Marketing + Comms: Getting in Sync

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6 and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition, to challenge convention with an added half-day strategy lab, exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddles studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. Marketing and comms are strongest when they move as one. In this episode, Cary Bainbridge, Grant Johnson and Laura McGregor share how they keep teams aligned and messaging consistent at every touch point. 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 1 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. When marketing and corporate communications aren't aligned, the results can be messy. One team is chasing PR or putting out investor relations fires while the other is focused on messaging, and somewhere along the way, the brand voice gets lost. That disconnect can cost you big time, and as more brands juggle multiple channels and audiences, keeping these two functions in sync has become mission critical. But here's the thing, when marketing and comms are truly aligned, magic happens. Your campaigns resonate. Trust builds in the brand's message becomes undeniable. Today, we'll be focusing on how brands keep their messaging tight and their teams even tighter. With that, let's bring on the CMO of ABM Industries, Cary Bainbridge. Cary is a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss aligning marketing during transformation. Hello, Cary, how are you and where are you this fine day?

Cary: Hello, Drew. I'm dialing in from Atlanta, Georgia.

Drew: Awesome. And it's funny because here we are. You know, last time we talked about aligning something, and now we're talking about aligning again. So it seems like you're the great aligner, right? I don't know. So let's talk about how you and your chief comms officer sort of divide the role within your company?

Cary: Yeah, sure, so, and I'm sorry Nadine couldn't be here with us today, but it's because we are great partners. I feel good about representing us. I have brand. I own brand marketing strategy and operations, as well as product. On her side of the house, she's got external PR and media investor crisis, and then culture and internal comms. So if we think about even owned, earned and paid media, I've got paid, she's got earned, and then we both share in owned media. So it's really a Ben and how we manage where there's overlap.

Drew: Okay, that was a lot to digest, and I want to sort of break that down. So on your side, because you have a broad portfolio as it is. I mean, with brand strategy, ops, product—when you say product, as in product marketing, or as in product development?

Cary: Product marketing.

Drew: Got it, okay. You can sort of summarize all of those in the sense that ultimately paid comes through your department. Correct. So then all right. So now, when we talk comms, I mean, PR and IR and crisis are all classic comms roles. Internal comms is an interesting one, and maybe we start there, because so often internal comms is essential for the adoption of, say, a new brand campaign and a new thing, and we have to get our employees behind the thing. How do you two work together on something that sounds as simple as internal comms, but it can often be sort of under appreciated?

Cary: We work really closely together on internal comms, because we have 100,000 people, 10,000 staff and management. We come together on the talking points, whether it is a new product launch, it could be how we handle a crisis situation. We work closely together on the enablement of our own teams, and then how we tailor that message for our external audiences. So it all starts inside.

Drew: There's planning sessions where the two of you are saying, okay, big picture strategy. Now we gotta talk about internal comms, and so there's no surprises. Is what you're saying, because you guys have developed it together.

Cary: That's right. I mean, think about it this way, we're all in the car, going in the same place together. It's just a matter of who's driving. It might change along that route.

Drew: Right. And clearly this takes a lot of trust, I mean, because, you know, at some point in time, you two have to sort of be really in alignment, right?

Cary: Right. And I think, you know, I think it's important to say that, you know, at ABM, a very authentic part of our culture, and even how we hire in leadership, is collaboration. It's really the foundation of how we operate. You have to be collaborative, and in that way, you know, it comes with mutual trust, respect, transparency. You know, it didn't used to be us working in a partnership role, and years and years ago, comms reported into marketing, but given the cultural shift over these last 10 years, that's what's really made it work. And we have a mutual respect for the roles that we play.

Drew: Right. And it feels like there's a clear sort of, you know where your domains are. You know where the points of intersection are and what and kind of dependencies, if you will. So I can imagine that conflict gets minimized. But I'm just curious if you can share an example where this collaboration was sort of crucial for a successful campaign.

Cary: Yeah, and, you know, and funny, you know, sometimes we agree to disagree. Sometimes we say, "What do you think?" You know, it's kind of a trusted partnership there. But a great example of that collaboration that's happening right now is the preparation that we have underway for our brand repositioning launch that's coming in early '25. I could not launch the new branding without a strong partnership with my communications team. We come together on the objective, and we team up on the activation of this. Internally, we ideate together, we play devil's advocate together, and then externally, when it comes to clients and investors, we both go to our respective audiences with a singular message.

