ICYMI -Jennifer Griffin Smith (Brightcove) - Thinking and acting like a media company

Speaker A: M. Foreign. Welcome to Destination cmo, a podcast about growth, business and the power of marketing with your host Vincent Famvan, a three time Chief Marketing Officer, member of the Forbes Communication council and a 40 under 40 award recipient. On this show, we invite our guests to share the most important stories happening today in business and tech told through the lens of a senior marketing leader. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker B: Our guest today is Jennifer Smith, Chief Marketing Officer at brightcove. Jennifer is a well respected international marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience in managing a go to market strategies and corporate communications for public as well as private technology companies. Before joining brightcove, Smith held CMO positions at other software companies including Work Human, Avid Technologies and Progress Software. Hey, uh, Jennifer, welcome so much and I'm so excited to have you here today.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Nice to be here.

Speaker B: It's great to always chat with other marketers. One thing I always am curious about is when you started your career, where did you think you were going to go in your career and what was the path that you ended up taking?

Speaker C: I don't know if I had a path lined out. I didn't know if I thought I was going to go anywhere. I think when you, well, unless you have a clear vision that you're going to be, I don't know, an attorney or a doctor or. I think when you do business you don't really know what you want to do. Even now some grads may say marketing, but I actually did a general business management degree and I actually majored in human resources. Did do marketing as well, but was actually a linguistic, uh, a linguist. I studied French and German. I lived in Germany and Switzerland and so when I left university I actually thought I wanted to use my languages and I ended up going into a customer service role where I could speak German every day. I lived in the UK then you can probably tell by the accent I wasn't um, born in America and and so I thought that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to work and I'm going to deal with Eastern and European central countries and I'm going to use my languages and I happen to just fall into a job out of university in technology and who knows? Actually I remember at the time I had two jobs. One was in shipping, two offers, one was in shipping and one was in tech. And back then it was like, I don't know, what do I know about tech? But you know what? This role seems exciting and I landed in it. And while I was doing that role, I got to know the marketing manager and I got to go to events and I got to be intrigued by, um, branding and was actually back then it was the Memorex, it was the old floppy disks and you know, it was way back in the day. But it really intrigued me. It really intrigued me. And then I was lucky enough and my second role to go into another software company with the most amazing cmo who's still a very dear friend of mine today. And she really taught me everything. She just took it upon herself to take me in every meeting and every agency meeting where I didn't know the lingo they were talking about. You know, these were the days where you used to have to go to the print shop and, and proof your print as it was being printed. And it was just a great experience. And I guess my goal has always been do something that I love, work with people that I learn from and see where it takes me. And I really didn't have a path. I got more and more into marketing. I led inside sales for a little bit and, and here we are. At some point I was working for Progress Software and was doing an international role and they asked me if I would like to come and work in America for two years. And my husband and I at the time said, well, this is a great opportunity and we both could do it. So we said yes, and here we are 12 years later. So I, uh, don't know. There wasn't a plan. It was just great opportunities, working hard. And here I am in my sixth season CMO gig and living in America.

Speaker B: I love that because there's a few things that I heard from you. The first one is it's okay not to know a specific path that you want to do in the future. And you know, there are careers where whether you want to be a Doctor and that's 10 years of education, or a lawyer with quite a few years of education, then you do have to go down that path. But generally in business it's okay to take the path that your career takes you versus kind of, uh, rigidly defining that path. Because so many careers are not linear. They don't. You know, when you learn as, as a younger person and you hear things like climbing the corporate ladder, you end up thinking it's actually a ladder that goes vertically up. And it's, it's not, it's just not

Speaker C: like that, uh, doesn't exist. And I would say to anybody, and I say to New people in my team or people I'm coaching. Don't think about a title. Don't think about a title. Think about remuneration. That's okay. And we should all be fairly remunerated and incented. But titles don't mean anything. And they, they, they differ by company. And I would just think about the exposure you're going to get and, um, the projects you're going to work on. And sometimes you need to move sideways and even sometimes out of a company or take something extra on to get a project that it's going to open your mind to something different. And it's really the experiences. Some of the best people I work with didn't come up through that normal career path and have taken it upon themselves to move sideways or do something else. And they're just so great to have in a team because they're just open to taking on anything. And, you know, I have somebody that's kind of like any special project, that there's a special project, and so that person gets to work on amazing things. And so just don't, um, think, oh, you know, I'm the PR manager. I must get to the PR director and the senior director and take on something else. Because it's only when you become fully rounded that you become so valuable.

