August 24, 2022
Article

Digital Transformation: First team first, it’s hard to be simple, get out of your comfort zone (podcast episode #29)

SUMMARY:

Get ideas for managing your team, navigating your career, and innovating your marketing campaigns by listening to episode #29 of the How I Made It In Marketing podcast. I had a lively, warm conversation with Emily Campbell, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinite Electronics (a Warburg Pincus company).

Campbell discussed the art and science of marketing, challenging your team to help them grow, and balancing an extremely successful career with a really interesting life.

by Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute

Technology Marketing: First team first, it’s hard to be simple, get out of your comfort zone (podcast episode #29)

This article was published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

Our latest podcast guest discusses balancing the art and science of marketing.

But I asked her a deeper question as well – what about philosophy in marketing? After all, our free digital marketing course is called Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages.

You can hear the answer to that question, along with plenty of lesson-filled stories, from Emily Campbell, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinite Electronics (a Warburg Pincus portfolio company). Warburg Pincus is a global private equity firm with $85 billion in assets under management. Campbell manages a 40-person team and a $30 million marketing budget.

Listen to our conversation using the embedded player below or click through to your preferred audio streaming service.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Google Podcasts

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Some lessons from Campbell that emerged in our discussion:

Balance the art and science of marketing

Campbell has always been surprised when someone comes to her with a proposal or a new marketing campaign and just talks about ads or the web page. In her career, she has learned that it's not just about design. It's about the objectives that you are designing for, and what your success criteria are going to be. This creates a balance between the art of design and the science behind measuring effectiveness of any campaign.

While working at Dell inc., she had the opportunity to lead a team focused on redesigning Dell.com with the goal of delivering additional conversion/revenue. Historically most of the design at Dell was done based on executive approval versus customer behavior. She implemented a series of A/B and multivariate tests prior to the design to start to test customer behavior. Additionally, the team managed testing throughout the process and post launch.

They were able to deliver a new site that actually increased conversion and average order value leading to significant increases in revenue. She has always been more interested in the testing and data side of marketing. This was a great opportunity to combine the design side and the testing and data side to deliver an overall better product.

Get out of your comfort zone

Campbell had an opportunity to work in Ireland on an 18-month assignment. At the time she took the role, she had never spent any time outside the US, and she had two young children who would be coming with her. She showed up in Dublin, got in a car accident the first morning she was there and started a new job the next day.  That first year, she earned so much about different cultures and how to get along with a broad range of people.

She ended up staying in Europe for five years. Over that time, there were many Americans who talked about taking an assignment in Europe but very few of them actually did it. She learned that if you get out of your comfort zone and take a chance to do something different, you will stretch yourself in ways that you never imagined. 

First team first

Over the course of her career, Campbell has had several roles where her boss or her boss’s boss created tension among teams by giving conflicting goals or creating competition among peers. In her current role as CMO of Infinite Electronics, she was told that her peer group would be her first team and they would need to work with each other and collaborate to be successful. She says it sounds intuitive, but the reality is, it’s not.

At Infinite, the team focuses on ensuring that they are helping prioritize and align resources cross functionally. They are currently in the middle of a large digital transformation program including new websites, a new PIM (product information management) and a new ERP (enterprise resource planning). There is no way that they could have taken on this complex program if the various leaders were not 100% aligned on resources and priorities.

She says it is exciting to work at a company where that type of teamwork is modeled from the top down.

Challenge your team and help them grow

Campbell has several people who have worked for her multiple times over the years. One person that she thinks about a lot was someone who was moved to her team when she was a new manager. Generally, people recognized that Christian was extremely smart, but he often seemed bored at work and was perceived as “lazy.”

She was very concerned when he joined her team since she only had three people working for her. She discovered quickly that Christian was not lazy, but he was bored. She started asking him to do more, including things that he had never done before. Every task or project he completed was excellent. He became more engaged with work and was looking to learn more.

By the time she left the role, Christian was doing the work of all three of the other people on the team. He was quickly promoted and was later hired by the person who had at one point said he was lazy.

Campbell found that you have to deal with each team member as an individual. Each person is motivated by something different. It is important to understand the priorities of people on your team and help them grow and develop the way they want to grow and develop – not the way you are comfortable teaching them.

It’s hard to be simple

Steve Jobs said at one point “simple can be harder than complex.” Coco Chanel said, “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” Very different quotes, but to Campbell they are very similar. How do you simplify a complex message (or project) and highlight what is important? She tends to dig into the details of whatever marketing, sales, or digital activity she is working on.

She has had to learn over many years that knowing and communicating are two different things. Being able to discuss digital transformation with her current board of directors is exactly this kind of a challenge. She has had to explain a complicated tech stack, a significant taxonomy shift and a massive content migration in a way that people who are not marketing or technical people can understand. She is still working on this one.

Stories (with lessons) about the people she made it with

Campbell also shared lessons she learned from the people she collaborated with:

Balance an extremely successful career with a really interesting life

via Kim Hibler, VP SMB Sales, Dell (currently retired)

Hibler was leading the sales organization at Dell when Campbell was working on the Dell.com redesign she mentioned earlier. Hibler was one of the smartest people Campbell knows, but that is not what she learned from Hibler. Hibler has always been able to balance an extremely successful career with an interesting life, and Campbell has tried to pick up this skill while working with her.

When she was 38, Campbell started working out at a gym near her house. Hibler convinced her to join a group training session at 5:00 a.m., which she did.  Campbell stayed with that group for 10 years until she moved to another state. Even today, she works out early so she is not trying to fit it in after work.

When her oldest turned 21, Hibler took him on a mother/son trip, which may not sound fun for a 21-year-old, but Hibler took him to Vegas. When Campbell’s oldest turned 21, they went to LA for a long weekend together and it was fun. Hibler has always been an amazing mentor and whenever Campbell gets back to Austin, they try to catch up. Not for coffee or a drink, but for a five- to seven-mile power walk around the lake.

Coaching and mentoring can help people grow in their current roles but also help them plan for their future career – even if it is not with their current place of employment

via Joi Chevalier, Program Manager, Dell (currently founder and President of The Cook’s Nook)

Chevalier is an amazing woman who worked for Campbell at one point. She remembers talking to Chevalier about her career goals and ambitions as part of her development planning. Chevalier was a chef on the side, but she expressed interest in starting a restaurant at some point in her career. Knowing that was her goal, Campbell tried to give her assignments that would round out her experience and allow her to interact with finance and planning teams – two skills she would need.

