Defining the Enemy When Rebranding
April Moh, CMO at Kyriba, shares about defining the enemy and the hero during your rebrand.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faiz on CEO of Cast Me In Studios.
Today, I am joined by a very special guest, April, how are you?
>> Very good, Ian.
Thanks for having me.
>> Excited to have you on the show,
excited to chat marketing at Kriba,
your background and everything in between.
Today's show is always brought to you by our friends at Qualified.
You can go to Qualified.com to learn about the number one conversational sales
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for companies that use Salesforce.
Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
April, first question, what was your first job marketing?
>> Well, it's my first job in marketing.
Well, my first job was in, I was schooled in the arts of PR.
So my first job was actually working out of a PR agency.
I spent probably the first half of my career,
just specializing in public relations.
>> Flash forward to today, tell us what it means to be CMO of Kriba.
>> I talk about being the CMO of Kriba is just a real dream.
Kriba is just such a wonderful company with a really strong product market fit.
I think when it comes down to finding a company where you can be a CMO,
Kriba is as good as it gets, quite honestly.
There is this strong product market fit where the industry leader in the space
that we play in,
and coming into the space and being able to work with all of these wonderful
pieces,
that's been a real dream.
>> Yeah, you and I were talking off air about Kriba because we've done some
work with Kriba in the past.
It's such a cool company because this idea of liquidity and what this mountains
of cash
that companies have sitting in their bank accounts that is doing nothing
or even hidden where CFOs can't see it.
Things like how their cash, everybody says cash is king,
but it's like do people even know what their cash is doing?
That when I first learned about that and learned about what Kriba does,
I was just kind of blown away and I just something I'd never thought about.
Well, like, yeah, that's a good point.
What is happening with all that cash?
You think these massive companies were sitting on piles of cash or companies
that aren't,
like everybody needs to figure this out and yet tons and tons of folks don't
have it
figured out yet. What an exciting place for you to be.
>> It really is. It really is.
We talked about our company right now going through a reflection period,
we're rebranding ourselves and one of the big things that we're doing in is
we're rethinking the way that we're telling the Kriba story and how we're
defining that.
And to your point about the invisible vote of cash that sits within the company
that
CFOs or Treasures may be not discovering at this point,
we're realizing from our conversations with CFOs specifically that the real
issue for
not having that visibility is because they're gridlocked.
They're gridlocked by systemic challenges, systems that are siloed,
disconnected,
not allowing them to see exactly where the idle cash is.
And that is the problem.
So through the rebrand, we really wanted to come up with something that was
going to be,
that was going to just elicit a visceral reaction from CFOs as the enemy.
And we think we've come up with a perfect phrase for that.
And we call that the liquidity gridlock.
The gridlock that you experience being just stuck in hamstrung by disconnected
systems,
manual processes, really preventing people, CFOs and Treasures from discovering
where
their idle cash is.
So yes, that is a real challenge and Kriba is here to solve it.
It's so cool that you're able to come in as a CMO where you could see that
problem from
a new perspective.
And it's funny because when I started working with Kriba and looking at this
problem from
a very similar perspective, like outside or coming in and saying like, hey,
what is the
challenge here?
I love that idea of the gridlock and trying to figure out liquidity is the name
of the
game for Treasury folks and CFOs specifically.
Did you hear that phrase come up over and over again from CFOs?
Did you hear the frustrations around that when you thought about choosing a
place for the rebrand?
Such a great question.
One of the things I did coming on board as the new CMO of Kriba was I started
to speak to our
customers.
I wanted to understand what they loved about us and what potential challenges
that they
may have that we really needed to pay attention to.
And over the course of the last six months, I've spoken to dozens of CFOs in
particular.
I will say that there are two themes that have repeatedly come up that really,
really
point us towards the whole notion of gridlock.
So they talk about their biggest challenges as number one, just having
disconnected
siloed fragmented systems that are not allowing them to have a proper view of
their financial
sort of health of the company.
