AI Can Scale Bad B2B Marketing Too: Bullhorn CMO Jonathan Bedard

[00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

[00:00:29] The conversation right now around AI and marketing is around like expense reduction, right? People are like, oh my God, look how much marketing I can do with so few people, right? If you scale, right, you distribute, mass distribute a really bad message. I mean, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. AI now allows you to mass scale something at the push of a button. So you can actually do more harm than good. Marketers are trying to deliver the right message to the right target at the right time.

[00:00:56] And, you know, like that's been true since the beginning of time. However, channels have gone digital. Now you've got AI. The tool sets have changed. I think the folks who are going to win in the future are going to be the ones who use the tool for growth, not use the tool to save some money.

[00:01:26] Hey, this is William Tin Cup and Ryan Leary. You are listening, hopefully watching The CMO Pivot, where we talk to CMOs about what's changing in marketing, the work of marketing, the array and portfolio of marketing, but also the position. How are CMOs changing with the times? What does that change kind of look like? I've got Jonathan Bedard on from Bullhorn today. So, Jonathan, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good. Good.

[00:01:56] Ryan, how are you doing? Hey, I'm good. I'm good. I wasn't forgotten. So I'm good. You got to ask. You got to ask. This is a kind of a holdover from COVID. You start off with a light. You know, how's the family? Everybody good? Anyway, Jonathan, would you do us a favor, the audience a favor and introduce yourself? Yeah. So I'm CMO at Bullhorn, have been for almost three years now, but been with the company for close to eight.

[00:02:27] I've been doing B2B tech, though, for the better part of over 20 years now. You know, I'm not your traditional CMO. I'll say that in that, you know, I didn't start my career in my early 20s coming up through the marketing ranks. And I'm happy to go kind of into my background a little bit here. But, you know, I'm probably the unexpected marketer and that, you know, kind of found my way into, you know, that department and that path.

[00:02:52] And, you know, have been doing it though now for going on 10, 15 years in a variety of different capacities. And, you know, but, you know, I got real lucky, you know, I'm from Boston and, you know, I picked a lot of good winners along the way and been a part of a bunch of different growth stories. And so, you know, fortunate to work with some really talented folks and, you know, most recently here with Bullhorn. Yeah, that's so. So, OK, so I want to I'm going to just start and just throw a big question at you.

[00:03:20] You've been in you've been in the game for a while and you've seen some changes. Right. So we don't need to get into you've been the CMO for three years. So we don't need necessarily into that just yet. Where is marketing, though? Where is it gone from the time you got into marketing? You said 10 or 15 years ago until now. What's that big change that we're that you're seeing? You know, I let me start with. I think there's a couple of ways to think about change.

[00:03:47] If you think about what the role, the fundamental role of marketing, I'm a big believer that like the goal of marketing has not changed the way in which you go about executing it has. Right. And I think it's important. And like, you know, and I was with my team earlier this week and we did kind of our kickoff for the year. And, you know, and I put up a big slide and that slide says, like, you know, what marketers are trying to deliver the right message to the right target at the right time.

[00:04:16] Right. And, you know, like that's been true since the beginning of time. And I think that's a big thing. However, channels have gone digital. Now you've got a I the tool sets have changed. Right. Therefore, the way you organize teams and roles are split up roles and responsibilities has changed. But the end goal is the same. Right. And how you go about executing it is the same. And I think like making sure you don't lose sight of that true north is like mission critical as a marketer.

[00:04:44] You know, so I think we like to get lost in the tool set a little bit sometimes. And if I go on LinkedIn, you know, it's the death of marketing. But, you know, take all the jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny after every time we do one of these episodes, if I scroll through my LinkedIn or if I scroll through my Instagram, it's it's all these marketers jumping out and you got to do this. You got to do that.

