The Benefits of Refreshing Brand for Demand
TJ Waldorf, CMO at 1WorldSync, shares why he is embracing a total brand refresh and how it’s benefited him and his team.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison and I am joined by a very special guest,
longtime listener as well.
I have to say, TJ, how are you?
>> Good man. How are you?
Good to see you.
>> Great to see you.
Super excited to chat today.
We've known each other for a while and
getting all your thoughts to our visionary audience is really exciting.
Today's show, as always brought to you by our friends at Qualified.
Qualified is the number one conversational sales marketing platform for
companies revenue teams that use Salesforce, go to Qualified.com,
right now to learn more.
TJ, first question, what was your first job in marketing?
>> Man, I had to think about this.
I could go all the way back to when I was marketing and selling at a lemonade
stand,
but maybe that's you're not looking for that quite that far back.
I started my marketing career in graphic design and visual communications and
right out of school I worked at an office max in the copy center.
And so I was doing a lot of design work for small businesses and personal
events and
that kind of stuff.
So I think that's if I go all the way back, that's probably where I started.
>> And flash forward to today.
Tell us about your current role at One World Sync.
>> Yeah, so I am the chief marketing officer at One World Sync.
I've been with the company for a little over three years now.
And in the marketing order, you have kind of your usual suspect in terms of
roles and
whatnot.
And then I also have some BDRs as well as a group we call community enablement,
which we can kind of talk more about.
It's basically a team that works with our retailers to help mobilize and
activate the brands and suppliers that sell into those retailers.
So it's a pretty interesting model and
wasn't something that I was too familiar with before joining One World Sync.
But very, very important part of the overall marketing organization here.
>> Yeah, super fascinating company and go to market.
Let's get into that in the trust tree.
This is where we go and feel honest and trusted and
you can share those deepest, darkest pipeline secrets.
Zoom it out, what does One World Sync do?
>> Yeah, so we actually just went through a company kind of repositioning
project and
brand refresh.
And the way that we think about what we do is we really are the leaders in
what we call product content orchestration.
So when you think of all of the product data and
product content that brands have to share with retailers or
other content recipients, whether that's supply chain and logistics data all
the way through all the content that you might see on,
walmart.com or amazon.com to engage and
convert a buyer to actually click by now and add to the cart and click by now.
We're really the behind the scenes technology that supports all of that.
So it's super, super interesting to think about it from a consumer standpoint
and
just really understand the complexities that go into not only getting physical
products from one place to another, but how that works online as well.
>> Yeah, absolutely, endlessly fascinating.
You and I have talked at length about it,
just how complex of a product it really is and how many stores and
shelves and digital land spaces and everything are touched by one world sink.
And it was pretty mind blowing to me.
>> Yeah, I mean, we just acquired a company that does e-commerce analytics for
Walmart and one of the interesting things that we learned after that
acquisition
or during the acquisition process is that if you think of walmart.com as a
consumer, you're thinking of one e-commerce website.
But the reality is there are over 4600 walmart.coms because they're localized.
And if you're going to buy something online and pick it up in the store,
you need to find that product next to where you live to go buy it.
So you can think of the complexities of how does a brand understand
how their products are performing in each one of those separate markets and
stores, it's layers upon layers of complexity and we help solve all that.
>> So who are your types of customers?
>> Man, we have, today we have over 17,000 customers.
So if you can imagine that scale and just kind of the span of the size of
customers that we work with, brands that you think of all the way up to
the PNGs of the world down to Ian's cookies, right?
So if you single sole operator, maybe one or two people on the team,
you're selling your famous cookies into Walmart, we're probably helping you too
>> And yeah, and so of those customers, obviously,
size being a key part there, what does that buying committee look like?
>> Yeah, so it's changed.
So I've been with the company for about three years now and
when I joined, the buying committee was a pretty specific department and
that department, typically you'd see titles like master data.
And those were the people within the brand or the retailer that were
focused mostly on the supply chain logistics data.
So that's who we sold to, right?
And that was a very specific piece of technology and
capability that we sold.
Since then though, we've acquired seven companies,
we've built a lot of new technologies and capabilities within our platform.
And today we sell not only to the master data teams and
the IT teams, but marketing, e-commerce, sales,
and all the different constituents within those groups.