That is of impact to the CFOs because they're accountable for the cash position
their working capital positions.
And so being hemmed strong by all of these systems is an area that has
prevented them
from having visibility, full visibility.
Now, the second theme that has come up a lot is their recognition of manual
processes as a
challenge for them because it opens the team up to a lot of human error.
So things like Excel spreadsheets, right?
And it's still doing things and calculating things manually.
That is a real thing amongst many finance teams today.
So together when we think about systems and we think about manual processes,
all of these things are hugely uncomfortable for CFOs.
And in fact, one of the CFOs I spoke to mentioned that the notion of liquidity
gridlock
or the phrase liquidity gridlock is liberating for him.
It's liberating for him because it is pointing towards systemic challenges
that only the right software providers can solve, right?
So the best of their ability to doing whatever they can.
But there's this small part that's preventing them from outperforming the
business strategy
and it is that piece that Kariba fits into.
I love that.
That's really cool.
Any other things that came up during the course of doing a rebrand and thinking
through this stuff
that you found particularly interesting or insightful?
Yes. The one insight that I found really insightful.
So when we think about liquidity, we're open to interpretation when it comes to
liquidity.
So different CFOs, sometimes even different treasures,
they think about or define liquidity very differently.
And for some CFOs I've spoken to, and these are probably the more classically
trained CFOs,
the ones who have risen to the very top positions from FP&A,
starting from rising from VP of finance positions.
I have noticed a trend where they tend to see liquidity as a department,
that is liquidity being handled by the treasury department.
And I then have met a different group of CFOs and these are the ones who don't
come from your
classic FP&A backgrounds. Very interestingly, we're seeing a lot of CFOs and I
've spoken to a
lot of them that actually came from consulting firms or departments that were
handling strategy
and transformation. And these are the ones that are looking at liquidity and
defining that
in a broader and much more, I think business contextual manner,
then I have typically heard liquidity being defined.
So that's been really eye-opening to me to see that even among CFOs,
there's not a standardized view of the importance of liquidity for them.
I wonder what that is for marketing. Maybe the word brand.
Yeah, 20 marketers, every single person thinks of brand a different way.
Oh my goodness, you're so right. So many of my counterparts probably view brand
as look and feel,
but then there's a school of us that really see brand as that anchor the
nucleus from which
a lot of what we do is built on. Yeah, that's probably exactly right.
It made me think because I'm in the business of content and the two things that
are always king,
cash is king and content is king. And it struck me as I was thinking about this
episode and
how important cash is and liquidity specifically. I'm like, that's how it is
for content too.
Content's the same way, where it's like for some people, it's like content
equals blogs and then
for other people, it's this huge, every single part of your marketing is
content because every
single thing has someone that's either doing some design or some writing or
some audio or video
or whatever it is. Anyway, that's a really great insight of that if people don
't even agree on
what the word means to begin with, then how do you even address the word?
That's exactly right. That's exactly. And that has really inspired us to think
about
ourselves as evangelists in the art of liquidity for the enterprise and
thinking of how do we
actually use what we do on our platform to help CFOs and Treasures connect
liquidity to their
most strategic advantages. So it's not just liquidity in terms of identifying
your assets
and how to convert that into cash, which is the economical definition of
liquidity.
But more importantly, what do you do with it? How do you grow your business
with it?
And how do you outperform your business strategy? And that's where we're
heading to
currently with our rebranding in our strategic narrative.
Love that. Okay, let's get to our first segment, the Trust Tree, where you go,
if you'll honest
and trusted, and you can share those deepest, darkest pipeline and marketing
secrets.
We know a little bit about what Kariba does. Obviously, you're selling
to CFOs and finance leaders and treasury leaders. What types of customers do
you work with?
Yeah, so we work with a lot of Treasures. So typically, they're from the office
of the CFO.
They're usually the Treasures or the head of treasury. And quite occasionally,
we encounter
the CFO. But typically, that would be the VP of finance or the Treasures or the
controllers within the office of the CFO. Yeah, and what does that buying
committee look like?