After leaving Dell, she founded a company called The Cook’s Nook, which started as a food and tech culinary incubator.  She has since expanded her vision to focus on food access/security for underserved areas of Austin, Texas.  She is accomplishing great things. Campbell likes to think that coaching and mentoring can help people grow in their current roles but also help them plan for their future career – even if it is not with their current place of employment.

Go into a meeting with a high-level story – never the details

via Matt Anderson CDO, Arrow Electronics (currently at The Carlyle Group)

Anderson was Campbell’s boss at Arrow Electronics. He is the best storyteller she has ever met, and he really spends time thinking about what he wants to say.  When she was working for him, they would spend hours prepping for board meetings or other exec meetings. He would know every detail of a campaign or a program, but he always went into a meeting with a high-level story – never the details. 

Carefully woven, these stories were like breadcrumbs that led the audience to the right conclusion – additional investment, organizational changes, or reprioritization of company strategies. He was also able to inspire his team by creating a compelling vision of the future. She would generally say she has never worked harder than she did when she was working for Anderson, feeling both productive and knowledgeable with him as a leader.

She really felt he believed in her and her team. She has tried to take that into her current team as she is working to inspire them.

Related content mentioned in this episode

NFTs For Brands: It’s OK to say no, always be a student, don’t resist change (podcast episode #26)

About this podcast

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages free digital marketing course.

Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a tough transcript of our discussion.

Daniel Burstein: Go into the meeting with a high level story. This is the lesson our next guest learned from one of her former leaders. When I read this lesson in her podcast guest application, I thought it was a good lesson. But then here's when it got really good. I saw who she learned it from. He was a CDO Chief Data Officer. Now our biases may say a data person. Oh, boy, this presentation is going to get down into the weeds. It's going to be chock full of numbers and spreadsheets that are confusing at best or even worse. It's going to look important, but it doesn't really help the organization make decisions. So if that CDO can go into meetings with a high level story, so can I and so can you.

To sell your marketing ideas internally to get budget, to advocate for the customer. And stories, that's the stock and trade of the How I Made It Marketing Podcast. If you've listened before, it is how we hope to grab you, add a little interest or fun to your day, and most importantly, pass along the lessons from the marketing leaders and entrepreneurs we talked to to help inspire your next your next great campaign or your career move.

Like our next guest who will share the story behind how she learned that lesson from the Chief Data Officer along with many other lesson filled stories from her career. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Emily Campbell, the Chief Marketing Officer of Infinite Electronics. Thanks for joining us, Emily.

Emily Campbell: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Daniel Burstein: So let's take a quick look at your background. I just kind of cherry picked off your LinkedIn. Early in your career you started as Marketing Manager at Compaq, then you were at Dell for many years. You rose to vice president of Global Online Product Management at Dell. You were a Senior Director of E-Business at National Instruments. You've had many other roles.

But right now, for the past year, you've been the Chief Marketing Officer at Infinite Electronics. For those who don't know, Infinite Electronics is a Warburg Pincus portfolio company. Warburg Pincus is a global private equity firm with $85 billion in assets under management. And Emily manages a $30 Billion marketing budget and a team of 40 people. So, Emily, give us an idea. What is your day like as Chief Marketing Officer?

Emily Campbell: Well, most days are pretty diverse. You know, we have a number of different marketing campaigns that are running at any given time. Infinite is kind of a portfolio company within Warburg Pincus as our private equity sponsor. We actually go to market under a number of different brand names. So we have brands that are in various stages of growth, some that are much smaller or some that are larger. And so really trying to make sure that we're addressing customer needs across a broad range of market categories is really critical.

And then we also have a number of strategic programs that we're working on, including a massive digital transformation program, which includes a new website for each of the brands that we host or that we own. And also looking at a new product information management tool, a new, you know, how we align our customer data. So just a lot of major changes in the corporation right now.

Daniel Burstein: And that's great. We're going to get into some of those stories with Emily especially how she's communicating some of that with her board of directors. So if you're struggling with that, I think you could learn a lot from Emily. But I also want to call on one thing, too. We were talking about, you know, I know some B2B organizations are very sales driven. Sales just going out there getting whatever leads they can get. But the way I look at it is you have a well fed sales team. So do you want to tell us a bit about that.

Emily Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. So Infinite is very marketing driven. So if you think about like the pointy end of the spear, we spend a lot of time looking at how we're driving online revenue, but also how we're ultimately driving leads into the sales organization. And the majority of our customers are coming to the business from leads generated from the web.

We have a very tight relationship with our sales organization, actually, one of the best I've ever seen in any companies that I've worked with. You know, I meet with the sales organization almost daily. The sales lead also meets with the marketing team quite frequently. And it's just a very positive like, you know, activities float all boats we’re all trying to achieve the same thing. And we don't have conflicting goals, which is amazing and makes it so much easier when we're working together. But yeah, we do love the fact that a lot of the activities that we're doing from a marketing perspective are what really drive the revenue for the company.

Daniel Burstein: Okay, great. Well, let's look at some of the lessons we can learn from the things you made in marketing. So I've never worked in another career, but I kind of feel like as marketers, other than like a podiatrist or actuary, we make things, we get to make things, we make campaigns, we make brands. And one of the things you made was Dell.com actually redesigning Dell.com and the lesson you learned from that was to balance the art and science of marketing. So we've heard this before, but I want to get into the specific story of how you did it because it's really interesting. So can you share that with us?

Emily Campbell: Emily Yeah, absolutely. So Dell.com is in a constant state of flux and always evolving, but I was involved in the online business at Dell for many years while I was there, but one project in particular really stood out to me. We were working on revamping the purchase experience for our consumer business and it was very contentious. You know, we wanted to really bring together on a global basis the purchase path so that we didn't have each region or even country operating with a completely different path and making it very difficult to manage on a global basis.

So we went through we did a ton of research upfront and then we designed new pages, launched a new purchase path. And you know, one of the things we found is no matter how well you think you've planned up front, there are things that you will not learn until something actually goes live. And then, you know, it's chaos, right?

So we took an approach that basically said we have KPIs that we've established upfront and we have success metrics that we've defined that say once we get to this level, we believe that we are confident that we will be in the right place to deploy this website on a global basis. And we did a number of A/B tests, actually a ton of them in order to pretest activities or things that we wanted to add into the website when we launched the new purchase path.

But also once we deployed, we did a number of tests to make some enhancements to the site as we went and then continue to do testing as we went through the deployment and on an ongoing basis. And we were able to very clearly see revenue enhancements and conversion enhancements based on the testing that we were doing.