Drew: Yeah, and it's so—and I want to focus a little bit on the internal because when I see, you know, the research that I did for my book and all of that, one of the places everybody says, when you're launching a new brand and new campaign that internal communications, but it often gets short shrift, right? We say it's like all the campaigns coming out in a month or three weeks, we better tell employees. And so I'm curious how you've developed and are thinking about activation. You already mentioned you have a lot of employees to get behind this. And I'm also thinking about, I saw a post yesterday from a CMO in the community, who was all excited because there was a swag box, and actually did a video of the reveal of it and how it helped express the campaign. I'm just curious how you two are thinking about your internal launch together.

Cary: Yeah. I mean, I tell you, we agree wholeheartedly that if our team members aren't bought in to the brand and feel confident about telling our new story, we've really missed our opportunity. It has to start from the inside. We're using a lot of the same messages and the campaigning that we're going to take external, internal. You know, we want those messages in parallel, to be consistent. You know, if our employees don't have the confidence to tell the new story - we want them to have the confidence to tell the new story, but if they do have the confidence, and then they also see how the new brand is going to help them achieve their own personal goals, it's a win-win.

Drew: Right. Because it aligns, and then so forth. And it's so interesting because we started with culture, and how collaboration is such an important part of that, but you also mentioned that comms owns culture, and I just think that's such an interesting thing to ponder. But before we sort of finish on this section, I just want to make sure, as we're thinking about - so you two are aligned on strategy, you're aligned on execution. And again, I'm going to focus on internal - what kinds of things are you going to do to make sure that employees are fully educated, know how to tell the story, are excited about it, and how will you know when you got it right?

Cary: Yeah, some of the things that we're doing - well, first of all, we have a cross-functional brand Council that represents all aspects of the org. That's been part of the development over the last three years. So that's really a critical point to make. With the help of that team, we've identified brand champions across the organization, because a two-way feedback loop is incredibly important, not just leading up to launch, but following launch. Right? Are the messages resonating? Are we empowering them with the right tools and resources to be able to perform the roles that they're in and really taking a field-first approach into how we roll out the brand? And it's something that everybody sees themselves in. So whether it be strategic town halls, where we involve our leadership team, where we pull people in from the field to talk about stories of the new branding actually in action. We also do a lot of surveys with the team. We have a survey called The Voice, where we want to hear from our teams what the temperature is of the culture. And listening is really an important part of this, right? And then once we listen, then it's a matter of, how do we act on that feedback?

Drew: I love it. This is like just almost textbook - brand Council, brand champions, roll it out. All right. We'll be back with Cary, but now we're going to talk with Laura McGregor, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Center for Internet Security. Laura has previously joined us for the show on the intricacies of cybersecurity for CMOs. Hello, Laura. Welcome back. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Laura: Hi, Drew, thanks for having me back. I'm doing great, and I'm located in the great upstate New York.

Drew: Upstate New York, all right, go Bills, I don't know, maybe...

Laura: Split up here.

Drew: Yeah, no, I know it's like, if you're not really West, you don't quite... okay, all right. Importantly, CIS is short for your company. Your company merged marketing comms about 18 months ago. What was the reason behind that decision? And talk about how you sort of integrated those two roles.

Laura: Yeah, it was really timing. So the VP of Communications and I had always worked really closely together, typically working toward the same objective, but he was moving on to a new opportunity. And so I had the conversation with senior leadership about, do we replace or do we just merge the function? And did that make more sense at the time, and we decided that it did. It put the people closer together, working toward the same end, broaden perspectives and reduce overlap. So it was really good communication that made this successful. No pun intended, but we were very intentional about how we did this. So I talked with all the communications team members, understood their team norms, that they wanted to continue what worked, what didn't, and we renamed the team so it wasn't merging one into the other. It was really a combined function. So we called it marketing and communications. We changed my job title, we changed our folder names and all of our documentation, so that it was more inclusive. That was important. We also looked at continuity with leadership. So I knew I needed a number two in that space. We did post, we recruited, but ultimately promoted from within was the best candidate, and then also helped to just keep the strength and momentum of that team going. Lastly, process was something we really had to focus on, and so we spent a lot of time as a group working on that too.

Drew: So over the years, I've worked with a lot of comms people, and I've worked with a lot of I'll call them CMO marketing people, and it's like the brains work differently. They see the world differently. And do you find yourself sometimes, "Oh, I better put my comms hat on for the moment," you know, and maybe thinking about PR and that kind of thing. And part of it is, and this is a gross generalization, and I'm glad there's no actually sole comms person here, but I often have met comms people who are sort of risk-averse and thinking about what's the worst - you know, that the crisis part of the job - whereas the marketers look like forward-thinking, courageous. And so I'm wondering, how you balance that?

