Why AI Won't Save Your Bad Brand

0:00 (logo whooshing) - Mario, or should I say Super Mario? Super excited to have you here. Really interested in the unique perspective that I know you're gonna have of this. There's been so much hype around AI, especially in marketing. And I think people are really just clinging on to this belief that if you can build the super personalized, automated workflow, mass personalization system, that your company will just magically grow. But I think people are over indexing a little bit on that, and they're leaving the investment in their brand a little bit behind. So I don't think AI on its own is gonna save your brand, and I don't think you do either,

0:49 but where do you think people are getting this misconception from, and what can they do? - Yeah, well, first and foremost, you can't go anywhere without people talking about AI. And I do believe, like most people say, that the most successful marketers will adopt AI. But to get the root of your question, the way that I think about this is, it's separating the components of marketing and go to market more broadly between what is a commodity versus what is truly your secret sauce. And when you think about how quickly you can produce assets or how you can scale sending out messaging or the channels that you operate or the way you flow your leads,

1:30 there's a ton of opportunity for AI to optimize and make that process faster. But there's nothing uniquely differentiated about any of those processes, and any marketer off the street can go and do those. What is your secret sauce is ultimately the story you tell in the market, how you interact on a one-to-one personal basis with your audience and perhaps most importantly, how your audience feels when they interact with you. And while I'm sure AI is going to continue to advance, I haven't really seen a success case of AI being the vector that changes an audience's perception about you or your brand.

2:09 And that ultimately comes down to the brand that you build and the, I'll call it non-commoditized secret sauce that goes into great marketing that I don't think is gonna be replaced anytime soon. No, I think that's a good way of putting it. And I haven't either. I haven't seen a company where, oh, they implemented AI and now all of a sudden, they've gone completely viral. And I think a lot of people, like you said, they're gonna have access to the same tools and techniques. So it's really just raising the noise and the volume rather than potentially increasing the quality. And I think something that people may not be thinking about enough is I think SAS

2:52 is really getting commoditized with AI. So there's so many products that you can spin up with no code, low code, very, very small engineering teams to where the barrier to entry to create a SAS product is so low now. When it used to be a serious investment, you had to raise a lot of money because you need tons of engineers to do it. So when SAS becomes more commoditized, I think the brand, the importance of having a great brand just skyrockets in that environment. - I mean, easy answer, but I couldn't agree more, you know. You can, and this is a good thing for what it's worth, that you can go, you can follow the top 10 marketing leaders on LinkedIn.

3:39 You can read a book about marketing and within a few short months, you can probably know as much or more than I do about how to build a website, how to route leads, how to optimize individual channels, how to create assets for each individual piece of distribution or each individual channel. And ultimately it is because a lot of those pieces are commoditized. The way that I like to describe this to people is that I don't really know any secret marketing tactics or secret marketing channels. Cause if you compare the things that I do and my teams do, it's kind of like very similar to what you would get if you interviewed the CMO of 10 other SAS companies.

4:21 And when you look at those 10 companies, I've never seen anyone say, oh wow, that company, like they are really good at Google ads and therefore they're growing 10X faster than everyone else. It ultimately comes down to which of these companies are truly executing at a 10X level that another way of thinking about this is a lot of what tooling does and a lot of what technology is doing for marketing is making pipes that reach the audience more efficiently and faster, but it still comes down to you and your team to determine what you're putting through those pipes. And if that end product that's reaching the market

5:01 isn't something that's garnering and captivating attention, it's not gonna matter how efficient the delivery mechanism or the experience is. Another way of looking at this is that attention is one of the very few things that can't be bought, it has to be earned. And I think the best way to do this, albeit it's simple, but not easy is having a very captivating story and a strong brand that gives you the right to ask for and earn people's attention. - Yeah, no, I think you're right. And I think of these tools as amplifiers, not necessarily creators of that story. And I know you can brainstorm a little bit with chat GPT or your AI tool of choice,

5:45 but I think the best stories come from real authentic needs and then being able to communicate those needs in a human way. There's something that you still need that human touch to make sure that it's relevant and timely for the people you're trying to get in front of too. - 100%. - That's a great degree more. - So I think a lot of brand and storytelling with your business, I think a lot of it, I hate to put it this way, 'cause I wish there was just like a formula for everything, but I do think there is an aspect of taste and an aspect of having an eye for aesthetic or what you're putting out into the market. At the same time, I'm curious,

