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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
Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to The Dave Gerhardt Show.
Dave [0:00:02]: Okay.
Dave [0:00:17]: We're live, super excited to have Katie on the pod.
Dave [0:00:19]: She's CCO and Head of Martin CCO is a Chief Customer officer a commercial officer having.
Dave [0:00:24]: Communications.
Dave [0:00:25]: A nod to your past life, which we'll talk about on this podcast.
Dave [0:00:29]: But chief Communications Officer and Head of marketing at SurveyMonkey.
Dave [0:00:34]: Someone we've gotten to know over the last, you know, year or so, doing cool stuff at SurveyMonkey, one of the members in our executive communicated.
Dave [0:00:41]: I'm excited to have you on the pod before we get into your whole background.
Dave [0:00:46]: What's the last three months in your life been?
Dave [0:00:48]: Summer's done.
Dave [0:00:50]: We're getting back into September?
Dave [0:00:51]: What's been going on?
Dave [0:00:52]: How would you describe your last two or three months at work in life?
Katie [0:00:56]: Gosh, well, I've got kids.
Katie [0:00:57]: So it was a lot of camps, you know, all the parents understand the varying drop off schedules.
Dave [0:01:03]: How old do your kids?
Dave [0:01:04]: That's kinda what I was trying to get a hold your children?
Katie [0:01:06]: Yeah.
Katie [0:01:06]: Well, I have a first grader now.
Katie [0:01:08]: She just started first grade, and then I have a three year old to had the blessed experience of staying in preschool all summer.
Katie [0:01:15]: So that was amazing.
Katie [0:01:16]: But we did the camp shuffle all summer along with the first grader.
Katie [0:01:20]: And in the meantime, at work, we were trying to be super interesting over the course of summer and so we were able to pull off a lot of really cool stuff.
Katie [0:01:29]: That's been a lot of fun work on.
Dave [0:01:31]: Okay.
Dave [0:01:31]: Alright.
Dave [0:01:31]: Cool.
Dave [0:01:32]: Everybody's kinda comm over, like, the August Marcy.
Dave [0:01:35]: Who's one of the CMOs in our world was like, I think camps could charge, like, double the price in August, and that would be a good business strategy.
Dave [0:01:41]: Like, by then, I know my kids were home for the, like, last three weeks of August.
Dave [0:01:45]: Yesterday.
Dave [0:01:45]: It was the first day of school, and I feel like I have superpower today.
Katie [0:01:49]: Oh, yeah.
Katie [0:01:50]: So much focus.
Katie [0:01:50]: So much clarity.
Katie [0:01:51]: Amazing.
Dave [0:01:53]: Alright.
Dave [0:01:53]: So where I wanna start we have this awesome prep doc, and sometimes I go in, you know, in and out of it, But you've been at SurveyMonkey for seven years, which is, like, look, I'd interview CMOs and V vps of marketing for a living.
Dave [0:02:05]: That's a long time.
Dave [0:02:06]: Especially a long time in tech what keeps you there?
Dave [0:02:09]: What gets you excited Like?
Katie [0:02:10]: So I've been here for seven years, but it feels like it's been at least three different companies in that time.
Katie [0:02:16]: And we've been through so much if you think about the last seven years as an industry.
Katie [0:02:20]: Things are changing so frequently that the learning curve just never stopped.
Katie [0:02:25]: I was able to just keep learning and going through wild new experiences.
Katie [0:02:29]: When I started, we were publicly traded.
Katie [0:02:31]: After that, there were the pandemic years, the transition to remote work.
Katie [0:02:37]: Everybody was doing the digital transformation acceleration thing.
Katie [0:02:40]: And so that was a crazy time to be at SurveyMonkey.
Katie [0:02:43]: Then we rebranded and took on a new name trying to move up market under a different company name, then we had an activist investor.
Katie [0:02:53]: There was a failed acquisition by Zen, the activist gets puts on our board.
Katie [0:02:59]: We go private through private equity transaction.
Katie [0:03:02]: We returned to SurveyMonkey.
Katie [0:03:03]: I mean, all of these chapters were so interesting, and I feel like I got twenty years of experience in seven years at the same company.
Katie [0:03:12]: And I think the thing that really makes it easy to stay is the people.
Katie [0:03:16]: I think if you talk to anybody in the industry who knows folks who been at Survey, there is an incredible really kind really loving group of people behind this company, and that has always made it.
Katie [0:03:26]: A really safe space to learn and a place that is worth fighting for through all of those changes.
Dave [0:03:32]: So I love that perspective because I think if you told me all those things on the surface, I would say usually when I talk to someone when someone lists out all those things that that's six different reasons to leave.
Dave [0:03:43]: You know, usually...
Dave [0:03:44]: Oh, well, I talked to Someone, I was at this company for a year, but then this thing happened and I left, what you're talking about is amazing if I could try to, like translate the career advice there.
Dave [0:03:54]: We talk to so many marketers in our career community.
Dave [0:03:57]: Like, you're not always gonna be in the perfect job at the perfect time with the most amount of budget and the ability to attract top talent and the market is going in direction and A mentor of mine once told me was, like, your career is bigger than the current company that you're at, but you have to think of, like, what are the things that I'm learning and adding, like, to my bucket right now, what do you think some of those things have been over that time?
Katie [0:04:19]: Yeah.
Katie [0:04:19]: I think about the bra smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.
Dave [0:04:23]: Is that true Could you feel that?
Katie [0:04:25]: Yeah.
Katie [0:04:25]: Who wants smooth cease all the time.
Katie [0:04:27]: You're not learning anything.
Katie [0:04:28]: I have a good friend who's a recruiter, and he took a job at Blackberry during the iphone era.
Katie [0:04:35]: And we were, like, what you doing?
Katie [0:04:36]: Why are you going?
Katie [0:04:37]: And he's like, can you imagine how good I'm gonna get...
Katie [0:04:40]: If I can recruit people in the Blackberry right now?
Katie [0:04:43]: Then you imagine?
Katie [0:04:44]: I'm on unstoppable.
Katie [0:04:45]: Yeah I love that perspective.
Katie [0:04:46]: I think that's such a growth mindset way to go about your career and you're always gonna find meaning and value if you can really be anchored on what you're learning and the skills that you're acquiring and not necessarily like, what does this look like to the outside.
Dave [0:05:00]: Has there been a crew of other people that have a similar tenure to of people you've worked with over this bumpy period?
Katie [0:05:07]: Yeah.
Katie [0:05:07]: Survey is kind of incredible like that.
Katie [0:05:09]: We had town hall this morning and celebrated a ten year anniversary, and those are not uncommon.
Katie [0:05:14]: So the company been around twenty seven years.
Katie [0:05:17]: I think our chief people officer might be the longest tenured employee.
Katie [0:05:20]: She's been there for, like, fourteen, I think of those years, but it's not uncommon to have in your anniversaries.
Katie [0:05:25]: And those people usually, you know, maybe they start in support, and then they move into a more technical role.
Katie [0:05:31]: They learn engineering skills.
Katie [0:05:32]: Now they're on the engineering team.
Katie [0:05:34]: They're building cool stuff.
Katie [0:05:35]: Like, it's been a place with a lot of mobility for the workforce and that has been really fun.
Dave [0:05:40]: What was the re brand?
Dave [0:05:41]: I remember because at the time I was close with Leila.
Dave [0:05:44]: Right?
Katie [0:05:45]: Love, Leila.
Katie [0:05:45]: Lila Sri Austin, our female CMO.
Katie [0:05:48]: Yes.
Katie [0:05:49]: So this is the publicly traded years and there was some hesitation on the sales side of the business, the folks who are trying to sell SurveyMonkey enterprise.
