Maura Rivera & Kishore Kothandaraman & Shannon Duffy 33 min

CMO.ai


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Okay, so hi everyone and welcome to our CMO roundtable. My name is Mora and the

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CMO here at Qualified.

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And I am joined by two incredible marketing leaders. We have Shannon, who's the

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CMO at Asana. Hello, Shannon.

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All right.

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And we have Kasur, who's the co-founder of GoldCast. So welcome you guys.

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Hi, Mora. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Shannon.

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Yeah, great to be here.

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So I am so excited about this session because Asana and GoldCast are two of my

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favorite pieces

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of technology. And they're two of the pieces of tech that are absolutely

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integral to Pipeline Summit AI.

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Coming to life, Asana behind the scenes leading up to it and then GoldCast, of

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course, as our streaming platform.

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So super excited to talk with you guys about all things AI and what's on your

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mind from a marketing perspective.

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So before we go in to kind of how you're folding AI into your strategies for

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next year, one thing

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that's super exciting is you guys have all brought new AI products into market

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over the last couple

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months. So we'd love to tell the audience a little bit about kind of what your

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AI products and

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capabilities are before we go in. Kasur, you guys just launched GoldCast

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Content Lab just a few weeks

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ago. Can you tell the audience a little bit about that and kind of how it works

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from an AI perspective?

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Yeah, for sure. I think the whole context behind the launch was that it's so

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tough to have these kinds

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of conversations, right? And I at least believe that events produce such

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authentic content for

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marketers. And a lot of times it goes to the website as an on-demand content

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for 60 minutes.

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And nobody really tries to consume that because it's so long and it's so tough

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to consume.

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The whole sort of concept behind the AI content lab is how do we take these

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video recordings from

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events, be it field marketing events, webinars, product launches and use AI to

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generate snackable

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content post event, be it video clips, be it blog post, etc. So that we can

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actually generate a lot

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more views and engagement because people are like us are used to a lot more

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short form clips,

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etc. That's a quick sort of overview of the launch. We're excited to see how

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the customer's using

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the product, but yeah, that's a quick overview. That's awesome. You guys are

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evolving from an

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event platform to a full content platform. Yes. Shannon, tell us about Asana AI

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. Nothing

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this event would be possible without Asana. And you guys have kind of woven in

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a lot of cool

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little tips and tricks and shortcuts into the platform. Can you tell us a

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little bit about how

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you guys have woven AI into the Asana platform? Yeah, absolutely. So Asana is

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the world's leading

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enterprise work management platform. So we essentially make work easier, make

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more transparent,

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work more productive for everyone. And so AI has seamlessly kind of layered

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into our platform.

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So if you think about how AI makes it easier for people to do things, AI and As

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ana tell us,

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it makes it easier for people to do the work. We like to say it helps people

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work smarter by

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automating things like status updates, by automating things like the health

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check to see how well

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your project is doing. All of this is really designed to automate the more

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tedious stuff. So

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humans can really do the creative stuff that we all love in our jobs day to day

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Well, I think the kind of unifying factor between both of your AI products is

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it's just making

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everything faster and more efficient. What I'd love to hear about is how you

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brought those products

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to life into the market. I remember a year ago was kind of, we did our first

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pipeline summit and

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then a few weeks later was chat GPT emerged. And there was this frenzy of how

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are we going to

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weave this into our product roadmap? How are we going to bring this to market?

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How are we going

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to be seen as innovators with our customers? But there's this fine line that

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you also don't want to

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build or launch products too quickly that it's seen as just an AI flash in the

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pan or trend or

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something that wasn't well thought out. And there's been so much rapid

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development from an AI perspective.

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We've all run broadened AI products to life this past year. I would love to

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hear from you,

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Shannon, how did you think about bringing your AI products to life and ensuring

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that there was

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trust with your customer base when you kind of revealed your new AI

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functionality?