Laura: Well, we've always been pretty forward-thinking with, I think, our PR, and we've got an excellent media relations manager who's building relationships and getting us out there, so we don't have that issue so much, but I would say, rather than us versus them, it's been how do we combine the strengths of these skill sets? So for example, every time we have a new product or service or an update, we always start with key messages. They're the foundation for how we would build the campaign, and all the tactics and assets that come out of that. So now we have the combined power of a product marketing team that can provide market insights and positioning, a comms person who can craft some great key messages and help tell the story, and then a content person who knows SEO and will tell us if that will actually resonate and bring us organic traffic. So it's really the power of those functions coming together, and how do we leverage that?

Drew: I love this in theory. And again, I'm going to go back to personal experience where meeting with the PR folks, it was like, "Okay, well, these are the stories that are happening right now. This is what the press is responding to. So in order to get this story and make it relevant, we've got to bend what we're saying to get over here so the reporter will cover it." And that's, you know, I mean, again, that's just sort of good PR, but I'm wondering if you can give an example of where these two functions have sort of worked together to help you sort of increase the impact of your overall efforts.

Laura: Yeah, I think, you know, and sometimes there are, you know, in-the-moment news, things that you're trying to respond to. We pick and choose which of those makes sense. But an example of where this worked really well is we took some data that we had internally, we have another team that was helping us analyze some cybersecurity threat data, and we pulled a subset of that for the K through 12 sector, which was an important focus area for us, and we produced this report. So it was a joint effort to write it, marketing produced it, laid it out, made it pretty, distributed it via all our channels, but because of the power of the data in that report, we were able to pitch it to journalists who were more than happy to pick that up at certain times in the year. That helps get more reach for the report than we would have if we had just distributed via marketing tactics alone.

Drew: Yeah, no, it's such a great reminder. Because, you know, we think about, we've talked about this on the show and other shows, about the power of research and how proprietary research just helps the company in so many different ways from a content standpoint. But when comms is there, from day one, you're often looking at the research in a slightly different way - you're looking at, was this PR-able, right? How is there news in here, or at least when they're analyzing the data, but even how you set up the structure? So having at that moment comms with a seat at the table, not separated out, makes so much sense. So talk about, do you - you know you've now seen this. This has been in place now for 18 months. How have you seen this sort of help in any other ways? I mean, because again, the PR person's over here, the demand gen person is over here. How do you make sure that the whole team is kind of working together?

Laura: Especially this year, we focused on becoming more agile, and so we have joint planning and stand up meetings, either weekly or monthly. And so that gives everyone insight into the big picture of what's going on, and also as part of our campaign planning process, you know, going back to that K through 12 report as an example, what media can we get? How can we get our sales people or others leveraging those articles? Who can we advertise to, to extend the reach of that? So it's really the full circle and getting all of those things to inform one another. And so when the team is closer together and meeting regularly and seeing what everyone else is doing, some of that starts to happen naturally.

Drew: Yeah, and it sort of makes so much sense to think about this in an ideal world as a campaign based thing, because then everybody has a role in doing this. I'm wondering again, this is an interesting dynamic, and it comes up when we talk about, you know, a CMO and a CRO and I'm just working on a piece right now about why it doesn't make sense for the CMO to report to the CRO. And one of the reasons, one of my arguments against it, is, then the CRO is suddenly thinking, well, do I spend another dollar on a salesperson, or do I spend another dollar on marketing? And if they're mainly sales people, that's where they'll do it. How do you, as you're looking at your budgeting sort of balance, well, I could put another person in PR, or I could have put another person in demand gen. So as you think about staffing and growth, how does that come into play?

Laura: Yeah, I'm in more of a unique situation, because we are a nonprofit organization, and we do generate leads and revenue for some areas, but it's much more of a balance than I would say the typical marketing leader is in the position of so my perspective may be a little bit different, but I'm focusing based on business need and goals and priorities for those either specific products and services or bigger picture strategies versus tactically. Which do I need at the time.

Drew: Right. And business need. So just explain that a little bit. So the business need, for example, is x, and therefore I need staff to do Y.

Laura: Right. So maybe we, I think we, in the last year and coming months, are launching half a dozen more products and services. So I need a person who can run point on the planning and execution for all of that, for example, versus just say, I'm going to add one more person to do PR, because that wouldn't necessarily be a full time equivalent of work for that, for those six.

Drew: Right. Okay, got it? Okay, all of that makes sense. All right, we'll be back with Laura, but now we're going to talk with Grant Johnson. Grant is a six time CMO and an industry expert who has graced our sage before to delve into topics like implementing IBM, getting organizational buy in, and metrics dashboards. So hello, Grant. Wonderful to see you. And how are you and where are you this fine day.

Grant: Well, I'm doing great, and I'm sitting here in sunny San Clemente in Southern California. Actually, there's some clouds out there, so it's hopefully going to burn off soon.