Katie [0:05:58]: They were saying, you know, people don't wanna spend six figures with a company called SurveyMonkey.
Katie [0:06:02]: And so we created this brand.
Katie [0:06:05]: It was called meme And that was kind of the...
Katie [0:06:08]: So SurveyMonkey stuck around is the name of the flagship product, but all of our enterprise solutions were under this momentum name, and it was designed to give the sales side of the business some tailwind in those conversations.
Katie [0:06:21]: But like I said, we went private in twenty twenty three, and our new CEO, Eric Johnson, it was his first act as CEO was to un brand.
Katie [0:06:31]: Re re brand back to.
Dave [0:06:33]: What was your reaction to that?
Dave [0:06:34]: How did you feel?
Katie [0:06:35]: It was so well received inside the company.
Katie [0:06:37]: I remember I was sitting with Eric in the conference room because as the comps person, and I was doing the town hall with him where he announced this and down the hall.
Katie [0:06:45]: I could hear the cheers from the people watching.
Dave [0:06:49]: It's like the scene on a movie and Like, we're bringing it back and everyone's...
Dave [0:06:52]: Yeah.
Katie [0:06:52]: And Was like, I like, losing their minds.
Katie [0:06:54]: It's just such a beloved brand and a brand that sticks out and stands out.
Dave [0:06:58]: It's all interesting how much things have changed.
Dave [0:07:00]: It's almost like better to be the brand with the monkey in it now because of Ai and everything, you know.
Dave [0:07:05]: Right?
Katie [0:07:06]: Yeah.
Katie [0:07:06]: We talk about that all the time.
Katie [0:07:08]: So when I took over marketing around this time last year, I set the goal our number one priority was to be relentlessly helpful and relentlessly us.
Katie [0:07:17]: And it took a lot of work to define what does it mean to be relentlessly us in this market where you have Ai and all the sea of same as in the great flattening of affect and tone, and we are in the middle of launching this big.
Katie [0:07:31]: We're calling it today's SurveyMonkey but this big unveiling of what it means to be relentlessly us.
Katie [0:07:36]: And I'm so proud it and so excited about it because it really is what you're saying.
Katie [0:07:41]: Like, let's lean into the fact that there's monkey in our name.
Katie [0:07:43]: Let's be different.
Katie [0:07:44]: Let's do the things that we've earned the right to do is this twenty seven year old brand that is different from a lot of the other moment of the universe.
Katie [0:07:53]: Like, we don't need that sheen and that shine anymore because I think it...
Katie [0:07:57]: That makes us stand out more to just be us in this market.
Dave [0:08:00]: As a storyteller, like, have you gone back into the Og, is there a lot of, like, Og ingredients in the SurveyMonkey story that you're kinda like, pulling at and, like, re retailing now with the scale and size that you're at?
Katie [0:08:15]: Yeah.
Katie [0:08:15]: One of those is curiosity.
Katie [0:08:16]: So when you think about monkeys, There may be some unpleasant associations with them.
Katie [0:08:22]: But the thing that everybody latches.
Dave [0:08:24]: I think about seen in J when they're all in the kitchen.
Katie [0:08:29]: And the guy is has to get his little tail out seen.
Dave [0:08:31]: Yes.
Dave [0:08:31]: Yes.
Katie [0:08:32]: Yeah.
Katie [0:08:32]: So I mean, like, monkeys, you know, the best thing about them is also a almost universal human trait, which is curiosity.
Katie [0:08:40]: And we did this report the outset of the summer when I was talking about just doing really fun, really interesting stuff.
Katie [0:08:47]: It was called the state of curiosity report, and it found that ninety five percent of people still describe themselves.
Katie [0:08:53]: As curious.
Katie [0:08:54]: Only thirty percent of workplaces strongly reward that curiosity.
Katie [0:08:58]: And we thought that was so interesting because this is like nearly universal human trait to be curious at work and our workplaces are squash it.
Katie [0:09:06]: And when you dug into the reasons behind it, it was, like, people think it slows you down.
Katie [0:09:10]: To ask questions or be curious.
Katie [0:09:11]: But in the end, it makes it more expensive when you have to rework or do the work again because we didn't ask the right questions up upfront.
Katie [0:09:18]: Or the more senior you are, the more likely you were to just ask Ai.
Katie [0:09:21]: You didn't ask your peers or the experts on your team.
Katie [0:09:24]: You're just, like, chatting with Claude and taking that first answer that came back.
Katie [0:09:28]: And so leaning into curiosity, I think that's a core of our business and something that is just inherently related to us because of our name in the space that we occupy.
Katie [0:09:38]: That we could make a lot out of.
Katie [0:09:40]: We actually took the findings of that report and we hosted something called the world's most un curious meeting.
Katie [0:09:45]: It was ninety minutes because, like, it the worst
Dave [0:09:48]: this.
Dave [0:09:48]: Yeah.
Katie [0:09:49]: It was the...
Katie [0:09:49]: Yeah.
Katie [0:09:49]: The worst time If you see a meeting that's ninety minutes long that, like, hurts are in?
Dave [0:09:54]: If I get an hour meeting?
Dave [0:09:55]: It's, like, what are we...
Dave [0:09:56]: What who's what are we doing here?
Katie [0:09:58]: Yes.
Katie [0:09:58]: And so is this improv droop in la and they found this, like, health scape of a conference room to have this live meeting and it was live on Linkedin.
Katie [0:10:05]: It literally took ninety minutes, and they decided nothing.
Katie [0:10:08]: It was the world's most curious meeting, and it was so fun.
Katie [0:10:11]: And, like, we saw reporters chi in on the chat.
Katie [0:10:14]: Like, it got this attention.
Katie [0:10:15]: Like I said, over the course of summer when people aren't generally thinking about buying our software that we were able to capitalize on, and it would just was so fun and different and unique in a way that I feel like all brands need to be thinking about right now.
Dave [0:10:29]: Okay.
Dave [0:10:29]: So that's the big rock for, like, your work today at survey every monkey.
Dave [0:10:33]: This kinda like, rein campaign.
Dave [0:10:36]: Can you just talk to, like, the campaign.
Dave [0:10:39]: Let's just geek out on some of the marketing because I think a lot of people listening.
Dave [0:10:42]: Like, it's your...
Dave [0:10:43]: It's our peers.
Dave [0:10:43]: Right?
Dave [0:10:43]: That...
Dave [0:10:44]: Wow, this cool.
Dave [0:10:44]: That's a cool opportunity this, you know, twenty year old company or whatever it is rebranding going back to the Og brand.
Dave [0:10:49]: How do you think about this?
Dave [0:10:51]: How will you...
Dave [0:10:52]: I'm not asking this question because I want you to explain it, but just, you know, how will you measure this?
Dave [0:10:56]: How does this get rolled out across the business.
Dave [0:10:57]: How does this become more than just like, change the website and then, like, hooray, how do you actually put this thing into action?
Dave [0:11:04]: What's going on across the marketing team in the company?
Katie [0:11:07]: Well, I I mean, it started with laying down the gauntlet of we need to be relentlessly yes.
Katie [0:11:11]: What does that mean?
Katie [0:11:12]: And we had to do all the work to define, like, who we are in our customers minds who we want to be, did our visual identity in every touch point that we're putting in front of customers reflect that.
Katie [0:11:22]: And so did the hard work decided on this redesign.
Katie [0:11:26]: It's a visual redesign done with a ton of intention.
Katie [0:11:29]: And to, you know, the team's credit, it didn't just stop at marketing, the product design team was deeply involved and they were thinking about the entire onboarding journey, and how can we make that more personalized to represent this kind of more human centric, very curious, relentlessly SurveyMonkey type of experience that we're trying to create?
