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Interviews with top marketers sharing tactical tips, strategies, and lessons learned to help you grow your business. Hosted by Dave Gerhardt, founder of Exit Five, former CMO, and author of Founder Brand. Learn more at exitfive.com
E5_Canva B2B Marketing - Audio Episode
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[00:00:00] You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhart. Action.
[00:00:17] Hey, it's Dave. Recorded this one back a couple months ago with two guests from Canva, Emma Robinson, she's head of B2B marketing there, and Christine Siegrist, she's head of global consumer marketing. And we're running this one back because it speaks directly to something that a lot of you are working through right now, how to scale across multiple audiences without losing the brand that got you here.
[00:00:36] We get into how they balance brand building with pipeline accountability, how bottoms-up product adoption turns into enterprise deals. I know a lot of you have a similar motion like that. And why they treat brand investment as a long-term growth lever rather than a cost center. We also get into team structure, data science, and their whole Love Your Work campaign.
[00:00:55] Enjoy my conversation with two of the marketing leaders at Canva All [00:01:00] right. Hey, everybody. Excited to do this episode. We got double barrel action coming at you from the team over at Canva. Maybe you've, you've heard of Canva. I'm joined by Emma Robinson and Christine Siegrist, two marketing leaders that are helping scale one of the most beloved brands in tech.
[00:01:17] I mean, Canva's makes me feel like I can do things. I don't need to know Photoshop to remove the background in my photos. I've done everything from, you know, we use obviously, uh, we use Canva at Exit Five. We run our business on it. I don't know if this is a Gen Z thing, but do you know that the two Gen Z folks on our team, they don't, they don't use Google Slides anymore.
[00:01:35] They're making their decks in Canva. That's a noticeable shift. The presentations are happening in, in Canva. I hope she doesn't listen to this, but I made, I made my daughter a note from the Tooth Fairy in Canva once. You, you helped her out. You, you... Yeah, absolutely. I did. I did. So we got Emma here. Emma leads the B2B side of marketing at Canva, focused on go-to-market, customer marketing, and growth for the enterprise products.
[00:01:58] And then Christine [00:02:00] is VP of Consumer Marketing, leading a global team across performance, brand, and everything in between. What a cool idea to have you both on. I, I can't say that I take credit for this. It was-- It came in at inbound, but, like, heck yeah, excited to talk to you and, uh, we just had a great chat behind the scenes.
[00:02:16] Just curious, like, what does the marketing org look like at Canva and kinda what brings you both on to g- talk to this? Like, why not just talk to Emma or just talk to Christine? I'm curious about what, what does that say about the marketing org at Canva? Well, Emma, I was kind of laughing with that double barrel intro.
[00:02:30] I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like we are two parts of a whole, actually, in our, our working life, whether we're, like, running with passports, trying to make a flight together or addressing our teams together. So this is very natural for how we operate. And I would say in terms of how our team is structured, we really kind of think about fluidity between how people work and how people live.
[00:02:54] And, you know, kind of this really strict binary of, like, B2B and B2C, we just feel like that's a [00:03:00] little bit of an outdated notion, that people are constantly moving between different spheres of their life. So it's very natural that when we're building programs or we're planning things together or even working with our teams, it's all about just not having those boundaries, knowing that people are experiencing our brand in the world in a way where they're not like, "Oh, what part of the org chart sent me this?"
[00:03:21] Communication. They're just seeing things from Canva, and either we're delivering value in that moment or we're not. So we're pretty joined at the hip, I would say. So, um, great that we're having this conversation together. Yeah, I would echo that. I think, uh, we spend an awful lot of time together, but for good reason.
[00:03:35] Because, you know, as you ... Even at the beginning of the year when we start the planning process, I think it's an incredibly important unlock to have everybody in the room. So we also have an international, uh, leader as well. So there's sort of the three of us who get in a room, and we all represent parts of the business that are nuanced and different to the audiences we market to.
[00:03:54] But the channels are consistent across everybody, so it is important just to make sure we have [00:04:00] that consistency across the channel regardless of the, the audience that you're speaking to. And then I can probably just dive a little bit on the structure. We have sort of like our business units, so those audiences I mentioned, B2C, B2B, and international.
[00:04:13] And then we have core channel support. So across the organization is sort of more centers of excellence that allow you to kind of get deep into a channel and into providing the right subject matter expertise for that channel. But then that's sort of laddered into those business outcomes we're trying to drive across the, the different business units.
[00:04:31] So it's sort of like a very hea- heavily matrixed model, which I, I feel like it ... Canva's such a collaborative company that that works really well. And, you know, we obviously use Canva to do a lot of that briefing and sharing documents of strategy and so forth, so that helps. But it's a lot of fun to build this, and I think B2C gives us a lot of creative ideas that B2B, which we can talk about shortly.
[00:04:52] So yeah, that's how it works. Well, it's, it's interesting 'cause I'm just like always i- logged into one account. And so I'm not like, "Oh, let me, let me hop into my pers- Let me, let me [00:05:00] log into my like consumer Canva account and, and make this." And so it's interesting to think about that split. And do you ... So you have B2C, B2B, international, and like is there
[00:05:10] I don't even know. Is there a CMO at Canva? Do you all report into one person? Is it the founder? Who is it? We do. The amazing Zach Kielsche is, uh, the CMO across- Those different areas, pulling everything together, and he's directly into our founders, Mel and Cliff. So that's the way we're structured. And even though the company's grown and scaled, we still try to work in a really scrappy way.
