How AI Is Transforming Productivity and Marketing

Speaker A: Every single marketer and every single brand should be attempting to earn a disproportionate share of conversation. If you work for an organization where they say, bring us a chart that goes up and to the right, you have a challenge.

Speaker B: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half.

Speaker A: I am here to inspire you, to excite you, to motivate you, to transform you, to energize you.

Speaker C: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this episode. Today we have Prachi Gore, the CMO at Asana, the work management platform for human and AI collaboration. More than 170,000 organizations, including Accenture, Amazon, Anthropic and others, run their most critical work on Asana. And we love having Prachi on the show she's been on in the past. And her and Ian talk about her current approach to marketing and how she's thinking about productivity. Let's get into the episode.

Speaker A: Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Casperian Studios, and today I am joined by not just a special guest, but a recurring guest. Prachi. How are you?

Speaker B: Hi, Ian. Great. I'm glad to be back. This is going to be fun.

Speaker A: I know. I'm so excited for this. Uh, you are now CMO of Asana, one of our favorite companies. And I'm, uh, so excited to dig in on how, you know, one of the best CMOs out there is thinking about AI, thinking about productivity, uh, and all that. So, uh, yeah, let's first, like, why'd you take the job? Why are you so excited to be at Asana?

Speaker B: My marketing team at Chakur, we were tinkering with AI for almost 18, 20 months at this point, even more. And one of the realizations I had was that I do believe strongly in the agentic future. And if agents have to do work, we need a system of record. And so in my head I was like, what could achieve that? And when I met Dan, who's the CEO of Asana, he painted this vision and I had this aha moment. I was like, yes, that is exactly where my head was at. But I wasn't quite sure who could claim victory. And I think Asana has such a fair shot, because if you think about the agentic future agents doing work, the unit of work is task. And Asana's data model is built to operationalize tasks and build agentic memory of how work is happening, what is happening, and take it to your goals. So I do think this is going to change what it means to work in Asana as humans plus agents. And we might even go from just a collaboration layer to an infrastructure plus collaboration layer. But I'm excited, excited about that vision. So can we do execute?

Speaker A: It's so interesting when we're catching up, because I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's very obvious. We were sort of talking about this idea of obviously agents being really good at tasks, because that's the sort of unit of measure of agents, right? It's like, are they doing tasks? Like you have to give them the task and that's what they have to execute on. And how they do that task is like, is now wildly different, right? So like, we use ASANA for our shows and you know, you have the task, which is whatever published podcast episode, for example, and there's all these subtasks under there. And so we have this like, very humanistic system of like, how we have built that and just this idea that like, you built all these human systems that do these things in a certain way and then you invite an agent to like review that and to say, you know, what are the different parts where a robot can do better? What are the parts where a human can do better? That we already have sort of an organizational mapping of how we do tasks that we have had for six years. And like, that's pretty darn cool. Like, you know, if you ever heard the Einstein thing of like, how does Einstein problem solve a problem in an hour? It's like for the. Spends the first 59 minutes diagramming it and the last minute solving it. I kind of feel like, you know, like Asana is here showing up, uh, you know, at minute one with us for the first 59 minutes. And now it's. Now it's like, hey, you know, you've been doing this stuff for six years.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, let me take a look at all this and, and figure out, uh, perhaps some other ideas. And like, that to me is. Is really exciting and takes it from sort of like productivity to sort of. I don't know if it's more action oriented, but, uh, exactly.

Speaker B: And I think, you know, productivity is in two lenses. And I know our podcast is not about just this, but I'm so passionate about this. I'll say it. One is individual productivity. And that is, you know, we have ASANA teammates, but every, like chatgpt hardcore. Like all of these are driving single player individual productivity. And you can work from anywhere. We have mcp, we have these connectors you can call in Asana instance from cloud. So we will keep building to drive more individual productivity. But the comment you just made, which to me is like the blueprint of your work, your work graph, your work process, how you've done this as humans for so many years, and the mapping of that and layering agents on top of that on Asana drives organizational productivity across all your teams collaborating together versus the individual. And I think to realize the vision of the agentic enterprise, you will need, you know, companies will need that individual productivity and they would have a system and tool of their choice which could range all the way from ChatGPT to something like Asana, which has agents, um, but likely any of the LLMs which are leaning into that. But you need this workplace productivity that is across teams and you need the blueprint, you know, and which, you know, luckily for us we pioneered like work collaboration and built all of this for different work, different Personas. And so I'm just really passionate and excited about bringing that to market.