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Yeah, I love this question because I think again, I know exactly what you're

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talking about,

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where I like all the enough was everyone knew about AI and we'd all been

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talking about AI

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from a product roadmap perspective. But all of a sudden it was like, boom, go,

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what's your story,

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what's your launch? So I think for us, the good news about Asana is we had been

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thinking about

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that for a long time and the way our platform or infrastructure was built, the

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work graph,

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it was really easy for AI to be a really ineffective tool. I think a couple

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things though, I think

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people were a little skeptical, like what is this? Like, the meme you would

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hear is like,

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our robots going to take over a type of thing. And so at Asana, when we

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launched the AI capabilities

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in our product, we also launched some principles guiding principles for how we

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think of AI.

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And you can read them on our website, but fundamentally, we believe, we use the

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term AI has joined the team

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that AI is not going to replace us and what makes us unique and special and the

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ability we have as

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marketers or other sort of professionals or knowledge workers in the space.

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What we are going to do

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is help it make it easier for us to unlock that amazing creativity, the things

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that we do on top

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of it. And so that's when we were bringing our products up to market and we

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were launching it.

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That was really important for the messaging is that this is going to make you

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more productive.

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You're these two things working together to really drive maximum business

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productivity

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versus an either or and throw at everything you've been doing. AI is the future

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. Is it future?

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Yes, but it is bringing us along from where we've come in the past.

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That's fantastic. How about you, Kishore? Did you guys, did you see any hesit

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ancy from your

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customers as you released the new products? I know it's one from our team as

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kind of part of the

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user testing experience along the way. But how is it received from your

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customer base?

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Yeah, so I think we have, I would say, 50% customers from the wind market

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segment

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who are a lot more interested to adopt it anything very quickly because these

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teams are so lean

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and the CMOs and CEOs have such large mandate for next year. So it's time to

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figure out how do I

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do more with less. So they're very quick to adopt these tools and they didn't

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have a lot of

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inclination towards security or data privacy, etc. But as you go to enterprise

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companies,

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the first question that we get asked is how do we make sure that this data

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doesn't get used

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for other models being used out there? So how do we have a very private cloud

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model

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ensured that make sure that these models are used only for the air client and

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not for other

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clients becomes a very important mandate that you have to get out of the market

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So there's a difference in response we saw from mid-market enterprise clients.

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But overall,

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I think to watch hand-and-set, I think the messaging we used was it'll help you

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save so much time

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compared to ensuring that your teams get replaced. And that is very powerful

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enough for marketing

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teams to adopt the tools that they're using. Yeah, I mean, especially right now

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, we all could

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use more time, more resources. Shannon, I'd love to kind of double-click on

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something you said.

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And we were talking about this during our prep call. Like a year ago, there was

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this AI revolution

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and we all were like, is it going to replace people on our team? Is it going to

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replace our

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time and make things better? And we just thought the whole world was going to

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change. And then we

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look at today and we've learned a lot over the last year. A lot of the tech

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that we use has

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unveiled their AI technology. We've started to use it more in our everyday

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lives. But I don't know

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if the world has changed maybe as drastically as we thought it would a year ago

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today. What's your

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take on kind of how AI is helping marketers and how impactful has it been this

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past year?

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Yeah, I love this question too, because I think we aren't changing, right? But

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we're changing.

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And I think maybe the AI, the potential for AI is definitely something that all

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of us,

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especially those of us that have worked in tech for a long time, are like, okay

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this is definitely a paradigm shift. But again, it's like, how are we

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integrating AI into the tools

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that we stay? And so from a marketing perspective, it has not replaced by

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marketing team. Like,

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it is not replacing on that creativeness, that connection with our customer,

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that deep understanding

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of our product and the ability to make messaging, pithy and resonating and

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unique. But what it

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has done is automate things that like, I don't really enjoy doing in the first

8:20

place, right? Like,

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writing job descriptions. Now, it may not write it 100%, but if I get it 85%,

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and then I can put

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that 10, 15% on top that makes it unique to Asana or unique to what I'm looking

