Getting your business to take risks and try new things establishes your brand positioning and upscales your content marketing. Join Glenn LaFollette, a content marketer and storyteller for brands, as he discusses the importance of finding a story to activate a brand launch and why effective storytelling is crucial in B2B marketing to create effective and engaging stories that can reach a wider range of audiences across multiple mediums.
Glenn also talks about his first B2B and content job that has helped him shape his marketing career and the valuable lessons he learned during his transition from journalism to marketing. Listen in as he highlights the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), how it provides new opportunities for content creation, and how can it be the new partner of content creators to help them produce better content. Hover that play button now and also find out how you can engage your audience virtually!
Key Points From This Episode:
Connect with Glenn LaFollette on LinkedIn.
With 25+ years of marketing experience, Steve Goldhaber is a former head of global digital marketing for two Fortune 500 companies and the current CEO of 26 Characters, a content marketing agency in Chicago.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
Steve Goldhaber (SG): Everybody, it's Steve. Welcome back to Studio 26. Today I am joined by Glenn. Glenn, it's great to have you on the show. Give us a quick introduction about who you are.
[INTERVIEW]
Glenn LaFollette (GL): Thanks, Steve. I am Glenn LaFollette, content marketer, storyteller for brands. Very happy to be here to talk about all things content and content marketing.
SG: All right, cool. And we've done a number of episodes so far. So all of these loyal listeners know how we do the show. We always open up with the case studies. This is, this is your chance to share a story with us from your experiences. So we're gonna jump right into that. And the first case study is all about how to do a brand launch the right way.
SG: And it's a little bit of a, of a trick question or a trick statement because the launch is always a very old school way to do the brand launch, right? Like it's always that we're gonna pick a date and we're gonna go for that date. And there's pre-launch and there's launch and there's post-launch, but anyway, I don't wanna steal your thunder. I don't like being a thunder stealer, but, I'm excited to hear this story. Take it away, Glenn.
GL: In terms of, I was trying the good examples from our past, with bits, I find that in many of the roles I've been in, content is usually a problem solver, so I, a lot of my experience has been, you know, tactical solutions to strategies that are missing something. And I think that's always true with brand launches because they're, they're difficult. Usually, they're the thing that everyone has the most opinions about. And you do a lot of work to get a new vision for a company. The words, the fonts, the colors, which it's easy to feel like it's just those things, but it's usually little grounding and fighting to figure out what the essence of a place is.
GL: And what usually gets missed is that you do all that work and when you get to the end, you want to tell people that you've represented and really the missing pieces that you want to show people, your brand, I think, and not just tell them that you've rebranded and so it's like launching a new website. Don't tell people you launch a new website. Give them a nugget, something interesting worth going there. And so for brand, in a lot of cases, if you're solving the problem of missing something to help activate a brand launch, I think it comes down to finding a story that really highlights what it is you're about.
GL: Whether it's about, you know, authenticity or empathy or, the way you help clients. Like there's something there, and it could be about your people. It could be your clients. And so I was in a situation with a, a global company where we, it's not necessarily a mistake, but got to the lodge point and we didn't really have a way to explain to people to bring that brand to life. And so, What we chose to do is we put our heads together and said, look, you've gotta be able to kind of absorb the brand through something. And we picked a magazine, a brand magazine, and what that allowed us to do, not that, you know, we were trying to bring print journalism back , it was more just contextualized for people through stories.
GL: And so we looked at kind of the things that you do when you're trying to tell stories about yourselves. Like what do we, what do we know a lot about? Where are places we've helped clients in unique ways? Who are the personalities that should be included in this? You kind of just pick your best mix of things. And so my role in that was, as editor, you know, kind of bring some of that together. And we were a company that did tons of thought leadership, but thought leadership is not the same thing as like those kinds of stories that you have in something like a brand Mac. Doesn't mean that it's super promotional either. It's not just an echo for press release, it's something that is about people, human moments. And fortunately, for our company, the company was very much focused on a brand that was human forward. And so it made it easy to kind of find stories that affected people or about people.