Katie [0:11:49]: But we also were looking at the data and realizing that we had this real seasonality to the business where I mentioned, you know, we see this drop off in interest over the course of the summer, maybe people are just not thinking about their goals for the year as much, or they're not at third desk.
Katie [0:12:06]: They're...
Dave [0:12:07]: We don't care as much about customer research in the summer.
Dave [0:12:09]: You know?
Dave [0:12:09]: It's like They're
Katie [0:12:10]: watching in the world cup.
Katie [0:12:11]: I don't know.
Dave [0:12:12]: Yeah.
Dave [0:12:12]: Wait.
Dave [0:12:12]: That's a real thing, by the way.
Dave [0:12:13]: I don't know if you saw this in our in our group, like, there was one.
Dave [0:12:15]: A couple CEOs were, like, convinced that the summer slowdown was due in part to, like, the whole office watching the world cup.
Katie [0:12:21]: No.
Katie [0:12:21]: Don't you think that's like, they're watching the world cups.
Katie [0:12:24]: Like everybody must be?
Dave [0:12:27]: Of course, right the executives are certainly not.
Dave [0:12:29]: But the people.
Dave [0:12:30]: You know, Right people.
Katie [0:12:32]: Those people.
Katie [0:12:32]: Yeah.
Katie [0:12:33]: So summer's slow for us.
Katie [0:12:35]: And so what we decided to do this here was really lean in to the seasonality of the business with a ton of intention.
Katie [0:12:41]: So over the course of summer, we let our earned and owned channels be the hero.
Katie [0:12:45]: So we create this report We put it out across, you know, podcasts, and we're featuring it in all of our content we had it on the homepage next to the sign up.
Katie [0:12:54]: You know, it's, like, check this out.
Katie [0:12:56]: We're remarketing to people who interact with that report.
Katie [0:12:59]: We're showing them the I'm curious meeting, that's all going out over social.
Katie [0:13:02]: So is this like, here moment over the course of summer, we called it organic summer to try to make as much noise and be as interesting as possible.
Katie [0:13:10]: So that when September comes and our selling season begins.
Katie [0:13:14]: Where we see this really heightened demand.
Katie [0:13:16]: Yeah.
Katie [0:13:17]: We can capture as much of it as possible and we wanted to have all channels firing.
Katie [0:13:21]: So what started as the visual redesign quickly became a real lightning rod for the entire company to be ready for selling season.
Katie [0:13:30]: And so we've got all of our influencers lit up in September, like, all the paid placements we're doing in flight ads with a lot of the same content.
Katie [0:13:39]: So it's not just the site or even just the site and the product experience that's getting a refresh.
Katie [0:13:45]: It's every single channel we have in marketing.
Katie [0:13:48]: Full bore pedals of the metal capture as much demand as possible, while we are top of mind and there's really high interest in what we are offering the the feedback loops, the continuous listening programs that you wanna set up in the fall heading into the New Year.
Dave [0:14:02]: I think that's a really cool example of just...
Dave [0:14:05]: You did it because you're using the seasonality to your advantage.
Dave [0:14:08]: It's almost like, you know, spring cleaner.
Dave [0:14:10]: I think so much in in marketing, it can be so easy to just like, straight line the plan and you're just gonna keep growing in group.
Dave [0:14:17]: And that's just not reality and then so many people that we talk to, you never have time to go in, like, do the re brand or seed the market or build up the organic stuff?
Dave [0:14:26]: And so now you've kinda done that intentionally.
Dave [0:14:29]: Is that because you don't have the pressure of being...
Dave [0:14:32]: Like, is there anything about being a private company that feels like you can kinda do that or am I making that up.
Dave [0:14:37]: I'm just getting at, like, You almost need to step back to, like, grow some stuff invest in it, then you can do marketing and reap the benefits of it.
Dave [0:14:45]: If you're expecting these all to pay off overnight.
Dave [0:14:48]: It just doesn't work that way.
Katie [0:14:50]: Yeah.
Katie [0:14:50]: Well...
Katie [0:14:50]: I mean we didn't start there embracing seasonality?
Katie [0:14:54]: We tried first what we call the def strategy.
Katie [0:14:57]: So we're like, can we
Dave [0:14:58]: beat it?
Katie [0:14:59]: Can we change the seasonality?
Katie [0:15:00]: Can we actually, like, okay.
Katie [0:15:02]: So it's Easter and demand starts to weaken.
Katie [0:15:04]: Could we be out in market with, like, a big push?
Katie [0:15:07]: And just change it.
Katie [0:15:09]: And so we had this out of home.
Katie [0:15:11]: We were in Boston.
Katie [0:15:12]: We were in Chicago.
Katie [0:15:13]: We had a whole digital national campaign, and it, like, worked in Boston, Chicago.
Katie [0:15:18]: But it didn't, like, change the trajectory of the business.
Katie [0:15:22]: And so I think it comes back to looking at the data on a very regular basis and trying to say like, what's working here and what's not is this the next best place to park a dollar or a bit of effort knowing what we're seeing.
Katie [0:15:35]: And so we swung pretty wildly from, like, okay, that def, like, we didn't beat the curve.
Katie [0:15:40]: We didn't change the slope of that line.
Katie [0:15:42]: Let's embrace it and see what we can do in the fall when we know demand as high to just be beyond max demand capture.
Katie [0:15:48]: Moment, but I actually think back to your original question, is it a private company thing or not.
Katie [0:15:53]: I think it actually comes down to the marketing challenge that Survey has, which is that almost everyone knows SurveyMonkey.
Katie [0:16:01]: We do not have a brand awareness problem?
Katie [0:16:02]: We have very high saturation of awareness for SurveyMonkey?
Katie [0:16:06]: The problem is people are kinda anchored on what SurveyMonkey was in, like, two thousand nine.
Katie [0:16:11]: And so how do we update their point of view and share a glimpse into how the platform has evolved in all the different ways it can help you if you're anchored on the two thousand nine version.
Katie [0:16:24]: So it's a little bit like, you know, the challenges that Kim Zoom has shared with this community in the past are like, people are anchored on what they know of Zoom from, like, free era when they were all working remotely.
Katie [0:16:37]: Zoom is so much more than that, and we we have the same story to tell at SurveyMonkey now.
Katie [0:16:41]: So I think that gives us the luxury of sitting back and, like, we aren't out there with a blank slate trying to make survey means something to people.
Katie [0:16:50]: We can kind of do these lightning strike moments where we're trying to disrupt a pattern of thinking about us instead of trying to, like, get that baseline established.
Katie [0:16:59]: That's something that an earlier stage or a less well known company has to do.
Dave [0:17:03]: Yeah.
Dave [0:17:03]: Okay.
Dave [0:17:04]: That's a super interesting way to transition this because I'm glad you brought up the Kim thing and the brand awareness thing because you have this interesting challenge where I don't know if you called at this or our our generative Ai.
Dave [0:17:16]: Briefing doc.
Dave [0:17:17]: But then the Swiss Army knife problem, which is moving to persona based marketing, which is, like, a really interesting thing that a lot of people that listen this podcast have to deal with was like, hey, we don't want people to think of us this way where actually really...
Dave [0:17:29]: You know, we have this use case for this persona?
Dave [0:17:31]: In this use case from this persona Can you talk about how you've kinda of realign marketing around this persona based approach?
Katie [0:17:38]: Yeah.
Katie [0:17:38]: It's all related.
Katie [0:17:39]: Right?
Katie [0:17:39]: So this was Army knife is, like, you know, SurveyMonkey makes great surveys and forms.
Katie [0:17:43]: And then you leave it up to people what they need to use surveys and forms for.
Katie [0:17:49]: So, like, you're kinda counting on people to be like I need a survey.
Katie [0:17:51]: I'll go to SurveyMonkey.
