Jess Cook: Brand Beats Demand Gen

Speaker A: Hi, I'm Tom, founder of Demand Genius and host of Demand Geniuses. This show is all about equipping B2B marketers with everything they need to convert demand to revenue. So please hit the follow button. It makes me really happy. And then enjoy the show. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses. We've been, it's been a couple of weeks actually since we've recorded one, so I'm going to see if I can. If I can make my way through this without forgetting how to do it, although I may have already kicked that off to a bad start. So with, with no further ado, I'm going to get straight into and introduce my guest, which is. I've been very excited for, is Jess Cook. So Jess is VP of Marketing at Vector and. Well, first of all, Jess, hello.

Speaker B: Hello. Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

Speaker A: Thank you for coming on. You are a multi. A, uh, multi time recommended guest. So we had Chelsea on a couple of weeks ago, who was kind enough to make the introduction to you. Um, but also your name has come up once or twice from other people. I always ask them for a kind of thought leader or industry voice they recommend. So you come highly recommended. No pressure.

Speaker B: No, that's so. Yeah, no, that's. That's awesome. I love it. I hope I live up to the hype.

Speaker A: Well, we will. We will judge that at the end. Um, I guess before I do a very bad job of giving a kind of rundown of your background, you maybe want to just give us all a little bit of an introduction into you and kind of where you've been, where you are now.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, my background is in copywriting and creative direction. I spent the first 15 years of my career as a copywriter on the B2C side. I worked on McDonald's and Pop Tarts and Rice Krispies and Cottonelle toilet paper, among other things. A lot of fun brands, uh, household names. And made the switch to B2B in 2019. And I kind of take the principles of like B2C creative thinking with me into to B2B. And so I think that's kind of my differentiator. That's my, you know, frame of reference for everything is like, how can we make this feel like a consumer product experience within the brand?

Speaker A: Talk to me about. So I think that the brands were McDonald's, Pop Tart, and then there was one other. And then we went to toilet paper, which I'd imagine is kinds of copy that you end up writing a very different Kind of adjective.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, Rice Krispies was the other one, which I think in the UK maybe they call Rice Bubbles.

Speaker A: No, we've got Rice Krispies.

Speaker B: You do? Okay. All right, Maybe that's uh, a. Maybe that's an Australia. The Australian name then. Uh, yeah. So no, I used to get to write like jokes and skits for Snap, Crackle and Pop. And I used to write the jokes and little riddles on the Happy Meal boxes. And you know, first. First couple of jobs out of school were, uh, were really fun and exciting and very like high visibility copywriting, which is a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, that sounds fun. And then since then, I know you kind of spent some time at Fastly, which is a brand I know relatively well and a lot of people probably do Marpipe and now Vector. So a bit of a mix across kind of early large businesses and now with a, with a startup that I believe is just coming off a series A fundraise. Right. Which must be very exciting.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. When I moved into B2B, I first started kind of in the content marketing arena. Uh, and then as I moved on would start to, uh, stand up content program programs as head of content. And then this is my actually first like marketing leadership role over all of marketing. So, uh, still learning every single day just how much I don't know specifically, ironically enough, on the demand side of things and product marketing side of things.

Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. But it doesn't help when there's actually new stuff being invented like five times a day. It's. But I think that skill of like learning what you don't know is actually probably the most important skill now. Uh, that was one of my questions that she made that I was quite interested to dig into is obviously coming from a copywriting and then a content background to now running marketing. Like, how critical would you say your content skills have been? Maybe a better way to frame it is like, what. What's the biggest thing that you had to learn in transitioning to VP of Marketing and what's the biggest thing you had to unlearn?

Speaker B: Great question. Okay. Uh, transitioning to VP of marketing specifically, I think is really like leaning on your people. So I think, you know, while I was head of, I was also still an individual contributor in those roles. And so now as VP of marketing, I have a, you know, full team underneath me. Um, and they're the experts in their domains. Right. So I have a fabulous demand gen lead. His name's Kelly Arndt. And so I lean on him a lot for like, please Teach me about reporting, please teach me about like the things that I need to know. You know, I know, I know the kind of business level things that I want to report back to my CEO to know the health of the business. But I also want to understand especially because we're a uh, product for demand gen marketers which we can get into in a little bit. What are, what are we seeing on the demand gen front that I can report back, you know, not only as like health of the business, health of uh, you know, the budget, but also just product insights. Like what are we learning by using our own product for demand gen that we could share back out to the market.

Speaker A: And what do you think made you the best, best person for that job? Because my natural instinct would be you're hiring for a kind of company that lives in the demand gen space. You'd want a demand gen expert and probably go down the route of a demand gen kind of strategy for the business as well. Whereas you've gone the complete opposite direction. And I had a kind of content brand expert.

