Innovators and Intrapreneurs: B2B Marketing’s Next Big Role

Audio Transcript Auto-generated

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  Hi everyone.

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  I'm Carla Johnson and I'm excited to be here

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  with you at this year's marketing props event where

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  I'm going to talk about the next big role

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  for B2B marketers and that's as innovators and entrepreneurs.

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  Before I start out,

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  I want to talk a little bit about how

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  we've been trained with our own mindset about innovation.

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  I'll take you back just a few years to when I was five and I was in kindergarten

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  when I was in kindergarten, I had a ton of ideas and you know,

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  that's how all kindergarteners are.

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  They're going to take on the world. They've got a million ideas.

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  They're always saying why, why, why they want to try anything? There's just no fear.

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  I was absolutely no different.

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  One day I came to school and one of the assignments that we had from our teacher was

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  to take a sheet of paper just like this

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  that was filled with all of these repetitive balls.

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  And I was supposed to color it

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  well.

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  Again,

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  I'm five years old and I have the world at my doorstep and

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  there was a lot of things that I wanted to get done.

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  I didn't want to sit there and pay attention to

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  all the detail on these little balls in color.

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  So I took

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  a single brown color and I colored the whole entire

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  sheet of paper all in one fell swoop and I thought

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  I'm good, let's move on to the big stuff.

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  I checked that off, I checked off that box and moved on.

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  However,

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  when I handed in this sheet of paper that was colored completely brown

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  to my teacher.

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  This is what she did.

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  I still remember her name. It's mrs Stoltenberg

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  and mrs Stoltenberg looked at me

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  and she looked at my paper

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  and she looked at me

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  and she gave me a new piece of paper and she said,

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  I need you to go back to your desk and I need you to color each individual

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  ball just like the instructions I gave you and just like all the other kids are doing

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  well.

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  I had to learn to be a rule follower.

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  So I went back to my desk and I sat and with all that tedious work,

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  I colored in all the balls instead of moving all of those big ideas forward that I had

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  now

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  Jump ahead 10 years. I'm still working on big ideas.

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  I was a huge fan of the arts in high school.

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  I loved my art class, I love design, I loved creating, I loved everything about it.

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  My dream was to be a graphic designer and an artist.

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  So I'm sitting at the dinner table one night

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  with my parents. Now

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  my parents,

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  we're an interesting story themselves.

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  My mother was a small town girl and she was a teacher.

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  She taught kindergartners in first grade.

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  My dad was college educated,

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  he was an accountant and he had worked for Ge in new york

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  before he came back to small town Nebraska and ran the family farm.

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  They had big sites on the future for their kids.

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  I'm the youngest of five.

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  So we're sitting there at dinner one night and my

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  dad is reading the paper like he did every night

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  and he happened to say,

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  have you ever thought about college?

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  And I was so excited.

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  Nobody had ever asked me about that before and I said yes,

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  actually I have got a thought about college.

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  I want to be a graphic designer and I want to go to the Chicago art institute.

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  My dad looked at me like I had two heads and he said, are you kidding me?

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  Who would ever hire you? Who does that stuff?

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  You need to think about going to college and studying,

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  studying something that people will actually hire you for.

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  You need to think about how you're going to get a job.

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  And then he put his newspaper up and he went back to reading his newspaper.

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  Now I'm sitting here talking to you at a marketing conference.

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  So you know, it didn't work out for me and my engineering background.

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  Okay, but let's fast forward another 20 years. I'm in B2B marketing.

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  I'm in a room full of engineers.

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  It's kind of like I could do cross,

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  can you cross cultural communications between engineers

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  and the rest of the world as a marketer.

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  So we are talking through a strategy for sales

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  for a big client that we're trying to pitch.

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  And as we're sitting in this room I'm the only marketer in there.

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  In fact, I'm not just the only marketer,

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  I'm the only person who is not an official engineer.

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  We're talking about ideas, we're talking about strategies and I raised my hand

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  and I say my idea

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  and you could hear a pin dropped all of the eyes, every place around the room

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  turned and we're focused straight on me,

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  but nobody

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  said a word.

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  They just stared at me

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  and then they all turned and went back to the work. It was like I was invisible.