I know a lot of companies do A B tests and a lot of companies talk about testing and how they're using it. But at Dell, that was like core and fundamental to the work that we were doing with the online group. We were doing hundreds of tests a quarter and very, very focused on making sure that we were improving the customer experience and ultimately driving revenue growth for the company.

Daniel Burstein: Alright, so I know sometimes with a home page or a website, especially with a company as big as Dell, you know, it could be a bit of a political turf battle, right. You know, everybody wants to get on the home page. Everyone wants to get their product on the home page or service on the home page or get, you know, in the NAV or where it wants to be by doing all that testing, did you help have like some information where you could push back and say, hey, maybe, you know, that shouldn't be at the top of the home page or it shouldn't be in the NAV or something like that.

Did any of that data really help you make a decision of what should be there versus what can happen in, you know, some organizations where it's more of a political battle of who gets to be where?

Emily Campbell: Absolutely. And I think that that was very continuously happening all throughout this program where we were doing these tests. And this is why it's a bit of the art and science, right? It's like you want to have data to inform your decisions. It can't be just, hey, an executive swoops in and says, I don't like that color or I don't like that placement, or, you know, you have different stakeholders who want, as you said, like better positioning on the home page or in the header. You know, you really want to have the data to back up what you're doing. And that's where a lot of this testing and having predefined KPIs, things along those lines really came into play. But you also have to think strategically about, okay, now what do I do with all this data? And that's where a lot of the art comes in.

So I know what I know, but I don't know what is going to work the best as my next step. So really being able to balance out the I'm taking in a lot of information, but I'm coming out with a few activities or actions that really make sense based on all of this information. And by continually testing, and testing in small increments, we were able to really alleviate a lot of that executive swoop in where you know, we could actually show them with data what worked best.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, that's great. I also wonder, you know, you talk about the art and science. I wonder what about the philosophy of marketing? And here's what I mean. So for example, we have a free digital marketing course. It's called Become a Marketer Philosopher. And so if you can think of, you know, the creative is commonly referred to as art, and the science is studying customer behavior, like with testing.

But philosophy gets to the more fundamental. Like when you said we're going to design Dell.com based on customer behavior versus executive approval. Like saying we're going to design based on customer behavior with the testing versus executive approval. That's fundamental, right? That's not art or science. That is an internal philosophy. That's a philosophy you're trying to bring in to the organization or, you know, keep going in the organization. So do you have any thoughts in general on that philosophy of marketing, like how to actually approach it?

Emily Campbell: Oh, good question. I mean, I think that when you're trying to determine, like what your overall framework is, and I would think about that almost as the framework that then you're operating within, you know, you have to have some guidelines to say, I believe that this is true. Like I believe that we can get more revenue from our online site if we do this correctly, or I believe that we can increase average order value or whatever, whatever the goal is, increase NPS.

You know, you almost have to build that framework that defines the philosophy before you even get started. If you don't have that, you're not grounded in what success looks like. And so I, I think that it's really important. I look at it right now. We're working on developing a philosophy at my current company with what do we want to do with customer data, how do we want to define what is a customer?

And, you know, particularly in a B2B based business where you have users and you have buyers and you have approvers and you have, you know, different bill to and ship to addresses and it can get super complex when you start thinking about what is a customer. I think if you don't have that philosophy fully grounded and vetted before you start doing a data cleansing program or aligning against a new CDP, you just get lost in the data over time and you can't kind of come up with the final answer if you don't have that philosophy fully documented before you go into the process.

Daniel Burstein: That's great. And speaking of a B2B company, I often see that when it comes to leads or leads generated, it's like, well, what is a lead? Is a lead like, well, we bought an email address from somewhere and now that's a lead. Look at all these leads we got or is the lead, you know, this is the person that has raised their hand, that has indicated interest, that has met whatever, you know, revenue benchmarks they have to have a decision making benchmarks.

And so, yeah, exactly. That philosophy, that framework is so important because without it, you know, frankly to we can say success is whatever we want to say it is we've gotten all these leads versus, hey, we actually had this goal going in. We have this goal going in because we know it's what's going to be profitable to the company or make us successful. And then this is how we're kind of using art and science to achieve that goal. I love that. All right. Let's talk about something that I got.

Emily Campbell: Yes, with my team. They will often say, well, I don't really have a goal because I don't know what's going to happen. And I'm like, put a goal in place even if you're wrong and you undoubtedly will be, at least you have a guidepost. You know, it's like if you get a 5% increase in whatever you're looking for, is that enough? Is that not enough? Start with a goal and then, you know, measure around that as you keep going and get more intelligent as you put, you know, whether it's capabilities or campaigns in place, you're going to learn a lot as you're going. But if you don't at least have a target to start with, then you're just, you know, again, you never know if you did enough or if you were successful.

Daniel Burstein: And I mean, that actually goes along with testing very well because testing I mean business borrowed that from science, right. And science believes in hypothesis based testing. What you're actually testing is a hypothesis. You have a hypothesis set up beforehand and you're either proving or disproving the hypothesis. And I worked with data scientist, a Ph.D. who explained it to me this way, which I thought was very clear. And he was like, it's looking at a forest and throwing a rock and hitting a tree and saying, Hey, I hit that tree. Versus looking at a forest. And before you throw the rock saying, my goal is to hit that tree, and then you see if you hit it or not. It always resonated with me.

I was like, that's very clear.

Let's talk about what are your next lessons? You say, get out of your comfort zone. So I think this is really a career lesson, but it's also a life lesson. So how did you have to get out of your comfort zone in your career, Emily?

Emily Campbell: Yeah, so I had been at Dell for about three years and one of my bosses, boss's bosses, moved to Europe and basically gave me an opportunity to move to Europe, take over marketing for desktop marketing in Europe and was like, you know you can come to Ireland, you can do, you know, really expand your career. Do a lot more.It'll be great.

And in my experience in my life, I was not that young. But honestly, I hadn't had a lot of experience internationally and it was something that I really aspire to in my career. Personally, I think Ireland is a little bit like expat lite, you know, everybody speaks English, so it's not as difficult as moving like to China or something like that. But it really was for me personally, very much outside my comfort zone. I had two young children and we basically packed up and moved as a what we called at Dell, a local hire. So that meant I didn't have the safety net of an expat package. I sold my house in Texas and I moved to Ireland with my family with 4 and a 2 year old.

