Renegade Marketers Unite

A rebrand is not a campaign, it’s a new direction. That’s why NI (previously known as National Instruments) brought on their first-ever CMO, Carla Piñeyro Sublett—they wanted someone to guide them through the brand refresh process, to shake up their foundation and challenge their entire business strategy for the better. Knowing that this would be a bold undertaking, Piñeyro Sublett and her team, with full C-Suite support, worked from the outside-in. Then, with the help of an outside marketing agency, a cross-functional internal team, six months of brand strategy planning, 800+ interviews, and a month of employee prep, NI initiated an electrifying process of discovery for the business—one whose identity is encapsulated in two powerful, purpose-packed words: “Engineer Ambitiously.” This episode is a special one, as NI live-streamed the launch this week in a global celebration of their new brand. Tune in to hear about how they did it, you won't want to miss it!

Brands must be handled with care. They are emotional, enduring, and convey everything a business stands for, so it behooves CMOs to ensure that their company’s brand purpose and the messaging around it are not tone-deaf, but accessible—so accessible that they become a rallying cry for employees and customers alike and speak to any challenge that may come your way. Now, how can you achieve this? At Renegade, we suggest finding a common story and articulating it in six words or less, which is exactly what Altair did when the software engineering firm launched its “Only Forward” campaign. As CMO Amy Messano explains, they knew that their decision to rebrand during COVID was the right one; firstly, because they had previously put in nearly a year of hard work to find their brand story, and secondly, because their purpose gave employees hope in an otherwise unpredictable moment—the true acid test for a successful brand refresh. In this week’s episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Amy shares the story behind Altair’s mid-COVID rebrand, including how she used her “engineering pocket translator” to discover their purpose-driven story statement, how they activated their employees with the new message, and how they’ve measured its success thus far.

When do company values matter? Just ask today’s guest Peter Finter, the SVP and CMO at Couchbase: “It's when you have to make a hard decision, that's when values matter.” Speaking with conviction, Peter knows what it takes to prepare a business to take on any challenge. This conviction was made clear in Couchbase’s nearly seamless response to the COVID pandemic and how it took care of employees, customers, and prospects. In this week’s interview, Peter shares the six unique values of the open-source cloud database company that they’ve brought to life in the recent months across the spectrum of their ecosystem, starting with “Be a good human always.” With a commitment to personalizing marketing through things like employee talent showcases on Zoom and a free community edition of their software, Couchbase’s priorities are evidence that the human, purpose-driven B2B brand will always outlast the two-dimensional, poster board one (and they’ll probably see higher demand generation, faster once things start picking up again). 

Enter overused marketing advice: Be authentic. Understand your customers. Helping is the new selling. Clichés, yes, but they are as true today as when they were first uttered. You can’t skip these steps, and most people get it wrong by assuming they can, ultimately undercutting their “authentic” image with overtly salesy content or “authentic” messaging with no steps taken to back it up. In our opinion, the true renegade marketer will be able to bring these platitudes to life through innovative actions and strategy. The leaders that can achieve this are sure to see a growth in demand generation and value-added conversations, because working off of a strong foundation will set you up for a lifetime of success. One such renegade is Christina Bottis, the CMO of Coyote Logistics, a 3rd-party logistics (3PL) provider with a pack mentality. The business is focused on enabling its customers with industry-specific data, forecasts, and content because you can only be as good as the people you serve. Not only do they get e-commerce and the supply chain right; they have established themselves as reliable thought leaders who are committed to their purpose-driven tagline: “Drive your business forward.” Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how Bottis has helped Coyote articulate their promise, align it with the organization to make it real, and measure the results of their successful growth.  

With budget cuts looming (or already made), CMOs are suddenly being asked to do even more with even less. Many are stirring up their inbound marketing efforts, concocting lots of content with the hope that their audiences will drink it up. But as the old saying goes, hope is not a strategy. SEO, or should we say smart SEO, is indeed a strategy, one that takes a specific expertise and can pay substantial dividends. Getting discovered on Google for specific keywords is hardly a new opportunity. Many marketers have been doing it successfully for years. But if for some reason—perhaps you’ve changed target markets, launched new products, or just updated your website—you’re not appearing on page 1 of Google, then now is the time to fix that. In this episode, Drew speaks with Geoff Atkinson, the founder and CEO of Huckabuy, a firm that helped radically improve our firm's search presence for keywords like B2B Brand Strategy (feel free to type that into Google to see how we’re doing!).  Since Drew doesn’t normally have other service firms on the show, he wanted to make sure that what Huckabuy recommends could actually be achieved. As it turns out, they’ve got a reliable recipe for SEO success. Listen in to learn how a tweak here, an amazing piece of content there, and a bunch of well-structured metatags all over your site will make you an unstoppable SEO mixologist.