[00:05:33] We try to make sure the org still feels flat. We don't want things to feel highly hierarchical. Like, we're very intentional about that because I-- that some of our best ideas or most interesting ideas come from all over the place. You know, whether it's our experiential team, someone in PMM, they're not just the domain of maybe a small group, so we want that fluidity.
[00:05:55] And we're really focused on trying to build teams that feel kind of [00:06:00] small and empowered, like little swift boat pods that can just chase after areas that they believe will have impact without a, a ton of friction and, you know, kind of whatever it is, approvals, running things up a chain. I just think those kind of bureaucratic elements can suck the life out of experimentation and trying things and moving quickly.
[00:06:20] So I think that's also part of the spirit of how we're trying to structure, and Zach definitely sets that tone for the team. Yeah, I, I know we probably just add do, but I think that AI has accelerated that process too, because, you know, there's a lot of functionality we can bring in that helps us scale really fast, particular- particularly in the area of per- performance marketing.
[00:06:39] And so that gives us the ability to test a bunch of things very quickly, but then find the kind of quality and the high performance peak within that, and then sort of rally around that particular asset or creative idea. So, so I think there's just something, the spirit of the way that you test and learn very quickly in these small sprint groups helps to sort of [00:07:00] give the rest of the org, like, learnings and leverage on what is actually working, and so there's just a lot more insights I think we're getting, particularly in that sort of fil- realm of AI.
[00:07:10] Maybe, like, a practical example in terms of testing something in a small group and then pulling it across the organization. We have an amazing team in Japan, and they were discussing, "Hey, we have this logged out homepage, and it's, like, this amazing surface that millions of people are going to every day.
[00:07:27] Are we really sweating it? Like, are we thinking about how to make this, like, the most visually stunning, fun, inviting entry point into the product?" And there was a million reasons maybe to not do those experiments. It was working well for growth. It was optimized to do certain things, but they did some experimentation in terms of looking at fun partnerships, creator content, things that they could bring and showcase to feel truly local for the Japanese market, and then we took some of those learnings and pulled them into other spaces, other markets, and found ways to scale that.
[00:07:58] So I [00:08:00] think it's also kind of provoking. Sometimes things are working really well to drive certain outcomes, so maybe you don't look at them again or push on them, but I think actually the constantly trying to beat yourself and not getting into, like, cruise control because something is working well is something we're constantly trying to do.
[00:08:17] Like, "Hey, we're hitting our numbers. Well, could we three X those numbers? Like, are we happy with that? Can we maybe test something that feels a little wild and, um, just make some space for it?" And then having that kind of central connection that Emma was talking about to make sure that when we do something that shines, that we can tell our friends across the globe.
[00:08:35] Like, "Let's see if this, if this works in other regions. Where else can we land this?" All right, and, like, especially when you get to the, the stage and size that you all, you all are at, like, that is ... that's, like, a free money, found money opportunity where, like, there's probably so many eyeballs and so much traffic to that page, but you're not thinking about it day to day.
[00:08:51] You got so many other things going on. Like, this other team surfaces this opportunity. "Hey, let's see what we can do for our world." I wanna go back to planning a little bit just because- [00:09:00] One of the most common questions that we see, like, among Exit Five and our community and everything is like, okay, marketing is really easy...
[00:09:08] Well, when you're selling, like, one product to one persona. And so I always think it's, uh, the question is something like, "Hey, we sell this one thing that has, like, a wide use of applications across lots of personas." And so, like, Canva's a perfect example of that, right? You can do a bunch of different things with it.
[00:09:24] It can be applicable to almost any persona, and then on top of that, you have these kind of business units that are responsible for different things. You have the consumer side, you have B2B side, you have international side. Any size company, there's always gonna be some internal scorekeeping, counting, like, how do we know, oh, that was, that was actually a B2B lead, but that should've gone to Christine's team.
[00:09:45] That was B2C. How do we get credit for that? Oh, international expansion. Like, I don't really have a question, but I'm, I- I'm sure you all can figure out what I'm getting at. Like, as much as you could tell me, like, how do you track the success of marketing? How do you plan? Like, you can't just do these things in a silo.
[00:09:59] [00:10:00] Anything that gets done from, like, the Canva brand side is gonna trickle down and, and raise each of these other business units and markets. Like, I don't have a question. I'm hoping you all can figure out the question that I want. That, that's a thing that I wanna try to understand a little bit. How do you get good at that?
[00:10:13] What lessons can we share with others? Oh, it's really easy, Dave. It, it just all happens. No, it is, it's complex, first and foremost, but, like, within that, I think we actually spend a lot of time, the founders really set very visionary goals for what they wanna achieve, so we sort of start there, to be very honest.
[00:10:29] And so then that unpacks into, well, if these are the goals and these are the outcomes we wanna drive, which is typically how do we create awareness, how do we build on the already strong customer base we have with paid offerings? So, how are we driving, you know, whether that be ARR or other revenue metrics, and then how are we driving the sign-ups, the trials to enable that?
[00:10:51] And then really it's kind of the funnel view, and then how are you driving loyalty, continuity of the product, and making sure that people feel, [00:11:00] you know, empowered to use all functionality, not just one piece of it, like designs or, or maybe video or, or whatever it might be. So I think there's, there's sort of, again, like, this matrix idea, but each of those metrics around, like, performance will be measured incredibly heavily.
[00:11:16] So we have a huge, uh, data science team that spend a lot of time working on these things. And, and ultimately, do we get to see, you know, the impact of, of all of those metrics and how we're growing them, improving them, and we'll set targets around them based on sort of the founder goals. And then on the B2B side, we actually do more of an attribution model that we're looking at As the sales cycle starts, what is that sort of compelling event that marketing either creates the lead or helps to influence the opportunity, and then all of the touch points across that funnel journey are, are measured and tracked, and we have, you know, algorithms that weight things.