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  Like I had broken some sort of ghost rule that I didn't

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  know about who was allowed to speak in the rooms or not.

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  But the thing is is that I'm not the only one who has these kind of

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  experiences because our whole mindset about innovation is

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  that the innovators are the people who,

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  who are somebody else who and you can fill in the

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  blank the ones that are much more detailed or structured,

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  the ones who have a different degree,

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  the ones who are in a different profession that have a different job title.

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  This is not only the companies

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  mindset about innovation a lot of times, it's our mindset to as marketers.

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  So what we need to do is that we need to

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  understand that we really have an identity problem as B two

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  B marketers and our whole entire role and the place and

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  the history that we have our legacy with innovation as B.

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  Two B. Marketers.

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  I mean if you go back in time and you

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  think about who started innovating the first in business,

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  it was B two B.

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  Marketers because we were the advertisers,

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  we were the industrial advertisers who showed how what we

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  were doing was different because of the advertising that we did

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  fast forward maybe a few years.

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  And it was the marketers who began to tell the story instead of just about these are

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  the products that we sell and this is what they do and this is how they function.

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  And we moved into this is our brand and we talked about a

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  bigger story than just the details of the products that we sold.

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  I mean you look at the history of this shift and

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  a lot of it started with the 1984 ad by Apple

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  and looking at how do we start to create brands as

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  a product and not just products as what we sell.

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  The next thing. You look at marketing and you move into digital transformation.

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  Shoot the end of the 90s, the early 2000s,

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  those seem like the easy years compared to what we're faced with.

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  Now we look at it was the start of websites and online marketing,

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  Their crm s their social media.

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  We're looking at 1-1 and being able to personalize emails.

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  There was the research that said marketers would

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  have a bigger it budget than it teams.

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  Digital transformation was a huge shift and it

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  was marketers who really led this innovation.

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  Now from there we moved into content marketing.

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  Once we had a bigger platform from which we could talk,

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  we had more opportunities to publish our own content.

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  You look at all of the different social channels and you look

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  at Youtube and blogs and everything that's available now as content marketers,

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  it feels like we're in our glory days.

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  But as we started out, it was the marketers who really led the way in changing

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  not only how business looked at marketing,

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  but how customers looked at businesses and the

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  expectations of how they would engage with them.

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  It was content marketing that responded to this need that customers had of

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  being able to educate themselves and not having to depend on a sales person

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  to get the information that they needed to learn about a product to understand

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  their problem and to understand what it is that they needed to do.

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  You move from content marketing and how we're able to connect that with

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  customer experience because if we're using content

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  to truly fuel that customer journey,

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  that's the foundation of the customer experience

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  and what department was it that brought in the voice of the customer,

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  of all of the data of everything that showed what it is that customers do,

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  how to behave and what they interact with and when

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  it was the B two B.

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  Marketers were the ones who drove this change this innovation in how we show

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  up as a brand and how we interact with customers now from customer experience,

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  we moved into brand purpose.

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  If we're going to deliver a phenomenal experience,

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  we have to base it on something that has greater meaning than

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  I just want to sell you what I have to sell.

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  And it was marketers who led this path in brand purpose,

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  not just for marketing and for sales but also for HR How we

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  looked at everything internally with how we brand ourselves as as an employer,

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  how we recruit employees who believe what we believe

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  and help deliver that true customer experience that we have

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  Now when we look at all of these opportunities that we've had

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  and things that we delivered on throughout our history as B2B marketers.

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  one thing is true

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  Is that B2B marketers have always been the

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  innovators and the entrepreneurs within an organization.

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  It's just that we never realized it.

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  So what we have to do is re establish our whole identity, not just as B two B marketers,

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  not just as the people who bring in the voice of the customer,

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  not just those who lead content, marketing, digital transformation,

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  customer experience and brand purpose,

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  but as the group who truly leads innovation and the entrepreneurship,

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  the opportunities to expand what we do as a business inside our companies.

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  Now,

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  I want to show you what this looks like in the real world And this is

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  a good friend of mine who has done exactly all of this throughout his career.

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  This is colorado Paolucci in colorado is the newsroom Manager and head

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  of content strategy for any and any is an energy company.

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  It's one of the top seven in the world.

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  And every day when Corado went to work,

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  he had to think about how do I tell this story of, of energy to tell a better story.