What does leading through a crisis look like? Drew covered the subject in-depth in a recent episode, but if you want a real-life example of leadership in action, look no further than Holly Rollo, the CMO and SVP Transformation at  RSA Security (and avid sailing enthusiast). In the past few months, Holly has taken the helm, steering her team through the COVID storm from her #WFH office in South Lake Tahoe, California. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how Holly has shifted priorities and helped transform the cybersecurity organization for the better: anticipating new security threats, building community through authenticity, and aligning sales teams with digital marketing efforts.

How can a business discover its brand story? The first step, according to David Altschul of Character LLC, is to identify the story’s conflict. Now, this isn’t the classic “good vs. bad” conflict that you tend to see in Marvel movies—a brand conflict is between two positives, think “independent vs. social” or “strong vs. soft.” That’s what Character specializes in, and they’ve helped some big-name clients (think Walmart, Amazon, Wendy’s) embrace such conflict and infuse it into the way they do business. Why does this matter in B2B, you ask? Well, there are a few reasons. At the outset, brands with story set themselves apart from competitors that are just selling products; when the buying committee comes together, story unifies the c-suite’s perspective of your brand; and finally, story gives you a framework for making decisions no matter what you come up against, even a pandemic. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear David’s expert advice on discovering brand story, and how to align the goals of your business across the board. He also answers questions from our live audience of three CMOs: Kevin Alansky of Higher Logic, JD Dillon of Enphase Energy, and Dave Bornmann of Naylor Association Solutions.

Imagine you’ve spent the past year preparing to rebrand your organization. You’ve ticked off all the boxes—strategized with a cross-functional team, developed a robust communications plan, and defined your brand purpose—and you’re finally ready to start rolling things out, but then, the COVID pandemic brings the world to a halt. This is a moment for a big decision, do you still rebrand? Or do you put things on hold? For Julia Fitzgerald, CMO of American Lung Association, the answer was to forge ahead. After all, if they were going to make their new brand promise real, if they truly were dedicated to fighting lung disease, then this was the perfect opportunity to do it. The rebrand didn’t come with all the bells and whistles that it normally would have, but this, perhaps, makes it that much more real. After all, as Ben Franklin once said, “Well done is better than well said.” Tune in to this week’s episode to hear about all about American Lung Association’s rebrand and how they’ve agilely pivoted their marketing efforts amidst the COVID pandemic. 

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: no CMO can succeed without the backing of their CEO. Countless CMO guests on the show have talked about how crucial it is to have that top-down support, and on this special episode, we’re joined not only by the CMO of Wasabi, Michael Welts, but also by his CEO, David Friend. With a strong working relationship that most can only dream of, they talk about how they’ve built their brand and grown their customer base from 1200 to 15,000 in just two years.   The key thing David was looking for was a “simplifier” CMO, and with Michael, he found just that. Through bold marketing, Michael and his team developed a strong value proposition, “1/5 the price of Amazon and 6x faster” and based their sales strategy around the three Wasabi “peas:” price, performance, and protection. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how to build a B2B demand gen machine, measure metrics outside of revenue, and have the CEO/CMO relationship that dreams are made of.

Now more than ever, people want simplicity. They’re looking for simple solutions to complex problems, simple language to describe complex ideas, and simple experiences in an increasingly complex world. That’s why this week’s episode, recorded pre-COVID, is so poignant. Mika Yamamoto, the CMO and CXO of F5, joins us to share the ways she has transformed how they do business by asking one simple question: “Does this remove friction or add delight?” Mika discusses the advantages of combining the CMO and CXO roles, they’ve given her a unique end-to-end perspective that has ultimately led to innovative, measurable changes for F5’s employees, customers, and prospects. With the battle cry “code connects us all,” tune in to hear all about how to best measure customer satisfaction (spoiler, it’s not NPS) and how to align your employee’s day-to-day interactions with the larger goals of the organization.