[00:11:51] So we are working on attribution. Um, I... There's not so much of the, this is sales contributed, this is marketing. I know sometimes in [00:12:00] attribution models you sort of get this, like, finger-pointing that, you know, would you not do this thing, or why are you not responsible for this? And so we actually have a very tight agreement with sales that we're pretty much driving sort of 50/50 across the sort of attribution funnel.
[00:12:13] And then of course that ladders into all of those different activities that we're running that get measured, and then it becomes a really productive conversation. Like, we have to be accountable on the B2B side for the ROI, how we're spending, what is returning from the spend we're making, and so we need to have that narrative created for our exec, our CFO, and our finance teams to be able to continue to invest.
[00:12:36] So we definitely have a lot of rigor around that. It's a very well agreed and aligned model with our sales team, and they feel very comfortable with it, and then it's really about accountability and how we're driving that across the teams to both be responsible for a total pipeline contribution number, and that sort of then takes a lot of the steam and the heat out of those sort of sometimes unproductive conversations [00:13:00] where it comes to, "Well, marketing saw this."
[00:13:02] "No, well, we had this conversation." And you know how those things go. Emma, that was much more eloquent. I was gonna say, we just arm wrestle for whose NQL it is, so I think that was a great way to explain it, for sure. We throw pencils across the office. Yeah, something like that. There must be like... Is, is expansion, I don't even know if that's the right term, but, like, if I'm Dave at Gmail and I start using Canva, like, my first thought will be, well, Dave, like, must have a job of some kind.
[00:13:26] Could we possibly sell him the team plan? Like, is there a lot of- The overall goal is, like, get people using Canva, and then on the, and that, that's maybe the consumer side, and then the... And I don't know anything about your business, I'm just riffing 'cause it's what I do, I'm a thought leader. But there must be some of that where it's like, okay then, can we use signals from the product to actually, you know, is there an opportunity to sell these people on the Team plan?
[00:13:46] Okay, Dave was using Canva by himself for a year. Now he's, like, growing his business and, uh, oh, shoot, I wanna have my brand style. I wanna... Okay, now I have a five-person team at Exit Five, like, we should upgrade to that plan. Like, how do those motions all kind of... They, they gotta all connect in, in some way, shape, or form, right?
[00:13:59] Yeah. [00:14:00] I mean, absolutely. You know, again, kind of the heritage of the business was more of these self-serve models, right? Kind of probably what you have where you're making this, these great tooth fairy outputs and hopefully things that work too by using a subscription or maybe something for your team where you're all working together maybe in a, a, let's say if it's a small business or a group of entrepreneurs working together.
[00:14:20] And those are self-serve products that you can sign up for, and of course are a big part of our consumer-led marketing or our PLG motion. We do get a ton of signal in product of, you know, are there moments that would be appropriate for upsell because someone is, you know, perhaps they want access to more AI credits.
[00:14:39] They're doing really cool things with some of our AI features, and the way to get more of that would be to convert them from a f- from a... We have a huge free user base too, from a free user to a subscriber. And then there might be other signals where it'd be valuable to think of migrating someone to Teams.
[00:14:54] But not, you know, not everyone w- that would be appropriate for, but finding those right pockets. And then also, like I mentioned [00:15:00] earlier, we find that in 95% of Fortune 500 companies, people are using Canva. They're using it at work for all kinds of use cases. So that's all from that kind of, like, bottoms-up demand growth, people realizing that this tool is unlocking outcomes for them.
[00:15:17] It's helping them to bring their ideas forward in a more fluent way. It's helping them with workflows. So that really creates a nice conversation for us to then maybe have a conversation with the C-suite or decision-makers to say, "Hey, we're just observing that obviously there's some value here. Is there a way we can structure this to help accelerate and unlock more for you at a tops-down level?"
[00:15:37] So that's where we really see this Coming together, and I think it also comes back to what we're building. We're constantly getting input from our community, what they say, what they do, both in a work context and in a personal context, so it's helping us to build the right products and keep closing that loop.
[00:15:54] You know, I would also add for the enterprise specifically, you know, of course their requirements are a lot more [00:16:00] complicated than, you know, being on a free or t- or even a Teams or Pro license. And so there are legitimate things about, you know, how do you stay on brand, how are you kind of curtailing a lot of organic usage around unbranded content, which is very productive for the enterprise, great brands, you really wanna be able to represent their brand in the po- best possible way.
[00:16:21] So what we offer on the enterprise side is, is a lot more kind of rigor, uh, granular controls, and brand kits that people can feel really compelled to use without having to compromise kind of their creative need. So that is sort of a way that I think and, and the enterprise was really put in place for that because, you know, CIOs don't want to have this sort of crazy organic content usage because that can become unproductive for brands.
[00:16:48] So being able to really land brand kits and then also things like security, so SSO, being able to sign on, control user usage and views and all of those types of things are really important. So, [00:17:00] so sort of like there's different needs for the different pockets of folks across all these, these different audiences.
[00:17:06] But ultimately, yeah, we, we see a lot of product signals that allow us to be able to go market to those audiences with this right value proposition around usage and the features that might be more important to them, and we, we do go and do that based on the signal. You mentioned having this data science team before.
[00:17:23] Is that a cross-functional... Like is that its own team, or is that part of the marketing org? So they are cross-functional, but they sit in, we allocate them to business units. So we have a, a few folks that are working on measurement and brand tracking, actually, as sort of part of, like, research and brand tracking and data science and sort of one measurement team.
