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Who is Paul, and what happened to him? We are so glad you asked.
In this limited series, we unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Paul, the trusted playbook that guided product launches for over a decade..
Follow Jarod and the Vivin team as they face their biggest challenge yet: pulling off a high-stakes product launch without the playbook they’ve relied on for years. As the product evolves faster than anyone imagined, the team must navigate the chaos of strategy, planning, creation, communication, and launch in real time.
Can they succeed without Paul by their side, or will the launch fall apart?
Join us as we explore the death of the traditional product launch playbook and what it means for the future of go-to-market strategies.
Narrator (00:03):
Last time on What Happened to Paul. Victoria's team faced the creation phase. With Paul gone, the plan unraveled, timelines changed, and the chaos of bringing everything to life left the team scrambling to catch up. But now with things back in motion, Ava stepping in as a teammate, and the clock ticking down, it's time to get the message out, and fast. In this episode, the pressure is on. Lindsay Morton is tasked with taking the evolving message, shaping it into something clear and communicating it to the world, all while dealing with tight deadlines and last-minute changes. With everything moving at lightning speed, it's a race to the finish. And Lindsay's about to find out just how fast she can work when every second counts.
Jarod Greene (00:54):
So Lindsay, after everything changed in the creation phase, how did you initially approach communication? What was the first thing you had to do to get back on track?
Lindsay Morton (01:06):
In order to know what on track even looked like, we had to get our hands on the accelerators.
Narrator (01:13):
Okay, so quick definition explanation here. Accelerators are the tangible way that Ava really pulls her weight. So think of it like creating solution docs, stakeholder maps, and any other key assets without being asked. So as things unfold, Ava anticipates what's needed next and delivers it, giving you the kind of proactive support you'd expect from your best-prepared teammate.
Lindsay Morton (01:38):
And that was the moment that the field and the entire go-to-market team, and particularly me, I saw the accelerators immediately understood their value and the need to change everything. We immediately met with our internal experts, our sales team, to understand how they would use the accelerators, what value, where they would use them, and how they were actively using them to work their deals.
Jarod Greene (02:04):
So with such a tight timeline, how'd you prioritize what needed to be communicated?
Lindsay Morton (02:11):
We knew that the website had to mirror what we were launching at the event.
Narrator (02:16):
And remember, UNXPCTD is Vivun's annual spring launch event. So everything needed to be ready for the new product by that date. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Lindsay Morton (02:26):
So the web took priority and we also knew that the value props had immediately changed. We were now the only agent that was proactive, doing work on your behalf, with a brain nonetheless, before you even asked it. And that really changed the game for what agents are, what we expect for agents. And so we knew that we were also entering it into a new conversation of differentiating our agent from the mass just text, chat, Q and A bots. We already had the differentiating brain, but that's really hard and esoteric to try to sell. And so now we had this really concrete proof of how Ava is different than the quote unquote agents you see everywhere else. Ava proactively builds these sales assets that you need and you probably don't have time to do it all and certainly don't have time to do well for all of your deals. So with that, we knew our entire message had to be flipped. Web needed to be the priority, and we basically made that the hub in the central messaging. All edits were live edits. We would sit around a screen, we would think about it and then publish. And then we took that messaging and started building out an email workflow to make sure that our existing clients knew about the changes and then we had some material to follow up from UNXPCTD.
Jarod Greene (03:51):
How'd you manage to stay flexible while making sure the message was still clear and still aligned with the product?
Lindsay Morton (03:58):
I think flexibility is the number one personality trait of anyone in marketing at a startup. And so if you find yourself drawn to these sort of really exciting, sometimes chaotic, innovative places to work, you are flexible and you find ways to put that in the culture of your go-to-market team. And so I was really lucky to come into Vivun and there was a flexible, let's ship things at 88% and know that we'll get the next 12 really quickly. And I feel like there weren't any culture changes that needed to happen and we were all the right people to be as flexible. Now, making sure the message was clear is a little bit more difficult because you have two camps in Vivun. You have those that are working with the product and seeing evolution every day. And then you have those on the go-to-market, which are kind of the secondary audience, internal and we're more distanced from the message.
(04:59):
But it's our job to clarify what product is saying and turn it into human impact. These are great technological advances, but how do they help the humans that are Ava users? And so we sat down with product and they gave us their very technical explanations and we met with the field and we said, okay, here's what's product saying that you tell me how would this move your deals forward? How long does this take you? And we did a summary of each of the accelerators and the value they brought the time that was being saved. We felt like there was a clear message that paired the technological message with the true human impact of the capabilities.