So the range of who we're selling to today has expanded as much or
more as we have as a company.
So it's been interesting.
>> What's your marketing strategy?
>> Yes, we think of our marketing strategy and
kind of three pillars in an overlay, which is how do we position our platform
to all these different buying groups that we sell to you today?
When I mentioned that we just went through kind of a refresh and
a repositioning project to make sure that we're resonating with those different
buying groups, that's a big part of it.
And then put in the customer at the center of everything that we do.
So through case studies, G2 reviews, so on and so forth.
And then expanding the different use cases, right?
So what are those e-commerce use cases?
What are the sales use cases that our platformer solutions can solve for today?
And then that overlay is really measuring what matters, right?
Picking what our North Star is and what the leading indicators and
put metrics and all that really are to support the other three pillars.
>> We're just sort of like pipeline generation too within that.
>> Yeah, I mean, it really fits across all three of those pillars.
But if I was to kind of drill in, right?
Like if I think of how we're expanding our use cases,
a big part of our opportunity is you can imagine with 17,000 customers
being able to go to those brands and retailers with new capabilities that
we've either acquired or that we've built and partnered hand in hand with the
sales
team really getting in front of these new buyers to get them to understand
how they can leverage more of what we do.
>> And tell me about this brand refresh that you had going on, repositioning.
How do you, why did you do it?
How did you do it?
>> Yeah, the why is really, like I said, over the last three years,
we've acquired or built a lot of new really great stuff, technology capability,
so on and so forth.
And close to a year ago, we got to a point where we're like, man,
our story and how we're positioned to the market really needs to catch up to
who we are as a business today and looking ahead, call it 24 months.
So that was really the catalyst of why we did it.
And like I said, it was close to a year in the making and
just last week on June 5th, I know the date very well, is when we went live.
So.
>> Forever etched in your memory.
>> Forever, I'm getting the tattoo next week.
So.
>> Any pieces of advice for someone going through a repositioning like that?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think, be open ideas.
That's kind of the first thing, like we partnered with a really awesome agency
to help us through this process.
And I think that was really key because you brought an objective view in, right
They led a lot of customer interviews and prospect roundtables and
took a very data driven approach to figuring all this stuff out too.
So we had our CEO involved, our chief product officer involved.
Our chief technology officers, there are a lot of people involved and really,
I think the way that you have to think of these things, these projects like
this,
is it's not a marketing project per se, it's really a company project.
So having the CEO and other leaders in the company bought in and
really helping drive the conversations was critical and I think a big part of
our success.
>> Okay, any other thoughts on strategy or
buyer committee or customers or any of that sort of stuff?
>> I think from a customer standpoint, like I said,
we try to put the customer at the center of everything we do from a marketing
perspective.
So we work really closely with our sales team again to get customers,
essentially raise their hands, partner with us on case studies or testimonials.
And I think the more, this is probably an obvious statement to your audience,
but the more that you can get the customer to tell that story and how we're
enabling their success,
it just makes everybody's job a whole lot easier.
So again, maybe a little bit of an obvious statement, but something that we
keep at the front of everything we do.
>> It is an obvious statement, but it's not an obvious implementation.
I mean, you and I have talked about this in the past about things like podcast
and video series and
webinars and customer stories and video and shooting and interviews and
how do you just sort of get those customer stories out as many places as
possible and
as many use cases like it's just really complex.
I mean, it says complex as marketing is.
So I think it's sort of it's like should should sit above all of our computers
and say, how are you telling customer stories in new, exciting, creative and
different ways?
>> Yeah, and it's like you have to build, get a build up just a big backlog of
customers that
are willing to do stuff because sometimes, you know, depending on the size of
the customer that
you're working with, just the approvals and everything that you have to go
through to get them to,
you now say, yep, you can do that.
It can take a while.
So when I have a backlog.
>> One, just in the way that you're engaging them and the format that you're
engaging them,
like that's also part of it.
I think so much we go for the, you know, there's levels to levels of engagement
with this stuff.
Like getting someone to keynote your user conference is a much different ask
than asking them to,
you know, do a shoot at their headquarters where you bring cameras in versus,
you know,
getting them to come on your podcast.
Like they're just levels to this stuff.