[00:17:42] And they're responsible for... I mean, there's a lot of data inputs, as you can imagine, across all of, of Canva. We have so many signals that we can leverage in marketing, so it's really about that team being able to find Those things you just ex- described, like how do you sort of see patterns of usage that might show that actually [00:18:00] our, you know, our whiteboard feature is really growing and people are really
[00:18:03] there's a lot of good repeat usage of it, so, like, go more, market that more. Uh, and things that sort of just allow us to be able to influence our content strategy and then the right sort of messaging that we wanna lean into. And this idea of, like, the next best action. So if someone is working with certain products, making certain things, driving certain outcomes, what's the next best thing for us to share with them to help unlock more value from Canva?
[00:18:28] Because as you mentioned, you can do a lot of things with Canva. But I think the beauty of it is it's a place that can really kind of enable end-to-end what you're trying to do. But someone may have a, a lot of love for the product, but their usage might be more shallow, like their knowledge of what they can do.
[00:18:43] So, like, how you bring them on that adjacent journey of, like, you're crushing it with these presentations, you're having a lot of great outcomes. Maybe the next adjacent way for us to bring more value to you could be thinking about how you might bring, you know, documents or video creation into that. And that's
[00:18:58] There's a lot of science [00:19:00] behind, like, how do we sort of open that value up for people. A part of the reason I asked the, the data science question was just, like, a lot of times in marketing, we ... and I wrote about this the other day, was like, your job in marketing is to be great at marketing, not to be the CFO, and you have a business partner who's in finance, and it's important to understand finance.
[00:19:17] I'm not ... People ... When I write this on LinkedIn, people turn this into, like, "He doesn't care about measurement, and he, this guy doesn't know what he's doing." It's more just like, is your job to be the marketer or the CFO? Like, you ... at any company that grows to a certain stage, you, you have ... ideally, you have business partners, and you have other smart people inside of the org.
[00:19:32] And so this is a good example where it's like, obviously, Canva grew to a certain level and was like, "Hey, we could do better work if we could better measure this stuff. We need more than just, like, whatever we can track in Google Analytics or whatever the heck enterprise thing you, you all use. And so let's, let's build out a data science team to better enable our marketing team."
[00:19:50] And my guess is you can do better marketing because you have partners that are experts in working in data science. So, like, Emma and Christine aren't spending 90% of their day [00:20:00] trying to, like, comb through data to make decisions, but you have a partner that can help you make decisions, so then you can go and, "Let's go do this.
[00:20:07] Let's go create this, like, Love Your Work campaign. Let's go spend time on the things that matter," as opposed to, like, you trying to be the data scientist for this Yeah, totally. And I think that's a nice spicy topic about being a great marketer and a CFO, like what is kind of your, your role as a marketer.
[00:20:24] I mean, I think it's about working with your data team in the right way to be empowered by that information, but not limited. 'Cause I think sometimes when you have a lot of information, you can start just doing kind of thinking in incrementalism or doing a lot of like local optimization. And I think sometimes you still have to swing for the fences and bring an informed judgment and have conviction around creativity and a big idea that you just can't have full like measurement sureness of what it's going to deliver because you're trying something for the first time.
[00:20:53] So it's really the balance of, I think it's important that marketing is seen as a driver of the business, not a cost center. We all want that. We're, we're, we're [00:21:00] here to help our communities flourish, help our businesses grow, and impact more people positively. But I, I think it's just using the data as a way to make you smarter, not a way to make you play smaller, if that makes sense.
[00:21:12] Maybe one example I'd share, we do a flagship event every year called Canva Create. We host it in LA for about 5,000 folks, and it's really about, one, you know, setting the narrative about how we can look to reshape work, empower people to bring their ideas to life. It's also just a very fun, joyful, confetti-filled festival where we, you know, have musical numbers, where we bring our community in to do everything from printing Star Wars T-shirts to playing in ball pits.
[00:21:42] I mean, it's really like our brand personified. And there are things in that investment that maybe on paper when we're first pitching this idea, does, does it math? Will it make sense? But we have a lot of conviction around the power of having this tangible experience with the brand and having it brought to [00:22:00] life, and then it's bringing in all the great intelligence and, you know, great marketers like Emma to say, "Okay, like we have this great flagship moment.
[00:22:07] How are we gonna make that work for enterprise audiences we care about? Let's build a special track for them. How are we gonna make this work for teachers that we care about and educators who are using Canva in the classroom? How can we use this as a springboard for our creator community?" So it just becomes this kind of like center of gravity that we can make work really hard for us, but it is about making space for that creativity and big swings as a brand and kind of living our purpose in a way that maybe wouldn't make sense in a spreadsheet, but we think allows us to bring that sense of creativity forward to the people we're serving.
[00:22:39] Good lesson. It's like just because we have this fancy, expensive data science team, don't get it twisted, like the great stuff in marketing still comes from like taking chances and being creative and doing the stuff that's harder to measure. Yeah. And our data science team, I just give them props, are creative and fun and adventurous, so they're like the right, left brain, right brain, so we're so, so lucky to have them.
[00:22:59] Yeah. [00:23:00] Yeah. No, I, I, you know, I would just add, y- you know, there's always gotta be a narrative, and I think there's also to the CFO around investment, and of course, everybody wants to see the right return, the right math model on these things. And it helps as we go f- you know, sprint towards, you know, having really that rigor in place in terms of the sort of projection of where the business is going.