So the Treasures are the ones that end up being the end user. And their teams
are the ones that
are using our platform. So we have about 80,000 users of them on our platform.
What happens is,
they are the ones that get really sold and convinced and become huge die-heard
fans of
Kariba, the Kariba platform. And the CFOs are the ones that would have to sign
up on those purchases.
Also, there's the mix of IT in there, because a lot of what we do as a platform
and some of the
bank connectivity that we offer requires integration to their systems. And so
even making sure that
the CIOs are involved at the right time, that usually occurs at the later
stages of our deals.
And then, obviously, you haven't been in the role extremely long, but six
months in, I feel like,
you've been there long enough to know all the different things are going.
How do you think about when you came into the role, your marketing strategy
broadly?
Yeah, that's a really good question. So my marketing strategy is really
contingent upon how do we build marketing to become a really, really powerful
revenue engine
for the company? So working backwards, what does that mean? So there are a few
things that I know.
So for instance, marketing at Kariba has historically been a very powerful
force for revenue.
Today, it accounts for over 55% of our net new customer acquisitions. And as we
think about that,
the question now becomes, how do we grow our marketing engine at Kariba to
become scalable
and repeatable? And whilst a lot of companies out there might index on demand
capture, so your
SEOs, your paid media, capturing existing demand, our strategy is contingent
upon making sure that
we're not just capturing existing demand, but also filling the engine with net
new demand by
putting emphasis on demand creation. So the combination of demand creation and
demand capture
is how I would describe the marketing strategy.
Oh, I love that framing because I think it puts more emphasis on to the
teaching part of it.
Those folks, as you mentioned, maybe the folks that have that old school
mindset that it's like,
hey, there's a new way to do things. There's a new sort of problem that you
need to deal with that
here's what some of the, you know, your more progressive counterparts are doing
how they're sort of changing their companies and you can too.
That's exactly right. And we believe that there's always going to be just a
finite number of people
at any given time ready to buy. And what about the people that perfectly fit
into our ideal customer
profiles that are not yet ready to buy? Those are the people that we need to
influence and educate
and build affinity with. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about, you know
, what their right
messaging is for them. How do we deliver valuable content to them? Content is
king, as I agree with
you. How do we, how do we, how do we build trust with them? That is really
important for us.
And then making sure that when they're finally ready to buy, Kariba is top of
mind for them.
And what does your marketing team look like? How do you, how do you structure
your team?
So let's start with the team as I, as I inherited them six months ago. And the
team as it looks
today, because it blends perfectly into what I have just covered in terms of
the marketing strategy.
So the team as I inherited was just, I mean, first of all, one of the most
resilient marketers I've
ever met, very, very honored, very, very privileged to lead such a great, great
team.
The team that I inherited was structured, you know, by leadership to be very,
very focused on
capturing existing demand. So it was a huge emphasis on fuel marketing, on
events, right, on the bread
and butter of, you know, just the core of what one would normally assume to be
the core of marketing.
Now when I started and didn't analysis and audit, I realized that while we were
very strong in the
demand capture arm, we had practically nothing from scratch. We had to start
from scratch on the
demand creation arm. We have built a really solid brand name amongst our
customer base over the
last 21 years. And it is important that we continue to build an affinity with
new customers there and
not yet in the market to buy. So the way that the team is structured today is,
you know, keeping
the few marketing team, maintaining a reasonable focus on events, but then
ensuring that we are
boosting and revving up a product marketing team, creating a really strong
public relations team,
and also setting up this digital marketing team that allows us to have a really
clear
distribution strategy, right, where we can have an always on sort of
communication and demand engine
that works and delivers content to where our customers are digitally.