Narrator (05:42):
And remember that this product launch pivot is all happening in real time. Paul's traditional playbook is not going to work because everything is evolving so quickly. So Ava, while she is the product, is also helping Vivun change these things in real time because they have established a Brain. Ava is helping them think and move things forward, not just regurgitating what she thinks they want to hear or say. Paul was a great guide, but he wasn't a teammate. Ava is helping move things forward as a teammate.
Jarod Greene (06:22):
Okay. Lindsay, be honest. Was there a moment when you thought this might not come together in time?
Lindsay Morton (06:29):
Oh, very much so. I never doubt my team. And I work truly with the smartest people I've ever met and the most passionate people I've ever met. When I meet and have coffees with our team, literally everyone says if I wasn't working at Vivun doing the work I'm doing, I would be trying to get to a place like Vivun and doing the work I'm doing. Being surrounded by such passionate intelligence makes me believe that we can do anything as fast as we want to. Of course there's some technical challenges, so I am our go-to webmaster. So some of the changes were competing. I had some CSS bugs. Anyone that's been in web flow knows that one piece of code is tied to another. And there were certainly times where I was very worried that the web was not going to mirror what we were launching. And those are just long nights and hopes and prayers and fingers crossed and then just honestly momentum that says there's no way that I can't make it work. It just has to work. And it did.
Jarod Greene (07:40):
Lindsay, how'd you handle the last-minute changes, the tweaks in the message? Is it a challenge to keep it all moving while also making sure nothing gets missed?
Lindsay Morton (07:51):
Absolutely. We had a messaging checklist and we kept referring back to it, making sure that all of the updates, all of the language changes were consistent page to page. And then we met with our CMO and with our CEO before to make sure that there weren't any big pieces that we were missing because truthfully, that's how quickly things have been progressing. Where we get a messaging framework, we're able to work within that framework really quickly. And by the time that we're able to check in and make sure before launch, sometimes things have shifted and in a great way, I won't say it's not a challenge. I think it would be more of a challenge if it wasn't continually adding value. I feel really lucky to be working in a place where any of the fire drills are truly around value being delivered fast. And I understand pivoting and sprinting in that case.
(08:47):
Anyone in marketing will tell you there are fire drills. That's just part of the MO of being in marketing and then in marketing at a startup. But usually the buyer drills don't add tons of value and you're kind of left looking like, okay, I'm exhausted, and what was all that for? And I've yet to feel that because every time we have rushed and really come together as a team to push, to move the message, to move the product forward quickly, it's for a substantial reason that truly differentiates our product in the market and makes my job so much easier. It is so much easier to talk about Abit today post accelerators than it was previously. And I saw that as soon as I saw accelerators like, wow, okay, now we are truly a proactive agent and that is easier to communicate. So I was excited. But the question is, looking back, how do you handle it? I think you handle it with excitement. I truly think that the energy you bring to a project is the energy that you end up with through the project. So we started excited. We genuinely saw the value of accelerators, and so we knew that we had to go fast, but we knew why we were going fast. And I think that makes all the difference.
Jarod Greene (10:02):
So Lindsay, when this was done, when we got through the communication phase, paint the picture. Where were you, what were you doing and how did it feel?
Lindsay Morton (10:12):
Yeah, I was sitting next to you in Atlanta, which was really particularly special. Whenever our team is able to get together, because we are a remote-first company, we really value that collaborative time and we use it so well. So we've been collaborating and making all of these down to the last minute changes. So when the event goes live, we're watching it live, we're watching people engage, truly engage on the points that we spent late nights building. You have a sigh of relief and you also realize you are entering into a new phase of the company, of the product. And so there's this exciting momentum with it. So I didn't just feel relieved, I genuinely felt re-energized, like let's go. And with ai, I never know what Ava's going to be able to do next. And understanding that Ava demanded this sort of vast iteration helped me reset my understandings of the role and my understandings of our team. And yeah, we went and had a drink in person, we celebrated, and yeah, I think I got really good sleep that night.
Narrator (11:21):
Communication was a success. There's creative to support the launch. Launch is officially on the horizon and all of this without Paul, and instead with Ava stepping in as a teammate. So what does this mean for Vivun's launch and other companies like them? More on that in the next episode of What Happened to Paul, the death of the traditional product launch playbook.
Trevor Jett (11:28):
At no time in the history of recent technology has there been so much hyperbole and confusion, and so being able to adapt in real time, you see the reception to your message. That was pretty critical. That was unexpected.
We had to adapt to that at the last minute. Again, never in the history of technology has the product and the capabilities evolved so quickly. In generative AI, you can wake up, check the news, and everything's changed.
That's gonna continue to happen in the future, and it's all happening just much, much faster than we ever thought before.