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for,

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it will give me thought starter ideas for a brainstorm meeting, right? Again,

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things that

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are going to like help help with time. You know, in the Asana product in

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particular,

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we are going to be launching something where if you have a project, AI can help

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write your status,

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right? Like, that's amazing. Like, you know, you have all the information in

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there, if AI can help

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make the status update, and I can kind of, you know, make it, you know, make

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sure it's correct,

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maybe add some stuff like those are really great time saving things that enable

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me to think,

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all right, how do I connect with my customers better? How do I have that

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messaging that's going

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to be, you know, in that bullseye that really connects with them? That's why I

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got into marketing

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to do. So I've seen it kind of help with like the more stuff that I didn't want

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to do anyway,

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so I can be more creative. So my team can be more creative. That's a good point

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. Being able to

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focus on those big ticket items and viewing it as more like an assistant or a

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co-pilot.

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How about you, Kishore, if you look back a year ago, has AI been more impactful

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less impactful to a marketer's life than you thought it would originally be?

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Yeah. For us, the particular use case, we're of helping marketers repurpose the

9:36

video content

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post event, right? Typically companies have these internal agencies or internal

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video teams

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who get blocked by so many video requests coming their way, right? They're just

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like constantly

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figuring out what video should I work on, etc, etc. So the whole tools of help

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marketers become

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video editors themselves so that all these internal teams can work on really

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high priority work,

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right? For example, if Craig is taking on an event tomorrow, right? Their team

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should focus on

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that particular request rather than figuring out how should we repurpose the

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webinar post

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that happened a couple of weeks back. So to Shannon's point, I think it has

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really helped

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cut down the repetitive tasks that we are all used to doing and focus our

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efforts into these

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high priority tasks so that we get our creative minds are actually used for

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that rather than working

10:22

on those things. That's how I think about it and that's how we're seeing our

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customers do it as

10:26

well. So it's exciting to see what's happening next year. The one role though,

10:30

I would say that

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we are excited about to see if it works is to scale the SDR team, right?

10:38

Sometimes SDR teams

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report into marketing, right? And there's a lot of manual work involved there

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as well, right?

10:45

In terms of figuring out contacts, how do you look at LinkedIn profiles first?

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I think reach out.

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So thinking through that also is very exciting, but that one role, I think, I

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think could also

10:54

have a lot of look through AI as a whole technology. One thing that I'd love to

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pick your brains

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on or as this new AI technology emerges, both for marketing and for sales team,

11:05

how willing are you guys to let go of some things? This is one thing I've

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thought about a lot because

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as marketers, we want to scale, we want to be more efficient, but I'll speak

11:15

for myself. I'm kind

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of a control freak. I want to make sure that I don't know if I want to let

11:21

email loose on my

11:22

buyers to write the whole message and do it all for me. I want to make sure our

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buyers are seeing

11:29

the right message and they're seeing at the right time and it's personalized

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and it's high quality.

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That's something that's so important to all of our brands. How do you guys

11:37

think about letting go

11:39

a little bit to AI? Is that just where we're headed? How do you balance AI that

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gives you that

11:45

feedback loop versus AI that you just can train but then send off and cross

11:50

your fingers that it

11:51

works? I think that's the thing that's the hardest for me is learning to let go

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a little bit when

11:56

it's customer-facing content. Shen, you go fast.

11:59

Yeah, I think that's really... I totally. Maybe there's something that we have

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in common all going

12:05

into marketing with a little bit of control freakiness. I agree. I kind of look

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at it two ways. One,

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for me, it's been how do I empower my team to experiment, which is not exactly

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what you're asking,

12:16

but it's similar because they're creating this content that's customer-facing.

12:20

It's like,

12:20

how do we create a culture of experimentation and wanting to understand this

12:26

and take it from the

12:27

unknown to the known from our marketing? That's a culture of stuff that we're

12:30

driving.