All right. Any other thoughts on strategy there or should we get to our tactics
We talked about public relations as the place where I started, where I kind of
grew up in my
career. So I will say this about the whole notion of demand creation, which is
that even though
public relations is not something that can immediately be tied to same year
revenue,
it is something that is crucially important because that serves a huge function
in softening the ground
to drive awareness for sales to be able to go into and be able to effectively
sell outcomes to
customers. So I would say that the one thing about demand creation is don't
solely pack the ROI
to directize the booking to revenue, but find other ways to be able to quantify
why it's working
and be prepared to see results in about two years from creating that engine.
Yeah, I love the framework to sort of know, like and trust, right? And it's
like if sales is going
into a conversation and they've never even heard of your brand before, like
that's going to be
really, really hard, you know? But if you can, like you said, if they already
know who you are,
perhaps if they already like you, then you can build the trust and say, hey,
this is why we're
the best solution. But if you don't have the previous two, it makes trusting
someone.
How many people do you trust on the first date, on the first time you met them
on the first?
You know, it's like you have to build that stuff. So yeah, I think PR is super
important.
Thank you. I couldn't agree more.
All right, let's get to the playbook where you open up that playbook and talk
about the tactics
that help you win. What are your three channels or tactics that are your most
uncutable budget items?
I would say the first would be paid media and paid media in a very focused
manner. So
paid media that actually allows us to capture audiences they are ready to buy,
using the right search terms that allow us to identify those buyers. Paid
social as part of
paid media is really important to us as well. Delivering content. So content is
king, but content
can sit idle. We need to distribute that. So paid social does that. For us, it
is about making
sure the right content gets to the right person at the right time. So that's
number one. Number
two, I think you might know my answer and that's public relations. That is
critical because what
reporters say is infinitely more important than what we say about ourselves.
And even better is if
those reporters are from outlets that are audiences trust. So being able to
identify those and being
able to get endorsement or coverage that aligns us with that thought leadership
their audiences
are looking for, that changes the game and softens the ground for ourselves
teams. And then I would
say the third, you know, uncuttable budget to quote you would be events, but,
and that comes with a
huge, but with strict measurement. So events, but knowing exactly what events
are for, what purposes
they fit. We have a small subset of events that we absolutely believe in in
sort of driving thought
leadership. And then there are, you know, numerous events that we do that are
intended for demand
generation, demand capture. And those come with a set of ROIs that we hold
ourselves and our sales
counterparts really accountable to. So for instance, making sure that there is
a 10x pipeline a year
from now in the, you know, from from the point of our investment. In order to
re-evaluated this
is an event that is worth investing in in time to come. These are really strong
grout reels that we
have, but events, no matter what people say, they're not going away. The in-
person factor cannot be
replaced. I agree. Couldn't agree more. There's nothing like it. Right. There's
nothing like it.
And you know, yeah, there's all sorts of different schools of thought there of
like, you know, you
can you can make you can make all sorts of assumptions of what digital can do
and all that. But there is
there is nothing like meeting someone. IRL and actually and actually getting to
know them.
Going back to the first point, so for paid is interesting that you said you
sort of content
delivery is part of that. I'm a huge believer in that, you know, obviously all
the different podcasts
and video series that we do here at Caspian. Every single one of them is a paid
budget. Every
episode has a paid budget. So, you know, my personal podcast or my personal
marketing strategy,
I, you know, for Caspian, I call the three P's, which is podcast paid and
partners. And so
podcast really is a royal is the royal term for like serialized content, but it
's easier.
I'll just say three P's. But, but yeah, no, I firmly believe that that that
your paid engine
is not just about, you know, demand capture, but it's also about demand
creation. And when you can
sort of, you know, accelerate your content going out into places, like you
shouldn't be making it
if you're not going to promote it, right? Unless it's like an SEO piece. But
even still, I mean,
if you think it's good enough to make, you should be good enough to get budget
behind it.
Whereas I just feel like so many people just never do that. And I'm like, you
hired the people,
you did this stuff, you did all the work, you made the thing like put some
freaking dollars behind
this. Get it beyond the website. Exactly right. So why do you think more people
don't do that?
Like, like, why do you, what do you think the disconnect is that this is like
one of the things
that like boggles my mind. That's a really, really good question.
