Positioning That Sticks: Winning Mindshare

 

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers. If this is your first time, welcome, and if you’re a regular listener, welcome back. You’re about to hear a recording from CMO Huddles Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome marketing leaders of CMO Huddles, a community that’s always sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness. The marketing leaders in this episode are Joe Cohen, Sara Larsen, and Carlos Carvajal, and we explore some flocking awesome positioning stories. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You’ll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let’s dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through. Proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here’s your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Welcome to CMO Huddle Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I’m your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York City. Positioning is one of those super squishy words in marketing. It’s hard to define, it’s hard to explain to non-marketers, but it’s inherently clear when done right. I’m going to go a place that you might not expect me to. I’m going to remind you of the scene in the first Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi waves his hands at two Imperial storm troopers and says, “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” and they let the wizard and his passengers through. Obi-Wan was repositioning R2-D2 and C-3PO in the minds of the troopers. Marketers essentially need to do this Jedi mind trick to capture mind space for their brands, whereas my friend Tamara McCleary put it, “Positioning is finding the parking space, the right parking space inside the consumer’s mind and going for it before someone else gets there.” Okay, you got that young Jedi? Cool with that. Let’s bring on Joe Cohen, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Axis and unknown Star Wars fan, but returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss brand values. Hello, Joe. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Joe: Hey Drew, thank you for having me back on the show. It looks like I’m in a boardroom, but this is a facade. Behind me is a poorly made bed, and I am in my home in Hoboken, New Jersey, and I’m a Star Wars fan. Grew up watching the original trilogy.

Drew: You know that scene I’m talking about. It’s just a magic sort of thing. All right, let’s talk a little bit about Axis and your new energy transition syndicate. What’s going on there?

Joe: Yeah, so I’ll step back a moment and just let people know. Axis is a global specialty insurer and reinsurer. The work we do is predominantly B2B, and part of what’s our special sauce is that we’re a global, multi-billion dollar company, but we’re a mid-sized player, and we stand apart and compete against some of the other bigger and smaller companies with a value proposition that centers around offering specialized insurance solutions. When you think about how we compete against the bigger players, we’re able to offer more specialization, more tailored programming on a global scale, and be more nimble in doing so, which relates to what I’m going to talk about regarding the energy transition syndicate. And then for smaller competitors, we’ve just got more reach, more resources, and more scale and robust global platform.

To answer your question, something that has been long an area of strength for Axis is that we were one of the early entrants into the renewable energy space, but we’ve also had a robust energy business too, more traditional energy. So, you know, 14 years ago, we launched our renewable energy practice a little bit ahead of the game. Now, what’s been happening on a global scale is there’s increasing investment in energy transition. So part of what we wanted to do, from a business standpoint and from a marketing standpoint, was lean into the credibility and expertise we have and put a stake in the ground.

From an operational standpoint, we launched the first-ever syndicate at Lloyd’s, the famous business and platform Lloyd’s of London. We launched the first-ever dedicated syndicate to basically ensuring energy transition risks. And if you think about what that means, you think about whatever a project could be. It could be building a solar farm, it could be battery storage, wind turbines, and so on. And there’s the conception and invention, the insurance that goes with that, there’s securing financing, there’s sourcing and moving goods and materials, there’s the construction, there’s the operations, there’s the dismantling and repurposing of both before you build the new technology and updating the technology. So all of those different sorts of operational items have risks, and there’s insurance need. So for us, what we created with this syndicate was a one-stop shop. So if you have any energy transition needs, we have expertise in it. We’ll help you through that journey. We’ll come up with customized risk solutions for you. So for this, what we wanted to do was celebrate the launch of it and also tie it to who we are and what we stand for. No Jedi mind tricks, it’s who we are.

Drew: Okay. So there was a lot going on there and a lot to unpack. It’s so interesting. I mean, visually, what I thought of as you did it, I remember seeing, I think it was in The Economist, it was a giant wind farm, but two of them had been broken in half as a result of a hurricane. Obviously, that’s the kind of risk that most of us think about. But you described a much deeper and broader frame as the world tries to electrify and move off of organic, if you will, or fossil fuels, right? So part of this is a product thing, which is this syndicate, and all the ways you do it, the product can be the message. And I think that’s what you’re saying here, is that by having this, you’re sort of making a stake that you are a company that is on the leading edge of energy transformation, right? I mean, there’s hopefully a good halo for you.

Joe: Yeah, no, you hit a lot of points there. I think part of it also is helping contextualize the different considerations that you need to have when you enter this space. And there are different drivers that are moving business to pursue energy transition. Part of it is federal subsidies in the States, you know, favorable environment outside the States and other jurisdictions, wherever a company is based for doing business. Part of it is a need and a business opportunity, customer demand, whatever it may be, but for folks who are relatively new to this space, they may not understand the full scope of risks that they’re taking on, and there’s a lot to it.

