Episode description

Summary: In episode 2 of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta. Together they discuss the essentials of maintaining a consistent brand story across channels. The conversation touches on the importance of defining the perceptions or storylines you want to drive in the market, how to drive perceptions through content and campaigns, and examples of perceptions.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 2 is sponsored by Closing Media & Naro.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

Devon Watts is a long-time startup marketer currently leading Product and Partner Marketing at Mercury. Previously, she ran marketing for the high-growth fintech Anrok, and spent time building her PMM, content, and brand expertise at companies like Yammer, Asana, and Carta. Devon has led B2B marketing teams with anywhere from 1 to 25+ people, and has experience in PLG and sales-led motions. In addition to marketing, Devon loves her kids, being on/in/near the water, her dog Dolores, and eating cheese.

This episode features Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, providers of beautiful, affordable, always on-brand tracking, asking us “How do you tell a consistent story?”

Quotes

”  I think of content overall or your story and brand as another product your company's creating for the same audience. So it's a product. It should be thought of as a product, managed like a product. You need to think about why you're telling your story, what's unique about your story, how your story is differentiated from competitors’ stories. Much like you would think about how your product is going to be differentiated.” - Emily Kramer

“To me, a story is everything you say about your business. And that includes the stuff you say about your company mission, vision, your founding story. It includes the stuff you say about your products. It includes the things you say related to thought leadership. It includes the things you say in ad copy and all of that. Like all of that together is your story. So maybe the story is the through line across all of your marketing fuel.” - Emily Kramer

“My hot take response is what not to do, which is don't just start cranking out content and creative, and marketing assets if you haven't aligned on what your big picture themes are. Because I think that's a very easy way to just get into doing random acts of marketing that aren't cohesive or consistent.” - Jenny Thai

” You have your customers, probably the most important audience and the one we think about most as marketers. But your recruiting team has an audience of candidates, prospective employees, and you have investors. You have these other audiences that you might want to tell slightly different stories to, but still have a consistent through line and still be telling the market at large a unified story.” - Devon Watts

” Start with what you want people to hear. And one exercise for this is ‘what would you want people to repeat back to you about your company?’” - Devon Watts

” Write the headline we would want to see. If we got our dream PR placement or whatever, how would they realistically put it? Not just what's going to be our blog post headline or our landing page headline, because that is not necessarily how the market will perceive or talk about you.” - Devon Watts

” Write perceptions from the perspective of the customer that you're trying to reach. Because then it helps you think about where they actually are right now. Like, do they even think about you? If not, then like, you actually have to create some awareness. Or if there is an existing perception about you, then what do you need to do to shift it to the new perception?” - Jenny Thai

”The combination of your perceptions should be unique to your company. No other company should be able to claim that combination. One individual perception could potentially be used by many other companies, but the combination should feel like uniquely your company or else your story is not going to seem unique.”  - Emily Kramer

” Think about perception as a product you're selling or something you're launching. What's the plan? The campaign plan, the launch plan, the plan to launch this perception into the world? What are the campaigns? What are all the things that you're doing? And I find that some of the best marketing ideas come from this.’” - Emily Kramer

”If you don't know your story, you probably won't be telling a good one. So know your story, spend time to actually define what you're trying to say. Zoom a level out…your work is going to be so much better if you take a couple of steps backwards in order to go much faster, with a much more clear sense of direction.” - Emily Kramer

Time stamps

[00:00] Meet Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury

[01:49] Question from Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit: How do I tell a consistent story?

[2:11] Initial Reactions to the Question

[5:41] Defining Story in Marketing

[7:56] Story vs. Brand

[10:49] Positioning and Story Consistency

[13:28] Crafting Perceptions and Storylines

[22:15] Examples of Effective Perceptions

[27:11] Crafting Unique Company Perceptions

[28:06] Understanding Perceptions Through Famous Slogans

[28:50] Analyzing Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign

[30:51] Decoding Twilio's 'Ask Your Developer' Slogan

[32:43] The 'Got Milk?' Campaign and Market Context

[34:57] Evaluating Effective Perceptions

[37:24] Implementing Perceptions in Content Strategy

[41:14] Final Thoughts on Telling a Clear and Consistent Story

[44:13] "Best, Marketer" Game: Driving Perceptions

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Caspian Studios

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Emily Kramer, Devon Watts, Jenny Thai, Mikayla HopkinsSubscribe to MKT1 Newsletter for a companion newsletter for each episode.