Speaker B: Yeah, our CEO Joshua Perk, uh, and our, who's a co founder and our other co founder Nick Masters, who are, who is our coo. They, we're big believers in the marketing lead for this company needing to have a brand or storytelling background. Uh, we're very heavily invested in brand. In fact our, in my entire first year at vector was 100% organic and inbound. Maybe not 100%. I think we spent $40,000 for the entire year on ads. And so uh, let's say 97% organic. And we had our, we had our goals. So we, we are very big believers in brand and storytelling and the power of those things that they actually drive demand, that they can actually bring you qualified hand raisers. Uh, and now we're kind of continuing that now with a demand gen arm as well. Uh, now that we've made that higher. So it's it. We started with the foundation of brand so that people would be aware of who we are and what we do, which is contact level advertising. And then now we bring that brand into everything we do on the demand front, into our events, into our actual ad creative, you know, all, all of those kinds of things. ABM outreach, all of that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. And um, what, I guess maybe it's a useful framing conversation as well. Like what is it about the nuances of Vector that are going to be useful for people to understand in terms of understanding why that was. And I guess all of the kind of conversation is going to Follow what framing is useful for everyone m. To understand.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, great point. Okay, so Vector is contact level advertising. Oh, I love your mug. Sorry, that guy.

Speaker A: Little guy. We've taken some inspiration from you guys on the mascot. Actually, that's one of my overwhelming. When Chelsea mentioned Vector, I was like, vector, I know them. Oh, that's the ghost guys.

Speaker B: Okay, perfect little side note here. So. Yeah, sorry, let me start that again. So Vector is a contact, uh, level ad platform. You know, everyone knows account level, right. We've been doing ABM for a good decade or more now. And basically we allow you to get a level deeper. We actually let you see who in your target accounts are actually in market or engaging or doing some kind of research on your competitors or relevant topics. You know, basically allow you to get to the. The 5% of people in market a lot faster and target them with ads at the contact level. So that's really, really cool and exciting and new. So essentially like some, I think some context that will be helpful is like we're a new category. We're kind of deepening a current category, a way of people that. A way of working that people have been doing for a very long time and giving it a new kind of layer of depth and data, which is really, uh, interesting. You mentioned our brand mascot, the Ghost. So there was kind of this initial idea when the brand was first created that we're allowing you to reveal the Ghosts on your site, clicking your ads, doing the research online about kind of your problem space and solution. And uh, so we, the Ghost kind of became the mascot. We lean into him very, very heavily. So, uh, yeah, I think that was actually part of the reason that when I started looking at the company and potentially, you know, coming on as uh, head of marketing, I was like, this feels very B2C already. They have a mascot. They use these really bright colors. They talk very plainly. They have a little bit of like attitude and humor. It did not like I could very quickly connect the dots between kind of my creative way of thinking and background and how I could bring all of that to life at Vector and help

Speaker A: me understand because I guess it's also. I want to understand the context of the go to market motion because my. And I often. I'm all welcome. I'm always on this podcast, the least intelligent marketer in the room. M. Like my impression would be we're not building a category. Then that's where actually like a demand capture lots of advertising makes sense because you're kind of trying to. There's demand out There, like, how do we just funnel that off so we're a little bit better? And so that would push me towards actually what you guys do and what would seem intuitive for Vector, uh, whereas you've gone the other direction and it's like a category creation play within a category that already exists. Help me understand why.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not a category category creation play, but it is very much a, ah, re Education. Right? And in order to get people to want to even slightly change how they do something, like, you have to pull them in, you have to get them to care, you have to get them to like you. And so a lot of what we do is just optimizing for pure likability, shareability, getting people to go, what the heck is this? Right? I need to know more. Um, will get people to be more likely to see kind of your way of thinking, right? Where we're saying you've been doing ABM for a very long time. You're not wrong. But the tools you were given don't give you the level of data that you need. So listen up, right? This is kind of our way of saying, like, listen up, something different is happening here. There's something to being kind of the unique voice in the room that helps you get people to kind of change their, their minds.

Speaker A: So those three things that you said were re education, shareability and likability, which I think are all quite interesting. I want to kind of like. So you've built brand. It all sounds like some of the foundations were there already, but you've then kind of taken it and run with it. How consciously are you trying to embed elements within the brand for those things? Or am I kind of digging way into something that you said off the cuff there and you're like, stop pushing me on this, Tom.

Speaker B: No, we. Brand is a part of every single thing we do, from the swag to our own kind of personal brand building within LinkedIn. From our, uh, employees that we have, you know, we have a podcast, uh, all the way down to like, our ad creative is written in a way that. Written and designed in a way that does not feel like it's coming from B2B company that it feels like it's hitting a pain point. Very specific to, you know, our, uh, top Personas that they're seen, but we're also kind of giving them a little bit of a wink and a smile. Right. And so even down to our most focused lead capture initiatives, it's all brand like. It is all very premeditated in the Creative and the voice and the tone. Nothing is unintentional about the way we treat brand across any channel.