6:30 when you're in a new company, you're starting a new journey, do you have any frameworks that you like to apply that help you get there and then layer in some level of intuition? What does that look like for you when you're creating a new brand or telling a new story for the first time? - Yeah, I'd love to just be known as a creative genius, but the candid answer is I'm not, that there's a lot of people with better taste, better design skills can make a lot cooler stuff than I can. So to really answer your question of like, how do you get there? It starts with just a couple simple questions. Maybe I have a somewhat unique experience

7:14 of having entered several different growth stage startups at a point in time where they really were looking to put their foot on the gas and really accelerate growth. And the first question I asked them is, hey, how do we feel about the way that we brand ourselves and we interact with the market today? And the answer at least from the very beginning has almost always been, it's okay at best. It's not what I aspire to be. It's not something that gets me excited to go out and share with my friends, with my family. And if that's the internal sentiment from the people that have more vested and financial interest

7:55 in the success of the company than anyone else in the world, you can only imagine what the average Joe out there that they're trying to sell to is gonna think about the brand. And so when you think about the outcome that you want as a growth stage startup, you want to see outsized returns and much faster growth than all of your peers. You have to be willing to invest in a way that yields that. Like what company in the world is gonna think that they can grow 10X faster and more efficiently than every other company out there when the way that they're operating and the way that they're presenting themselves to the market is looking just like

8:32 every other company out there. And so the first question is getting that internal alignment on, hey, if we want these 10X results, if we want outsized results compared to the rest of the market, we've gotta be willing to operate in a way that is different than the rest of the market. So that's kind of been the very first starting point for a lot of the projects that I've had the opportunity to work on. I almost said lead, but ultimately, this isn't a marketing process, it is a company process. And then the second question that helps you really get to how you actually execute on what you say, how you present yourselves visually is ultimately,

9:09 what do you really want to be known for in market? And what I've found that at least a few companies where I've led this transition has been that the way that the founders and the executive teams within these companies describe what they do and the value that it drives to customers is very different from what you're hearing in the market at present day. And even what you would pick up just engaging with their website or their content or interacting with their field level sales teams. And so you have this dissonance and that's ultimately the job of a great brand or a great marketing leader to solve for.

9:49 And once you can get that really tight internal alignment on, hey, this is our secret sauce as a company, this is what makes us better than anything else out there, this is how we want our customers and our prospects and our market to perceive us, you start to get a much clearer blueprint for this is what we need to achieve. And then from there, while again, it's one of those cases where it's simple, not easy, your task as a brand leader or a group of people to do this is to find a way both through positioning and through visuals to create that perception that the founding leadership team has for the company and market.

10:32 And I think in the cases where I've been able to before we put pen to paper on anything that the external world sees have unbelievably clear and crisp internal documentation on this is the end outcome that we want, that's what makes it a lot clearer, I'll say. Again, it's not easy, but it's a lot clearer when you're having a discussion around, hey, do we choose this visual style or that visual style? Do we use this type of language versus that type of language? If it's just arbitrary, it's your choice versus my choice versus other person's choice versus the board's choice. But when it's, hey, we're charging towards people

11:10 feeling a certain way about our brand or knowing a certain thing about us, we can base those decisions in some sort of objective reality. So the greatest brand projects have all started with like a very simple one page Google document of this is who we are, this is how we want to be perceived in the market and this is what we want people to know about us. - And I like that you say it's simple, but not easy. I think of like diet and exercise, it's really simple. - Great example, I can tell you how to be the fittest person in the world. That doesn't mean that you or I are gonna do that. - Right, right. Everyone knows the formula,

11:46 everyone knows how to stay in shape, like eat less, eat healthier, exercise more. But what do you think like in that metaphor, there's clear reasons why it's difficult to do that and there's reasons why people maybe can't invest in it. What do you think is getting in the way of a lot of companies? Is it the founders? Is it the people? Is it keeping up with presenting things in a modern way? Like how come people aren't just automatically doing this? - I think there's several things that go into it. Let me try to put these in some sort of a logical order. The first one that comes to mind is trust. And candidly, it is very difficult for,

12:36 and it's hard for me to even speak on this 'cause I'm not a founder. I'm not the CEO of some company of which is my baby and my prize joy. But having worked with many people who are in that situation, I can very clearly see that it is candidly really difficult to trust someone like me or a brand agency or a group of people that have only been working on this project for a much shorter period of time than you have as the founder to execute your vision. And candidly, the bar for doing this well is really, really high. And so it's difficult for a new leader to walk into an organization and build up enough credibility and trust