12:31

I think from your perspective, though, that goes back to, I play with it a lot

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and it can

12:38

write really good things and it also can write things that maybe aren't perfect

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yet. For me,

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it's like, how do we use it as a way to get a few steps faster down the line,

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not from zero

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to completely done? That's where the humans come in. That's where the people

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have come in that

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can vet it and can really understand how it is going. That's why I don't see us

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giving it over

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right away or anytime soon, but it gives us ideas to try some new things and it

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will help us do

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the basics faster. That's what I really want to encourage the team to use and

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experiment.

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Who knows? Maybe someday we'll write it completely, but we're not there quite

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yet.

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It really is the humans plus AI together. Just this one point that I do watch

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on my channel and said, I was actually recently thinking that the amount of

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steps it takes to

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create a campaign, be it a landing page, be it a copy, be it a creative asset,

13:30

the amount of steps

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it takes to get there, sometimes it's so hard for a CEO or a CXO to understand

13:37

the steps involved

13:38

in those kinds of things. There are a bunch of tasks that just get done every

13:43

month, every week,

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all the whole algorithm reporting, except for so I'm excited about automating

13:49

those things in

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general so that the teams can free up to do high value tasks rather than doing

13:53

it for the sake

13:54

of doing it. This is just one point I'm very deeply involved in looking at our

13:59

own campaigns

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for next year's planning to ensure that those things can be taken out of

14:03

someone's plate.

14:04

I think it's been an interesting time for us as marketers because we've all had

14:09

to rethink

14:10

our strategies, our tech stack, how we do things where there's probably room

14:14

for more efficiencies.

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I feel like it's pushed us to not just do the same old the way we used to

14:20

because sure we'd love to

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talk more about quality, kind of what we were going back to you earlier because

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with the evolution of

14:26

content lab, you guys, we were saying you've gone from an events platform to a

14:31

full content platform

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and I think we're at this interesting place in both our consumer lives and our

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business lives

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where there is content everywhere. We go into Netflix, we go into all the

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streaming platforms,

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there's so much content there and you go into LinkedIn and all of a sudden

14:45

every company can

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create videos with a snap, they can create blog posts in a snap. So how do you

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think about making

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sure that you're still focused on quality from a content perspective and how do

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you think that in

14:57

the coming year, certain companies can make sure that they're still creating

15:01

compelling content,

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kind of cutting through the noise because it's pretty noisy out there right now

15:05

Well, so very honestly, we're gonna figure that out to be honest with you, we

15:08

're also going through

15:09

the same exercise of what is working and what's not working and it's so tough

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to generate pipeline

15:13

right now. It's just so hard, this economy to figure out what's working and

15:17

what's not working.

15:18

From our sense, I think what we are excited about is I think two things are

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happening. One is

15:24

in general without or with AI, the cost of content production has just

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decreased so much

15:30

right with iPhone, anybody can record a content and post on LinkedIn and AI

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just supercharged

15:35

the whole content editing part in general. I think the bet we are making is how

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do we make

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sure that we bring authentic conversations like what we're having right now