Speaker A: And that even carries in uh, one thing that stands out, the other thing like the ghost. And then I've also just seen on um, the LinkedIn airwaves, ah, a lot of fun little interactions between you and your CEO. And I know you have like a fun dynamic there. It seems like you were, you landed your dream job in an element and that you have a lot of people in the business who are very supportive and kind of, it must be naturally bought into the kind of approach that you're taking.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I got pretty lucky in that, you know, not every CEO, uh, or set of founders really understands marketing. Uh, and even if they understand demand gen because it's so close to pipeline, very few of them really understand like brand and top of funnel and awareness type activities. Like they, they get a little muddled in that kind of altitude because for them it's so far from pipeline, it's such a long tail activity and they have a hard time tying it to business impact. And so I think when I saw you know, the, the version of the website that I saw when I was evaluating uh, the company and interviewing, I could already tell like they understood the importance of brand and that we were going to be able to do a lot of really interesting things. And then there's a point where like yes, you have to have, you know, a demand gen function at some point. We are doing uh, outreach, kind of advertising led outreach because we know that those two things work together really, really well. But all of that comes from the top. Right? Like my CEO, my founders understand that like the brand piece is just as important, if not more important than all of kind of the, the tactics that fall underneath it in order to build pipeline and to move the business. So I do think I got like, yeah, landed a dream job with kind of the dream founders who really get marketing. That's not always the case. I've been in companies where like even the marketing leader doesn't really understand why we're doing content right. And so I know that's not everyone's reality and uh, it's hard.

Speaker A: And does it take any. Because I think one thing that I often speak to people and maybe less so on this podcast because it's often the people that have succeeded with it. But out in the real world is like they would love to do a lot of this stuff, but it's like I don't, I can't get people internally to engage it sounds like it was certainly easier for you and you were pushing on an open door, but did you still have to go and like really show the benefit to the leadership there of why they should be engaging so much on social? How much encouragement did it take and how did you go about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I, you know, some of it happened organically, Tom. Like some of it was, uh, you know, we have this podcast, uh, it's called this Meeting could have been a Podcast. It's essentially Josh, my CEO and I, it's like you've been dropped into our one on ones. And so each episode is just kind of a different decision or program that he and I kind of had to come together and make decisions on. And we disagreed on some things and then where do we actually end up? And out of that kind of came these like caricatures of us and caricatures of our dynamic. Right. Where bonehead CEO. Right. And like the over ambitious marketing leader and how do we get along and how do we come to decisions? And that started actually playing out not only in the podcast, but in LinkedIn as well. So he would post something and I would comment on it sarcastically. Like just the other day he posted something and I, you know, he said something about, I don't know, we had like huge growth in a certain year. Right. And, and so I commented on that and his reply to me was like, don't get a big head. You know, like it's all sarcastic, sarcastic, but it's like we have this kind of funny back and forth that I think people genuinely enjoy that pretty organic that it translated from the podcast into our LinkedIn kind of Personas. Uh, but I think people really appreciate it. They, not everyone gets to have that relationship with their CEO or ask the questions or say the things they really want to ask and say. Like they don't feel they have permission to do that. And so I think it's kind of fun that I get to be their proxy and do that for them and be like, why do you go to a conference and come back with a million insane ideas like why? And he'll give me a straight answer, like, I think just our transparency and honesty, people appreciate it gives them some, maybe some insight that they don't feel that they can get from their own leadership through their own conversations.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny, when you were talking, I was thinking like that's, it's very sarcastic. It's actually very British. The, the, the, the like tone of it. Because it's like borderline abusive.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is what we do best jokes, you know, borderline. I didn't say abusive, but it must reflect, like, it, it. It feels like it's a culture. It's like you're just having fun with it, which I think is very. Something that we often remove completely from anything. That's B2B. I guess that's your background as a copywriter coming through a little bit, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, 100% where it's like, it feels unexpected. But I. Now, I think people expect this from us specifically. Right. Like, they've not seen other companies or other kind of CEO and marketing leaders act this way. And now it's like, that's our, that's our Persona. That's our shtick. And I think people have come to expect it. And so now the challenge becomes like, how do we top that? How do we keep that going?

Speaker A: Does that make it. Is it harder now?

Speaker B: A little bit. I, uh, you know, I think the thing that I worry about is, like, are people going to get sick of this? Are people going to be like, okay, we've seen this for, you know, two years now. We get it. Uh, is there, is there an evolution of this that people need to see or, you know, we just raised a series A. Like, is there a point where we need ourselves to, like, glow up a little bit? Right. Like, we are now this series A company. What does that look like? How do we act a little differently because of that? Do we need to. I don't know. What do the people want? Right. And so I think we're always trying to look out for that feedback and that understanding of, um, how are people engaging, how are people receiving this and do we need to evolve it and some way? And so far it's, it's, you know, I think just the natural evolution that we've played out, um, has, has. Has been really successful.