13:22 to be allowed to lead a transformational project like this. I think that's one of the big reasons why companies are saying good enough is good enough. The second one is the constant tension between brand and growth, that I have certainly never had the luxury to be within an organization where we have unlimited resources and unlimited capital. And so in that realistic world, you do have limited people, limited capital, and you have to choose where you invest that. And for the vast majority of companies, it is really difficult to invest both human time and dollars into a project that might have a six plus month time horizon

14:15 compared to saying, hey, I have these set of channels. Maybe it's SEO, PPC, and a field program. And I know that that's bringing me revenue right now. And if I invest time and energy into optimizing those channels, putting more money behind those channels, I'm gonna see more returns today, I think is a big second reason why a lot of companies have this knowing of like, hey, I know we should do this, but I don't know if the time is right. It's a lot easier to invest in something that is as easy as one plus one equals two. It's a lot harder to trust someone like me coming from the outside and saying, trust me,

14:55 one plus one can equal three, but we've gotta invest. And then I think the third reason, and it's partially aligned with the trust reason, is a lot of people have kind of a bad experience in their mouth. I won't speak to any people specifically, but one of the most painful and challenging things of being a executive and a SaaS company, and especially within GoToMarket, is there are candidly a lot of external groups that will talk a big story of transforming your funnel, driving more leads for you, updating your brand, and when you go and engage with them, you get the most junior employee on the roster and you get one-tenth of their attention,

15:48 and you say, wow, we just spent tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands of dollars and didn't get what we want. That it's almost one of the best skills to have as a marketing leader is knowing when you want to go to the external market and work with agencies or contractors, which ones you can really trust, because I can say personally, I've been swindled by agencies that have pitched a very, very large game and not deliver. I've heard stories from bunches of companies. I've walked into companies who, prior to hiring a true marketing leader, had been trying to solve some of these problems through external agencies without results.

16:25 And so, when you put all those things together, we can look at it and say, damn, why is every company not doing this? But then when I take a step back and say, what is the information? What's the data that a CEO or a collective executive leadership team is using to analyze this decision? You can see there's a lot of reasons that say, hey, as much as I want to do this, maybe I don't have as high a degree of confidence that if I do this, it's gonna yield the result that I want. - The one you just mentioned about agencies and knowing when we run into this, LeanScale's an agency. We do go-to-market operations for Series A to pre-IPO SaaS companies.

17:06 We run into that all the time too. Sometimes we're cleaning up the mess of an agency before. We have to spend a lot of time building trust. They're like, oh, well, I hired this other team. They sucked. I don't hire agencies 'cause they don't work. And it's almost like saying I don't hire employees 'cause I had to fire somebody once. It's like, well, you know, there's a difference. Yeah, you have to, but I do think that's a big part of being a leader internally. And we always say, you can't outsource accountability. So you still need someone to lead and build the company, and you can't outsource that part.

17:40 I think if you can put things into well-defined problems, and if you use agencies normally for one of three reasons, if they do have a specific expertise that they have, like that you just don't have in-house, great. You know, capture their knowledge. If you simply need just helping hands, that's a good time too. Like we just don't have bandwidth. It's gonna take us too long to hire people. Or three, sometimes, I don't know if you've had to use agencies this way, but when you're trying to convince a executive or a founder that what you're talking about might be a good strategy, sometimes it helps to have that third-party validate.

18:20 But yeah, I think figuring out that puzzle of who do you need in-house, what do you outsource, can be really tough for a leader. Yeah, and there's, I mean, I think two quick responses to that. I mean, number one is it, I think really reinforces the, as you said, the importance of having strong internal leadership that you are gonna get way more bang for your buck from any external partner agency resources that you bring on with a strong firm hand guiding the ship internally. Whereas this kind of panacea that you might think of when you see these agencies advertising themselves on LinkedIn of like, hey, I can just plug in

19:03 with these folks once and it's gonna fix this problem or fix that problem. And I can really understand that as a CEO that feels like there's a million fires going on in every direction, you're not an expert here, you don't have internal expertise. You're saying like, wow, wouldn't that be awesome and being kind of caught on the dream? But I've seen very, very, very, very few success cases where there isn't strong internal alignment and leadership that's guiding that agency. And also candidly evaluating these different agencies so that they end up picking someone like LeanScale that they know is going to deliver for someone who might not.

