresenius Medical Care North America, and held other marketing roles at Xerox and Haley Marketing Group.About HubSpotHubSpot is an innovative cloud-based CRM platform designed to help align sales and marketing teams, foster sales enablement, boost ROI and optimize your inbound marketing strategy to generate more qualified leads. HubSpot has over 184,000 customers in more than 120 countries around the world. About the benefits of putting content on YouTubeNext to Google, it's the second largest search engine—and the number one for video.YouTube has more than 2.70 billion active users as of 2023. Youtube Premium has 80 million active users worldwide in 2023. 52% of internet users access YouTube at least once a month. Over 122 million people visit YouTube every day via its Website and Apps.Videos are 12 times more likely to be watched than text is read.A survey by Unbounce found that videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. A survey by Digiday found that 64% of consumers made a purchase after watching a branded social media video. A survey by AdWeek found that 85% of consumers find video helpful when making a purchase decision.YouTube is free to use.You can post cell phone videos - they don’t need to have high production value.YouTube is a Google product, so your videos are more likely to rank in search results. There’s a definite boost to your SEO strategy.YouTube allows users to add captions and transcripts for greater accessibility.What B2B Companies Can Learn From HubSpot’s shift to YouTube:Use market research to drive demand. And create media in the format and location your audience prefers. If they’re listening to podcasts on Apple or watching videos on TikTok, follow suit. Kyle says, “When we look at the market itself, most folks are moving to new channels and new mediums to consume news and education and entertainment. And so you have research companies like Nielsen sharing that YouTube is now the top streaming platform in the United States ahead of Netflix. And so there's this shift happening where folks are going from these traditional media companies to some of these independent media properties to get their information. And so we want to make sure that we are there and meeting our audience and providing them value.” Instead of relying on traditional marketing like buying ads, make a strategic investment in building channels and content that supports your audience’s media appetite to drive demand more effectively.Run experiments to see what’s working. You don’t have to go all in on a marketing strategy. Instead take a tactical approach and experiment on a new channel. Kyle says HubSpot started their shift to YouTube by investing some in video production and seeing if they can convert viewership into demand for the business. So they ran conversion rate optimization experiments, and he said, “We inched into it. We did that for a month or two, and then we built a big enough data set where we said, ‘We really think this can be a meaningful channel for the business and that's when we can build that business case to invest all in on YouTube and build out that network.” What they’ve found is not only does YouTube build brand awareness, but that they’ve figured out how to get people from YouTube over to the HubSpot website. Cultivate a portfolio of talent. We hear again and again on Remarkable that humans buy from humans. So enlist trusted people within your company as well as external creators as brand ambassadors. Kyle says, “There are personality driven brands and institutional brands. We’re all going to end up in a house of personal brands. There's going to be people within your organization or that you build partnerships with that are trusted sources of information. And they're going to be on camera. They're going to be on mic. And they don't have to have the full TV studio production. They can have some good at home cameras and mics and help support your prospects and customers to get more conversions for your business. And so I do think that's where we're headed is folks want to trust other people and brands are going to need to figure out, ‘Okay, who internally is going to be a great representation of my brand?’” It humanizes and lends authenticity to your brand.Assign a key value metric to each channel. Kyle says, the way HubSpot thinks about this is that ”each one of our media programs can serve really two objectives. One is it can support the business's goals of reach and influence. Can we create demand for HubSpot in the market by driving brand impressions to our target audiences? The other thing our media properties can do is they can convert audiences into leads for the