So part of what we did, a key part of our promotional push and our marketing push, was we commissioned a global energy resilience report where we surveyed 600 experts, energy producers, brokers, industrial energy buyers, and identified some of the different themes and trends that people need to be thinking about. And that gave us great content for marketing, great content for digital social media, obviously earned, and PR was part of it too, as well as getting our underwriters who are out in the market, representing our brand, something to speak about in meetings, something to speak about at events. That was one of the key tactics that helped further contextualize the message here.

Drew: Well, and that research really gives you authority, right? Because you’ve gone deep, it’s so interesting. It’s like in B2B, when in doubt, do some really good market research that enables you to sort of, and in some ways, it positioned you as experts in the category. And as I said, authorities, I want to sort of make sure we answer the question about positioning, because this show is about positioning, and you talked about your wide range of competitors. How do you see yourselves positioned in this energy transition space?

Joe: Yeah, so part of it is that we have, there’s a lot of players who are entering this space, so we definitely have emphasized that we’ve been a leader in this space for 14 years, and we’ve got data, we’ve got industry knowledge. We know the ins and outs. And the other piece of it, which is very important, is as a company with a robust insurance, a global company with other products, when you’re thinking about, how does energy transition tie to finance? And we have a financial part of our business, insurance arm. How does it tie into construction? How does it tie into aviation? Marine really runs the gamut. That whole idea of the one-stop shop, making it clear that whatever the sub-sector is, we could help you connect the dots and look at it holistically and from a positioning standpoint, always going back to what’s our core message, that we’re a specialist that will help customize the solutions we put forward for your business, with the underlying message that we know this space, we’ve been doing it a long time.

Drew: Right, which, in some ways, because you’ve been doing it a long time, enables you to make your promise of being specialist as true as does the research that backs it up, right? And so these pieces come together, and it sounds like you’re well positioned for success in a category that is potentially exploding, but has all sorts of barriers. And just when you’re talking about, like, was the research, was it? Did it help you get the exposure that you were looking for? Or how have you been able to see your positioning in the minds of your prospects sort of grow?

Joe: Yeah, no, it has been helpful. I mean, we are relatively early in the campaign, so there’s still a lot more to go and a lot of mileage to get out of it, but what we’ve as far as getting in front of the experts as well as the broader populace, or people who are relatively new and customers who are relatively new to this, what’s been helpful with the research is we’ve been able to reach both audiences by helping people understand things they don’t know we’re going a little bit deeper than they may be thinking. An example that I touched on before securing financing, something that came through in the research that people may have known or may not have known, but there were some different details to unpack. Is that even though we’ve got this explosion of growth in energy transition, securing financing has become very challenging and very costly as you go about that you really want a partner who understands the space. So that was just one example, and you could deliver that message in a very high-level way for the newer customers, but also get into all the different sub-topics, and go in a little bit more of a deeper way with people who really know the space.

Drew: Right. Well, this is important work. As someone who’s been on the board of the Urban Green Council for 10-plus years, financing is a big deal, and insurance is a big part of it anyway. All right, we’ll come back to you, Joe, on that, but now let’s bring on Sara Larsen, VP of Marketing of Wolters Kluwer Health. So we’re going from insurance to health, and as an industry expert who’s graced our stage before to delve into the topic of sales enablement and CMO job search. Hello, Sara.

Sara: Hello Drew, thanks for having me back.

Drew: How are you and where are you this fine day?

Sara: Well, I am in the greater Boston area today, having a great summer. However, I have to warn you, I might be a little unplugged today. I’m about 30 hours away from vacation, so getting ready to head north and hang out on the lake for a while.

Drew: I am envious. You’re a good month ahead of my big vacation. Okay, let’s talk about how you’ve worked to evolve the Wolters Kluwer Health brand. It’s interesting because it is a sub-brand, so you’ve done a lot of positioning work. Let’s dive into the why and how your why has evolved over time.

Sara: Yes, it’s a really interesting story. Let me tell you a little bit about our brands and our solutions first. So my focus within Wolters Kluwer Health is in the clinical effectiveness space, and those are the solutions that really support consistent clinical decision-making, process and care management across your patient or member journey. So that sounds very fancy. What that really means is a doctor in Kansas is going to have the same type of diagnosis and recommended treatment path and medication path as someone in New York. So it’s really a way to make sure patients get the best possible outcomes from healthcare, and it’s a great way to help bring equity into the healthcare system.

These solutions within our portfolio cover the categories of clinical decision support, drug reference, and patient engagement. Our key solution is UpToDate. UpToDate is the market leader in providing clinical decision support. It’s a very content-rich application that’s trusted by over 2 million clinicians. And I say trusted, not used, because it is trusted. It is the go-to source for doctors. If you went to your doctor today and asked them if they used UpToDate, they would say, “Yes, I love UpToDate.”

What it does is, as they search it—and we have millions of searches a year—it helps doctors really have kind of that expert clinician on their shoulder, helping them make sure they’re making the right decision. We always think doctors know everything, and they do, but they always want to be sure, and so this solution helps them do that. It’s used very widely across the healthcare ecosystem. We’ve actually had independent studies, over 100 independent studies, showing positive patient outcomes based on changed decisions as a result of using UpToDate.