19:40 And then the second one is just candidly, I think for you guys and for a few other folks that I've kind of built a strong relationship with and have worked with across multiple different organizations, the opportunity for agencies to build trust with their clients that for me, if I bring on someone externally and they kick butt and really deliver for me, the chances that I am gonna bring them on at another project in the future or that I'm gonna proactively recommend them to other people in my network through the roof, just knowing how difficult it is to truly find the right fit. It's like when someone really delivers for me,

20:20 the first thing I say when I get on a scoping call with a new group is, hey, I wanna be your biggest advocate. I wanna be your number one case study. I wanna be your number one demand source. Like we make this work and I'm going to be your biggest advocate. And there's, I'm fortunate that over the years have built up a, not infinite, but a small bench of folks that I would run through a brick wall for because of how many times they've delivered for me. I don't know if I'm allowed to plug specific people, but there's been a group that has done several large brand projects with me and I would stake my entire reputation on them delivering.

21:01 And it's the case of you look at every project they've done and they've never failed. So my buddy's Patrick Aaron Clay at Studio Freight. They worked with me on Overjet. They worked with me on Stored. They worked with me on another project called Orderful. And it takes a lot of trust to bring on an external group that's going to literally mend the raw clay that becomes your brand. And these guys have never failed me and never failed any of their clients that I know. And so it's like one of those few examples where I would be hard pressed to engage in a project like this without picking those guys. And that's kind of the loyalty and the equity you build

21:40 when you come in and really kick butt for someone as a partner. - No, for sure. And just building those relationships and knowing like, hey, when I come in, I can hit the ground running because I have this team. I can bring them in right away. I know how to lead them, as well as other people that you can bring in. That's how we get brought in too. So yeah, if there's any agencies listening to this, it all starts with do kick ass work. So just blow them away. - Nothing else matters. - Nothing else matters. That's going to be your best. Your best lead gen is just doing a good job. So if you do a good job, people are more than happy to brag about it

22:14 because they get value out of just knowing you. Just making the decision to hire you is positive for them. So I think it's something that a lot of agencies will get caught up in like, oh, how do we maximize our growth another way? But just doing a good job. In your framework, the second point that you brought up, I had something I wanted to follow on to that. - The second point was starting with a very clear internal alignment can be as simple as like a one page Google Doc of this is our secret sauce. This is how we want people to feel about us. This is what we want people to know about us. And just having that as an artifact

22:58 that anyone within leadership or anyone that has a stake in the brand process could read and say, I completely agree with. That creates a much more, again, I oscillate on saying objective because candidly, this is never going to be completely objective, but it gets significantly more objective when you can tie various decisions that you're making that are inherently more subjective to that original strategy document. - How do you build the trust to get people aligned on that? 'Cause that seems like a process. Just getting it all on paper, everybody agreeing, shaking hands on it. How do you make that happen? - It's a little easier for me now

23:38 because I guess part of what people in the SaaS marketing space know me for is leading these successful brand transitions. And so at least, most recently at over a jet, they actually sought me out specifically to solve this problem. So that's a candidly a little bit easier for me. So what might be-- - So doing a good job, you mean, is a good way to build trust? - Exactly, like you said, but to answer the question for someone listening, you might be saying like, oh, Mario, that's not helpful for me at all. And I would say, yeah, I totally agree. And so here's the more helpful advice here. So, and candidly, this is something

24:17 that I learned the hard way that I've been fortunate to hold the marketing leadership role for several different scaling SaaS companies. And I won't name names, but I've certainly been in a position where I had this fire and this passion and candidly this belief that the company needed to make this type of investment. And I failed at being able to lead that charge internally and then convince the team to do so for a lot of the reasons that I laid out. And candidly that stuck with me, it frustrated me. I mean, the company was still able to continue growing and executing. And so after that, as I thought about, hey, how could I have handled this better

25:11 or how could I have optimized by moving this decision further left in the process, as I kind of found my next opportunity, this was something that we discussed as early in the interview process. And it wasn't a case of like, oh, you either let me rebrand the company, I'm not gonna come work here. But as I was talking to the founders of a company where I eventually became the VP of marketing and led a really successful transition, as we were getting through the interview process and going through the offer stage, one of the things that I said to them was like, hey, guys, I think that I could really kick ass for you, that there's a massive opportunity,

