Full Transcript of Think Fresh - Episode 6
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;20;15
RYAN
We’re doing this.
JEN
All right. Hello and welcome to this – were you talking? Oh, my God. All right, we’ll try this again. Ryan, are you settled?
RYAN
I’m Settled.
JEN
Okay.
00;00;20;17 – 00;00;41;06
JEN
Hello, and welcome to Think Fresh, a podcast brought to you by de Novo Marketing’s Collective Creative. Coming to you from our Ideas Institute and here to talk about all things marketing: Insights on new trends, innovative ideas and marketing tools you can use in your day to day life…and whatever else we deem relevant. I’m Jen Neumann, de Novo CEO and your host.
00;00;41;08 – 00;01;09;08
RYAN
And I’m Ryan Shenefelt, account manager, innovation and education lead and resident nosy eavesdropper, always looking to push the envelope.
JEN
He is indeed very, very nosy.
RYAN
Today, we’re going to talk about aligning your sales and marketing teams. And before we dive into the full podcast, I do just want to make a note. I am working remotely today and if you have a little bit of background noise, we are once again in our Tangerine conference room and there’s some construction happening outside.
00;01;09;10 – 00;01;33;06
RYAN
So just, just setting the scene for that. And joining us today we have Jill Mast. Jill is our vice president and director of client services. She’s been in the industry for over 20 years. While this is not a video podcast, when you see some of the snippets from behind the scenes, you may recognize Jill from her starring role in a Panchero’s commercial back in 2010.
00;01;33;09 – 00;01;51;29
RYAN
Jill, welcome to the pod.
JILL
Thank you. Glad to be here. So glad to hear about Panchero’s commercials, too. That was, that was one of those “other duties as assigned”, so.
JEN
Well, that happens a lot here, too. I mean, all of our interns, at some point in time get stuck into a video project or our background.
00;01;52;03 – 00;02;10;22
JEN
We actually, pretended to hit one intern with a car for a commercial, so. I mean, de Novians will they’ll they’ll, they’ll take one for the team.
JILL
Well, and everyone focuses on the Panchero’s spot. I mean, I was in Pepper’s, I was in The Vine. I’ve been in hospitals. I mean, I am like a professional extra. Just. Just so you’re aware.
00;02;10;24 – 00;02;28;11
RYAN
Didn’t you also…weren’t you? There was something with a theme park.
JILL
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Theme park in Kansas City when I worked down there. I rode their largest roller coaster 11 times in a row because the extras didn’t show up. And so, me and this old lady, we were on this roller coaster riding and riding.
00;02;28;11 – 00;02;49;26
JILL
I was much, much younger back then, so. But, it I – really it was fun until it wasn’t. And then, afterwards, I had to have a nap because I had a headache, but it was a lot of fun. I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff.
RYAN
That would be so hard, too. Like when you’re on camera, even if you’re not, even if you’re just in the background, you still want to have a sense of control.
00;02;49;26 – 00;03;03;19
RYAN
You want to make sure that you look poised. But on a roller coaster, everything goes out the window. In my opinion, I would be making the weirdest faces and I would just be like, no, I don’t want to be an extra in a roller coaster.
JILL
There was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming and whatnot.
00;03;03;19 – 00;03;23;12
JILL
So yes, it was. It was what you would expect.
JEN
All right, professional extra, Jill Mast.
JILL
I’m adding that to my resume.
RYAN
Well, and you mentioned that that was when you were in Kansas City. Talk a little bit about your your journey, your journey over the years to, to de Novo.
JILL
My journey to de Novo…after I graduated from the University of Iowa.
00;03;23;14 – 00;03;39;24
JILL
Go Hawks, I moved to Kansas City. I am what you call a boomerang. So I worked for two different agencies when I was there, kind of dummied into advertising. I had a marketing degree, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly. I worked for a smaller agency that had a lot of local clients.
00;03;39;27 – 00;04;09;07
JILL
Tourism, health care, higher ed. It’s kind of spanned a lot of local clients. And then I moved into a larger agency where I worked on a couple of clients, but one in particular that was a national, B2C brand. I got to do a ton of traveling. I learned a lot in both the smaller agency and the larger agency, such good experience, travel a ton, met a lot of great people, did a lot of great work, and then got to move back to Iowa, which I love.
00;04;09;09 – 00;04;27;26
JILL
Had a couple of great stints at other agencies in town and joined de Novo about eight years ago. And I’m never leaving. They’re not, they’re not getting rid of me, like it or not or not.
JEN
And your kids have now starred in de Novo videos as well.
JILL
So they have starred in de Novo videos, all kinds of things.
00;04;27;26 – 00;04;49;03
JEN
Yes. So headline – de Novo exploits child labor.
JILL
So they love it, though. They love it.
RYAN
So one of the things that, is, is just at the top of my head because we mentioned last time, I love sports now, but this is something that’s always been there. The Olympics, the Olympics are happening. I’m trying to get like a temperature gauge on this.
00;04;49;03 – 00;05;09;21
RYAN
Does anyone else care about the Olympics or is it only me?
JEN
I don’t honestly like kind of kind of zero fucks given on it. And I feel terrible about that. And my husband is so into it. It will be on our TV all the time. I will just find other things to do in the house. I just, maybe I’m not an American, I don’t know, but I just don’t care.
00;05;09;26 – 00;05;35;21
JILL
I love the Olympics, but I am a watch the highlights afterwards. Like, not watch every race. I can’t wait for, you know, track and field, swimming, gymnastics. My girl Simone. I cannot wait to see her. So I have very specific things I love, but I am a highlights after person.
JEN
My husband will call me into the den to watch some of the highlights, and I will say, I’m with you on Simone Biles.
00;05;35;21 – 00;06;04;14
JEN
Like, she’s amazing
JILL
She’s amazing.
JEN
And I can’t wait to see her perform again. And you know, my girls, we’re competitive gymnasts. And so I at least understand that sport, which is helpful. But most of them I’m just like, wow, they’re they’re very fast. Great.
RYAN
So there’s always this meme going around online around the Olympics of people just begging them to put an average citizen like an average person in there, just so you can see the caliber that these athletes are, are competing with.
00;06;04;14 – 00;06;21;15
RYAN
Because when you’re comparing apples to apples, you’re like, yeah, they’re a they’re just a little bit faster than each other. But no.
JEN
You know what would be good is a side by side of these incredibly fast track athletes with me crossing the finish line in that triathlon a couple of weeks ago, where I, when I, when I watch it, I’m like, am I limping?
00;06;21;17 – 00;06;42;24
JEN
It was so slow and I looked like I was in so much pain. And I think that that would be a really good comparison right there.
RYAN
Yeah. Your triathlon, it was this triathlon included… It’s not the standard triathlon. Right? What, what all was in that one?
JEN
It’s an adventure triathlon. I am not a swimmer. I have a serious dog paddle, and that’s about it.
00;06;42;26 – 00;07;04;02
JEN
So this is an adventure triathlon. And it was 11 miles in a kayak, which was really long. 12 miles. biking through some pretty hilly, hilly hills in, in Jackson County, Iowa, and then finished with a 5K, of which I walked half. So but I finished it, I finished it, guys. I’m 51 and I finished it.
00;07;04;02 – 00;07;25;24
JEN
So that’s my that’s my win for the whole summer.
RYAN
That’s what matters. The Olympics to me are a monoculture because I regularly see all over my feeds, the feeds of my friends, the feeds of my peers. But social media does a really good job of making everything seem like a monoculture, right? It’s like, oh, everyone sees the same thing.
00;07;25;24 – 00;07;46;04
RYAN
I consume media that talks about things I like and where, when it comes to monoculture, I think that there’s a few that have happened recently, like Taylor Swift. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about Taylor Swift. The Barbie movie. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the Barbie movie. Everyone was experiencing the same thing, kind of like that, that monoculture.
00;07;46;04 – 00;08;05;14
RYAN
But the Barbie movie is now a year old. Quite frankly, it seems like even longer than that. Like it a year has went by very quickly, in my opinion. Did you guys see the Barbie movie?
JEN
Oh yeah, I saw the Barbie movie and I, I wasn’t super excited about seeing it, but Ryan, you told me that I had to see it and I had to see it with my daughters.
00;08;05;20 – 00;08;23;07
JEN
It’s really, it is actually a beautiful movie, and I think it has a lot to do with mother daughter relationships. And, I appreciate everything about that movie and Mattel being willing to be the butt of their own jokes. Like, that was it. It’s a it was a cultural phenomenon. And it is kind of hard to believe it’s a year out.
00;08;23;07 – 00;09;00;28
RYAN
The other thing with monoculture, we’ve experienced about of it one more time and in software development and in it, it’s, it’s been found that monoculture really does exist because so many systems have to work together. You’ve all probably seen the, the CrowdStrike, the CrowdStrike outage that that took place. This was a piece of software that is on a lot of, a lot of computers, Microsoft machines, that’s so well integrated with these Microsoft machines, when they update, it can actually cause the Microsoft system to, to break essentially.
00;09;01;00 – 00;09;19;03
RYAN
Because this does monitor all of your, all of your messages, all the programs on your computer. It’s monitoring all of that, like at an antivirus level. So it had the ability when they updated and something broke in CrowdStrike, it had the ability to take down almost like every Microsoft computer. Did you guys experience any weird, any weirdness?
00;09;19;03 – 00;09;39;06
RYAN
The movie theater that I went to, all of their screens didn’t work. The actual movie screen worked, but the rest of the screens – nothing. Nothing. So everyone was like using paper menus at a movie theater, which was, which was kind of fun.
JEN
I, you know, we experienced a couple of, like, just outages with a couple platforms.
00;09;39;08 – 00;10;03;10
JEN
But smugly, we’re a Mac shop here. So, you know, not a lot of, it didn’t affect a lot of what we did, it did affect some travel plans of somebody who, I know who got stuck in an airport, like, overnight, due to that. But, you know, just from that smaller business perspective, I don’t, I don’t know that it affected small business much, but I think it affected there’s no way that it didn’t affect something in people’s lives.
00;10;03;12 – 00;10;20;29
RYAN
Oh, yeah. I’m curious to talk with some of our IT based clients to see if they utilize CrowdStrike, if they had any, any outages or anything, anything crazy. But that was a moment in culture where I think everyone was like, what’s going on is the world ending, but everyone on a Mac is like, what are you talking about?
00;10;21;02 – 00;10;43;10
JEN
What what outage, what outage?
JILL
It was interesting to watch the reaction around the world, though. And how many things one error can affect.
JEN
I felt pretty bad for the CrowdStrike CEO. I do think he handled it pretty well. I mean, he owned it. IT has a culture of saying there’s no problem here. It must be you.
