00:01.82
Robert Karel
If you remove the logo from most B2B tech ads today, you'd have no idea which company they belong to. it Feels like a sea of agentic powered yada. Founders and marketing leaders like to talk the talk about differentiation and our go-to-market strategies.
00:16.86
Robert Karel
They evangelize bold storytelling, human humanizing the brand and standing out in crowded markets. But in reality, most still play it safe. Today I'm sitting down with Skott Bennett, Senior Director of Brand at Qlik, to explore what might be the real constraint behind all of this, trust.
00:34.29
Robert Karel
Specifically, the trust required to take creative risks, challenge conventional thinking, and show up differently in the market. I'm excited to dig into the gap between what companies say about innovation and risk taking and what they allow their creative teams to do in practice.
00:47.99
Robert Karel
Skott, welcome. Thanks.
00:50.01
Skott Bennett
Hey, good to be here. Good to see you again, Rob.
00:52.41
Robert Karel
You as well. Why don't you give everyone just a little bit of your background, your journey through the creative world and what your current role at Qlik looks like?
01:03.74
Skott Bennett
Yeah, I don't how far back do you want to go. But yeah, i let's see, I think I was i was always drawn towards, at an early age, visual storytelling and graphic design.
01:16.47
Skott Bennett
And I kind of inadvertently trained myself for that career. I mean, I've got early childhood memories. Not that anyone cares about this. I'll dig in it. I have early childhood memories of like grabbing the remember newspapers, I'm old enough to remember newspapers, and they had the whole entertainment section.
01:35.26
Skott Bennett
And I remember being at my grandma's house, and she had this big box of tracing paper. And I would take that paper and put it over like the movie advertisements, and redraw them.
01:46.07
Skott Bennett
And what I didn't know at the time was I was teaching myself about composition, visual storytelling typography balance all these things that started to feel natural to me later in life when i started to pursue a job as a creative so fast forward i get out of school i get a job at a radio station group in san francisco as their in-house graphic designer and it was fantastic it was It was a head first dive into the world of brand, which I frankly didn't know much about at the time, or I guess I didn't know what I didn't know.
02:32.38
Skott Bennett
And we had very distinct brands there. We had a news station, a sports station. It was a KMBR flagship of the San Francisco Giants, Go Giants.
02:45.50
Skott Bennett
And then two rock stations. So I'm juggling all these like disparate brands with different brands audiences and different listeners. and if that wasn't challenging enough, that this is all happening many years ago when this traditional form of media was suddenly finding itself having to grapple with, what does a radio station website do?
03:11.42
Skott Bennett
And then once they got comfortable with that, then they had to figure out what streaming was, how to monetize it, how to how to brand it. and of course, things just started to change quickly. I was there when we had to figure out social media and how that changed the game for terrestrial media.
03:32.31
Skott Bennett
Everything from the rise of MP3 players all the way to smartphones. like I was right there in an industry struggling to keep up. And some would say it didn't. But what it taught me a lot about brand. And it taught me a lot about agility and it taught me a lot about change. So when I made the big change of jumping into tech, there was there was a lot to learn.
04:01.56
Skott Bennett
But the at the core of it, the problems that I was drawn to solving, i had already been solving in a different industry under different circumstances. So there was always this kind of thread of familiarity, going all the way back to the tracing paper at my grandma's house.
04:18.62
Skott Bennett
So, I moved from radio into an ad tech company. And it was, early days of programmatic advertising. So, this was...
04:30.45
Skott Bennett
How long ago? 2012, let's do the math, like 14 years ago when this happened. And I jumped straight into the world of AI before a lot of people were even really talking about it. So as AI applied towards finding audiences for ad campaigns, but it was still AI. And it was it was kind of early days of that, but i had to I had to figure things out really quickly. and lived through the classic Silicon Valley story of growing quickly, going through an IPO.
05:09.47
Skott Bennett
IPO didn't work out the way everyone had hoped, and then you deal with the aftermath of that. So then I just kind of stayed in the world of tech, B2B, SaaS, leading creative teams across a number of companies, including Informatica, where you and I met.
05:27.67
Skott Bennett
And that's where I kind of grew my management chops, having teams of creatives reporting to me, people doing the jobs I used to do, like video production, like graphic design, and kind of shaping their careers. and that was really rewarding. And then sooner or later, the If you work in the technology field, especially B2B, the layoff area is going to come sprinkle their magic pixie dust on you. So that happened to me at a certain point. And then I went into consulting and worked for a variety of companies, helping them with everything from brand campaigns to ceiling rebrands to yeah any type of problem they needed to solve.
06:18.36
Skott Bennett
But eventually another former Informatica colleague reached out who worked at Qlik and they had this new role, a senior director of brand. And I was thrilled with the job description. It just seemed like a great fit. was this great blend of being not just a creative leader, which, I had kind of been there and done that for a long time, but actually being a strategic leader, a thinker. That sounds really grandiose, but that's what they needed. and so I've been in this role for about a year now and really enjoying it.
06:55.41
Robert Karel
That's great. We're definitely going to dig deeper into kind of that leap into the strategic role. And I just imagine if when you were a kid, instead of tracing, you did what I did and you just used silly putty to pick up the ink, your career may have been in a completely different direction.
07:06.84
Skott Bennett
Oh, yeah.
07:10.31
Skott Bennett
I would have saved a whole lot of time. which is That's like Silly Putty, the original LLM. Just like together taking other people's work and showing it to you in a different way.
07:16.44
Robert Karel
Think
07:20.16
Skott Bennett
So, yeah.
07:20.31
Robert Karel
I think that's Anthropics new billboard on 101.