Drew: Got it well, I know that well, and I can appreciate what that means. A nice October day in SoCal. All right, so talk a little about I know you're here to add a unique perspective on how to empower comms to support the entire C Suite. So let's go for it.

Grant: Yeah. I mean, it's a couple of things I think about in my six time tours as a CMO, I've always had comms report to me at one point. You didn't report initially, and I'll get to that the first thing. And you know, Cary and Laura really articulated quite well how to communicate, collaborate and work as a unified team is you've got to ensure the alignment to company priorities and the outcomes. So you know, Investor Relations has certain objectives. Stakeholder influence could be analyst relations, press relations. So to get on the same page, what's important to the company, what are your respective roles and resources, right? And the second thing on the empowering, the supporting, the head of comms, you know, especially even if they report to me, I realize that if I'm the middle person between the VP of comms, let's say, and the CEO or the CFO or the VP of research, I've been in internet like Laura as well, and security and so that's going to slow things down. So I encourage them, hey, you know, take have coffee with them. You know, see if they'll go to lunch with you. Find some after hours. Just drop by their office, build that relationship.

Drew: Yeah, and I think that's such an interesting one, because I'm thinking about, look, a lot of times comms people are the ones who are writing the CEO speech, or there's a crisis and they need to brief the CEO, and if they don't have an ongoing relationship with that individual, it can be problematic. And I think when I see companies where there is a comms person and there's a marketing person, it is often because this is a larger company, and they do have PR crises that they have to deal with, and the CEO does have to get in front of investor boards and other things like that, and needs to be coached sometime, or at least practice. So I get that. And so you're well, you're basically saying, even if they reported to you, you said, you know, you gave them access and encouraged them to do that.

Grant: Yeah, I really did. You know, silence is an example. You know, CEO, famous founder, strong will. As all founders are very opinionated. And you know, we were on multiple floors. Marketing was on one floor, the CEO execs on another floor. So you could just get isolated. So he's just walking around the 11th floor, by the way. You know, he was on the ninth floor, and so he just got to hang out, go down to get to know, you know, we have these internal meetings, as the other guests have mentioned, and you got to make sure you've got the message right. So you want to rehearse it. You know, ad lib is fine, but let's make sure you've got a really strong message that we know will resonate with the staff. And then also, for ad hoc things like you say something comes up, there's something in the news you want to respond to should be on the text or the speed dial. And so my VP of comms, at times, took her a while, but she got there, and it really was a benefit for the company, not just for marketing in my function, but for the company.

Drew: So here's a question for you that I know you've wrestled with a lot, marketing, particularly today, in B2B is often sort of held accountable, and you've encouraged it in some ways, for, you know, pipeline, right in the pushing thing, getting, you know, top of the funnel, and through the funnel and comms often lives in this very sort of safe umbrella. Oh, well, they're doing investor relations. And you know how that is, or it's all sort of soft stuff. And I just this, this to me, it's got it, whether it's a direct report or, you know, they're an individual, how does the modern comms person or team? How do you as a CMO, hold that people, those folks, accountable the same way that marketing as a whole is.

Grant: Yeah, I mean, I do in a very similar fashion. It's a great question I think about, what are their deliverables? What are the outcomes we're trying to achieve? It might be share of voice. It might be a certain article in a certain publication that's influential in the industry. And I'll give you one example where I didn't have a good manager, a strong manager. I ultimately placed over our customer advocacy program. And really, if you're a strong communicator, you should know as a VP of comms how to connect, interact effectively with your customers. So I moved that function over to the Head of Communications. Initially, it was a bit of a struggle because, like, well, how's that function doing? Well, we're having weekly meetings, I understand. But how many case studies are in the pipeline? How many testimonials, how many customers have signed up for our customer conference? So I had to shift the mindset. If you're like a VP of revenue marketing or demand gen, you're used to metrics. You're used to measuring everything, reporting everything, and a lot of times, as you say, for comms, you know, long as there's no crisis and you're managing your media relations or your investor relations. It's not sort of the same daily pressure as pipeline.

Drew: Yeah, and it becomes this sort of squishy job, and it's like the comms person just keeps surviving, and the CMO is just hammered and, you know, and rotating through at a sort of alarming rate. So it is in some ways, then this is really being this is being harsh. But if the CMO doesn't hold them accountable, they had a cushy thing.

Grant: Well, they do in some cases, but I will tell you, when I was at Cofacts, initially we had a VP of comms, who had Investor Relations and PR, and so it was reported to the CFO. And then once I had established credibility with the C Suite and the CFO and the CEO said, Look, why don't this person report to you? But they'll serve, you know, the CEO and the CFO during the, you know, the investor interactions, which are not daily, like the rest of marketing. And so that turned out to be the right combination.