So that’s our key solution. We have around that a couple of additional solutions. We have a drug reference solution and a patient engagement solution. We bring those solutions to market to really help large hospital systems and hospital systems overall manage the patient journey. And so as we have looked at that go-to-market, and as we’ve seen the impact of the UpToDate brand, there’s always been this question of how do we leverage the UpToDate brand across our other solutions, across our drug reference and our patient engagement space? And so it kind of came down to, as you asked earlier, when is the right time to do it? And really for what benefit—what benefit for us and what benefit for the customers?

So as I started looking at this question, which had been asked for many years around the UpToDate brand, we really analyzed a couple of signals. First was our business and our product strategy. Where are we taking our product into market, and what was that going to mean for our customers? One of the things we spent a lot of time investing in is something we call harmonization, and it’s making sure that the information in one product matches the others, so that you have a fully consistent way you’re defining things, defining potential treatments, defining drug recommendations.

So what that means is, if you go to your doctor, your pharmacist is looking up the same information, and your care follow-up team is looking at the same information as a patient. We assume that’s always happening, but there’s a whole set of solutions behind that that can make it happen.

Drew: Right. If you have different databases supporting it and they’re not updated automatically, then you can have different—oh, that’s fascinating.

Sara: So we spent a lot of time doing that harmonization. We also listened to our customers, and they said, “Look, we love your stuff, but can you make it easier for us to do business with and can you help us understand how all of these pieces fit together, not just for my individual users, the clinicians, but for my organization, my enterprise.” We wanted to see that interconnectedness, and so that started to really give us the insight to the answer of when is the right time and to what benefit. We saw benefit for us because we can now use this UpToDate brand halo across all of our solutions, but we also saw the benefit for our customers because it would make it easier for us to do business with them, easier to communicate the value that our solutions are bringing.

So today we have UpToDate, we have UpToDate Lexi Drug, which is our drug reference, and UpToDate Patient and Member Experience, which supports both patients as well as payers around the member experience. So it really was a process of looking at our business strategy, product strategy, and listening to customers.

Drew: And so originally, there was just the one. Now there’s the three under this sort of—it’s still a Wolters Kluwer.

Sara: Yes, Wolters Kluwer sub-brand, but it really brought together the value proposition around the categories into one UpToDate sort of power brand which is highly recognizable in market. We have almost 100% aided awareness in the US.

Drew: Which is amazing. So against a target audience. And I know that anybody listening or watching this will go, “Whoa, 100% against the target.” That’s incredible. So basically what you’re saying is, if you like this peanut butter, we’re now going to have the chunky version of it, or we’re going to do actually a frozen version of it. So you’re leveraging a strong brand, a strong relationship, into other categories.

Sara: And I go back to that brand pillar of trust. I talked about trust, and we really do talk about that clinicians can trust UpToDate. We wanted to make sure that same level of trust existed with any solution we would put in and around the UpToDate brand. So that was really the rigorous test we had to go through, because you can slap a brand name on anything, right? People have to trust it. And in the healthcare space, it becomes even more important because we’re talking about lives.

Drew: Yeah, it’s so interesting, and so you essentially had to upgrade the other products in order to be able to deliver a similar kind of customer experience is what you’re saying, which makes a lot of sense. And I wish more brands did that, right, because where you started this exercise was really, how do we help the customer? And then as a result of that, obviously it’s going to help the business, but so often it goes the other way around. How do we sell more to our customers?

Sara: And there was a lot of internal—I guess I could even say friction. There’s a lot of internal friction, obviously, for the brands that were losing their legacy names. They really wanted to understand what was going to happen to how people perceive them, and how will they be perceived now under UpToDate. And the UpToDate team, which has built a blockbuster product over the past 30 years, they really had to trust that the new products coming under the brand were having that same level of quality, same level of acceptance with customers. So there’s a lot of internal change discussion. Our teams that staff around those projects are some of the best physicians and doctors in their field. So this is a highly engaged, highly academic audience to have this discussion with. So it really was a very thorough evaluation.

Drew: Well, another time I’d love to talk to you about the migration strategy, but we need to get to Carlos, who’s been waiting patiently. Carlos Carvajal, who is the CMO of Q2, previously joined us on the show to shed light on the intricacies of sales enablement and analyst relations. Hello, Carlos, welcome back.

Carlos: Hey Drew, thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it.

Drew: Oh, you know it’s great to see you. So how are you and where are you this fine day?

Carlos: I am doing great. I just got back from vacation recently. Unlike Sara, I’m a little jealous. I’d like to take another one, and I am in Austin, Texas.

Drew: All right, well, so you heard Joe and Sara, and I’m curious about the positioning work, or where you would come at this, relative to what you just heard.