And it doesn't always need to be a perfectly professionally shot video,
or it doesn't always need to be, you know, something that's very informal like
a podcast,
but there's lots of different ways to do it.
But people like all the different ways.
>> Yeah, I think, I mean, I think going through COVID kind of taught us some of
these things of,
you know, if you get a customer just to, you know, pull out their iPhone and do
a quick recording
of themselves, like that stuff can still be super engaging, right?
And you piece a couple of those together and, you know, add some of your brand
elements to it.
It's, it can work really well.
So I think you got to, you got to just be open to some of those different
formats.
>> Yeah, last thing I would say on this, because I think it's really important,
is that people are bad at self diagnosing problems.
So when you, when they give a customer story, if you, if I was to just say,
hey, TJ told me what it's like to work with Caspian.
You could probably come up with some stuff, but if I started to pry at other
things
that you have problems with or that you used to have problems with,
you don't even necessarily remember some of the things that you step in back in
the day,
or, or, you know, whatever it is.
And I think that that's an important part that it takes a good investigative
approach
to those type of storytelling.
And, and that's where you get some of those like really authentic details
that you might miss.
And you can't do that with everyone.
And again, there's lots of approvals and legal is going to have to get involved
but there's ways to ask the right questions to get some, some interesting
answers.
>> Yeah.
And I'd say one last thing on that, something that we're, you know,
we're putting more focus on is it's fine if you, you know, develop a full case
study,
but like what are the, you know, juicy sound bites from that conversation,
from that case study that you really want to make sure that your sales team is,
you know, weaving into their conversations on a regular basis.
And I don't think, I don't think, at least in my experience,
marketing teams think about that enough.
It's more just, hey, here's a case study and I hope you do something with it,
right?
With the sales team.
So I think the more that you can kind of lead the horse to water, so to speak
on,
here's great content, here's how you should use it.
You know, here are different ways that you can use it to, you know,
engage new prospects or re-engage conversations that might happen with
customers a while ago.
That's work that I think marketing teams should be doing and we're certainly
trying to do that.
Yeah, I use this example a lot on the podcast, but we were talking to a CMO
where they're talking
about, you know, selling accounting software and the big pain point is that end
of quarter,
that the account is going to be there, you know, all night, right?
And their marketing was around, you know, like accounting software where you
can spend
end of quarter, you know, dinner with your family.
And it's like, that's the sort of stuff where you get that person to say,
hey, I had end of quarter stuff wrapped up, you know, I didn't have to do every
night and I got
to watch all my kids soccer games. Like, that's a really impactful emotional
quote that like,
you could put that in your ad copy and it probably is going to work well, but
you pair that with
the actual testimonial of the person saying it and it's like 10x.
100% totally agree.
All right, let's get to our next segment, the playbook, where you talk about
the tactics that
help you win, or you got to open up the playbook and talk about the tactics
that help you win.
What are your three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable budget items?
Yeah, here you ask this question. Obviously, I listen to the podcast all the
time and, you know,
I think one that that seems to get added to the cut list very early, especially
when you go through
kind of rough market conditions as brand. And I would say, you know, especially
going through
this process that we just went through to, you know, refresh our brand and rep
osition the company,
I would put that at the top of the uncuttable. I think that, you know, brand
and demand don't
often go together as tightly as they should. And, you know, we could have been
halfway through
this project and said, you know, we're going to hold because we got to make a
little bit more of an
investment. But I think that would have been a terrible idea and we didn't do
it, right? So,
you know, I would put brand, I'll put brand on that list for sure. The other
one, which is,
you know, depending on who you ask, it could be a great tactic or a terrible
one, webinars,
like webinars work great for us. We typically get five, six hundred plus, you
know, people to
register and, you know, the typical conversion rate on that to show up. And,
you know, I've had
conversations with other marketing leaders, we're like, ah, you know, webinar,
we just don't do
webinars. They, they're terrible, right? And I think you get that in your mind
because you've
joined or attended terrible webinars. Right. Just the ones where it's a pure
product pitch and,
you know, not a conversation, not a dialogue. And, you know, that's something
that we, we try to
bring into what we do. And, you know, every month and every quarter, we seem to
get more and more
people joining. So it seems like, you know, the format and the content that we
're putting out,
whether it's, you know, having a customer join us to talk about their
experience,
kind of a live case study sort of thing or, you know, other thought leadership,
they work really
well for us. So that, that would be another one. And then, you know, the last
one, I would say,
is, you know, social, I think social is a big part of what we do. And,
and when I say social, that's kind of a, a broad category, but social from
everything from,
you know, just the social that we're, we're putting out on our corporate
account to how we're
engaging the employees at One World Sync to help amplify that stuff. Right. So
we use,
we use a technology called GaggaLamp to help, you know, our sales team, for
example,
we'll push something through the platform. They click a button and they're
sharing it as well.