15:48

right with potential

15:49

prospects with potential customers and bring that voice to the market right and

15:53

in general,

15:54

the one particular area where I'm excited about is video as an asset. I think

15:59

multiple research

16:00

have proven that video is a lot more effective in helping people retain the

16:04

information than

16:05

just text. So how do we bring such conversations like this and do a lot more

16:10

derivative content

16:11

out of these videos is one thing we're thinking about and I think that probably

16:15

is what the future

16:16

will look like in terms of how do you become a lot more human first in your

16:20

content approach

16:21

because everything will look the same after a point of time in some form. So

16:26

that's like the

16:26

big bet we are making in the next year or so. How about you Shannon, this is a

16:31

bit of a pivot

16:32

just it doesn't need to be AI specific but what are you guys focused on from a

16:35

content perspective

16:36

to kind of cut through the noise? Yeah so there's so much content right like

16:40

there's content like

16:42

we produce there's content that I have to consume and I think you know going

16:46

back to like you know

16:47

AI humans what does it mean for marketers like I have to tell you like it's I

16:51

don't want to say

16:52

it's easy to create content because it's not but it is emotion that most

16:55

marketers are comfortable

16:56

with. What is not as easy is creating content that actually relevant is reson

17:01

ates with your customers

17:02

and that they find differentiated and meaningful and so what I've kind of been

17:06

pushing my team

17:07

for it's like it's not enough enough to create a deck or a podcast or a you

17:12

know session for

17:13

event whatever whatever whatever flavor of content fine there is no substitute

17:19

for sitting across

17:20

the table at someone who has a you know virtual checkbook that they can buy

17:24

your you know product

17:25

service whatever and see how they respond to it right and so that's where it's

17:28

like it's less

17:29

about like creating the content it's more about like is this the right message

17:34

and meaningful and

17:35

that's something that AI can't do yet right like that's not something that like

17:39

I can create a deck

17:40

and it can like help me iterate but what we can't do is actually sit with one

17:42

of our customers and

17:43

tell me if it resonates or not and so that's where it's like how do we do less

17:47

better different

17:49

like that that's what we're really focused on so it's not just about flooding

17:52

the channels it's

17:52

like if we have three really good things that nobody but a son that can offer

17:56

and a value

17:57

prop that that people can only get from us that's when we've achieved success

18:00

and that's what we're

18:01

focused on for next year and whereas AI come in well AI is going to help us

18:04

maybe with some ideas

18:05

and help us with the basics but it's not going to crack that magic quote white

18:08

yes and now

18:09

so the humans come in well that that's so well said well i'm sure you really

18:12

were i added this

18:13

mistake very early on where you have a checklist of things that that team has

18:16

to produce every month

18:18

every month three blog articles one podcast one event and i've just just doesn

18:23

't work after a

18:24

point of time so less things different high quality to watch and said i think

18:28

that totally

18:29

resonates with what at least we hope to do next year yeah probably because it

18:33

confuses your customer

18:34

and it confuses your field too right like most of us if you're like having you

18:38

know like a b2b

18:38

motion you're your salespeople consume your content just as much your customers

18:42

do you have a lot of

18:43

stuff that's not differentiated they don't know what to use they don't know

18:45

what to set

18:46

them with their customers right so it just is like composed of even worse well

18:49

i think it's a time

18:51

where people could easily turn to quantity because it's easier to produce now

18:55

but that

18:56

a point you guys is how do we focus on quality how do we focus on the messaging

18:59

that resonates and

19:00

those and i think also distribution like this is something we can be guilty of

19:04

as well you create

19:05

this great piece you consider it you mark it done in a sauna because nothing

19:08

feels better than

19:09

marking a project not in a sauna but but but the project is not done then the

19:15

project needs to be

19:16

done when you when you have hit certain kpi's in terms of eyeballs or

19:21

engagement or metrics i think

19:22

that's something we're trying to really push ourselves on is that distribution

19:26

model of how

19:26

can we make sure we're thinking about that as well just to what this one point

19:29

you know one of our

19:31

i think uh small angel investors since article recently where he said this

19:35

company used ai to

19:37