Speaker A: Well, I think it's just so important for marketers. Like that's part of the thing. It's just like we know, I mean the thing that's so brilliant about AI makes other things is that it makes these things that machines are really good at, uh, able to actually do them. And it makes the stuff that uh, is not sort of deterministic that humans get to figure out. It lets us do that stuff. And like, that's exciting to me, right? It's like it doesn't like the AI doesn't know what's funny. I actually before this, I was in preparation for this, I was asking ChatGPT, uh, I was like, what, um, what do you find interesting? And it was like, it was like, oh, hey, here's all this stuff. And then I was like, no, no, no, no, like you as an LLM, like what do you find interesting? And uh, and so here's the answer. I don't feel interest. I model it statistically. I predict attention, I don't experience it. Here's signals I use for approximate, interesting novelty, tension or incongruity, agency plus stakes, specificity, information gain. You just think of all that and you're like, we know this, but it's like AI just doesn't know, like non deterministic outcomes. Right? Like, uh, it's like great at physics and math, it's not great at creativity. Right? Yeah, it's like, and so like you have to have the driver. I heard Naval on a podcast, he was talking about how like Steve Jobs said that, you know, computers are the, are the bicycle for the mind. But you still need someone to ride the pedals, right? It's like the wheel gets you faster, further than a foot, but as soon as you need to go up a mountain, it can't do it.

Speaker B: I agree 100%. And you know, my, um, experience with using ChatGPT or any AI actually is that it is still, it still can do a lot of the work for you, the creative work, but it will get you to a pretty decent average. And so if you want to be spectacular, you do need to do the human work and bring in the magic, the creativity, the taste that makes it amazing. And I do think you need to do the groundwork of telling it what you're trying to see to even get to the average. And so you have to do the bookend tasks, which make the work great, but it could do most of the mirror, which in itself is also amazing. But I agree 100%. Like, the creativity, the, you know, the human emotion, like what's going to speak to the human emotion is not a sum of all the average and stuff it's read. It comes from what's happening now, what's the experience? How do humans emote and react?

Speaker A: And I think that this is where just like words are so important and meaningful. And we'll get into how you actually think about this as a CMO in terms of like how you're, you know, building your team and all that here in a second. But I think it's important. It's like you said, it does the creative work, but it doesn't do the creativity. And like, that's, I think the like key differentiator is like creative work are the, are the tasks of which to get the creative thing out there. So like, you know, we're, we're working on this new fiction series right now, A Caspian M and like AI is incredibly helpful. It is not like picking anything, right? It is like helping us do the work that is associated with certain, like, levels of tasks. But it's not like leading the creative impetus for like, why we are creating this, who it is for, what is the impact that we want to have on them, like all that stuff. And so not to be all, you know, philosophical on this stuff, but I think it, I think it's important as we think about productivity as it relates to marketing is like if you free your marketing team up to have experiences of which they are getting more ideas to be creative, that is like so important. Like, it's like, cannot be stressed enough getting your marketing team, for example, out there, meeting with customers, spending a Day in their shoes. Like, that is so important because that is the inputs of which a, uh, creative thing then happens, right? Like, like that's how you train your own mind to, to find little nuances. And like, AI is horrible at that. It's horrible. It doesn't know what is interesting, right? Like it doesn't know, like, if something is set on a call, you know, that, um, you know, they seem pretty unsure about something. Like, and you shove that into an AI, it can be like, hey, they're unsure about this thing. Why? Right? Like that's the thing that the human is there for, is like the why behind it. So anyways, I digress.

Speaker B: But no, I mean, I think you're right. I think there's two things on say to that. One is like, I read this stat somewhere that, you know, we still do 60% of the work we do is work for work, you know, um, you

Speaker A: know, oh, it's gotta be higher, right?

Speaker B: Or higher. But like, the stat I read was like 65 or some such percentage. And I was like, that kind of work 100% agents can do. AI agents, I mean, and, and can be solved for. And so then what remains is the work that you actually want to do, which is, I think, what you're pointing towards. But that changes the definition of work in itself and each of the job roles as we have defined in our org structures today. And so I think the fundamental definition of work will change for the better. And then the work for the work that we are doing will get automated and like, that's great. There'll be systems for that. And you know, you can check those boxes easy.