00;10;43;12 – 00;11;11;27
JEN
Which is just I mean, that’s throughout that industry. And they were like, it was not a hack. It was our own error. And we have fixed it and things are coming back online. And that that takes some guts to do that. So I, I actually like talk about doing it right and being transparent and taking ownership, from that crisis communications perspective, I mean, I’m sure that guy’s gonna be cleaning that mess up for a long time.
00;11;11;29 – 00;11;27;24
JEN
but I was impressed with the way it was handled.
RYAN
Yeah, they did great. So a lot has been going on in the world. We just covered a few of the topics. But let’s get down to it. Today we are here to talk about aligning your sales and marketing teams. So that’s why we brought Jill here today as Director of Client Service,
00;11;27;24 – 00;11;47;28
RYAN
Jill sees a lot of this in play and she works with her team of account managers – I’m one of those – and she helps guide us and helps us guide those conversations with our clients. So. So, Jill. Yeah, starting right off the bat, what’s your your initial insight on aligning sales and marketing teams? What has worked well for you?
00;11;48;00 – 00;12;07;10
RYAN
What have you seen over your years in the industry?
JILL
Well, I think in order to have success, you have to have aligned sales and marketing and a lot of people drop the ball in this part. They see them as very separate, especially if you have a director of marketing, a director of sales. and, and they don’t, they aren’t completely aligned.
00;12;07;12 – 00;12;29;01
JILL
There’s also natural tension between sales and marketing. Sometimes you see marketing saying, hey, we’re delivering plenty of leads. Sales isn’t closing. You see sales saying, hey, we’re talking to leads. We’re doing, we’re out here pounding the pavement, having phone calls, whatever it may be. But marketing is just not getting us anybody that’s qualified. So there’s some natural tension because the process can be difficult.
00;12;29;03 – 00;12;50;02
JILL
But I think when you can align sales and marketing from top to bottom, that’s when you’re going to see the most success. And people that do that, companies that do that, always keeping the customer journey in mind from first touchpoint to every interaction all the way through, closing a deal and beyond follow up, you know, selling again, things like that.
00;12;50;10 – 00;13;08;24
JILL
Those people, those companies are going to be the ones that have the most success.
JEN
I want to take it back to leadership there because you talked about sometimes there’s a director of sales, a director of marketing or they’ll have a director of sales, and maybe there’s a marketing coordinator under them. There really has to be somebody leading the charge that pulls these things together.
00;13;08;24 – 00;13;30;05
JEN
And, understands that it needs to be shared goals and they have to speak the same language. They have to agree on their processes. And sometimes, as that leader, you have to make some really, you have to draw lines in the sand for people. And that is, that’s really hard to do. You’ll also have, you know, you were talking about the blame game there, right?
00;13;30;05 – 00;13;52;26
JEN
Like sales drives revenue. And so often sales kind of gets carte blanche. But marketing or, or even the production side of a business will say, well, they’re they’re promising things we can’t deliver on. Being able to have those conversations, those frank conversations, and building a system that supports all of those goals together is really, it’s the biggest hurdle.
00;13;52;28 – 00;14;09;17
JILL
It baffles me when we work with clients that say, oh, we’re marketing, that’s sales. And we say, okay, but if we’re if we’re not aligned and aware of and completely in step with what sales is doing, no matter what we do from a marketing perspective, we’re not going to win. We are not going to drive revenue. We are not going to drive donations.
00;14;09;17 – 00;14;32;18
JILL
We are not going to drive, you know, signups. Whatever your your goal is, whatever your measurement tool is. So it’s fascinating to me and a little disconcerting when people on the marketing side say, well, that sales or they don’t have any direct connection to sales, they don’t sit in sales meetings, they don’t get sales data. That’s some of the things that we always try to push for is connections to sales, data as they get them.
00;14;32;18 – 00;14;57;04
JILL
Okay, marketing does all this great work in our opinion, but it didn’t actually drive any leads or we didn’t actually drive any conversions. If there’s not a feedback loop there, if there’s not integration and alignment, then marketing is not doing their job either. And so I think that’s, a lot of the companies that are really successful have gotten to the point where they are aligned and they see it as a seamless process as opposed to one versus the other.
00;14;57;07 – 00;15;18;24
JILL
And I, and I would, you know, suggest that more companies that are not aligning sales and marketing that don’t have if it’s not a daily update, at a minimum, weekly, twice a week, even a quick update with how things are going. I think that sales can have a lot of influence on marketing, because a lot of times they’re in the, you know, they’re in the 1 to 1, the face to face.
00;15;18;26 – 00;15;38;12
JILL
And marketing should drive sales. And if we forget about that, you know, we’re not really doing our jobs either.
RYAN
So, Jill, when you were talking, you mentioned really aligning your sales and marketing teams. But Jen, you fed in. Yeah. Production also needs to make sure that that’s an alignment so that we are delivering a solid product.
00;15;38;14 – 00;15;58;22
RYAN
Jill, you said like you want to make sure that you’re talking your, your sales and marketing have a weekly check in. It sounds like we need even more check ins. Anyone who’s, who’s on that customer journey from initial conversations all the way through final delivery and then follow up, they need to make sure that they are having frequent communications between their teams.
00;15;58;25 – 00;16;21;10
RYAN
What’s like the best way to to start those conversations between different departments?
JILL
You know, I don’t know the best way to start the conversation other than, probably having some sort of goal for the conversation, whether it’s, quick touch in online, whether it’s a slack channel, whether it’s something like that, but what are the key metrics that you want to that you want to cover?
00;16;21;10 – 00;16;42;26
JILL
What are the things you need to discuss what’s important? And so whoever’s going to be at the table there, whether it’s sales, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s production, you know, whether it’s customer service, whether all of those things, you know, what’s the 1 or 2 most important things, for each each area’s effect on the customer. And how do we continue to align those things?
00;16;42;26 – 00;16;59;21
JILL
So if there is an issue, maybe that’s your top of agenda item. If there’s not, you know, are there some ongoing things that we need to discuss as a team? I don’t think they need to be long and drawn out. I think people hate long meetings and, you know, days full and full of meetings and you can’t actually get your job done.
00;16;59;24 – 00;17;23;06
JILL
But I do think those, the visibility and the collaboration that comes out of those check ins are extremely important. And, you know, when you talked about bringing in production, that’s absolutely an important key to this, because you look at, what marketing does, which is we’re setting up an expectation for the customer. We’re building awareness. We’re letting them know about our brand, our product, whatever our organization, whatever we’re marketing to them.
00;17;23;09 – 00;17;43;13
JILL
And we’re setting up an expectation for the consumer. And then as they get down the funnel, as they click on something, as they check out your website, as they read a white paper, as they download content, does that all align with what we just set up? We want to make sure that every single time you touch the customer when they order something, what does the packaging look like?
00;17;43;13 – 00;18;01;14
JILL
How long does it take to get there? What’s the shipping? You know, what’s the shipping costs if there are shipping costs? All of those things are part of sales and marketing, whether we like to think about it or not. What’s the follow up email? What’s the tracking information? How do you remarket to them afterwards to get additional sales?
00;18;01;16 – 00;18;21;23
JILL
All of that needs to be considered, and that all goes into your alignment doc.
JEN
And this is the difference between a company that’s firing on all four cylinders and a company that’s not and I’m going to give this example of – So, my I’ve ordered from Chewy for a while for my cat’s very special, very expensive food that he has to have.
00;18;21;26 – 00;18;44;24
JEN
And our vet rolled out a new program where we can buy from their online store, and I’m like, great, I want to support them. I ordered and…nothing. And I reached out and they said we’re not sure where your order is. I reached out again when they said, check back with us within five days because at this point I’m, I’m out of cat food.
00;18;44;24 – 00;19;11;19
JEN
Right. And they said, well, it appears it’s out of stock. So they lost me as a customer right back to Chewy. Right? Because they have a system and a customer experience and everything is happening in lockstep there versus whatever happened with this other company. I mean, that’s the customer experience. In the end, you want to make sales or drive conversions, whatever your goal might be.
00;19;11;21 – 00;19;34;29
JEN
If these things, if these dots are not connected between sales and marketing and production, then that’s the point where you lose a customer.
JILL
You make a good point with Chewy, they clearly have a really top notch CRM, and the data that they have in there is, it enables sales and marketing to happen and focuses completely on the customer.
00;19;35;01 – 00;20;01;19
JILL
So you get communication about your order. It’s always on time. It’s always right. They know what you like. They probably send you other marketing communications that are relevant to your cat, and they know what your cat eats, so they can probably take some data out of that. So, you know that that’s the type of experience that a consumer expects and that’s, you know, the power of having platforms, systems, processes and communication in place that enables that to happen.
00;20;01;22 – 00;20;25;10
JEN
And I want to bring that back to the CRM topic. I think that a CRM is the key to successful sales, marketing, integration and beyond. Right? With whether you’re talking about production or, fulfillment, whatever that might be a CRM, even a free one, I will say, is your tool for tracking customer interactions.
00;20;25;13 – 00;20;56;11
JEN
That is what it all comes back to. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a sales marketing team, right? So, you know, it doesn’t matter which, there are varying levels of CRMs out there and there are strong opinions on CRMs. So we’re not going to necessarily get into that today. but I’ve always been an advocate for having a CRM and, and I hate to use the word enforcing, but, making people use the CRM and salespeople, especially sort of the old school, like, I don’t like to use, I don’t like to put my stuff in a computer.
00;20;56;13 – 00;21;17;16
JEN
They’ve got to use it. Right. A salesperson can walk out the door with a database that lives in their email or an Excel spreadsheet, a CRM, they might be able to export some data on their way out, but they can’t take it with them and leave you with nothing. So, that’s a bit of a sidebar, but it is a really important aspect of that.
00;21;17;16 – 00;21;45;05
JEN
It also allows everybody to have visibility into that customer’s journey. I, I, I hate to use a scenario hit by a bus, but like, you know, if if somebody is out, on leave and somebody needs to pick up where they left off, they can see it instantaneously. And a lot of these CRMs are making it way easier to log this information automatically without having to go open a system and manually, manually enter it.
00;21;45;07 – 00;22;10;10
JEN
I just, I can’t stress how important a CRM is to bridging the divide in between sales and marketing and other aspects of the company.
RYAN
And you were saying, using a CRM, but this should go without saying, but it doesn’t all the time – using the same CRM, don’t have marketing using one, sales using another, another team using a different CRM.
00;22;10;10 – 00;22;29;16
RYAN
It has to be the same one. Otherwise there’s no point in this because then sales doesn’t have insight into what marketing’s doing. Marketing has no idea the conversations that are happening with sales, and that shared CRM can almost become, a constant check in or like a dashboard that your team can then see, how how things are progressing.
00;22;29;16 – 00;22;53;23
JEN
Yep. And that’s a leadership decision. That’s a leadership decision where you say, this is what we’re going to use. We’re not going to have a frank-en-stack of five different platforms that maybe we can find an API, an API to make them talk. No, we’re going to use one and we’re going to use it consistently. And that is it’s an investment, not just in the cost of a platform, but it’s an investment of time and resources.