And, you know, I don't have to be quite that dramatic to get out of your comfort zone. It certainly worked for me in terms of things that I learned and experiences that I had, but I would just say it's an important lesson for everyone to say like, what are those things that really can push you to learn new things can help you think about things in a brand new way. And yeah, you know, I would encourage anybody who has an opportunity to move overseas and work internationally. It's been over ten years since I came back and I still think about that continually as a learning experience and something that I lean on now when I'm working in Asia or, you know, Latin America or Europe, I feel like I learned enough when I was there to really give me a leg up when I'm working with other cultures.

But it was difficult and it was a personal challenge that I took on that, you know, I am incredibly grateful for and I loved doing it. I ended up I was supposed to be there for 18 months. I ended up being there for almost five years.

Daniel Burstein: So what is the biggest thing you learned from doing that, from going to Ireland, from living there? Because when you did that, you didn't just work there. You lived there, right? You're in that culture. I think, you know, when I started in working internationally, I got to work with, you know, some big software companies and they had international teams. And earlier my career I was very American focused and, you know, I'm a writer, so I was worried about language. And, you know, I was always told, well, the great thing is English is the international business of language. In America you know, it's kind of the capital of commerce. So whoever you're working with around the world, I mean, it's very American focused and American centric.

But the good teams I worked with, you know, they were able to say, well, we can use English in this country, but, you know, and they understood different cultural aspects of a country to be able to, you know, change things or shape things. But I hadn't had that experience, that point of, you know, actually living and working overseas.

So having actually gone there, lived in Ireland, you're physically there, you're not just kind of what we're doing now, just, you know, digitally, you know, working with the team remotely. What did you learn? Like what was your biggest takeaway?

Emily Campbell: You know, I would say this is maybe a little bit cliche, but I would say there's maybe 20% to everything that you're doing international. And that has actually been almost a foundational element that I've carried forward. The 80%, that's the same. You know, regardless of the company or the culture that you're working with, you know, people have the same motivations personally. Business needs are very similar across the board. And then there's this 20% that sits on top of that that is very special by culture, by country, by language. And you have to, first of all, think about like, what is the 80% and then what is that 20%?

And one of the things that I found is when I went into European marketing, every country was managing their own separate business. And we quickly moved to a pan-European model, and it was like they were all starting from scratch. Well, we were able to take massive costs out and still customize all of our messages, all of our pricing, all the products by creating some foundational templates that were used across Europe, by really building up some of this baseline, that 80% that can be the same. And then really customizing it in the last bit. And in that customization, really focusing on what are the important things for that country, that culture and competition in that area, things along those lines.

But you don't have to start from scratch in every single place that you are. And I'm taking that lesson even now. You know, as I mentioned, Infinite has a number of different brands that we go to market under different brand names. And as we're doing this digital transformation, we're really taking that 80/20 approach where we want the websites to be 80% the same so that they're easier to manage. Ultimately, tests that we do on one brand, we can apply in other brands easily, but we know that there's a need based on different based markets, based on different customer types, etc. that 20% needs to be really thoughtful and well thought out in order to be successful.

So I would say, you know again, like I say, it's a little cliche with the 80/20 rule, but I think that that really does apply to so many different things that you're working on. And certainly it's something that I learned in Europe. It's not like every country is completely different. There are a lot of similarities, but the differences are important.

Daniel Burstein: And that sounds like a nice balance between the overall corporate brand or the overall regional brand and what's needed locally. So we're talking internationally. Let's get a little closer to home. Okay. The people you work with directly, you said first, team first, that's another one of your lessons. What does that mean in terms of collaborating with your team first team first?

Emily Campbell: Yeah. So this is something that is, you know, my boss in my current company, the CEO of Infinite, has really taken to heart. And it's it's conceptually saying your peer group is your first team. So my work that I do with the CRO, with the CIO, with the CFO, that is my first team. That is my priority and that is the group of people that I am most closely working with and most aligned with.

And I think, you know, as kind of being the marketeer in the group and one of the only females in the group, you know, I think you almost feel the need to kind of protect your team or you might feel the need to, you know, help your team grow. And that's important as well. But really focusing on this first team as your peer group. One of the things that I've learned there is, your life is so much easier if you and your peer group are aligned on your core objectives, that you're working together to achieve your targets and goals, and that you're not setting yourselves up as competitors, but actually as a teammates.

You know, I encourage the exact same thing with my team members and making sure that they know that supporting each other is just as is just as important or more important than supporting their teams. And again, it's a little bit of a different philosophy, but I've really worked a number of times in organizations where that wasn't the case and where the executive team was not aligned and not working together as a team. And they were actually creating conflicting goals among their teams and in some cases doing it on purpose because they felt like it drove a better end result.

I can tell you that  it's just so much more pleasant to work in an environment where the executive team is aligned. But as an executive team member, you know, it just makes everything so much easier. And I feel like we spend a lot of time getting that alignment and making sure that we're all on the same page. But when we leave the room, we're all together and working together.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, one of those groups were like, the knives are out, right? So like we talked about the website where sometimes the knives are out and there is some political battle of whose on the website board when it comes to budget time, that's when those knives can really be out. Right. Who gets to carve a piece out of the budget?

So you talked about, you know, the organization's currently in the middle of a large digital transformation. I would imagine teaming up with a CIO or CTO role is crucial for that, but also just the entire organization being aligned around that because that affects a lot of things budget wise and just how the organization operates. So is there any specific advice you have to others going through a similar digital transformation, how to work with their team on the executive board, how to you know, make sure that goes down to everyone's team and understand what role they play in that transformation.

Because, you know, just one example, you know if CRM is involved. You know, if Marketing and the CTO and the CRO are all integrating the CRM and sales isn't aligned, we can have this beautiful CRM that doesn't have anything in it. So what's your advice on going through a large digital transformation, Emily?

Emily Campbell: Yeah, I mean, I think it's exactly what you said. It's like you have to make sure that all of the pieces of the pie actually understand their roles and understand where you're coming from and what you're trying to accomplish. So for example, I'm the executive sponsor of the digital transformation program because I own e-commerce for the business, and that makes sense. But one of the things that we found is we're implementing a new product information management tool at the same time, and there is a huge amount of work to actually transition our existing product data into a new taxonomy, we're doing a lot of data cleansing and enhancement on our product data and it would be absolutely impossible for me to do that work or anyone on the marketing team.

We need the product management team to be very, very involved in a cleanup effort which maybe that's not their top priority. You know, they're really looking at the future product roadmap, not so much looking at what they've launched in the past. But as the company has evolved and one of the brands that we go to market under has been around for 50 years. So, you know, as the markets have evolved, expectations have increased and the amount of product information you need to have on your website and through your channel partners has significantly changed over the past 50 years.