business.” So for YouTube, for example, they track new, unique, organic views. For podcasts, they look at reach or listenership. And they’re able to use these metrics to decide where to invest in more content.Quotes*“The framework we go through is, What's the objective? Who's our audience? What channels are we going to use to reach that audience? And then what content can we make for them?’” - Kyle Denhoff*“You could have a podcast, turn it into a video podcast, put it on YouTube, and the audiences are very different. So even though you've built a show for a given persona, the people who listen to podcasts in the car or at the gym are very different than people who are on YouTube and browsing on their laptop or on their phone.”  - Kyle Denhoff*”Most brands need a mix. Like, I'm going to invest in these core media properties for the audiences I know I'm going to want to reach long term. And then if there are these brand building or spike plays where we want to reach a target audience during a given set period of time, let's talk about advertising.” - Kyle Denhoff*”You don't necessarily need a ton of money. Get something out there, get the data points, build the case. And then go back to your business leaders and say, ‘I believe that if we continue investing in this podcast or in this YouTube channel, we can hit these business goals and here's the budget I'll need.’“ - Kyle Denhoff*”Going in cold is the mistake I've seen from a lot of folks, which is I have this big vision, I have this big budget ask, and then it doesn't happen. And then you're like, ‘Oh man, I'm kind of defeated.’ Just start. I mean, you can go to Best Buy and get a Logic cam and a Blue Yeti microphone, and you can deliver value to your audience right away. And you'd be surprised at how many people are going to watch that video and then ultimately take an action.” - Kyle DenhoffTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Kyle Denhoff, Director of Marketing at HubSpot[1:30] Learn more about HubSpot’s content network[3:25] How is the market shifting?[5:52] What is HubSpot’s content strategy?[8:00] What are the benefits of putting content on YouTube?[9:58] How does HubSpot experiment with putting content on a new platform?[11:33] How does Kyle’s team decide what kinds of videos to make?[15:10] Why are personality-driven brands more effective than institutional brands?[17:56] How do you build a network of creators?[28:02] How does HubSpot appeal to different target personas?[30:32] How does HubSpot track what’s working and what’s not?[33:15] How does HubSpot know when to increase or decrease their investment in a particular channel?[34:47] How does Kyle prove the ROI of content?[36:52] The importance of creating evergreen content[38:39] Do you need a big budget to make effective content?[46:56] What’s next for HubSpot?LinksCheck out HubSpot’s YouTube channelConnect with Kyle on LinkedInLearn more about HubSpotAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Your audience is like a fickle love interest. We’re going to show you how to romance them.That’s to say that your audience could be at any place in their buyer’s journey. So it’s important to meet them wherever they are and woo the heck out of them.So in this episode, we’re going straight to the heart of the matter by talking about B2B marketing lessons from 500 Days of Summer with the help of our guest, April Weber. April leads integrated marketing at Infobip. Together, we’re talking about how to meet the customer wherever they’re at in the non-linear buyer’s journey, the importance of presenting your products honestly, and incorporating real stories in your marketing. So brace your tender heart for this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, April WeberApril Weber is Director of Integrated Marketing at Infobip, having joined the company in 2022 as CX Expert. Prior to joining Infobip, April served as Director of New Demand Solutions at INFUSEmedia. She has also held marketing and demand roles at companies like QuinStreet and HID Global.About InfobipInfobip is a global leader in omnichannel engagement powering a broad range of messaging channels, tools and solutions for advanced customer engagement, authentication and security. They help their clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their business and enhance the customer experience – all in a fast, secure and reliable way. Over the last 15 years, they’ve grown into an Engineering Powerhouse with 70+ offices in 6 continents and over 3,700 experts, aiming to change how the world communicates.About 500 Days of Summer500 Days of Summer is a love story about a relationship that lasted 500 days