25:58 but I just wanna be super transparent. Here's my vision for what I believe I would need and we would need to do collectively to drive the results that I know both of you want. And I outline, hey, this is, we need to make this investment in a brand project. Here's a few needs that I believe that I will need from a team perspective. Here's some needs that I might need to go and outsource to agencies. And at this point in time in my career, I actually try to be very intentional about not taking opportunities and spelling out out front of like, hey, this is what I bring to the table. If I'm not your guy and I know very well

26:37 that I am not every CEO, every leadership team's cup of tea for a CMO and that's no problem. So I try to put my cards on the table as early as possible and say, hey, if I am your cup of tea and we have alignment and you know that day one, this is what I'm coming in and this is how I'm going to attack some of the mutual problems we've agreed upon, then it's a heck of a lot easier to get going because the thing you don't wanna be, even if this is maybe a first time VP of marketing role for someone, a first time CMO or still early in their career, it is way, way, way, way, way better to find out whether there's that like CEO, CMO fit before you jump in

27:22 rather than jumping in getting all excited, getting three, four, five, six months into the role and realizing like, oh, wait a minute. I don't feel like I have the purview, the resources, the trust that I need to do my job. And so probably the biggest piece of advice that I give to people who are aspiring to hold roles like the one that I hold now or kind of moving into that role is get as much upfront alignment on your style and whoever you're reporting to, whether that's the CEO, a CRO, the rest of the executive team, get that alignment upfront and it might be a little bit more painful upfront, but it'll save you so much pain

28:03 and also make you so much more successful throughout. So I think that's the probably biggest piece of advice. Then the next one is this concept of brand can be very subjective and ominous that it's your job as a brand leader to really tie it to business results. And so the way that I frame this for a lot of companies is like, we're here today. You just told me that you aspire to be 10X in X years from now. Let's unpack what it's gonna take to get there. And the line I've used probably more times than I can count in my life is that, hey, you're telling me that you want outsized results. Are you prepared to make a outsized investment

28:46 that in what world do you think that you can look like, market like, act like, operate like every other company out there yet magically expect to have outsized results compared to every other company out there? - Right. No, I know. And it sounds so obvious, but it's most people expect. I wanna make a little bit of investment. Like I think that no one should feel embarrassed about having frustration here because this is something I've learned the hard way and I'm glad that I've had kind of the experience of this not working out so that I can have had much more... Productive's not the right word because I don't want people to believe that

29:28 to be a successful marketing leader, you have to go lead some brand transformation that you absolutely don't. And just to be clear, your job as a marketing leader is not to come into an organization and rebrand the company. There's tons of companies that have very successful, strong brand market fit situations and they are looking for people who can come in and optimize the heck out of that engine. So I don't want this trope to exist that hey, a new marketing person comes into the company and inherently they have to go change the brand, change the website. You don't, it's just been for me, I guess I've kind of built up a bit of my reputation

30:09 on building that motion and the companies that are attracted to me and the companies that I'm attracted to are the ones that haven't quite solved for that brand market fit problem, but that's certainly not the case for everyone. And you can be... There are CMOs that are exponentially more successful than me that have not gone through any of this. Well, there's plenty of companies that need the brand help too. So I think... - Completely. - Yeah. If you find yourself in the position, you have to solve the problem that's there, but I think that goes to your point earlier, are you the right fit for the team enrolled? I find it really, really hard

30:45 'cause you said something they expect outsized returns with maybe minimal investment. I think it's so hard to attribute any of the success to the brand directly 'cause you have those direct channels that are just like put in a dollar, get out $2. To me, maybe at lean scale, as the founder, I just believe in it. I know if we're not doing this, we're not gonna get the results. I don't necessarily expect a full ROI analysis against it. I just assume it's table stakes. You have to invest heavily in your brand in order to get your company where you wanna go. But there is a point where, okay, in terms of the overall budget I have available to spend on marketing,

31:29 do you have a way to index X% to brand versus demand? Do you have some approach that helps you make that decision of how much of my investment I'm gonna put towards brand? How much am I gonna put towards demand? And then when I do put it towards brand, how do I show the value? Or does the executive team just need to have a belief and trust that it's working? Yeah, great question. So I actually, I'm gonna break your question down into actually three buckets. 'Cause you said brand and demand. And I'm gonna break it down one more time further because when we say brand, it can really mean two things. So there's this case of like,

