S2, Ep4: CMO Challenges in 2022 with Victor Milligan of Fastmarkets

Speaker A: Hello everyone and welcome to Funnelocity, the B2B sales and marketing podcast where we exchange views with some of the top industry experts on what it takes to succeed in global demand generation and elevate the customer experience. We're your hosts, Mary Kleinsorgen, principal consultant and Gifford Morley Fletcher. That's me, senior marketing strategist here at Market1. So without further ado, grab a tea or coffee, get comfortable and let's get to it. This is Funnelocity.

Speaker B: We are joined today by Victor Milligan, Chief marketing officer at Fast Markets. Prior to joining Fast Markets, Victor has led the marketing organization for Forrester, Nexage, Lavastorm analytics, and a senior partner at Gartner. Um, I've been working with Victor for our listeners, um, and team on a map consolidation project since last November. Although, um, I would consider it more of a transformation because really the project is one of many initiatives centered around elevating the customer experience. And then with that, Victor is leading this initiative by reshaping how marketing really thinks about going to market with a more customer centric and more customer first approach. Um, Victor is in scenic Vermont and when he's not hiking or scoping out bears and coyotes, he is often joined on calls with his four legged co workers, Bumba, Ziggy and Pumpkin. So hopefully Pumpkin will make an appearance today and welcome everyone.

Speaker C: Hope all you want. We're trying to keep him over there.

Speaker B: All right, so before we start diving into the CMO challenges. So Victor, do you want to just take a moment to talk a little bit more about your journey with Fast Markets for those of you that um, may not be familiar with your organization?

Speaker C: Sure. So I'm, um, essentially two years in. Fast Markets itself is a price reporting agency. So we provide price data, market intelligence, analytics, forecasting, um, into the commodity market, specifically agriculture, forest products, metals and mining, and energy transition. So these are the key market and price signals that help decisioners make decisions as well as particularly in the energy transition space is about a trillion dollars of plausible investment money is coming in and what they're looking for is better clarity as to how the market really works and where the market's really going. Get beyond the hype, get into the real movement of the supply chain.

Speaker B: All right. Awesome. All right, um, why don't we start diving into the conversation here?

Speaker A: Um, makes sense to me.

Speaker B: So if we look back a little bit on 2020, 2021, um, the CMO challenges, the biggest CMO challenge, well, was this, quote, new challenge of being forced into this digital transformation overnight. And I'm smiling about that because, um, I feel that this was raised in the industry as a new issue. However you kind of really look at it, um, you know, how the CMOs and the marketing organizations were pressured to compete in this environment and making your brand stand out from the rest. But you could argue that this is something that we should have as marketers been doing all along. Um, although digital transformation has been kind of pitched as this new term. Well, maybe, maybe we don't put that aside for a second. But Victor, I just want to get your thoughts on that because um, we had another recent podcast around, um, similar topic and we're talking about the challenges of 2020 and 2021 and what has really changed. And m, you know, I would be curious about your thoughts around this idea that everyone had to go into digital transformation overnight. And was that really a thing or was that something that really we should have been doing all along?

Speaker C: Well, I mean I kind of think that digital transformation began in the 90s. I mean I think that you have seen technology play a larger and larger role in all parts of the enterprise, including marketing for a. Um, and I think whether you're going to look at the dot com world, you're going to look at E business, you're going to look at B2C's challenges with that, the beginning of social. All those pieces began well before we coined the phrase digital transformation. So I think transformation is sometimes an overused concept. I think we've been well underway with it for a while. I think the thing I worry about sometimes from my chair is that digital transformation comes with a lot of cautionary tales. And I could equally argue that there's been digital destruction of marketing. And what I mean by that is that marketing was m more born as a mass media kind of thing, a one to many push. And what happened in my mind is technology simply made that easier. And one of the key competencies of marketing is storytelling. And I kind of think that storytelling got lost along the way. I think it was part of the collateral damage of digital transformation because it just was too easy, too tempting to be able to write an email against a well understood template. So now the template is now removing the design thought process and people are looking for, they're looking at it from a conversion rate standpoint. And so it's all good and we'll get into it obviously on the metrics and analytics. But I don't think storytelling had to be collateral damage, but I think it was collateral damage. And I think if you look at the marketing discipline now um, you sometimes hear the word copy editing and that's almost an issue of velocity. How fast can I get something out into short form? The question is, where's the stories? Where's the narratives that keep the customer as a protagonist? And when I do that work, what does it mean that the customer is a protagonist? Uh, what kind of stories do they have? What kind of issues do they have? And now I'm far, far, far away from automation and now I'm into the hearts and minds of my customers, where I should have been in the first place. I hope that we right the ship, but I worry that digital had as much benefit as it had damage.