with a girl named Summer. And the story plays out in flashbacks to memories of the relationship. The main character, Tom, meets Summer after she becomes the new hire at his job, a paper greeting card company. They start seeing each other, but Summer says she doesn’t believe in love and so it’s casual even though Tom wants more than that. They end up arguing and breaking up and Summer quits her job at their company. The next time they see each other, Tom notices an engagement ring, which raises all the questions about why she wouldn’t want to settle down with him, but felt true love with someone else. When Tom does meet someone new, he finds out her name is Autumn.The movie came out in 2009 and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom and Zooey Deschanel as Summer. It was directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, and produced by Mark Waters. It’s an indie movie that premiered at Sundance, and was picked up by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It’s generally considered a sleeper hit, and brought in $60 million worldwide. It had had a $7.5 million budget.What B2B Companies Can Learn From 500 Days of Summer: The buying journey is often non-linear, so meet the customer where they are. Ian says, “People want that extremely organized fashion, and other people don’t. You as the marketer need to plan those different pathways and journeys, and to be able to tell stories in the moments that matter.” It’s like how in 500 Days of Summer, the story is told in flashbacks to Tom and Summer’s relationship. In the beginning, the viewer needs to see the positive parts of their relationship to understand Tom’s attachment to the relationship. And then as the story goes along, we see the disconnects and the miscommunications, the more negative parts of the relationship. That’s how the viewer understands that Tom is falling out of love with Summer and healing from the breakup. So as the marketer, you need to highlight the moments that matter for your customers and meet them where they are in their buying journey.Present your products honestly and transparently. Over-hyping your products in marketing is misleading, and ultimately leads to disappointment where customers aren’t likely to return. April ties this back to 500 Days of Summer when she says, “Tom idealized his relationship with Summer. We fall into that trap when we're over-hyping our products or solutions to potential clients, when honesty and transparency are crucial in building trust.” So though it’s tempting to play up your products to get higher engagement and sales, don’t do it. Present their real benefits and you’ll earn audience trust. Incorporate real stories. 500 Days of Summer was inspired by a real relationship screenplay writer Scott Neustadter was in while studying in London. April says that “because it was a real story, it was relatable to me. We should be doing the same thing. We should be doing this with our clients, with our content. It adds a human touch. It resonates deeply, I think, when you can actually incorporate real stories behind it.” So add that human touch to your marketing by including real stories in it. It makes your content more relatable and more human.Quotes*”We should always focus on emotional connections and relatable storytelling, whether that's B2B content or B2C content. To make an emotional connection with your audience no matter who they are.” - April Weber*“500 Days of Summer made us laugh. It made us feel sad. And it definitely makes you reminisce about your own experience, which is a great way to have any kind of content. If you can get in all the emotions at once, that's awesome.” - April WeberTime Stamps[0:55] Meet April Weber, Integrated Marketing Manager at Infobip [1:40] Why are we talking about 500 Days of Summer?[4:13] What is April responsible for at Infobip? [5:14] What is 500 Days of Summer about? [10:32] Why is 500 Days of Summer remarkable?[12:28] What marketing lessons can we glean from 500 Days of Summer?[32:58] What’s April’s content strategy at Infobip? [38:44] How does April think about the ROI of content?LinksWatch 500 Days of SummerConnect with April on LinkedInLearn more about InfobipAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

The Director of Content Marketing at Mach49 discusses B2B marketing lessons from the Barbie movie, including marketing your brand everywhere, delivering content the “right” way, and utilizing product placement. They also explore topics such as generating excitement for a launch in B2B marketing, adjusting content marketing strategy during COVID, measuring ROI, reimagining case studies, and the power of partnerships.