[00:05:11] It's like whenever someone says you got it, I already lose interest in whatever they say. Yeah. But Jonathan, you said, you know, non traditional path. Yeah, I'd actually like to know a little bit about that, because B2B is so different than B2C. And you also said you're a B2B marketer. What are you know, there's so many great tech firms that are there in Boston that come up through Boston, just got universities, just a cluster of universities that you have there right there. Yeah.

[00:05:40] You're gonna have some startups. That's that's just gonna happen. But tell us a little bit about your path. Yeah, I mean, man, I was I started as a data guy. Right. So I studied economics in school. And then I said, oh, I don't know what I want to do for my you know. So, you know, why don't I go get some training?

[00:06:00] So I went to work at G Capital to start my career and did a training program and got a front row seat for Wall Street kind of collapsing on itself through the rise of kind of the early 2000s. And, you know, it was literally like, you know, the the junior analysts, you know, running spreadsheets, you know, looking at on a capital markets desk, you know, doing a bunch of math and going, wait a minute, that can't be true. Like, if that's true, like, a lot of bad stuff's about to go down.

[00:06:29] Like, you know, and kind of hand it to the guy next to me is like, oh, you did the math wrong. Do it again. You know, you know, and then and then I'm like, no, no, the math. Like, this is this is really bad. You know, and we know how that played out. So, you know, and like I got a front row seat for what was going down with a lot of these big banks. And I learned a lot about what I didn't want to do for my career through that. And I got some amazing training and worked with some incredibly bright people. But I was like, OK, I don't want to do that.

[00:06:57] Right. And, you know, I lived in New York, moved out of New York, moved back home to the greater Boston area and was like, you know, I want to go work for a growth company. And, you know, this was at the time kind of going through the financial crisis. The only people hiring were people who were like insulated from like Main Street. And so I went into biotech because, you know, Boston had a lot of great biotech companies and I joined their corp dev team.

[00:07:25] So I was doing like M&A and corp dev. I was the guy I was the I was the data guy who was running valuation models, just kind of diligence. Yeah. Right. Like I really, really good at like analyzing and how to value different types of assets and building presentations. And the thing that I that I really learned, I got a lot of exposure to very young age to very senior leaders. And I was founded by a ridiculously talented group of people.

[00:07:52] And I was working at what at the time was a very small company called Vertex Pharmaceuticals. And they were a kind of scale up in Cambridge. My first desk was literally in the hallway of one of their. Sam's table. I'm on my computer all day running data. I was in my 20s. I was just like working day and night. It was great. And we'd like the business was a rocket ship.

[00:08:21] I mean, if anyone knows Vertex's story now, they've got like two massive towers on the Boston waterfront, like a huge success. And I saw them go from almost no revenue to over a billion in revenue, like a rocket ship. And it was a lot of fun, actually. I was like, wow, growth is fun. This is really cool. And I got exposure to a lot of senior leadership. I learned how to do a lot of solve problems analytically.

[00:08:50] And then I was like, all right, this is cool. A bunch of life stuff also happened in between. Got married. My wife's career took us overseas. We lived in Copenhagen for a year. I went to work for a startup. So I saw a fintech startup that was like less than 100 people that was founded in Copenhagen, but then moved its headquarters to San Francisco. And they ended up hitting it big, too.

[00:09:16] So they went from like venture funded to like over a billion dollars in valuation, massive funding from top tier sponsors. And I just saw what like a scrappy startup looks like. We were doing everything. You know, we were doing, you know, business development alliances work, trying to build relationships with big banks. And then all of a sudden we were cold calling. Right. And I was doing all of it. I was picking up the phone. They're like, you know, here's a bunch of phone numbers, cold call and. There's the yellow pages. Yeah.

[00:09:45] You know, is the common thread here to success? Just have you in the company. A hundred percent. Lucky. Yeah. What are you doing next week? You want to. Like what are you doing? Lucky charm. Get lucky. Get lucky. You know, put surround yourself. Make good picks on where you go to work and surround people. Honestly, half the battle for folks early in their career. You know, and you know, whenever I'm like having a young person come to me and kind of say, hey, I want some career advice.