Drew: So all right, so your other point, I'm looking at their notes now, well, your other point was about alignment to priorities and desired outcomes. And again, I'm sort of looking at desired outcomes are pipeline. We know that there's more. And so do you ever try to get the comms people to sort of try to get us closer to some measurables that feel like they have to a CFO or a CEO, more business value.

Grant: Yeah, have a lot of times my VP of comms, or, you know, corporate marketing and market communications, lots of different titles, they've got social media. And you know, when you've got good performance marketing systems, as I've instrumented a few companies, you can see, if you've got a very active social media presence, and you're getting engagement, and you're building your audience, and they're going to the website just like, you know, if you have a paid ads, gonna drive somebody to a landing page that there's actually an ROI. And so I, my last company, the Social Media Manager report of the VP of comms, had, you know, tracked, you know, what are the competitors? So it's kind of make them think a little bit more like the very production oriented, you know, results oriented, outcome oriented, you know, demand gen. And say, look, it's a bunch of metrics, you know, yes, it's, it's soft and squishy and subjective, but it's also very concrete. You're trying to see, are you gaining and share a voice? Are you increasing your reach? Are you increasing the clicks and the replies, the responses, engagement, right? And so that you start getting to think more like that, they become more business people versus just strong communicators, and I think they add more value to the organization in that approach.

Drew: I'm going to defend PR folks for a minute, because I'm thinking of a couple of CMOs that I had conversations where their PR, they'd get a big story on a key sort of even in an industry trade that was totally targeted at the at the at the buyer or the person who would drive it, and this, they could see a direct correlation. It's funny because they don't often include links to the website necessarily, but they'd see they'd get a big PR hit, and then they'd see a massive increase in organic traffic. And that is obviously a nice metric. And then I'm thinking about Chris Willis, who had this sort of overall comms dashboard where it just said, we want the number going up, so add it all up and watch it. Watch it go up. So again, just in defense of the softer metrics, I just wanted to make sure that I was being fair to comms people in general. All right, before we sort of move on, is there, you know, I'm again, looking at your notes, some other key thoughts that you have in terms of comms supporting the C Suite.

Grant: Well, I think the main thing is that you have to understand that person and their strengths. You know, if somebody is not that effective in influencer relations, whether it's analysts or investors or media, you get them trained. But you also have to find, you know, who that starts at, you know, recent company, the CEO was, was okay, one of my recent companies, but the head of data science was off the charts, good. So we sort of pivoted the strategy. You have to find where you're going to get the most impact in your communications. And, you know, certainly don't insult the CEO, or if that person's not strong, or the COO or CFO, but you need. It go where the media finds someone that has the dynamic nature and the ability to effectively communicate, and, you know, place your bets there when possible.

Drew: Yeah, oh my god, I'm just you're bringing me back to moments where, you know, trying to get a CEO to be effective on camera, recording the interview, and just thinking, Oh man, this is just bad. And it's so funny, because it could be very effective CEOs and not very good on camera. And so it's such a great point is that in the goal here is not to make necessarily your CEO famous. The goal is to help your brand communicate and be seen as thought leaders. All right, awesome stuff. Okay, it's now time for me to talk about CMO Huddles and and here's the story. We were launched 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. So bringing back Cary, Laura and Grant and your incredibly busy marketing leaders, I'm wondering, if you might share no pressure here an example of how CMO Huddles has helped you.

Laura: Yeah, I can go Drew. It's been fabulous to be able to connect with other leaders that are either experiencing the same issues, just to commiserate that these are some of the things we go through together and sometimes vent a little bit in a safe space. But also, we all bring our own areas of expertise, and so chances are, if you've got a specific problem, there's someone else that's going through has been through that and come out successfully on the other side, and being able to learn from them is immensely valuable.

Drew: I love that. Thank you, Laura. Cary, Grant, anything?

Cary: It's helpful the different topics that land on your calendar. So sometimes it's the perfect timing and the perfect moment to dive in and and have those conversations with other people that are going through the same challenges, or it validates that some of the things that you're doing are on the right path. I also find it very helpful when we're looking at new platforms, especially as it relates to AI that if it's not on one of those calls that you can count on Drew to connect you with somebody that's been there or has used it, so thanks.

Drew: Well, no, and then I also know you're a regular reader of our recaps, which I appreciate in that, yeah, yeah, I know you wouldn't do it if you weren't getting value Grant any, uh, last thoughts here before we keep moving into this topic.