Speaker A: So yeah, it sounds great, honestly, to not do the terrible thing, um, and to just enjoy the, to enjoy the journey. I think that that's like one of the things I've really like tried to do sort of at this year in my life is like, enjoy the journey. I, uh, use this analogy of like the, of like watching sports. It's like you can, you can either like the Sharks played last night, San Jose Sharks, and like you can just check the box score at the end of the game and figure out who won. But like, the joy is like watching it unfold and the tension and like, whatever, because like the. That's the point, right? Or for some people, I suppose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and I think that that's like the part of marketing that like enjoying the parts of marketing that are enjoyable. And like, it's such a fun profession. It's like so fun. And if you just ask like, how Much stuff does someone do on a, on a day to day basis that's fun. And like if you're not having fun doing your marketing, like I, I saw someone who's, who's posted about how for the people who are like creating content for their audience that like aren't excited to do it, how could you possibly imagine that? Uh, that they're excited to read it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Or to like, Right. Like it's like. So let's, you know, let's get back to that.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I think what, you know, marketing to me has always been a fun job. This, you're always learning something new. Customers are changing, products are changing. But today what is even more exciting is the fact that I believe many of the um, old playbooks, they were already tired, but they won't work anymore. And so you have to reinvent not just yourself as a marketer, but all your playbooks for the product and the evening, you know, crazier part of all of this is like the pace at which this technology is moving is changing every month. I feel like every month, but maybe every few months for sure. And so what you thought possible, like a year out, it's probably possible today. And so not only have, you know, not only do we have to reinvent ourselves and our playbooks, but we have to keep pace. Like velocity is going to be key of like how fast you can move and how you make deterministic choices of where do you invest versus where you. Which is a trend that you're like, oh, whatever, we can deal with it later. So I'm just, um. That excitement excites me.

Speaker A: Well, let's get to the playbook. This is what's great about sports. This is what the greatest thing about sports is. You play to win the game. Hello. You play to win the game where you open up the playbook and talk about the tactics that help you win. What are your top three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable budget items?

Speaker B: I mean brand I think was always on the top of the list for me. It's even more important now, I think as I think about differentiating in the age of AI, the motive, feature function differentiation is going to go away fast or parity is very easy to reach because development cycles are so much shorter. So investing in brand is super critical. And when I say brand, for me it's always been a combination of many things. But customer value, customer experience at every touch point, that's super critical, making it easy to work with you as a company and delightful almost at every step while you're delivering value. And then of course design and brand awareness campaigns. Campaigns is a big part of that and awareness matters. But how do you drive trust and value and reputation and customer advocacy? All of those are going to be part of what I call brand and it's going to be one of the biggest mouths. So I will say brand. And for Asana, community is a big part of brand. Like we have a massive community that is highly engaged. We have tens of thousands of advocates in there at every size of company. And so how do we continue to delight and deliver for these IRR 200,000 customers that we have, give or take. So I think that to me, uh, 180, I think that's our number. But that to me is like brand is one big bucket. And then an aspect right now of that that I am thinking deeply about and I'm still fairly new at Asana, but is differentiation. You know, it's like AI. You see AI washing everywhere and not just in our category. I feel like, you know, companies in different categories are all saying the same things. It's all starting to sound the same for sure. So how do you differentiate, you know, your product, your offering, your solution in that very noisy AI washed market is part of that brand for me. So I think that's one. I think the second big channel I just say is digital. And um, digital is for a couple reasons. One is more and more research. Even before AI, people were doing like 60% of their research on their own before they talked to sales. But with AI, and we are seeing this in our funnels, you just get very ready to buy people like straight into the funnel that convert at uh, much faster cycles. And so that is going to be our audience. It's going to do its research somewhere and form an opinion about your brand even before you get a chance to engage with them on the website or your more traditional channels. And so how do you lean in with LLMs? How do you lean in with user generated content? How do you lean in with influencers who are doing a lot of the narratives these days? That's the new social strategy. But to form like a web consensus about your brand, about the different questions that are being asked. So like that aspect of digital today is more important than the traditional digital. I would say on the third one I have a tie. So I'll see both of these and then I think, um, in person,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: just anything in person. Like our community events are successful, not event strategy, like events made a comeback after the pandemic. But in the age of like AI, I think peers, like meeting peers, getting answers answered in that way is going to be super critical. So I do think events and then any physical community type of stuff is important. But then the second one I had that I'm thinking about as well, just at that same level maybe is your in product experience. Because there are like two phases I think of the customer journey and because Asana is such a big product led growth engine that becomes even more important for US versus traditional B2B selling which is mostly through sales. Uh, we do have a massive sales component too but really many of the journeys start in product. And so I think the in product experience, like the AI first onboarding how your chat experience is in product, where do you do the nudges, how relevant are you getting? Like it's almost like ABM M at the individual level is possible today with AI. And so it's a new area but I do think it's going to rise in importance. Those would be my like top non critical channels.