generate like thousand pieces of content every month and the SEO went up by

19:41

like 100 percent or

19:42

whatever right and and those things really sort of create FOMO amongst the team

19:45

figuring out should

19:46

we also do that right but doesn't work in the long term so i i just think

19:49

quality doesn't work

19:51

in a lot of these areas we'll just instead of that's great well i think you

19:56

guys have started

19:57

talking about looking forward to 2024 we're all in budget planning we're in

20:02

strategic planning for

20:03

next year one question somebody asked me recently that i'd love to ask you guys

20:07

is

20:08

are you gonna have a line item in your budget for ai experimentation is that

20:12

something that resonates

20:13

with you uh she and i would love to start with you so i think it does it does

20:18

right and i they

20:18

talked about building that culture of experimentation and feeling like wanting

20:22

to get more comfortable

20:23

with and really pushing the boundaries of this and what it means for marketers

20:26

right because i feel

20:26

like no one has figured it out so it's like why don't we ask like let's let's

20:29

make sure right here's

20:30

what i will say them we're not like i'm really looking at my vendors and being

20:33

like what is

20:34

your ai strategy right it's less about like buying a new vendor that's going to

20:38

fix ai it's like

20:39

no no like if you are going to be a strategic vendor to me a strategic partner

20:43

in driving like

20:44

marketing business telling me how ai is going to supercharge the tools i

20:48

already use today once

20:50

i'm comfortable with that are integrated in my system so that's the

20:52

conversation that that i'm

20:53

having less about is there something new new ai thing that i need to buy hmm

20:59

how about you kashore

21:01

yeah similar but i we don't have a line item in the budget but the three areas

21:06

that we are

21:06

actively looking at tools to help us in general is one that's campaign

21:10

operations in general right

21:11

can be effectively supercharged or campaign ops from landing pages etc that is

21:16

one second is you

21:18

know other tools like qualified abm platforms that can help in identifying

21:22

account signals

21:23

based on like a lot of data available in the market to see which account should

21:25

be go after

21:26

a third is just content distribution in general right how do we make sure that

21:30

we increase our

21:30

distribution from offer content so overall three areas you're looking at but no

21:35

line item in general

21:36

in our budget item that's great we're thinking about it the same way you need

21:40

the vendors that

21:41

you trust to have a point of view you need them to weave it into their

21:45

technology it's not just

21:46

buying some flashy new thing that can help you do the thousand blog posts it's

21:50

making sure

21:51

the tech you guys are already using has that woven in kashore would love to

21:55

kind of expand on

21:56

you're talking about some of your pipe gen strategies and how you guys are

22:00

thinking about

22:01

account identification um how are you thinking about using ai to help you with

22:06

pipeline generation

22:08

as a go as we go into 2024 anything that you're super excited about it's a good

22:12

question we're also in terms of pipe gen i think one thing we are actively

22:19

looking into is

22:20

we have so much data in terms of who's doing what across a different kinds of

22:26

activities right

22:27

a let's say for example octa right somebody from octa came to an event they

22:30

went to the website

22:31

so we are just figuring out how do we identify buying groups uh in general and

22:36

what they engage

22:37

with with different kinds of content and what does it work to get them to a

22:41

pipeline stage right

22:42

is it an event plus an str motion or is it a different playbook so just trying

22:47

to figure out

22:47

if there are any patterns to see hey this account at this particular segment at

22:52

this particular size

22:53

needs four to five touch points and these involve a bcd to get there that's the

22:58

kind of math we

22:58

are doing it to ensure that we are optimizing our strategy uh but there are a

23:03

few more things

23:04

on the content distribution side as well right in terms of using our video

23:07

assets to help us

23:09

create more personalized video content for their prospects and syndica across

23:13

to them but um

23:15

those are the two main things we're experimenting with right now nothing that

23:19

increased yes up now

23:19

how about you shinin what's top of mind for you as you think about pipe gen

23:24

which is

23:25

p1 always for cmo's but it's been hard this last year if you have your heart

23:29

that are

23:30

tried and true for you well so just what i was saying it's probably like

23:34

unpopular burning like i

23:34

think next year i think last last year was was hard for all marketers i think i

23:40

don't see it