Katie [0:17:53]: And I think that we've kind of maxed out in this era on that horizontal type of marketing.
Katie [0:17:59]: Again, the brand awareness is critical.
Katie [0:18:02]: We were gonna continue to count on our earned and known channels to drive that.
Katie [0:18:06]: But when we think about paid acquisition and the higher value customers that we're going after.
Katie [0:18:11]: They are specific personas.
Katie [0:18:13]: It's Hr.
Katie [0:18:14]: It's marketing.
Katie [0:18:15]: It's Cx professionals.
Katie [0:18:17]: Sometimes it's, like a small business owner who needs all of that and wants to buy one platform that can do it all.
Katie [0:18:22]: And they have very specific jobs to be done.
Katie [0:18:25]: That we need to be connecting our product too.
Katie [0:18:28]: So instead of talking about surveys or even employee surveys, which is something that an Hr leader might care about.
Katie [0:18:34]: We need to talk about the employee experience program that you're setting up and the cadence in which you're sending these surveys and how our expertise and our benchmarks inside the product are gonna help you understand where you are and where you need to go next.
Katie [0:18:47]: So it has to get, I think in this day age, a lot more specific, a lot more personalized.
Katie [0:18:54]: We're kinda like mid transition on this, but the early stats that we're seeing are really impressive.
Katie [0:19:00]: So if you go from kind of a generic, like, surveys are powerful type of ad message to something that is targeted at Hr leaders or managers who care about employee experience.
Katie [0:19:11]: We saw a seventy three percent increase in our click through rate on those ads.
Katie [0:19:15]: I think people are hungry for this.
Katie [0:19:17]: They don't want generic marketing, especially if they think they know you.
Katie [0:19:22]: They wanna understand how you're gonna solve their specific problem in a modern way.
Dave [0:19:28]: It's like life.
Dave [0:19:28]: Right?
Dave [0:19:28]: Like, if the content, is so dumb, this content that I watch, but, like, I...
Dave [0:19:32]: My whole Instagram content is, like, other forty year old dads, like, working out early in the morning.
Dave [0:19:39]: Like, before their kid Okay.
Dave [0:19:40]: That's what you are.
Dave [0:19:41]: You're at golfer.
Dave [0:19:42]: You're a cross fitter or whatever.
Dave [0:19:43]: And it's, like, the same is true when you're selling them products for work.
Dave [0:19:46]: It has to speak to me in some way, and I have to believe that you get it.
Dave [0:19:50]: This is only on top of mind because I'm working on my keynote for for drive, and I was referencing this, but there's this great old school copywriter called Dan Kennedy, and he always used to say, like, you need to, like, pass the sniff test basically, you need to...
Dave [0:20:02]: If you're selling to Hr, You have to sound like an Hr person.
Dave [0:20:06]: You have to get inside their head and know these things.
Dave [0:20:08]: How do you enable that on the team?
Dave [0:20:10]: Is it like a product marketing thing?
Dave [0:20:12]: Do you split people up by persona to someone go get really smart about Hr to someone go get really smart about marketing?
Dave [0:20:17]: Any lessons on like you've split up the team to do this?
Katie [0:20:21]: Yeah.
Katie [0:20:21]: We have a great shorthand for this.
Katie [0:20:23]: So I used to work with this guy ef from Joseph.
Katie [0:20:26]: He's at depp.
Katie [0:20:27]: He's a creative director there now, and he came into...
Katie [0:20:30]: We host this internal learning series called the Marco Master class.
Katie [0:20:34]: And he was, like, you need to know their secret handshake.
Katie [0:20:37]: What is their secret handshake?
Katie [0:20:39]: Because that is you extending to them their language, their vibe, like, what they care about?
Dave [0:20:45]: Yeah.
Katie [0:20:45]: So, yes, as we, like, get really specific on Hr.
Katie [0:20:48]: It's Hr season right now.
Katie [0:20:49]: Like, you know, you're going into open enrollment and, like, all the benefits surveys and heading into the end of the year stuff.
Katie [0:20:55]: So how are the Hr people talking about this?
Katie [0:20:58]: We have a Pm who's dedicated to this We're also lucky to have this incredible chief people officer and her team.
Katie [0:21:03]: And so we're, like, mining the expertise around us.
Dave [0:21:06]: Right.
Dave [0:21:06]: Yeah.
Dave [0:21:07]: You have somebody internally.
Dave [0:21:08]: I used to do this all the time.
Dave [0:21:09]: Drift with, like, our CFO.
Dave [0:21:10]: We were trying to sell the CFO, and I we just sit down with him and, like, you know, he...
Dave [0:21:14]: It just try to crush every objection that he had.
Katie [0:21:17]: Yeah.
Katie [0:21:17]: I mean, we do that too.
Katie [0:21:18]: So we like, have the CFO and the chief people officer and we're like, okay, what could she say?
Katie [0:21:22]: Nice she fits you.
Katie [0:21:23]: So, yeah, I think it's, like, if you're gonna move from horizontal to persona based marketing, you have to move from a shallow customer understanding to a very deep one to extend that secret handshake.
Dave [0:21:34]: Okay.
Dave [0:21:34]: How do you...
Dave [0:21:35]: This is such a silly question, but it comes about time and I can hear someone asking it.
Dave [0:21:38]: How do you handle, like, the website then?
Dave [0:21:40]: Because people always argue Like, then everyone inside the wants to fight over, like, no.
Dave [0:21:44]: We need more ads for this persona.
Dave [0:21:46]: Like, when I go to the website, I used to always argue with the Vp sales like, this persona is not on the website, Like, how do you show all that?
Dave [0:21:53]: How do you show, like, we're SurveyMonkey, the brand, here's what we do as a company, but we also have these individual use cases.
Dave [0:22:00]: You don't try to ask you?
Katie [0:22:02]: I do.
Katie [0:22:02]: Yeah.
Katie [0:22:03]: So our newly redesigned website, which is out now, You should go check it out it's part of this big launch that we're celebrating.
Katie [0:22:11]: So to back up a little bit.
Katie [0:22:13]: One of the benefits of having been here seven years is that a couple years ago, we went to this model that we called pillars.
Katie [0:22:19]: And there were, like, pillar focuses on different personas.
Katie [0:22:23]: So the product and engineering org were polarized Pm was polarized, but marketing stayed a center of excellence.
Katie [0:22:31]: And everybody listening who's been in a team that's organized like that knows what that means, which is, like, you become the battleground on which these ski play out.
Katie [0:22:40]: Who is more important?
Katie [0:22:41]: How do we allocate the resources who's getting wet.
Katie [0:22:44]: So I have fought very hard against that as we're becoming a multi product brand.
Katie [0:22:48]: We have products from market research.
Katie [0:22:50]: We have products for more Cx use cases like embedded listening on websites, things like that So we've had to hold the line on, like, what are our priorities and and making those really clear.
Katie [0:22:59]: The way we solved it on the website is the top hero section is a glimpse at the product because we have a product awareness problem.
Katie [0:23:08]: People know who we are, but they haven't seen inside the product and so long.
Katie [0:23:11]: And so we wanted to get people a glimpse of, like, You think you SurveyMonkey don't.
Katie [0:23:15]: And then as you scroll down, there's, like, we call them a bent.
Katie [0:23:18]: And there's this Bent toe where you can click through and see, like, okay.
Katie [0:23:22]: So for Hr leaders and managers, what's the offering And how is it merchandise there?
Katie [0:23:28]: And then you can click on, like, okay, But I'm a market researcher, where I'm a marketer or a product person who wants to understand the market.
Katie [0:23:34]: And so we have this great really elegant way of merchandising the whole offering just to give people a sense of the breath and they can kind of self select into where they go from there.
Katie [0:23:45]: And obviously, like, the journey gets more and more and more personalized as you move through the site.