[00:10:14] I said, start with a company you want to pick, you know, go find a winner and then go find someone you're going to learn from. And if you can solve those two things, the rest often takes care of itself. And I did. I was surrounded by world class people. And then I came back from Copenhagen and went to work for Athenahealth. Um, and Athenahealth and other like world class, uh, you know, B2B software company and the health tech space.

[00:10:41] Um, and, um, but like I joined them, they're a rocket ship of growth. Also, you know, I joined them. There were probably a few hundred million or so in revenue. I left. They were well over a billion in revenue. So I saw them more than triple quadruple in size. Um, and I joined as a chief of staff to like the number two, three guy in the company, which was the most transformative job I've ever done in my career.

[00:11:05] Um, um, so, um, and, um, the senior leadership, uh, at Athena at that time was just off the charts incredible. I mean, it was just kind of a who's who of very, very talented leaders, you know, across the board. Um, and I got a front row seat. I was very fortunate to be working for this wonderful guy named Steve Gahan. And, and I would just like, basically I shadowed him for better part of three years, every meeting

[00:11:32] he was in every trip he took, um, every presentation he gave. I mean, I just, I saw everything. It was like the, the most incredible apprenticeship that anyone could have. But the Steve was an incredible commercial mind. Um, like from a go to market strategy and a commercial strategy perspective, he was incredible. He ran the sales organization, ran the customers. It's kind of my first real exposure to selling, um, um, in marketing. Um, and I was doing it through his eyes.

[00:12:01] Um, um, and he just threw me at problems, you know, like, yeah, he would just be like, we got a problem over here, go figure it out, solve it, you know? And then all of a sudden I just got my hands in a lot of things. Um, and, you know, from there I started to realize I got good at certain things. I got good at solving certain types of go to market problems. Um, but I also took a very, um, analytical lens through it. Right. So I was kind of had this like data found in analytical foundation from my time on wall street.

[00:12:29] And, um, and, um, and from there was like, okay, well, what comes next? Um, and I was very fortunate that, um, at the time that the current CMO of Athena health was like, well, why don't you come work in marketing and build a help to build a product marketing function here? And I, and I looked at him and I was like, I've never worked in marketing and I don't have a clue what product marketing does. And he goes, you know, all that stuff you just used to do for that.

[00:12:57] Just do that for the whole company because that's it's packaging, it's pricing, it's positioning. Let's go to market strategy. It's like core fun, foundational product marketing stuff. I was like, great. That sounds awesome. Let's do it. So I started building product marketing teams. And then from there got customer marketing, got content and started to expand and start to see a lot more marketing. Um, and all while the company was really growing. Um, it was very fortunate to just be surrounded by a bunch of folks who took bets on me. Right.

[00:13:25] I had managers and senior leaders who were like, I'll place a bet on this guy. You know, he'll figure it out. Um, you know, and all, lo and behold, years later, I was a marketer. Um, and, you know, and stayed with Athena health for probably close to seven years. Um, so I had a really good run with them, saw a lot of growth. Um, and then Bullhorn came knocking and said, Hey, we want you to, you know, kind of come and lead the product marketing function. Um, at the time it helped the company through its next phase of growth.

[00:13:53] And the timing was right, really fell in love with the company, its leadership culture, the mission, the whole thing. Um, and then came and built that and was fortunate to kind of, um, to have the opportunity to then move into the CMO seat. So, yeah. And that's where we are today. That's where we are today. Yeah. Yeah. I've been doing it now for about three years. So, yeah. Yeah. What's your, what's your, you know, when Ryan and I are both, I would say frustrated,

[00:14:22] but let's just say, uh, retired marketers. What's, you know, cause we could go down the MQL, SQL path and all of that type of stuff and demand gen. Oh, what, what is sales looking for from you now as a CMO? Like what are you, when you're talking to the chief revenue officer, chief sales officer, et cetera, like what are they, what's the discussion? What do they need from marketing?