07:22.87
Skott Bennett
Yeah. Yeah.
07:24.95
Robert Karel
Well, let's go like right into it then. So like when we talk about brand marketing from a strategy level, like what is the real job? If you want to simplify it in the elevator pitch with a founder or a leader of an organization, what is brand marketing's number one job?
07:44.63
Skott Bennett
Well, that audience you just characterized, like any brand person, you gotta know your audience. What do they care about? They care about revenue, they care about growth, they care about sales. So the way that I talk about brand with that audience is, if I have to sum it up in one sentence, a brand makes your company easy to choose before a buyer even talks to your sales team.
08:12.37
Skott Bennett
That's it. I mean, and that's not it. It's a lot more than that. But my elevator pitch is, you've got to be you've got to be in their minds. You've got to be in the conversations. Because, shortlisting James Johnson, before anyone before any rfp's go out before any demos are viewed before anybody signs up for your newsletter or downloads your ebook like a shortlisting has already happened, they already have an idea of like the small number of companies, they want to talk to you for their problem.
08:33.57
Robert Karel
I have
08:44.87
Skott Bennett
So brand is, the principal job of brand is getting into their minds before that happens. I'm sure by the end of this podcast, people will be tired of the whole 95-5 rule.
08:56.05
Skott Bennett
I know we'll get into that. But it's really... it's a it's a human It's a human problem. It's a human brain problem that you're trying to solve because people have only so much bandwidth, only so much mental availability. So when a problem surfaces, if your company is in their mind as a company that solves that particular problem,
09:21.53
Skott Bennett
Then there you go. You're on the list. Then all the RFPs go out. Then all the demos happen. Then all the product conversations happen. So I think there's a misconception that brand is about logos or brand colors. copywriting, which is all critically important. And speaking as someone who's spent their life as a creative, I really believe in that.
09:47.58
Skott Bennett
But some people might toss that off as fluff. And it's not.
09:50.70
Robert Karel
Yeah.
09:51.45
Skott Bennett
Now Brand is, it's pipeline infrastructure. it's not fluff. It matters. And so that's how I would be a really long elevator ride. But if I had to get it down to one sentence, it's just you've got to make your company easy to choose before anyone engages with sales.
10:10.42
Robert Karel
Yeah, and in a recent episode, I spoke with Nadia Davis about marketing attribution. And we talked about this concept of the dark funnel, is that there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens in a customer's journey well before they touch anything that we engage them with.
10:27.16
Robert Karel
Do Any content or any webinars or events or emails.
10:27.58
Skott Bennett
Yeah..
10:31.48
Robert Karel
And brand is a massive part of that in terms of To even respond to an email, they want to have some familiarity that you that you even exist.
10:43.05
Robert Karel
And brand is what kind of, to your point, that human memory element is, oh, there's familiarity thanks to the fact that I've experienced what you look like, what you feel like, what something about you, which is out in the world, but it's not a one-to-one.
10:50.58
Skott Bennett
Right
11:00.70
Skott Bennett
Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. and it can be and the frustrating thing is so much of it is outside of your control. Sometimes the really exciting things happen that are outside of your control, sometimes not so exciting. Sometimes your brand...
11:17.08
Skott Bennett
Ends up on a short list because, two of your executives go to a Coldplay concert and all hell breaks loose. sometimes your brand ends up on, not on a short list because somebody in a fleece vest with your logo was rude to someone on an airplane.
11:36.02
Skott Bennett
It's just like all those things are brand moments. They all matter for better or for worse.
11:41.26
Skott Bennett
So it's, in this in this culture where we want to, Attribute everything measure everything that dark funnel is just out there swirling and swirling and swirling and you might be able to influence or influence it from time to time, but you can't measure it you certainly can't control it not at every touch point is as hard as I might try.
12:06.10
Robert Karel
Yeah, so it's like a lot, especially in B2B tech, a lot of founders, CEOs, just leaders, really come, their expertise comes from a technical background. They know how to build amazing products and innovate, but they don't necessarily know how to take that to market. and I've certainly had plenty of conversations with guests in prior episodes around their expectation that positioning and messaging is easy.
12:34.62
Robert Karel
I built it. I know how to talk about it. Well, but you don't know you don't know the nuance. So the same with brand. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that companies and especially kind of maybe product led and engineering centric companies have? What's their biggest misunderstanding of the Roland brand in their company's success?
12:56.12
Skott Bennett
You said you mentioned it a minute ago, the positioning part of it, because if you treat yeah know Another misconception out there is like brand is like that last mile of demand gen. If you like dress up all your campaign assets and fuss over every last detail of your of your brand guidelines, which, yes, is very important. I don't want to discount that. But you can make sure everything looks and sounds. it's Everything's aligned to your brand voice and all those things that really do matter. Consistency does matter.
13:33.08
Skott Bennett
But if you haven't done the positioning work to influence all of that to guide all of that if there's no foundation under that then you're basically just dressing up at a spec sheet and that's how we get i'm sure we'll talk a lot about people get tired of 95.5 by the end of this conversation and probably the term sea of sameness is probably gonna
13:33.71
Robert Karel
Yeah.
13:58.25
Skott Bennett
Turn into a drinking game by the end of this. But yeah, that's what kind of, I think that's where a lot of companies get it wrong, including myself, I've gotten it wrong.
14:09.25
Skott Bennett
And you just you end up getting this beautifully designed content that really doesn't differentiate itself.
14:10.34
Robert Karel
Yeah.
14:18.46
Robert Karel
Yeah.
14:18.66
Robert Karel
And Beautiful doesn't always mean impactful, right?