Speaker B: That's interesting. And maybe you coined a new phrase of digital destruction. Um, but I mean, quite often though, I think that there's this perception that marketing automation is just completely hands off. It's like the AI conversations and predictive anal analysis as well, where there's a lot of perception in the industry that, you know, I don't, I don't need to program anything. It's plug and play or plug and pray, depending on what you're choosing. Um, but you know, the automation factor, you're right. Like we get away from actually the design and thinking through of what our message is going to be and what our tone is going to be and then it's just all about, well, the system's going to do it for me, so I don't need to raise a hand. But that's completely the opposite. It's supposed to enable marketing, not replace marketing.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think the idea was that technology was going to remove the menial, highly repeatable tasks that marketers had to undertake to do simple things. And now that time is freed up, they could further invest in those that create most value, which is again getting closer to the customer. My worry is that the first part didn't really take place like people promised because the technology was not that easy to manage. Um, it wasn't plug and play. Um, I'm not sure how many CMOs allow their technology just to run and how much requires constant manual intervention. So I'm not sure that was freed up in the way that, um, some of the promises would suggest it was going to be freed up. The second one is I'm not sure that that then brought people skills over to the higher value areas. I think what it did is it brought, we almost doubled down into the technology, into the metrics, into some of the vanity metrics, other types of things. And I'm not sure we insulated ourselves from the customer, but I don't think we went running towards them either. And again, value is created when the customer says it's created. And if I don't know when that takes place, how it takes place, and why it takes place, I may not know that even value was or was not even created. All I know is I sent the email out and I'm seeing conversions on the other end. So I think you're right. I think the, the equation was set up to be successful, but I'm not sure it was fully executed on the

Speaker A: storytelling side, I mean, the kind of the dream, uh, when the Internet became a real thing and digital started becoming not so much something for the few, but for the many. The theory was in marketing at any rate, that the customer slash prospect could have more control. But do you think that what marketing did at that point was kind of go, oh, well, you just take over and we'll stop telling any story at all and you can tell your own story and there wasn't a kind of a middle to be met somewhere?

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know if there's a relationship between the two. I think that social proved that you certainly lost control of your brand and you certainly lost control of your brand message. And, um, you, you somewhat lost control of the dialogue. If you weren't in the dialogue, you know, you didn't partake. But I think those are two separate topics. I think customers took far more control or command of their environment, both B2C and B2B. That ultimately is a good thing. They become far more of a protagonist. An active protagonist. Yeah, you can, I mean on a very basic way, you can capitalize on that momentum, but you have to meet them where they are. And again, it goes to the same question. Where are they? Who are they? And when they're there, what are their worries? What's the sense of possibilities that they carry that mobilizes them to go from point A to point B? And does the marketer know and are they storytelling between them? So there's a. And I, uh, know, Mary, you know, I've talked about. There's this classic and inevitable integration between CX and the underlying practices and marketing because they both center, rightfully so on the customer. And there's a whole set of design thinking sort of principles underneath that. I'm, um, not. I think there's this opportunity for marketing to embrace that in full. But I think what it did is it sort of in some cases took the journey structure slightly translated to be a channel structure. So now the journeys were Channels and the customer was faded back in the background again. And now I'm just trying to move channels around, I'm trying to optimize accordingly. So I thought CX was the next opportunity to bring the customer to the fore and from a design thinking standpoint, have the underlying marketing capabilities aligned to that. I still think that's quite possible. And I still think that the possibilities of having technology help think with you is there, but you still have to do the thinking because the technology can't do it for you.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. Tech is supposed to empower you. And um, yeah, I think, uh, just sometimes or quite often with some clients, there's just too much of a reliance on the tech to be doing all the heavy lifting for them. Versus Yeah, I mean, I think the

Speaker C: challenge was that marketing wasn't at the time set up to be an effective technology buyer or manager and the technologies were beyond the skill set. And so those promises are quite alluring. Um, and you can see why people bought into it. But when I've gone into any environments and you look at what, again, what marketing has to do just to make the technology work, that workload displacement that was sort of the promise really didn't occur in full. And I still feel like that one of the strengths of CX is the underlying concept of empathy and the underlying concept of context, meaning empathy at context. And I still feel like that skill set, that mindset and skillset of empathy and context isn't really, um, promoted, celebrated, rewarded, encouraged, whatever words I should use in the marketing discipline yet. And I still feel like those who do it well. It's funny, when someone does it well, again in the B2C arena, you feel it more. But in the B2B, it is so obvious that they're doing it. It is so different. It's so, um, clearly better. It hasn't really mobilized everyone else to catch up.