Speaker B: I completely agree with that. And I think even fully rounded means spending time in other functions. Some of the best marketers that I've worked with and even in my career, I've spent time in operations, I've spent time in sales. And you end up being a better marketer as a result of being able to understand those different product perspectives. So for somebody that might be earlier in their marketing career or potentially even starting their career, what would you say is like, the best advice that you've received throughout your career? And what advice would you give to somebody striving to become ahead of marketing in the future?

Speaker C: Well, the world has changed drastically. And I think the digital world we work in is like nothing we've ever seen, nothing we've learned, nothing I've experienced. I think there's a couple of things I would say. One I was advised on and one I learned. The one I was advised was a long time ago, an old boss said to me, I want you. And, uh, this was back in the day, we were always in the office where there was no thought of ever working from home. You know, I want you to spend a day, a week at home, and I want you to spend time on thinking and strategy. And I was kind of like, what Are you talking about we're so busy. But what he was saying was give yourself a break from the doing to actually the thinking what is going to be the next. And even still today there are times where I even get frustrated with myself because my calendar is so jam packed that I'm like, when am I doing the next? Like when am I doing the big sky thinking work. And so always give yourself breathing room. Don't load yourself up. Give yourself breathing room. The second piece which I think is learned is collaboration. If you're in marketing, unfortunately you pick the role where you're not going to get thanked very much for success and you are going to get blamed for lack of pipeline. And if you don't like that, then you're in the wrong role. But if you think that a marketing team or the job you do in that marketing team is not siloed but a job, then you're wrong. Because no marketeer, you can't be in comms, you can't be in product marketing, you can't be in demand gen, you can't be in branding if you don't work with multiple functions. And you are really just the, you are the um, stitcher that's bringing it all together. You can't create a campaign without getting feedback from people. The worst branding is when marketing go into a room with an agency, spend eight months and a million dollars and unveil something and everybody in the company literally is laughing behind your back. Right? It's the worst. You have to be able to collaborate. And I think anybody that has spent time in product or is a technical marketeer and wants to come into something different, anybody that has been a inside sales store, BDR store sales rep makes a phenomenal marketeer. I will also say, like having sat on the phone myself and made cold calls, I feel like you just have to go through it and you'll either find that you thrive and you end up into sales and that's okay too, or you actually just appreciate what they need to be successful. But having that understanding of what those other teams are and how you are going to connect it because you literally. I think there's only one other function in a company which is HR that does the same. But marketing is like holding everything together. Marketing is the people that take innovation. Whatever your innovation is, whether you're working for a car company or a clothes, uh, manufacturer or a software company, you're taking whatever is coming out of the lab. I say, right, and you are getting it to market and you have to enable an entire company for that to happen. Right. You can't just put campaigns out there. You're telling internally what your message is, you're inspiring people, you're physically training salespeople, you're giving feedback from customers to product. You are at the center of it all. And that's what I love about being a go to market leader. But you have to understand that you can't be in your role saying this is what I want to do and just think you're going to go execute it down a path without being able to collaborate.

Speaker B: That makes so much sense in terms of poor marketing strategy. You're sitting behind your desk and I kind of use metaphorical desk since so many people are working from home right now and you're not actually where your messaging hits your target audience. And so, you know, I've seen marketers where they're designing trade show booths and they never actually see in person what the real booth looks like and the conversations that are happening in that booth or they're writing training materials for BDRs, SDRs, but they're not actually listening to those phone calls or not actually sitting side by side with the folks who are doing that job and hearing the feedback that is coming either directly from the potential customer, the potential client or from that rep that's having a conversation with them. And it's such a dangerous place to be.

