Creating Champions of Your Brand
Melissa Rosenthal shares her insights into creating champions of your brand, the importance of taking bets in marketing, and ways to differentiate you brand from competitors.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Castamine Studios.
Today, we are joined by a special guest, Melissa, how are you?
>> I'm good. Thank you for having me on.
>> Yeah, excited to chat with you today.
We're going to be talking creative.
We're going to be talking brand and all things that
a chief creative officer would do a click up.
Let's get into it. How did you get started marketing in the first place?
>> I fell into it by way of joining a very early stage startup called Buzzfeed.
I'd always been interested in marketing.
My entire adolescents, I helped my dad do event marketing.
He had worked in an event marketing company.
Really, I always loved that ability to reach people and build relationships.
But then at Buzzfeed, it really came into fruition about how we turned
our content model and our media model into a business model,
and being able to figure that out and market both our brand,
but also being able to work with partners.
Clarified there, and then from then on,
I went on to do marketing in many different ways.
It hasn't really been linear,
but it's been a lot of collective experiences across different types of
marketing in different roles.
>> Tell me about what the chief creative officer does at ClickUp.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Here at ClickUp,
I touch on everything as it relates to the ClickUp brand.
Anywhere you interact, experience,
ClickUp, that is my team. So from design to social, to our motion graphics,
our performance ads, or even our Super Bowl ad, we do everything in-house.
>> All right, let's get into our first segment.
We're going to the trust tree.
That's where we can feel honest and trusted,
and you can share those deepest,
darkest marketing secrets. What does ClickUp do?
>> ClickUp is a productivity platform that allows for work and collaboration,
and really brings all of your work into one place.
So instead of switching between a million different apps to try to get things
done,
all of your teams, all of your work occur in our platform, which is really
awesome.
I love working within ClickUp as a creative person.
Just makes everything a lot more streamlined,
able to work with a lot of people,
I get a lot of ideas from the visibility that we're able to see across the
company.
It's a testament to being able to market something really great,
is being able to be excited about using it every day.
>> Yeah, so what's the size of your customer?
Who are you predominantly selling to?
Tell me a little bit more about those customers.
>> The beauty of what we're doing and the challenge is that we're selling to
everyone.
So from teams of two to teams of thousands of people,
we are marketing across one to thousands,
and then in terms of the actual segments, it's across every segment.
So HR teams use us, engineering teams use us, marketing teams use us.
So you could effectively go wall to wall,
how do your entire company use ClickUp and use it for different segments.
>> We'll get into a lot more of that later here.
So who's the buying committee, who are the personas that you care about?
>> Yeah, I mean, anyone that can really influence a decision over their
specific department,
obviously as you go up those decision makers change,
but we have anywhere from managers to VPs who are using us for their teams.
The motion has been bottoms up up until now.
So it's spread very quickly within internal organizations.
It's a very viral kind of product when you have other teams that are using it
and see the visibility that they're able to have,
and how they're able to become more efficient and save time using the tools.
Within small teams, it can be managers to VPs to then eventually the CIOs,
large decision makers at the bigger enterprise companies and levels.
>> Yeah, and how is your marketing team structured?
Obviously, you sit on the creative side of the house,
how do you work within a sales marketing and your go-to market?
>> So a lot of the go-to market outside of sales is handled by growth,
and we partner with growth very closely on pretty much everything.
There's always a creative and asset component to everything that we're doing
on the campaign, integrated campaign side,
as well as a lot of the performance content that we're creating.
The performance content, of course, is judged by CAC and CAC payback,
but there's a lot that we do that effectively helps us build our brand
for the performance videos that we put out.
We build a machine to be able to test very quickly and iterate,
and we can go into that too,
but then infusing our brand into that and making sure that they feel very
unique to us.
Because eventually, if you're just selling features,
you're just throwing out features,
you're going to not be able to really build that brand and win.
So we like to marry the two,
make sure that we create a lot of awesome ads that convert,
but also build brand equity.
>> What's your creative strategy?
>> Yeah. So when I joined ClickUp two years ago now,
coming into a company of 60 people that people had heard of
in a very small niche community,
I would say ClickUp had a loyal fan base,
which is a part of why I joined the company to start.
What I really noticed is the ability to differentiate by building brand.
And what does that mean?