Carlos: Yeah, it’s actually, there are a lot of similarities, and you’re asking kind of the why question. Similar to Sara and Joe, I’m going to start a little bit with Q2 just to understand the evolution of the brand. So Q2 actually, we’re hitting our 20th birthday coming up this month. Actually, I just realized we’re in August. This year is flying by. Twenty years in the business and we started off around online banking. So we sell digital banking software to banks, credit unions, fintechs and even in some cases brands. The evolution over time is we started off in online, then just like probably everybody that’s listening today and participating on this, mobile banking became huge. Everybody does banking on their phones, and then the brand was very strong. We’re a leader in the space around online banking, and online banking, particularly in retail, for many, many years. Probably about eight-ish years ago, we started an acquisition strategy to expand our portfolio into commercial banking. And it may not be well known, but commercial banking is where most banks actually make their money. That’s a lot of their growth strategy actually driven on the commercial and business banking side. So the challenge from a brand perspective is we were so well known on the online banking on the retail banking side, that we weren’t viewed as a player, even with the acquisitions and other things that we made as technology investments. So there were situations as far as like business team challenges in the why we would go into a deal and we may end up losing it to a competitor. And they’d say, “Well, we know you’re doing some things in commercial, but you’re not really a serious commercial player,” like some of these other competitors that are out there. That was really the mission – we have incredible solutions that really solve the core, most important problems that these banks have in the commercial space. We acquired an incredible portfolio. We had very successful customers, and that was really the mission: to evolve the brand beyond being well known in the retail and online banking space, to really more of an end-to-end digital banking solution provider that could cover all the needs, from retail to micro businesses to small businesses all the way up to commercial and large corporate clients. And I’ll pause.

Drew: Yeah. So it’s fascinating, because you were positioned, one could argue really, really well in retail, and you owned some mind space there, right? And suddenly you say, “I know you love us in retail, and I know you respect us, but we also got this.” There’s a lot of risks in this, in that you could dilute your positioning with the retail – the brand simply isn’t, can’t stretch, and doesn’t have the elasticity to get there. And so I’m curious about the building blocks that it takes in your mind to get to this broader understanding and appreciation of Q2 as a full-service digital banking solution, as opposed to “we got you covered in retail.”

Carlos: Yeah, honestly, quite frankly, that was a challenge over time. Like you put so much into it on the commercial side, that really it was making sure we don’t under-invest on the retail side. And we had so much success, and I can talk more about some of the things that we did on the commercial side, that we actually had some people come back within the company saying, “We love what we’ve done on the commercial side. Now do more of that in retail as well,” which was an interesting observation, because two years ago, it was the exact opposite. So frankly, as far as that transition is concerned, it’s just making sure you don’t lose sight. Still telling your customer stories, your core message, the brand, even on the retail side for us, it’s also very important to work with the industry analysts, to work with the industry consultants, the influencers in the market, making sure that that’s where you can run into a problem if the organizations that are influencing your customers think that you’re exiting a market and you’re de-emphasizing, and they start telling their clients, “Yeah, I’m not sure what Q2 is doing here,” then that can create a problem. So we made it a point to the analysts and the influencers like we are expanding. We have grown. We’ve been a very successful company. So we are not exiting, we are not de-investing in retail. What we’re doing is augmenting.

Drew: Right. That’s so fascinating. And I think there’s a – you know, acquisitions often do this to companies. They get very excited about the new offering because that feels like growth, and they forget about the existing one, and that’s where all your credibility and trust has been built. So we’re talking about, how do you maintain the trust? And so suddenly you’re in Portfolio Management territory, right? It becomes a resource issue, it becomes a strategy issue, and you have to sort of now expand Q2 from an overall standpoint, right? We’ve got Q2 and then we’ve got retail, and we’ve got commercial, or we’ve just got Q2 full banking, right? And of course, how you manage that migration?

Carlos: Yeah, I think the first step was just being successful. We did have commercial technology in house, organically built, and then we expanded beyond that to the acquisitions. The first step in the evolution was to just be a credible player and a leader in commercial banking, like from the commercial banking clients, and then spanning that into what we call the single platform message to your point, which is more of that end-to-end story. So on the first just on the brand evolution, on the commercial side, I’m a big believer, you got to start with what matters most to your customers. And for the commercial clients, they need to first win more commercial clients, and they’re all about how winning one large business has huge impacts on a bank. I mean, they can get hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits that can then help fuel other things and more. So we wanted to connect back to the things that matter most. One, I need to win more clients. Two, I need to grow profitable relationships. And we had unique strengths through technology we built in house, as well as some of the acquisitions that we were uniquely positioned to help, both on the credit side, which is on the lending side, to help them really price loans effectively and get a competitive edge through some technology that we acquired, but also on the flip side, once you actually got them in, how do you actually expand those? How do you get the deposit accounts and much more and get fee-based income and grow, once again, profitable relationships? And we had a unique opportunity that we could actually cover both the credit and the deposit side, which was really nice. So that was a lot of focus: how do we get that message out there that we can actually help you acquire and grow profitable relationships uniquely? And then beyond that, you mentioned portfolio. And I just wanted to touch on this, because this was a challenge as well. We had a lot of technology, a lot of products, a very large portfolio that was built over time through acquisitions and organic growth. So in essence, what we did, which helped a ton, is we simplified all of it down to a framework. How can you help win, onboard, serve and grow? And without getting into all the details, then we kind of built a map, like a journey for our customers. What ended up working really well is basically a message of, we’re going to meet you where you’re at. Like your priority may be you really struggled to onboard clients efficiently. We can help you with that today, and then we can help you grow over time and help you build that strategy to help you grow these profitable relationships. Different customers may say, “You know what? We’re losing on the lending side, we need help on the pricing.” So this whole “we’re going to meet you where you’re at through this journey, and then we’re going to evolve with you as your needs adapt” resonated really well.