But getting them to think more about how the individual, each individual can
kind of
almost become a brand ambassador for One World Sync themselves and, you know,
promote what
we're doing through their own profiles. So I think that's another super
important one for us.
Yeah, to the, to the webinar piece, um, way to guess, come on to say that webin
ars need a rebrand.
Um, and I totally agree. I think that the way that people, like, what is the
difference between a
virtual event and a webinar? Like, is there even at this point, is there
anything? It's like, no.
So it's like, what's the point? What's the difference between, uh, a podcast
and a webinar? It's like,
well, there's actually quite a lot. Uh, it's a fundamentally different medium
where like,
one is designed on the go on demand. The other one is designed for real time
engagement and
attending a thing that is a moment in time. Like, and I think that we've just
webinar, like you
said, because so many people have run webinar programs, run them into the
ground, made them
bad and boring that it's like, and then they just like say like, oh, it's web
inar. I'll give a great
example. Qualified the great sponsor of this show. Um, and our best friends,
they run a series called
the pipeline summit, which is a quarterly online event, right? And it rocks. It
's like super awesome,
packed with value. We do all this stuff. It's really cool. Um, you wouldn't say
that it's a webinar,
because it's not like a single topic thing, but like that is a brilliant encaps
ulation of like,
this new thing. It's, it's both, it's, it's designed to be in real time. And so
anyways,
I say that to say like, you know, if your webinar program isn't working, you
might need to redesign
it, but also maybe that group of people wants to engage in a different way. Um,
and, and so I
think there's no one size fits all there. Yeah. I'll, I'm not a qualified
customer, but I will say,
I actually just yesterday, maybe it was this morning sent, our director of
marketing,
an example of some of the video content that they're putting out. I think it's
what I saw was
probably a snippet of that summit that they're doing, but I think that is a
great example of
like, how do you make this stuff engaging? Um, so people aren't thinking of it
as this
traditional stodgy thing that we think of as a webinar. And then for the people
who have a
traditional stodgy thing that they want to do, they can go check out a webinar.
Like, that's okay,
too. Right. Like for certain populations, like they want that exact thing. I
want to go on,
yeah, 45 minutes. You know exactly what I'm going to get. Um, so yeah, whereas
like some people
want to listen to a podcast on the go, some people want to attend a live event
so they can ask questions
like, uh, or, or a live webinar so they can ask questions in real time. So any
who, um,
cool to hear that that webinars are working for y'all. Any, any tips for how
you're doing them,
right? You know, one of the things that we're doing, and this is relatively new
and our,
we'll give a shout out to our product, um, marketing manager, Scott, he, uh,
you know, if I, if we think
back to the conversation we have, or had earlier about expanding our use cases,
one of the things
that we've started doing is, um, you know, asking our kind of legacy core buyer
audience that would
show up to our webinars to go, you know, tap their friends in marketing or e-
commerce or sales
on the shoulder and say, Hey, you should also join us because I think you get
value, right? And
put a little insight about there. But, you know, we've seen in the last few 25
to 30% of the folks
that registered attend are coming from that referral. So we're starting to get
in front of
some of these other buyers and, and stakeholders that, uh, I think that if we
just went to traditional
route, we probably wouldn't be reaching. So that's been working really well.
When you say
traditional route, what do you mean there? You know, just marketing to like, we
may not have all the
right contacts at a brand or a retailer in our database. So, you know, if you
're in the database
and you get the invite, uh, but your marketing counterpart is not your, you're
telling them that
they should join too, right? So we're, we're gaining that contact and, uh,
getting in front of those
new buyers. Yeah, that's cool. Very cool. Yeah. Um, do you pay dads behind the
webinar series? Like,
are you, are you pushing out there in front of people? We've done a little bit
of paid social,
like LinkedIn primarily, but not a lot. Cool. Interesting. Cool to hear that,
uh, organic growth. Um,
what about most cuttable budget item? Do you have something that you're not
going to be
investing in or isn't working? You're going to fade away. You know, I just
mentioned paid social.