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  Um,

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  one that more accurately reflects many things that his company does that are

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  not perceived as the stereotypical behavior of a company in the energy sector.

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  He said,

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  a lot of people look at what happens with oil

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  and gas exploration and they believe that it's all about just

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  ruining the environment in order to be able to extract what it is that they want.

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  And oftentimes the group that has hurt the most are the

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  local people in the area where the exploration is being done.

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  He said that's not the case for any,

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  that's not how we do business and that's not what we

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  believe about the environment and the people who we serve.

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  So what he happened to notice one day is like B2B marketers on occasion,

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  he takes some time off of his work

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  and he was watching netflix and flipping through different shows and looking at

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  all the different styles of content that there was to choose from.

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  And he happened to notice something interesting and that

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  was the variety of content that netflix had,

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  there was content that they had curated,

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  there was content that they were republishing from other

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  um other companies, there was documentaries that they had made,

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  there was a lot of original content that Netflix had done.

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  Now Corado was practicing the first step that the greatest innovators

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  follow, he was observing the world around him

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  and when we observe the world around us,

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  what happens is that we begin to bring awareness and we become

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  more sensitive to things that we normally just take for granted.

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  You know, it could be flipping through the netflix catalog,

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  it could be getting coffee in the morning,

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  it could be the walk that we take or you know what things look like at the gym.

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  This is the first step and this is what Corado understood and was able to

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  do is that he began to observe the world around him with different eyes.

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  Now the second thing that Corado did is he said, okay,

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  if I see all of these different things that netflix has been doing,

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  what does it all mean?

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  He was able to take all of these different observations that he

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  had made about the different kind of content where it came from,

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  how it was produced, how they used customer data,

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  what their vision was as a company and the entire

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  business model and he said really what this is about,

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  is creating an experience

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  in which you deliver content that is so amazing

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  that people want to binge on it.

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  This was how he looked at all of

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  these different observations and he made sense of them

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  now for colorado,

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  he understood the second step of looking at

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  innovation and that's the power of distilling,

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  is to be able to look at all of these things that you observe in the world around

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  you and observe them all and look for patterns so that you can create a broader theme.

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  Now,

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  the third thing that Corado did is the

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  most important part of the entire innovation process.

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  It's one that's overlooked and greatly underappreciated

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  because this is the step that makes

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  all the difference in the world whether or not ideas are accepted or rejected.

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  And that is that he took all that

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  he had distilled from his observations about netflix

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  and he was able to relate that into the work he did himself as a B two B marketer

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  for colorado.

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  He said what if we took this idea that energy is good news And we looked

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  at our ability to pull on the data that we have to use our research,

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  be really creative with the storytelling that we're already doing

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  and we create our own kind kind of platform.

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  We make it so interesting,

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  so attractive to have people binge on our own content that they can't resist.

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  So that's exactly what they did and um Corrado and

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  his team created an entire tv studio that's called any tv

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  and what they looked at is how they could

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  produce their own original

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  high quality content that was entertaining and it was accessible and it was,

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  it was engaging to a much broader audience,

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  not just customers and potential customers,

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  but really anybody who was interested in the environment,

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  how it's taken care of big business

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  oil and gas exploration, energy information and trends

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  to really build a bigger community and tell that story

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  that energy is good news

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  now by being able to observe what netflix had done,

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  distill that into the broader theme of creating digital content

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  and relate that into the work that he was doing,

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  Kurata was able to simplify these very big,

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  complex topics and help people understand

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  and begin to empathize with what was going on in different parts of the world

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  and how companies look at the environment and how they

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  really do try and take care of it in many situations

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  and with this ability to consistently produce

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  content that people could binge on it,

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  they were able to establish themselves as a relevant source for energy issues.

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  So he was able to grow their audience significantly.

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  He grew their website website traffic, he grew their viewership,

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  but perhaps most important

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  is that his content strategy approach for energy

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  and any tv and looking at how energy is

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  good news and with other blogs and videos and content that he and his team created.

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  He was able to create an entirely new business model

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  as an entrepreneur and looking at innovating how that story is

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  told that made any stand out and become a hardcore

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  thought leader in this area of business around the world.