Drew: Interesting. And so one might argue that’s a rather broad positioning. On the other hand, you’re essentially saying we’ll partner with you, right? And we’re not – yes, we have a wide range of solutions, but we really care about where you are today. I’m just curious, how did that – you know, how did you get that positioning? Because these are folks that really hadn’t done business with you necessarily. How do you get that in front of people?

Carlos: Some of the things that you talked about earlier about market research and figuring out who to work with. So we put a lot of effort into the industry analysts, and we actually engaged industry consultants on the messaging, positioning, and went through a very long process with them to validate tests, and they were pretty brutal, like, “You think that’s unique, but it’s not.” Or one of the other ones that I loved is like, “Stop talking about yourselves, and really lead with your customers.” You know, those kind of things. So we went through a process first on the positioning to validate with the industry experts that were ex-bankers. And then once we did that, it was just meet them, meet the bankers, where they’re at. One very important thing to keep in mind for us is we have a very finite target market. Like our sweet spot is about 2000 accounts. So I’ve been at companies where it was 300,000 plus. But here it’s like, you can identify exactly who you’re going after, and then how do you meet them where they’re at. So whether it’s through digital channels, whether it’s the PR strategy, earned media, but even good old events, road shows, all those kind of things come into play, because it’s a very high touch, relationship-driven business.

Drew: You know, when we were here before, we talked about your stadium. Are you still doing that?

Carlos: Yes! The Q2 stadium.

Drew: Does that play any role in all of this? Because, you know, it’s kind of cool to be able to say, “Hey, one of these prospects, come, let’s go meet at the stadium.”

Carlos: So what’s interesting about that, and it’s another part of the brand evolution strategy, when you think about commercial, what that also does for us is it allows us to go upmarket, like go up to larger banks. When you’re dealing with larger banks, because we started off in the community banking space, you have to come off as a player, like if they’re going to rely on you. So when you actually have them come down for an executive briefing at a larger bank, and then you say, “Okay, we’re actually going to go host you in the stadium,” and then they see all of the signage and everything, and just the presence of Q2 in the stadium, it really elevates us and makes us look like one of the larger players. So that absolutely helped, especially as we’re going upmarket.

Drew: That’s so interesting. Put your name up there, and it’s credibility. It’s like, they must be big, they must be doing something right. Look, their name is on a stadium, you know? Oh my gosh, it’s true. Amazing. All right. Well, a lot of food for thought here. We’re going to come back to you and get the whole group together. But for this second, I’m going to talk about CMO Huddles. We launched that in 2020. It’s a close-knit community of over 350 highly effective B2B marketing leaders who share, care, and dare each other to greatness. Given the extraordinary time constraints on CMOs these days, everything about CMO Huddles is designed to help leaders save time and empower them to make faster, better decisions. Joe, Sara, Carlos, you’ve been Huddlers for a while. You know, if you feel like sharing an example of how Huddles might have saved you time or something, let me know.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, Drew, I’ll jump in. I’ll speak a little more broadly. I think just being able to tap into the network, being able to speak with other CMOs – oftentimes you’ve connected me to CMOs when I’ve had specific challenges – has saved an enormous amount of time. Being able to pick your brain, without pandering – you know, hopefully not trying to get you to ask me easier questions during this interview. Being able to pick your brain has been helpful. And the e-blast that we get with a list of tips and insights for the Huddles that we’re not able to attend, there’s some really good, meaty insights in those. So always, that CMOs is helpful.

Drew: I love it. Thank you so much for that. Sara, anything?

Sara: I would say a couple of things. One, you provide great therapy, good therapy to get with other colleagues. You know, can talk about the gory details and things that you can’t share with your team, not going to share with your boss. So it’s nice to have that. And I would say, you guys keep me current. Sometimes I get heads down, and I don’t think about topics. And so there are topics I haven’t even thought that I should be thinking about, and you bring them forward. So I appreciate being on the leading edge of info.

Drew: I love that. I appreciate that. And Carlos?