Speaker C: I totally agree. And I think I have marketed many technical solutions in my time and not understood it all. Really didn't always made sure that I had the people in my team that were the technical experts. You can't write a demand gen campaign for a product that you have never purchased without truly being able to understand the audience. And at least in a good marketeer doesn't need to have done it, but they need to bring in all the data. One of the things I love about my job right now is that I consume what we are doing and I live it every day. And hence why I feel so passionately about it because I think that it's important for every marketeer. But, but for me it's. I'm now at a point in my career where I want to work on something that I truly understand every piece of the technology and that I'm living the day in the life of every one of our customers.

Speaker B: Yeah. Over the past, call it decade, how have you seen a marketing function change, A uh, marketing role change? You know, we've seen many companies move their marketing organizations from brand marketing to performance marketers. Introductions of digital channels have dramatically changed and even Things like today streaming as a new channel versus traditional tv, billboards, radio, how is that making an impact where the rubber hits the road in the day to day jobs and strategy?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I would say there are things that have changed drastically and the things that have not changed enough for me. Right. So uh, the things that have changed drastically and all the, some of the things you mentioned like who does. Well, I guess the direct mail was coming back before the pandemic and now nobody's in an office so you can't do that because everybody was sick of email, you know, so that was kind of a re. Insurgence I think of, of direct mail. But you know, I remember the day of everybody wanting to do airport advertising and it was so expensive and I'm like, who wants to do airport advertising? Right. Um, so I think the media, the medium has changed so much in the digital world has changed drastically. And I don't know that there's an, I don't know that we really understand the changes in the digital landscape and the connections. Right. It's, there's so many ways to market digitally. But how does it all connect? I think the technology that we use has changed really for the better. And I would say that there isn't one single solution for a marketeer. But I talked to some of my peers about this magic Martech stack, right. Because it's a massive component and I think marketing operations is central to marketing and that role has changed and that we've become more technical marketeers for sure from a system and data analytics perspective. I mean streaming. Well, first of all, let's talk about video. I mean I feel like it wasn't long ago where most of us, including myself pre pandemic were using videos as the high cost promo that you'd use at the start of a virtual event or a live event, right. And you were getting agencies to create it. But now nobody wants to engage with a piece of content or very few that is not in a video format because our attention span is less, our time to do this is less. And even if there's a good report, people want a video summary, any kind of product demonstration. I mean just look at like I Google how to fix the clock on my cooker and I want a video to show me it, right? I mean like everything. I always say my daughter, when you know, looking at her homework, she's a uh, junior in high school, it's like everything is video online by the teachers. Every single thing we do is video. And I, and so I think I Actually don't think that marketeers have a way of creating a content strategy that is video first, very few. And that's one of the things that we like to help with. Then you move into streaming. It's not just the video for putting up as an on demand, but then you look at how do you use streaming as part of your content strategy and as part of your marketing medium and what does that mean? And sometimes it's a live stream for certain businesses, but sometimes it's an always on channel. Right. It's more like a how do you create a corporate tv because that's the way people want to engage. And then how do you use AI to serve up the recommendations and content that they want to see? Because that's how we consume media. Right? That's how we consume our other media. And so why wouldn't we do that with our business content?

Speaker B: It makes a lot of sense. And especially video as an internal communication method because whether it's internal or external, I don't know. The last time that I've sat down and read an entire white paper through and through. Right though the white paper makes for really good research and really great messaging and really great takeaways, but that might get spliced up into a bunch of different almost micro campaigns in terms of how that gets dripped out and actually shared with the intended audience. And I agree with you that companies are not moving fast enough in a time where the barriers to entry are becoming lower and lower and lower. Even the simple setup that you and I have recording video just uh, five years ago wouldn't have existed. You know, we would not be able to put a credit card into a system, pay $30 a month and have something that can be polished like what we're using today.

Speaker C: Mhm. I agree, I agree. It's a huge opportunity.

Speaker B: I've also seen the, the other mistake on the opposite side of over investing. I had a friend once who worked at a large consumer electronics company, one of the top five and they had a campaign uh, that was recorded on a cell phone, went on YouTube and went viral and it got millions of views. So the company decided to then invest in a studio capability where they actually built an in house studio. They got fancy equipment, fancy cameras, production lighting, production audio and they tried to recreate that magic and it never happened again. And so going back to, we've talked a little bit about channels changing, but it doesn't fundamentally change messaging and it doesn't fundamentally change the actual core content a lot of the times.