Again, it's that infusion of a personality and a feeling in everything that you
do,
from the tone of how you talk to your customers,
to the way that your social voice behaves,
to the design elements and aesthetics that you choose on every single asset,
to your motion graphics language,
to the videos that you produce,
that all should have a cohesity to it that feels very human,
is able to personify the company and the product in a way that just
selling features would never do.
So the North Star was to really humanize the brand and humanize the product
and infuse that into every experience that you have.
>> How does that roll into your overall marketing strategy?
>> We're focused on building a 30, 40, 50 year brand.
And I think that when you're not looking for a short term,
that's a strategy that you decide on and you emphasize.
So it plays very heavily into our long-term strategy,
because of course, with acquisition and focus on certain aspects of growth
and go to market strategy, you also kind of need to pair a brand in there.
If you have a long-term vision for a company,
it's really never too early to start to build on that.
It was really important early on,
outside of making sure that we can master the other motions,
is to build brand and build that equity and rent space in people's minds,
so that we're always top of mind.
And it is very traditionally, I would say, a B2C approach,
B2C very much believes in brand advertising and in that top of funnel,
as well as the bottom funnel metrics.
And that was kind of the vision.
It was, let's marry those two things, because they're equally as important,
especially as you get further down the line.
And maybe your dollars spent per acquisition become less efficient.
What do you have to rely on?
It's community, mode and brand.
>> When you're building a community and building a brand,
when you're speaking to so many different types of buyers
and so many different size companies,
are you segmenting those people, is click up the same to everyone?
I'm curious how you think about that.
>> I believe in ultimate personalization.
I would say as a high level from a brand account,
like you are putting out more general content,
more general productivity content,
as it speaks to holistically what you look to achieve.
And then as you go, as you become more targeted towards different segments,
the content that you create is more personalized for them.
So we're able to do that on many of the different advertising fronts
and go to market methods that we have.
But there's kind of like brand, as you see it, overall,
and then the different segments and how you speak to them.
But the brand still ladders up to those segments.
It's just obviously you're speaking to them with different pain points
and things that they're struggling with and solutions
that will work for them as opposed to more generic.
>> Okay, let's get to our next segment.
The playbook is where we go to the playbook.
You open that thing up when we talk about the tactics that help you win.
>> You play to win the game.
[MUSIC]
>> Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
>> What are your three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable budget
items?
>> I would have to say the three tactics seem probably almost trivial,
but they're very important, which is one is just continuing to take big bets.
And these are things that will separate us from our competition in the future.
And things where we know that the growth is exponential,
outside of just pushing money through a funnel,
really where we've put a lot of our chips, which are on these bigger bets.
So I would say that's definitely one strategy.
The other is the infusion of brand into everything that we do.
That's the second one.
I think it's easy to try to mass produce things that don't really tie back
to kind of what you do and making sure that that experience is echoed
throughout
both the product and the marketing on the brand side and the performance side.
And really it touches everything that we do is really important.
So that's number two.
And number three is kind of having that startup growth mindset
when we're thinking about marketing.
So exploring channels that might be brand new, having that kind of innovative,
inventive
thought process and mindset is really important.
And these more or more like, I would say kind of philosophies,
you can use the go-to-market B2B playbook and you'll get probably the same
results as everyone else.
While we do a lot of that, we always try to infuse something different into it.
And then also take these other bets that potentially others aren't taking or
thinking about.
My meeting before this, we're planning a blog post about portfolio content
marketing of
like placing big bets and seeing part of your portfolio more like a VC
portfolio that can
return the value of the brand.
We're all in on that strategy.
I love that.
Why do you think about things like that?
Is it just that Facebook and Google are gobbling up so much money and it doesn
't return
enough value over time?
You got to keep dumping it in.
Like why do you want to place big bets?
I mean, yes, of course.
That's like always a part of the answer.
But the other answer is like, how do you truly become $100 billion company if
that's your goal?
And it's really to do that.
And it's something that might be unexpected that comes out as the front-runner
or the way
that you've actually been able to achieve that and go up market and also be
able to really
dominate the market share.
And I think that there are so many creative things that you're able to do now.
And creative ways to think about just growth in general that will outlast
any dollar that you physically spend on performance that it's really important
to do that.
Because otherwise you might be left behind with just the short-term acquisition
funnel
dries up and what do you do?