Carlos: Yeah, I just love the diversity of the topics. You get so many different areas with useful feedback and just peer insights, which is fantastic, from retention, to demand gen, to PR to AR, to talent. I mean, it’s just so many different areas, right? And it’s endless, which I think is fantastic. And then just, frankly, some of the Huddle calls, just some very good, useful tips. I still to this day, I have an initiative that’s been running now three years, that came from CMO Huddles, from a Huddle, and I took the idea – I’m just going to be totally honest about it. And it was an initiative around “be the best marketing team,” right? And making that more of a program focused on people and around because it’s really easy to get caught up in the business KPIs and worlds and everything, but mental health – how are people doing? How are people growing? How are people learning? And somebody just shared their insights on how they were running this “be the best marketing team” initiatives. And really did it organically and making sure leadership and marketing wasn’t driving it, and it was actually happening more from the ground up. And that was literally something that came straight from CMO Huddles that still exists today. I got to know on this yesterday.

Drew: I love that. Okay, I want to come back to that one too. Well, if you’re a B2B CMO who can share, care, and dare with the best of us and need a shortcut to B2B greatness, take a second to sign up for a free starter program at cmohuddles.com. And also do be sure to check out our free starter program at cmohuddles.com. Anyway, let’s all come back together. And Sara, we started to get at this a little bit. But you’re in this challenging situation because you can see the positioning, you’ve done all your homework. I know Carlos, you hired a bunch of outside folks, but you can get resistance internally. Just curious – we don’t have to be specific – but how do you navigate that resistance? Because, you know, positioning is not something necessarily you do by committee, although you end up having to talk to a lot of people about it.

Sara: Yeah, one of the things that we did is we prioritized investing in change management. And I know we talk a lot about change management, you know, how do you actually really do it? And so we really got specific about making sure that our executive team was bought in, making sure that that was cascading into their teams, finding the champions for the program, training and educating them, and understanding where the pockets of resistance were, why that was happening, and what we needed to do to overcome. A lot of the resistance was really coming around that trust around the product. So we spent a lot of time looking at that. We did not have customer resistance. We did not have market resistance. The analysts thought this was like a slam – why didn’t you do it sooner? But internally, it was really where we had to spend time. We invested in the Prosci methodology. We had a dedicated Change Management Program, and then we measured. I did pulse checks along the way to make sure people are getting information, that they understood the why. Why is this happening? Why is this happening now, and what’s in it for me? We just wrapped one of our post-launch surveys a few weeks ago – 94% of our employees said they understood why we were doing this. They understood the customer benefits. 95% said they had the timely information, and 93% said they felt prepared for change. So those numbers kind of made me smile a little bit, saying, okay, it was worth it to go through the investment in change management, but that was probably our biggest challenge in the program.

Drew: And I so appreciate you sharing the data with us and so forth, and it’s just a reminder – positioning, while you can get that right, resistance to change inside is a big deal. Yeah, it’s a big deal, particularly when you’re changing a name, or you’re changing your go-to-market, or you’re repositioning against a new target. But I also love the fact that you measured, and you measured and so forth. You also mentioned the executive team, getting them to buy in, and then sort of the champions and training the trainers. There are a lot of good things to unpack when you’re doing these things. The internal audience can be even more important.

Sara: For your brand, your employees are your brand. If they don’t understand it, the market’s not going to understand it. So you’ve got to get that right.

Drew: Joe, Carlos, you want to weigh in on that sort of internal situation and getting everybody on board?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, that’s a huge point. I couldn’t agree more. And we, I know, in the pre-call, we spoke a little bit about how you sustain something after a launch. Consistency is one another big item – consistency internally, and educating internally and mobilizing people and addressing challenges and issues head-on. But with the campaign, I mentioned the syndicate. We had a ton of internal communications and the consistency part of it. It’s not a one-off, providing people with updates. How’s the launch going? What are some of the actions that we’re taking? And stepping back more broadly, as it relates to positioning, there’s the broader campaign within access. I emphasized it’s about specialty solutions. And there could always be the risk that internally, it could feel old and boring to talk about the same messages again and again and again. But externally, our customers, they may need to hear it multiple times, particularly new customers, or customers who we’re growing with. So it’s something where you need that repetition internally. You need it externally, and you need to remind and motivate and inspire your people to continually tell the story while arming them with fresh ways to tell the story.

Drew: Right. I love this, and I say this for a mountain in Huddles, but in one of our Huddles, Heidi Bullock from Tealium said “internal messaging seven times, seven ways.” And so I really appreciate no one-offs when it comes to internal, but it probably applies as well. You’re aware of it, but they’re not. And going back to Sara, what you said about getting to 94 and 95%, I’m imagining there were a lot of touch points involved in that.

Sara: There were, and it’s about the key thing – the champions. These were not the senior-level folks in the organization. They might have been more junior in terms of where they’re reporting, but they understood the why, why now, and what’s in it for me, and they helped their peers understand it. So I think investing in that program was highly beneficial. You can send all kinds of emails, all kinds of videos, have all kinds of meetings, but you have to have that personal trust and relationship to help drive some change. And those champions were extremely helpful for us.

Joe: I think part of a program like that is that it’s two-way, and you could do programs like that. You could do it on a broad scale, like Ask Me Anything town halls, but you don’t want it to be you talking at your employees. You want it to be a two-way dialogue, where you’re basically finding out what’s on their mind, addressing questions and challenges head-on, but also gaining insights. And the information that you glean from those conversations and dialogues on a big or small scale, showing later how you put those insights to use – that’s part of how you really build stronger relationships and win the trust, which is a word we’ve spoken about multiple times. Win the trust with your critical internal stakeholders.