Speaker B: Now, something we were saying earlier about, um, having the skill sets to be able to support the tech, that was certainly a challenge a few years ago. I think it's still a challenge today where we're bringing more and more tools into this space. Organizations don't necessarily have the resources to be able to set up, um, you know, continue to maintain all of this tech. So, you know, our, some of our organizations are looking at outsourcing some of that, but I know that there's a careful balance here because organizations want to know what is the setup, you know, what is what. It's secret sauce. Um, you know, some, if you're outsourcing this at times it could be a black box situation where you don't really understand the solution. You know, that I've outsourced that I have another agency or another organization taking care of that for me. But then there's still the challenge within the organization where they don't understand what's going on. All they see is the result. And I think that's still that careful balance that we're, we're all trying to work through is, you know, how do we make this transparent enough to the business so that they understand what's happening. But then, um, you know, eventually the goal is to empower the organization so that they can take this on and maintain it longer term without having to rely on external sources to, um, manage their tech. But again, I think it's a careful balance there between what you outsource and what you try to manage in house.

Speaker C: I mean, I'll start with the cmo. In my mind, the CMO has to treat the marketing technology architecture as a strategic asset. So you can't outsource a strategic asset. Um, and the CMO has to understand that that architecture is also your data architecture. It's your data flows and it's your opportunity to convert data to fuel versus data as debt. Uh, I think you can't outsource it. There's too much at stake and there's too much to learn. And even if I take two, there's two very different approaches. One says, I put all my eggs in one basket, right? So I choose a large provider who can do all sorts of different to the full software suite, if you will, and I just sort of hand the business off to them. Or I do a best of breed where I have a lot of APIs and a lot of integration issues and I just choose the best of the best. Either choice I make will force me to have a deeper understanding of how it works today and how it will work tomorrow. One is, I don't think you can let it go. I think the problem with insourcing on a practical basis, and particularly now in this climate, is that technology, resources, human beings are extraordinarily valuable. And it's a very horizontal discipline. I could be a marketing technologist in finance, in telecom, in media. I can go anywhere, just very horizontal. So with that kind of fluidity comes salary inflation because you're always bidding against the entire industry now. And I think it's hard to keep that talent, um, because you have the reality of what's happening in the labor markets. You have that reality that people will move Jobs because sometimes they just feel like they're compelled to move jobs just because they're compelled to move jobs. And so keeping them there and then onboarding someone new and dealing with that churn makes having it be entirely an insourced capability. Not that it's unavailable. I just think it comes with obvious risks that if you can address them, great, but they're hard to address. And you, uh, and I talked about near sourcing where you do neither. You bring on an agency and you embed them in the team and so that they're not outsourced, they're not that black box as you just described it. It's an extremely transparent, obvious part of the business. And there has to be a skills and knowledge transfer that happens along the way because even if I'm not on the keyboard, I'm not staring at the screen. I am so incredibly dependent on technology now that if I don't really understand how it works, I meant to design my work in accordance with it. I don't know if technology is this thing I can carve off and say, okay, you guys got it. And then I have a team over here because who's not going to be involved in some way, shape or form in a technology driven process. I just feel like I align towards near sourcing, which allows me to somewhat mitigate the real risks of human beings while maintaining a principle that technology and data are strategic.

Speaker A: And as far as depth of knowledge within your team, you included, I mean, how much effort have you put into really understanding this technology? As a cmo, how much do you think a CMO needs to know?

Speaker C: Um, I think you kind of have to have a choice. I think the issue is that when it goes wrong, your learning curves are often forced to be vertical and so you can't afford not to know because if it goes wrong, it can go wrong and wrong fast. So I think you have to be. If I make a distinction of being conversant and being fluent, meaning conversant, which is, I know the words, I know the nouns, I know the basic principles. Fluent is, I actually can do that work. Expert is, um, I'm an expert. I think CMOs minimally need to be conversant. I think when you get to the data world, I think you need to be fluent. So I'm not sure. Sometimes the choice of technology is always the most central question, but the architecture that you choose and the way that you manage your data is now strategic. And I think CMOs have to be fluent in that. Whether that's a comment about Privacy laws. A comment about using data as fuel. Whichever way I look at it, whether I'm playing it from a risk standpoint or playing it from a sort of growth standpoint, I don't think you can treat data as a conversant question.

Speaker A: I mean, I agree, I think you need to think that you haven't got the time to be fluent, but if you haven't at least looked inside the engine room, it's much more difficult to drive the ship.