Speaker A: I want to get back to some of the brand stuff, but I have a question sort of M especially as it relates to Asana. You were an Asana customer before and so um, and I think sort of like we all, we all agree that task needs to be managed right? Like that thing. Like we all know that whether or not your organization does it or how good they do it is sort of another thing. But I wonder if um, I wonder how much this sort of like try it again for the first time. Marketing is like just such an important skill in 2026. Like because so many companies have a truly different product than they used to have and at a minimum are building towards a different product. And I just wonder like, you know, you and I talked about how Asana's like technical architecture is like really advanced and that, that, that means that it's built on you know, layers that are going to be extremely, uh, are going to allow these agents to work extremely well. And so it like stuff like that where it's like, hey, you know, let's say you used to be a customer a while ago and you liked it and maybe you're at a new company or maybe use something else and it's like try it again for the first time. Which is like such a, such a compelling, you know, offer that most people, I think when they see that type of advertising they're like, oh yeah, you know, uh, they, they change. Look at this. They painted the house and they get, you know, redid the kitchen and yeah, and So I just like, how, how should marketers think about like essentially marketing their own product that's, that's disrupted themselves, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I, I categorize that under, um, kind of a pillar that I call show, don't tell. So if we keep telling these stories of like, hey, Asana is reinvented, we are new, it's hard to perceive what is the change, what is really happening. And so a big part of our marketing strategy is showing the product. Like, product becomes a hero. Show it in all the different use cases. And what will come out of that is if you've used Asana and aren't using the AI features, like you have a sort. If you've used Asana for many years, you have a preconceived notion of what Asana does. If you see the new, the layering in of our agents and how it works today in terms of like the modern aspects of warp, you will see a very different Asana and I think it'll like, click the, you know, it'll uh, connect the dots of like, oh, wow, like, I didn't think this was possible for my little use case. And so we are going to lean in very heavily from a marketing strategy standpoint on, you know, use case marketing, which is like every little, you know, our customers use Asana in so many innovative ways. Like, there's just like, we know, we think this is one way of doing it, but they have hundreds of other ways of using Asana to solve their problems. So not only showcasing the breadth of what the product can do, but now infused with AI, but also just like show, show those use cases, you know, to drive that. Because we can say all sorts of things and the perception doesn't quite always change. And then the technical architecture, you know, I think the value to the customer of that is, uh, highly governed, secure, safe AI. I think that is one of the biggest concerns today. And a lot of people building AI agents just aren't going through the rigor of making sure that it's safe AI, uh, and is governed and is trustable in that way. And so our technical architecture not only creates this infrastructure layer for agentic work, but also the value to the customer is, hey, this is going to be a company that I can invest in today with my agentic operations. And it's going to work for the long haul because the technical architecture is so sound and it's built on the unit task and all the. We call it the work graph, but we have your work graph in your company. But the second Value that is like, governed, safe AI. And that is really the value to the customer. I can explain the technical architecture all day long. It excites me. I'm an asana. But from a customer standpoint, they're going to be like, great, so what? And the so what there is those things. Um, so we lean into that in our storytelling, for sure. Uh, especially upmarket. Um, this is becoming more and more important. Um, but then also in our kind of media strategy, if you will. Like me, I'm seeing more and more interest from media to, like, truly understand the how behind the product, which is very new. This wasn't the case, you know, just a few years ago. The report you got there were, you know, technical media, who cared about it, but not every media, uh, channel did. But today there is interest in learning, like, why your AI is different, uh, from a technical lens. So it'll be fun to go execute on it.