So you have to have a bunch of these levers that you can pull or things that
you're working on
as you grow to be able to then leverage those as the ecosystem changes within
performance
marketing and spend.
So I think that's one.
And two, you have to think about creative ways to grow organically.
And of course you can seed some of that organic growth.
But that's really what's going to be like your viral coefficient moving forward
It's that figuring out what those factors are.
So those are the big bets that we're thinking about all the time.
I know you can't share all of them, but you got to give us a couple.
Like what are the big bets?
I know you did a Super Bowl at how do you think about making these big bets?
Like how do you invest?
So just to touch on the Super Bowl, that was definitely a long-term process
that led up to
being able to make the decision that we wanted to do that.
And it was a year plus of testing different creatives in market, being
experimental,
building our brand voice, knowing what we could do well.
We did the Super Bowl ad with our internal team.
So understanding what our strong suits were and how we can bring things to life
and how
we connect with people in a smart and humorous way was definitely something
that we knew we
could place a bet on because we'd just done the work that we were confident we
'd be able
to pull it off in a really great way.
So that was definitely a big bet.
I think there are other big bets that are, you know, Super Bowl is still, it's
one day.
You get a lot of the press, you get a lot of the residuals, which is great.
Like we still see deals come in and reference that, or people reference it all
the time.
A lot of the other pieces are just kind of consistent growth, like on all
fronts.
So I definitely believe in building people as media channels.
I did this at my last company and it was just a huge growth lever for us
because there's a lot
of value in building people and versus brands as the funnel to the brand.
So that's a big bet that we're definitely placing.
It's producing meaningful content and tying the brand in in a relevant way and
being able to have
that exponential reach so that you're touching everyone with human thoughts and
perspectives.
It just feels much more authentic when it's coming from people and people
follow people.
That's definitely a big bet that we're placing, which is the ability to scale
people as media
channels and funnels to the brand, averse just building a brand channel.
Think about it this all the time because we have 43 shows that we produce and
all of those have
different hosts. We think about this stuff all the time. So a couple things to
dig in there on the
building people as media brands. First off, from what we've seen, it seems like
the algorithm rewards
this and specifically LinkedIn wants people sharing content. In terms of brand
sharing content,
it just doesn't you just don't see as much reach. Is that what you found?
What I actually found out the other day is all brands on LinkedIn are actually
competing for a
total bucket of 20% of all reach on LinkedIn. So you're competing in a much,
much smaller
subset than you think you are, which makes sense. I mean, brands definitely don
't have the reach
the people have. You don't see brands going viral on LinkedIn the way that you
see people.
So the reality is that you're actually all playing for this 20% bucket, a verse
, the 80% that you can
capture by creating content as a person. It's such a great point. We learned
this lesson with
Facebook. Yeah, I mean, our CEO is meeting with Zuckerberg and like, we thought
we were best friends
with Facebook. And when they pulled the rails from underneath us and said, Nope
, now we're going to
reward organic content from people and brands have to pay to play. It
effectively just crushed a lot
of what we were doing. And I think that reliance on building brand versus
people is a lesson we
probably learned a long time ago, but it's still tried and true. And I think it
's still people
fight the green and still try to build the brand because they think that's the
way and it's exactly
what you're doing and you're putting case studies out. And sure, you can do
that, but leveraging
people as funnels is the way to go to way to build that is it's about like real
authentic things
that people can take away. And I think that's tried and true that follows
through to brand, right?
People want like authentic ways that things will help them. And I think from a
human perspective,
like that can come from a person that works at the company. And it can really
flow through
to the brand itself. We're all people behind this building this product. And
there's no reason why
we can't share our own stories along the way that help funnel to the brand. I
would say, in my opinion,
I think that there's like a step beyond that where I think the companies could,
if they found
certain people, you don't need to like coach them up to be polarizing. But some
people are
just naturally like that. And again, not that needs to be polarizing, but some
people are more
direct and some people are not as direct. I think it's all about letting people
use their authentic
voice. And I think that's also how you have extended reach, right? You're
reaching different people
because different people want to follow different types of advice, different
thought processes.
So yeah, diversification within like the portfolio of who's speaking on behalf
of the
company is really important. Yeah, I think that when people get carried away
with the stuff,
I think that they say like this one person is going to be the spokesperson of
this company.