[00:23:19] You need a lot of this to sort of set the foundation, but there's a higher purpose brand piece that is around really building long-term brand equity for Canva that is a philosophy, and if you subscribe and believe in our founders, and they do absolutely passionately about this, then that really does set the company up to have the right sort of altitude balance between, like, the long-term growth and, you know, doing the fun and friendly, unapologetic Canva stuff and brand work with also very tight measurements around the types of things we're trying to drive and those outcomes I mentioned a- around the goals.
[00:23:57] So I, I think the best possible model is you [00:24:00] have the balance of both, and I fully appreciate not every company has the same philosophy around brand and in brand investment, but we're very lucky that that really does help us to find those new eyeballs, the new audiences for us to kind of, like, build long-term health on.
[00:24:16] So yeah, we're blessed to have that, but, uh, our data scientists do keep us accountable to the spend, at least they do in B2B.
[00:24:26] That's a good, a good way to frame it, Emma. It's kind of we believe our investment in brand is an investment in growth. Yeah, yeah. So you're playing to, obviously, what are we trying to deliver this quarter, this half, but you can't lose sight of the big picture and where we're going and how we're building equity for the long term.
[00:24:43] Yeah, and I think sometimes the way that that actually manifests in the more practical example, we, we just ran a huge awareness campaign, Love Your Work, which you may have seen some of the ads. We had a lot out at home and digital. But when we're driving those, those assets out into the market, we're [00:25:00] actually pulling people through to landing pages, which do have more of a B2B call to action where they're signing up for a demo, they're signing up for a contact sales form.
[00:25:08] So actually, you find you have this really nice blend between the brand awareness and then sort of like brand demand gen, which can come through, and so you do actually see that you can solve for both in that regard. And then the way that we look at it is that brand is the, an investment in lead for the future.
[00:25:24] Like it's, uh, how do you protect the base for lead gen for future state? And that is a very easy kind of mental model for us to prove when we start to track these things and then build that narrative for the CFO investment around it. Okay, since you mentioned this, Love Your Work, obviously massive campaign that you all did, and I, I wanted to just pull this up real quick.
[00:25:47] We had this... Okay, Canva has two hundred and forty million active users in one hundred and ninety countries. There are three hundred and seventy-six designs created every second and over three billion in revenue. Okay, so [00:26:00] that's just setting the stage for what Canva is. Then, then you do this massive campaign.
[00:26:04] Most of us listening to this podcast have never spent this level of money, have never done this level of advertising. I've been in marketing for a long time. I still go to the airport, and I see a huge, you know, Cisco billboard, and I'm like, "I wonder how they know if that's working or not?" Yeah. Mm-hmm. So let's go inside this Love Your Work campaign from a, from a strategy.
[00:26:22] Like, how do you know if this worked? I'm trying to be broad and ask you kind of like a, a basic level question 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm curious to how we can teach our audience for how y'all think about something like that internally. It's a great question. I think what's interesting about Love Your Work, and I will ca- I will also caveat because we believe in being truly local.
[00:26:39] This is a, you know, our US strategy. We have different things to unlock growth in different markets where maybe awareness is low or consideration is low. The US problem we're trying to solve is that Canva is well-known, well-loved, but sometimes the knowledge of Canva can be shallow, and people may feel great flow, the [00:27:00] ability to achieve goals in certain pockets of their life that...
[00:27:04] And, you know, sometimes it might be like, "Hey, I made an amazing menu for a dinner party." Like, "This has been a great for my kids at school." But helping to pull across that actually Canva's a, an amazing tool for work, it will unlock that same sense of- So it starts with something like this. It is not like, "Hey, we wanna grow sales, you know, 6% in the US."
[00:27:23] It's like, "Hey, strategically, we have a lot of people that use our product, but we don't feel like they know all the features of it. Let's, let's try this, like, mass media campaign to show all the things you can do with Canva." That's kind of like step one. Yeah. I think it's a higher order. It starts more strategically, like what's the unlock in this market?
[00:27:40] And really this idea that we talk to our community all the time, we're getting insights directly from them, and we know people experience this sense of feeling, you know, stuck at work Or not having, uh, the tools that are intuitive enough for them to use to take whatever idea's in their head and present [00:28:00] it and package it in a way that will literally cut through and help you to succeed at work.
[00:28:04] Increasingly, we're seeing the marketplace at work as more visual. We just did a piece of research, 92% of employers expect their teams to be reasonably adept at being able to communicate visually. But say you're in HR or you work in sales, like, that may not be your core competency. You're not a designer, but everyone should not feel stuck or blocked by the inability to present their ideas, their thinking in a way that will feel powerful and get attention.
[00:28:33] So that's kind of this highest order insight sense of getting people unstuck. And then we try to look at, like, what's a broad entry point for people? In this particular campaign, we focused on presentations and kind of a tongue in cheek idea of, like, presentation trauma, bad presentations. We've endured them.
[00:28:50] We've probably given them. And this sense of Canva is... Not you, Dave, not, but, you know, the re- the rest of us, unfortunately. So, you know, this idea that Canva [00:29:00] is going to help you kind of move past that and be able to be an effective communicator, a visual communicator, someone who can land their ideas, and that was kind of a broad idea of showing a powerful use case in the workplace that a lot of people can relate to.
[00:29:13] And then we were able to bring it to life with storytelling humor. Lorraine, the great Lorraine Bracco was our, our therapist, at which, you know, she's played so effectively in the past on shows like Sopranos and brought that really great credibility. So that's kind of our big campaign, is this idea that you can love your work and that you can feel that sense of flow, unleash, unlock empowerment at work.
[00:29:35] And that becomes this broad sense. And how we know it's working is we're actually measuring that it's shifting people's perception around considering Canva as a powerful tool for work, and we're measuring the full funnel activities through in terms of, is it also helping us to increase Now, is it also helping us to increase incremental revenue on the self-serve side?