14:20.15
Skott Bennett
Yeah. Exactly. and i And I have some empathy for executives and founders and leaders who struggle with what you just described. B2B does have a tendency to kind of over-index on product marketing. And again, I get it.
14:42.97
Skott Bennett
Those are Those are clean stories to tell. they certainly look good in a board deck and they're logical. and you've got And then you've got the human side of it is these people have invested their intelligence, their energy, their sacrifices into building these beautiful and complex and hard to talk about, frankly, products.
15:08.38
Skott Bennett
And then you've got me showing up at the meeting, telling them that's not how you tell your story. yeah That doesn't feel good. So a lot of my, another part of my role is it's almost like being multilingual. the analogy that I use is, I talked earlier about knowing your audience and we talked about the elevator thing. a lot of times I feel like i'm the headphones at the United Nations. I think we've had this conversation before, too. But, at the UN, you've got the dignitary on stage speaking and in whatever their language might be.
15:47.64
Skott Bennett
To an audience of hundreds of people from around the world who probably don't speak that language. So they're all wearing the headphones with the real-time translation going on. So they're all they're all getting the same information, but they're getting it catered in a way that they understand it, which is what language is.
16:04.95
Skott Bennett
And so a lot of times I feel like I'm the headphones at the UN, n helping people craft their stories so a bigger audience can who you are and understand it.
16:18.55
Skott Bennett
But yeah, but that's the whole over-indexing on product marketing.
16:18.78
Robert Karel
Yeah
16:23.74
Skott Bennett
Hey Has it been a source of frustration for me? Absolutely. But the deeper I get into my career, the more the more empathy I have for the people who are involved in that side of that.
16:41.04
Skott Bennett
Because I've worked closely with a lot of them, and they're wonderful people. But yeah, it's yeah it's always it's a bit of a tug of war. But when everybody just has that conversation where you all realize you're all on the same side after the same goal, that can that can help quite a bit
16:57.27
Robert Karel
Yeah, and I think we're going to put a pin because we're going to talk about kind of that. i so I call it's a healthy tension between brand and product marketing.
17:04.29
Skott Bennett
Yeah.
17:05.64
Robert Karel
But it's really it's really funny because everyone's got a different perspective. Hey, this is a go-to-market perspective. So that's exactly what we're talking about. I've had prior episodes with product marketing leaders that say founders are over-indexing on demand gen and spending not enough time on product marketing and positioning.
17:23.80
Robert Karel
And so they're doing that. They're probably spending zero time on brand and creative, so there's a lot, it's more than a two-sided coin is what it comes down to is it's not this or that there's a lot of,
17:38.14
Robert Karel
Decisions that are being made that maybe sacrifice what's the right order of the right things to do. And, I think you and I are, being let's call it the brand guy and the product marketing guy, just in terms of our heritage.
17:51.35
Robert Karel
We probably both agree that we got to get our work done before you start running campaigns to come up with leads. Because if you don't have a position and an identity, what are people reacting to?
18:03.04
Robert Karel
So But I guarantee the demand folks that I've had on here have a really strong argument about why you need revenue to your first point. And you're not going to get revenue if you don't do anything to drive in. So is none of the none of it's unimportant.
18:17.58
Robert Karel
It's the balance that's hard.
18:20.15
Skott Bennett
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a matter of balance. And look, that if you look at, oh gosh, I'm forgetting the name of the study, but there's that there's that chart. I've seen it so many times that shows like the long-term growth of brand versus the more like direct response plays. And the brand is going up and up and up over time, whereas the sales plays are kind of going like this, like almost like an EKG.
18:49.02
Skott Bennett
And that, to me, when I look at that, and I don't think the point of that chart is to say that brand is better.
18:49.14
Robert Karel
Yeah.
18:55.94
Skott Bennett
The point of that is they have to work together. the point of that is it's all brand, really.
18:59.67
Robert Karel
Yeah.
19:00.34
Skott Bennett
At the end of the day, it's all brand. And so it doesn't have to be, it's often adversarial. Let's just tell it like it is. it doesn't have to be.
19:11.45
Skott Bennett
It shouldn't be. and so the real key is, and we've done some really great stuff at Qlik, in my opinion, to kind of to kind of find a way to have those all those things feed into each other, reinforce each other along the journey.
19:28.18
Robert Karel
Yeah, and, but when I advise folks on just the whole positioning and messaging architecture, brand and corporate is a slow moving dimension. That should not change often at all.
19:39.82
Robert Karel
You only change when there's a massive transformation going on in your business model, your audience, your product.
19:45.66
Robert Karel
That should not change much. But as you go down the messaging stack in terms of what are your platform capabilities, what use cases and solutions are you living to market? What are your features? That changes really fast.
19:57.11
Skott Bennett
Yeah.
19:57.08
Robert Karel
But you don't launch a new feature and then rebrand because of the new feature, right?
19:57.27
Skott Bennett
Yeah
20:02.94
Robert Karel
So that's, again, the whole, where brand and product come together is the fact that they're intentionally doing this because they have to keep reacting to changing market conditions, competitive conditions, customer needs.
20:16.42
Robert Karel
Whereas the brand is, that's our North Star.
20:20.34
Skott Bennett
Yeah
20:20.30
Robert Karel
That's who we are and what we do. And hopefully that's not changing on a daily basis or you're going to go out of business.
20:26.90
Skott Bennett
Yeah. I mean, I guess the other short elevator pitch, I just had this conversation with the colleague the other day is, the yeah the brand positioning is who you are and then the value statement is what you do.