Speaker A: You've kind of preempted my question a little bit, which was going to be like, how do you maintain it? You raise a series A, which means that everything is doing more and less, and like, a smaller and smaller percentage of your marketing is going to be you and your CEO, uh, talking, interacting in some way. So how do you scale a culture which is built a little bit on that interaction, or a brand that is built a little bit on that interaction once you start amplifying it more? Have you thought about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so a couple ways. One is, I think you hire for it. So we've done a really great job of hiring people who are willing and able or are already, like, building in public, uh, are not shy about having a similar Persona or kind of their own Persona out there in the world. Right. That they're really excited about being able to talk about the things they're doing at Vector and sharing that on LinkedIn, uh, being on podcasts and talking about the things they're doing within the company. So I think hiring for that and kind of thinking through like, okay, we need kind of organic, social and um, kind of our internal SMEs to become kind of the talking heads for the company. That's a hiring decision. Um, and I think it's something that we've done. We've done really well. Second is I think because the rest of the company has seen myself and Josh and a few others in the company kind of do this so publicly and create these bold ideas and they do get approved and we do get funding for them and they do go live. It gives permission to everyone else to have these big, bold ideas and run with them. So, you know, we have. My entire team is coming up with like crazy thinking around how do we want to announce this launch? Or like this would be a crazy like guerrilla idea at the next event. We should do this right. And so I think that culture that's part of culture, it comes from the top, is like the psychological safety to have big crazy ideas, whether they actually make it, you know, through the, the gauntlet or not, um, but to bring them to the table for sure. And so many of them get through. We're actually working on a couple of like out of home things at a couple different events right now that were. That came from, you know, the team that are like really big, bold thinking that probably doesn't happen in a lot of like B2B companies. So I think, you know, hiring, but then also just really making sure that that mandate is lived through. Your leadership team of like, bring the big ideas. Nothing is too crazy. Like, let's if it. If we think it could have a business impact, let's figure out a way

Speaker A: to make it happen, which so few places I think actually do in a time of data and efficiency and roi. Like very few places actually give that freedom. I think it's funny, as you were talking, I was kind of, um. I might be about to take this off on a horrible tangent. This might be an editing moment, but we'll go there anyway.

Speaker B: I've had my own.

Speaker A: It's okay. Over the last, like, let's say 10, 20 years, we've seen this kind of steady progression of marketers where actually the data marketer has been the king or the queen. Right. That's been the kind of holy grail and there's been a really an almost like snobbishness away from like if you're not that, then you should be. And it's that, that's the holy grail and that's led actually to this kind of sea of sameness in marketing. Because what are data do? It learns from historical trends so it helps you recreate that. And there's a certain type of business that that's exactly what you need. But it, it only goes so far because it's very hard to innovate. We live in a world now where seamless is everywhere because AI really is just that on steroids. It's trained on everything that we've ever done and it reproduces that. It's our data driven strategies amplified into every little piece of copy. When you talk about hiring, I wonder if that is going to be like an industry shift that actually the Persona you look for, it does go back much, much more towards personalities, people. If, if our goal is to stand out, you need people who want to stand out.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's, it very much comes down to the person can actually do the job, uh, the role that you need them to do. And they can also almost be your, you know, a mascot in their own. Right. Right. We have our demand gen marketer, Kelly. He's on all kinds of webinars and podcasts, our own and other. Just talking about what he's doing and why it's so different in, in, in a way that gets people to be like that is, I mean he is so smart. Right. And like I want to do marketing like that. And so I think there's something really valuable in finding people who are really good at the job, but also really good at marketing themselves publicly as well.

Speaker A: Do you think that makes it hard to be. Well, I don't want to talk about vector here because I think it's content. But like, do you think that makes it hard to be an introvert in marketing going forward? Because my reaction to that is, God, I hate that. That sounds terrifying. I don't want to do that at all. Uh, do you notice a clear shift towards like a very extroverted group of people? And do you ever think about that, of how you maintain like an element of. I don't want to use the word diversity, but you know, I think you know what I mean? Element of kind of totally.