Maybe sometimes it comes from, you know, just kind of an over-able lens on
organic social,
where they're indexing on, hey, and that's a good thing. It is a good thing to
have organic
social followings and amplification strategies. But what pay social does is
that it gets it
directly in the hands of, you know, your customer profile or your ideal
customer profiles. And so
being able to turbocharge that is probably something that, you know, that
people need a
stronger awareness of. It's, yeah, it's definitely something. Another thing
that's interesting about
it for me too is, and this is some of the stuff that we do, it allows your ret
argeting arm to be
so much more effective. Like, that's a lot of the stuff that we do is we'll do
paid, you know,
we'll do paid on a bunch of places and then we'll do, you know, use retargeting
layers
for, you know, for the more, you know, product, product-centric
copy and ads. And that is, and it's decreased our cost like a ton to be able to
do that.
You know, giving people content that they actually would be interested in and
then letting
themselves to self-select into the buying timelines. That makes so much sense.
Yeah, it's like, oh, hey, I'm going to give you stuff that, you know, is
valuable to you all year
around. And then, you know, every now and then you're going to see an ad rather
than like
be you over the head with like, buy our stuff 24/7. So true. So true is all
about adding that true
value and, you know, really providing helpful content to people without the
soles pitch being at the front and center. Second piece here, PR. You're
obviously a PR wizard.
You've been a chief comms officer. You've, you know, you cut your teeth in this
What are the types of things that you're having your PR teams focus on to drive
that brand value,
to drive that story, to drive those things? Yeah, that's a really good question
. So two things I'm
obsessed with when it comes to the LAN of PR. The first one is we need to have
a very clear idea in
terms of what perceptions are we really trying to drive towards? Where are we
today in terms of
perceptions amongst our audiences? And what are the perceptions that we want
our audiences to have?
Because therein between what is and what is to come is that delta. The delta of
, you know,
just what the PR agency can do in conjunction with us. So this is where
innovation can take
plays, creativity can take plays, a really strong content strategy, right? I
always start any type
of, you know, PR discussion with what do we know and what does our audit tell
us, you know, or some
of the, some of the perceptions of us, it may be, we may find out that, you
know, some of the
perceptions out there are limiting us in terms of our growth. So then how do we
expand that?
That's where I would hinge our hangout strategy on. And then the second thing
is just being very,
very clear on which sources, which media outlets are our customers trust, right
? Because what may
be considered tier one by a different company in a different industry could
very well not be a tier
one for us. We need to know and define our tier ones based on what is relevant
and what is considered
trustworthy by our audiences. And then really go out there and get all stories
out there.
Is there, so you just did this huge rebrand, obviously, I don't know, huge, but
you just did
this impactful rebrand. And you have a clear narrative that you want to go to
market with.
Is that the thing that you're sort of saying to the, you know, to your PR teams
to say like,
hey, this is the, this is the story that we want, you know, to get out there.
But then they're also
having to pitch, you know, other stories, right? It's like, that's what's part
of the thing that's
so hard about about PR is getting the, getting the journalist, getting the
influencer to care,
right? About a story that, that their audience cares about that's beyond just
the brand.
And so yeah, I don't know. Curious to sort of like, you know, the, the brand,
the message that
you told earlier is such a clear product message for me, which is, you know,
like there is all of
this complexity. And really just a lot of, you know, fuzziness that can be
solved with technology.
But sometimes the journalists don't want to hear that message, you know.
Right, exactly. So, so coming back to the rebrand that we talked about,
as we talked about rebrand is more than just, you know, look and feel. A lot of
it is also about
what is that story and what is that strategic narrative. And for us, we, we
worked through a
very simple framework, which is to define what the enemy is. So the enemy
represents the current
way of work that is not productive for CFOs or Treasures. And then what the
hero is. So how do
we position ourselves as being able to really add value in solving that problem
. So as part of the
rebrand Ian, the enemy that we have identified and I mentioned this earlier,
that that is the
notion of liquidity gridlock that points towards systemic constraints that are
really preventing
CFOs and Treasures from being able to see their full liquidity positions. And
we are,
we've been thinking, taking a lot of time thinking about what is the solution
for gridlock.