Speaker A: That, yeah. One of the things that we've seen in the last year from a content standpoint, there's like, a lot of Caspian customers and new people that have come to us that want to build shows, uh, and series is that there's just such a voracious appetite for content around AI, because all of us are basically starting from scratch because none of us know anything. And so, like, you know, you talked about sort of like the old playbooks being dead and, you know, those type of things, uh, or needing tweaking and all of that. And I think it's the same way with exactly what you're talking about, right? Is like, people want to know what, like, asana, you know, what you can do with asana, like, right now, like, that's like, that's content now. Whereas, like, five years ago, that was just like product marketing. You know, you and I, both fans of Lenny's podcast. I mean, Lenny's podcast is like half demo, you know, it's like, it's like people coming on, demoing their products, essentially. And that's great. Like, people actually want that. And I think that that just speaks towards this closer loop, this, like a shorter loop of product to value that people are seeing. They know that they can test something. They know that they can get value much quicker. They know that things like onboarding and like, large sales cycles and that sort of stuff, you know, an extension of plg, which made that so popular. Popular, uh, you know, to have those type of, like, the smaller loops is all just becoming much more, uh, like, standard. And so with that sort of idea, it's like you can just Go. I mean, I. I don't know how many AI tools, like, I've signed up for. I listen to a podcast and I'm just like, all right, I'm signing up.

Speaker B: Let me guess.

Speaker A: It. Yeah, it's like 20. 20 bucks a month. We're gonna, you know, check this out. Like, it's like my R and D budget. Does my CFO know we have it? Um, but, uh, my lack of an R and D budget. But I think that there's just so much more of that now. So it's like, for someone to say, like, hey, I just want to go try, you know, Sana's agent. What. What's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to go see if there's like, if Lenny's podcast had an episode on it. Yeah, like, that's like such a different. And. And they're going to obviously ask, you know, Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. Like, they're. They're gonna, they're gonna do those things and they're also gonna post on their Slack Group A. Has anyone used Asana's agents? Like, that's. That's the modern buying flow, right? And, like, none of that is talking to a salesperson.

Speaker B: And they're going to try it. You know, it's like if you, if you reduce the friction to just get started, they're going to try it and decide. Right. And so I do agree, I think, like, leaning in with giving your product as a sandbox, as a try in, as a, you know, like, infusing that PLG in, the strategy is going to be more critical. And then, you know, it's like, not only that people are, uh, wanting to buy that way. Like, just solve for my use case, solve for my problem. But, uh, that's how they are prompting. So that's what. That's the content. LLMs are trusting too, and finding.

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: So it, as a marketer, it kind of touches on both aspects. Like, you're designing for the system of discovery, but you're also designing to wow the, uh, customer. Right. Which is your ultimate goal always.

Speaker A: I made this meme that's, uh, it's the Taylor Swift and Pat Mahomes wife. I forget her name. Brittany, maybe. The meme is basically like, you know, you're. You telling your CFO that you want, like, crazy video projects and the person saying no, and then it's like, uh, you telling your CFO that you want LLM. LLM optimized videos, uh, for citations and the cfo, like, being excited and, uh, and like, it's so true, though, because of exactly the jump that you just said, which is like the. The same way that a user would go watch Lenny's podcast to hear from how Asana's doing it. That the LLM is citing Lenny's podcast where you just spoke, and they're not citing something from three years ago because three years ago didn't matter. Two years ago didn't matter. One month ago didn't matter. Two days ago mattered. And like, that is all, like, we have no patience, no patience for what happened a year ago anymore. It's a, It's a different world.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's just like the pace of innovation is so high that whatever it was, like, even 12 months ago, you're saying a month, but, you know, let's be generous to ourselves and say, like, last year, 12 months ago is all outdated. Like, we gotta, you know, refresh content. Refresh.

Speaker A: And I think it's just like, everything refresh. And I think that this, like, sounds super scary because it is, because it's unknown, but it is true. Right? Like, there's, like, core fundamentals of marketing that remain. Right. Like, getting your customers together in person is always valuable. Whether or not you can afford it is another story, but it's always valuable. You know, like, getting your sales reps to physically speak with a prospect is always valuable. Right. So, like, you want to try to get that to happen. Um, you know, it might not always happen, but, like, that's like a desired outcome, right? Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think the fundamentals don't change. Right. I would abstract it even further to say, like, what the things don't, that don't change are, uh, delivering value to your customer, making it super easy to do business with you, you know, and then the how of that is changing rapidly. And so I always tell my team, it's like, this is going to be the year of learning. We are going to learn a lot. But I want us to take bold moves, experiment, make bets, not shy away, and just default back to the tried and tested, because that tried and tested may not work. So I'd rather swing, uh, at some big fun opportunities and be bored out there, and we're all going to learn. And that's the fun referencing back to your journey point. Enjoy the journey. Like, that is the fun aspect of what is happening today. Um, instead of being scared and trying to say, okay, what do I know? What's my safe space? Let me play there. Because that has worked for so many years.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think there's just this. Oh, my gosh. You wouldn't believe what Asana just did. Check this out. This is so cool. If I heard that exact thing five years ago, I would. I would have like. And again, we use Asana. We love Asana. I'd be like, what? Like, what possibly could they have made that would change my life? You know what I mean? Like, I'd be like, yeah, it's where all of our tasks live. And, like, it's fantastic at that. Whereas, like, now when I hear that I'm, like, locked in, I'm like, oh, that's great. Right? I mean, if you're a. If you're a product user, like, these jump steps allows you as a marketer to signal the jump step. Right? And, like, that is super valuable. Right? People are like, are waiting for it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And like, oh, a product that you already love just got 3x better. Like, how's that possible? You know? Whereas, like, a product that you love five years ago got 15 better. You know what I mean? Which is, like, kind of imperceivable. Or maybe they added a feature, they added an integration, which, like, those are cool too. But it's nothing like what's happening now. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, our quarterly releases, like, feel so packed. It's like, great. You know.