Grant: Well, first of all, CMO Huddles is essential to CMOs success. I'm one of the founding members, as Drew knows for over four years. And I gotta tell you, this is just a light bulb flashed on Monday. I'm talking to a recruiter, executive recruiter, and it's placed a lot of CMOs. And I talked about the CMO Huddles, and I know this person, and this person, this person, I won't mention, they're all CMO Huddles and and it just increased my credibility. Well, you know these really smart, successful marketers. I just placed this person of this company. And so this didn't happen overnight. I've been talking to these folks, part of the CMO Huddles for three to four years. Most of them have been around a few years, and so you have to invest time to get the most value, and it's all there for you with CMO Huddles.

Drew: I love it. Thank you, Grant. Thank you. Well, if you're a B2B, a senior B2B marketer and need a shortcut to B2B, greatness and perhaps not feeling so alone, take a second to sign up for our free starter program at cmohuddles.com so now let's bring everybody back with digital transformation, and we can throw in Gen AI in there, impacting both marketing and comms. How are you adapting your strategies to sort of stay ahead and you know, any technologies or platforms you're focusing on, you know, Cary?

Cary: Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you we hit on AI, and I think that's top of mind for all of us. I mean, at ABM, we've created an AI cross functional AI council so that we can come together on for the overall business, you know, weighing out the value against feasibility where we're going to invest as an organization. But for from a marketing or comms perspective, it's really understanding, you know, the impacts of search use cases that can increase efficiencies across our team. But then we see a real opportunity with comms, on how AI can help us with localization. We have a very diverse workforce representing 14 languages, so not only how we communicate internally with our teams and their native language, but also how we recruit and attract talent online, that's a big area of focus for us right now.

Drew: And I love the fact that you have a sort of overall counsel, because this is so much bigger than marketing and it you know this, some of the applications that I've seen that are the most interesting will never impact marketing and but they're all about process and and workflow and getting information to the right person at the right time, or parse. All the data that you have. So that's amazing. And then, yeah, the localization, those are just because it's the same content. Now we just need to get it in 14 languages and do it quickly. Laura, any any thoughts on on technology and where that's impacting you, especially since you're in cyber security.

Laura: Yeah, I think for us, it's really more emphasis on video. We saw a return to in person events after COVID, but they've probably doubled in cost since then too. So how can we be more impactful with webinars and live streaming? Those are some investments that we'll make for next year. Also as website tracking and privacy consent and all of those things become more challenging. How do we reach the right people with the right message? So we're making some investments there. And lastly, my team has been on an agile journey transformation for most of this year, and it will continue into next year, but it's really working smarter, not harder, focusing on the most impactful things and how to do them as efficiently as possible, because the workload is not going to slow down, and we have to keep moving forward.

Drew: Yeah. So lots of good things. I think video is such an interesting way. I was talking to a company. In fact, a huddler introduced to the company is called vido, so they're very new and it started, but they can take massive amounts of your video and then just sort of through the magic of AI, identify the pieces and cut it into pieces and so forth. And so we're really anxious to test it. And I know that kind of thing is happening out there a lot. So video is an interesting area. So Grant, what about you? And as you're thinking about this, where do you see Gen AI having the biggest impact on marketing and comms?

Grant: Well, I mean, it has a varying impact depending on your functions. We know content marketing is sort of the killer app and whatever, when you happen to like best, there's a number that are out there. But I did an experiment with my team about a year ago, and I said, look, let's everybody try something. There are 35 folks and see if it helps you, doesn't help you, and some tools didn't help. Some helped a lot. And I even challenged the marketing operations. We've got this complex tech stack, and ABM offering intent and market automation, sales automation, web automation, how do we get some value? And there were a couple of tools we found. There were tools we found for landing page packed SEO was probably the strongest all these competitors. What keywords are they using? Imagine a person trying to track all this on their own versus a tool. And so we eventually adopted about 10 tools, and you know, it's on a tracking sheet, so, you know, over time, there'll be, as you said, Drew would be a better tool. You know, we also want to get as low as everybody could be, a little more efficient, take away some of the manual, tedious, time consuming work, and automate it, if possible, and try to improve outcomes.

Drew: Yeah. And again, it's sort of, if you just look at this as a content play, you're probably missing it. But I so appreciate it, because it is the low hanging fruit. The one thing I keep thinking about is, how do you make sure your big idea is there and not is not necessarily generative AI, because that's going to be sort of, I like to say, AI as average intelligence is sort of down, right? But then the opportunity, I would say, you do have a big idea. Laura mentioned the research study. You could put that research study into thing and then slice it and dice it a million different ways, because it's proprietary data, interesting, okay, switching gears in your experience. How important is stakeholder engagement in your respective roles? And I know Cary, we talked about that a little bit, but let's talk about it on a broader level, in terms of ensuring strategies effectively address the needs of of a variety of stakeholders. I mean, whether it's sales or market, you know, sales, or it's HR or so forth. So maybe you can start with that.