Speaker C: Yeah, again, I think on the data side, you have to be fluent and you need, you need people on the team. And I thankfully have been blessed with people on my team that are constantly coaching me, teaching me about changes, subtleties. And what is the reality when you get past the data architecture? What's the real reality of the data itself? And so most, um, firms on this planet inherit a diverse data environment. Right. Data sits in different places, it's dispersed, it's managed differently, it's governed differently, it's what queued up MDM as a key principle. CMOs rarely deal with this idea that data is homogeneous and unified. It is mostly heterogeneous and dispersed. I think you're always forced to solve that problem. It's far too costly and I'm not sure how wise it is to centralize it all. So you're now stuck with some method to federate, normalize and capitalize. And, uh, again, that, that data process is so central to making marketing work.

Speaker B: I wanted to bring back the conversation to something you said, Victor, around, um, you know, retaining the talent because as we all know, market one is looking to hire too. But it's so hard to find the tech talent or the strategic talent to be able to support sales and marketing. And, um, you know, you were mentioning that, you know, with near sourcing, you're bringing them in, you're embedding them into the team. But it's also this challenge where it's, it's hard to retain that internal expertise because that, the, the talent pool is, is so, you know, spare out there right now. So I don't know, what would you suggest as a cmo, you know, how could you retain that talent? What are some of the ways that you can, you can, you know, keep that talent? I know there's a salary situation. There are some people that will just look at the bottom line, the salary, and if the salary is higher, then some people will just jump from one role to another. But I don't know, I'm not all that convinced that salary is, is the main motivator Um, I think there are other factors there that would help to retain talent at the organization. So what are your thoughts around how do you retain that talent?

Speaker C: Yeah, um, the issue is when salary is the only determinant, you're in trouble. Um, and so I think this idea of a purpose driven organization or purpose driven company, I think it matters. Do I feel that the work I do creates value that's larger than myself? Um, do I believe in that value? Does it mean something to me at a very personal level, so that every day I feel mobilized to go do that thing, whatever that thing is. Particularly in marketing, I think there has been this disassociation of, from what marketers do in the activity world to the outcomes that the organization is delivering to customers, to shareholders, or what have you. And I think that marketing not being at the table, sometimes, marketing not being a organization of consequence, but sort of this insular organization that does stuff, makes it hard for that fabric of a purpose to happen because you're only within the marketing world and value is not created in that insular world per se. So I think that it's incumbent for CMOs to create these powerful lines between what does somebody do whatever they do, and how is value created in the largest sense of the word, and to this idea of purpose driven organization, uh, to me is not just words. I think it really does matter. Because if people feel like that sense of belonging, that sense of purpose, that sense of value creation, then salary still matters. But again, now it's not the only thing on the table. The only thing I'll comment is that there's been no shortage of activities here and you could easily see where someone has put forth a purpose and it just doesn't feel authentic. It feels like they did it, but is that really them? Um, I do think it's a big deal and it's a participation sport to put forth the purpose. It's not a marketing thing, it's not an HR thing. It's the organization's journey to be on. And that sense of everyone having a deep affiliation to it, a deep sense of purpose, a deep sense of belonging, all those things that are the softer sciences that sometimes get placed in the back burner in the pursuit of the numbers. The problem you run into is that to your point, it goes right to considerations of attrition, retention, and, uh, am I hiring the right people and are they doing the right work? And there's nothing that's more tragic to me than seeing someone who's extraordinarily talented in doing the Wrong work and not really knowing it because they could never connect the dots. But they could have if they've been given that information or given that sense of purpose. They could have almost re engineered their world to just slightly make uh, some changes to it and all of a sudden they get connected to this larger value creation equation. So I think there's a lot of people work to be done that I think is being done which makes the salary piece, doesn't make it secondary. It's still important, but it can't be the only thing that's important.

Speaker A: It's very interesting what you say because I recently read a study, uh, talking about what they're calling the great Resignation. Uh, loads of people churning, you know, leaving their jobs in droves and things. And they were looking at what it is that uh, drives retention and number one was affiliation with the brand. It was about the brand. Uh, and it's actually quite, you know, it's also quite personal to me. And I believe you're also looking at the brand messaging at the moment. You know we've been looking at it within market one as well. And to give your employees a uh, uh, a mission, vision, purpose, promise that they can buy into it really helps and they can align to. And you mentioned at the end about somebody doing the wrong work for the wrong reasons or uh, uh, again with clear guidelines, brand guidelines. And branding is obviously we talk about marketing sometimes coming second place to sell. Branding gets put for some organizations gets why are we spending money on what they think of as a new logo. But actually to have those values to align to it really helps the brand