So I don't think we sell any products that are 50 years old, but we might. But, you know, it really is like, how do you go back and fix stuff? You need to have the product management team engaged and aligned around that goal and really setting the priorities upfront. I worked with the leader of that team last year to make it part of their goals and objectives this year. That that's one of their core priorities is to do this data cleanup initiative around the PIM. So, you know, it may seem like they aren't core to a digital transformation, but as it's turning out, they're incredibly critical. And I'm very glad that I did the alignment upfront to make sure that they were on the same page.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I used to work in the software business and I would joke software is magic, right? Because sometimes it was sold as so much like, you know, company has problem A they buy the software everything's great, you know, they get these great results. But in reality, software only does so much. It's the people that actually do that work. And so when you talk about something like taxonomy, I think that framework and that philosophy you talked about earlier, really just crucially important, you know, to get that taxonomy right, you’ve got to get everyone on that right page and understand why they're doing it.

So another lesson you had, challenge your team and help them grow. So earlier we talked about how you got challenged by your boss's boss boss. You ended up in Ireland, transformational for your career. How have you as a leader now learned how to challenge your team and help them grow?

Emily Campbell: Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking about this question and I was thinking back throughout my career and even in my current job, you know, I'm really focused on doing like individual performance development plans so that people can actually start thinking about where they want to be in the future, what they want to do. But I found that with your team, you know, everyone on your team is slightly different in terms of how they want to be managed, what they will be successful at, what they'll volunteer to do versus what you have to kind of push them a little to do.

And I was thinking back to a specific person on my team many years ago who I think that the general commentary around this person was that he was lazy, super smart guy, you know, very well organized, always came with the right information, but never really went above and beyond in any way. And it was kind of like, yeah, he's good, but is he ever going to make is he ever going to be a senior leader in the organization? Is he ever going to be a vice president? Probably not. And I looked at him and said, this guy is bored. So my goal was to just give him more and more and more and more work and just, you know, see if I could challenge him and kind of get him to the point where he says, okay, I'm done. You can't give me anything else to do. And it took a long time before we got there. So by the time, you know, like within a year after he started working for me, I think he was accomplishing and doing like five times more than he had been when I started in that role. And he was much happier and more motivated.

And the thing about this story that I love is my boss who had said, this guy is lazy. You'll have to evaluate whether or not you don't want to keep him on the team. She later hired him as her VP of Sales at another company that she went to. So, you know, I think that not only were we able to actually challenge him and get a lot out of this person, but ultimately the role that he ended up with was working for someone who had been questioning whether or not we even wanted him at the company a few years before.

Daniel Burstein: You know, I love that lesson and here's why, because we've talked about personal branding a lot on the How I Made it Marketing podcast, you know, and mostly when it comes to personal branding, it's about, you know us branding ourselves in our career. But the flip side of personal branding is as leaders, I mean, a brand is, in a way, a prejudgment of someone, right?

I mean, you're pre-judging a company when you think of their brand, you have different associations with them and you can prejudge a person, too. So what I really like what you did there is you didn't just kind of look at that individual's personal brand, which in that case was not necessarily a positive. You kind of dug deeper and tried to see like, what are their motivations? How can you place them correctly on their team, which we as leaders have to do? We've got these different people to work with. How can we place them correctly in our team? And you found a way to really turn it. You probably helped turn around that person's career and made them a lot more productive. And that's a fantastic thing we can do as managers, as leaders is not just, you know, try to, you know, do things like digital transformations with software, but actually look at the people and how can we transform their personal lives and their careers.

But let's get back to that digital transformation again, because this lesson, I think, ties very nicely into it. I know the lesson you said it's hard to be simple. And so you talk about that digital transformation. How are you communicating that to your current board of directors? Because we talked about, you know, with your team, with your peers, getting everyone aligned. So you've kind of got those two levels. Essentially, the people that report to you, people that are your peers. But getting that board of directors on board for something that is the clear part of it is probably is the cost, right? But the thing that's a little more hazy is what is the value of it? So how do you get them on board?

Emily Campbell: Yeah. So I think I put in my application a something that Coco Chanel said at one point, which is before you leave your house in the morning, look, you know, turn away and then turn them back around and look at the mirror. And the first thing that you see, take it off, you know, jewelry wise, not your clothes, obviously, but scarves things along those lines. You tend to over accessorize. And it's really good to be simple.

And you know, I kind of take that approach in my board decks. It's like I'll put in everything that I think we need and then I start taking stuff out. So it's like, okay, can I tell the same story with a lot less information on the page? Because the thing that you have to realize when you're talking to a board of directors is they'll never have as much information on your business as you do. They are talking to multiple different companies over any given quarter. And so they may not have ever had experience working in digital, working in marketing, working in I.T., working in sales.

So their experience comes on the financial side. You know, they're very interested in what happens in finance. What you need to do is actually focus on the information that you can communicate to them effectively and not go too deep into the story, be able to tell the story without all the details. And, you know, for me personally, I'm a detail person. I tend to get wrapped up in the details. So really being able to back off that and tell a story without going too much into the details is absolutely, you know, a goal of mine. Every time I go in front of the board. And I do try to take that approach, it's like, okay, what are the things that I can take off this page and still tell the story? And, you know, I would say that's a work in progress, but it's definitely something that I think every marketer should do is just remember that your audience is not always as interested in what you're talking about as you are.

Daniel Burstein: I mean, that's true to the board of directors, that's especially true to customers as well, especially with technical products. So I interviewed the Head of Marketing at Cuisinart earlier on the How I Made it in Marketing podcast and she was talking about how, you know, with a lot of housewares products, I have a washing machine, it's got AI in it. I don't know what the AI does in the washing machine, right? Or you get these toasters, it's got all these different functions. You don't know what's going on. And she’s like one, it’s harder to communicate to the customer, right? There's a lot of complexity there. But two, especially in an era of supply chain issues, in an era of inflation and everything you're adding when you're making an appliance smart that doesn't need to be smart, you're adding cost to it.

And so she was talking about one of the most popular products, the food processor, designed in the 1970s. It's got three functions. It's got on, off, and pulse, which is just another version of on and it's usually popular. And I actually didn't realize we had that food processor and I've used it before and I hadn’t thought about it. Like yeah, it is just so intuitively easy to use up, down, middle, like that's it.

And so I think sometimes that you also mentioned the Steve Jobs quote in your podcast guest application, simple can be harder than complex. Sometimes it's not additive. It's what can we take away? What can we take away? What can we strip? So we get to the essence of our value proposition. So that’s great.