How do you choose those people? Yeah, I mean, I think it's people that are
excited to grow their
own brand as well as contribute to thought leadership. I think it's a really
great way into the public
speaking circuit if they're interested in that. So there's some personal
benefits as well. And
people are excited to share their story and actually connect with people. And I
think a lot of this
allows you to do that on a very personal level. So in deciding it's, you know,
people that are
very valuable at the company who do really cool things have an impact, have a
voice, and
are interested in being able to do this. It's like that empowerment and that
mindset of like,
hey, everyone can do this. Like you all have something to say. So if you're
able to really
empower them and think through it with them and give them guideposts and
frameworks of how they can
speak on behalf of the company and speak on behalf of their own experience, why
not do it on a really
consistent basis and make it thoughtful and educational with takeaways. I love
all the stuff
you just said. One other thing that I think is important to talk about here
with this is like
people are so afraid to do this at their companies because they're worried that
their employees will
leave. And I've always looked at this as this is a classic, train your people
and they will
what happens if you don't train them and they stay, right? That is such a fear-
based, like,
negative way of looking at things. If that person leaves and they spend three
years as like
someone who carried a lot of support for us, guess what? They're still going to
be doing that
at their next company. They're still going to be drumming a bleeds at their
next company.
A hundred percent. Yeah. I think a lot of people that I work with see the value
over the fear of
like investing in someone. We're also investing in people all that goal here is
to grow every day.
So we want to give people opportunities and new experiences and they're going
to do things that
in their career here are going to make them more valuable in market. Okay. Any
other big bets that
you've placed or even things that you think that folks could be making bets on?
I would say less
bets and more like mindset. I would say the mindset of being a little edgy is
something that
can be very polarizing. But I think if done in a fun and authentic and light-
hearted way can
really move mountains because people are afraid to do it. So I think taking
some of the bets that
others are afraid to do or that you're able to do now while you're in pre-
public company,
still private, you're able to punch up. It's definitely a big bet. We did that
a lot with Atlassian and
certain things that we've done with our marketing strategy and trying to win
different segments
like EPD teams and some of the stuff that we did was certainly polarizing but
you have to be
polarizing in a way to really reach people. I'm curious to your thought on this
. So people when
they are scared to make a polarizing bet, again, like not polarizing like we're
not like announcing
your political affiliations or but something polarizing, they say that it's
quote off brand.
As someone who's like a champion of brand and stewardah brand, is that stuff
actually off brand?
I think it depends on the way that you do it. There's definitely like a
creative process to doing it
in a way that can come off like smart. And I think there are ways to do it very
lowbrow that
are not going to be construed that way that could technically be very off brand
for how you present
yourself in market. But I do think like if it ladders up to that north star
that you create and
you kind of are able to say this is our brand persona and I think we can get
away with this,
this is how we do it. I think there are smart ways to do that. I think there's
also other data
that supports certain decisions that you might make first not make considering
some of the
more polarizing campaigns that we've run. The company that we included in those
ads had become
a very like culturally mainstream thing to joke about. And I think that allowed
us to feel comfort
in the ability to connect with people that were also going through those
struggles with that
company, among with that product. And the fact that it had kind of pierced
through mainstream
into different memes that you would see on different channels was really the
crux of like,
all right, we can do this because this entire movement is almost celebrated
with on the internet.
So taking that and creating a campaign around it was kind of this strategic
thing of like,
yes, we should do that. Now, had that not happened? And had we not seen that,
would we have made
that bet? I don't know. Would we have gone as like strongly against them and in
certain ads that
we created? I'm not sure. But I think the fact that we saw that happening and
the different cues
that you can take from the internet and things that are happening definitely
are a driver in those
decisions. And then obviously there's a creative process to make sure it's done
well. I'm curious,
how many times do those folks get hit up by prospects and customers that just
want to chat with them
or talk to them versus talking to a salesperson? Because I think that this is
something that we
see a lot like events is a great example. If you did a small event and for
chief product officers,
that chances are they're probably going to want to talk to your chief product
officer more than
they're going to want to talk to when they eat, right? And so I'm curious, do
you see from a sales
perspective, people reaching out to them? I mean, personally, people reach out
to me all the time
that run agency is and they see my content and they are like, hey, how do you
do this for this or
this for this? And they want really quick anecdotal information on very
specified things within
creative teams or marketing agencies, they can utilize. I mean, of course, I'll
answer that and
like discuss it with them for a little bit and then be like, if you want any
help, I'll connect
you to a salesperson. But I'm very open to having those conversations. I think
the more human,
like you can put into the world, including your executives and people that work
at the company,
who can act as ambassadors and customer service reps and kind of like really
embody like a piece
of the company. Like this is my company too. And we all have a stake in it. And
we want to act as
representatives of it to help further it. I think that's obviously a big part
of it. The more that
you put out into the world, the more people are going to want to connect you
with you on certain
topics. There is a balance of what you're able to handle. But I mean, 100%, I
talked to people all
the time that reach out on LinkedIn and other platforms about various specific
use cases. Like
how do we manage all of our billboard inventory and all of our spending across
out of home in clickup?