And I think we may have come up with a positioning for that. And that is the
notion of liquidity
performance. So the story of ending gridlock starts with connecting liquidity
to any CFOs
most strategic advantages. And that is performance. So connecting liquidity to
how they perform
and in turn how their companies perform was, you know, was the notion that
inspired liquidity
performance. So yes, in terms of getting our agencies and aligning our PR teams
in telling the
stories and landing the right stories, part of it is making sure that going
forward,
Kriba is evangelizing, right, the notion of liquidity performance, because
there is a level
of education and awareness that needs to take place. What is liquidity
performance? I talked a
lot earlier about how different people define liquidity differently. So there
needs to be some
conversations about what that means and how that connects to your business as
well. So a big part
of what the teams will do is to evangelize the whole notion of liquidity
performance as well as to
really raise awareness on the challenges that gridlock presents to finance
teams everywhere.
So at the very baseline level, it is evangelizing and really landing stories
that dispel, you know,
any type of perhaps stereotype or misperceptions about liquidity and then align
ing us as that
liquidity performance platform and then spreading awareness on that problem of
gridlock. And then
on top of that, I think it would be all about how do we address that gridlock?
How are we, you know,
a CFO and treasure is, you know, best companion in the field of liquidity
performance? And then it
goes from there. In terms of budgets, what about something that is your most
cuttable? You're
something that may be not be working or not fading away? We're just not
something that you wanted to
invest in. I would say content for content sake. What you and I talked about it
, like you said,
I have to quote you. I mean, if a content is good enough to be produced and if
it's good enough to,
you know, put time and effort into, then surely it is good enough to have a
distribution strategy to
go with it. It deserves investment and it deserves amplification. So any
content that is just for
content sake, I take, I probably take like a second or third look at it and say
, you know,
this probably belongs on a blog somewhere, but not something that we want to
put too much time into.
I love that. That's a great, great point. What about experiments? What do you
say that that
five percent of your budget for crazy experiments? Any experiments you're
excited about?
So there's one that we're doing in-house that, you know, is something that's
coming up as
that five percent budget space. So AI, how do we apply generative AI over our
vast content
repository? I mean, we have loads and loads and loads of content in Korea, but
we are in no shortage
or content in Korea, but how do we apply generative AI on our own marketing
content or company content
to not just make content discoverable, but also to be able to produce and build
net new content
that is contextual, useful, and impactful. And that is an expert, an era of
experiment that we're
working on right now. The other piece of it and would be the whole idea of
really rethinking
how we curate our customer communities, because today we either do events to
get together with
them, or we engage with customers on platforms that other people own. So it
would be really good
to begin to figure out how do we build and own our own digital community of
customers,
right, to keep that conversation going endlessly. Yeah, very one. So hard, so
important, right?
So important. Even if it's one thing, right? It's like, that's a, you know, it
's like,
that's a crawl walk run. It's like, even if it's just like, this is the way
that we talk to people,
you know, this is the way that we create community. It's around, you know, like
, we're going to get
together and eat chocolate, you know, once a year, you know, like, even if it's
just one thing,
it's like, what is our thing, you know? And that everything that we do really
should be in service
of our customers. And if we're waiting to speak to them, you know, aside from
offering them support
or servicing their accounts, then I think we're missing out on a lot of iter
ative changes that we
can make to our platform in the way that we serve them. Couldn't agree more.
How do you view your
website? As the, as only the most important demand engine for us on the
marketing team,
the website is so, so important for us at Criba. I believe it is the case for a
lot of companies
out there. You know, just the website in relation to us, for instance,
generates over 55% of our
pipeline and more importantly, over 55% of our bookings. So that passes through
our website,
through inbound demos, and then translates, right, a huge percentage of them
translates
into actual revenue for us. So it's really, really important for us.