Speaker B: I, I don't think she'd mind me saying this. I'm going to point to our Rev Ops leader, Sarah McNamara, who has told me before, self proclaimed, like, introvert, she is one of the top voices in Rev Ops and, and automation and workflows and AI on LinkedIn. Uh, I think she has an enormous fan base. She's told me before people have come up to her in event, at events with like a gift of like, you made such a difference to me, like just following you, you know. So there, there are people like her who are still very introverted but still have a ton of opinions and are incredibly skilled at what they do and are willing to share that. And you know, maybe they're not the, the ones out there with all the like, you know, antics and jokes, but I, uh, think they still have the respect of their peers. So I think it comes in all shapes and forms and tones and, and varying degrees of. What am I trying to say here? Of introversion and ext. Extroversion, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess the people that you're trying to reach are still across that. So you kind of the core skill set is a willingness to put yourself out there, I guess, and to kind of. It's a willingness to fail really. Because I think that's certainly my fear. With a lot of stuff like that doing something a bit more trivial or jokey, um, on, on LinkedIn or something as well. What if it just flops and I've just made it this, like making a joke in a group and no one laughs, even though that's not quite happening. That's how it would feel a bit, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah. 100%. Yeah, it's, uh, it's. I think that's part of the process and I think maybe that's what it is is to find somebody who's willing to just kind of have a big idea and know that not everyone is going to gravitate toward everything they say. And that's just part of the.

Speaker A: Yeah. What's your biggest, um, I'm curious whether one stands out. What's your biggest flop that you've, you've had in terms of like a big campaign or just a slightly smaller thing that you and your CEO like, oh, let's do this. And it just like, I don't know

Speaker B: if I can point to, like, I don't know. I've had so, so many. I've been doing like posting on LinkedIn now for over four years straight. And when you do it for that long, it's like, uh, once a week you're gonna have one that just goes nowhere. And I think the Thing that always comforts me about that is if it goes nowhere, then like, very few people actually saw it. So it's. So I, you know, it's kind of like, whatever. Now I know, like, it's all a. Learning that's a point of learning for me is like, okay, for whatever reason, that did not go over well, but maybe it's not the idea, maybe it's just the hook, or maybe it's because I threw a link in there. Right. Uh, maybe I need to just present it a different way. So I think it's very much just part of being out there and, and putting your ideas out there. Not all of them are going to land every time.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe let's get, let's get back on track a little bit then and talk. I want to. I want to get a bit more into like the brand that you're building and I guess how you think about that. So I guess what I'm trying to think of the best place to kind of kick it off. But I guess you've been part of multiple, kind of multiple different businesses where you've been trying to build similar kinds of brands. Like building a brand today in 2026. Are there ways in which it is different to what it would have been in past places or even when you joined, uh, Vector? As you think about how to scale

Speaker B: this post to Series A, I think the channels change. I think the fundamentals are always the same. Like, you can go back and read some of like, you know, Ogilvy on advertising, and the principles in that book are still as true today as they were when he wrote it in the, in the 60s. It's all about great storytelling. It's all about, you know, kind of showing humanity in whatever way makes sense for your brand. It's all about getting people to feel something. And I think that's why we struggle in B2B, because for whatever reason, we kind of forget that we go very deep into features and technicality, you know, and like, how we're different than a competitor. And I always liken that to like, you know, I used to work on Frosted Flakes. I tweeted as Tony the Tiger for a while. And, you know, it's like Kellogg would never be like, there is 4 million parts of frosting per square inch on a frosted Flake like that. No one cares about that. Right? Tony the Tiger is very much about, like, positivity and activity and sports and like, having a great time, trying your best. Right? And so all of the commercials and all of the kind of ethos of that cereal and that brand is built around that being great, right? As ah, as Tony always says. So I think we forget that part where we're like, oh, well we, you know, we can do this and we can uh, save you this much money and this much time, right? Like a B2C brand would never present themselves in that way. And I think that's something we could all like really take with us as we continue to build a brand. I can give you a very specific example of how we have really taken brand and even infiltrated kind of the um, demand gen, our demand gen activities with that. So we've been running a campaign for a little while. Uh, we were just been calling it like the surround sound campaign. But because we have vector in our tool belt, we can actually build contact level audience on LinkedIn. Uh, we know that they're all in our ICP and we're running three pieces, uh, three basic campaigns or kind of like uh, ad types against this exact same audience. So we're running like single image, product benefit kind of pain point framing ads. We're running thought leadership, uh, so that is a combination of internal employees and their thought leadership posts about our product, about the way that we think about things and about the way we think marketing should be run and our influencers and kind of their take on our product or how marketing should be done. And then we also are running CTV ads against that same exact audience. Um, and so we're running a set of four, um, CTV ads. They're as wild and zany as you think they would be. There's one where like a guy is in a bathtub, uh, is about to get in the bathtub and a woman pops up out of it and she's like spinning an ad, you know, one of those like sign spinners. And she's like, I needed you to see my ad. It's the only way to make sure that you specifically see it right? So the idea is like there's a better way and it's vector. And so we have kind of these three kind of campaign types running in front of the same audience. We through this campaign saw like 40% increase in traffic and 40% increases in pipeline month over month. And I think it's really fascinating because they're very squarely like, like top, middle, funnel, at most. They're definitely not bottom of funnel. And uh, I think it's really fascinating that kind of these wild, you know, CTV ads can get people to go, whoa, this company's really different and then the thought leadership ads can kind of build the trust. Oh, I follow that person or I know, like, I know they're very well trusted and well liked and they like vector. And then kind of the single image kind of pain point rooted ads are like, oh yeah, I have that problem and they're speaking directly to me. And so all three of them together are working very, very hard at this exact same audience. Kind of seeing all of these in a, in a given time period, we track all of this. You, uh, know we have attribution software. Not because I need to know, like, oh, we need to kill this program, but because we just kind of want to directionally understand is what we're doing working. And it's funny because the C, like day the data would tell us to kill CTV immediately because we can't track the clicks, right? There is no immediate like jump from like seeing CTV to book a demo. And yet I will never let that happen because I think the three of those things together work so well as a unit that I think if we turned those off the other two, their efficacy would start to drop. Right. And so I think that's just something like we look at the data as a guide, but I think you also just have to trust the things that, you know. And I think the thing for us a KPI is like our audience thought it was cool and that's kind of enough for us to greenlight something if, if we feel like it's, it's gonna just up the vibes and people will be into it.