And I'll either send them a template or we'll create something on it and be
like, hey, we should
maybe more people want to know about this. We should probably create some
larger format or of
content that can reach a wider audience because there's definitely interest
here. So it funnels
both ways. But absolutely, I'll have those one-on-one conversations before
those people hit sales
when they reach out to me. I think it's part of it. That's part of building
people as funnels.
Yeah, we had that with a podcast host where they kept getting hit up for
basically
essentially demos. And it was this person's time is now kind of talking to
prospects. I was like,
this is the best thing possible for you to come up with. Whatever they were
doing before,
now that this is their new job, I'm sure you can backfill whatever they used to
be doing.
Yeah, I mean, it's also, it's definitely not a ton of time, but it's so
valuable for the company.
So if you can create all of the people who are not salespeople to be sales
people and in a fact that
they can just talk and answer questions, you're going to build something really
valuable over time.
What is one maybe most cuttable item or what's one area of marketing that you
think is not working
that well or maybe something you won't be investing in going for? We are still
like on the cusp of
figuring out a lot of things that will work long-tail for us and the things
that we will not be scaling.
I think it's hard to say right now because we're such in a phase of like seeing
what fully bakes
and experimenting in many different ways that you can ask me that question in
six months and
I'll have a probably a very different answer on like where I think things will
be.
But a lot of the things that we're kind of into now are working for us
currently. Will they scale
beyond that, you know, the next three to six months TBD? I think that also is a
very heavily
dependent on ecosystem, marketing ecosystem as a whole. But I think new
channels will emerge and
we need to always kind of be thinking about those new channels as older
channels become less
efficient. So I don't know if there's anything we're cutting right now, but I
think everything
needs to be firing on all cylinders and then you trim the fat of what isn't
working and replace
it with something that new or a new bet that you're going to take. How do you
view the ClickUp website?
The website obviously is a huge funnel for us. If people land there and we need
to give them the
best experience possible, so the strategy for the site is like constant,
constant, constant testing
and optimization. It's testing a million different things all the time. I mean,
very small nuances of
tests that we're always running. After we see those results, we keep the winner
, start the losers,
and then continue to iterate and test on that control and try to beat the
control. So that's
happening at all times, right? And I think we're always trying to think about
like ways we can
enhance the experience, make it more customized, personalized, make it joyful
too. We'd certainly
want people to experience some site type of emotion when they land on the page
or go through
different modules or different different parts of the site where they're
considering using us
or they're thinking about what the product can help them or their teams or
their entire companies do.
Easy, easy to understand and use, right? From a user perspective. And the
answer is like,
we're always optimizing that as well. But then from content, we're doing tons
of content tests
all the time. It's just, it's like an ever-evolving piece of living, breathing
material. You can think
of it like that. It's like physically just constantly growing. Do you have any
other things from the
playbook that you want to share or any other campaigns that have went
particularly well that
you want to share? Yeah, I mean, I think the playbook is also like having
allowing your teams to have
like a very creative mindset where no matter who you are, like empowering them
to think about things
that you can do that will garner attention in like creative ways. And I always
use this reference
because I never have seen any other company do it, but it kind of came from my
BuzzFeed days where
the goal is to make everything viral, right? So you're just looking at this
from this perspective of
like, can I make this viral? Does this work? And the answer is like, you never
force it. So you can't
do it. You stop because forcing something to try to go viral or trying to force
like something that
isn't funny is way worse than not doing it at all. So it's always through that
lens of like,
does this actually make sense? But one example was we saw our competitor make a
very funny
reference to us at their largest conference, their largest user conference. And
they called
out our slogan and our billboard in front of their entire conference and kind
of made fun of it,
poke just, you know, and we decided to take that clip and remix it and turn it
into an ad.