23:41

i don't see the sky's opening with joy and for marketers anytime soon so in

23:46

some ways that's bad

23:46

in some ways i do think it is it is taught us i mean we're gonna get back to

23:51

basics and it goes back to

23:52

what is our message what is our value and how do we tell that as clearly and

23:58

hit the lead and

23:59

emotionally as possible to our customers and so for us it's like you know

24:03

rebuilding the playbook on

24:05

how you connect with these people where where are the events that you meet them

24:09

what is the

24:10

message that you tell them how do you show them similar customer stories right

24:14

and really building

24:15

campaigns around that like there's elements that we need to make sure we have

24:18

in each campaign for

24:19

it to be successful it's the message the customer story it's the it's the um

24:23

that the medium or the

24:24

venue that we're doing and just being laser focused on what is resonating with

24:28

our customers so

24:29

it and then again it's like maybe not a new motion but ais hope you'll see that

24:33

i know uh somebody was talking about the when it's spring and there's snow

24:39

everywhere and you're

24:40

looking for those shoots of grass you're like i think i see when like i think i

24:44

see spring is coming

24:45

but we don't know if it is yet so i think we're all kind of bracing for a

24:49

longer winter but i do

24:51

think we've learned a lot this last year of like the back to basics what works

24:56

what doesn't how do we

24:59

because you know rewind two years ago or three years ago we and more euphoric

25:03

times we were more

25:05

indulgent we were probably spending more we probably had bigger teen but this

25:09

year it was kind of a

25:10

reset and i think we're entering 2024 probably with more confidence than we

25:14

entered 2023 2023 the

25:17

world changed ai emerged it was kind of scary and now it's like okay we kind of

25:22

know what we're

25:23

probably getting that over the next six months i told and i will say one thing

25:27

though like the

25:28

difference for me which has been like events are back and in person events

25:33

right like and that to me

25:34

it's like okay like we kind of missed that for several years with covid and of

25:38

course for marketers

25:39

we did amazing virtual events and people still go to virtual events there's

25:42

value in that but like

25:43

having those forums to really engage with your customers and bring them

25:48

together like we have

25:50

seen tremendous success and that's a huge cornerstone of our strategy next year

25:54

it's like getting in

25:55

front of people and getting that feedback which is still that sort of like that

25:58

special secret

25:59

sauce of marketing that we love so much yes we missed it and Shannon i'd love

26:02

to hear any type

26:04

of event that you're particularly excited about because we're doing our

26:06

planning for next year

26:07

and we're looking at trade shows we're looking at owned events that are larger

26:11

customer conferences

26:12

you know executive dinners like bringing those back for deal acceleration is

26:16

there a certain

26:17

bucket we're doing all of them because we've seen if you talk about those green

26:22

shoots tomorrow

26:23

we're seeing the green shoots with all of them if that makes sense and so i

26:25

look at them and

26:26

sort of like kind of like three buckets like you said there is you know at

26:30

scale which are the big

26:31

trade shows they're sort of more targeted which is the industry strategy and

26:34

how do you have make

26:35

sure you then if you go to industry events it's not just enough to go to

26:38

industry event how which

26:39

what's your demo in that industry what are your use cases in the industry those

26:43

dinners for you know

26:44

pipe mat and relationship building and also asana piloted our first buyer event

26:49

this past month

26:50

like our own call it the work innovation summit and that's tremendous like it

26:53

is our moment to

26:54

own the stage our moment to really you know put a stake in the ground and talk

26:58

about our point of

26:59

view and that was you know very very well received so how do we scale and grow

27:03

that program over the

27:04

next year that's great and kashore events are obviously in your wheelhouse you

27:08

guys kind of

27:08

grew up during covid you took under stage with virtual events but i know you

27:13

guys are expanding

27:14

into in-person events i think we're using your field marketing um let reg page

27:18

for something

27:19

coming up um so how are you thinking about the balance of virtual versus in-

27:22

person events

27:23

especially as we go into 2024 harverson marathi i think so one the key buckets

27:29

of investment for

27:30

us from an event standpoint is we'll do digital but we are going big or a few

27:35

conferences earlier

27:37

used to spray and pray that let's go to every trade show do a small party with

27:41

some partners

27:41