20:40.29
Skott Bennett
It's really easy to get those things mixed up or try to do both in one statement. And i don't I don't think that's wise. A lot of people don't. i'm not I'm not going too far out on the ledge here, but...
20:51.61
Skott Bennett
But yeah, there is a difference between value positioning and brand positioning. And then you get down you get down and you can talk more about the kind of tactical stuff.
21:03.77
Skott Bennett
That's where you can get into the features and have those conversations when those conversations arise.
21:08.53
Skott Bennett
But you have to start. You have to start the conversation in somewhere. You have to be, it's a like a cocktail party analogy. Like if you walk into the cocktail party, who's the person in there? If it's known, who are you most comfortable with right off the bat?
21:26.81
Skott Bennett
Why? What is it about them that draws you in to start having that conversation? Two hours later, the conversation has moved on, right? So it's all about, getting them into that getting them into that conversation up front
21:41.27
Robert Karel
So I loved it when we were planning the episode and you're you were kind of telling me how early in your career, the types of requirements you would get from different parts of the organization was make it pop, make it look cool, which we probably all yeah are guilty of saying to our creative colleagues in the past because we don't know what to ask for.
22:03.26
Skott Bennett
Yeah
22:04.83
Robert Karel
So how do you think... that differs from the experience of all other functions in marketing and collaboration and versus like, is this like a creative specific pain point or do you think there's flavors of this out there?
22:22.94
Skott Bennett
It's a it's a it's a double-sided lightsaber no it'll stab me on either end no the i guess what i what i love and don't know i think hate is a strong term but
22:44.38
Skott Bennett
I think people have those types of conversations when they're making requests with creative people. it's like I said, the headphones at the UN thing. like not everybody out there is going to be able to talk to your art director or your script writer or your graphic designer in a language that they understand. So the role of a good creative director is to Aaron Shaw, Foster those more strategic conversations so that your team is prepared. You look in a perfect world. We'd always be working from a creative brief.
23:20.42
Skott Bennett
But that may not always be the case with small teams or startups where everybody's doing everything. So the work of a creative director is to is to kind of frame things in a strategic way so that the creative people have something actionable. They know who the audience is. They know what the tone of voice needs to be for the particular message that's going to determine all kinds of choices from copywriting to layout to whatever it is you're here you're working on.
23:50.87
Skott Bennett
But I think the reason why people feel so comfortable kind of inserting themselves in the process, whether or not it's their profession.
24:03.74
Skott Bennett
Or sometimes there could be like a lack of a lack of humility. And again, it took me years to understand this, but it's really simple. Everybody has eyes and everybody, I shouldn't say everybody, I'm not i'm being exclusive here. Most people have eyes and ears, most people,
24:22.17
Skott Bennett
Look at things aesthetically and take them in and form opinions every day. They have a favorite book, they have a favorite song, they have a favorite movie. And so when they get the chance to collaborate with somebody who can build those types of experiences,
24:37.78
Skott Bennett
Then they've got they've got a point of view. and maybe that point of view aligns with what the what the organization is trying to do, or and maybe sometimes it aligns with their own personal preferences. But again, you have to you have to slow down and engage those people and have conversations so that you can understand what the what the point of what you're working on is.
25:00.70
Skott Bennett
And early in my career, i would be halfway to the finish line on an asset without really understanding why someone needed it, why someone asked for it.
25:13.14
Skott Bennett
And then sometimes you'd turn and you'd go back to the person that asked for the thing and they didn't really know. They would just say, well, I need a video. oh Why do you need a video?
25:24.50
Skott Bennett
Cause Because the product needs a video. Why does the product need a video? OK, I'll get to explain it. OK, explainer video. We can work with that. Where is this going be? Oh, just put it on the website. Oh, by the way, any time you have the just in front of a request, then that you need to ask like 10 more questions.
25:43.93
Skott Bennett
So, then it's like, okay, well, how are you going to know if it's successful?, just because you like it, that matters. It's not the whole story. Are you going to track performance? When is it going to be out of date? When are you going to pull it down? Like there's all these, you all these things that have to be talked about up front.
26:04.66
Skott Bennett
But when somebody comes to you and they're they haven't thought those things through, then you start having those conversations like make the logo bigger, make it pop, make it cool.
26:19.00
Skott Bennett
And to me, I think yeah that there was a time in my career where that stuff would drive me crazy. And when I have colleagues or direct reports who find themselves in those moments and they come to me,
26:34.68
Skott Bennett
My advice is always like, remember, we're brand. We're good at starting conversations. That's your opening. That's not that's not that's not a creative brief. It's the it's the opening. that's your opportunity to start asking questions.
26:51.54
Robert Karel
That's great. And I think you're doing you're doing two things and I'll speak for you and you'll tell me if I've got it right. But one, you're talking about your own journey from becoming a creative execution person to a strategic partner and how you've learned to do that through these experiences.
27:09.55
Robert Karel
But you're also providing a really valuable advice, honestly, not just to creatives and folks, but anyone that's on an execution side and is accountable, which is most of us, for delivering on some form of requirements is feeling confident that every ask is the beginning and not the end of the conversation.
27:31.26
Skott Bennett
Yeah, i mean, what do you... what is the ultimate outcome of this of this PowerPoint deck that you have to collaborate with a designer on? like it's or A lot of times people are making these things because they have to make them. It's their job description. It's just the way things are done.