So I might be talking out of both sides of my mouth here, but, uh, we haven't
seen a lot of
success on Twitter in particular. So we've kind of pulled back on, you know,
any sponsored
promoted content there. Um, you know, that would probably be the main one, a
little bit of traction
on Facebook, but primarily LinkedIn is where our, our audience is going to be.
Any other thoughts on
uncutable stuff? I mentioned brand earlier in this, you know, I think plays
into that. Design is a
big part of it too, right? Like we, part of this refresh was to really make
sure that we were going
to market with a real distinctiveness to the brand and the assets that we're
putting out,
whether it's through social or other channels. And, um, again, I think that
sometimes brand
and design falls into that as well can, can be early on the chopping block when
you have to think
about things to cut. And I think that's a, that's a bad idea. It looks great.
Um, thank you.
You can go to One World Sync, the number one, uh, worldsync.com to check it out
. The design looks
fantastic. It looks so good. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Yeah, I'll give a, give a
shout out to our
designer and then we partner with an agency called Studio Science. So, uh,
great, great group of
people, great to work with. And they did a fantastic job kind of guiding us
through the process.
I know there is probably a point where you could have too many designers, but I
totally agree that
design is so under invested because I mean every medium that we use is so
visual now, right? So,
it's like you have to have stunning visuals, like you have to. Otherwise, it
just blends in. And I
feel the same way when people have like a very clear brand design and then
every one of their
assets looks the exact same. It's like, well, what is going to stand out? We do
this a lot with,
with podcast series where we often recommend people to create a series in like
an alt color
so that it's like when you are posting about your series, um, it's a palette
that you only use for
that thing. And it makes it pop on your website. Same thing with like your web
inar series or your
event series or whatever. And, um, again, a lot of people just sort of trot out
the same stuff.
Um, yeah, and it just doesn't doesn't work as well. Yeah, I mean, it goes back
to
is that asset distinctive, right? Like if you want them to think about a
certain series, like for
us, if we wanted to think about, uh, or have marketers think about a certain
series different
than the IT team or the master data team, you know, how do we make that
distinctive? So,
when a marketer sees it, it's not kind of blending in some of the other stuff
that we might be doing
that speaks to a different audience. So, uh, I fully agree. I believe you're
that.
How do you view the website? How do I view the website? You know, I've heard,
I've heard other folks talk about it as kind of the digital storefront, right?
Um,
I really view it as, um, it's really a product for us. Like the marketing team
thinks of the website
like a product because, you know, we've got to engage. We got to convert. Like
this is the,
the doorway into the rest of the conversation. So, um, you know, again, a lot
of the work that we did
wasn't just about design and copy and all that, but you know, how are we
getting, you know,
users and traffic from the homepage to other places and site, we need them to
go. So, um,
big time focus on just user experience overall as well. I'm curious, um, you
know, how you,
how you decided to make, uh, strategic sort of decisions on things like Nave
and stuff like that.
Mm hmm. Yeah. This, like I said, a lot of this was guidance from the agency
that we worked with.
And if you, if you're on the website right now, which it looks like you might
be,
um, that navigation is not something that you see very often, right? It's, I
mean,
it basically takes off the whole screen, uh, when you click on platform. And
the reason that we did that
was, you know, what we offer is pretty complex and we do offer a lot of
different capabilities
for the different teams and stakeholders that I talked about. So, you know, our
, our goal there
was we want them to click one button and be able to see basically everything
that we do and quickly
navigate to the thing that is, you know, most important for them. So if you're,
you know,
the VP of marketing and you click that, how are we getting you to the area of
the website that's
going to resonate most with you versus, you know, if you're in the master data
teams or the IT teams,
same thing, how do we get you as that particular buyer or stakeholder to the
thing that's going
to matter most, right? So that we can engage you in conversation. And we,
frankly, and very candidly,
like when we first saw it, we were, we were a little, uh, uh, surprised because
we hadn't seen
something kind of that bold, but you know, through conversations and really
understanding the logic
and kind of strategy behind it, we, uh, we bought in and we went with it. So
well, it's like,
the way that I was thinking about it was if the job of the nav is to get you
where you need to go
fastest, then like it, it really does that, right? It gets you where you're
going really fast.