Cary: Well, when I think about my stakeholders broadly, I think about one, it's our team members, two clients and three investors. So it's critical to understand the needs of those three stakeholders and all that that we're doing, and then how that how we message like so we'll do both a combination of quantitative and or qualitative research with those audiences to make sure that when we are building the strategy, it's informed. It's informed with them, and it's and it points us in that in the right direction, to make sure that that it represents their interests. So that's really, for me, the foundation. And then, like I said, you know, really listening along the way, validating some of the work as it's being developed with our stakeholders, to make sure that they feel part of where we're moving the business.

Drew: Interesting. And that's right. And you're public and so, and Laura, you're not a public company. So, I mean, as a nonprofit, not so, how do you look at stakeholders?

Laura: Yeah, the way we mostly look at it is internal and external, and there's different categories of that, but most of our marketing, communications, planning, content creation is very collaborative with our internal stakeholders. You know, technical accuracy, obviously, is a big one, or are we working on the right things to achieve their goals and objectives, less than dictating? You know, I think I want a blog post and a bunch of social media posts. Well, why don't you tell us who you want to reach and how many, and we'll help you figure out the best way to do that. So that's the internal piece, and then externally, we're engaging with a variety of people. So it could be members or customers. It could be we have a big volunteer community. We partner with many, many organizations, and so keeping them engaged and or doing outreach as needed.

Drew: And in terms of customers, volunteers and partners. Does that fall under comms, or?

Laura: It's a group effort. So we basically help our internal stakeholders with their outreach. So if they're wanting to send out communications to those groups, we'll help draft and facilitate that in some cases.

Drew: So Grant, I'm gonna throw this at you, because if you've been at a lot of companies, we've talked about alignment and collaboration, can you sort of describe a situation where you didn't have it in the sort of the things that would go wrong because of that absence? You don't have to name company names, but I'm sure you can come up with a situation where there was misalignment and something happened that probably shouldn't have happened if, if you had those this, this happy place of alignment and and collaborative relationship between marketing and comms.

Grant: Yeah, there was a company where we had a bit of a crisis in communications. And, you know, it was not helpful to the stock price. And the CFO thought that marketing communication should have been better prepared with, you know, the messaging a lot of public companies, it's required, just like, you know, having crisis drills if something happens, your community or your connectivity, Internet availability. You know, we just took it as a lesson learned. You can't anticipate a crisis, but you might want to have a little more preparation, you know, all the way down to, you know, cell phone systems doesn't work. What sort of, you know, third party communications can you use? So, you know, it was a stressful time period post the crisis, but we eventually, fortunately, looked at as a learning opportunity. And, you know, weren't defensive. Yeah, we could have done a better job comparing, because, you know, the CFO was explaining for probably a quarter or two as to what happened.

Drew: Right. And so that CFO was obvious, because they were on the hook for the shareholder reports. They were just throwing stones. We could have done this better. And you bring up a really great point, because I've certainly worked with clients over the years who did have crises, and it's not that you can anticipate the crisis exactly as it is, and write a playbook for every crisis, but you can write a generalized plan like, step one, assess the problem. Step two, communicate internally, right? Step three, and there's certain and I've seen some really, really brilliant playbooks that have worked in extreme cases like the CEO died, or a hotel that where there was a somebody was killed, you know, I mean, and they've but they managed it because they had a playbook, right? And then we've obviously seen that where folks have mismanaged it and it really, really hurt, obviously, in misinformation and disinformation is happening at such a speed, I just there's got to be a whole new playbook for that. And I and Cary, I'm just gonna throw that out there. Is because this could happen to any company. Is that sort of are you now? Does your playbook for crisis management now include that disinformation, misinformation that people just making stuff up.

Cary: I can't point to any scenarios where we've had the misinformation. I'm anticipating it, though, with AI on the rise, I would say, you know, I would say, Well, yes, I will say, first, we do have a playbook. Our comms team typically runs point on the day to day crisis situations, specifically when the media is involved. But we are an essential workforce. So because we're an essential workforce and we're operating and maintaining commercial facilities, things like the recent port strike that was in the news, or even the hurricanes, right? So those impact disruption and service for us, right? So we follow the playback, right? We understand the situation. We come together, whether it's comms and marketing with our operations and our procurement teams, to understand the situation and then guide our teams through it, make sure teams in the affected areas are okay, and then, and then, how do we pivot to make sure that our clients are aware and feel empowered, that we've got their back during a crisis?

Drew: Yeah, the human element of this. Laura, I know you have some thoughts on misinformation management.