So, let's look at we talked about the things that you have made in your career, and that's key to, you know, our life as marketers, but also the people we make them with, the people we collaborate with is so important. And so let's talk about the first person you collaborated with that you learned from. You said Kim Hibler, the VP of SMB sales at Dell who is currently retired. You learned from her how to balance an extremely successful career with a really interesting life. And I like that especially because you had those adjectives, too. It wasn't just successful career and interesting life. It's extremely successful career and really interesting life. So tell us about Kim and how you learned that lesson from her.

Emily Campbell: Yeah, so Kim is someone that I worked with at Dell and honestly my interactions with her at work were somewhat limited. You know, we were working obviously from a demand generation perspective, things along those lines. But she wasn't as involved in some of the day to day activities. But I happened to run into her one morning at a gym that I belong to and she convinced me to join a 5am class. So I was working out with her at least three times a week at 5:00 in the morning. And it's amazing what you learn about people at 5:00 in the morning. It's true all the time. Maybe it might be when you're most authentically yourself. So if you're making it to the gym at 5:00. But there's really no artifice there. You're just you're just you, you know, you're kind of there. You're doing something and you know, some of the things that Kim and I talked about while we were together were, you know, how to how to manage your career while you have young children, how to manage your career while you have older children. And her kids, you know,  her son turned 21 or turned 16 like they're five years older ish than my kids.

So it was like she started all these major milestones, turning 16, going to college, graduating from college, getting married, and, you know, kind of how she remained such a critical part of her children's life and how she continues to do so and how she was able to balance that, being friendly with the kids, but also being the parental figure and really understanding what kids needed at various different points in their life has been, you know, really inspirational to me.

And then, you know, just kind of watching her as her career has evolved. She's retired now, but she went from Dell to a number of other companies where she was progressively, you know, more successful. She told me about when she went to Germany to test drive her BMW and then they shipped it over here, those types of things. Again, I think those life experiences that can be extremely compelling and being able to balance that while you're in this incredibly stressful work environment at the same time. It's inspired me all throughout my career, but also in my personal life. And still to this day, whenever I'm back in Austin, we get together and we don't go have a coffee or have a cocktail. We go for like a five or six mile walk, run around the lake. So, you know, I think kind of bringing in that physical, physical piece of of your life and being able to balance exercise with stressful jobs and kids. And, you know, I mean, I look at her and I say, woman has you know, she's been able to do everything. And I'm sure there's sacrifices she's made along the way, but she certainly has it all together, as far as I'm concerned. And II would aspire to be like that.

Daniel Burstein: So you're saying I should do podcast interviews at 5 a.m.? We'll get people's really authentic self.

Emily Campbell: You will probably get a very different perspective. Maybe that might be a good idea.

Daniel Burstein: Well, the thing I like about the really interesting life part, I mean, just one, we're human beings and I hope that is everyone's goal at a certain level, just as a human. But here is my argument where it helps you as a marketer. You know, we as marketers, I mean, a key thing we are is creators, right? So we're really only as good as our ideas and our concepts. And what I've learned in my life is like, if you're not putting things into that brain, you're not going to get things out.

I'm a big fan of stand up comedy, and I hear some of these stand up comedians who once they become really successful, it becomes a lot harder to be a standup comedian because their lived experience has changed, right. If you're, you know, very wealthy and famous, then your experience is a lot different from your audience. And you've probably removed a lot of the idiosyncrasies of life, the inconveniences of life. And that's why you hear so many stand up comedians joke about, you know, what's going on in the airplane and the peanuts and all the stuff because they're flying all the time. They're traveling all the time.

And as marketers, the more we can live life and, you know live as our customers and audience do, but live life, the better ideas we're going to get. And that's very true for B2C marketers, but even for B2B marketers, for myself, one small example of how I got an idea from my own personal life is, you know, we saw Emily has a dog actually in the room with her right now over recording and normally that freaks me out and where the dog bark it's been so well-behaved so far hasn't uttered a peep. I'm very impressed. But you know, I was on a call with my partner at the time and and the dog was barking in the background. And we were doing internal communications for IBM, for a group in IBM in Sales Enablement and these things. And we got, you know, an idea even back then. A lot of people work from home is very geographically distributed, set up. And just a little thing we could add to the email newsletter to get people to know each other. We called it Who's Barking in the background, right? Because everyone had that experience. You know, we didn't have video calls at that time, but, you know, you had the audio calls now. No, the dogs barking and I got a mute.

And so we would have a little feature. You know, we had all information about the product and case studies of sales and all of those other things. We just had that little bit in the newsletter. Who's barking in the background where you got to know someone on a personal level because you got to know their dog. So that's my argument for living a really interesting life in marketing.

So, you know, we talked earlier about how you had helped someone really transform the arc of their career at the company and kind of changed how people saw them. This is a great, interesting story about transforming the arc of the career, even if they don't stay at the company. So your lesson is coaching and mentoring can help people grow in their current roles, but also help them plan for their future career, even if it is not with their current place of employment. You learn this from working with Joi Chevalier, a Program Manager at Dell, she was then. Now she's Founder and President of the Cook’s Nook. So how did you learn this from working with Joy?

Emily Campbell: So it's interesting because I actually get this a lot from my current company because I believe that, you know, when you start talking to people about what their five year goals are or what their what their plan is, a lot of times people haven't really thought that far ahead or they haven't thought that through or they don't really know where they're going or what they want to do. But if you start like asking them, what do you see yourself doing or what do you aspire to be? You know, sometimes you get the very traditional like, Oh, I want to be in your job or I want to do something in sales or you know, you know, I want to go to the next level within my current career trajectory.

And that's great, really important to have people that want to stay in the company and everything else. But occasionally you get someone who is very transparent and says, Listen, I don't think I'll be here in five years. My goal is to actually go do something for the community, to do something that leverages my skill set, which in Joi’s case was, you know, she was trained as a chef and also had a couple of other degrees. She's very smart woman, but she was working at Dell at the time. And it's like, you know, she had said, I don't think that I want to be here. So part of what we started talking about was, okay, how do we build up your skill set? You know, finance, you know, outside of marketing specifically but really think more broadly about things that you would need to run a business.