And, uh, and I thought that was just kind of a cool way of, of, of doing it. Um
, anyways,
it's a beautiful site and, uh, and, and really cool. Yeah, thank you. Um,
any other, uh, any campaign stories, um, or favorite campaign or anything that
you've
you've either got going now or done recently? You know, we, this year will be
the third year that
we've done it, but we do, we produce a report called the consumer, um, product
content benchmark
report where we, we go out and survey consumers, right? A lot of reports that
you see from B2B
companies are surveying like the buyers of whatever that technology is. Um, we
've taken a bit of a
different approach and we survey consumers to understand how product content
from brands and
retailers influence their buying decisions. Um, and that's, that's worked
tremendously well for us.
We've, you know, generated a lot of press from it. Um, it's been an awesome
just sales asset for, uh,
our sales team and it helps, you know, uh, our, our customers, our brands and
retailers really
think about the different ways that they need to, you know, orchestrate product
content in a way
that's going to get their, um, their shoppers to do what they want them to do,
which is, you know,
add the cart, click and buy. And, you know, whether they're coming into a store
and picking it up
or it's being delivered to their house. Um, you know, that report gives them a
lot of really great
insights to, uh, to understand that. How do you measure success?
How do we measure success? You know, I think first and foremost, you know, we
think of our
North Star metric as, you know, the company's metric are we growing? Um, you
know, as a sales
team hitting their bookings number, are we seeing, you know, the pipeline that
we need to see in order
to get there? So, you know, those, those company level metrics are really kind
of the first thing
that we think about. But then you have, you know, what I like to think about is
, you know,
input metrics, indicator metrics and then outcome metrics. So I talked a little
bit about the
outcome metrics, but, you know, what are the activities that we're doing, um,
as inputs
that will lead us to those outcomes? Um, and there's, you know, a list of them
that you probably
already know, but, you know, how many people are we driving to webinars? How
many sales
conversations meetings are we setting? Right. Um, all of those, uh, you know,
how much traffic
to the website is that growing? Um, all those indicators that are going to give
you confidence
or a lack of confidence that you're going to get to the outcomes, right? That
you need to see. So,
um, you know, I've got, we've got our kind of global brand dashboard where
there's probably 15
different metrics that fit into each one of those buckets that we look at on a
regular basis. Um,
you know, when we align with the sales team to make sure that everybody's on
the same page.
Now that you own sort of like, be our function, um, do you, do you feel more
strongly that it
should live in marketing? Yeah, a little, a little bit of a bias answer, but
yeah, I think they should be
and there's the reality. There's different, you know, different flavors of how
this can work. You
can sometimes have inbound BDRs report into marketing, outbound report into
sales, but I think
having the group within the marketing organization really helps to ensure that,
yeah, you know, all of the messaging and everything that we're doing from
marketing standpoint flows
through to the conversations that are happening, um, you know, in early
discussions with prospects
and customers. So I think there's a lot of value in, in that structure. All
right, let's get to our
next segment. The dust up, we're talking about healthy tension with us with
your boards, your
competitors or anyone else. GJ, have you had a memorable dust up in your career
? A long time,
a long time ago, not, not recently. I remember, I mean, this was probably more
than 10 years ago,
where, you know, I was a junior manager and I got an email that created certain
emotions and I
probably reacted to that email too quickly. And, um, you know, sent some
feedback to one of the
folks on the senior executive team and pretty quickly got, uh, whipped into
shape, so to speak,
on that one. So that's the most memorable, uh, nothing too recent though. All
right, let's get
to our quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers. You already
know all these.
I'll spice it up. I'll give you some quick shots. These are quick, just like
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on there, qualified.com, go talk to somebody quick hits. Tj, you're ready. I am
ready. What is one
hidden talent or skill that's not under resume? I am a barber. Oh, I've been,
well, you can't
tell and you can't critique me, but I've been cutting my own hair since I was
15 years old. I used to
cut my friend's hair. My son who's now almost 13, I cut his hair. So it's a
little bit of a
hidden skill that most people don't know about. So that's one. I also cut my
own hair, but I'm
not a barber, so I'm just pretty bad at it. Well, I'm a self-proclaimed barber.