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  Now his ability to relate was an opportunity where he could find

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  these hidden threads of truth that content can be bendable

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  and people do want to consume at time and time again

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  as long as it's content, that's interesting and meaningful.

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  Now for colorado,

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  he said he knew that they wanted to model this

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  after a video on demand type of experience because he

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  wanted to engage people and give them the side of

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  the energy universe that they had never seen before.

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  He wanted to tell the story that energy is good news

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  and he took the opportunity to do it in a way,

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  in an approach, in a method, in a practice that people were already familiar with.

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  Now when we look at the approach that colorado has done,

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  it's actually a repeatable process that anybody can use and follow.

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  And this is the process

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  you began by observing the world around you.

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  Just like Colorado happened to do that day when he dug

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  into netflix and why it was so successful from there.

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  He took the observations and he distilled them into things

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  that had a broader theme that that had something that

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  reflected the patterns of behavior from what he had observed.

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  It was from there that he related it into his work

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  at any and how he got the idea for any T.

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  V.

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  These first three steps are absolutely critical in how we as B. Two B.

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  Marketers take on our next big role

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  as innovators and entrepreneurs because these are the

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  three steps that are never done or

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  completely ignored because they're too much work.

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  And what happens now is that whenever we are

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  tasked with coming up with a new idea or a new strategy or anything that requires

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  innovative or creative thinking we get caught up

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  in this two step process generate and pitch.

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  And what happens is that people say we need a new idea, we need it for a campaign,

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  we need it for a uh sales pitch,

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  we need it for next year's strategy whatever the reason is.

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  And they say let's all get into a room and let's brainstorm ideas.

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  And you know there's no such thing as a bad idea.

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  So just throw all of those ideas out there.

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  But what happens is pretty much all of the ideas are horrible ideas.

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  They're ones that you've tried before.

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  They're copycats of customers because nobody really wants to stick their neck out.

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  And so then you pitch those ideas to your boss, to your client,

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  to your team and they say no it's ridiculous I don't want to do that.

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  And so you get caught in the cycle of generating and pitching.

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  And the work that comes out is never actually innovative and it's never knew,

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  unique or different.

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  So what we have to be able to do is look at,

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  how can we deliver these extraordinary outcomes by

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  using this process just like Colorado did to set

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  ourselves apart as innovators to look at how

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  we can be the entrepreneurs within our organization.

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  What we need to do is by following this process,

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  we start to understand that innovative outcomes aren't

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  something that comes just from divine inspiration,

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  but they are something that that that are refined over time.

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  When you follow this process.

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  What you find is that you get people to say yes to new ideas much more often.

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  And the third thing that you understand when you follow this process is that

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  it gives people context for new ideas and it makes them feel less risky.

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  And when this happens, people's fear of change or of risk

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  is much smaller and you have a much greater opportunity as an innovator

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  and an entrepreneur to do new work.

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  That's different, fresh and work that you're proud of.

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  Now.

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  What I want you to do is look at this process and

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  think about how you can begin to observe the world around you,

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  distill what you see into patterns that have a broader theme,

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  relate that back into your work and then,

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  and only then begin to generate ideas that you can pitch for the work that you do,

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  Because this is what the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs

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  in the world are already doing in B2B marketing

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  and the truth is what we're seeing is that there's

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  all sorts of amazing work that iconic brands are doing,

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  that we're discounting because we don't think that we

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  could ever be as creative as they are.

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  But the truth is there's never been a better time to move big bold ideas forward

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  because you have the ability to stand out in ways that your competition

• 21:16 - 21:18

  could never ever copy.

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  But what most people don't realize is that they discount the relevance

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  of this brilliant work because they think that what they do is different

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  or unique and they're not able to take the brilliance behind a

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  provocative idea and relate that back into the work that they do.

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  So this is my challenge to each one of you

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  because you don't have to turn the entire world upside

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  down to become massively innovative to be the idea people

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  in your organization into lead new initiatives in your company.

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  All you have to do is one thing

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  is to start to connect the dots between what it is that inspires you as a

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  person and what it is that you want to create as a B two B marketer.

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  This is the path that we have to take as the new role of B two B.

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  Marketing to become those innovators and entrepreneurs.

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  I'm Carly johnson and thanks for spending time with me today