32:10 hey, I need to revamp my brand and get it into a position where I feel like I have that finely tuned F1 car and then I can go drive it. So I'll call that like, whatever you wanna call it, like a brand revamp investment. Then there's investment in brand marketing. Like, hey, I'm gonna go and spend money to buy billboards or run TV commercials or run like very, very, very high funnel video advertising without a direct response conversion path, things like that. And then you have like your true demand gen marketing, your PPC or your SEO, your conversion driven paid social, your outbound SDR motion, all of that. And so the initial investment candidly,

32:56 and there are ways you can track this, but candidly in my experience, it is a case of like, if you are the marketing or the brand leader and everyone else on the exact team says, oh, I love our brand today, the chances that you are going to have success and the chances that like you even need to make that investment are really low. But most cases it's the total opposite where, it's a case where I remember a quote from the stored CEO. He goes like, Mario, I used to be afraid to send our website to people in my network. And now it's like, I can't wait to show it off to someone that like, if you find yourself in that case

33:40 where anyone you ask, no one's jumping out of there, there seats around the excitement that your brand delivers, you've got a pretty good idea that like, hey, you don't have that like finely tuned Formula One car. And so in most cases, like you have, like I've been able to, to measure the impact of that, both through increase in traffic, increase through organic and direct revenue and increase through conversion rates on our performance channels. But to answer your question directly, it has never been the case that my pitch has been, hey, let's go through this brand process. And I think that we're going to have a 30% increase

34:20 in our click through rate on our Facebook ads. That like, if you don't have that conviction, then candidly, I think that you as a marketing leader, you as a brand leader are going to experience a lot more pain than value of trying to push it through. And so either the company and the leadership has a conviction around the importance of brand or you build that conviction. Otherwise it's going to be candidly, really, really challenging to have success. But once you've done that, I think there's kind of two things I've seen every time I've done this. And I would say I've done like three pretty major brand updates in my career, like complete overhauls.

34:59 And three things have been true every single time. Number one, internal excitement has gone through the roof. I've never seen employees more excited about what they're doing, sharing what we're doing, advocating for what they're doing. Number two is the interest in employment at the company, recruiting efficacy has gone through the roof following a successful process. And then number three, all of your core marketing metrics become more efficient. So that's more direct traffic. That's a higher conversion rate across all of your channels and a higher velocity and close rate within your funnel. And then more broadly than any of those three things,

35:43 all of which you can actually track, there is just this tangible excitement that if you go through a six month brand process and your internal team isn't like jumping out of their fricking shares when you unveil it, you've done something wrong. And so that's some of the ways that I've looked at this and tracked this at prior places. And then the last piece I'll add around like, hey, now that you have kind of like that Formula One car and you feel really good about the brand vehicle that your go to market engine is driving, how do you determine of the dollars that you have to spend programmatically, where to spend on brand versus where to spend on demand?

36:22 The answer is different for every company, but it really comes down to a case of, hey, if there is enough demand in the market that you can hit all of your goals and exceed your pipeline goals by running the traditional demand and lead capture mechanisms. And you are in a position where you're saying, hey, there's so much intent coming in through Google. There's so much potential SEO volume that we can capture through content. The size of audience and the engagement of that audience that I can target through paid social is so large that the only thing that's rate limiting me for more success is more money than you should be spending

37:01 nearly all of your money on demand. And that's great. But what ends up happening, whether it's from day one or as a company matures, you reach a point where ultimately you cannot just put more money into your demand engine and see that payback through your existing efficiency. So the way that I've measured this in the past super simple stuff, payback, CAC, and CLV to CAC. And you're reaching a point where more money into that demand engine is not resulting in more value back either because you are already capitalizing at maximum from the amount of intent that exists in the market, but you still want to grow faster. The only thing that you can really do

37:42 is say, hey, unless I'm doing something higher up in the funnel to get more Google searches, to get more eyeballs, my demand engine is capped. That's when you start saying, hey, maybe it's time for me to invest in direct mail. Maybe it's time for me to start investing in out of the home. Maybe it's time for me to start investing in more of like a traditional brand campaign without a direct kind of call to action. And that's how I've kind of broken up those dynamics in the past. But I know there are people that will come in and say like, oh, marketing's all brand, you should just be doing all this stuff and not tracking any of it and good things will happen.