[00:29:59] And [00:30:00] we're doing that with, you know, a combination of whether it's media mix models or looking at experiments to measure incrementality, whether they're geographically based or, you know, conversion lift, looking at things like attribution. So this kind of suite of measurements to pull that together. How do you look at something like perception?
[00:30:15] We would work with brand tracking, as Emma was mentioned earlier. We would have health measures to be able to survey folks in a substantial way, and then we would connect it through behaviors. So is the perception shifting, and then is the behavior shifting in a way that's driving our goals? And then to pass that to Emma, the campaign like that creates a springboard for us to then say, "Well, what are the targeted things we wanna do with enterprise customers that can be more tailored to micro audiences, whether it's sales or HR, C-suite, et cetera, CIOs, to then do things like account-based marketing or field marketing events, or looking at our life cycle and email communication, all these different levers to help land this broad campaign that helps to make-- position Canva as a [00:31:00] credible unlock for you in the workplace, and then thread that through into our B2B motions.
[00:31:05] How do you decide a campaign like this? Is it a, a year-long thing? Is it three months? Is it six months? Like, how do you time box this? How do you decide what should be in it? Like, you're gonna do... I, I saw the ads on, on TV, streaming. How do you decide what levels down the campaign is gonna have? You're gonna have, you know, out of home, you're gonna have influencers.
[00:31:25] Like, how do you make all those decisions? Then my 15th question on this topic, and then you all can ch- choose to answer. And then maybe talk a little bit about just the creative process, because I get overwhelmed of even, like, spending money at a smaller scale at another company, and it's like, well, the CEO's gotta be okay with this, and this
[00:31:42] How do you not play the dance of like, there's gonna be people inside the company who don't love it, but you need to commit and ship it, and then prove that. You're never gonna create something and invest something that everyone in the company's like, "This is amazing." They're like, "Well, no, we should've done it this way."
[00:31:53] So that's the, the messy part of the creative process I'm curious about. Yeah. First of all, everyone loves it. I'm just kidding. [00:32:00] Yeah, obviously. It's great, Dan. I mean, there was a lot in that. Emma, you wanna build on it first, then maybe I'll take a little bit on the media, I mean, the comms piece? Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:09] I mean, look, I think, you know, ultimately the, the point I made about the philosophy, I, I think holds true across our ... You know, certainly our founders, but then also permeates through the executive leadership team. So in general these things, you know, you obviously have to prove the value of them and the right placement, but th- they subscribe to this idea that it actually, to put great creative into the market and be differentiated, will actually get us the good return in terms of the, all the metrics that we've mentioned around sign-ups, and ARPU, and all the rest of it.
[00:32:36] But I think to, to sort of go back, this is the nice thing about having a B2C and B2B team together, because you start this process together, and you work through it together in more of those sprint teams that we mentioned. So we have, and, and props to the creative team, they run these things incredibly tightly.
[00:32:54] It's like, "Here's the insight, here's the idea, here's the expected strategy," and then you have [00:33:00] opportunity to be able to input into that process in a very early stage. And then once you get the idea to a certain point, then the creative process can kind of unveil itself, and they, they go through all the steps they need to do in terms of the production element.
[00:33:13] And then it's a matter of checks and balances around the creative when it comes back. But that early ideation, that early planning strategy work, is always done across the company, like across B2C, B2B, and even international would see that too. So, so I think, um, that really helps from a sort of planning point of view.
[00:33:32] And then, um, and then the way the channel mix- plays out is about the strategy. We bring in media agency who then look at ways that we can hit our goals, and they are very tangible goals for the most part. And so then they build the right sort of set of media planning for us that we then back into with all of the creative assets.
[00:33:52] So, I mean, we, um ... You know, and I mentioned earlier that the lovely work has a pull-through element into a lead gen platform. Like, the lead [00:34:00] gen element is in, well, you've seen this great out-of-home, here's the landing page content, and here's the next action we'd like you to take to sort of explore Canva more and how you can find that.
[00:34:10] Being able to, like, continue to change that perception, and then it's about the customer proof. So we have a lot of enterprise customers that if they are sort of starting the journey and seeing something like an out-of-home ad, how do you find that sort of through line into an experience that will help them but also prove it with customers?
[00:34:28] So we have companies like FedEx and DocuSign who are doing a lot of really being able to empower everyone to create, but also be able to do it on brand and do sort of have, like, this nice ideation part, then the scale comes in in the way that you create your content. So it's got, like, a really nice through line, and we can actually prove that using the incredible measurement team to be able to see the impact we're having for the top of funnel right the way through to the bottom.
[00:34:55] It's interesting that ... So on the enterprise stuff, and I've always kind of wondered this, is there, is there also some [00:35:00] level of, like, being and feeling legitimate to your top customers? Like, if you're a- an enterprise customer and you're using Canva and you're traveling for work and there's a massive billboard at JFK for Canva, you're like, "Oh."
[00:35:12] That company's not gonna go out of business tomorrow. Like, feels legit. Like, I, I remember for a couple, maybe a year or so ago, getting a subscription to Anthropic and, you know, starting to really like Claude, and I thought it was, like, super cool 'cause everyone was using ChatGPT, and I'm, I'm using Claude.
[00:35:26] You know, now everybody is, right? And there was a massive billboard for it at, at the Logan Airport in, in Boston, and I remember thinking like, "Ah, all right. This thing's legit." Like, there's some perception to there, and I- I've always wondered, like, if that's also part of, like, an enterprise marketing strategy.