[00:14:47] I think what you're finding right now is that in the way I partner with my sales organization is like, we're both responsible for sales. We're both responsible for driving sales. Right? So if I meet with my peer or his directs and what I do on a regular basis, and we're like, our, our goals are aligned. What they're looking for is like, do you and your leadership team share in this bookings goal? Right? Are we in it together? Right? Um, no, no doubt. There's all leading indicators that we're all looking at. So is sales.

[00:15:15] They're looking at quota attainment and ramp times. I'm looking at the generation and pipeline conversion. Of course I am, but like, there's no world where I can claim success because I've generated enough opportunities and the company has come short of its bookings. Like that is like, that is not how we roll. You know? Um, at the end of the day, it stops with bookings and we're in it together. Um, and we achieve together. We kind of win together or we don't.

[00:15:42] Does the CMO also, you're saying you work together with sales. Do you, do you think there's the, do you think the CMO owns the sales role or they're just working in conjunction with? No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, in my experience and it was, it's true at Bullhorn. Um, and it's, it's, it was true at Athena health as well, which is that you had, you know, um, the CMO

[00:16:09] and you also had, you know, your head of sales or chief revenue officer both reporting to the CEO. Um, um, and to me, that's a great model. Um, you know, at least for the B2B software companies that I've been part of, I'm not saying other industries, there aren't other models, but from what I've experienced, that's the most optimal model. I don't believe, I think they're very different skill sets if I'm being in it with you. Um, um, I often think there's often different people who are attracted to different sides of it for different reasons.

[00:16:37] So, um, you know, I, I, you know, I think we're, I think we're, I think we're both partners in driving the bookings number, but you know, and. And I've found actually Ryan and I were talking about this earlier today. It's, it's rare to find someone that's excellent at both. Yeah. There's an excellence on one or the other, but like excellence at both is a very challenging. Where's the line of demarcation? Cause we've seen with certain companies where they'll take a, they'll take over inside sales.

[00:17:05] Like they'll take over that part. So it'll go all the way from funnel all the way over to where they're keying up and teeing up demos. Yeah. And things like that. What's y'all's what you, what's your take on kind of that line? I think it different. I think it depends on, you know, what type of organization you're selling to, um, you know, the organization that I've been a part, we we've got a pretty wide go to market.

[00:17:30] So we're selling, you know, fortune 2000 size organizations and then midsize organizations all the way down into small S and B organizations. So there's a highly segmented go to market model. And I think like the lines of demarcation are very different as a result of that. Um, so, you know, there's no such thing. I, I, there's not like a classic, like lead that's being generated from a large enterprise. Like for people who are like in the game, that's like a nonsensical thing to play to say. Right. Um, right. Um, however, right.

[00:17:59] If you're in a more transactional S and B sales environment that you're operating in under 30 day sales cycles, um, there's very much, you know, a, you know, a marketing motion to kind of generate those hand raisers. Right. And then qualify those hand raisers and get them, you know, into the hands of the right salesperson to, you know, engage demo close. Um, you know, so you get a more prescriptive kind of go to market motion in that point. And we do that.

[00:18:26] So I've got, you know, business development reps who sit within marketing who are very much, you know, they've got a number on their head where they're like, there's a certain amount of opportunities that I need to generate in order to be successful in my job. And that's really in pursuit of those smaller to midsize type opportunities. Where, where does content come into this? So I know you used to run content.

[00:18:56] But how important is content today, as opposed to maybe how important it was three years ago? And I, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking with AI, with all of this auto generated content, how do you build that trust? I think is really the real question. I'm getting at it to get these opportunities. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of slop out there. Um, and you know, in order, it depends what your brand's trying. Right.