Speaker A: Like, yeah, again you kind of answer my question. Because my first thought was I, I agree with you, Italy, but my first thought was to play devil's advocate and kind of like what the data person responds would be like, well, how do you know you're not wrong? Like, I guess maybe a bit. How do you draw the line between that confidence and willingness to place a bet and knowing when. Okay, no, this bet hasn't failed. Like, how do you stop it creeping into stubbornness?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, oh, great point. So we, we do have uh, we have dream data. It helps us kind of see like multi touch attribution. It helps us understand off site attribution and, and offsite conversions so we can see a little bit clearer picture of like what is actually happening. And so I think that that's help. There's also a point of like creative fatigue. Like those ads because they're so wild, like people will probably get a little sick of them quicker than maybe if it was just kind of like a You know, ho hum, kind of traditional banana.

Speaker A: When something stands out, once you've seen it a few times, you're like, okay, that's done now. It was funny the first time.

Speaker B: Yeah, I get it. Yeah. I don't need to, I don't need to see anymore.

Speaker A: It's almost like if it doesn't have fatigue then it wasn't good in the first place.

Speaker B: Agreed. Yeah. Like I want people to be like, I can't see this half naked guy about to get into the bathtub one more time. I'm going to lose my mind. That's success for us. Right. And so I think uh, those are the things that we're looking at is just like the fatigue. Like how many times have people seen this ad? When do we need to refresh? We have a pretty uh, we're getting into a pretty good kind of cadence of creative refreshes and combing, using AI to comb sales calls for new insights and quotes and you know, headlines that we can use and tests. So, so yeah, I think there's for us it's more an element of uh, we know the channel is working, we know our style of creative is working. It's really a matter of like when do we, when do we need to refresh and when do we need to get something new into the market?

Speaker A: Mhm. It's funny, I always think about in, in these conversations the overwhelming thing is like momentum is just so important because all of these things I think most marketers would agree with. And you can do it when you're hitting your targets over the kind of medium term period when you're not, that's when people start looking into the data and it's very hard to argue with. And it's funny how that momentum can just completely reverse and suddenly it's like a flywheel in the complete wrong direction. And I've spoken to people who've been through that as well. One like I guess on that point of momentum that like you just, there's some pretty kind of impressive numbers in terms of how your kind of advertising or pay spend is going. How much of that do you attribute putting aside the vector, the vector hat for a second to an excellent add strategy and obviously add uh, technology. And how much of it do you attribute to the kind of latent, outsized, latent awareness that you had because you got to series a quote unquote the right way?

Speaker B: You know what's funny is like I'll never know, I'll never know the answer to that question. And the answer is somewhere In a combination of all of that, right. Like all of these things work together. The series A was just a huge. As a big awareness booster, people were talking about us for like two days straight. We got all kinds of coverage and press and all kinds of engagement, right? And same thing with all of our top of funnel activities. We did a big, like, Halloween launch last year. I think that's gonna be kind of an expectation is like we do something big every Halloween now, right? And so I think there's definitely like the things that get people to either learn about us or see us again and be like, oh, yeah, these guys are still around, right? Like, what are they up to now? And then I think there's be underneath that. In order to actually capitalize on that, we have to have a really smart content strategy, uh, a really smart paid strategy. We have the best product marketer on our team I've ever worked with in my entire career. And I think just the fundamentals of that, that she brings of messaging and like, you know, this kind of all of this over here is noise and this is kind of the focus that we should be really leaning into. Those handful of things all working together was what really, you know, raises all the ships, right? And I think when you lose one, uh, it gets very hard to compensate for it. And I think a lot of B2C typically leans in that kind of demand gen in those demand gen waters. And the second that, you know, budget gets cut or, you know, you put out a campaign that maybe doesn't resonate, it's like everything dries up because there was no real loyalty or awareness or affinity to begin with. And so both things are just so important. And I would argue to say that brand is slightly more important because it permeates everything. Uh, marketers see brand is like what it looks like on the outside. And everyone else who deals with your company sees brand as every single touch point they have with you, right? They talk to the customer success manager. That is a reflection of your brand. Right. And so it goes deeper than just the ad creative and just the, uh, content that lives on the site. I think we forget that a lot too, that like brand is literally part