[00:35:41] It's like being legit to customers in, in some way. Is that, is that my silly belief, or is there some truth to that? Yeah, no, I get... I mean, I think there's definitely some truth to that. I, I would say that on our strategy was more around how do you change perception that Canva's not only for consumers and for knowledge workers, but also for, you know, everybody up to CMO [00:36:00] level in organizations or C-suite.
[00:36:02] So you have to kind of, like, allow us to, or all that's part of that, we try to allow people to see the robustness, the fact that we have a lot of enterprise customers, you know, using the Fortune 500 company. So there's an element of taking people on that journey, but in terms of seeing just out-of-home, like, the purpose is really is creating awareness around that perception change, and that is the strategy.
[00:36:24] It's, it's, it's, you know, of course, fundamental to show that we're in market in different channels, showing up in different places, but it's more about mapping to the journey that they go on, which is that sort of research journey that sometimes starts with them being able to see an ad in, in, uh, in an airport when they're traveling.
[00:36:42] And there's many other things. I mean, it's not just the out-of-home. I think, you know, when we look at things like awareness, we're looking at PR and comms. We're looking at, you know, the relationship we have with analysts like Forrester and Gartner. I mean, these things are incredibly important as you go into the enterprise, and so it's far more than just sort of that, like, [00:37:00] awareness piece.
[00:37:01] It's really how do you go drive credibility as a total outcome in a market where you have skepticism around a consumer brand. So it's trying to get ahead of that, that we're trying to- I mean, the spaces and places where we are, the point of, like, you know, what's the logic in choosing the channels and choosing the places, it is about credibility, but I think credibility is connecting- With the people we're trying to speak to, and we internally call them knowledge workers, which is just this idea of you're working and you're trying to drive outcomes.
[00:37:34] So it's kind of a broad lens that can include lots of different professions, but also, like, what are we saying to them? So you mentioned FedEx earlier as an example, Emma. You know, what's the story there if you are a decision-maker at a company? They're in 1,400 teams in 40 different markets, and everybody on the ground has to produce assets.
[00:37:57] And if you don't have some kind of central [00:38:00] brand kit or governance, like, that can get pretty out of control quickly in terms of making sure that everybody can produce content at scale, but also make sure that you're reinforcing the brand and having high integrity for the brand. So what's the takeaway there would be like, hey, this brand team, maybe a central brand team of a few mighty folks, they can't govern that.
[00:38:19] That's too much scale. So by putting Canva in people's hands, you've just reduced I think that brand team was like 77% reduction in brand reviews because people could just run, 'cause they had like the right guardrails, the right governance, the right tools. So it's about seeing that out-of-home when you're walking through the airport, Dave, but also like, why do I care?
[00:38:37] I care because this is gonna reduce time for my team. I care because it's gonna drive efficiency. So what is that kind of like ding, ding, ding moment for a decision-maker at a company to look at Canva different and understand that there can be a different type of value that actually will matter in their organization?
[00:38:54] So it's, it's those two things coming together. And I think the last piece of it is, is memorability. I mean, you, [00:39:00] you know, use out-of-home because you want your creative to shine and to, you know, cut through the sea of the 101. I live here in the Bay Area, so my drive to work into San Francisco is full of AI ads the whole way up the tech, tech market.
[00:39:13] And you know, you have to find a message that's gonna connect your audience that stands out from those messages as well, and, and just kind of find the way to be, you know, maybe a little bit humorous, maybe hu- more human. But I think we're constantly trying to push the, the creative on those things because that is the thing that, you know, will compel people and compel them to sort of go and investigate your brand.
[00:39:36] And, and our brand is, is very true on empowerment. It's about, you know, the levity, like having a bit of fun with work. It doesn't have to be really boring. It can be very, feel consumery, but also be very robust in the enterprise. So there's a lot of those things we're trying to hit when we actually finalize creative, but one of them is, is definitely to sort of give you a little bit of a, a smile and a smirk on all your drive and [00:40:00] your commute wherever you are, and then just be memorable, like people will have to connect into the Canva magic, and that's the intention of those ads too.
[00:40:08] I guess we have to try to do quick answers to these. So, so a, a couple things I wanna get at. Who's responsible for the Ari at Home collaboration? That's our team. He-- Did you see it? I love that. Um- He's one of my favorite creators, and I thought I was like the only one, and I'm like, "Man, this guy's amazing.
[00:40:25] I'm totally gonna do something with him." Like, I bet we could. You know, sometimes even though he has millions of views on YouTube. And I'm like, damn it, I go and I see he's got a Canva ad. I'm like, I don't have that kind of budget. But this is the stuff that I love. It's like, sure, you can do the big billboard stuff, but and so people don't know.
[00:40:40] Listen, there's this guy, Ari at Home. He walks around New York City with this keyboard, and he makes beats live on the street, and he gets rappers. It's just this amazing organic stuff, and somehow he made a beat with Canva sheets, and then some guy freestyled over that- Yeah ... which is incredible. So I, I'm mad at you all for that, but I respect the game.
[00:40:58] That is a great, it's a [00:41:00] great play. That's the stuff that I love. Like it's not... Yeah, the billboard stuff is cool, but finding these kind of more niche creators and doing stuff on the street is great. You each have backgrounds working. Emma, you worked at Google Christine, you worked at Meta. Just curious how...
[00:41:15] Maybe if you could each talk about, like, one or two marketing lessons that, you both worked there, you know, not for just, like, a year. They were a portion, a big portion of your life. I'm curious to how that has shaped your philosophy and how you do marketing today. I think for both of you, my guess is that was a huge part of your, your marketing career arc, and so maybe Emma, we'll go, go to you first.