and it doesn't didn't work so doing few you know important events like for us

27:46

to guard they're

27:46

going big on them and then a lot of them is smaller dinners and events i just

27:51

particularly

27:52

believe that the smaller road shows and dinners are a lot more effective than

27:56

spending a million

27:56

dollars or a couple of million on a on a big conference right i just think that

28:01

those connections

28:02

are just so tough to replicate and it's easier to form a point of view with

28:04

those people uh so

28:06

our strategies around go big on a few conferences plan these smaller intimate

28:11

field marketing events

28:11

and approaches across a few cities and then use digital to cover the awareness

28:15

standpoint and get

28:16

more people know about it just that's i would just add one thing on that like

28:19

because like

28:21

well we're finding it's not enough to do a dinner right like i can go to any

28:24

restaurant i can

28:25

do my i can have dinner by myself like it's like what are we talking about like

28:29

what is the topic

28:30

what is the subject who are the people i'm going to meet and that's like that's

28:33

what i'm seeing

28:34

separates sort of a dinner from a strategic pipe maturation event is what are

28:38

we talking about

28:39

who am i meeting what am i taking away at the end of that dinner no that's a

28:43

great point sure

28:44

and on that point just to add to the point we did a multiple different formats

28:48

one is a small

28:49

happy art which nobody came and one is a format where we had a panel discussion

28:53

with the customer

28:54

talking about how their lives are going to be changed by a particular topic and

28:58

people were a

28:59

lot more receptive to that because they hit learning something for dinner and

29:01

they're not just

29:02

taken like you know good food it's some learning involved in those dinners as

29:05

well so very very

29:06

effective format if you're thinking about these field dinners and road shows i

29:09

have a parallel

29:10

discussion and then and a small breakout after that that's the magic when you

29:14

can get a customer

29:15

in like a late stage prospect talking to each other there's nothing

29:18

so we're going to close out but would love to hear crystal ball as you look to

29:25

2024

29:27

where do you what do you think is next for AI in marketing and if you don't

29:31

have a game changing

29:32

answer that's okay too but where do you think AI is going to take us as

29:35

marketers next year

29:36

shall many thoughts from you i think it's going to continue to evolve i think

29:43

it will i think it

29:44

will start evolving a little bit faster i think the marketing departments that

29:49

are going to like i

29:50

don't want to say win but are truly going to like difference with it themselves

29:53

or the ones are

29:54

going to build a culture of experimentation and comfortableness with the

29:58

unknown and really

30:00

revolutionized revolutionized how they how they change the way they do

30:04

marketing how they can crack

30:05

that code and maybe getting that content just a little like more precise more

30:10

emotionally

30:10

connection and so it's kind of be a kind of race a little bit but i kind of

30:13

think of that is fun to

30:15

figure that out and then it's really going to be for all those tools that we

30:18

use every day it's

30:19

like how quickly can the vendors that we use we all have similar text how can

30:23

they put that

30:25

technology into make our lives easier it's awesome you know i wish a world more

30:30

aware we have

30:31

you know a co-pilot for everyone offers where i can just ask questions and it

30:34

sort of magically

30:35

throws me answers for example if a campaign gets over right i did just ask

30:39

question how many of my

30:41

target accounts gave to the event and it just answers me a question and stuff

30:44

going to a marketing

30:45

ops post and getting a report or something like that right so really exciting

30:49

investing

30:49

advancements happening in the whole space but i also want to make sure that you

30:53

know folks

30:54

don't get pressurized to update technologies you know it's not it's not a lifes

30:59

aver or a

31:00

game saver it obviously helps in a lot of ways but i think we started to our

31:03

own individual jobs

31:05

as well and apart from the whole the transformation is happening like

31:09

kashore my answer would be very similar to yours is like generative analytics

31:13

like how did this

31:14

work and just spit it out without having to like dig through the data tap your

31:18

bark vinox

31:18

person shoulder um well this is fantastic kashore chan and thank you guys so

31:23

much for joining us today

31:25

at pipeline summit ai at our cmo round table again huge fans of both cold cast

31:29

and asana so it's

31:30

really fun to all be together in person um and we'll see you next time yeah

31:42

thank you ronah

31:43

so

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