And, you know, she only worked for me for a year or so after that and then eventually left Dell after I left. But I've been so pleased to kind of watch her grow and develop. We're still friends and, you know, really see her take on this role as a, you know, starting a new company. It's an incubator where they do trying to bring food to less privileged areas of the Austin community and really thinking about, you know, a whole range of things that I think her experience at Dell, if you were to say, oh, you're a program manager here and now you're going to be a CEO or President of a company over here. It may not immediately translate. But when you look at some of the skills that she built in her role and how they translate it, it makes a ton of sense. And you're like, yes, you were prepared to go do this totally different career.

And, you know, I think that as managers and as leaders, if we're not helping our employees think about their careers and think about what they want and then helping support them, you know, if you look at statistics, you know, it's like how many people are staying in their jobs, in their companies their entire career? Very, very few at this point. So if you can get more out of your employees over the next 3 to 5 years by helping them get to where their ultimate goal is, iit's a win win situation. You know, you're helping them, but they're also really contributing enthusiastically because they know that you have their best interests at heart and they know that you're trying to help them grow in the direction that that they want to grow for their career.

So, you know, Joi is a single example, but I feel like that's something that I you know, I think about a lot of different people in my career, and I've always tried to be very open to what their goals are so that I can help guide and direct them in their career development in a way that actually helps them, as opposed to just helping me.

Daniel Burstein: Well, it sounds like you really tapped into her passion, which, as you said, helped in those 3 to 5 years or however long she was with you get the most out of her. So that's great. You know, when I've gotten that answer of, you know, I want your role in five years or whatever, sometimes I've really just got to, you know, ask and challenge it because I think there is this real shininess or whatever to managing people, right. To growing in an organization and getting to manage people. And it's just not right for everyone. And so sometimes I would have to tell people that like, you want to manage people. Really, why do you want to manage people? Like what is it about managing people that makes you want to do it? And so I think it's also just so important within an organization to have different paths to success, right?

So if people management is the only path to success, you're probably going to get people with really good subject matter expertise in different areas and, you know, creativity in programing and development, all these different areas that you're forcing into a role that's just not right for them, which is either getting them to not want to stay because they can't find success with the things they do or is going to end up giving you ineffective managers.

I want to get an idea from you. So, when you talk about, you know, you talk to Joi, give us an idea like what is the cadence of how you learn about your team, both your direct reports and your reports report? I mean, do you have an annual sit down with them? You have monthly one on ones. And, you know, how do you kind of plot out their career path in that?

Emily Campbell: Yeah, you know, it kind of depends on the size of the team that I'm managing at the time and really a lot depends on what the team members are actually looking for. So as an example, you know, you said this at the beginning, I manage a team of about 40 people right now. I've had teams in my past that were much larger, also smaller. So it kind of depends. But, you know, I was in Idaho last week meeting with some of my marketing team. We have an office in Idaho for some reason and there's differences in the team there. Right. So there are some members of the team that are more experienced. They've been in their career a long time. My Creative Director is there who does a lot of our web design. And we have basically an in-house agency that does a lot of our catalogs and advertising things along those lines.

So, you know, I was talking to her about her career and what she's looking for, and then I went and had a very similar discussion with someone on her team. And the differences were stark, right. I mean, you're talking to one person who's in their mid-twenties who's still trying to find where they want to go, who's very eager to learn more, who wants to, you know, experience change and wants to try a broad range of different activities. And then you have someone who's been in a job a long time that you're challenging them to do more, to move to a different type of design cadence and capabilities. And, you know, they both have extremely different needs. And, you know, what I try to take from something like that is how do I then respond, you know, how can I keep them both motivated knowing that maybe it's not going to be exactly what they want in the next year, but also look for opportunities where maybe for this this person who's at the very beginning of their career, towards the beginning of their career, I can give her challenging assignments or things that are maybe outside of the scope of what might be currently within her job just to give her learning experiences.

And how can I support the Creative Director, the Manager of the team? So that she's not feeling overwhelmed with all this new stuff that's being thrown at her on a day to day basis and really making sure that she understands, you know, what expectations are. And how great of a job she's actually doing. So, you know, I think that you almost have to take it on a one on one basis to understand what does that person need and what can you give them versus maybe what their Direct Manager needs to give them.

Daniel Burstein: That’s great, in your story with Joi, I mean, that got into something in her personal life. And I think something that's happened really in the past few years, too, with COVID and people working from home. And now we're kind of like, you know, actually you're in my home and I'm in your home right now and we're having this conversation. And that's kind of happened a lot during COVID, too, is it gets a lot more into the personal. And I wonder, what are your thoughts about where is the line for how deep a manager gets into their employees personal life when they're mentoring them? Because I interviewed Frank Weil, he's the Founder and CEO of Myntr for an earlier episode of the How I Made It in Marketing podcast. And he told me a story when he worked at Havaianas you know, flip flop maker, the CEO was his mentor. And after the CEO met his girlfriend, the CEO said she wasn't right for him. And they broke up the following week and I thought, wow, that's so great to, you know, have that close and trusting a relationship with a business mentor.

But I also thought, you know, where is the line between work and personal life? You know, it kind of gets fuzzy for the employee, for the manager. So in your opinion, Emily, where is that line? How deep should a manager get into their employees personal life when mentoring or, you know, when going through something like COVID?

Emily Campbell: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think so. First of all, I think that's a little bit of a balancing act, right, between how comfortable you are as a manager, being in people's living rooms and in their offices and whatever, and also how comfortable the team member is. So for me, I've had people that have worked for me or people that I've worked for who are now deep personal friends who I feel like I can call up at any moment time. And they would be supportive, you know, advice or just chatting about what's going on for the weekend. You know, I think that that is something that I feel very comfortable with, with people that have worked for me in the past and people that I've worked for.

So but you're right, with COVID, it really does lead to a whole nother level of intimacy. You know, as you said, you can see my dog. You can see my cool New England home. But I think there's still an opportunity for as an employee to kind of retain some privacy and say, like, I'm not I'm not comfortable sharing pieces of myself with you. And I can usually tell if they have a Zoom background on like if they have a background, I usually assume that there's only so much like that's almost like a wall that they're putting up or they don't want me to necessarily see into their personal life. And I try to be very respectful of that, you know.

But I do think it's very important, especially in kind of the hybrid working post-COVID world. My whole team is remote and there are offices around the country, but my team doesn't regularly go into them. I think it is very important to understand that people's personal lives are extremely important and you know, you have to have a level of flexibility around dogs barking in the background and, you know, people coming in and delivering lunch.