Dave [0:23:50]: How will you look to talk about this?
Dave [0:23:52]: You know, a a year from now.
Dave [0:23:53]: This is all this work is successful.
Dave [0:23:56]: What are the things you're talking to, you know, with the executive team, the board, whoever, when you're talking about this kinda rein campaign?
Katie [0:24:05]: That's a good question.
Katie [0:24:05]: I think if we're wildly successful, we will have understood a couple things.
Katie [0:24:09]: One, this brand is resonating with people or breaking out of the Cf of same, we need to, like, enrich and continue building on what we have here.
Katie [0:24:19]: I think the next thing would be confirming the seasonality of the business and how we are going to lead into that in the future.
Katie [0:24:27]: It makes me think about, you know if our season is September to Easter, call it April.
Katie [0:24:33]: How quickly can we come back from the holidays.
Katie [0:24:35]: What can we have in market on January second.
Katie [0:24:38]: So that we are at maximizing every single day of that journey?
Katie [0:24:42]: And then I think on the persona based side of things, it starts to become how are we enriching the entire company's understanding of these different personas and what we need to build for them and how we're gonna make sure that the content and the marketing and the products that we put out in the world are really resonating with them and solving their problems.
Katie [0:25:02]: Because I do think that shift from, like, the horizontal kind of shallow understanding of the customer to a very, very deep one is critical to pull this off.
Katie [0:25:11]: And so, I mean, hopefully, it's like a maturation of all the things that we're trying right now and and that we're proven right.
Dave [0:25:19]: Okay.
Dave [0:25:19]: I wanna pivot into talk about your career path because my job talked to Vps of marketing and CMOs, and I think there's a belief that there's one perfect little path and you must come up through this way, and I love talking to people about all the different paths you came up with came through.
Dave [0:25:35]: We talk about your path from comps.
Dave [0:25:38]: I mean, obviously, it's still a big part of your job today.
Dave [0:25:40]: You're a very easy person to talk to.
Dave [0:25:43]: You're very polished comps person.
Dave [0:25:45]: So, like, that comes off, but there's a story from earlier in your career when you were working with Sheryl Sand And I've used this example because...
Dave [0:25:53]: I...
Dave [0:25:54]: The Linkedin CMO was Shannon Bra.
Dave [0:25:56]: Mh.
Dave [0:25:57]: She's not there anymore.
Dave [0:25:58]: I don't think.
Dave [0:25:59]: No.
Dave [0:25:59]: And I would always say she was the first CMO that I saw that was, like, yeah, Came from a P r background and here's how this influence seems like you had a relationship with your can tell that story?
Katie [0:26:08]: Yeah.
Katie [0:26:08]: I did.
Katie [0:26:09]: It was actually...
Katie [0:26:09]: I'm got connected to her through Lila when Lila was the CMO at SurveyMonkey, and she saw some picking me.
Katie [0:26:17]: She was like, you didn't text Shannon because Lila came from Linkedin.
Katie [0:26:20]: And she was there earlier in her career.
Katie [0:26:22]: And Shannon was nice enough to hop on the phone with me, and she told the story about when Jeff Wei tapped her to take over marketing and she was like, I don't I don't wanna take over of marketing.
Katie [0:26:33]: I don't even like marketers.
Katie [0:26:34]: Like, what...
Katie [0:26:35]: Why...
Katie [0:26:35]: I no interest in this.
Katie [0:26:36]: I'm not even
Dave [0:26:38]: though she's a cop think of herself as a marketer.
Dave [0:26:39]: It's.
Katie [0:26:40]: No, we don't We don't think of ourselves.
Dave [0:26:42]: Oh, you've head of marketing.
Dave [0:26:43]: You're.
Dave [0:26:44]: One house now.
Dave [0:26:45]: You've had a marketing
Katie [0:26:47]: Like, this hybrid.
Katie [0:26:47]: I mean comm people are having a real resurgence industry suites in a way that, like, I find really exciting in the age of.
Dave [0:26:56]: Well, I mean, one you differentiate.
Dave [0:26:58]: Once the CEOs found out that, like, getting mentioned, you know, it's, like, mentions are back, you know, like, P coverage and backlinks and press release is crawled by the L, like B2B is definitely having a moment.
Katie [0:27:10]: It's back big time.
Katie [0:27:11]: And I think, like, if there's parallels with me and Shannon where she was trusted by the CEO.
Katie [0:27:16]: She was in the c suite, so she's very close to finance and the board and understanding the strategy of the company overall.
Katie [0:27:24]: And I think when you give comm people that kind of access, what it unlocks is this ability to help shape the strategy from a communication standpoint.
Katie [0:27:33]: So it's not so reactive.
Katie [0:27:34]: You're not just like whips, We made a mistake.
Katie [0:27:36]: Now P has to come in and clean it up.
Katie [0:27:38]: P can helps steer by being like, this is what public perception is gonna be of this.
Katie [0:27:43]: This is what...
Katie [0:27:43]: Is gonna happen to our reputation.
Katie [0:27:45]: If you go down this path, and here's an alternate slightly different path.
Katie [0:27:48]: That I might have a better outcome for.
Katie [0:27:50]: And so that was the I had as well sitting on the C suite, being able to help steer the reputation of the company very, very close to, you know, our CFO and the sales team and, like, understanding those parts of the business that comes people used to kinda be left out of.
Katie [0:28:05]: And so Shannon said that Jeff was, like, you have no choice for doing this.
Katie [0:28:09]: And that she ended up loving it.
Katie [0:28:11]: And that's been my experience as well where, you know, I asked to take it on, and I was just very upfront about like, well, here's all the things I'm gonna have to learn.
Katie [0:28:19]: But learning it has been incredible, and it's been so fun to work with this team and this brand and these customers that we have.
Katie [0:28:28]: We have customers all over the world.
Katie [0:28:30]: Some of the biggest coolest brands and some of the smallest, like, fastest growing ones.
Katie [0:28:33]: So it's spend quite the opportunity and something that I would totally encourage other comps people to think about.
Dave [0:28:40]: Let's tell about that part, like, the learning part of it because I think there's some things that when you come up from a certain path, there's things that meet make you great as a marketing leader, which is, like, your bias is your zone of excellence is gonna be comm positioning messaging, communication strategy, which I think, grass is always greener, but, like a CMO or head of marketing who came up through demand gen.
Dave [0:29:00]: I they could learn a lot from you about how comm actually drives demand.
Dave [0:29:04]: We get so obsessed over channels, but there's so much you could be doing.
Dave [0:29:07]: Were there, like blind spots or areas.
Dave [0:29:10]: I have a much smaller example.
Dave [0:29:11]: I wasn't leading marketing at a company as big of SurveyMonkey, but I was a CMO of a small startup, and I got to build a team of ten people and my background is very much product marketing brand, comm, and I wasn't a strong demand gen person and the first person I hired was a very good demand gen person, and I Mh.
Dave [0:29:27]: Got that experience because at my past company, my peer was awesome at demand, and I saw her and I saw what good looks like.
Dave [0:29:34]: Like, how have you kinda navigated building out your team that way?
Katie [0:29:38]: Yeah.
Katie [0:29:38]: I'm a big believer in just asking around.
Katie [0:29:41]: So when I got this opportunity, I was connecting with CMOs, you know, from the Exit Five community or just from my network, and I remember talking to this one woman and she was, like, mission number one for you is to get as close as possible to the growth team.
Katie [0:29:57]: You need to look at everything they're looking at, you need to understand everything about their strategy, you need to ask all your dumb questions right now so that you can get really good at this really fast, and that has been a really great strategy for us.
Katie [0:30:12]: I think I wouldn't have had the confidence to do things like, you know, shut down that out of home campaign or pull off the organic summer move to save all the budget for the fall.