00;22;53;26 – 00;23;12;08
JEN
But again, that’s a difference between a company that that’s successful and firing on all four cylinders versus one that’s just swinging at everything that comes across the plate. And their batting average is not good.
RYAN
I think this conversation around the CRM can get us at a bigger, to a bigger point. Don’t operate in a vacuum between your departments.
00;23;12;08 – 00;23;28;19
RYAN
You want to make sure that you are, like Jill said, bringing everyone to the table and looking at who’s at that table. And if you’re realizing that somebody is not sitting in a chair that needs to be there, bring them into that meeting, actually pull everyone together. And that’s also a leadership decision – who gets to go to meetings?
00;23;28;19 – 00;23;47;18
RYAN
Right. and if you realize someone’s not there, that does come along on that customer journey. They should have representation there so we can then the marketing team can then get information from them on how to best out about to get new customers for that sales team. But how can, how can we open up the data and how can we remove those barriers?
00;23;47;18 – 00;24;08;22
RYAN
It sounds like the combination of a CRM and a good old in-person meeting is, is a great way to do that. Right? Any other any other ways?
JEN
I want to bring it back to company culture. And this may represent a shift for some companies, but, you talked about operating in a vacuum, and people don’t they don’t intentionally hoard information.
00;24;08;25 – 00;24;31;05
JEN
Sometimes it comes down to, they don’t have time to share it or don’t feel they have time to share it. They don’t have a way to share it, you know, like a CRM or something like that. and they’re just not accustomed to it. It’s not a habit that’s built in that particular organization. And so going back to the idea of, creating goals together, not just a top down, these are our goals and we’re going to work together.
00;24;31;05 – 00;24;54;17
JEN
So why why isn’t this working right? That’s not a good culture, where there is sharing and and buy-in. So, it, it comes back to the leadership of whether it’s a one department or two departments creating those goals together, creating those goals with the people who have to do the work involved in those goals.
00;24;54;19 – 00;25;22;01
JEN
And then implementing that in a way that people can understand, grab on to, potentially incentivizing it. You know, carrot rather than a stick, potentially. But sticks if necessary, as a last resort, you’ve got to change the culture of how sales and marketing work and how they integrate other departments as well.
JILL
I was going to say the exact same thing, carrot and stick and also shared wins.
00;25;22;01 – 00;25;41;13
JILL
I mean, usually at a lot of times salespeople get the commission and that’s great if they close the sale. But what role does marketing play in there, and how is the marketing team rewarded for their piece in it as well? Having more skin in the game besides, you know, picking up a paycheck, and making sure that they’re providing value for the sales team.
00;25;41;15 – 00;25;59;06
JEN
I like that you talked about shared wins because that’s how a team feels cohesive, right? When we feel like we’re winning together, sometimes we lose together, too, right? And that’s hard. But you can do that as a team. And you can rally a team around that kind of thing. But you can really gain a lot by celebrating things together.
00;25;59;06 – 00;26;39;02
JEN
So, I think that culture is a huge part of that and a conscientious leader who can understand when cultural change needs to happen, and is uniquely qualified to make that change happen. Not everybody can do that. It’s not natural to everybody.
JILL
One of the other things to consider is the type of industry you’re in and the type of sales you’re doing, because we’ve talked a lot about sales people, but if you’re in E-com, you may have it like, you know, you and everything you do is e-com, you know, your sales team is your web development team, is your data team, is your e-com team that drives email marketing, digital advertising.
00;26;39;02 – 00;27;10;19
JILL
You know, any of those types of things. And so how do marketing and sales connect in my head? Sometimes marketing and sales actually connect better because you have so much data and because it can be very immediate. So if the E-com team or your data team is kicking information back every day or on a regular basis to the marketing team that’s developing messaging, creative strategies, you know, determining platforms, you know, you’ve got a lot more measurability, you’ve got a lot more, you know, hard, relevant, timely data to look at.
00;27;10;19 – 00;27;27;10
JILL
And so, I feel like the companies that we’ve worked with where a lot of what they do is e-commerce, those teams feel more aligned, or that the companies that we’ve seen that we’ve worked with, those teams feel more aligned and that seems more natural. It goes back to when you’ve got a lot of in-person, face to face, big sales.
00;27;27;10 – 00;27;47;19
JILL
You know, I’m not buying a $10 bottle of something online that’s going to arrive at my door in two days, but I’m buying a six figure, seven figure, you know, investment, and you are working with a person. You’re getting a big presentation. You know, this is something where a board decision might be involved. You know, sometimes I think that’s where sales and marketing often fall flat in collaboration,
00;27;47;21 – 00;28;04;24
JILL
in collaborating, because it really does fall a lot more on sales at that point. In a lot of organizations, especially more traditional organizations, and how marketing, how branding, brand building… I don’t want, you know, sales people to just look at marketing people as the people. Oh, they just make a brochure, because that’s not how it is.
00;28;04;24 – 00;28;22;07
JILL
But how can marketing strategically and tactically support sales at that level? You know, you’ve presented to a board, you’ve presented to the CEO or whoever it may be. What’s your next step? How can marketing help, you know, make that decision? We want to make it really easy for people to buy from us, no matter what that buy is.
00;28;22;15 – 00;28;43;04
JILL
And so marketing can often help influence that with sales. When the handoff happens between marketing and sales, it’s also really important that it doesn’t go into a black hole. It’s not like marketing’s peace out, we’re done here, it’s all on you, like that feedback loop and that constant improvement process and communication between the two is extremely important.
00;28;43;07 – 00;29;16;16
JEN
Yeah. And and that’s where that CRM comes back in. I mean you should be able to see, you know, this hand it off. It was a warm handoff to sales. It was a qualified lead. What happened next? Not just deal closed or deal failed. Right. There’s a whole lot of in between there. and lessons to be learned from a lot of that too, so that that data in the CRM is really it’s key.
JILL
Well and if you take it back to like the very basics of marketing, and you talk about like the four P’s and you talk, you know, why did a deal fail?
00;29;16;16 – 00;29;39;26
JILL
Was price an issue? Price, we didn’t, we haven’t talked about price at all between sales and marketing. But pricing strategies is a big thing with sales and marketing. And that feedback helps inform those. So you know, like you said, it’s not just deal deal closed, deal denied or yeah, whatever. It’s you know why on every one and how can we improve at every single touch.
00;29;39;28 – 00;30;02;07
JEN
So in the CRM we use when, when we move something to lost or won, it asks for a reason. It’s, that’s pretty important, you know. Is it price? Is it the time that you’re going to take to complete the project? You know what, what won it or lost it for you? is key data moving forward for both sales and marketing teams.
00;30;02;10 – 00;30;19;09
RYAN
So when it comes to boiling this all down, we have to truly bridge the divide. Bridge that gap between sales and marketing. The first way to do that is make sure that everyone is speaking the same language. Having a shared language between them, making sure that everyone understands the metrics. An MQL versus SQL, marketing qualified lead vs sales qualified lead.
00;30;19;12 – 00;30;52;10
RYAN
Make sure people know when those things move between, between the departments.
JEN
And that they think they’re the same thing, right? Like they understand the marketing team understands that. The sales team understands it. Everybody understands it. Because different companies define those things differently. So that’s where shared systems comes into play, right? Like if you’ve got MQLs and SQLs built into the system that you’re maybe converting somebody, someone down that as they’re bringing them down the, the funnel, they understand that.
00;30;52;10 – 00;31;22;21
JEN
But having that funnel there in a system. So coming back to that CRM, a CRM is a great place to align that shared language, but then develop that process of how somebody moves through the sales cycle from beginning to end and back to being a customer again, at a later date. Understanding that system, having it in place and building a process around it, and sharing that process.
JILL
Well, and I think one of the most obvious things that sometimes gets missed is that we have shared goals.
00;31;22;23 – 00;31;44;19
JILL
We are all on the same team. There’s tension between marketing and sales and that can be used for good. The tension should be used for improving what we’re putting out there, improving our product, improving our branding, improving what we’re doing, our customer experience so the tension can be a force for good, but never losing sight of the fact that your sales and marketing teams should have some shared goals.
00;31;44;19 – 00;32;06;06
JILL
They have their own individual goals, but they also should have shared goals for the entire company, for the organization. And so we are all in the same team. And making sure that’s aligned, is really important as well.
RYAN
Okay, so now it’s time for the power of three. This is where we try to leave you with three key takeaways, following our main conversation of the day.
00;32;06;11 – 00;32;30;03
RYAN
So here are three main takeaways when it comes to aligning your sales and marketing team. First, a daily or weekly update between sales and marketing. Make sure there’s that constant flow of data between the two teams. Second, have a CRM, even a free one, and make sure you’re enforcing the usage there. That will also help with sharing of the data and making sure everybody understands where a customer or a potential lead is at in the process.
00;32;30;05 – 00;32;52;08
RYAN
And third, look at your culture. Make sure that you have a culture in which everyone does feel ownership over a customer or a potential lead. Guide that change where it’s necessary. And like Jen was saying, this might be a leadership decision. This should be something that leadership is not, not controlling, but but oversees. And making sure that the culture is is one that is is customer focused.
00;32;52;10 – 00;33;18;22
JEN
All right. It’s time for Creative Briefs. And this one is is interesting, I think? I’m just going to own up to the fact that culturally I didn’t understand this, and that I am relying on some team members to explain this. So, Ryan, I want you to pull apart and dissect the Kamala is Brat phenomenon.
00;33;18;25 – 00;33;39;18
RYAN
So, first I want to establish one thing, and that is who Charlie XCX is. When you hear that name, you’re probably like, wait, I’ve heard this, but I don’t know who she is. She is a musician. She’s been around for like, 15 years, maybe 14 ish. You’ve probably heard her songs that, like, I love it.
00;33;39;18 – 00;33;58;25
RYAN
It’s like, I don’t care, I love it.
JEN
Oh, my God, this is the first time that Ryan has sung on the podcast.
RYAN
So there’s that one. And then like the “boom clap, the beat of my heart beat goes on”. I don’t actually know the words, but those are her popular songs that you probably have heard before.
00;33;59;00 – 00;34;23;25
RYAN
They’ve been around for like, a decade. Charlie XCX is a musician who’s very popular with Gen Z girls, millennial girls. And this is not the first time I’ve said it – the gays. So the girls and the gays. She’s releasing a new album right now, and that album is called Brat. It has been floated as the album of the summer.
00;34;23;25 – 00;34;49;20
RYAN
We’re always trying to establish that mono culture, like we were talking about earlier at the beginning, that that one album, that one song, the song of the summer, the album of the summer, something that everyone can get behind. But this, this all ties in because the marketing of this album, and remember, the marketing for this is specifically to the demographic that Charlie XCX goes after those Gen Z and potentially the gays.