Is your brand strong enough that you can release logo-less content and people still know it's from your company? Are the visuals, the font, the tone and voice so clearly yours? Brand is so nuanced. But when done well, your name will be the first in the buyer’s mind when they’re ready to make a purchase. In this episode, we’re taking tips from a show that has super strong branding: White Lotus. We’re discussing Season 2 with Atlassian’s Head of Brand Content, Natalie Mendes. Together, we’re talking about how to cultivate a brand that will take you from season to season, investing in the heroes of your brand, and much more. Now, you can put on your bathing suit, but we wouldn’t recommend getting in the water for this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Natalie MendesNatalie Mendes is Head of Brand Content at Atlassian. She is an award-winning marketing leader with a wealth of experience in content marketing spanning over a decade. At Atlassian, she started and grew the brand content team, with a track record of building successful content strategies that drive traffic, engagement, and conversion. She has  won several awards, including Best B2B Content Site from Digiday and Best Digital Publication from Content Marketing Institute. She has experience in SEO strategy and content development, paid and organic social media, email marketing, website development, and PR.At Atlassian, she leads strategy and execution of content on their website, blog, podcasts, video, and social media. She has grown a team of skilled and motivated content marketers that serve and support their brand and product marketing strategies, as well as managing external agencies for social media and web development. They have grown organic monthly pageviews by 1000% in the past 3 years and proved out paths for sales. She has grown a thriving and engaged following for Atlassian brand and won multiple excellence awards in B2B Content Strategy and Podcasting.About AtlassianAtlassian is a portfolio of products that enable teams, increase collaboration and communication, and help businesses obtain their desired business goals. They connect teams to share work and drive higher productivity and outcomes. The teams they support include software, IT, business, marketing and more. Their team of 7000+ Atlassians supports an international group of 250,000+ customers. They build tools like Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello to help teams across the world become more nimble, creative, and aligned.About White LotusWhite Lotus is about the guests and employees of a fictional resort chain of the same name, White Lotus. While initially everything is beautiful and picture-perfect on the surface, there’s a darkness underneath that reveals itself more and more as time goes on. The second season is set in Sicily and stars Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, F. Murray Abraham as Bert Di Grasso, Michael Imperioli as Dominic Di Grasso, Adam DiMarco as Albie Di Grasso, Aubrey Plaza as Harper Spiller, and her husband, Ethan Spiller is played by Will Sharpe. It starts off with the death of a guest at the White Lotus resort and revolves around the sex lives of the characters from cheating to addiction. This is different from the first season, which focused on money and privilege. The series was created by Mike White for HBO and premiered in 2021. There are now two seasons and a third in production, which will reportedly be filmed in Thailand. Each season is set at a different White Lotus resort. The first season was set in Hawaii. It has won ten Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes.What B2B Companies Can Learn From White Lotus: Cultivate a brand that can carry you from season to season. And piece of content to piece of content. You should be able to use your brand voice across channels. The key is that your content has to be of high value to your audience. They learn to look forward to your content and trust the quality of it. Natalie says, “It's so much easier and efficient in a lot of ways to build on something that's working than to try to change up your story every single year and try new marketing formats just for the sake of it. When you can build on something over time, that's where you see the benefit and the growth, even from an organic SEO standpoint, we still see lots of great traffic coming to our old content. It's not all about the new stuff every time.” It’s like how we know that each season of White Lotus takes place in a different luxury resort. And it sets the stage for drama to unfold. So the audience learns to trust the quality of the storytelling and looks forward to a dark, complex plot that is undeniably White Lotus.Highlight the “heroes” of your brand. Whether it’s a character in your marketing or a fan favorite product, give your audience more. Natalie says, “Find your darlings and really invest in them.” She says, “Whether that's something that starts in your digital world and becomes an event in the real world, or your customers rally around one of your products or a new feature, letting that take off and knowing that that is gonna be good for your brand and good for your customers, while still having the regular cast of characters in the mix.” In White Lotus, it was Jennifer Coolidge’s character, Tanya, who became very popular. And references to her, including memes, are all over the internet. At Atlassian, they unleashed evangelists with resources and messaging to consult with customers. These evangelists, or heroes, strengthen their brand and accelerate the business.Quotes*”It's a show where there is no hero. Nobody really wins. And I think that's sort of what I like about it too, is it's more of a character study in these people and what's driving them to do things and what's holding them back and what are their secrets.” - Natalie Mendes*”Once I started watching White Lotus, I just got immediately hooked on the story and the intrigue. So it's a show where you know the ending but then the whole show is about figuring out how it happened. And so I love how that storytelling device hooks you immediately and then you become part of the show.” - Natalie MendesTime Stamps[0:53] Meet Natalie Mendes, Head of Brand Content at Atlassian[2:40] What is Natalie responsible for in her role at Atlassian?[4:31] What is White Lotus about?[8:11] Why is White Lotus remarkable?[23:02] How does Natalie think about brand?[25:54] What B2B marketing lessons can we learn from White Lotus?[34:59] What’s Natalie’s content strategy?LinksWatch White LotusConnect with Natalie on LinkedInLearn more about AtlassianListen to TeamistryListen to Work CheckAbout 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. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.