Let's get to our next segment, the Dust Up, where we're talking about healthy
tension,
whether that's with your board, your sales team, your competitors, or someone
else. Have you ever
had a memorable dust up in your career, April? It was hard to think of one, but
I, I, I'll pick one.
So I remember, I've done about, I've done three reprints in my career. And in
one of my, I think
it was my second rebrand. It was just, you know, doing this company wide re
brand and facing really
loud vocal criticisms from very longstanding employees, we were taking a mascot
that,
that is very loved by the company. And you're, you're, you're, you're laughing
a little bit because,
you know, probably have an idea which company I'm referring to. But there's a
mascot that,
that is very loved by employees and customers and partners alike. And part of
the rebrand
meant that we wanted to make little tweaks to the mascot, just little tweaks.
We're never going to,
you know, change it completely, give it a facelift that nobody can recognize,
but we wanted to give
us some modern finishes and tweaks. That came with huge objections from
longstanding employees.
Slack blew up, my email blew up. I mean, every which way I turned at that point
, people were,
you know, really furious at how dare I touch that mascot. And the, the way that
I approached
the dust up was to really think hard about what is that common ground and how
can data help
so that we don't have to argue based on emotions. Rebrand's can be surprisingly
emotional for many
people. Right. And so what I did was I took a few iterations of our mascot,
including the original
and pass them through our customers. Our customers will always be the common
ground, right, and got
them to vote. And the results came back pretty compelling. While our customers
really, really
love our mascot, they truly appreciate the modern touches that were suggested
for the mascot.
And so that helped, you know, kind of put everybody at ease, including my loud
est critics.
And I think finding that common ground and always backing any type of emotional
decisions with,
with data is my big learning from this point on.
I love that story. Always love a mascot. Anything with a mascot story is always
good.
Just don't touch the mascot, right? I know. Yeah. And that was truly eye
opening for me, Ian,
because I realized the reason why people have such an emotional investment in
mascaras is because,
you know, that has been what the company is rallied and rallied behind the
galvanizer identity,
you know, behind. So it was not about the mascot per se. I think it was more
about
change and bringing them alongside us, you know, for change that was really,
really critical.
Yeah. And it's what got you there, right? You know, so, so you feel, you feel
emotional. It's like
my cast being caribou, we just were talking about this will never change. Okay.
Last,
last segment, Quick Hits. These are quick questions and quick answers just like
how qualified
helps companies generate pipeline quickly. You can quickly go to Qualified.com
to learn how you can
tap into your greatest essay, your website, and identify your most valuable
visitors. And instantly,
and I mean instantly, start sales conversations, go to Qualified.com to learn
more. Quick hits.
April, are you ready? I think I am. Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill
that's not on your
resume? I'm a spice fiend. No spice level is too spicy for me. Dang. That's
pretty. That's a
great skill. It is. It is something that nobody believes me, you know, believes
me in, but you will
see. I'll put them wrong. Do you have a favorite book, podcast, or TV show that
you recommend?
Can I say to? Sure. Salt by Nira Wahid, which is a poetry book, really good. TV
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Are you kidding? Those, those, those ladies
keep me on my toes.
I love it. If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what do you think
you'd be doing?
I would be an astronaut. Ooh, good one. What is your best advice for a first
time CMO?
See yourself not as a marketing specialist anymore, but as a senior official of
the company that is
actually managing the company's business growth. And then stay endlessly
curious.
April, it has been wonderful having you on the show today. For listeners, you
can go to koriba.com,
go give your CFO a nudge and say, hey, what are we doing with our liquidity? Is
it gridlocked?
Go to koriba.com. April, any final thoughts? Anything to plug? You know, next
month,
and month of May, AAPI month. So, you know, find your AAPI community out there
or your colleagues,
and think about, you know, what you can do for them to give them a lift in
their careers.
Oh, fantastic. That's awesome. April, wonderful chatting with you and take care
Thank you, Ian.