I know the CRO that I work with his wife comes into the Zoom background constantly and brings him like snacks and delivers him his coffee. And I'm like, what is she doing that she's like, always coming in on your calls. But that's how his life works and he's comfortable with that. So, you know, I think that part of this is being flexible and being prepared to be comfortable sharing to the level that other people are willing to share. I wouldn’t advise anybody to break up with their girlfriend though, that seems like a terrible idea.

Daniel Burstein: I thought. On the one hand he so he still has this relationship with that CEO. She sits on the board of his company now and what is special and fantastic thing to have that deep of relationship. But I also thought, you know, I'm like, well I don't know, you know, how far would I want a mentor to go into my personal life and get into my relationship? So, as you said, I think that's a great point. It really varies based on the manager and the employee. And I also think I hadn't really thought that before, but that's a really great point about, you know, when we were in person, we used to look for these kind of subtle visual cues. We would naturally do this just as human beings of one another person's communicating with you. Are they open? Are they closed? I had never really thought, but now when you said it, it instantly made sense. When someone has that zoom background up, there is a certain level of of privacy they're trying to tell you of, like, hey, I'm not too comfortable with you getting involved in my house, in my personal life. That's a really great point.

All right. Final lesson here. And this is the one I opened the episode up with because I loved it so much. You said go into a meeting with a high level story, never the details. I've been in too many meetings where data is presented and it just seems like data is presented for data sake without the clarity of why does it really matter?

And so you said you learned this lesson from Matt Anderson, the CDO Chief Data Officer Arrow Electronics who is currently at the Carlyle Group. So how did you learn this lesson and how have you used it in your career? I think we kind of touched on this when you talked about talking to the Board of Directors.

Emily Campbell: Yeah. So just for clarification, he was actually the Chief Digital Officer, but he also had responsibility for data as well. So slightly different. Also another D. Yeah, you know, I think that it's interesting, you take a very old school company like Arrow Electronics, which has been around forever. It's about a, you know, like a $27 billion company that most people have never heard of because they are in the electronics distribution space. So unless you're in the industry, you probably have not heard of them or don't work with them.

And in, you know, very, very old school in terms of the approach to how you engage with customers very much feet on the street type of strategy. And Matt came into the business and basically threw everything up in the air around driving a more transactional digital business in order to bring a whole new set of customers into the organization.

And, you know again, his is ability to kind of storytell and to talk about something completely different and seem like he's rambling and then bring it home to like a point, like the point of a pin where you're like, Oh my God, that whole story absolutely makes sense now, I had no idea where you were going with it, but now I completely see how all of those pieces connect.

And to me, that kind of storytelling, again, I look at many of the mentors and some of the people that I've spoken about here as like people that I would aspire to be, just the ability to kind of to tell a story, to bring a group of people, whether it's a large audience that you're speaking to at a conference, a podcast, a board of directors, but to tell a story that is so compelling and so connected that by the end of the story, you feel absolutely convinced that the proposal, the idea is, is 100% the right thing to do for your business, even if it's completely outside the realm of something you've done in the past.

Matt has that skill I would say he's the type of person who could sell ice to Eskimos, but, you know, he's just much better than that even. And being able to watch him kind of his thought process and how he puts together some of these discussion points, even when he's talking to his own team, he can be extremely inspiring. And again, is that storytelling piece that really brings you along as someone who works for him or with him or around him. It's just again, it's very inspiring.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I love that because, you know at Marketing Sherpa, we're mentioning this earlier in our conversation, but at Marketing Sherpa, we get pitched all the time about all these things and there's so many people that have opinions, right? But who can really back up that opinion with evidence? You know, one way to do that is with a story, you know, walking people through, okay, here's how I came to understand this. Here's how you can use this.

And so just to give one example, you know, looking at your podcast guest application, like I mentioned, get out of your comfort zone, for example. That's a lesson you hear many people say. I'm sure no one listening to the podcast is shocked to hear that. I'm sure they've heard it before. But what makes it so powerful is your story of having a two year old and a four year old and moving to Ireland with Dell and going through that. That's what makes it powerful.

So I think, you know, every marketer should keep that in mind. That's great for your internal meetings with your team, with whoever you have to present to, your board of directors. It's so important for your customers to you can say these things. It's one thing to say the thing, but then to back it up with a story, especially if that story has real evidence, to you know, show how something actually came to be. It's just so much more powerful. So and thank you for sharing all of your stories with us today, Emily.

Emily Campbell: Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Daniel Burstein: Well, one final question I want to ask. You know we kind of went through all these stories you shared all of these lessons. What are the key qualities of an effective marketer if you had to just break it down?

Emily Campbell: Oh, gosh. You know, I think that for me and in my career, my experience, you know, it's almost like a balanced triangle. You know, you have to be able to manage the technology. You know, if you are a creative designer, even, you know, in today's world, even if you're purely on the creative side, you have to be able to leverage technology in order to get your job done. And I think that marketing, you know, you constantly see those market maps of all of the different marketing technologies that are available out there. It's just becoming more and more and more important part of our go to market strategy to be able to lean on and leverage technology to be effective. I think you have to understand your data.

You know, I mentioned A/B testing as part of this, but again, data goes in so many different directions and there's so much information out there. You have to be able to pick the right elements and be able to use that in what you're building, whether it's a campaign, digital transformation or an ad for next Tuesday, it can't. You have to leverage data in order to do things intelligently.

And then finally, you know, I think that creative piece is something that as marketers, we can't lose sight of. We can't be so invested in the technology and the data that we forget that, you know, a very, very compelling creative ad can bring customers along the storytelling piece. You know, it can bring customers so much further than you can if you just have speeds and feeds or, you know, a very data driven approach to your marketing activities. If you can bring customers along, you know, they say pictures worth a thousand words. And if you pick the right thing, you really can leverage that creativity, the power of creative in order to, you know, meet your customer needs, in order to address your board, your employees, your managers, your partners in your organization. All of those pieces come together in that element of, you know, creativity. So I think, like I would say, balance on that axis between technology data and creativity. And, you know, that's to me what makes a successful marketer.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And it makes it a fun role too, you know what I mean? To be able to take that technical knowledge, that data knowledge and come up with something creative. I mean, boy, what a fun thing to come into work and do I think so. Yeah. Well, thank you for again sharing all your stories, Emily. It was such a joy to talk to you today. Oh, we got a bark in! We got a bark in right at the end!

Emily Campbell: Right at the end, I was like, Oh, stop it.

Daniel Burstein: It's his way of saying I was part of this, too. I was here too, I was present! Emily, thank you so much for joining us today.

Emily Campbell: Okay. Thank you so much.

Daniel Burstein: And thanks for everyone for listening.


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