27:50.62
Skott Bennett
But I would just encourage people to just take a beat and like think about outcomes. Be empathetic to your... to your audience. If your audience is sitting through nine different product demos in every two or three days or God knows how many pitches,
28:10.04
Skott Bennett
Is it important for yours to stand out? Of course. Is it important for it to be accurate? Of course. But think about the person on the other end of that who has to like sit through these things. Like what is it what can you do to make the experience better for them? And if you if you start there and then and then layer in your own story, product specs, speeds and feeds or whatever, like, in ways that make sense, then at least you're showing that person some respect that you thought about, what their life is like, what their problems are like. Look, can you do that at scale with every customer you talk to? Is that even realistic?
28:49.34
Skott Bennett
I don't know. I wish. Maybe that's what AI is going to be for. but again, I just think, just having empathy for the audience is something I always tell people who report to me. Agencies I work with, they all know this. But I think the people who are executing, asking for these things, like if you give them a little nudge, people actually really love talking to me about that. They love thinking about it, even if they don't realize they do.
29:15.51
Robert Karel
Yeah, no, that's good advice. And I think we decided to name this episode, The Trust Gap, implying that there is this lack of trust between a lot of B2B organizations and their creative teams, the brand team.
29:32.22
Robert Karel
And that, as I hinted at in my intro, a lot of folks are kind of playing it safe, even though they want to be differentiated and they want to stand out. there's some inherent discomfort with maybe being bold, because the definition of bold is a perceived thing that might mean different things to different people.
29:53.24
Robert Karel
Can you share maybe just some examples? Because, it sounds like, you've had some really positive experience where you've earned trust, but you've also had the other end of the spectrum where you had like zero trust and it was like pushing that boulder uphill to just make any kind of splash. Can you share some experiences on both sides of the spectrum just so listeners can kind of get a sense for what that feels like from the creative's perspective?
31:59.74
Skott Bennett
Sometimes not being trusted is someone leaning over your shoulder and literally telling you, what to do. That doesn't feel great and I would argue that doesn't really lead for a good product sometimes not being trusted is
32:12.28
Skott Bennett
The too many cooks, that let's show it to so-and-so and see what they think. like the fear of taking accountability can lead to a lack of trust. And we've all experienced that.
32:22.67
Robert Karel
Kind of consensus driven creative.
32:25.66
Skott Bennett
Exactly. So it's not, yeah, it's, that's not exclusive to creative, by the way. That's something that a lot of people deal with in their roles.
32:35.07
Skott Bennett
But yeah, the whole too many cooks thing is an example of not being trusted. I will tell you from personal experience, the most,
32:47.16
Skott Bennett
The most dramatic conversation about trust I ever had was with a CEO. And i was I was working on a rebrand for a company. started out as a consultant and we got along so well, they brought me onto a full-time role.
33:05.43
Skott Bennett
And I hadn't spent a ton of time with getting to know the CEO. I'd done my research, I'd had conversations, like interviews with him to kind of learn about the trajectory of the company and all that would inform the choices I made for the rebrand.
33:21.88
Skott Bennett
But he sat me down and I was trying to like feel him out about like what how involved he was going to be. Because some leaders want to be super involved and some of them just don't want to touch any of it. And some of them just don't know what they want until you show them what they don't want and then you go back and make it 10 times.
33:43.16
Skott Bennett
So what kind of ceo is this guy going to be and he said to me i'm paraphrasing he said, we hired you because you're good at what you do. We hired you because we trust you to do a good job for us. i If you are need a tiebreaker vote on something because you're having trouble making a decision, that's when you can call me in and I'll i and i'll add value that way. But otherwise,
34:14.26
Skott Bennett
You're here to do a specific job. I trust you do the job. You have years of experience and expertise. And if you say it's the right way to go, then I trust that it's the right way to go.
34:26.46
Skott Bennett
And I just about fell out of my chair because that those conversations, those are those are the conversations you dream about as anybody, but especially as a creative, I think.
34:37.41
Robert Karel
Yep.
34:41.02
Skott Bennett
But in corporate America, in tech, like can you imagine a ceo saying that? And it certainly hadn't been my experience up to that point. And what that did was it gave me...
34:57.78
Skott Bennett
It allowed me to give myself the permission to just take the blinders off, and try things, get things wrong. like Get things wrong until they're not wrong and try new things and push things in unexpected directions. And really, all those things we love to talk about, having a brand stand out and having a brand be a part of the conversation and all that. like it If you have trust in the people who are doing that for you, then they're going to trust themselves to do things differently.
35:34.76
Skott Bennett
They're going to trust themselves to approach problems from unexpected angles. And then you start to get the results of that speak for themselves because then you're not in that sea of sameness anymore.
35:46.44
Skott Bennett
Now, is that going to happen everywhere you work? Hell no.
35:50.04
Robert Karel
Yep.
35:51.38
Skott Bennett
But I think the experience of having that conversation, and I've worked other places since where that necessari that wasn't the case, but that little spark of somebody saying, you're good at what you do, you've got this, that stayed with me.
36:10.87
Skott Bennett
Like This was something that happened forever. four years ago or something, I'm still running on that every day. Every day. It changed everything..
36:20.76
Robert Karel
Yeah. And it obviously it shows some amazing leadership and professionalism for that CEO, because guess what? That CEO is probably growing the business and making the business successful because they weren't micromanaging or not trusting the people they hired. But at the same time, like the blinders are off. It means you and the creative team are able to take bigger swings.
36:48.89
Robert Karel
What could you provide an example? It could be from stuff you've done. It could be stuff you've seen in the market, but like, what does a big swing look like in a B2B context where we'll get more into the sea of sameness, but like, but everything just seems to just be very washed with the same, with the same patterns.
37:00.41
Skott Bennett
Yeah.
37:07.80
Robert Karel
What does a big swing look like for B2B?