[00:19:24] It depends what your brand's trying to be. Right. Bullhorn is a trusted brand. Right. We're very fortunate. And I feel very fortunate that, you know, I'm, I'm operating on a 25 year old industry leading brand. Right. And, but in order to establish that kind of placement in the market, it takes a lot of years. Um, and it takes a lot of earning of that customer trust. Um, um, it can be very quickly lost. Um, and it takes years, you know, the old, it takes years to build a brand and kind of minutes to lose it.

[00:19:53] A type of analogy, you know, I think that's something that we really take to heart and marketing. Um, and so for me, the quality bar cannot go down simply because you've got automated tools at your disposal. Um, you know, like, you know, I think we've all been spam before. Like that is not the game that I'm trying to play. Like, um, you know, so I sure hope that I can figure out how to use these tools.

[00:20:17] And I think there's really evidence that I can, where I can absolutely speed up my content writing, but also have a human in the loop to ensure that the bar is not being lowered in a way that creates leverage. Um, you know, and I, I think, so I think AI is going to help with content. I think AI, the thing that's, that I'm like actively thinking a lot about right now is the structure of one's team as a result of people having these tools at their disposal.

[00:20:47] So, you know, that like before there were, you know, oh, I need to have something written, send over a brief to the content team, right? That's been the traditional structure of marketing teams for a very long time. You know, I think AI is challenging that model, right? Um, I was having a conversation with a member of my team today on that, you know, which is, you know, like, where does that writing reside when, you know, many people on the team are going to have the access to these tools, which effectively acts as a new team member.

[00:21:19] Um, and new role, the definition of roles are kind of being challenged on that. And I think that, but I think most people are in agreement that like more people are going to be content writers, um, and new role. The definition of roles are kind of being challenged on that. Right. Right.

[00:21:47] And the, and the fundament and the workflows that exist within the broader marketing team are being rethought as a result, as a result of that. I love it. I want to get into your day. Take us into just an average day, a normal day, you know, Tuesday. What is. If Wednesday, you can do a Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah. I do. Nobody loves, nobody loves Monday. So I kind of avoided that one.

[00:22:13] But, uh, I think it's interesting for the audience to hear like, okay, heads down. What do you, what are you doing? Like, what's, are you spending some time on email? Are you with a team? Are you talking to executives, customers? Like what's, what's the bit? Yeah. I have a lot of context switching that happens in the course of a week. Right. Um, and you know, I think the role of a marketer is pretty broad, um, you know, so you really need to be able to weigh in on a bunch of different things.

[00:22:41] I, you know, in the course of a week, you know, I think there's like, there's obviously a healthy amount of alignment as an spending time with an executive, the broader executive leadership team that is, has nothing to do with like marketing level of execution. It just has to do with like broader strategic alignment or goal setting or checking in on how we're doing or some problem that happens that we all got to swarm, whatever the case might be. Like there's a healthy dose of time that's just being spent on that.

[00:23:07] Um, you know, and then, you know, really making sure that my team's rolling on the same direction. Right. Um, like, uh, it's, it's January. So we're kicking off the year. So there's like a disproportionate amount of effort being put into that. Right. Which is right. What are the key messages for the year? Are we aligned on our goals? Right. How does it all come together? All of that. What are the big campaigns, et cetera? Like we spent a bunch of time this week with the broader team on that. And like my big message to the team was like, there's a method to the madness here. Does everybody feel aligned? Right.

[00:23:37] So does every individual on the team look at their personal goals and can very clearly go, I see how this ladders up to the team goals. And I see how those team goals ladder up to the company goals. Right. So that like, you know, like there's just like, you know, therefore people can make, you know, a lot of independent decisions that are going to make sure they're all pointing in the right direction. So this is going to date me, Jonathan, but CMOs used to kind of build like an editorial calendar.