Speaker A: of every single interaction it touches literally every point in the funnel, right? Or if the way that I think of it is, if it's a flywheel, you can grab the flywheel at one point and spin it, or you can literally wrap your hands around it, grab it at every single point, and just like force it to go faster and faster. And that's what brand does it's it. It makes me think of what. So with what we do as well, which is in the kind of AI visibility, a lot of that is about like how do we bring AI along with us? And one of the big mistakes I think people make in our space is they treat AI as a visibility channel. They treat it as a kind of a single point on the flywheel that we want to optimize and try and get traffic from as if, as if it's SEO. In actual fact, it's an extension of your brand. Because that for a lot of people is going to be the first and M and main touch point that they have for a cfo. It might be the only touch point they might get a deal, land on their desk. Just quickly type in a is vector good value and is it a good fit for us if it says no 100k deal gone? How do you think about that? To what extent is the brand that you're building now built for and through AI?

Speaker B: So a couple different ways. We have a pretty focused content strategy around how do we show up in answers, but we also want to show up in answers with positive sentiment. And I think that that is a really important piece of it. A lot of that comes from kind of the social, uh, the dark social stuff. Right. Reddit threads and what people say about us on LinkedIn, all of that. Right. And so I think uh, it's hard to con. You can't control it all. There's no way. It's a lot like a review site, right? Like where you're not going to be able to go in and take down a one star review just because you want to. You actually have to like talk the talk and walk the walks. Like great, great LLM and kind of AI visibility and sentiment. And all of that comes down to do you have a great brand experience, do you have a great product experience, do you have a great customer experience? Because people talk about that and that is what is getting picked up so much more now than just, you know, the content on your blog that's feeding the answers. And so I think, yeah, it, I think going back to what we talked about in the very beginning is like let's optimize for likability and shareability and let's make sure that like the experience from beginning to end is really special and exceeds our customers expectations so that they're feeding the answers for us in a way that we want them to.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that and I love the focus on kind of sentiment as a metric. It's Something I think people always need to be a little bit careful. We did, we did this research report. We looked at how AI responses vary at different points in a complex buyer journey. So if you take an awareness prompt, a consideration prompt, a conversion prompt, and one thing we noticed, which was really interesting, is this thing called intent matching. So the AI basically is very smart. It understands the user's intent and it helps them fulfill that. So in an awareness query, it's exploratory in consideration, it's comparative, and then in conversion, it's directive. So in conversion, so what most people do is they track bottom of final prompts because that's the only place where you get an actual citation. And they see high sentiment and they say, it must really like us. No, actually it's intent matching and it knows that it want. That the user wants high sentiment towards something to help it make a decision. And that's where something. People go a little bit wrong with that. But I completely, it. It warms my heart to see you focusing on more than just visibility metrics, as if that's the kind of holy grail.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100. And I think, you know, we're all still learning like it's, it's still a new art form. And again, like you said, it changes five times a day. And uh. So, yeah, I think, I think the, the best thing you can do right now is really build a solid content strategy and you can build really great, like, customer experiences and those two together will help kind of bolster all of that for you.

Speaker A: Agreed. Content, reputation, position. If all those three, three things are good and they say the same thing, your goals are made. That's where most people go wrong because they see things, say something completely different because you got content from five years ago before your pivot. And, um.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Anyway, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole now on that note. Let's wrap it up there, Jess. And before I let you go, do a couple of quick fires, since we've got five minutes that we always like to do. So I think normally I give people this in advance, but I think I didn't for you. So I'm going to put you slightly on the spot.

Speaker B: Okay, let's. All right, do it.

Speaker A: First one is an AI use case or an AI tool that you absolutely love. The thing that, like, most blew your

Speaker B: mind, I just started using Town, and it is pretty incredible. So it's, uh, AI tool basically, like takes a look at your calendar, Slack messages, your emails, and. And it acts kind of, uh, like an assistant for You. So yesterday I got an email. I've been trying to order some different sizes of vector swag. We ran out of some sizes. And I got an email back from our vendor and it had a couple of questions in there for me. It drafted the email with all the answers to the questions so that I could just kind of go in and review and hit send, you know. And so it pulled all of that from Slack messages where I was talking to somebody about like, hey, we need to reorder the swag. Here's what m. I'm thinking from the email from previous, uh, conversations with this vendor. Right. And so I don't know. That was pretty astounding to me. Like, I think it's going to be one of those things that just saves me some, like, heartburn in terms of I, I, my, my email inbox is like, piling up and I, you know, I start, my eye starts to twitch and I think it'll just kind of help me, like, get through some of that, which is amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that it's the like, uh, it's the just does it for you. Because often you can do that of like, you go on and it's like, try to apply and oftentimes it's crap. And so I've just stopped engag that it's like, it's quicker to just reply to my no.