Speaker C: Well, I think what it does though is that it needs to be more personalized. And I think we are all over uh, having mass marketing messages and we've been saying it for years, but if you can use user generated content through video and if you can be more personalized in your targeting and you can create videos that are specific to a business pain point or a solution that somebody is trying, a business pain point they're trying to solve or a solution they're looking for that's much more appealing and successful. And we always talk to customers about measuring the content consumption that you're putting out. The other thing is that video metrics are pretty basic and people think, oh, I'm going to look at, uh, click through or open rate. And it's, you know, we have something we call the attention index, which is actually what you want to look at is what is the attention index across one and multiple videos. Because you really want those people that are watching more than 75%, you want to understand who's doing that and also understand well, who's only watching less than 10% and what does that mean for the content. And if you can understand that, then you can inform your content strategy. And that's why we say think and act like a media company. Because think about media companies, it's not about using media for me, it's about the content. Right? It's, you remember when we used to talk about everybody should be a software company, you know, Uber has cars, but the really a software company and Airbnb has, you know, remember that old story we heard over and over again? To me it's a similar situation here. We all have content, but only media companies manage, create, reuse and monetize content in a way that we can learn from. Because their whole business is making money off their content. Whether it is subscription revenue or advertising revenue. They are analyzing the consumption of the content, which next shows to repurchase how to serve you up content that's relevant for you. That's what we talk about in thinking and acting like a media company. Treat your content in that way, have the systems to be able to manage and analyze it. And always think about visitors like a subscriber to a media site and think about creating and repurposing content only in the way that it gets consumed by that subscriber.

Speaker B: Right? And a lot of the digital delivery allows us to be able to personalize and to be able to segment messages so much better. In the old school world and still even Today on traditional TV, to an extent, you're creating one 30 second spot that goes out to everybody. And you can't necessarily speak to an individual person, but you can absolutely do that through a lot of other mediums where you can target and segment specific videos by industry and not only by industry, but by job title and job role within those industries.

Speaker C: Psychographic like you can, you can get down to it now where it's like only serve up uh, to people considered in the buying intent phase. Right. Or those in the awareness phase because of knowing what they've done previously and what they're searching for, which is really clever. I mean it's not as simple as it sounds, um, to implement and it does take a team and it takes processes and testing. But we do really sophisticated account based marketing in that way now where we're working as a joint sales and marketing team starting up a campaign, looking at what content we're putting out to people, seeing what the. And then informing our sellers of what they really want and not getting somebody to cold call out to, you know, somebody before they've done anything. We just ran some research where there was. I'm going to get the actual number wrong because there was a lot of data there. But it's something like 87% of the respondents from a B2B survey said that they were more susceptible, they were more open to communications from a company after they'd watched a video about that company. And so, and it was a high number, over 90% of people in the survey said they preferred the video content over any other form of communication. Which I just think is very compelling.

Speaker B: Yeah, I absolutely think that's compelling. And it changes things. When you have a marketing and sales organization that's thinking about the first time they can really present a solution or really talk about a solution is on a demo call and really moving that forward to start leaving bits of that that somebody's consuming so that they're not walking into a demo call hold with no context. And the same thing is happening in consumer purchasing as well, where online research that consumers are doing before they walk into brick and mortar stores is fundamentally skyrocketed in the past few years. And there's been a big shift in brick and mortar retail where it used to be, you know, somebody would come in, they'd have no idea. Different TV models, whether it's different washing machines, cars, whatnot. But the consumer today absolutely does that research. Usually even has things narrowed down to a couple different specific products. And they're really going into the store to ask either follow up questions or they're there and ready to buy. And all of that messaging and marketing happens before the quote, unquote, official starting point of that sale.

Speaker C: Exactly, exactly.

Speaker B: Throughout your career, is there a big aha moment where you made a mistake and you learned from that? And what necessarily would you take away from that specific incident?