00;34;49;23 – 00;35;08;27
RYAN
But the marketing has been lime green, kind of like Nickelodeon Gak, or Nickelodeon slime. It’s lime green and it just says the word Brat on it. This has been very popular with her audience. They’ve been putting a lime green color filter over a lot of their over a lot of their social graphics to show support.
00;35;08;29 – 00;35;34;00
RYAN
Other brands like Hot Ones, the viral YouTube series where people eat really spicy chicken wings. They did one as well, where they did a lime green background and the words in black over it. It’s almost a stylized treatment.
JEN
I’ve seen none of this out there. Talk about monoculture, but a monoculture that’s targeted because this was all news to me.
00;35;34;03 – 00;36;04;06
RYAN
Yes, yes. And I think that that, a piece of marketing and communication falls into that, this is segmented for, for different groups. But this all brings in Kamala because, right when Kamala announced that she was going to be taking over the Democratic ticket, Kamala HQ, the Twitter account or the X account, that that kind of leads leads the campaign, they made their they made their cover photo Kamala HQ in in that green treatment.
00;36;04;08 – 00;36;28;20
RYAN
But this all stems from a few days ago Charlie XCX actually tweeted, Kamala is brat. What does that mean? If you were to read that, five years ago or ten years ago, what does that mean? But it exists for for that specific demographic of people, that follow Charlie. They know they knew about it. But what does, what does brat actually mean?
00;36;28;27 – 00;36;51;08
RYAN
This has been taking over the news. People are asking, what is brat? Jake Tapper was having some of his staff on CNN explain what brat is. The Vox. They’re all asking, what is brat? Google trend searches for brat have peaked in the last two weeks. So I kind of want to talk about messaging.
00;36;51;08 – 00;37;15;14
RYAN
And when you have a target audience, how that spillover can kind of cause some confusions because Jen and Jill, you were both saying you don’t know what this is, but, me and me and my peers are like, we’ve seen this everywhere.
JEN
Yeah. Well, it’s it’s definitely it’s the difference between a trend and a brand. Right. when Jill and I were talking earlier today, like, have you seen this?
00;37;15;14 – 00;37;31;24
JEN
Do you know what this is? No, I don’t know what this is – earlier and we kind of got into this discussion. a trend is something you can jump on. And if it’s a big enough trend and if you know how to flex with a trend, you can absolutely use that to your brand’s advantage if it fits with your brand.
00;37;32;01 – 00;37;49;26
JEN
Lots of times we’ve seen brands try to jump on a trend and it falls really flat or it doesn’t actually align. I think this aligns for her. I think it’s fleeting, too. I mean, I don’t think that that green filter will be on there for the whole, you know, whopping four months of this campaign that we have left.
00;37;49;26 – 00;38;12;17
JEN
But, you know, a brand is very different. Can your brand flex with a trend? That’s an interesting concept to dig into.
RYAN
Yeah a trend versus a brand. I think that’s a very good call out. This is like you said, this is a trend. This is not the brand of Kamala for this demographic. This is just a way that they are leveraging and tying on to an existing trend.
00;38;12;21 – 00;38;32;03
RYAN
Sometimes you see brands try to tie in to a trend, and it doesn’t necessarily work because it doesn’t feel organic. But in this case, it it’s organic. It’s not, it’s not forced. There’s not any payment behind it. Right. It’s not Charli XCX’s is people saying, hey, Kamala, HQ will give you X amount of money to promote this.
00;38;32;03 – 00;38;55;05
JEN
Or vice versa, that they’re not paying her to use her brand that she created in a way for her, for her release and her album.
RYAN
Exactly.
JEN
It is actually fairly organic. I give it two weeks, before it’s off of the campaign side of things. I think Brat lives on for a while.
00;38;55;05 – 00;39;12;21
JEN
I think, as you said, the girls and the gays are going to carry that one on for a while. But I think, I think within a week to two weeks, we see that that green filter come off the Harris campaign.
JILL
I mean, Jen pretty much summed up what we talked about earlier today about the difference between a trend and a brand.
00;39;12;21 – 00;39;30;27
JILL
And, you know, the pitfalls that you can that you need to watch out for. But, also the opportunities that if it’s a trend that works for your brand, but you have to be nimble enough to identify and figure out how your how your brand can take advantage of that.
RYAN
I think that this goes a step further into the conversation of how communication works, right?
00;39;30;28 – 00;39;51;00
RYAN
Specifically around presidential campaigns. It used to be, oh, you would get on CNN, you would get on Fox News, you would get on TV. Then it was, well, even before that it was newspaper. It was radio. You really only have one channel that you’re worrying about and you keep adding in channels. President Obama was the, the president of social media.
00;39;51;03 – 00;40;20;23
RYAN
President Trump did a great job of leveraging Twitter, right? This is a natural evolution. We’re adding in all of these other pieces. And and one could say that Kamala Harris is a candidate of memes. She’s really taking on these memes, these small, bite sized pieces that Gen-Z and millennials are sharing back and forth. She’s making it really easy to consolidate a message or or a brand or trend into one graphic that’s easily shareable.
00;40;20;25 – 00;40;39;23
RYAN
You don’t have to have a long diatribe of saying, I’m supporting this candidate because X, Y, Z, ABCD, you can just share a meme, or put a meme on your story or share it with a friend. And that’s that’s doing a lot of that work for you. Kind of the natural evolution of communication and in this case, political communication.
00;40;39;25 – 00;41;04;28
JEN
And in the end, we actually get to see the most measurable results, because we will know in four months time if voters turned out and we will know the ages of voters who turned out. So is this a flash in the pan? It’s everybody is just kind of excited right now. And then the excitement wanes. Or does this translate to actual votes in November?
00;41;05;01 – 00;41;25;27
JEN
And, you know, that is kind of the thing that I love the most about this is that it is highly measurable. It’s the highest of stakes, but it is highly measurable. And we will see directly if young voters turn out, a little or en masse. You know, one thing that I think we have to talk about here is how things have changed.
00;41;25;28 – 00;41;48;28
JEN
Ryan, you were talking about at one point in time, you went on, you know, NBC news or, you know, you did an interview or you were on the radio, that changed to social media, and now it has changed to two way communication, where as at one point in time it was a very analog one way, you know, here’s my platform, like it or leave it kind of thing.
00;41;48;28 – 00;42;20;18
JEN
Communication is now two way and much more instantaneous. And it’s not always just words, right. It can be emojis on your social media handle or on a post, and that can indicate where you lean or where your preferences lie. It’s a fascinating change in how we communicate. and it also shows how fast things change now versus when things – change used to be generational, and now change happens within a matter of moments.
00;42;20;20 – 00;42;51;00
JEN
And that’s the world we live in now. And I think that this Kamala is Brat campaign is is a really good example of how fast something can happen and how fast it might pass.
JILL
Okay, I think I’m following, but Ryan, I’m old. What is brat?
RYAN
What is brat? This has been Googled. This is been written about quite a few times, but it goes back to what Charlie XCX, basically, has determined what she thinks brat is.
00;42;51;02 – 00;43;16;26
RYAN
We’ve all heard the word before, and it’s like, oh, a spoiled, a spoiled kid. Someone throwing a tantrum and their parent giving in and kind of caving to the tantrum and being like, oh, they’re just they’re just a little brat, a snot nosed brat, etc.. but Charlie is reclaiming the term. She’s taking it back and she’s saying a brat is is that girl or that person who likes to party and do dumb things from time to time, but she still holds herself together.
00;43;16;26 – 00;43;40;24
RYAN
Like, sure, she might have a breakdown, but also, within ten minutes she’ll be just fine. She just needed a few minutes to herself. She kind of parties through it lots of times. Very blunt, volatile, oversharing. It’s kind of a conglomerate of – this is a millennial talking about Gen Z – but kind of what they’re known for, they’re known for, being very blunt.
00;43;40;25 – 00;43;57;01
RYAN
They’re known for having fun and not being afraid of who they are and being themselves. I think that this word is trying to embody a whole generation, and and a lot of people are latching on to it. They’re saying like, yes, I’m not a zoomer, I’m not Gen Z, I’m brat. So brat is no longer a noun.
00;43;57;01 – 00;44;18;01
RYAN
It is a verb. It is something that you do. You can say that’s brat or, you don’t have to say you’re being a brat. You can just, you can use it as an adjective. Brat is everything in summary. Brat is everything.
JEN
Ryan, that comes right back to the monoculture discussion. I mean, last summer it was Barbie.
00;44;18;01 – 00;44;43;12
JEN
This summer it’s brat. And it changes in a heartbeat. And that’s, that’s just the way the world changes. How quickly things change. Now, these things do have lasting effects, and they are part of the zeitgeist once they’re out there. But they fade fast, too. So it ties back to can a brand tie into one of these trends, capitalize on it, and know when to get off that train?
00;44;43;14 – 00;45;08;18
JEN
That that’s a really important thing. Is, is knowing when it’s appropriate for you and when it is suddenly, not to your advantage anymore. And at de Novo, Ryan will always be brat. Ryan is brat.
RYAN
I love it. I will claim that in a heartbeat.
RYAN
So that’s it for today, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our Think Fresh on aligning your sales and marketing teams.
00;45;08;18 – 00;45;29;02
RYAN
Many thanks also to Jill Mast. Jill, thanks for joining us today on the podcast.
JILL
Hey, thanks for having me, Ryan. I appreciate you, and the other youngins here keeping me up to speed on all the current cultural cool trends. So I’m not totally lame to my kids.
JEN
Jill, so glad you were here with us today. And to represent, let’s just say, an older generation.
00;45;29;02 – 00;45;48;26
JEN
And I’m still just going to use brat the same way I have always used it in conjunction with my children. So they don’t need to know.
JILL
They don’t realize that we’re using it in two different ways.
RYAN
Wait, so when you say Ryan is brat, which one do you mean? Jen?
JEN
I plead the fifth on that one.
00;45;48;28 – 00;46;11;11
JEN
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Think Fresh.
RYAN
And remember, the conversation does not have to end here. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Review our show on whatever you listen to your podcast on, or share all your marketing trials and triumphs by shooting us an email at info@thinkdenovo.com with the subject line “Dear de Novo” so we don’t miss it.
00;46;11;13 – 00;46;32;00
JEN
And while you wait eagerly for our next episode, you can get your fix by checking out our blog, Fresh Thinking blog.thinkdenovo.com. Stay tuned for more engaging conversations, laughs, and of course, marketing brilliance and me making fun of Ryan in the next episode to come.
RYAN
Here’s to fresh thinking, sparking creativity and never being boring. Bye friends.
00;46;32;03 – 00;46;36;29
JEN
Are we swearing on this or no?
RYAN
We’re doing this.