And we added some beats and some backgrounds and our slogan that he was
referencing and it kind of
went viral. So, you know, I think it's like an opportunity to take humor and
like do things that
people really appreciate. I think also people really appreciate in the industry
, like playful
jousting. I think it benefits every company involved to actually do that. Even
if you're on the receiving
end of it, like to celebrate that sort of that jousting in a very competitive
market space should
just be acknowledged a little bit more like we're all in this space, like we
can have a little bit
of fun with it. And I think it's trying not to take yourself so seriously. And
like, even if you're
at the receiving end of it, celebrate the fact that it's been done because it's
definitely
daring marketing, it gets attention. And at the end of the day, I think it's
good for both brands.
Okay, let's get to the dust up. This is where we talked about healthy tension,
whether that's with your board, your sales team, your competitors, which you've
already just
talked about a fun desktop or anyone else. Have you had a memorable desktop in
your career?
In my career, I think being at hyper growth companies, like that happens all
the time.
It's like how you learn to live with that type of tension because you're
constantly
in a growth mode and the company's changing every three months. So, it's really
hard to pinpoint
like this one desktop because I feel like every three months there's dust ups.
And it's like,
it's the fight to make sure that you're prioritizing the right things and not
focused on the things
that don't matter. And that's always going to be like a constant of evolution
and iteration of
what you're working on. I got to say, when I saw a cheddar come out and was
seeing it kind of all
over back in 2016 or whatever, and I was just like, this is so obviously like
the future of this
exact type of thing, right? It felt so new and fresh. And this quick hitting,
you know, video first
sort of approach, I was talking about earlier about sort of like the format of
your content and
the function of like why you're doing it, how you're doing it. I'm just curious
to your thoughts on
like multi-channel approach. It seems like everybody consumes, whether it's
podcasts or video series
or micro shorts or longer form or serialize or episodic, whatever you choose to
do, it seems
like there's a bunch of different formats now of how people are consuming,
especially like
different generations. How do you think about just like multi-channel?
Yeah, I mean, I think multi-channel is great because different people consume
different content
on different channels. Like that's a fact. I think it can also be like a huge
distraction,
depending upon like how you approach it. I think you really need to figure out
what you can do
very, very well and try to double down and win on those channels rather than
trying to
to win on every single channel. And my approach to like everything is like,
maybe this isn't the case anymore, but it always used to be like we're looking
to hit home runs,
like everything we do is a home run. And I think what actually matters more is
when you're making a
ton of smaller decisions and smaller things and smaller bets that ladder up to
bigger ones
where you're hitting doubles and triples every time, where something is really
well received or
it does really well and that you're consistently doing that time over time. And
then a lot of those
things ladder up anyway to become like the big bets that you're focusing on.
So I think like multi-channel approach, like we're definitely multi-channel, of
course, like we have
to be everyone is, but I think what we put our focus on and what we double down
on is like very
important as a strategy moving forward because to win across every channel is
just going to be
impossible. I mean, outside of having an entire thousand person company focused
on just a multi-channel
approach, I think you need to figure out where your customers are, where your
segments are, where
you can win and really just focus there. Yeah, that's the same way I feel too.