Speaker C: animates the soul of the company. And so the question is what is the soul of the company? And the brand is not only an external thing, it's an internal thing. And so I think when it gets relegated to logos or color choices or what have you, it's going in the wrong direction. And I also think that marketing is not best suited to do it by, by themselves. This is an all. And you want to really take stock of the entirety of your organization. And his organizations are becoming far more diverse in intellect and experience and others. And you really need to pay attention to the beauty of that because that helps to sort of describe the soul more thoroughly. And um, so I think, I think the brand work has evolved to meet that challenge. Um, but I think brands relegated to messaging or logos or they just don't, they don't carry the same weight. And I do think that you, I mean ultimately the team you have will dictate the success you have. And um, you have to care deeply about that. The team wants to be on the team and they feel like they are part of the team.

Speaker B: I think that's so important too. And I think that's the key to keeping this talent is having uh, this sense of accomplishment. So going into work and um, doing what I need to do and just at the end of the day feeling that I've accomplished something, feeling that my voice has been heard and that I can contribute to, you know, the values, to the visions. And that, um, that all of that aligns with, with you know, what that, that overarching vision is. And I, I think that certainly being. Feeling that I'm, that my opinion matters, that I'm contributing value to the organization is, is giving that sense of accomplishment. Because at the end of the day, if you're, you're doing something, um, and you, you know, it doesn't really align with what you know, the vision is and you don't support what, uh, you know what that vision is, and you're just kind of clicking the buttons, going through it. You know, you end your day, there's no sense of accomplishment. Maybe there's a lot of politics in the organization that are not really aligning with your values. And that could really have a, uh, damper on how you're performing. And that I think, could be, you know, one of the reasons why people are leaving organizations is just because of that dissatisfaction. And you're right, it's not necessarily a salary situation. It's that careful balance. It's having the culture and aligning with your own values that's going to help, um, you know, keep you at that organization.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think most organizations are moving towards matrix management, so essentially flattening the organization. And because I think hierarchies fail because they, they have the unintended consequence of making the people lower in the hierarchy, less valuable. And I think what's wrong with that, and I can speak factually here, is my team is smarter than I am. And I think that's provable almost on a daily basis. And I would be just. It would be absurd to not capitalize on the wisdom and talents of everyone on the team, regardless of where they sit, because reality sits everywhere. They see things you can't see, they perceive things you can't perceive. They're interpreting it differently. Um, and that collective insight, the collective wisdom is what propels you forward. I think hierarchies lock that down and um, they have a. I don't think it's the intent of it. But, uh, to me it's the outcome of, has the intent of making people, some people less valuable than other people, or some people inherently more right than other people. And I don't buy it. I've always been blessed in my work with people that are far smarter than I am. And I think that for leaders, they're going to have to make a choice between intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is, I'm smart, I guess. Wisdom is I know how to bring a team forward and make them feel like such a deep sense of ownership that we're all smart. That's not a game to be won or lost. The game is outside your four walls, trying to compete in a marketplace and deliver value. And so, um, and I think most, I think the matrix structure offers that opportunity. It's work. And I also don't know if you know, with, with, as you say, with hearing my voice comes the consequence. You know, what if you say something and we say, okay, let's do it. And um, I think, you know, one of the byproducts of marketing not being at the table, which has been a long term assignment of marketing, is that we were able to live without deep consequence. And then you're at the table and then you have consequence. You carry the risk, you carry the impacts of your decisions. When you matrix and now everyone is at the table, essentially the whole matrix is sitting there. You want people to feel the gravity of it and also the freedom of it, but it doesn't come for free. And I think that consequence will place forward a higher premium on mindset, higher premium on critical thinking. The idea that ideas that have some underlying critique to them and they have gone through some form of friction, some people have disagreed or thought of it slightly differently. And out from that process comes this far better idea. Um, those thinking processes I'd like to see more embedded into the natural movement of marketing.