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah.

Speaker B: Doing the quarterly, I was like, should we just do real time?

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker B: This is a conversation. But you're right. Just that, uh, you know, it's like every time we have something new to say, we are like, we can wow our customers. We don't have to package it all into one, you know, that is X months out.

Speaker A: You know, you made me. That's such a great point about the quarterly releases. And obviously there's. There is still value of. Of, you know, doing that and thinking about, is it more often? Whatever. I wonder how much people will. Will really use their customers for releases going forward. It's like, you know, you have. Okay, well, we have our quarterly releases for press and for, you know, analysts and all those sort of things. But it's like there's also just, you know, the daily releases of, oh, this type of customer just found a new use case that, like, we didn't even know that this was possible. Right. It's like, that's that type of stuff. The actual stories as it. As it, like, nests into the. Into the, like, larger release because, you know, the larger release where it's like, oh, we did 15 different things that are like mind blowing, mind blowing product achievements. Um, whereas sort of like oh now you know, uh, if you have a lawnmower company you can do uh, you can do this on Asana, uh you know you can schedule all your lawn, lawn mowings, lawn mowing activity. Uh with an agent like that almost that product releases can become hyper specific product releases in a way that you're telling stories and maybe that's just how it always has been. But anyways just the unit of measure there being using the customer stories in a way that they historically uh again where people are seeking that information um you know to like how to do the jump step themselves for their business.

Speaker B: So we talked about kind of the business process, you know importance as you think about work. I think from a marketing standpoint what that means to me is like if more and more product usage is going to be tuned to does this fit my business process because agents have to operate within that governance framework etc. And if we are building towards that then um, as a marketer I have to get even more honed in on you know we've always done Persona and ICP and industry vertical marketing but you just have to like double down I think on kind of that the relevance. I think we've all already probably said goodbye to genetic messaging but everyone still does a lot of segmented group everyone into a segment and send a general kind of message. Um but with not only like how companies will think about AI products but their own personal journeys and what the tech stack will allow us to do is get hyper relevant in our marketing. I think that is a change we all need to be ready for and start adapting towards. I don't think the technology is quite there yet to do one to one personalization but it's like just a few months out. I don't think it's very, very far out. And so how do you um, train your processes and your internal own workflows to adapt very quickly to that and get to doing very personalized marketing is going to be I think um important as marketing teams, as tech evolves.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say also just your job as a CMO is I don't want to say any jobs easier or harder but I think that your job is harder because I think when you are selling to everyone that's a harder job. It does mean yes you could perhaps like have more like I'll uh, say B2C type campaigns because you can paint a broader brush. You know, you can sponsor a jersey, you can do like there's other stuff that you can do, which is you're going to hit a lot more people. Obviously we've seen, you know, things like Salesforce, like invest like way, way, way, way more heavily in brand over the past handful of years, uh, with the McConaughey spots and different sort of things, which is much more B2C. But I think it is harder because of that. We did a show with Sonny years ago and I remember, I remember just sitting down and thinking through like prioritizing Personas and, and all of that and just how much, how difficult it is, uh, you know, to do that. And like, historically someone who is selling to a lot of different Personas, you just like really have to pick and choose and in and you know, maybe that's always going to be true. Uh, but you could kind of squint your eyes and say maybe it does actually get easier to get hyper verticalized now with the way that we can go to market with AI and different types of tooling. I don't know if you've sort of thought about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, claiming your icp, even if you're selling a broad platform that can do everything for everyone is like super important because that's how you should make investment decisions in terms of like, where are we going with marketing whatnot. But I do think what is interesting right now and why it's going to be easier for marketing teams to. You have to start there at the narrow, but create the breadth. If your product can do more is because the internal marketing, AI agents, like the content agents, the map value prop agents, all of these things because you need a whole bill of materials to go after new Personas, new industries, new verticals. Producing that, um, has become significantly better. Even if you retain some capacity for the actual creativity. Just that the time to get there, to hold a high bar and get there is like much shorter today. And so that same resourcing can allow you to do a lot more now once they enter the funnel. I don't know that from a sales process standpoint we are quite there yet for sales to and able to have all of these conversations. I hope in the future it does get there soon enough. But so that might be your blocker to still kind of keep your Personas small. But for the PLG business you can absolutely go broad because building the content, the material is just so much easier. Especially if you have an established business like Asana, where we know the workflows, we have the data, we have the customer community, the conversations to package, repackage, all of that into you know the stories for the market.