Katie [0:30:22]: If I didn't have that better understanding of how that organization worked and all the levers we could pull and what we were seeing in the data and what was missing.
Katie [0:30:31]: But if you're overcome by impostor syndrome when you step into something new, and that prevents you from asking people wiser than you for advice, then you're just like writing your obituary ahead of time.
Katie [0:30:43]: Like, you gotta embrace what you don't know and go in there and turn over all the rocks and ask all the questions and and just really seek out some some knowledge from people who have more experience.
Dave [0:30:53]: What's the role of comm today.
Dave [0:30:55]: So segue into, like, it's an interesting.
Dave [0:30:58]: Where does comm fit?
Dave [0:31:00]: You know, you see so many people asking about P r and in our group right now.
Dave [0:31:04]: Mh.
Dave [0:31:05]: Is it more important than ever am I over overweight that?
Dave [0:31:07]: I want this as not SurveyMonkey lessons, but, like, I gotta tier one com's person on the line, and I want your advice about, like, what matters for, you know, other senior marketing leaders that are listening?
Katie [0:31:18]: I think it's more important than ever.
Katie [0:31:20]: Maybe I'm biased, but I think it's again, like, okay.
Katie [0:31:24]: Ai has changed everything for everybody.
Katie [0:31:27]: Search doesn't work how it used to.
Katie [0:31:29]: You're facing traffic losses.
Katie [0:31:32]: You're facing just, like, easier than ever faster than ever content creation that just is all garbage and sounds the same and is super boring.
Katie [0:31:39]: So who are the people who can break out of these reps for you?
Katie [0:31:44]: It's both P r and, like, if you think about P r is, like, pitching media building relationships with journalists.
Katie [0:31:49]: Journalists also operate differently.
Katie [0:31:52]: All of my favorite journalists write their own sub back now.
Dave [0:31:55]: Okay.
Dave [0:31:55]: This is what I was gonna say Like, yeah.
Dave [0:31:57]: What what is the media landscape is so different.
Dave [0:32:00]: Right?
Dave [0:32:01]: My very first job out of college was at a P agency.
Dave [0:32:04]: Now we're, like, literally cold calling reporters, and I was like, please don't answer.
Dave [0:32:07]: Please don't.
Dave [0:32:07]: They didn't know what to.
Dave [0:32:10]: U.
Dave [0:32:11]: But today, the media, like, you know, media has been democrat.
Dave [0:32:14]: So are you...
Dave [0:32:16]: Are there, like, publications that still matter to people?
Dave [0:32:19]: I I worked...
Dave [0:32:19]: One of my clients was like, a legal tech company and there was, like, sixty law publications now?
Dave [0:32:24]: I don't know who matters to serve them?
Dave [0:32:26]: Is it all, like micro?
Dave [0:32:27]: It's P r now, like this kinda like micro influencer thing with, like, subs tag?
Dave [0:32:32]: Is that the play?
Dave [0:32:33]: Or are I missing something There are bigger publications that still matter?
Katie [0:32:37]: Yes, and it all depends on your story.
Katie [0:32:40]: And and again, if you go back to this, like, not a swiss army knife, but a very specific tool for a very specific buyer, you can find the micro influencers who are important to you.
Katie [0:32:50]: We still want to speak to small and medium sized businesses in general, and so we'll often, you know, work our relationships with fast company and Inc, outlets that have really great newsletter thinking, like, the morning brew type folks.
Katie [0:33:05]: So, yes, it is, like a micro influencer push, but also trying to get the bigger publications to think of you in that way, and then leveraging your own internal experts to tell stories on their own channels, our CEO eric Johnson is an Avid runner.
Katie [0:33:22]: He's like, this...
Katie [0:33:24]: One of these crazy people who was just like, I was talking to him last night, and I was like, I got invited to run a fifty k who runs a fifty k.
Katie [0:33:30]: He's like, it's not that hard.
Katie [0:33:31]: So anyway, he has...
Katie [0:33:32]: All.
Dave [0:33:33]: There's is not a normal...
Dave [0:33:34]: There's not a normal CEO or founder, and I say that would love and I've worked for them.
Dave [0:33:37]: You know It's like it's...
Katie [0:33:39]: And he's awesome.
Katie [0:33:39]: But he...
Katie [0:33:40]: So we were like, looking for an organic angle for him to be posting online and we're, like, what are you running thoughts?
Katie [0:33:45]: That you say that's either the most productive release productive time of your day, like, just share your running thoughts with the community, and it's been so well received.
Katie [0:33:52]: And so a com person can
Dave [0:33:55]: build right now.
Katie [0:33:56]: Yeah.
Katie [0:33:56]: Eric Johnson, SurveyMonkey, follow running thoughts.
Katie [0:33:59]: Great.
Katie [0:34:00]: And sometimes they're just, like, you know, post about kindness and his daughters, and sometimes it's about pizza, but it's often about business strategy and how he's thinking about the hard problems and...
Dave [0:34:10]: Good.
Dave [0:34:10]: I'd rather see do this than, like, what a lot of people do is they just kinda like, start all these CEOs are just posting like s generated from...
Dave [0:34:18]: You know, it's just, like, they got a ghost writer or they're just s claude.
Dave [0:34:22]: Like, I...
Dave [0:34:22]: This is much better.
Dave [0:34:23]: It's much more authentic.
Dave [0:34:26]: Okay.
Dave [0:34:26]: This is great.
Dave [0:34:27]: He's sweaty standing in front of the Peloton.
Dave [0:34:30]: Right?
Katie [0:34:31]: Yes.
Katie [0:34:31]: And a comps person can find a really good comps person can find what is authentic and interesting.
Katie [0:34:35]: About you or your person, your principal that you're supporting, and tell stories about it.
Katie [0:34:42]: And, like, what else is there in this day and age that's gonna help you break through or be a brand that's memorable.
Dave [0:34:47]: D insight as a comes person your peers.
Dave [0:34:49]: I'm guessing you still talk about this stuff a lot.
Dave [0:34:51]: It comes up a lot.
Dave [0:34:52]: You're probably doing it at every monkey.
Dave [0:34:53]: Are there any lessons about mentions and stuff, influencing search and Ll like Linkedin and getting included in a subs and going on a podcast or even writing press releases and having that bomb up on your website?
Dave [0:35:07]: Any insights and all that kind of mum jumbo I red blah.
Katie [0:35:11]: It's just changing every minute of every day.
Katie [0:35:14]: So We don't...
Katie [0:35:15]: We like, a lot of people started participating on Reddit?
Dave [0:35:18]: Yeah.
Dave [0:35:18]: How.
Dave [0:35:19]: How you do that in a way that doesn't get, like, the pitch forks coming at you?
Katie [0:35:22]: So we have some internal folks who have, like, zillion of karma points.
Katie [0:35:26]: They're just, like, obsessed with Reddit.
Katie [0:35:27]: They're are very active on the platform.
Katie [0:35:29]: Again, ask for help right.
Katie [0:35:30]: So we're like, hey, if we wanna have a brand presence here, we don't want to be gross.
Katie [0:35:35]: Like, with how do we do it?
Katie [0:35:36]: What do we do and they were like, you know, you need to respect it.
Katie [0:35:39]: Anonymity you need to be helpful.
Katie [0:35:40]: So again, our number one priority was to be relentlessly helpful and relentlessly us.
Katie [0:35:45]: And so that first part, I think is really important on reddit.
Katie [0:35:48]: What we've heard from customers on the platform is they thought they didn't like our free plan because we were offering, you know, a limited number of responses and then you have to pay for the rest, and they felt like that was, like, holding the responses hostage.
Katie [0:36:00]: So we did a...