38:26.17
Skott Bennett
Yeah, you know what it is? i think like big swings look like such an overused term, but authenticity, something that has a real sensibility about it.
38:40.41
Skott Bennett
Something bold enough to say that David Price- know, maybe not everybody's going to get this right away, but when but they will remember us and somewhere down the line, they will get it, they will get it that's risky and I get it, this stuff is expensive. David Price- And.
39:05.17
Skott Bennett
And we've got, revenue targets, we've got to hit every quarter. and so, telling people to be patient is not a winning strategy, even if it is, even if it is winning strategy, it doesn't always play that way.
39:21.85
Skott Bennett
But it's, David Price- You have accept that not everyone's going to love you, and sometimes that's the goal, maybe that makes your audience self select a little better. David Price- I mean some examples of that are like I think Domo does it does a really good job of that they've got a very.
39:43.72
Skott Bennett
Down to earth, realistic human voice. It doesn't really feel sassy. It's sassy.
39:49.62
Robert Karel
The
39:50.47
Skott Bennett
Trademark that one. I just came up with that.
39:54.87
Robert Karel
That's yours.
39:55.86
Skott Bennett
Even like the early drift stuff was a little contrarian, like a little smart ass. and that was and that was how they made their mark. And those of us in the Bay Area,
40:09.24
Skott Bennett
Remember when the one those snowflake billboards started showing up and it was like, Oh my God, finally someone who's talking like a human and not a spec sheet.
40:14.25
Robert Karel
Okay.
40:20.57
Skott Bennett
So it is it is possible. I mean, those are some real world examples of what they look like. But again, it just takes it' it takes a lot of trust.
40:34.00
Skott Bennett
I'm coming back to that word again. It takes a lot of trust, and trust isn't easy.
40:36.47
Robert Karel
Yeah. who comes to mind more modernly is, and I had, is Wiz, just acquired by Google.
40:37.62
Skott Bennett
Great.
40:46.52
Robert Karel
It's a security company. and
40:48.41
Skott Bennett
Oh good great
40:49.72
Robert Karel
And, they, I've always just been a fan. I had Alyssa Stone's the head of AR from Wiz. So they're top of mind because of that. She was a guest recently.
41:00.38
Robert Karel
And everything they do from a marketing and brand perspective is very just approachable and friendly and fun. They actually have a fun vibe for a security company.
41:11.37
Robert Karel
It's so not the sameness of most security companies that are very serious because it's all about risk mitigation.
41:17.41
Robert Karel
It's all about compliance and what they've always done. And I've just, whether it's what's on their website or seeing them at an event, they're always trying to find a fun angle.
41:29.50
Robert Karel
And I just give a lot of credit to their whole organization because theyve I view that as kind of the another example of a big swing because security folks were not necessarily looking for fun. They were looking to not get fired, not be in the cover the Wall Street Journal for a breach. So that's just an example of someone who went out of the norm of what others in their market would do.
42:01.59
Skott Bennett
Right and that to the key the key to that type of approach though is i'm not suggesting Price- organizations or brands just go left when everyone else is going right just to be different for different sake, like it has to be, it has to be connected to something bigger, it has to be.
42:21.24
Robert Karel
Right.
42:25.36
Skott Bennett
David Price- to what we were talking about earlier in terms of doing that hardcore positioning work, it's all it's all aligned. coming down from that.
42:36.47
Skott Bennett
But it doesn't mean that it has to look like everyone else and sound like everybody else. Even if you have a similar product or you're solving a similar problem, but there, but there has, it has to ladder up to something bigger than just being different for different sake. That's some, and I think that's where we talked earlier about this misconception about brand being fluff.
42:58.42
Skott Bennett
That's the danger like if your only goal is standing out being different then you're going to make fluff it has to be supported by the other parts of the organization including product our friends and product and leadership and everything else like it's got to be it has to be a unified thing even if people are on different teams
42:58.42
Robert Karel
Yep.
43:22.87
Robert Karel
And you bring it up, and i'm not going to name any names, but I think we've all seen it on our LinkedIn feeds or whatnot, is brands from a campaign or a social media perspective or a number people trying to be funny or goofy, which I love.
43:37.58
Robert Karel
But In general, I love it when because it's entertaining and it's it wakes you up from the doldrums.
43:44.53
Skott Bennett
Yeah..
43:45.14
Robert Karel
But if nothing else in your brand and your experience matches that, then it's just weird. It's cringy. So, like, for me.
43:51.96
Skott Bennett
Yeah
43:52.65
Robert Karel
So if like if your website and your events and everything is really. Pretty much by the book, professional tone or smart people or whatever, and that's it.
44:04.92
Robert Karel
And then you have something that's just really goofy. I'm just like, where did it come from? i don't get it. It doesn't make sense. So to your point, it's got to be like a full stack. identity, not, yeah, you can pilot things, but it's that's not on brand is kind of the goal.
44:18.84
Skott Bennett
Yeah.
44:22.74
Skott Bennett
Yeah. And I would say like, if I'm not like writing the creative brief here, but I would say like, if you are a brand like that, and you do have a desire to express he yourself with comedy, which is really hard by the way, you've got to pick the right partners, the right production companies, the right agencies, the right writers.
44:45.32
Skott Bennett
If you want to do funny, there is nothing harder, nothing harder than being funny.
44:50.90
Skott Bennett
Take that from someone who's tried and failed many times. You just, you got to get people that are better at it than you are. But yeah, But like if you're if you're starting from that, like if you want to incorporate if you're like a very stuffy, stodgy company, you want to start incorporating something a little offbeat, make fun of yourself. right like Use that use your reputation as a starting point for something.