Speaker A: Yeah. To keep going with our like lawnmower analogy like every single you know, lawn mowing company uh, or whatever, insect exterminator company.

Speaker B: I was going to use a different product.

Speaker A: I know lawn mowing is kind of difficult and also very loud. If anyone who works from home knows uh, insect removal company uh, where you know, I don't know how many of them use Asana now. All of them should be, I'll tell you that much. The idea of like creating a campaign again five years ago for just that audience doesn't make sense. It's not a big enough market, it's not a big enough for Asana to go after. I'm putting words in your mouth but like yeah, yeah, you know it's not, it's not enough, it's not enough, big enough to go after. But like in 2026 where you're like well we can actually maybe craft a uh, something for this you know, audience group build a content series, build you know some using the customer stories that we do have like find those folks get some like hyper specific use cases that like how they do it differently because their orgs, you know are going to be different. So again like that's, that's an advantage of an enterprise. Like that's an advantage of someone. Like that is a strength. Right. I think that there's a lot of this sort of like oh well every, every niche is going to have new applications that sort of like get built to there. But it's like yeah that's true for sure as you're making best of breed agents that you know you can go to market with uh, you know to all sorts of different people. There's tons of you know, value in the enterprise as well. So anyways it's just a cool, it's a potentially really cool expansion of what used to feel limiting as a marketing team.

Speaker B: 100% agree. I mean I think it's like the era uh, of highly relevant, highly personalized marketing and we've tried that for many years and it's still like not enough. I think yeah, for sure has got us there. So any marketer that is not like striving to get to that one on one personalized should try to get there because the technology exists. And so I've been in this marketing thing for long enough when ABM didn't exist but marketing automation did where you saw the mass marketing. Then came the era of ABM M. I understand the reasons for it and today I think everything can get to that much specificity with, you know, not that much resourcing. Like it's very efficient to do ABM at scale, um, almost to a one on one level.

Speaker A: So also just like with the way that LLMs work, you can actually benefit from this. So like in the old world, say like, okay, well let's address this with content. We're going to write a bunch blog posts of, you know, seven things that uh, insect removal company can, can do to increase productivity, right? Like that doesn't pull the, you know, the inspiration out of your chest. Whereas like you could do a YouTube video tomorrow of like how an insect removal company CEO can build an agent in five minutes that saves you five hours a week and that video can get cited in an LLM tomorrow. And like, and like that is just a different universe. And so it's like, with that, it's like you don't even need to have, you know, you don't need to have like everything set up. You don't need to have like crazy campaigns attached to it. You don't need to have like, you have this phenomenal PLG motion. You have a great product. You know, you can create a piece of content that can, you know, start getting cited tomorrow. And then you could put, you could run paid behind it, you can run it on YouTube, you can run it on TikTok. Like that is just super different. You don't need to have it. Uh, you know, like that's just, that feels really, really different.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I think like what is also amazing m and I've kind of like learned this firsthand in even just talking to customers is like there was, you know, people almost trust organic and I call these like de produced videos a lot more than highly produced content. Like, highly produced content always looks great and is a pleasure to the eye and you know, all of that. But from a trust factor perspective, like, hey, would I trust this company to go, you know, into their funnel, do business with them, whatever. The deep produced organic style videos are almost more appreciated. And so if you think about like video being like a leading media type for you, and if you marry that with, hey, we don't need to keep a very high production bot, it brings the cost down, it brings the speed, you know, to market down. And so it uh, allows. And then there's tech that allows you to like turn videos off very fast. So just like unleashes the power that marketing can bring for these very niche categories. As long as like you have some content, some audience, some influence or some customer Someone willing to, you know, um, give it a take. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that part of the reason that that stuff works is that, uh, the person sees himself. Right? It's like, here's how I built three agents in three hours and I didn't know what I was doing an hour before this call. Like that it's super authentic, right? So, and the person goes, hey, I don't know what I'm doing. And that's how my office looks. So, yeah, my kids yelling in the background. Like, that looks great. You know, like. And I think comparatively, or to contrast that people like to see, uh, experts who are doing expert stuff. Right? So it's like, if you're filming, like a, uh, good example is like comedians like comedy. There's a reason why all these comedians and athletes and people have really nice studios now is because we want to see them, we want to hear them. Really good quality. We want to have the visual stimulation. Like that's more like a TV show. So there's like, you know, there's a reason why all of them have upgraded their setups to not be really bad anymore. Like, people just often just don't, don't realize that like how important sort of like the consumption, uh, you know, nature of this is. And I think that like, you know, writing, writing things under the, like the Royal Blog is, is something that um, is a different utility. And like, it was the only thing that we had and now we have different things. And so like, people go to the corporate blog for corporate level stuff. Um, and that like. Right. Like it's just a different utility and we have other modalities now.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's still a repository of all your content in one place. It's all your media. So if anyone ever wants to crawl as an LLMs or search engine, it's there. But it's not the front window of, you know, your exposure to the world. It's, you know, um, as it was predominantly for a very long time.