Katie [0:36:02]: Our first post and we worked so hard on this post.
Katie [0:36:04]: Was just to explain it was a flow chart.
Katie [0:36:07]: And it was like, when should you use survey, and when should you use a free tool like Google forms that you could just get unlimited responses from, but you don't need the bells and whistles that come with SurveyMonkey, The security the, like, additional Ai features, the ease of use, all of the things that make us a good platform.
Katie [0:36:24]: And so that kind of approach where you're not just, like, hey, Reddit it come by SurveyMonkey, but you're like, here's something useful for you to help navigate when you're choosing a platform don't pick us if you need a hundred responses for free.
Katie [0:36:38]: We're not the platform for that.
Katie [0:36:39]: And, like, that kind of honesty and hopeful, I think was really well received there.
Katie [0:36:43]: But all the news now is that, like, the L aren't inc Reddit anymore.
Katie [0:36:48]: But I'm still proud of our community participation there because it's a big audience and, like, we can be helpful to the people there.
Katie [0:36:53]: But I think if you're just chasing, like, Ll mentions, you gotta come back to, like, hoo your buyer, or what do they care about?
Katie [0:37:01]: Are you being helpful to them, that content will find them if you, you know, are listening and, like, doing the the feedback loops that you need to be doing, but to chase the Ll mentions, it's like, Oh, this gonna change every day.
Katie [0:37:13]: It's too much.
Dave [0:37:14]: Can you give me a overview of how you structured the team and how you run, like, the weekly?
Dave [0:37:19]: What does Katie running the marketing team look like?
Dave [0:37:21]: What are you're just kinda operating rhythms and cadences and people love that type of stuff.
Dave [0:37:27]: Can you tell me some of that?
Katie [0:37:28]: I know it's so helpful just to hear how other people do it.
Katie [0:37:30]: And now I wanna know what other people.
Dave [0:37:32]: Like that then you have an opposite, which is, like everyone learned that, you know, Jensen at Nvidia has, like, a hundred direct reports you know.
Dave [0:37:40]: And so everyone's like, I'm having and doesn't have anyone on ones, and everyone's like, I'm doing that.
Dave [0:37:45]: It's like, okay.
Dave [0:37:46]: Great.
Dave [0:37:46]: How do you do doing Katie?
Katie [0:37:47]: So we've structured our week.
Katie [0:37:49]: There's a meeting that I called the weekly health check.
Katie [0:37:52]: And everybody who's a director and above comes to this meeting and chimes in on what they did last week.
Katie [0:37:58]: So it's, like, your key metrics for the moment.
Katie [0:38:00]: And then what happened last week that influenced those metrics and what's happening this week.
Katie [0:38:04]: And then there's also a section for issues and blockers and a section for...
Katie [0:38:08]: It's a big spreadsheet, and it's, like, do you have anything that we should need about this week, Especially if they're...
Katie [0:38:13]: That issue or blocker needs to get escalated.
Katie [0:38:15]: So this started as a weekly meeting?
Katie [0:38:17]: And it would be like, about an hour, we'd spend the first five to seven minutes reading the thing, and then we go and and we talk about it.
Katie [0:38:25]: But what we found recently is that we can do at async every other week for the most part, and then I'll call a meeting on any blockers or anything that's flagged in there.
Katie [0:38:34]: So now it's becoming an every other week meeting, which I think is helpful because I'm a big fan of giving people heads downtime and, like, let's not me if it's just a read of what's on this document, Like, we don't need a meeting for that.
Dave [0:38:45]: Gosh, especially now when it's, like, if you just send me a freaking three page Pdf from Claude, and I get me on a call Like, you...
Dave [0:38:52]: And I'm not going to that meeting.
Dave [0:38:53]: Absolutely not.
Katie [0:38:54]: Did you see what Sophie from Clay wrote?
Katie [0:38:56]: She's, like, an engineering manager, and she wrote these rules for writing with Ai, and they're so simple.
Katie [0:39:01]: I post about it because it resonated with me so much because that day, I had gotten a seventeen page claude Pdf.
Katie [0:39:08]: And I was like, no.
Katie [0:39:09]: No.
Katie [0:39:10]: I wanna know what you think.
Katie [0:39:12]: Somebody told me the term for this if you just passed claude work on, you're a meat proxy.
Dave [0:39:18]: I saw this.
Dave [0:39:18]: This is going around.
Dave [0:39:19]: Let's put a production Marissa, when you listen to this later, let's link to Sophie thing from clay, and then we gotta put that.
Dave [0:39:26]: What was it meat vehicle meat?
Katie [0:39:29]: Meat proxy don't be a meat proxy, mean what you send around.
Katie [0:39:32]: Like, if you need to stamp...
Katie [0:39:33]: Her basic premise was, like, you need to stand behind every word and how it is presented.
Katie [0:39:37]: Yeah.
Katie [0:39:38]: And if you cannot do that, you're not doing this.
Katie [0:39:40]: Right?
Katie [0:39:40]: Like, you
Dave [0:39:42]: you
Katie [0:39:42]: really have to engage with it to make sure it's communicating what you want to communicate.
Dave [0:39:47]: Yeah.
Dave [0:39:47]: Okay.
Dave [0:39:48]: I distracted you on...
Dave [0:39:49]: I have a side tangent there, but what we don't need to get there.
Dave [0:39:51]: So I like I like that.
Dave [0:39:52]: God you're such a Comm pro.
Dave [0:39:53]: By way I love the name naming it a health check as opposed to like, Katie's management sync is like, you know, that seems intentional.
Katie [0:40:00]: Yeah.
Katie [0:40:00]: And then later in the week, we have time reserved for any meetings that we need to have or, like, strategy discussions and that is an accordion meeting so it's like it.
Katie [0:40:08]: Add people if they need to come, shrink it if they don't.
Katie [0:40:10]: We'd...
Katie [0:40:11]: I just don't like...
Dave [0:40:12]: Is it industry term in in accordion meeting.
Katie [0:40:15]: In accordion?
Katie [0:40:15]: Did I invent it?
Dave [0:40:16]: I have the motion too.
Dave [0:40:18]: Like, yes, possibly.
Dave [0:40:19]: It can
Katie [0:40:20]: get bigger or smaller.
Katie [0:40:20]: Based on.
Katie [0:40:21]: I do love a one on one.
Katie [0:40:23]: I do them bi weekly.
Katie [0:40:25]: I think I have seven direct reports, which is probably a lot, but, you know, I really get a lot of value out of staying close to all of them.
Katie [0:40:33]: And so I haven't moved to change that at all.
Katie [0:40:36]: But I love one.
Dave [0:40:37]: What does your one on one look like?
Dave [0:40:38]: Is it structured unstructured?
Dave [0:40:39]: How do you do it?
Katie [0:40:41]: I ask for docs.
Katie [0:40:42]: And so my Ea will go through and say, like, if the dock isn't filled out, do you really need to meet with Katie or are we releasing this time.
Katie [0:40:48]: So it put some pressure on people to put some thought into what we're gonna talk about?
Katie [0:40:52]: I always start with blockers.
Dave [0:40:54]: Does a doc have, like, some type of format or something or is it just like, what notes do you wanna talk about?
Katie [0:41:00]: It's blockers.
Katie [0:41:00]: It's wins that you want me to know about.
Katie [0:41:03]: It's like things you've accomplished and it's discussion items.
Dave [0:41:08]: Where'd did you get this?
Katie [0:41:09]: You know what, I think it's originally from Francis Fry and and Morris.
Katie [0:41:12]: I think this is what they recommend, and I just love it.
Katie [0:41:16]: They're also very anti recurring meetings.
Katie [0:41:19]: Like, meet when you need to talk about something do not meet just because it's on the calendar.