Speaker B: Do you think there are situations in this matrix organization? So now that marketing has a seat at the table or other teams, uh, have a seat at the table, that there's also this fear of speaking up, or I guess you were kind of talking about that too, about the consequences. So there could be situations where someone, okay, great, I have a seat at the table. But now I'm afraid to say something because, yeah, it's not going to align with other opinions or I want to make sure I'm saying the right thing because I want to kind of get into the minds of other people and say what they're thinking or they want to see. Not necessarily my Own opinion.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I have someone on my team who I won't name because we're in a podcast. And, um, she thinks very differently than I do, and she communicates very differently than I do, and I share with her. Just yesterday I said, I find myself reading what you send me twice. Not because I have to, because I want to. Because the linguistic choices being made and how it's phrased and sort of the way that the idea is brought forth, it's so interesting. And what I pay attention to is not differences, just for differences sake, but isn't it interesting that you can think of it a different way? And when I take whatever my perspective is and whatever her perspective is, and I kind of put it together like you do tend to think of it as, now I have a fuller view of what this thing is, a deeper sense of what's possible. And usually there's a third way that comes out, which is. It's neither. Um, but I think it's hard in this Covid world because I'll speak personally, which is we're now on zoom and we're not in the same room. So I'm capturing about 33% of the communications coming out right now. I don't really see the body language, and I don't really get a sense of how this stuff is really playing out. And so, uh, to me, what happens is people then try to perfect their speech, and when they do that, they lose themselves. They become less authentic because they're trying to say things the right way. And I think you lose meaning. But it's hard. Covid has. Has given everyone a video face. Right? It's given everyone a way to talk, and it's taken away a key part of the humanness of it all. And with that humanness is the authenticity of that person. I have no interest in people saying things the right way. What I really want them to do is to say what they mean in whichever way they wish to say it, or communicate, whichever ways to communicate it. Because this the idea that's going to carry it, not the way the idea Nessa was expressed. But I just think that's a challenge that's not unique to marketing. I just think it's a deep implication of this Covid digital world that has created such dissonance in our communications among each other.

Speaker B: I think the industry tries with opening up video, but yeah, you're right. I mean, it's. You kind of lose that authenticity sometimes. Although I will say on, uh, a couple of our calls, we, with this Covid world that we have in Zoom. I mean, now there are filters too. So I can totally show up to a meeting as a Lego person or you have pumpkin on my head or.

Speaker C: Yeah, but, but I guess if, if, if I'm saying something and someone is really doesn't agree. Right. I may never know.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm in a room with them of 10 people because there's just one. One tile. Right. But if I'm in a room, you can get a sense when someone's body behaviors. They're leaning back, saying, I'm not, I'm not in here. All these things start to happen and the body starts expressing what's truly happening.

Speaker A: You can't even see. I've got my arms crossed right now.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is one of those classic signals.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I think, you know, from a standpoint of leadership, I think leadership needs to. Needs to find ways that maybe are partly contrived. How do I bring the humanness of someone forward and make it okay? And um, I think that even in the best of lights, you're going to have a percentage of it. I don't think it's ever going to equate to the direct interactions the whiteboard experiences. The true fundamental disagreements that exist between two very well meaning people who see the world from different angles. That friction is what M creates great ideas. But that friction I don't think really plays itself out well in a digital context because it's too easy to say, oh, come off the meeting and I'm on the next meeting. Right. So I think there's work to be done still. And who knows where we're going with all this to really unleash the full human capital of humans in this Covid world. And I just think it's one of the things. And for me, when we look at people, this is why I still believe that hiring or investing in the concept of mindset versus skill set, because mindset will carry. Carry one through the day. You can always build skillset. It's really hard to turn mindset. And I think that in this world you talked about, you know, CMOs and technology, I just think everyone, everyone has to be in a constantly adaptive learning mode. Right. They have to believe in every moment. I know some things and I don't know other things. And I'm really curious about those other things. And it's okay not to know and it's okay to ask and you know, that type of thing. So there's a lot of human parts of this equation.

Speaker B: I think that also comes back to employee, ah, retaining Employees as well. So if you are creating that transparent environment, you're welcoming that feedback, then, um, you don't have to put on this, um, inauthentic type of mask when you're in, in a meeting or, um, you know, you're just feeling that you're contributing to the organization and that can help relax and understand. All right, well, if I know that my feedback is going to be welcome, that my opinion matters, that I'm going to provide value here, then I am going to be more open and transparent and I am going to be contributing more to the organization. And I'm not going to be silent thinking about what's the right thing to say versus all right, now let me be authentic. And you know, I. They're open to, to hearing what I really think about, you know, whatever the situation is.