38:18 Like candidly, that's not me. If I have a mechanism where I can deploy dollars against campaigns that are tying back to revenue, I will deploy dollars there until I have no dollars left or until there's no more dollars to get out of that for revenue. - No, I love that a lot. As that LTV to CAC ratio, you start to see it dip down. Maybe that's when you raise the brand investment and as that goes back up, keep funneling more into demand. I think having a tight understanding of what your numbers and metrics are and having those systems set up can really help that. And I also really like what you said about

39:03 just the litmus test of if you need to do a brand refresh or not or total brand redesign, is the internal team excited about it? Are they getting fired up about it? And I think there's real value there. I mean the cost of recruiting, the cost of enthusiasm, like enthusiasm drives more results. So if you have people fired up about where they are, what they're doing and proud to be at the company that they're working at, I think that's huge. And then I do like that, maybe you're not seeing the sales yet, but if an earlier signal that your brand is doing well is, hey, inbound people wanting to work at your company, what does that look like?

39:44 And if it's low, then maybe you have a brand problem. - Yeah, all well said. - This is great. I think just hearing your experience is super interesting, your approach. It's really calculated. It's really thoughtful and intentional. None of us got into this in like a linear, I went to college for XYZ, got into doing this type of work. So I'm always curious, where did Mario like go from coming into earth and then finding your way like leading top growing SaaS companies and redoing brands and building companies into unicorns? - Oh wow, yeah, not linear. Maybe a little bit more linear than most though. So like despite being known for being more

40:32 of this kind of creative brand leader, art type of marketing leader, I think of myself as like a very, very just like logic driven person. And maybe some of that comes through in even the way that I think about brands. So going as far back to when I was in high school thinking about where I wanna go to college and what I wanna study, I didn't know that this would be the end result, but I knew that I wanted to, this is gonna sound embarrassing, but I'll be completely honest. I wanted to optimize my earning potential while minimizing the unbelievably hard science classes that I had to take. And so I landed on, hey, why don't I go

41:18 and find a school that has a really good undergraduate business program so that I could do it in four years and not have to go back to school and get a MBA. And so that was basically the step one did undergrad business in college was also massive, massive cheat code. I have incredible parents that were both successful in Silicon Valley, for people that aren't that lucky, I'm sorry, I'll be honest with everyone. I'm extraordinarily lucky to have very successful parents. And so summer after my freshman year, somebody who used to work for my dad took me on as a financial analyst intern. And I learned that summer that you can make money doing that,

42:08 but I wasn't good at, and I didn't like it. And so my sophomore year of college, and I'm back at the drawing board and said like, hey, how can I make money without doing a lot of math, without selling anything, because personally I'm like very introvert and have like social anxiety, if you can believe that. And then also don't wanna build anything. And so I landed on marketing. And so I started taking more marketing courses. I was able to get a summer internship at Sandisk marketing flash drives, super, super fun. Was thankfully successful enough in my sophomore year summer internship with Sandisk. They're like, hey, I actually really like the stuff

42:50 that you're doing and no one's gonna pick it up when you leave you down to work for us 20 hours a week remotely while you're at school. And I said, whoa, wow, that's awesome. Why not do that? And so by the time I graduated from undergrad, I had almost three years of experience doing product marketing for Sandisk. And at that point in time, I said, my gosh, it is way too late to change now. And as like obviously looking back, I could have changed and done anything I wanted from that point in time. But I was like, oh man, I got three years worth of experience doing product marketing. I got a huge leg up on the game, like my career is set.

43:30 And so while all my friends were kind of like going to these like new grad jobs and like applying for these like very intentional, hey, we're hiring new grads to train them. I was like, hey, I'm gonna just go apply for product marketing manager roles and show on my resume that I have three years experience doing that. And so ended up getting a job in product marketing at DocuSign and I didn't appreciate it nearly enough at the time because the level of talent on that DocuSign product marketing team is, it blows my mind to think about it. Like I think about obviously my direct manager, but then of the maybe 20 or so people on that team,

44:13 this is gonna sound crazy, but I think almost every single one of them is a high up VP within a really successful company, a CMO, a CRO now. And at 22 year old me just thought that this was normal, but looking back on it, I'm like, wow, I learned so much there. I thought that was normal. I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I should. So Michael Ongren, thank you very much. I learned Todd Miles Kelly, you're the man. Also amazing DJ, so not just a amazing CMO, but yeah, that's how I got here. And then following that, I took a job at a smaller company. At the time I was like, oh, I'm gonna have so much responsibility.