Speaker C: Oh my gosh, I'm sure I made many mistakes. Campaign mistakes where you test something and you don't get the results you want. But you've got to do that and you've got to push it. And I always encourage my teams to try something new and be creative because it's the only way we will break through. Through. I'm not sure there was a big, I mean, I think there have been many aha, uh, moments, but I think it's more about different teams and how different teams work together from a branding perspective. You know, I think that rebranding and brand refreshes, as we call them, have to be done as a team right across an organization. Um, and unless you get buy in from the whole company, then it just becomes, it just becomes a marketing activity. And to me, branding is very inside out. Right. And it's very much about what are the values of the company that everybody in the company is portraying. Right. Because I can't say my value is trustworthy if customers don't feel like we are answering their support calls, you know, well enough. Like, I just think it. Everything we do in servicing, uh, our customers is who we are. So I think, you know, you'd have to ask my team. There's probably all my bosses, there's probably, there's probably many mistakes. Right? But then you learn from them and you move on and you take them from company to company and hopefully you're only human at the end of the day. Right? So I think as long as you. Humility for me is something that I think is really important in making sure you're using your team in the best way and understanding the role that everybody plays in the team. And my teams would probably say, you know, I expect a really high outcome and I expect hard work, but I just want to have some fun with it too. And I want everybody to learn something. And um, I guess one of the key learnings for me is somebody I used to work with that always used to say there's three measures of is the job good? And it's earn, ah, learn and laugh. Right. And it's like you've been remunerated. Are you learning? And I actually haven't having fun. And that's kind of a motto I Live by.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. One of the companies that I worked at spent almost eight or nine years at was Best Buy, and one of their company values was have fun while being the best. And I thought that, uh, the spirit of that was really great in terms of the balance and the fact that you can do both. You can have a lot of fun while winning at the same time.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think if you're miserable in what you do, don't do it. I mean, in any role, like it's. Life is way too short. And if you're frustrated and you can't feel like you've got anybody to talk through, to break through, find something else. I mean, you've got to be able to be listened to. There is a way to put your ideas out there, but if it gets too much, just don't do it anymore. That's my. Because somewhere your creativity and passion will be recognized.

Speaker B: What are the best resources along your career? You mentioned a mentor earlier that you learned immensely from. What are the other resources that have really been beneficial for you along your path?

Speaker C: Oh, well, I mean, great bosses. I've had some really great, experienced CMO CEOs peers. I actually, I would say the peers that I've worked with. I've just been on every management team. I've been so lucky. And, um, I learned from them. Oh my gosh. Not just about marketing and sales and business, but just life. And so. And that's everything from the sales leader to the product leader to the channel leader to the. The chief people officer that. I just feel so lucky to have worked with those people, my team. I, uh, have people that I've worked with at multiple companies and I've. I consider them friends now. And although we have a great, great deal to do and we have great fun, I mean, the other resources I would say are, uh, there are definitely some mentors and coaches that I've had that have become friends that, you know. There's two or three people that I will call at the drop of the hat for any advice. And they've probably been in my life for 20 years. Right. Which is wonderful. And then more recently, peer groups, CMO groups, other CMOs that I meet that are, ah, just great to chat with other, uh, heads of marketing. There are so many groups right now that I love to be a part of and they help with tactical things and we have questions. But you also just know that somebody's in the same boat, and that's great.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely agree with you. Where can people follow you or learn more or stay connected with you.

Speaker C: LinkedIn is my number one go to. Yeah, I do love that site and I love that it is still mostly remaining, uh, professional. And I would also say go to Play tv. Go to brightcove Play tv. It is our always on channel. It is all things video. If you want to know anything about video or get hints and tips and master classes. And we are launching uh, 32 episodes of Play on November 8th, which will be live on November 8th and then you can watch it on Play TV thereafter. And I will be talking about how you can think and act like a media company.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you Jennifer so much for joining us. To follow Jennifer we have a LinkedIn URL, uh up on the screen. Also check out Brightcove and play TV. Jennifer, hope you have a great rest of your day.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me. Great to talk to you.

Speaker A: Likewise, this has been Destination CMO hosted by Vincent Famfan. Because marketing careers are often highly specialized and rarely linear, Destination CMO invites senior marketers to share stories and insights from their professional journey. If you liked this episode, join the community by following us on social media. We have links to all our platforms in the show notes and join us next time for the most important stories in business and tech explained through the lens of a senior marketer. Thanks for listening to Destination cmo. This podcast is produced by Caroline Pickens and the team at Fresh Picked Studio. For more information, go to freshpickstudio.com.