Laura: Yeah, it's something that we deal with and we plan for and prepare for. We actually had a crisis preparedness exercise last week, so it's fresh in my mind, but it is something to plan for. And so whether it's like Cary said, a more industry-very specific issue that's related to what you're doing, or if it's about your company for itself, there are a lot of things that you can do to prepare. And so especially having a communications and marketing team that are working together can help. For example, our comms team has a brand and keyword monitoring tool, so they're able to pretty much immediately see when some of these issues start popping up. They can see, you know, to the point earlier we just want things to keep increasing. Maybe some of these we don't, but we can see when they do trend upward, and know that maybe we need to act. And so we are working on developing a playbook around that. When would we comment? When do we need to add more information to our website to make the facts clear? How can we prepare our members, if there's someone that's impacted, can we support them with a toolkit and some information so that they feel prepared as well?

Drew: Yeah. And what I love about this show is we really broaden the aperture the way, if marketing and comms are working together, we are thinking about all the things that can happen in the communication world to a company, and I think that's such a great lens. We pulled back on that. And one of the things is, there are bad actors out there and there's cybersecurity risk, but misinformation and disinformation is a huge issue.

Laura: One thing Drew, having that alignment really helps because, you know, we may need to do several things really quickly. We may need to pull ads down. We may need to change our message on social media and see what's scheduled. So having the team more tightly aligned allows that to happen more seamlessly.

Drew: Right. Because if I'm having to just build that relationship from scratch, and we're in the middle of a crisis, it's like, no, no. This is a moment where we're all, you know, we're on the same boat, or, as Cary said, we're all in the same car, and we have a plan. You know, we already talked a little bit about measurement, but I'm just curious, how do you measure? What does your metrics look like versus your comms leader's metrics?

Cary: Well, I think for both of us, reach and engagement is key so and also it's about quality over quantity in terms of less messages with more impact. So ultimately, I think for both of us, I mean, you know, we're measuring multi-touch engagement across channels to understand what channels are working. Where should we invest more or less? But ultimately, our goal is to drive awareness and affinity to the brand, not just with clients, but talent, and then how that ultimately impacts our growth.

Drew: God, there was a lot in there, and it's so what I heard, I heard focus, because, again, we've got to own some mind space and so which is the awareness. We've got multiple targets, both internal and external. If you think about marketing, comms, yes, they do those, anything else in terms of metrics, Grant anything else you want to layer on top of this?

Grant: Well, I have to say that I love what Cary said. Those are two of my six metrics in the marketing performance index. So I think, you know, reach and share engagement and loyalty. Those are, those are important for marketing and comms. You know, marketing has more interest in your pipeline and progression. My other two metrics, but you know the other four, you know reach engagement, share and you know even loyalty, if you're if you're communicating with your customers effectively, you want to measure all those together and see if you can move the needle. You know, as you say, some things will happen in the market. You may not always go straight up and you might dip down, but if you're working together on those key metrics, you can drive better success.

Drew: Yeah, and I know you and I have spent a lot of time thinking about how you actually sell that in because that's so important, but by broadening and helping folks see that there are multiple measurements that matter, not just pipeline. Laura, anything else on metrics?

Laura: For us, it's, you know, the metrics help us know if our tactics are working as we expect them to, and what's our contribution. But as an organization, we also try and look at what was the impact of that. Because if the email had a great open rate, or we got hundreds of articles out there, but we didn't achieve the company's mission. You know, how successful can you say it was? So we really look back to those company objectives, like, are security best practices helping people improve their ability to defend themselves in court if they are breached and dealing with an issue? Can we show that we improved the cybersecurity posture of state and local government? So some of those things are harder to measure in their group effort, but those are really what we look to as drivers of success.

Drew: Awesome. All right, we're at the point now we need some final words of wisdom, and we'll do this in reverse order starting with Grant for ensuring marketing and comms are working in sync. Okay? Grant, final words of wisdom.

Grant: Make sure you're one team with shared goals and outcomes, and work together for the best possible success of your company.

Drew: All right, one team, shared goals, one outcome. Okay, Laura, final words of wisdom.

Laura: Yeah, definitely, working toward the same company objectives is important, and communication is key. It's funny because it's in the function name, but we have to remember to communicate together and stay well aligned.

Drew: Yeah, and one that I'm just gonna add on that is that there is a sense, and this is why it's so important. Frequency matters, if we're just doing it one time. Hey, we sent the email out. I thought you knew that's not enough when it comes to certainly internal comms. And we know it's not enough. Okay, Cary, final words of wisdom.

Cary: I would say, if you have an idea or an initiative you want to propose, bounce it off of three or four people in different functions before you take it to your boss or your CEO. Collaboration, key.

Drew: Collaboration is key, all right. Well, speaking of collaborating, thank you. Cary, Laura, Grant, you're flocking awesome. And 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!