Speaker C: Yeah, there's been a very high premium on the concept of alignment. You know, alignment within the marketing piece parts marketing and sales. Marketing, sales and product, whatever, which I completely buy into. And the idea of sort of integrated orchestration is a powerful idea. The problem is, is that it often can get interpreted as conforming. Alignment means that I'm not to disagree because I have to align. Right. And so earlier this week I was on a call and someone expressed concern because, um, they weren't aligned because someone else disagreed. And you have to parse out those two topics. Right. Disagreement is that. Yeah, I'm glad they disagreed. And you should be celebrating that because what's happening is someone is now investing in you because they've internalized your idea, they've given it some thought and they want to contribute to it. Now it's coming through the lens of disagreement, but that's not really what it is. It's really investment. Alignment is when you get through that and you can collectively agree how best to move forward. But alignment at step one is dangerous because what it does is it really is a conforming step, not an alignment step. And I think it has the net effect of taking away what you said earlier, which is everyone wants to have a voice. Well, if my voice is only within the alignment world, I don't really have a voice anymore, do I? So I think there has to be steps in the alignment that are intentionally premised on disagreement, because it's just any two people are. And you know the thing that scares me most? Well, there's a lot of things that scare me, so that's, that's stiff competition. But the thing that scares me quite a lot is to be in a meeting and say, let's say five things and everyone agree with you. Like, that can't be true because I know I'm wrong. So now everyone, you know, uh, how did that happen? Because you depend on the critical ideas and the critique of your people investing with you. Um, so, uh, I do think we need to learn how to disagree with more enthusiasm.

Speaker B: Yeah. And get away from. You can have a voice as long as it's the same as my opinion.

Speaker C: Yeah. This is the difference to me between intelligence and wisdom. Wisdom is you collectively bring the best ideas forward from all the talent that's there. Intelligence is. I'm the smartest person in the room. Well, there's no prize for that. But wisdom, you begin to capitalize on the entire talent set that's there. And like you said, when people feel like their ideas mattered, they're so much more compelled to have the next idea. And now they're investing in the next idea because they care. And they start caring about the outcome versus the input because they can see themselves in the outcome now. And then you get, that's a nice cycle to be in. Um, but if they can't see themselves in the outcome, they really didn't participate. They just executed piece parts of it. You get left a little bit too. Uh, I don't really have a. I'm not really belonging to this organization. I'm just sort of participating. I'm just sort of contributing to it. I'm not contributing with it.

Speaker B: And I think that's what makes you a unique leader, is that you're, you know, you, you challenge your team. You. You push them to. To voice their. Their opinions and, um, you know, creating this, this environment where it's very collaborative and they can come to the table with the ideas. And it, you know, the old school, uh, you know, corporate structure was. Well, no, you. You have to go to your director and you have to go up to the hierarchy. But, you know, again, like, why I think that you're such a great leader is that you're. You're bringing everyone to the table and you're encouraging people to, you know, to voice, um, their opinions or, you know, feedback on a particular project or on a particular initiative that, you know, it doesn't matter where you sit. Like, everyone has a seat at the table and you value everyone's opinion.

Speaker C: I do. I mean, I will say I have good days as being a leader, and I have days where I failed that job. So, you know, I'm trying to have more good days than days I fail at the job.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I think we all strive for that, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: Which day is this day? Is this a good day?

Speaker C: It's early.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: Um, yeah.

Speaker C: Gif.

Speaker B: I don't know. Do you have uh, any follow up or.

Speaker A: Well, I suppose it's just, just bringing it back to kind of uh, 2022. Uh, we've talked a lot about people, so I'm imagining that's an important factor. But you know, what's going to, what's going to get you out of bed in 2022?

Speaker C: I think there's no shortage of things that are in front of anybody. CMOs, COO, CFOs, directors of marketing, people working within the automation environment, people working in data.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker C: you have this expressed panacea of some type of AI. And AI is a term that means all sorts of things. What's the true and best implementation of AI that unlike automation, delivers to its promise? What's the work that has to be done for it to deliver to its promise? Um, I think the question about human beings, um, and I'm not talking about personnel or employees, I'm saying the human being. I still think it's going to be one of the hardest challenges because you have real consequential things from COVID that aren't solved with old tools. And I still feel like I can speak for me. I feel like I get a little bit of it. I don't think I fully understand it yet. And I think every day you learn a little bit more about what it means. Um, and I mean I live it too. You live this sense of being somewhat decoupled from communications that you're actually in and it can be pretty jarring. And I think that people have different lives to live that Covid has interrupted at best. And um, that's coming into the work life and of the blurring of work and life. And I still think there's a human being question that for leaders should be front and center all the time. Uh, because I think people are doing remarkably amazing, wonderful things with what's in front of them, but they're hurting. It's hard and it's uncertain. And so you have to accept it and begin to work that. I don't know what that means yet, but I think it's a big equation to be solved. The. I still feel like data sits there as one of those great potential energy questions and are people really harnessing the value of data? Um, and I think that there has to be a sizable investment from the CMO. I mean CMOs come from all different walks of Life, when they come in as a technologist, as a more of a brand person, or wherever they come in as I still think that data, harnessing the real value of that and data doesn't belong to a single function. So creating that matrix fabric of how you manage data across the enterprise, I still think is going to be a significant issue, irrespective of how AI rolls down the road.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: There's a lot there. And I think, uh, I don't know. Initially, I think the feeling was with COVID was that, you know, oh, well, it's a temporary setback, we'll all go home, but then we'll come back into the office. I think that it's done more than that. It has actually changed. Well, I don't know. Personally, I think it's changed the way we're going to work, as well as the way we work, which also means it's going to change the way we market, the way we sell, as it has during this period. Do you think we have to adapt, evolve rather than go backwards?