[00:24:02] So here's the theme for the year, quarterly themes, monthly themes, and then campaigns and in the array of whether or not you're doing webinars or events or whatever the bit was. It was it was based on a theme. And at all, like, I love how you said ladders up to from the person, but also to the theme that you're trying to achieve. You still do you still kind of do that? 100%. Okay. 100%. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:24:31] To me, like, you know, I started by saying, like, a lot of foundational principles of marketing haven't changed. I don't think that's changed. Right. Like, I think, I think every company needs to take a hard look and ask themselves, you know, when our customers or our targets read what we're putting out. Whether they're reading it as an email, as an advertisement, as a thought leadership piece. Like, what is the thing I'm fundamentally challenging them on? Right. And what are the key messages that are trying to get through? Right.

[00:24:58] And if, if, if those are all over the place, you know, you're just going to be white noise. Right. So, like, I mean, that's been true forever as a marketer and, and that's still true today. Right. So, you know, you know, we're absolutely, you know, what's coming up for the next quarter. Right. What are the channels we're activating? The whole thing. Right. It's still very much a planned exercise. Yeah. And so I, I was going to ask you this earlier. You, you, you've answered it now, but I, I just want to put it out there and see, kind of get your, your reaction to it.

[00:25:26] When you, when you have marketers, I'll call them marketers, but they're, they're content producers online. Um, they're just create a hundred pieces of content a day and push it out. Right. The algorithms are going to push it there. They're going to get you your audience. What is it? How does that, do you cringe? Yeah. I do. I do. I can see them cringing on the, like, I mean, for my business, for my business, I cringe. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:53] Because I think, you know, I, I have to, I have to put myself in the shoes of the reader of my customer and ask myself, like, what am I really trying to get them to read? And, um, and you know, I'm not, I'm not trying to put out this like quick hit content. That's like trying to get like, it's not an impulse buy. Right. Um, you know, um, and if you're a consumer goods company, right. Or something totally different. Right.

[00:26:17] But you know, I, I, I'm trying to, I'm trying to challenge my customer on how they think about running their business. And, you know, yeah, there's always an emotional element to some of that, but, and I'm trying to play on that a little bit, but I'm also just trying to honestly be helpful is more than anything else. Like I need to write stuff to them that says, yeah, I'm kind of, you're right. The, the, the market climate right now is quite challenging here. It feels like this thing that, you know, is being sent to me is actually kind of on, it's on the mark.

[00:26:47] Um, um, and it's not like, it's not superficial, right? Like, like I'm a big believer, you know, where do I think all this is going? Like, um, I think, um, you could easily spam a hundred pieces of content a day. I think you, I don't think you're going to get the intended result that you want from it. Right.

[00:27:04] I think the key thing that in order to separate yourself from the pack on all of that, you actually need to have like a fundamental position or some knowledge or some asset that distinguishes you. Um, um, so you know, the thing that I call it a knowledge asset, right. Which is like, if someone were to go, well, look, I could take, I mean, I could take a webinar that we're doing and I could cut it up into a hundred pieces of content. Right.

[00:27:32] Um, um, and, but I got to ask myself is like, is that webinar, is that the message that's in that and what I'm distributing actually the, the thing that's going to stand out? Um, um, and you know, so to me, it starts with good. I mean, I've, I've, as a product marketer, I always say great marketing starts with great product marketing because the rest of marketing is often in the, is, is, is in the effort of scaling that position that you come up with.

[00:27:59] Right. So if you scale, right, you distribute, mass distribute a really bad message. I mean, right. You're, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. Um, you know, what does AI do? AI now allows you to mass scale something at the push of a button. Right. So you can actually do more harm than good. Oh yeah. If your underlying position is garbage. Yeah. So quick, quick follow up to that. And this is more, I think just me, my, my own personal kind of interest in, in this area.

[00:28:30] From a B2B marketing perspective, right? At least from, from your perspective as a CMO, you spend a lot of time building that content, building that education into ideally, you know, a target, right? Not just an individual at the target, but sometimes it doesn't happen that way. Right. You're, you're the, the one person that you need to write the check or, or get you through the door. They spend two years, three years reading your, your content consuming it, and then they leave.