Speaker A: And if you're not sending tons and tons of, of of. Or it's not sourcing you tons and tons of traffic, then you know, it, it's different. And, and again, like, if they can get the, you know, if they can get the message in 30 seconds on a video that somebody else posts or, you know, whatever their favorite podcast or their favorite AI podcast or whatever it is, even better.

Speaker B: Um, it's the age of podcasts, which you're in the best business.

Speaker A: Well, you know, it's funny you say that though. I, you know, I, I Had this thought years ago where I was like, I think every company should have a podcast. And that thinking quickly evolved to like, you know, I was doing five for Salesforce back a while ago, like, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago. And um, I was like, oh, what if, what if Actually you need one per product line. And then now, like, now you, the way you look at things and then like that, that, that's expensive. Only people, you know, whatever. And then now you look at it and you're like, well, and it's not podcasts. Like, we focus more on like short form video in addition to like podcasts. Now to me it's like, oh, the different types, like for, for us, like, historically we were doing like, you know, 45 minutes, sit down interviews, very smart person with a, uh, with a host, right? And now it's like, well, the format and the structure and all of those things are like incredibly different. So the attack vectors are now like five dimensional, right? It's like you can have 15 different formats, you can have 15 different Personas, you can have different verticals, you can have, you know, different styles. And like, so it's now just like way more complex than it ever was. Are you going to do 25 different podcasts? Like, well, it's like, that sounds kind of crazy, but it's like HubSpot literally has that. They have an entire network, you know, which is like our business. I think that what we were talking about earlier, where it's like, do you need to have, you know, the best podcast for every single thing? Like, maybe not. Maybe you do, I don't know. But you do need to have at least one video that's like incredibly fantastic for every one of your Personas. Like, and that's where people are just don't have it. Like, if you look at their YouTube pages for like B2B companies, they don't have it. They don't have shorts, they're not like, they don't have it. So it's like you can't tell. You can't do one video that's 30 seconds long for every single Persona you're selling to. You owe that to them, first of all. Second of all, like, you need it, you got to do it, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah. I would argue every Persona, uh, and the breadth of their use cases, especially if it's short form video, it is so critical today. And the more authentic the setup, the story, the, uh, the better, you know. So it's like if you can achieve that as part of your marketing strategy and it's very feasible today and not as cost.

Speaker A: We built all these universities, you know, the, the things like that. And now it's like, that's like, it's almost that, but like turned upside down. It's like, oh, we don't need high up down universities. We need bottom up, you know, uh, short form video, you know, factory.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Prachi, wonderful having you on the show. Obviously, our listeners should check out asana.com or just DM me, ask me how we use it. Any final thoughts? Anything to plug?

Speaker B: No. This has been a pleasure. I love the, uh, direct multiple directions we went in. And it's always fun chatting with you. Ian. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Thanks again to our friends at qualified. Go to qualified.com to learn more.

Speaker B: Sam.