Speaker B: It was like, if it felt like me sounded like me, like I didn't have to change a thing. It was incredible.

Speaker A: Nice. Okay, cool. That's a new one for me. I will check that out. And then second question is a little bit more kind of for you specifically. Like, is there a skill or a trait that you have personally that you think has been the biggest needle mover for you in your career?

Speaker B: It's a weird one. Video production. So I have been scripting and producing, you, uh, know, been on the producing end of, um, video was through my entire career. Right. I wrote scripts for Snap, Crackle and Pop. I did a whole Cheez it series where, like, the talking cheese wheels I had to like, script. Each one had a different personality and I got to oversee the animation. There's something about being part of a video production that helps you, like, really see a, uh, creative plan come together. Um, you start to understand the process of, like, the things that matter up front versus the things that can take place in post production. Spoiler alert. So much more matters up front than you think you go through.

Speaker A: I thought you were gonna say the opposite.

Speaker B: No, no. There are so many things where, like, you'll hear people say, we can fix that in post. And you're like, no, we can't. We need to get it right right now. Uh, you go through casting, you go through, like, like, location scouting. I don't know. It's just a whole other world. And I think having gone through that so many times, uh, it feels like one of the more stressful things that you can do as a marketer or creative. And once you've done that a few times, you're like, I could kind of do anything. It gives you this, like, sense of confidence, and I think it helps you understand, like, the things that are important to nail early on and the things that are just kind of noise until you get to the end or you'll figure it out later and that will be okay. So. So, yeah, I don't know. I would. I always tell people, if you have the chance to be part of, like, a video production or you get to script something and you get to kind of see how it's made, like, jump at the chance, uh, it's been a pretty incredible skill that's allowed me to do some really amazing work and stand out, I think, as a candidate of somebody who can do work like that. There's. There's not a ton of, you know, B2B marketing leaders that can be like, oh, yeah, I can script that and put that together and find talent and do all of that. And, yeah, no problem. 1.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that because I think everyone knows video is a very powerful channel, but for most people, me included, it's very intimidating. That's one thing. Like, things like Riverside have made that a lot easier, but still, it has a pretty clear bar. And that bar is normally a short reel on LinkedIn that has two heads next to each other. And talking about, there's so many bloody marketing podcasts about B2B. There's one thing I was very conscious when I started this. I was like, that's what the world really needs, is another market marketing.

Speaker B: Hey, you never know. They're. They're. Everybody has their thing, man. And, uh, you know, I'm. I bet there's raving fans of this show who are like, I listen every week.

Speaker A: I hope so. Hi, dad. Hi, Mum. And then very last question is. Actually, we'll go straight to you. Just conscious of time, one recommendation that you'd have for everyone, whether it's like a book, a thought leader, a podcast. As I say, you've been. You've. You've come up here once or twice yourself.

Speaker B: So I cannot recommend Exit 5. Enough. Exit 5 is a B2B marketing community. They have a podcast. They have, like, an actual online community with its own kind of app where you can go in and ask all kinds of questions. Uh, they have different kind of sectors of the community for marketing leaders. They have, uh, different chapters in all different cities. I. I've. In my, like, early B2B years, I learned so much just from listening to the podcast, uh, about how other marketing leaders were running marketing, how other content were running content, things that I could take with me the following week and, like, implement them in my own role or test them out. And so, yeah, I would get on the Exit 5 train. You will learn a ton. They have an incredible event, uh, in September in Vermont, of all places, which is where the founder actually lives. So, um, I'll be there this year. It's. It's an awesome event. Like, just, it's helpful to meet other people who are facing the same challenges, and I think that's why what that community provides for. Sure.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, yeah, and I know they've got a pretty good podcast as well, so definitely go and check that out. I've been in the community at points, actually. Cool. Look, Jess, this has been fantastic. Thank you for, for your patience with all of my endless and meandering questions, and thank you for being so open. And also thank you for all of the lovely. One thing I wrote down at one point was you. You love lifting up people around you. I can see that you like shouting out all of the different people in your team, and I think that's really cool. Cope.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I have the best team. Uh, I'm. I'm so lucky. And I would, like, shrivel up in a ditch without them, so got to give them their flowers.

Speaker A: Okay, well, let's not do that then. Right? Thank you, Jess. And, and thank you for everyone listening at home.

Speaker B: Thanks to.