Speaker C: Uh, yeah. I mean, I think sometimes I think that there was all these dystopian stories, and what was great about them is that they weren't true. Um, and I think Covid came a little bit too close to that. And all of a sudden we're like, well, this is a pretty uncertain world and things can go horribly wrong and horribly wrong for long periods of time, and we're not really in control of some things. And so I go back, yeah, we have to market and sell differently. But step one, take care of the people. Um, step two is your current and future customers are also in that context. And I think you can less afford to be distant to them. Um, and I think there's an illusory thing that AI will make you closer. AI simply makes the signals being able to be worked better, but you still have to get the signals. Um, and I think that one of the things that we saw that is a sort of a positive in all this is that you saw an increasing kind of digital, digital citizen. So there was sort of an infinite amount of webinars stood up in the last year and a half. And, um, which all made sense. And what was great about it, what we saw was we started being introduced to a whole new type of person that I don't think would have shown up in a different context. So now what do we do? How do we understand who they are? Why are they different? Why do they show up? What was good about it? How do we create value for them? That type of thing. So I think that there's different movements afoot. Um, but I still. And Mary, you've heard me say these words before. There's a whole future in front of us. But I still feel like I don't want to lose the fundamentals in this because I still feel like marketing has some basic improvements to make with operationalizing empathy, with becoming better storytellers, with unleashing the contextual value of technology and capitalizing on it in real terms, um, to being at the table and knowing what it means to be at the table. Um, I still think there's some fundamentals that if done well, independent of what happens next, marketing will be a better positioned and marketers at the individual level, we better position to capitalize on what's next.

Speaker A: Wow. I don't know what you think, Mary, unless you had anything else. I think that's quite a good point to kind of sum up unless there are any other questions you had, because it's quite a good. You've just done quite a good summary with answers.

Speaker C: Yay me.

Speaker A: Uh, thank you very much, Victor. You've covered a huge amount in quite a short time. Uh, I've noted down the importance of storytelling. Data as fuel versus data as debt, which I love as, uh, a phrase. Disagreement being a key factor in achieving alignment.

Speaker C: I'm nothing but pithy, I guess, at the end of the day.

Speaker A: Right. It's great. Um, before we, uh, wrap up completely, just to learn a little bit more about you, I have.

Speaker C: Oh, here comes a 10. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: I have 10 quick fire questions. They are either or, but you can say both. Don't think too hard. Yep. So here we go. Number one. Cats or dogs?

Speaker C: Both.

Speaker A: Demand Gen or nurture?

Speaker C: Neither.

Speaker A: Beach or mountains?

Speaker C: Both.

Speaker A: CRM or map?

Speaker C: Integrated.

Speaker A: Wine or beer?

Speaker C: Wine.

Speaker A: Outbound or inbound?

Speaker C: Inbound is a better reflection of real intent.

Speaker A: Day or night?

Speaker C: I hope both exist.

Speaker A: Instagram or TikTok?

Speaker C: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker B: Facebook.

Speaker C: Can I see MySpace?

Speaker A: You can. Um, uh, AOL.

Speaker C: I was listening to this show about. It was from a music critic that how much TikTok has disintermediated them from being able to even participate in the judging of music. Because TikTok has taken one more thing away that's gone. It's like direct to consumer. It was fascinating.

Speaker A: That's very true. All right, two more. Car or cycle?

Speaker C: Cycle.

Speaker A: And work from the office or work from home?

Speaker C: Both.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: You're welcome.

Speaker B: Those were easy.

Speaker C: Yeah, I didn't want to take any, like, you know, big, you know, moral stands here. Although I thought wine or beer was coming close to some moral judgment

Speaker A: for

Speaker B: the cat or dog. It's like picking your favorite child or.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I've always been a dog person, but, uh, our cats act like dogs. I mean, almost pumpkin, almost to the point it's absurd. But, um, so, you know, I'm really a dog person, though.

Speaker A: Says it now. Okay, well, uh, there's only one more thing to do then, which is just to wrap up. Thank you, Victor, very much indeed for a very wide ranging, uh, and interesting conversation. And for more information on Market 1, and to find out more episodes of our podcast Funnelocity, you can visit marketone.com funnelocity.