[00:29:00] How do you get that person to disseminate that into the organization? How do you keep that message going and not start fresh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think when you get into bigger accounts is often where, you know, you start to see that, um, which is, you know, when, you know, if I'm talking to my team members who are pursuing larger accounts, they're not talking about marketing to the account. They're talking about marketing to the individuals within the account, right?

[00:29:29] And they're, they're really trying hard to identify who are the people that we need to know who Bullhorn is. We need to have a favorable impression. And ideally we need to influence. Um, um, and it's in partnership with sales, right? Cause sales is also thinking these are people that I need to sit down with and talk to. Um, right. Right. So marketing thinking, okay, well, great. They're more likely to take that conversation if they know something about us or, you know, they, they walk in with some positive, you know, notions of that, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

[00:29:58] So we're trying to kind of set the stage for that. So ideally it's not just one individual who, Hey, that person happened to leave the business. Now we're starting from scratch. Right. You know, you, you, you kind of, you cast a wide enough net and identify the right people so that, you know, you've got a kind of multiple contacts within that account that you're, you're targeting. Right. Right. Okay. So, uh, slightly different because you've got an analytical, analytical brain and background.

[00:30:27] How hard is it for you for things that come up in marketing that are not based in math? I'll give you a couple of examples so that you can tinker with it. We need to change the logo. Okay. That's not math. Yeah. Uh, messaging. We need to do, redo the messaging. That's not math. Uh, you know, what we're going to do at an event. That's not math. And events are horrible with ROI anyhow.

[00:30:51] So we'll never do the math on those, but like, there's a ton of things that just, you, you just can't make a math. You can try, but you can't make a math. And so how do you, how do you personally confront the things that you can't put in a spreadsheet? Yeah. I mean, I mean, first of all, I think you need to be pretty well-rounded as a marketer. You know, I think that's true everywhere, right?

[00:31:16] If you're running a demand generation team, you absolutely need to be analytical because you need to know how the funnel works, but you better be able to put something that's creative and compelling and well-written in market that you look at it and go, I'm going to get the reaction that I want to out of this. So I actually genuinely find that most marketers are like, you know, pretty good in terms of like being across multiple skills. Um, so my mom was a middle school writing teacher. Right.

[00:31:43] So like, I got a healthy dose of editing and kind of writing in my background as well. Uh, so yeah. So like, I feel, feel pretty good as a writer also. Um, um, but you know, on the creative side, you know, like surround yourself with folks who are just exceptionally skilled in this.

[00:32:05] Like, I mean, I cannot speak highly enough about the creative team that I was fortunate to that they've been there since the day I joined Bullhorn. Um, uh, most of them have, um, and they're world-class, um, you know, and they've been a steward of our brand for, you know, well over decade now. Um, and so, you know, I think as a marketer, you just gotta be honest with yourself that there's like, there, there are unique and specialized roles that do exist within marketing.

[00:32:33] Um, and those folks are incredibly important. Um, and yeah, you know, I, I, I think anyone who short changes their creative is, is missing a beat. I really do. Um, and you know, it makes a world of difference when you're trying to bring an idea to market in a way that's truly compelling, unique, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:32:55] And, you know, I've been part of, I've been part of organizations where all of a sudden they take their eye off the ball three, four years later, they go, Oh, we got to do a brand refresh. Right. You know, you know, call the Madison Avenue firm, you know, and, you know, and my experience at Bullhorn is that if you've got a creative team that acts as a proactive caretaker over that you are constantly evolving your creative and refreshing the brand.

[00:33:23] And you never find yourself stale. Uh, and it's been impressive to watch. So I was going to add to my next question. You just kind of answered with the, well, now we're screwed. We got to do a rebrand. What, what, what is that point though? My question was going to be, what is the point where the marketing team has to just admit, okay, it's time to pivot, not necessarily the brand, but our content isn't hitting. It's not resonating. How do we pivot and eat that? Yeah.