Carlos: All great points. I was going to mention the champions point too, because a lot of times you get the executive buy-in. But yeah, I could not agree with Sara more. It’s really understanding who internally actually influences down at every level of the company. I think that’s really key. And then to Joe’s point around consistency, and even thinking about cadence, celebrating the wins, like the impact, even if they’re smaller wins, but just getting that out there, and having others share that. So it’s not always coming from marketing. So getting people in sales and others to say, “Hey, we actually drove results – this work was great. This positioning actually worked in this situation.” I remember one of the things we created, they called it the money slide for that lifecycle positioning, because the customers would say, “I need this,” and they would point to something in the broader framework. And that actually started going through sales as the money slide. The money slide is just one example, but it was in the broader positioning around what I talked about commercial, but just celebrating those wins along the way.

Drew: So while you’re here, I’m interested, because you mentioned a lot about analysts and experts. Talk about the role – again, we’ve now talked about employee input and also education – consumer feedback plays in shaping this positioning. You know, how do you make sure that you’re not? It’s funny, I’m listening to Dan Ariely’s book on misbelief, and we all have sort of built-in biases, right? And so how do you make sure that you’re hearing what they’re saying, not what you want to hear?

Carlos: Yeah, yeah. And that’s a great point. We did a lot of primary research with customers and getting that type of feedback and making sure we didn’t have happy ears, for example, and just starting with the core problem, like, is this the biggest problem? Is it what we think it is, or are we just hoping it’s a problem, right? And that was very reaffirming. What’s interesting in the commercial banking space is that this is tricky. Somebody mentioned change management. They’ve been following a similar process forever, which is very relationship-based. We’re going to take them to dinner, we’re going to go to golf, we’re going to go do these things. So thinking about how to use technology and digital and those kinds of things to really create a competitive advantage is tricky, right, from a change perspective. But through the customer research, they were recognizing, like for the next three, five, ten years, we can’t keep doing business the way we’ve always done it, or we’re gonna get left behind. And they were telling us that. So it’s part of that process that really helped, as far as just through the validation and learning to help shape the position.

Drew: Okay, speaking of borrowing ideas, I’m gonna borrow “happy ears.” I just love that notion. And so again, the term is confirmation bias. We all have it in so many different ways. It feels like it’s something that goes with marketing. It’s a wonderful thing because it can help you build a case. It’s also just – it can blind you to the real opportunities there. Okay, so we’ve talked about aligning employees, getting customer feedback, and making sure that when we’re doing this positioning work, that we really understand it. Sara, you touched on measurement. I’m curious, Carlos, or Joe, as you’re looking at the success of your positioning, other than revenue, because obviously, in your case, Carlos, we could just say how many banks are now using you for both, you know, or for commercial, right? Because we could just look at it that way, but there’s got to be some other measurements to say that what you’re doing is working.

Carlos: Yeah, as far as what’s working on this positioning, and we did actually look at this – I mean, yeah, you could talk about revenue, you could talk about deals pipeline opportunities, which we could kill on the commercial side, but even just higher up the funnel, when we actually – we do have sections of our current website, for example, that are specifically on commercial, commercial banking. So are people curious? We looked at website metrics. We also looked at social, social engagement. We try to do a deeper analysis as far as who’s engaging with us, and are we actually hitting some of these commercial clients, those kinds of things as well. We basically look at some of the traditional metrics up funnel, but put a lens as far as the type of customer, the segments within, like the commercial space as an example.

Drew: So the website would be an early indication that someone was actually interested in that. I got it, okay, and right inbound that. Oh, that’s a wonderful notion, isn’t it, Joe? How do you measure this positioning in the renewable energy space – is it resonating?

Joe: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of the fundamental approaches that you’d expect, whether it’s broker surveys, anecdotal feedback, results, obviously the amount of business that we’re writing, renewal business that we’re keeping, for business that already existed, and so on and so forth. But brand perception studies – what I’d say, though, is probably the best takeaway and effective best practice that we’ve used is embracing the idea of shared KPIs, so not operating in a silo. Huddle in with distribution management and the different business leaders, HR in some instances, for certain product launches and campaigns have an internal element to it, and the idea – some of it could even be saying in certain areas of the business when we’ve launched a certain campaign, have we seen our hiring numbers go up, that kind of thing. So just to fully explain that a little bit more, but the idea of having shared KPIs and then reporting together that – when we do that, it always proves more effective. And just showing how everything really connects together, so that shared KPIs is one I might emphasize.

Drew: Well, thank you, Anastasia, for the thumbs up for Joe. I appreciate having a live audience weigh in here. I’m curious. I was having this conversation with someone the other day about positioning – oh, it was actually HW Smith – and we were talking about this. I remembered that the first positioning exercise I ever went through was to convince blank to use blank instead of blank because of blank. That was a long time ago. I was wondering if you feel like the positioning work that we’re doing now – how different and how has it evolved from what you did when you first got in your career? I’m just wondering if this is such a fundamental exercise that what was true three decades ago is still what we’re doing today.