[00:41:33] What one or two lessons you took from there and how you do marketing or think about marketing and business strategy today? Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, as you know, uh, Lorraine Twohill has been at Google as a CMO for, gosh, I think she may have been there close to 20 years now. But she started with a very, very simple thing, which was about being able to know your product, know the magic of the product connected to the user, and that's the marketing lesson.
[00:41:58] Like, it's very [00:42:00] formulaic and, and actually it's so foundational and so simple, but so many people miss it as they're going through their campaign creation. So I'm constantly thinking about ways that we can have thought leadership, have really great content assets, but if you're not bringing through the product magic, if you're not explaining that and how it translates into how this can help you, then that's gonna be a myth on everyone's part.
[00:42:23] So I, I love that lesson from her, and it's, it holds true for most, most folks at Google because it is such a foundational way that they go to market. And then, look, I think the other thing I would- I've learned from my time at Google, where we were also doing this sort of enterprise transition, which is now Google Cloud, is that it's not something that's done overnight, and you know, it's not like you can go from a PLG company to FLG very, very quickly.
[00:42:48] Like, it is a multi-stage, multi-step, multi-year journey. And some da- some months and quarters it might be, you know, you might see huge uplift and some you may not see as much of a [00:43:00] growth, and that's okay because this is... You know, I know I hate to use the analogy, it's a marathon not a sprint, but it, you know, it truly is, and so it's reminding the people that maybe haven't seen this or expecting to see this silver bullet approach, is that actually with patience and time and, like, the right strategy, the right executions, you'll get there, but it is something that builds.
[00:43:19] Like changing perception is something that you build over a period of months and years. It's a great... I'm down for any lesson that's timeless, that are always gonna be around. I love that. Christine, what about you? Yeah. I'm loving those lessons, Emma, especially with staying the course, right? I would say two things.
[00:43:34] One is really, this has been a theme throughout this discussion, but being very anchored in your community and who you're serving, and never failing to use that as a true north. When I was... For example, some of the best products that Meta has launched has been by observing what is happening organically, and how can we build products and serve those needs.
[00:43:54] An example I would share is Facebook Marketplace, which I think is just a killer product. That came from [00:44:00] observing the fact that people on Facebook were building buy/sell groups all the time. They were doing that naturally within groups, but didn't have sort of a structured way to, to do that until Facebook Marketplace launched.
[00:44:11] But that idea emanated directly from the community, not from some kind of ivory tower brainstorm happening in Menlo Park. And I think it's very similar to Canva, how we've moved into enterprise. That's because that's where our customers were going. That's where our community was going. They were demonstrating they had this need.
[00:44:28] So just using your community as your North Star and your source of inspiration, and constantly closing the loop with them will never steer you wrong. And the other thing I would note is creativity is a superpower. It is, and I think if we... It's very important to be high integrity with your data and your measurement and your credibility and ROI.
[00:44:44] That's all very important. But you mentioned that piece with Ari, like launching a new product like Sheets in an unconventional way. We also launched our enterprise product on stage with a rap number, which got a lot of attention. Oh, I saw. I was [00:45:00] not gonna... I, I have it on my list, but I was gonna see how this conversation went.
[00:45:03] I wasn't gonna bring it up. Regardless, th- that was a perfect example of, like, maybe all PR is good PR, because it did drive a ton of awareness for Canva, whe- however you feel about how the rap actually went down. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about this is you have to be absolutely unapologetically yourself.
[00:45:19] You have to do that. Otherwise, you lose yourself And taking things to market in an unconventional way that has credibility but also playfulness is very true to who we are. And at the end of the day, B2B, B2C, these are people, and it's very easy to get lost. We live in a noisy world, and we want to create work that demonstrates value and also delights people and makes them want to start a conversation, makes them want to share.
[00:45:46] And we actually think that's not a frivolous exercise, but it's actually creating the best value that we can for the business. Love it. Amen, sister. That's, that's a great ... The people thing is great. Like, and I, I think that is just a [00:46:00] underrated thing. Granted, I saw a stat today that said by 2027, 97% of the B2B buying journey is gonna be done by AI, so may- I don't know.
[00:46:08] I, I ... Every day I'm learning and changing my opinion about what the future holds. But I'm half kidding, but I do always go back to, like, the timeless lessons in marketing, understanding people, understanding psychology. Yeah. Anyway, I could hang out with you all for- forever. Maybe we'll hang out in person sometime in the future, but, um, this is great.
[00:46:26] Thanks for help making this happen. Do me a favor. If you're listening to this episode, send me a message, uh, dave@exit5.com or, or reach out to, uh, Emma and Christine on LinkedIn. That's actually my favorite form of feedback. I don't care about a CTA. I want you to go to them and, like, send a bunch of LinkedIn net- messages and connections and be like, "Huh, people actually do listen to that podcast."
[00:46:45] That, that means a lot. So I appreciate you both hanging out. Awesome. Keep doing great things at Canva. I could be in your next ad if you want, like, you know, from tooth fairy messages to board decks, like, "Look what Dave did." I'm just[00:47:00]
[00:47:02] saying- Moving in front, Dave. You always are- Reach out to my people- ... moving in front You're already scheming on that collab. I'm into it Yeah. But reach out to my people. We can make something happen. But, uh, seriously, it's great. I am, like, a truly a marketing nerd with this. Like, this is me scribbling. Like, I got so many notes from this today, so awesome.
[00:47:12] Great to hang with you both. I hope you have a great rest of the day, rest of the week, and I'll, I'll see you all soon. Thank you.
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