JEN
All right. Hello and welcome to this – were you talking? Oh, my God. All right, we’ll try this again. Ryan, are you settled?
RYAN
I’m Settled.
JEN
Okay.
00;00;20;17 – 00;00;41;06
JEN
Hello, and welcome to Think Fresh, a podcast brought to you by de Novo Marketing’s Collective Creative. Coming to you from our Ideas Institute and here to talk about all things marketing: Insights on new trends, innovative ideas and marketing tools you can use in your day to day life…and whatever else we deem relevant. I’m Jen Neumann, de Novo CEO and your host.
00;00;41;08 – 00;01;09;08
RYAN
And I’m Ryan Shenefelt, account manager, innovation and education lead and resident nosy eavesdropper, always looking to push the envelope.
JEN
He is indeed very, very nosy.
RYAN
Today, we’re going to talk about aligning your sales and marketing teams. And before we dive into the full podcast, I do just want to make a note. I am working remotely today and if you have a little bit of background noise, we are once again in our Tangerine conference room and there’s some construction happening outside.
00;01;09;10 – 00;01;33;06
RYAN
So just, just setting the scene for that. And joining us today we have Jill Mast. Jill is our vice president and director of client services. She’s been in the industry for over 20 years. While this is not a video podcast, when you see some of the snippets from behind the scenes, you may recognize Jill from her starring role in a Panchero’s commercial back in 2010.
00;01;33;09 – 00;01;51;29
RYAN
Jill, welcome to the pod.
JILL
Thank you. Glad to be here. So glad to hear about Panchero’s commercials, too. That was, that was one of those “other duties as assigned”, so.
JEN
Well, that happens a lot here, too. I mean, all of our interns, at some point in time get stuck into a video project or our background.
00;01;52;03 – 00;02;10;22
JEN
We actually, pretended to hit one intern with a car for a commercial, so. I mean, de Novians will they’ll they’ll, they’ll take one for the team.
JILL
Well, and everyone focuses on the Panchero’s spot. I mean, I was in Pepper’s, I was in The Vine. I’ve been in hospitals. I mean, I am like a professional extra. Just. Just so you’re aware.
00;02;10;24 – 00;02;28;11
RYAN
Didn’t you also…weren’t you? There was something with a theme park.
JILL
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Theme park in Kansas City when I worked down there. I rode their largest roller coaster 11 times in a row because the extras didn’t show up. And so, me and this old lady, we were on this roller coaster riding and riding.
00;02;28;11 – 00;02;49;26
JILL
I was much, much younger back then, so. But, it I – really it was fun until it wasn’t. And then, afterwards, I had to have a nap because I had a headache, but it was a lot of fun. I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff.
RYAN
That would be so hard, too. Like when you’re on camera, even if you’re not, even if you’re just in the background, you still want to have a sense of control.
00;02;49;26 – 00;03;03;19
RYAN
You want to make sure that you look poised. But on a roller coaster, everything goes out the window. In my opinion, I would be making the weirdest faces and I would just be like, no, I don’t want to be an extra in a roller coaster.
JILL
There was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming and whatnot.
00;03;03;19 – 00;03;23;12
JILL
So yes, it was. It was what you would expect.
JEN
All right, professional extra, Jill Mast.
JILL
I’m adding that to my resume.
RYAN
Well, and you mentioned that that was when you were in Kansas City. Talk a little bit about your your journey, your journey over the years to, to de Novo.
JILL
My journey to de Novo…after I graduated from the University of Iowa.
00;03;23;14 – 00;03;39;24
JILL
Go Hawks, I moved to Kansas City. I am what you call a boomerang. So I worked for two different agencies when I was there, kind of dummied into advertising. I had a marketing degree, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly. I worked for a smaller agency that had a lot of local clients.
00;03;39;27 – 00;04;09;07
JILL
Tourism, health care, higher ed. It’s kind of spanned a lot of local clients. And then I moved into a larger agency where I worked on a couple of clients, but one in particular that was a national, B2C brand. I got to do a ton of traveling. I learned a lot in both the smaller agency and the larger agency, such good experience, travel a ton, met a lot of great people, did a lot of great work, and then got to move back to Iowa, which I love.
00;04;09;09 – 00;04;27;26
JILL
Had a couple of great stints at other agencies in town and joined de Novo about eight years ago. And I’m never leaving. They’re not, they’re not getting rid of me, like it or not or not.
JEN
And your kids have now starred in de Novo videos as well.
JILL
So they have starred in de Novo videos, all kinds of things.
00;04;27;26 – 00;04;49;03
JEN
Yes. So headline – de Novo exploits child labor.
JILL
So they love it, though. They love it.
RYAN
So one of the things that, is, is just at the top of my head because we mentioned last time, I love sports now, but this is something that’s always been there. The Olympics, the Olympics are happening. I’m trying to get like a temperature gauge on this.
00;04;49;03 – 00;05;09;21
RYAN
Does anyone else care about the Olympics or is it only me?
JEN
I don’t honestly like kind of kind of zero fucks given on it. And I feel terrible about that. And my husband is so into it. It will be on our TV all the time. I will just find other things to do in the house. I just, maybe I’m not an American, I don’t know, but I just don’t care.
00;05;09;26 – 00;05;35;21
JILL
I love the Olympics, but I am a watch the highlights afterwards. Like, not watch every race. I can’t wait for, you know, track and field, swimming, gymnastics. My girl Simone. I cannot wait to see her. So I have very specific things I love, but I am a highlights after person.
JEN
My husband will call me into the den to watch some of the highlights, and I will say, I’m with you on Simone Biles.
00;05;35;21 – 00;06;04;14
JEN
Like, she’s amazing
JILL
She’s amazing.
JEN
And I can’t wait to see her perform again. And you know, my girls, we’re competitive gymnasts. And so I at least understand that sport, which is helpful. But most of them I’m just like, wow, they’re they’re very fast. Great.
RYAN
So there’s always this meme going around online around the Olympics of people just begging them to put an average citizen like an average person in there, just so you can see the caliber that these athletes are, are competing with.
00;06;04;14 – 00;06;21;15
RYAN
Because when you’re comparing apples to apples, you’re like, yeah, they’re a they’re just a little bit faster than each other. But no.
JEN
You know what would be good is a side by side of these incredibly fast track athletes with me crossing the finish line in that triathlon a couple of weeks ago, where I, when I, when I watch it, I’m like, am I limping?
00;06;21;17 – 00;06;42;24
JEN
It was so slow and I looked like I was in so much pain. And I think that that would be a really good comparison right there.
RYAN
Yeah. Your triathlon, it was this triathlon included… It’s not the standard triathlon. Right? What, what all was in that one?
JEN
It’s an adventure triathlon. I am not a swimmer. I have a serious dog paddle, and that’s about it.
00;06;42;26 – 00;07;04;02
JEN
So this is an adventure triathlon. And it was 11 miles in a kayak, which was really long. 12 miles. biking through some pretty hilly, hilly hills in, in Jackson County, Iowa, and then finished with a 5K, of which I walked half. So but I finished it, I finished it, guys. I’m 51 and I finished it.
00;07;04;02 – 00;07;25;24
JEN
So that’s my that’s my win for the whole summer.
RYAN
That’s what matters. The Olympics to me are a monoculture because I regularly see all over my feeds, the feeds of my friends, the feeds of my peers. But social media does a really good job of making everything seem like a monoculture, right? It’s like, oh, everyone sees the same thing.
00;07;25;24 – 00;07;46;04
RYAN
I consume media that talks about things I like and where, when it comes to monoculture, I think that there’s a few that have happened recently, like Taylor Swift. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about Taylor Swift. The Barbie movie. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the Barbie movie. Everyone was experiencing the same thing, kind of like that, that monoculture.
00;07;46;04 – 00;08;05;14
RYAN
But the Barbie movie is now a year old. Quite frankly, it seems like even longer than that. Like it a year has went by very quickly, in my opinion. Did you guys see the Barbie movie?
JEN
Oh yeah, I saw the Barbie movie and I, I wasn’t super excited about seeing it, but Ryan, you told me that I had to see it and I had to see it with my daughters.
00;08;05;20 – 00;08;23;07
JEN
It’s really, it is actually a beautiful movie, and I think it has a lot to do with mother daughter relationships. And, I appreciate everything about that movie and Mattel being willing to be the butt of their own jokes. Like, that was it. It’s a it was a cultural phenomenon. And it is kind of hard to believe it’s a year out.
00;08;23;07 – 00;09;00;28
RYAN
The other thing with monoculture, we’ve experienced about of it one more time and in software development and in it, it’s, it’s been found that monoculture really does exist because so many systems have to work together. You’ve all probably seen the, the CrowdStrike, the CrowdStrike outage that that took place. This was a piece of software that is on a lot of, a lot of computers, Microsoft machines, that’s so well integrated with these Microsoft machines, when they update, it can actually cause the Microsoft system to, to break essentially.
00;09;01;00 – 00;09;19;03
RYAN
Because this does monitor all of your, all of your messages, all the programs on your computer. It’s monitoring all of that, like at an antivirus level. So it had the ability when they updated and something broke in CrowdStrike, it had the ability to take down almost like every Microsoft computer. Did you guys experience any weird, any weirdness?
00;09;19;03 – 00;09;39;06
RYAN
The movie theater that I went to, all of their screens didn’t work. The actual movie screen worked, but the rest of the screens – nothing. Nothing. So everyone was like using paper menus at a movie theater, which was, which was kind of fun.
JEN
I, you know, we experienced a couple of, like, just outages with a couple platforms.
00;09;39;08 – 00;10;03;10
JEN
But smugly, we’re a Mac shop here. So, you know, not a lot of, it didn’t affect a lot of what we did, it did affect some travel plans of somebody who, I know who got stuck in an airport, like, overnight, due to that. But, you know, just from that smaller business perspective, I don’t, I don’t know that it affected small business much, but I think it affected there’s no way that it didn’t affect something in people’s lives.
00;10;03;12 – 00;10;20;29
RYAN
Oh, yeah. I’m curious to talk with some of our IT based clients to see if they utilize CrowdStrike, if they had any, any outages or anything, anything crazy. But that was a moment in culture where I think everyone was like, what’s going on is the world ending, but everyone on a Mac is like, what are you talking about?
00;10;21;02 – 00;10;43;10
JEN
What what outage, what outage?
JILL
It was interesting to watch the reaction around the world, though. And how many things one error can affect.
JEN
I felt pretty bad for the CrowdStrike CEO. I do think he handled it pretty well. I mean, he owned it. IT has a culture of saying there’s no problem here. It must be you.
00;10;43;12 – 00;11;11;27
JEN
Which is just I mean, that’s throughout that industry. And they were like, it was not a hack. It was our own error. And we have fixed it and things are coming back online. And that that takes some guts to do that. So I, I actually like talk about doing it right and being transparent and taking ownership, from that crisis communications perspective, I mean, I’m sure that guy’s gonna be cleaning that mess up for a long time.