And that's
why I was curious about the cheddar piece where it's like you take a company
like that or what
you're doing a buzzfeed or whatever. And you just think like it's so an actual
media company whose
job it is to create multi-channel content across every single place that you
can win. Like even
those companies don't do that well, CNN doesn't do it well everywhere, you know
, like whoever,
Fox News, all these people, like they don't do it well in tons of different
channels. So like the
idea that you could do it with like your makeshift team, I think is we all see
that that is that
is challenging, but it also makes this thing of say, well, what do we invest in
and maybe I just
want to do it and I'll just make another webinar or something. Yeah, I think it
's we're always looking
to push the boundaries of what we do. But I think like in relation to the
channels where we think we
can win, we do that better and we focus on that. But yeah, to your point, at
Buzzfeed, we had 1000
people working on content all day every day. And it was still like you're still
fighting against
platforms, you're still struggling. I think it's just taking strategic bets and
making sure that
you feel confident in winning. I mean, cheddar was a bet on two things. It was
a bet on the fact that
that type of content had an audience and no one was doing it. It was a bet on a
company that
understood that like young people care about finance and tech and explaining it
in a way that was
built for them. And it was a bet on the future of not people not having cable
and cutting the
cord with subscriptions because they have the option of choosing OTT and
creating their own bundles
and packages of what they want to watch. And those were our bets. It was medium
and format. So I
think you're actually right, you're absolutely right. Like, you know, pick your
mediums and your
formats and place bets there. Let's get to quick hits. These are quick
questions and quick answers,
just like how quickly qualified helps companies generate pipeline faster, tap
into your greatest
asset, your website to create your most valuable visitors and instantly start
sales conversations.
It's quick and easy just like these questions go to qualified.com to learn more
. We love qualified.
They're the best in the whole world. And 100 plus episodes in, they're still
here and we love
them dearly. Go to qualified.com to learn more. Melissa, quick hits. Are you
ready? I'm ready.
Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
A talent or a skill. I'm a great cook. I like to experiment with a lot of
different fun,
cool things, gastronomy. So, you know, very, very into cooking. Favorite book
or podcast or TV
show that you've been checking out recently? I've really enjoyed a lot of the
tech shows.
We crash super pumped, the Therina Badblood one. I was binging those for a
while. Do you have
the favorite non-marketing hobby that might make you a better marketer? I mean,
I would say like
cooking in a way is just so creative. It's not like it helps with marketing,
but it helps me
free up my mind and also think about things that are not like unconventional in
the way that you
like work with food. And I love that. I think that's what you can use kind of a
science and cooking
is more of an art. So it helps me. I would say like creative writing a lot,
that aspect of creative
writing nonfiction poems helps me. And then I think just honestly like finding
inspiration and
things that people are doing is less like a hobby that helps, but more of like
a way that I internalize
things like films and just consuming. I would say like consumption of media is
like certainly like
a big inspiration for me. I love taking bits and pieces of a lot of the things
I see that I like
and then figuring out how to apply them to this company, which is really fun
because it's a
B2B company, right? But there are so many things out there in the universe that
have applications
that if you think about it through the right lens, you can figure out really
fun and creative ways
to do that. I love it. I couldn't agree more. Any final advice for a first time
chief creative
officer or CMO that's trying to figure out their creative strategy? Yeah. I
mean, I would say like
first come in and see what you're working with, obviously the stage of the
company and where the
company wants to head is certainly something that should help inform like how
you come out and market.
Someone brought something up in a really funny podcast the other day where they
could you have done
what you did with a click up and the answer is like obviously not. I would not
have come into SAP and
tried to put out my click up playbook. So create a playbook that's unique to
you, unique to the
company. What makes sense for growth for that specific company? And I would say
use data, data
is your friend and think about like what you strive to achieve and what the
long term goal is and how
the brand presents itself currently and you know iterate from there. But don't
come into to something
and just try to like completely change it day one. I think slow, iterative
process and in steps.
Don't discount the small decisions. All the small decisions matter so much.
They matter almost more
than large decisions you make because they become a backbone of how you build
everything. So I think
care and detail into everything that you do and and being strategic even on the
small decisions
really has a huge impact later on and everything that you see in the decisions
you make day one
will affect what you do a year from then. So don't discount that and build your
own playbook.
Melissa, thank you so much for joining. This has been awesome for our listeners
. Go to clickup.com
to learn more. Check out the websites. Go to the website. Go to the learn tab.
A lot of
good stuff there. Melissa, any final thoughts? Anything you played?
Yeah. Follow me on LinkedIn. It talks a lot about kind of what we do with
people but I'm someone
that is very I would say vocal or very active on LinkedIn. So follow me for
click up tips, advice,
cool things, thoughts on marketing. You can find me very easily there. Use
click up. It's an all
in one productivity platform that allows you to be more efficient and save more
time with your work.
So check out clickup if you haven't heard of it or haven't used it yet. I think
you'll be really
really surprised at what it can do for you. I love it. Thank you again, Melissa
. We really
appreciate it and take care. Thank you.
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