[00:33:50] I mean, I think, you know, great marketing starts with like a deep understanding of the voice of the customer, but in order to understand the voice of the customer, you got to have your finger on the pulse. Right. So, and it's a bunch of things, right? If you were asking, we just went through the messaging exercise. What's our lead message for the year? And we're sitting there going like, okay, what's happening in the market? What are our customers telling us? Right. And where do we think kind of our recent product innovation is going to help our customers the most, you know, where those three circles overlap?

[00:34:20] That's our key message. And, but that key message has a shelf life. And that shelf life can vary, but it can be as short as say nine months. Sometimes it can last as long as 18 months. So what you find yourself is at the end of that shelf life, as long as like you're being proactive and curating it and looking, you look at the data, obviously, but you know, because all of a sudden you're putting a message in market and you're like, wait a minute.

[00:34:48] The problem statement that that message was built off of is no longer what my customers are telling me. Sure. You know, and you'll, you'll naturally go, it's time. It's time for the next campaign or rally cry, whatever you want to call it. Then that next lead message needs to change. And, you know, that's a annual exercise. Every single summer we go. So it's been in markets at that point, usually six, nine months.

[00:35:16] And we, we, every summer we look, we pick our head up and we go, is this still relevant? Um, um, and if it's not, we go through the exercise to start to change. And we're literally rolling out the new rally cry as we speak for 2026. And the prior one was in market for about 18 months. So I think Ryan, some of that is, uh, Jonathan talked about the customers and having a pulse there. And is it still relevant? Which I love that exercise by the way. Uh, it's also sales.

[00:35:46] So if the sales team stops believing in the message. Yeah. Uh, or it stops to resonate with the, who they're talking to the prospects. And let's say that people are hitting their quota. Um, then, then that might happen faster. Uh, that, that shelf life might've might be faster. So some of it is, I mean, keeping a finger on sales too, which is, you naturally do Jonathan. Yeah. Last, last question for me was, uh, we're, we're here a year from now. So it's January 27.

[00:36:16] What are we talking about? How successful this next rally cry has been. Yeah. Dude. I love, I love going through it in summer. Go and lift your head up. Like my, I got, I got goosebumps because I don't know that many marketers that do that. I think it's a good question. I think there's a few things.

[00:36:41] Um, I think you're going to start to see, um, a focus on quality over quantity. Um, so right now, right now the focus is on efficiency and quantity. Yeah. I think you're actually going to see the focus shift to quality and outcomes. So, right. Most of the conversation right now around AI and marketing is around like expense reduction, right? People are like, Oh my God, look how much marketing I can do with so few people. Right. You know, are you going to cut your staff and things like that?

[00:37:10] And, um, and look, if you're a San Francisco startup and like you're running super lean, cool. Right. Um, but what I actually think that the interesting thing is the conversation is going to go like, okay, well, can I be a more effective marketer if I'm adding a bunch of really effective digital labor to my team without really cutting my staff, but maybe changing how work is done? Can I out market the competition and outgrow the competition? Can I take market share because I'm better at marketing?

[00:37:40] I'm better at selling. Uh, the same thing's true in engineering, right? Can I just create more products because of the technology that's allowing me to create more code? Right. Or am I trying to cut my engineering team in half and just produce as much code as I used to? I think, I think the folks who are going to win in the future are going to be the ones who use the tool for growth, not use the tool to just save some money. Um, and I know like, Hey, in the near term, maybe I'm trying to save a little bit of money because the markets things, but okay, fair enough.

[00:38:06] But like, I think what you're going to see is people are going to talk about winning more than they are going to be talking about cutting jobs or saving money. I, Jonathan, wonderful. Yeah. This is, this has been really good. A great conversation. I think people are going to resonate with this one. Um, because it's not just here's the glamorous life of a CMO, right? It's actually like, Oh, there's a glamorous life. He won't tell us about it, but there is a part of it. Come on now.

[00:38:34] I think this was, this was going to hit, hit hard, especially for those in our space. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us to the audience. We shall see you next time.