00;11;11;29 – 00;11;27;24
JEN
but I was impressed with the way it was handled.
RYAN
Yeah, they did great. So a lot has been going on in the world. We just covered a few of the topics. But let’s get down to it. Today we are here to talk about aligning your sales and marketing teams. So that’s why we brought Jill here today as Director of Client Service,
00;11;27;24 – 00;11;47;28
RYAN
Jill sees a lot of this in play and she works with her team of account managers – I’m one of those – and she helps guide us and helps us guide those conversations with our clients. So. So, Jill. Yeah, starting right off the bat, what’s your your initial insight on aligning sales and marketing teams? What has worked well for you?
00;11;48;00 – 00;12;07;10
RYAN
What have you seen over your years in the industry?
JILL
Well, I think in order to have success, you have to have aligned sales and marketing and a lot of people drop the ball in this part. They see them as very separate, especially if you have a director of marketing, a director of sales. and, and they don’t, they aren’t completely aligned.
00;12;07;12 – 00;12;29;01
JILL
There’s also natural tension between sales and marketing. Sometimes you see marketing saying, hey, we’re delivering plenty of leads. Sales isn’t closing. You see sales saying, hey, we’re talking to leads. We’re doing, we’re out here pounding the pavement, having phone calls, whatever it may be. But marketing is just not getting us anybody that’s qualified. So there’s some natural tension because the process can be difficult.
00;12;29;03 – 00;12;50;02
JILL
But I think when you can align sales and marketing from top to bottom, that’s when you’re going to see the most success. And people that do that, companies that do that, always keeping the customer journey in mind from first touchpoint to every interaction all the way through, closing a deal and beyond follow up, you know, selling again, things like that.
00;12;50;10 – 00;13;08;24
JILL
Those people, those companies are going to be the ones that have the most success.
JEN
I want to take it back to leadership there because you talked about sometimes there’s a director of sales, a director of marketing or they’ll have a director of sales, and maybe there’s a marketing coordinator under them. There really has to be somebody leading the charge that pulls these things together.
00;13;08;24 – 00;13;30;05
JEN
And, understands that it needs to be shared goals and they have to speak the same language. They have to agree on their processes. And sometimes, as that leader, you have to make some really, you have to draw lines in the sand for people. And that is, that’s really hard to do. You’ll also have, you know, you were talking about the blame game there, right?
00;13;30;05 – 00;13;52;26
JEN
Like sales drives revenue. And so often sales kind of gets carte blanche. But marketing or, or even the production side of a business will say, well, they’re they’re promising things we can’t deliver on. Being able to have those conversations, those frank conversations, and building a system that supports all of those goals together is really, it’s the biggest hurdle.
00;13;52;28 – 00;14;09;17
JILL
It baffles me when we work with clients that say, oh, we’re marketing, that’s sales. And we say, okay, but if we’re if we’re not aligned and aware of and completely in step with what sales is doing, no matter what we do from a marketing perspective, we’re not going to win. We are not going to drive revenue. We are not going to drive donations.
00;14;09;17 – 00;14;32;18
JILL
We are not going to drive, you know, signups. Whatever your your goal is, whatever your measurement tool is. So it’s fascinating to me and a little disconcerting when people on the marketing side say, well, that sales or they don’t have any direct connection to sales, they don’t sit in sales meetings, they don’t get sales data. That’s some of the things that we always try to push for is connections to sales, data as they get them.
00;14;32;18 – 00;14;57;04
JILL
Okay, marketing does all this great work in our opinion, but it didn’t actually drive any leads or we didn’t actually drive any conversions. If there’s not a feedback loop there, if there’s not integration and alignment, then marketing is not doing their job either. And so I think that’s, a lot of the companies that are really successful have gotten to the point where they are aligned and they see it as a seamless process as opposed to one versus the other.
00;14;57;07 – 00;15;18;24
JILL
And I, and I would, you know, suggest that more companies that are not aligning sales and marketing that don’t have if it’s not a daily update, at a minimum, weekly, twice a week, even a quick update with how things are going. I think that sales can have a lot of influence on marketing, because a lot of times they’re in the, you know, they’re in the 1 to 1, the face to face.
00;15;18;26 – 00;15;38;12
JILL
And marketing should drive sales. And if we forget about that, you know, we’re not really doing our jobs either.
RYAN
So, Jill, when you were talking, you mentioned really aligning your sales and marketing teams. But Jen, you fed in. Yeah. Production also needs to make sure that that’s an alignment so that we are delivering a solid product.
00;15;38;14 – 00;15;58;22
RYAN
Jill, you said like you want to make sure that you’re talking your, your sales and marketing have a weekly check in. It sounds like we need even more check ins. Anyone who’s, who’s on that customer journey from initial conversations all the way through final delivery and then follow up, they need to make sure that they are having frequent communications between their teams.
00;15;58;25 – 00;16;21;10
RYAN
What’s like the best way to to start those conversations between different departments?
JILL
You know, I don’t know the best way to start the conversation other than, probably having some sort of goal for the conversation, whether it’s, quick touch in online, whether it’s a slack channel, whether it’s something like that, but what are the key metrics that you want to that you want to cover?
00;16;21;10 – 00;16;42;26
JILL
What are the things you need to discuss what’s important? And so whoever’s going to be at the table there, whether it’s sales, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s production, you know, whether it’s customer service, whether all of those things, you know, what’s the 1 or 2 most important things, for each each area’s effect on the customer. And how do we continue to align those things?
00;16;42;26 – 00;16;59;21
JILL
So if there is an issue, maybe that’s your top of agenda item. If there’s not, you know, are there some ongoing things that we need to discuss as a team? I don’t think they need to be long and drawn out. I think people hate long meetings and, you know, days full and full of meetings and you can’t actually get your job done.
00;16;59;24 – 00;17;23;06
JILL
But I do think those, the visibility and the collaboration that comes out of those check ins are extremely important. And, you know, when you talked about bringing in production, that’s absolutely an important key to this, because you look at, what marketing does, which is we’re setting up an expectation for the customer. We’re building awareness. We’re letting them know about our brand, our product, whatever our organization, whatever we’re marketing to them.
00;17;23;09 – 00;17;43;13
JILL
And we’re setting up an expectation for the consumer. And then as they get down the funnel, as they click on something, as they check out your website, as they read a white paper, as they download content, does that all align with what we just set up? We want to make sure that every single time you touch the customer when they order something, what does the packaging look like?
00;17;43;13 – 00;18;01;14
JILL
How long does it take to get there? What’s the shipping? You know, what’s the shipping costs if there are shipping costs? All of those things are part of sales and marketing, whether we like to think about it or not. What’s the follow up email? What’s the tracking information? How do you remarket to them afterwards to get additional sales?
00;18;01;16 – 00;18;21;23
JILL
All of that needs to be considered, and that all goes into your alignment doc.
JEN
And this is the difference between a company that’s firing on all four cylinders and a company that’s not and I’m going to give this example of – So, my I’ve ordered from Chewy for a while for my cat’s very special, very expensive food that he has to have.
00;18;21;26 – 00;18;44;24
JEN
And our vet rolled out a new program where we can buy from their online store, and I’m like, great, I want to support them. I ordered and…nothing. And I reached out and they said we’re not sure where your order is. I reached out again when they said, check back with us within five days because at this point I’m, I’m out of cat food.
00;18;44;24 – 00;19;11;19
JEN
Right. And they said, well, it appears it’s out of stock. So they lost me as a customer right back to Chewy. Right? Because they have a system and a customer experience and everything is happening in lockstep there versus whatever happened with this other company. I mean, that’s the customer experience. In the end, you want to make sales or drive conversions, whatever your goal might be.
00;19;11;21 – 00;19;34;29
JEN
If these things, if these dots are not connected between sales and marketing and production, then that’s the point where you lose a customer.
JILL
You make a good point with Chewy, they clearly have a really top notch CRM, and the data that they have in there is, it enables sales and marketing to happen and focuses completely on the customer.
00;19;35;01 – 00;20;01;19
JILL
So you get communication about your order. It’s always on time. It’s always right. They know what you like. They probably send you other marketing communications that are relevant to your cat, and they know what your cat eats, so they can probably take some data out of that. So, you know that that’s the type of experience that a consumer expects and that’s, you know, the power of having platforms, systems, processes and communication in place that enables that to happen.
00;20;01;22 – 00;20;25;10
JEN
And I want to bring that back to the CRM topic. I think that a CRM is the key to successful sales, marketing, integration and beyond. Right? With whether you’re talking about production or, fulfillment, whatever that might be a CRM, even a free one, I will say, is your tool for tracking customer interactions.
00;20;25;13 – 00;20;56;11
JEN
That is what it all comes back to. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a sales marketing team, right? So, you know, it doesn’t matter which, there are varying levels of CRMs out there and there are strong opinions on CRMs. So we’re not going to necessarily get into that today. but I’ve always been an advocate for having a CRM and, and I hate to use the word enforcing, but, making people use the CRM and salespeople, especially sort of the old school, like, I don’t like to use, I don’t like to put my stuff in a computer.
00;20;56;13 – 00;21;17;16
JEN
They’ve got to use it. Right. A salesperson can walk out the door with a database that lives in their email or an Excel spreadsheet, a CRM, they might be able to export some data on their way out, but they can’t take it with them and leave you with nothing. So, that’s a bit of a sidebar, but it is a really important aspect of that.
00;21;17;16 – 00;21;45;05
JEN
It also allows everybody to have visibility into that customer’s journey. I, I, I hate to use a scenario hit by a bus, but like, you know, if if somebody is out, on leave and somebody needs to pick up where they left off, they can see it instantaneously. And a lot of these CRMs are making it way easier to log this information automatically without having to go open a system and manually, manually enter it.
00;21;45;07 – 00;22;10;10
JEN
I just, I can’t stress how important a CRM is to bridging the divide in between sales and marketing and other aspects of the company.
RYAN
And you were saying, using a CRM, but this should go without saying, but it doesn’t all the time – using the same CRM, don’t have marketing using one, sales using another, another team using a different CRM.
00;22;10;10 – 00;22;29;16
RYAN
It has to be the same one. Otherwise there’s no point in this because then sales doesn’t have insight into what marketing’s doing. Marketing has no idea the conversations that are happening with sales, and that shared CRM can almost become, a constant check in or like a dashboard that your team can then see, how how things are progressing.
00;22;29;16 – 00;22;53;23
JEN
Yep. And that’s a leadership decision. That’s a leadership decision where you say, this is what we’re going to use. We’re not going to have a frank-en-stack of five different platforms that maybe we can find an API, an API to make them talk. No, we’re going to use one and we’re going to use it consistently. And that is it’s an investment, not just in the cost of a platform, but it’s an investment of time and resources.