45:16.66
Skott Bennett
And then you if you if you start from that place, you're showing some humility. You're showing you like a human side of like a very, corporate brand.
45:28.38
Skott Bennett
And that could be a way to start to, again, stand out in the conversation, take me take people by surprise. so it's not like it's impossible to be, goofy on LinkedIn and straight laced everywhere else, but you have to you have to approach it the right way.
45:44.34
Robert Karel
That's really great. It's like acknowledge your brand if you're doing something different to just acknowledge that this is different and you're having fun with it.
45:50.95
Skott Bennett
Yeah.
45:54.08
Robert Karel
And that's I like that advice. So as we're kind of closing, there's a couple more topics I wanted to bring up.
46:01.29
Robert Karel
One was just really on the pendulum swing and we've been through a measure everything swing. Everything in marketing has to be measured. Every dollar has to be accounted for in proving that it's delivering revenue versus, and how does that stifle those big swings?, so where do you feel things live today and what actually needs to be measured? If you're, it doesn't mean you shouldn't have ROI on investments, et cetera, but what actually needs to be measured to truly strategically run a brand?
46:35.42
Skott Bennett
Oh, man. i will show some vulnerability here and admit that if, and maybe this is something people don't like to say out loud. I'll say it out loud. Measuring brand is hard.
46:52.31
Skott Bennett
Not even sure if it's possible. And that's a that's a scary thing for a brand leader to say. Aaron Shaw, Ph.D.: Are there tools out there? Yes. Do they give you part of the picture?
47:03.48
Skott Bennett
Absolutely. Aaron Shaw, Ph.D.: But in contrast to the kind of measure everything era that we've been in for the past, 15 or 16 years.
47:16.57
Skott Bennett
Aaron Shaw, You a be testing everything towards whatever the median clicks on I think that's it's these are tools that you have only haven't existed until recently.
47:29.60
Skott Bennett
Shaw, They're important they're enlightening they're not the whole story and they should not be in the driver's seat, they should be. i need an analogy here something with many driver's seats they should be like artemis astronauts all working together so rather than like going down the well-trod path of familiar patterns and like optimizing yourself into total mediocrity it's just
48:02.52
Skott Bennett
Yeah, I mean, remember when are people still calling themselves data driven marketers, like everyone had to have that on their resume. i
48:08.06
Robert Karel
Well, now they're authentic marketers, so whatever.
48:10.15
Skott Bennett
Now they're authentic marketers, but i prefer i prefer data informed to data driven because you it's part it's part of the story. It's part of how you measure the health of your brand or the health of your campaign or whatever you're doing.
48:25.34
Skott Bennett
But again, this gets back to trust and probably not a very sexy thing to talk about in the age of AI, but it talks, but it's, this is human lived experiences.
48:38.81
Skott Bennett
Taste, instincts, these very non-measurable experiences. David Price- Things that yeah they're subjective, I admit that. David Price- But I feel like in this age of measure everything like the value of those things is more and more been overlooked, but the problem is where the opportunity is like that's where.
49:12.48
Skott Bennett
That's where the ideas come from, man. That's where the yeah the magic happens. That's another cliche. I don't like yeah the created creativity as magic. like It's just as easy as waving a wand. But no, it's the years of experience of trial and error, which hones your instincts as a storyteller, as a communicator.
49:37.91
Skott Bennett
As whether you're creative or anything else in marketing we shouldn't doubt that stuff we should be using it every day even if it's not measurable it has to work with that it has to work with the data and
49:49.65
Robert Karel
Yeah.
49:57.46
Skott Bennett
You talk about a sea of same as c of sameness, optimizing everything into looking exactly the same on LinkedIn. i think that is a result of that type of thinking and the importance that's been put on it. Now, maybe it's just the algorithms serving me what I want to see, which is basically what they do. But it feels like the dam is breaking a little bit.
50:22.58
Skott Bennett
It feels like the pendulum is starting to swing back, maybe not all the way towards, maybe more towards the middle. And that's encouraging to me.
50:33.86
Skott Bennett
I'm having conversations right now, even in even in the age of everybody trying to figure out how to implement AI. I'm having the most engaging and exciting and thought-provoking conversations about messaging, about positioning, about creativity, about storytelling than I've ever had in my career.
50:59.64
Skott Bennett
And it's happening right now, which is really ironic given what we're living through.
51:04.76
Robert Karel
Well, that yeah that's certainly positive, and I hope that's true.
51:05.05
Skott Bennett
So i'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that we're kind of reaching a point of balance.
51:14.64
Robert Karel
And I think the other positive that you're not in the you're not alone category is product marketers have been struggling with the ROI of what they do.
51:26.78
Robert Karel
For their entire careers. And what they often talk about is correlation versus causation. Did their competitive battle cards they gave to sales win deals? Or is there a correlation that since they've published those battle cards, we have increased the win rates?
51:43.27
Robert Karel
There's a thousand factors that go in why we might win or lose, including improvements to the product and Things that our competitors are doing poorly.
51:50.75
Robert Karel
And there's a hundred reasons why you might win or lose. Same with positioning and messaging and product launches. Sure, there's adoption metrics and, sales metrics, but like,
52:04.18
Robert Karel
Is it because I positioned it really well or is it because the feature just sold itself and customers just loved it and they didn't have to read any? You don't know. And it's very similar.
52:15.48
Robert Karel
So let's talk about the, we'll wrap up. This will be our last question, which is really about the tension. But I think it's a positive tension between brand and product marketing, which is really two sides of the storytelling coin. They're both necessary.