44:59 I didn't take a leadership role, smaller company, let's do this. So kind of joined to build out product marketing at a smaller startup about two weeks in, my boss left and they gave me the head of marketing role. And at that point in time, I certainly wasn't ready for it, but basically learned in the field running marketing for that company for over three years. And from that point on I've kind of been this brand product marketing, archetype marketing leader. And so I definitely wasn't ready for it when it first happened and it candidly took me years to really get over like that imposter syndrome of like, oh, I didn't earn being ahead of marketing.

45:41 It just lucked out. And I think that to an extent, everyone feels like that in the moment, but someone once told me that success is luck plus preparation. I think I indexed very heavily on the luck between having really, really, really amazing successful parents and walking into some really lucky and fortuitous opportunities, but then working hard to make the most of that over the past 12 years or so now. - Yeah, and I think luck tends to find the prepared and a similar story. I landed in a startup that had like a perfect growth arc and I got to see every go to market motion, like product-led, sales-led, partner-led and eco-led.

46:27 They had offices in every region. So I got to learn like how that is different. And then it scaled from 4 million to 50 million and got acquired. And I thought, so that was my first startup. I was like, wow, this is awesome. Every startup does this and they don't. - Yeah, this is normal. - Yeah, this is normal. So I can't wait to just hop in the next one and now I'm even smarter and better. And I'm sure I had a lot to do with what happened there. And then I realized, no, I just had a really good first-class ticket on the rocket ship and was lucky to be on it. Picked up a few things that can have an effect where I go next, but a lot of that happens.

47:07 But you don't get those opportunities unless you have put in the work and you are prepared in at least in some way. But yeah, it's really, really fortunate when those things happen. - I think, again, for people that are devoted to doing things the right way and working hard, can I say that everyone is gonna get the lucky break that I did as early in my career as I did candidly not? And it's something I'm certainly in age and become very grateful and thankful for. Probably wasn't grateful and thankful enough for it at the time, but just in the things that I've seen doing this at several different companies, it does seem to be an almost foregone conclusion

47:49 that people that drive outsized results and have outsized impact get the right opportunities coming to them in the right time. - Yeah, and I think so too. I think so too. It's just a matter of time when they come your way. - Well, this has been great. I really appreciate walking through all the approaches that you've taken. I love the frameworks that you apply to building brands, something that seems sometimes a little tough to grasp. It sometimes seems very subjective, but just taking a real calculated approach and knowing when you should invest in it or if maybe you don't have to invest as much in it.

48:26 This has been really, really helpful and I appreciate it. What's the best way? I know our audience loves to get connected with people we've had. I love the Mario hat, so I know that's on your LinkedIn picture too. It stands out really well. Just love that you embrace it. But what's the best way for people to get in contact with you after listening? - Kind of bucking the trend of what would be normal for marketers, but reinforcing the social anxiety piece, actually not on any social media other than LinkedIn. So I'm already packing in on LinkedIn. I got, you will see the Mario hat. I did have the mustache that I have on LinkedIn at one point in time,

49:02 but when I went for the Backstreet Boys Bleach Tips, it just looked so ridiculous that I ended up shaving the mustache. So find me on LinkedIn. Email is super.mario.pagonini@gmail.com. Currently I'm the SVP of Marketing at a really amazing company in the dental space called Overjet, just overjet.com. I encourage you to check us out. One of the brand transformations that I've led. You know, if you told me three years ago that I would be working in dental AI, I probably would have said, no way. And then I would have said, what the heck even is dental AI? And I've spent the last two years kind of changing that, improving on both of those different vectors.

49:45 So feel free to check us out there as well and see some of the work that myself, my team, and the rest of the company are doing. But yeah, other than that, email and LinkedIn, only place you're gonna find me. - I love it. I'm pretty sure that's really healthy, not having anything else. So that's great. - Well, thank you again. And really excited to follow your career, see what you do next. And really excited for our audience to hear all the insights you've shared. And as things develop, would love to have you back. - Amazing. This has been such a joy to do with you and also such a great opportunity for me. So thank you. Appreciate you having me on. - Absolutely.

50:25 Thanks, Mario. - Right on.