00;22;53;26 – 00;23;12;08
JEN
But again, that’s a difference between a company that that’s successful and firing on all four cylinders versus one that’s just swinging at everything that comes across the plate. And their batting average is not good.
RYAN
I think this conversation around the CRM can get us at a bigger, to a bigger point. Don’t operate in a vacuum between your departments.
00;23;12;08 – 00;23;28;19
RYAN
You want to make sure that you are, like Jill said, bringing everyone to the table and looking at who’s at that table. And if you’re realizing that somebody is not sitting in a chair that needs to be there, bring them into that meeting, actually pull everyone together. And that’s also a leadership decision – who gets to go to meetings?
00;23;28;19 – 00;23;47;18
RYAN
Right. and if you realize someone’s not there, that does come along on that customer journey. They should have representation there so we can then the marketing team can then get information from them on how to best out about to get new customers for that sales team. But how can, how can we open up the data and how can we remove those barriers?
00;23;47;18 – 00;24;08;22
RYAN
It sounds like the combination of a CRM and a good old in-person meeting is, is a great way to do that. Right? Any other any other ways?
JEN
I want to bring it back to company culture. And this may represent a shift for some companies, but, you talked about operating in a vacuum, and people don’t they don’t intentionally hoard information.
00;24;08;25 – 00;24;31;05
JEN
Sometimes it comes down to, they don’t have time to share it or don’t feel they have time to share it. They don’t have a way to share it, you know, like a CRM or something like that. and they’re just not accustomed to it. It’s not a habit that’s built in that particular organization. And so going back to the idea of, creating goals together, not just a top down, these are our goals and we’re going to work together.
00;24;31;05 – 00;24;54;17
JEN
So why why isn’t this working right? That’s not a good culture, where there is sharing and and buy-in. So, it, it comes back to the leadership of whether it’s a one department or two departments creating those goals together, creating those goals with the people who have to do the work involved in those goals.
00;24;54;19 – 00;25;22;01
JEN
And then implementing that in a way that people can understand, grab on to, potentially incentivizing it. You know, carrot rather than a stick, potentially. But sticks if necessary, as a last resort, you’ve got to change the culture of how sales and marketing work and how they integrate other departments as well.
JILL
I was going to say the exact same thing, carrot and stick and also shared wins.
00;25;22;01 – 00;25;41;13
JILL
I mean, usually at a lot of times salespeople get the commission and that’s great if they close the sale. But what role does marketing play in there, and how is the marketing team rewarded for their piece in it as well? Having more skin in the game besides, you know, picking up a paycheck, and making sure that they’re providing value for the sales team.
00;25;41;15 – 00;25;59;06
JEN
I like that you talked about shared wins because that’s how a team feels cohesive, right? When we feel like we’re winning together, sometimes we lose together, too, right? And that’s hard. But you can do that as a team. And you can rally a team around that kind of thing. But you can really gain a lot by celebrating things together.
00;25;59;06 – 00;26;39;02
JEN
So, I think that culture is a huge part of that and a conscientious leader who can understand when cultural change needs to happen, and is uniquely qualified to make that change happen. Not everybody can do that. It’s not natural to everybody.
JILL
One of the other things to consider is the type of industry you’re in and the type of sales you’re doing, because we’ve talked a lot about sales people, but if you’re in E-com, you may have it like, you know, you and everything you do is e-com, you know, your sales team is your web development team, is your data team, is your e-com team that drives email marketing, digital advertising.
00;26;39;02 – 00;27;10;19
JILL
You know, any of those types of things. And so how do marketing and sales connect in my head? Sometimes marketing and sales actually connect better because you have so much data and because it can be very immediate. So if the E-com team or your data team is kicking information back every day or on a regular basis to the marketing team that’s developing messaging, creative strategies, you know, determining platforms, you know, you’ve got a lot more measurability, you’ve got a lot more, you know, hard, relevant, timely data to look at.
00;27;10;19 – 00;27;27;10
JILL
And so, I feel like the companies that we’ve worked with where a lot of what they do is e-commerce, those teams feel more aligned, or that the companies that we’ve seen that we’ve worked with, those teams feel more aligned and that seems more natural. It goes back to when you’ve got a lot of in-person, face to face, big sales.
00;27;27;10 – 00;27;47;19
JILL
You know, I’m not buying a $10 bottle of something online that’s going to arrive at my door in two days, but I’m buying a six figure, seven figure, you know, investment, and you are working with a person. You’re getting a big presentation. You know, this is something where a board decision might be involved. You know, sometimes I think that’s where sales and marketing often fall flat in collaboration,
00;27;47;21 – 00;28;04;24
JILL
in collaborating, because it really does fall a lot more on sales at that point. In a lot of organizations, especially more traditional organizations, and how marketing, how branding, brand building… I don’t want, you know, sales people to just look at marketing people as the people. Oh, they just make a brochure, because that’s not how it is.
00;28;04;24 – 00;28;22;07
JILL
But how can marketing strategically and tactically support sales at that level? You know, you’ve presented to a board, you’ve presented to the CEO or whoever it may be. What’s your next step? How can marketing help, you know, make that decision? We want to make it really easy for people to buy from us, no matter what that buy is.
00;28;22;15 – 00;28;43;04
JILL
And so marketing can often help influence that with sales. When the handoff happens between marketing and sales, it’s also really important that it doesn’t go into a black hole. It’s not like marketing’s peace out, we’re done here, it’s all on you, like that feedback loop and that constant improvement process and communication between the two is extremely important.
00;28;43;07 – 00;29;16;16
JEN
Yeah. And and that’s where that CRM comes back in. I mean you should be able to see, you know, this hand it off. It was a warm handoff to sales. It was a qualified lead. What happened next? Not just deal closed or deal failed. Right. There’s a whole lot of in between there. and lessons to be learned from a lot of that too, so that that data in the CRM is really it’s key.
JILL
Well and if you take it back to like the very basics of marketing, and you talk about like the four P’s and you talk, you know, why did a deal fail?
00;29;16;16 – 00;29;39;26
JILL
Was price an issue? Price, we didn’t, we haven’t talked about price at all between sales and marketing. But pricing strategies is a big thing with sales and marketing. And that feedback helps inform those. So you know, like you said, it’s not just deal deal closed, deal denied or yeah, whatever. It’s you know why on every one and how can we improve at every single touch.
00;29;39;28 – 00;30;02;07
JEN
So in the CRM we use when, when we move something to lost or won, it asks for a reason. It’s, that’s pretty important, you know. Is it price? Is it the time that you’re going to take to complete the project? You know what, what won it or lost it for you? is key data moving forward for both sales and marketing teams.
00;30;02;10 – 00;30;19;09
RYAN
So when it comes to boiling this all down, we have to truly bridge the divide. Bridge that gap between sales and marketing. The first way to do that is make sure that everyone is speaking the same language. Having a shared language between them, making sure that everyone understands the metrics. An MQL versus SQL, marketing qualified lead vs sales qualified lead.
00;30;19;12 – 00;30;52;10
RYAN
Make sure people know when those things move between, between the departments.
JEN
And that they think they’re the same thing, right? Like they understand the marketing team understands that. The sales team understands it. Everybody understands it. Because different companies define those things differently. So that’s where shared systems comes into play, right? Like if you’ve got MQLs and SQLs built into the system that you’re maybe converting somebody, someone down that as they’re bringing them down the, the funnel, they understand that.
00;30;52;10 – 00;31;22;21
JEN
But having that funnel there in a system. So coming back to that CRM, a CRM is a great place to align that shared language, but then develop that process of how somebody moves through the sales cycle from beginning to end and back to being a customer again, at a later date. Understanding that system, having it in place and building a process around it, and sharing that process.
JILL
Well, and I think one of the most obvious things that sometimes gets missed is that we have shared goals.
00;31;22;23 – 00;31;44;19
JILL
We are all on the same team. There’s tension between marketing and sales and that can be used for good. The tension should be used for improving what we’re putting out there, improving our product, improving our branding, improving what we’re doing, our customer experience so the tension can be a force for good, but never losing sight of the fact that your sales and marketing teams should have some shared goals.
00;31;44;19 – 00;32;06;06
JILL
They have their own individual goals, but they also should have shared goals for the entire company, for the organization. And so we are all in the same team. And making sure that’s aligned, is really important as well.
RYAN
Okay, so now it’s time for the power of three. This is where we try to leave you with three key takeaways, following our main conversation of the day.
00;32;06;11 – 00;32;30;03
RYAN
So here are three main takeaways when it comes to aligning your sales and marketing team. First, a daily or weekly update between sales and marketing. Make sure there’s that constant flow of data between the two teams. Second, have a CRM, even a free one, and make sure you’re enforcing the usage there. That will also help with sharing of the data and making sure everybody understands where a customer or a potential lead is at in the process.
00;32;30;05 – 00;32;52;08
RYAN
And third, look at your culture. Make sure that you have a culture in which everyone does feel ownership over a customer or a potential lead. Guide that change where it’s necessary. And like Jen was saying, this might be a leadership decision. This should be something that leadership is not, not controlling, but but oversees. And making sure that the culture is is one that is is customer focused.
00;32;52;10 – 00;33;18;22
JEN
All right. It’s time for Creative Briefs. And this one is is interesting, I think? I’m just going to own up to the fact that culturally I didn’t understand this, and that I am relying on some team members to explain this. So, Ryan, I want you to pull apart and dissect the Kamala is Brat phenomenon.
00;33;18;25 – 00;33;39;18
RYAN
So, first I want to establish one thing, and that is who Charlie XCX is. When you hear that name, you’re probably like, wait, I’ve heard this, but I don’t know who she is. She is a musician. She’s been around for like, 15 years, maybe 14 ish. You’ve probably heard her songs that, like, I love it.
00;33;39;18 – 00;33;58;25
RYAN
It’s like, I don’t care, I love it.
JEN
Oh, my God, this is the first time that Ryan has sung on the podcast.
RYAN
So there’s that one. And then like the “boom clap, the beat of my heart beat goes on”. I don’t actually know the words, but those are her popular songs that you probably have heard before.
00;33;59;00 – 00;34;23;25
RYAN
They’ve been around for like, a decade. Charlie XCX is a musician who’s very popular with Gen Z girls, millennial girls. And this is not the first time I’ve said it – the gays. So the girls and the gays. She’s releasing a new album right now, and that album is called Brat. It has been floated as the album of the summer.
00;34;23;25 – 00;34;49;20
RYAN
We’re always trying to establish that mono culture, like we were talking about earlier at the beginning, that that one album, that one song, the song of the summer, the album of the summer, something that everyone can get behind. But this, this all ties in because the marketing of this album, and remember, the marketing for this is specifically to the demographic that Charlie XCX goes after those Gen Z and potentially the gays.