52:33.27
Robert Karel
And It's the emotional human centric storytelling that the brand is trying to build versus the factual defensible solution level messaging that product marketing is also on the hook to deliver.
52:46.62
Robert Karel
What are your thoughts in terms of the best ways to work between brand and product marketing?
52:47.17
Skott Bennett
Right.
52:53.62
Skott Bennett
Well, it's going to seem overly diplomatic, but they're both right. the problem is they're both competing for the same real estate. like It might be.
53:04.72
Robert Karel
Thank you.
53:06.58
Skott Bennett
Know, the homepage of your website or something else. So there's that there's that tension there. the product marketing has really exciting, features and proof points, all those things that help a buyer justify a decision on their side.
53:26.17
Skott Bennett
And those are, I'm, dorky enough to understand why those are really exciting to talk about. And then brands on the other side where you're dealing in those squishy areas of emotion and identity and narrative.
53:43.40
Skott Bennett
And those are things that make buyers, that's how you get on that short list, right? Those make you that make the buyers wanna be in another overused term, a relationship first, right?
53:56.81
Robert Karel
Right.
53:57.05
Skott Bennett
So you need both. You can't have one over the other because if you if you overcorrect either direction, you're going to be in trouble.
54:13.02
Skott Bennett
You can't lead with, we have 47 integrations. And then you also can't just go out there with something that's just designed for an emotional impact with nothing to back it up in terms of product offering.
54:26.46
Skott Bennett
So the
54:26.94
Robert Karel
And i think I think the good news is both teams are recognizing, the good product marketers don't want to talk about features. They want to talk about value outcome.
54:38.23
Robert Karel
The good brand and the creatives don't want to just have pretty colors. They want to drive this experience you're going to get, which is an outcome. Everyone's leading to outcomes. And I think that's the meeting point.
54:50.97
Skott Bennett
Yeah, yeah, it is the meaning point. It's just that there's a million roads you can take to get there, but, I know we're winding down, but I think one thing I would like everybody to remember, including myself, is, and maybe this is just like a mid-career mid careerer crisis, mid-career wisdom, and whatever you want to call it.
55:20.79
Skott Bennett
When you move through your professional career and you look back, speaking for me personally, i am... I'm remembering less and less of the things I accomplished.
55:34.55
Skott Bennett
I'm remembering more and more of the people I accomplished those things with. I'm remembering the people. I'm thinking about the people. I'm in touch with the people. And I think it is,
55:47.45
Skott Bennett
It's worth taking a beat sometimes when you might be looking at a problem from, a different way from a colleague to think about, and in five years, are we going to care about this product launch? Or in five years, am I going to have somebody I can send a text message to saying, hey, remember that time at the conference and yada.
56:10.81
Skott Bennett
And so I think something that I've started to incorporate in the way that I approach my work is I've always been like a consensus builder type of person.
56:24.55
Skott Bennett
But now I keep that really in the forefront.
56:26.04
Robert Karel
Thank
56:27.11
Skott Bennett
Like I'm trying to understand the human being across the desk from me who might want to solve a problem in a completely different way and learn from them and appreciate where they're coming from and respect them.
56:38.55
Skott Bennett
Even if I fundamentally disagree with them about what to do next or how to do it. Because there's always going to be something you can take from that person that's going to inform your work and make it better. and that is, you even though we're talking about going to market for B2B companies and I'm over here talking about relationships, I think it matters a lot more than most people really think that it does on a daily basis.
57:08.44
Robert Karel
Yeah, and I think our old CMO over at Informatica, one of the things that really stuck with me, Sally Jenkins, was that there's no such thing as B2B or B2C. Everything is B2P. We're always selling to human beings, to people, and everything that should really ground every decision we make is that are we connecting with the human on the other side? And your advice about working with your colleagues and what's more important, the launch decision or the relationship you're building, it's like,
57:38.87
Robert Karel
Yeah, for everyone early in their careers, that's the good stuff. So I couldn't agree more.
57:44.18
Skott Bennett
Yeah, I would agree. And I think, i and I'm not the first person to say this, and I was wildly off topic, and maybe we'll cut it, maybe we won't, is I think I don't agree with Professor Galloway on everything. Well, let's get that out there. But he's got a really good point about remote work and people earlier in their careers. So I think it's vital for if you've got the opportunity at your entry level role or like the first 10 years of your career to go into the office, go.
58:18.36
Skott Bennett
Meet those people build the relationships that you're not going to really be able to build over zoom or not as well make friends get to know people on a human level it will enrich your life it will give you a network that just from like a self-employment preservation perspective you'll have a network that is rooting for you and will help you when you need it and you'll be able to help people when they need it, long into your career. sometimes decades later, someone will send you an email that turns into an opportunity that changes your professional life.
58:58.96
Skott Bennett
David Price- are we getting that over zoom maybe not, but do you get that in person, yes, so later in life when you've settled down and you have kids and you've got other responsibilities and there's a reason for you to be at home and yeah work from home like that's where your focus needs to be but. David Price-, for those people early in their career, who are lucky enough to get jobs in this dumpster fire of a job market, we have right now, especially for young people, if you can go into the office go into the office.
59:29.82
Robert Karel
I couldn't agree more. Skott, this was a lot of fun. Really appreciate you joining and thanks for being a part of this.
59:38.25
Skott Bennett
All right. It's just great to catch up with you, man, on a podcast or any other format. So thank you so much for having me. And i hope some of it made sense.
59:46.78
Robert Karel
It all did. Thanks so much.
59:48.44
Skott Bennett
All right.
59:48.70
Robert Karel
Take care.
59:48.85
Skott Bennett
All right. Thank you, Rob. Bye.