Sara: I know, I think you’re trying to date us, Drew!

Joe: I think you could pick up “Diary of an Ad Man” by Ogilvy, and there are certain parts of it that will ring true today, and others where your mind will be blown because TV is like a new thing. But what I’m trying to get at with this is that the fundamental truth – that it all comes down to identifying and addressing the need of the customer – that has been a constant. As far as the tools and the landscape and the broader environment, all that changes, and you need to be adaptive, but you never want to lose sight of the fundamentals.

Sara: Yeah, I think one thing that is new – and look, I’m a disciple of the April Dunford book around positioning, “Positively Awesome.” Love it. Had my team read it. The thing in that process that you really talked a lot more about beyond the basics is the context. And I think that’s what’s probably nuanced now – the world is so much more complicated than 30 years ago. Maybe it was complicated then, but I think that in the world of B2B, the world of technology, regardless of what industry you’re in, it’s noisy, it’s complicated. And so you have to understand the context of your positioning, I think, a lot more than potentially you’ve had to think about in the past.

Drew: And it also feels like you have to be more nimble. This is really tricky. It’s funny – my favorite little positioning, by the way, is packaged goods. It’s Gain detergent, and the position was “smell as proof of clean.” I saw a Gain ad on the Olympics, and the woman was still smelling the thing. I mean, that’s a 40 or 50-year positioning. Imagine being able to do that, but it was a different product form. I will say it wasn’t the classic detergent. Anyway, we’re not going backwards, we’re going forwards. We haven’t talked about how you could use AI, if at all, in all of these exercises, but we’ve done that in some other shows, so let’s wrap up based on your experiences, and we’ll do it in reverse order. So Carlos, you get to go first. What advice would you give to CMOs and marketing leaders about the future of brand positioning?

Carlos: To be honest with you, I’m struggling a little bit because it relates to your last question. I just think even for the future, you still have to get the basics right, or the fundamentals right. I think just focusing on the fundamentals – you mentioned one of the positioning frameworks. I’m still a fan of the Crossing the Chasm positioning frameworks. One of the first business books I read was “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Ries and Trout. Those kind of just fundamental concepts. However, as far as the future, I think with AI and technology, it can help accelerate some of the execution and learnings and things like that, but you still got to get the fundamentals right.

Drew: Yeah, I think you’re right. I do think one of the ways that this is going to be really interesting is not using it to develop a positioning, but to use it to challenge a positioning. That’s an interesting thing. Okay, Sara, we can either talk about the future of positioning, or we can just talk about two things that folks really need to keep in mind when they’re repositioning their product or service.

Sara: Well, I’ll give you three. I would say, number one, have your CEO on board. You know, I always say marketing hosts the brand and positioning conversations, we educate, we drive it. But ultimately your CEO is going to have to drive it through the organization and across your ELT, so have your CEO on board. Part and parcel of that is making sure that your business strategy is driving brand positioning. And that means where’s your revenue going to come from in the future? Who are your customers in markets in the future, and are you positioned to win there? Because I think sometimes we get tied to the past. And finally, change management. You’ve heard me talk about it here, but invest in change management. Sometimes it’s an afterthought, but make it part of the core plan.

Drew: Got it. Okay, Joe, two or three things either to think about as we move forward with positionings today or tomorrow?

Joe: Yeah, I’ll echo Carlos – staying true to the fundamentals, that’s a big one, something we spoke about earlier. Always be listening – sounds very Glengarry Glen Ross but always be listening internally, externally to all the key stakeholders. Another one, consistency, staying true to who you are. Don’t get bored with your own messages, but adapt when you need to. And another item that relates to what Sara shared about the context – it’s such a noisy environment, figuring out ways to get your message and your brand out in a clean, clear, memorable way. You know, it gets harder and harder, so that requires work and intentionality. I did four – that was more than you wanted.

Drew: That’s perfect. It’s fantastic. And I’m just thinking about all of this as we’re talking and there’s so many good things that we could say. Yes, positioning is an exercise that you can go through as a marketer, but you’ve got to involve the organization, and you’ve got to involve your customers. I mean, that’s the biggest story there. And the one thing I wanted to sort of end on is this: every time you talk to a customer as a marketer, you are winning. You are winning because you’re creating an opportunity to listen. You are winning because you can learn. You can inform the product. You can inform your repositioning. You can find out if they’re a massive fan and advocate. So talk to your customers as often as you can, because that will help you really understand whether or not your positioning is resonating. Okay, thank you, Joe, Sara, Carlos, you’re all amazing sports. Thank you audience for staying with us.

 

To hear more conversations like this one, and submit your questions while we’re live. Join us on the next CMO Huddles Studio, we stream to my LinkedIn profile—that’s Drew Neisser—every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that’s me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I’m your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!