Let's say that.
That's right. That's right. I'm in charge. Yeah. Do you have a favorite book or
podcast or TV
show that you've been checking out recently? Obviously, this one is fantastic.
I've been
listening to you for a while. A book that I'll actually mention a couple books.
One that a gift
most often is called Taking People With You. It's a great book on leadership.
It's by,
he used to be the former CEO of Young Brands. So folks should go check that out
. Another one,
which is kind of funny. We just had Tim Calkins, who's a marketing professor at
Northwestern
Kellogg. He did a talk for our company, our employees this morning. He's got a
book called
How to Wash a Chicken. It has nothing to do with washing chickens. It's about,
you know, how do you give a good business presentation? So that's one that I've
been kind of
encouraging folks, especially if you don't do a lot of presentations or you
haven't. It gives
you the fundamentals and probably will save you a lot of mistakes. So, and then
podcasts,
you know, outside of this one, there's one that I listen to pretty religiously
every Monday. It's
called Grit by one of the partners at Kleiner Perkins. It's a lot of really
good conversations
in that one. So if you could make any animal, any size, what animal would it be
and what size?
Oh goodness, it is a curveball. So we have two cats. It would be interesting to
see
the fluffy cat the size of, you know, an elephant, let's say.
Just knocking. Just knocking stuff over, running cars over. Yeah. Elephant size
glasses of water
off the table. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that
maybe indirectly makes
you a better marketer? Non-marketing hobby. You know, I have, and maybe this
kind of fits in
marketing, I don't know, but I have a personal blog, so I like to write. I
think that helps just
strengthen that skill. It's something that I enjoy doing. The other one, it's
less of a hobby.
It's more of just, you know, I'm a parent to a late Gen Z child. So it's always
interesting just
to see, you know, he's almost 13. Interesting to see how he thinks about, you
know, brands and content
and the stuff that he's consuming because the reality is in 10, you know, or so
years,
he's going to be the one at the brand or the retailer that's making decisions
on things that,
you know, that we do and other B2B companies do. So the more I can, you know,
get in his mind
today, maybe I'll be a better marketer for that generation when it comes time.
What's something
that you're investing in, uh, marketing wise? Well, we've talked a lot about
the brand refresh,
you know, that the big part of that project's done. You know, outside of that,
we're investing
more surprisingly, talking a lot more about investing in events and, you know,
you're probably
hearing that more now than you obviously did a year ago, but, you know, the
event that we just
came back from last week, just being able to get our sales team in front of
customers, in front
of future customers and prospects, and have a real genuine conversation is it
was, it was great to
see. And I think it's something that, you know, as we think about the second
half of the year and
going into 2024, right, how do we do more of that? Even if it's on a smaller
scale, just, you know,
road show type events or, you know, other ways that we can support the team to
get in front of
customers. And that way, I think is important. What is one piece of advice for
a first time
CMO trying to figure out their pipeline strategy? Man, I would say, you know,
really understand
what the business is trying to accomplish. So start there, right? Align with
your CEO,
align with your, if you've got a chief revenue officer, VP of sales, align with
them, and really
get as clear and granular as you can on, okay, here's the goal. What are the
inputs and what are the
different, you know, levers that we have to pull that we really need to go
execute against as a team,
you know, collectively, just get super, super clear on that. I think, you know,
where marketing
leaders can go, you know, off track is they kind of have their own picture of
what that needs to look
like. And then the CEO or the CRO have another picture. And, you know, you just
kind of get out
of whack and things can go south pretty quickly. So get alignment. TJ, it's
been awesome chatting
with you. It's always great to chat with you. Great to chat with you and
playing like this.
And everyone or listeners can go to oneworldsink.com. You can check out the
brand refresh that we've
been talking about. You can ping TJ any questions you have about it. TJ, any
final thoughts, anything to
plug? Yeah, I mean, you, she have a large audience and there's probably a lot
of folks that work in
CPG in retail. And if you're, you know, if you're already a customer, reach out
, let me know. If
you heard this, you got value from it. If you're not a customer, love to learn
more about, you know,
how we might be able to help. So connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to be a
resource and share
more. If you have more questions.