00;34;49;23 – 00;35;08;27
RYAN
But the marketing has been lime green, kind of like Nickelodeon Gak, or Nickelodeon slime. It’s lime green and it just says the word Brat on it. This has been very popular with her audience. They’ve been putting a lime green color filter over a lot of their over a lot of their social graphics to show support.
00;35;08;29 – 00;35;34;00
RYAN
Other brands like Hot Ones, the viral YouTube series where people eat really spicy chicken wings. They did one as well, where they did a lime green background and the words in black over it. It’s almost a stylized treatment.
JEN
I’ve seen none of this out there. Talk about monoculture, but a monoculture that’s targeted because this was all news to me.
00;35;34;03 – 00;36;04;06
RYAN
Yes, yes. And I think that that, a piece of marketing and communication falls into that, this is segmented for, for different groups. But this all brings in Kamala because, right when Kamala announced that she was going to be taking over the Democratic ticket, Kamala HQ, the Twitter account or the X account, that that kind of leads leads the campaign, they made their they made their cover photo Kamala HQ in in that green treatment.
00;36;04;08 – 00;36;28;20
RYAN
But this all stems from a few days ago Charlie XCX actually tweeted, Kamala is brat. What does that mean? If you were to read that, five years ago or ten years ago, what does that mean? But it exists for for that specific demographic of people, that follow Charlie. They know they knew about it. But what does, what does brat actually mean?
00;36;28;27 – 00;36;51;08
RYAN
This has been taking over the news. People are asking, what is brat? Jake Tapper was having some of his staff on CNN explain what brat is. The Vox. They’re all asking, what is brat? Google trend searches for brat have peaked in the last two weeks. So I kind of want to talk about messaging.
00;36;51;08 – 00;37;15;14
RYAN
And when you have a target audience, how that spillover can kind of cause some confusions because Jen and Jill, you were both saying you don’t know what this is, but, me and me and my peers are like, we’ve seen this everywhere.
JEN
Yeah. Well, it’s it’s definitely it’s the difference between a trend and a brand. Right. when Jill and I were talking earlier today, like, have you seen this?
00;37;15;14 – 00;37;31;24
JEN
Do you know what this is? No, I don’t know what this is – earlier and we kind of got into this discussion. a trend is something you can jump on. And if it’s a big enough trend and if you know how to flex with a trend, you can absolutely use that to your brand’s advantage if it fits with your brand.
00;37;32;01 – 00;37;49;26
JEN
Lots of times we’ve seen brands try to jump on a trend and it falls really flat or it doesn’t actually align. I think this aligns for her. I think it’s fleeting, too. I mean, I don’t think that that green filter will be on there for the whole, you know, whopping four months of this campaign that we have left.
00;37;49;26 – 00;38;12;17
JEN
But, you know, a brand is very different. Can your brand flex with a trend? That’s an interesting concept to dig into.
RYAN
Yeah a trend versus a brand. I think that’s a very good call out. This is like you said, this is a trend. This is not the brand of Kamala for this demographic. This is just a way that they are leveraging and tying on to an existing trend.
00;38;12;21 – 00;38;32;03
RYAN
Sometimes you see brands try to tie in to a trend, and it doesn’t necessarily work because it doesn’t feel organic. But in this case, it it’s organic. It’s not, it’s not forced. There’s not any payment behind it. Right. It’s not Charli XCX’s is people saying, hey, Kamala, HQ will give you X amount of money to promote this.
00;38;32;03 – 00;38;55;05
JEN
Or vice versa, that they’re not paying her to use her brand that she created in a way for her, for her release and her album.
RYAN
Exactly.
JEN
It is actually fairly organic. I give it two weeks, before it’s off of the campaign side of things. I think Brat lives on for a while.
00;38;55;05 – 00;39;12;21
JEN
I think, as you said, the girls and the gays are going to carry that one on for a while. But I think, I think within a week to two weeks, we see that that green filter come off the Harris campaign.
JILL
I mean, Jen pretty much summed up what we talked about earlier today about the difference between a trend and a brand.
00;39;12;21 – 00;39;30;27
JILL
And, you know, the pitfalls that you can that you need to watch out for. But, also the opportunities that if it’s a trend that works for your brand, but you have to be nimble enough to identify and figure out how your how your brand can take advantage of that.
RYAN
I think that this goes a step further into the conversation of how communication works, right?
00;39;30;28 – 00;39;51;00
RYAN
Specifically around presidential campaigns. It used to be, oh, you would get on CNN, you would get on Fox News, you would get on TV. Then it was, well, even before that it was newspaper. It was radio. You really only have one channel that you’re worrying about and you keep adding in channels. President Obama was the, the president of social media.
00;39;51;03 – 00;40;20;23
RYAN
President Trump did a great job of leveraging Twitter, right? This is a natural evolution. We’re adding in all of these other pieces. And and one could say that Kamala Harris is a candidate of memes. She’s really taking on these memes, these small, bite sized pieces that Gen-Z and millennials are sharing back and forth. She’s making it really easy to consolidate a message or or a brand or trend into one graphic that’s easily shareable.
00;40;20;25 – 00;40;39;23
RYAN
You don’t have to have a long diatribe of saying, I’m supporting this candidate because X, Y, Z, ABCD, you can just share a meme, or put a meme on your story or share it with a friend. And that’s that’s doing a lot of that work for you. Kind of the natural evolution of communication and in this case, political communication.
00;40;39;25 – 00;41;04;28
JEN
And in the end, we actually get to see the most measurable results, because we will know in four months time if voters turned out and we will know the ages of voters who turned out. So is this a flash in the pan? It’s everybody is just kind of excited right now. And then the excitement wanes. Or does this translate to actual votes in November?
00;41;05;01 – 00;41;25;27
JEN
And, you know, that is kind of the thing that I love the most about this is that it is highly measurable. It’s the highest of stakes, but it is highly measurable. And we will see directly if young voters turn out, a little or en masse. You know, one thing that I think we have to talk about here is how things have changed.
00;41;25;28 – 00;41;48;28
JEN
Ryan, you were talking about at one point in time, you went on, you know, NBC news or, you know, you did an interview or you were on the radio, that changed to social media, and now it has changed to two way communication, where as at one point in time it was a very analog one way, you know, here’s my platform, like it or leave it kind of thing.
00;41;48;28 – 00;42;20;18
JEN
Communication is now two way and much more instantaneous. And it’s not always just words, right. It can be emojis on your social media handle or on a post, and that can indicate where you lean or where your preferences lie. It’s a fascinating change in how we communicate. and it also shows how fast things change now versus when things – change used to be generational, and now change happens within a matter of moments.
00;42;20;20 – 00;42;51;00
JEN
And that’s the world we live in now. And I think that this Kamala is Brat campaign is is a really good example of how fast something can happen and how fast it might pass.
JILL
Okay, I think I’m following, but Ryan, I’m old. What is brat?
RYAN
What is brat? This has been Googled. This is been written about quite a few times, but it goes back to what Charlie XCX, basically, has determined what she thinks brat is.
00;42;51;02 – 00;43;16;26
RYAN
We’ve all heard the word before, and it’s like, oh, a spoiled, a spoiled kid. Someone throwing a tantrum and their parent giving in and kind of caving to the tantrum and being like, oh, they’re just they’re just a little brat, a snot nosed brat, etc.. but Charlie is reclaiming the term. She’s taking it back and she’s saying a brat is is that girl or that person who likes to party and do dumb things from time to time, but she still holds herself together.
00;43;16;26 – 00;43;40;24
RYAN
Like, sure, she might have a breakdown, but also, within ten minutes she’ll be just fine. She just needed a few minutes to herself. She kind of parties through it lots of times. Very blunt, volatile, oversharing. It’s kind of a conglomerate of – this is a millennial talking about Gen Z – but kind of what they’re known for, they’re known for, being very blunt.
00;43;40;25 – 00;43;57;01
RYAN
They’re known for having fun and not being afraid of who they are and being themselves. I think that this word is trying to embody a whole generation, and and a lot of people are latching on to it. They’re saying like, yes, I’m not a zoomer, I’m not Gen Z, I’m brat. So brat is no longer a noun.
00;43;57;01 – 00;44;18;01
RYAN
It is a verb. It is something that you do. You can say that’s brat or, you don’t have to say you’re being a brat. You can just, you can use it as an adjective. Brat is everything in summary. Brat is everything.
JEN
Ryan, that comes right back to the monoculture discussion. I mean, last summer it was Barbie.
00;44;18;01 – 00;44;43;12
JEN
This summer it’s brat. And it changes in a heartbeat. And that’s, that’s just the way the world changes. How quickly things change. Now, these things do have lasting effects, and they are part of the zeitgeist once they’re out there. But they fade fast, too. So it ties back to can a brand tie into one of these trends, capitalize on it, and know when to get off that train?
00;44;43;14 – 00;45;08;18
JEN
That that’s a really important thing. Is, is knowing when it’s appropriate for you and when it is suddenly, not to your advantage anymore. And at de Novo, Ryan will always be brat. Ryan is brat.
RYAN
I love it. I will claim that in a heartbeat.
RYAN
So that’s it for today, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our Think Fresh on aligning your sales and marketing teams.
00;45;08;18 – 00;45;29;02
RYAN
Many thanks also to Jill Mast. Jill, thanks for joining us today on the podcast.
JILL
Hey, thanks for having me, Ryan. I appreciate you, and the other youngins here keeping me up to speed on all the current cultural cool trends. So I’m not totally lame to my kids.
JEN
Jill, so glad you were here with us today. And to represent, let’s just say, an older generation.
00;45;29;02 – 00;45;48;26
JEN
And I’m still just going to use brat the same way I have always used it in conjunction with my children. So they don’t need to know.
JILL
They don’t realize that we’re using it in two different ways.
RYAN
Wait, so when you say Ryan is brat, which one do you mean? Jen?
JEN
I plead the fifth on that one.
00;45;48;28 – 00;46;11;11
JEN
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Think Fresh.
RYAN
And remember, the conversation does not have to end here. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Review our show on whatever you listen to your podcast on, or share all your marketing trials and triumphs by shooting us an email at info@thinkdenovo.com with the subject line “Dear de Novo” so we don’t miss it.
00;46;11;13 – 00;46;32;00
JEN
And while you wait eagerly for our next episode, you can get your fix by checking out our blog, Fresh Thinking blog.thinkdenovo.com. Stay tuned for more engaging conversations, laughs, and of course, marketing brilliance and me making fun of Ryan in the next episode to come.
RYAN
Here’s to fresh thinking, sparking creativity and never being boring. Bye friends.
00;46;32;03 – 00;46;36;29
JEN
Are we swearing on this or no?
Creative Briefs:
How Kamala Harris became part of Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’ summer
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/kamala-harris-brat-meaning-mean-slang-charli-xcx-what-does-hq-rcna163026
Kamala HQ X Account:
https://x.com/kamalahq