Katie [0:41:22]: And I I like to live by that.
Katie [0:41:25]: So, yeah, we start with blockers.
Katie [0:41:26]: I always read the wins and the things they've accomplished, but we don't necessarily need to talk about it.
Katie [0:41:31]: It's like, I, like, comment on it or, like, send a little, like emojis and stuff.
Katie [0:41:34]: But then we talk about, like, if they have questions about strategy, if they're dealing with something hard on the team, if there's a blocker an issue that we need to unblock.
Katie [0:41:42]: That's really where we dig in the meat of it?
Dave [0:41:46]: Is there ever any surprises is, like, does someone write in the doc?
Dave [0:41:49]: Like, I'm thinking about quitting.
Dave [0:41:50]: And I, like, how do the personal things come up because I...
Dave [0:41:53]: I feeling like one zero one is a lot.
Dave [0:41:55]: Like, I don't wanna put it on the.
Dave [0:41:56]: I'm waiting I'm waiting into my one on with Katie, and I'm finally gonna like, talk to her about this thing.
Katie [0:42:01]: Yeah.
Katie [0:42:01]: Well, I mean, anything urgent, that's what Slack for and and the beauty of, like, not filling your calendar with recurring meetings as you're available.
Katie [0:42:09]: So someone's was like, do you have a minute.
Katie [0:42:10]: I'm like, actually, yes.
Katie [0:42:11]: Because I do not have a thousand recurring meetings on my calendar.
Katie [0:42:15]: I have time to talk to you about this?
Katie [0:42:17]: And they'll usually put something in there as a discussion topic that's like, people matters.
Katie [0:42:21]: And it doesn't say more than that, but I know then that we...
Katie [0:42:24]: You know, it needs to be a serious conversation, and sometimes I'll even ping them if I see it ahead of time to be like, is this urgent.
Katie [0:42:30]: Should we talk now?
Katie [0:42:31]: So, yeah.
Katie [0:42:32]: And I do like to know people personally too.
Katie [0:42:35]: So, like, I always save time for just those little conversations.
Katie [0:42:39]: How's the family on that good stuff.
Dave [0:42:41]: Yeah.
Dave [0:42:41]: That's a good reframe there.
Dave [0:42:43]: Is like, you need to...
Dave [0:42:44]: As the team leader, you need to have time to be available to chad.
Dave [0:42:47]: Where a lot of team leaders are constantly in meetings.
Dave [0:42:52]: You know, have you ever seen that?
Dave [0:42:53]: There's, like a meme and it's like, you're basically in meetings from nine to five, and then you're supposed to fit...
Dave [0:42:58]: When do you actually do the work?
Dave [0:42:59]: Know, it's like the work managers to lead the team and to be there for them.
Dave [0:43:03]: It's, like the...
Dave [0:43:04]: It's refreshing to hear you say that.
Katie [0:43:06]: Well, and I think it's easy to just go where your calendar tells you to go, but that's not what you need to be doing.
Katie [0:43:11]: That's not driving your own priorities or dictating, you know, what you need to be focused on.
Katie [0:43:16]: That's just...
Katie [0:43:16]: That's somebody else's agenda.
Dave [0:43:18]: Okay.
Dave [0:43:18]: Do you ever bring the whole team together?
Dave [0:43:20]: Like, everybody, like, hang town hall type of thing?
Katie [0:43:24]: Yes.
Katie [0:43:24]: We have in all hands once a month where we...
Katie [0:43:27]: It's the the marketing and communications team and we call it Marco, where we all get together and we had it this morning.
Katie [0:43:32]: We talked about the campaigns, some of the stuff we did over summer, how things are tracking, some celebrations, like, know, somebody got married and other people had big anniversaries that we got to celebrate.
Katie [0:43:43]: And then once a year, we have a summit where from all over the world, all of the team comes together.
Katie [0:43:49]: We're doing at Toronto this year, it's gonna be super fun in October, and that timing lends itself really well to twenty twenty seven and planning and getting the team all aligned on the strategy, And that is such a fun week that we get to have all together.
Katie [0:44:01]: Because we've got offices in seven countries around the world and then a bunch of remote people too.
Katie [0:44:05]: So it's just absolutely vital for, you know, that team and making sure everybody knows each other and has a good relationship.
Dave [0:44:13]: Okay.
Dave [0:44:13]: Last question.
Dave [0:44:14]: Shout out someone who has had a meaningful impact on your career as a marketing leader.
Dave [0:44:18]: And why?
Katie [0:44:19]: Definitely, Leila Sri austin.
Katie [0:44:21]: She way back when when I was, like a director of ko comps saw something in me and really worked to nurture that and kinda of planted the seed that this could be my job one day.
Katie [0:44:33]: And she's also the type of leader that I really look up to.
Katie [0:44:37]: She would be the first person of volunteer for, like, a lip sync battle or to, like, film a silly video where she did hundreds of takes trying to just throw a basketball over her shoulder.
Katie [0:44:47]: You know?
Katie [0:44:47]: Like, she's that kinda Hmo who brought the fun and at our Ck k this last year was my first one as marketing leader, and I wore this, like, head to toe...
Katie [0:44:56]: Survey mu green suit.
Katie [0:44:57]: And the sales leader and I because it was ski themed had, like, a nineteen eighties app race ski, like, outfit for dinner that night.
Katie [0:45:05]: And all of that is because of Leila because of the person she was in the way she tried to bring the fun to everything.
Katie [0:45:10]: I really aspire to be a marketing leader like that.
Dave [0:45:14]: I love that.
Dave [0:45:14]: I've gotten to know her a little bit, and I always kind of vibe with her and I love when I find out that someone actually is awesome from someone else.
Dave [0:45:21]: Like, who actually walked through them.
Dave [0:45:22]: Like, okay.
Dave [0:45:23]: Good.
Dave [0:45:23]: She is who we thought she was.
Katie [0:45:25]: She's actually awesome.
Katie [0:45:26]: That's true.
Dave [0:45:28]: Alright, Katie, Thanks for hanging on the pod.
Dave [0:45:29]: I'm pumped.
Dave [0:45:30]: I think this is a great story.
Dave [0:45:32]: Given all of the, like, Ai and s.
Dave [0:45:35]: And I I always love a story when, like, the company wanted to go enterprise and we needed to be more, you know, serious and we had to have this brand.
Dave [0:45:43]: It's like, actually no.
Dave [0:45:44]: Because the things that I love about marketing is like the story about, like, why it was SurveyMonkey.
Dave [0:45:48]: The curiosity of a monkey, like, leaning into that brand and showing people that you can sell to the enterprise even with a monkey in your brand.
Dave [0:45:55]: You know, it's like, that's the whole point.
Katie [0:45:57]: Yeah.
Katie [0:45:57]: We gotta lean into the monkey now.
Katie [0:45:59]: It's what makes us different.
Katie [0:46:00]: Makes us special.
Dave [0:46:01]: Lean into the monkey.
Dave [0:46:02]: Yeah.
Dave [0:46:03]: Alright, Katie.
Dave [0:46:03]: Thanks for coming on the pod.
Dave [0:46:04]: I appreciate you.
Dave [0:46:05]: Go check out SurveyMonkey.
Dave [0:46:07]: Follow Katie on Linkedin.
Dave [0:46:08]: I already got Eric.
Dave [0:46:08]: I'm into the running stuff.
Dave [0:46:10]: Eric added one new follower as a result of you coming on the pod today.
Dave [0:46:13]: So amazing.
Dave [0:46:14]: Yeah.
Dave [0:46:18]: Hey.
Dave [0:46:18]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.
Dave [0:46:20]: If you like this episode.
Dave [0:46:21]: You know what?
Dave [0:46:22]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave review because Hi I don't really care about that.
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