GL: And that's what we did. We picked, we took things that were, you know, trends, situations where we helped clients, interesting topics that we found. And either through the voice of someone or you know, hopefully from a client that was doing something really interesting. We picked and chose the stories were a very magazine style, very much magazine style articles about each of those, and then package it together. And that was, you know, tons of work to kind of, you know, you're a global firm, a global company and so you could pick a lot of things. And so, you know, it certainly, we probably had more than we could possibly write about, but you picked the things that build the most present. We gave the magazine a theme to kind of fit what was going on in the world at that point, and then those stories were meant to kind of give you something that physically, like as a new hire for the company, you could pick up and immediately kinda understand what we're about.
GL: You could also fortunately take that and give it to our sales team and they could put it in the hands of clients. And that's what we did. And so, you know, we saw that it was definitely the first couple issues were definitely the most downloaded thing that year. And certainly some of that's from having a larger push. But we were kind of doing this with people that could write. I mean, we weren't built to create that sort of thing, but when we got to the brand launch, we looked around at people that were interested in kind of like whether a designer, a writer, marketers across the company. We found a coalition of the willing to help put it together and they could have grew that team out because we thought it was important to make sure that people understood from our new brand positioning, our brand promise, that this is the thing that you can kind of download, immediately dive into that helps you understand why we did this, who we are, what we're about.
GL: And my favorite result of that is not just that it was downloaded a lot. You can tell a story and it could be applicable to candidates, it can be a applicable to prospects, it can be applicable to people that you're trying to retain from a business standpoint. Like you need things like that. And it doesn't have to be a magazine, it just means that when you rebrand, find a way to tell that story in some form that connects and it's usually not, you know, just something that repeats the brand tagline, impact to the clients or the prospect.
SG: Yeah.
GL: It's something that sort of brings your people and your mission to life.
SG: Yeah. You know, it's fascinating. I've been doing marketing for about 25 years. When I started out, there was very much a formula about how to do the brand relaunch, and it was, it was all about the general or the brand agency that defined the look and the feel. So it was the very much the "here's the logo, here's the tagline, here's here's how we lock it up". And now that we have this done, we're gonna do, you know, a series of three print ads and a, you know, one or two 60-second TV spots. And it was always like the brand anthem, you know, launch. And it's fascinating how fast forward to today you have to do that obviously that those are components of your brand. But I'm seeing more companies get smart about the activation work.
SG: So yes, you can have a beautiful design system, but if it doesn't activate well, it fails. Or you know, in a similar way, companies can be so strong on the graphic standards of a brand, but then when they get to like, well, what do we talk about? It's just like, I don't know. How do we bring this to life? Like we can't just look to buy print ads so we can put the logo on the bottom right hand corner. So I'm glad in the story that you got to a point where you realized you have to activate. And from my understanding too, on this one, you were talking about a magazine, but then that content was also a little bit, you know, you could leverage that into other channels. Maybe talk about how the, the, well, the magazine was the rallying point. How did you leverage that other content?
GL: Yeah, I did. I mean, it is effectively, it's storytelling. And storytelling inevitably reaches other mediums. Probably the best example is that we were pretty efficient and creative around what we did with client stories. You assume safely that you're going to distribute this content. Whether if you paid SEO-based articles or even slides that are for your Salesforce, you kind of have to pick a story that is good across all those, like it's gonna have a, you know, a money testimony quote. It's an interesting client, it's got hopefully some, some key stat that is amazing. And if you don't have those, you lean into one of the others, because inevitably, some client stories are just a, you're pitching a lot of airlines and so it's a major airline, you know, that kind of thing. But we, I'd say we were always guilty of testimonials or case studies being just a quote, right?
GL: And so to flesh that out, you had to go through hoops of approvals and, you know, find the right candidate. That could be something that could be a multi-touch story like, And we found a few, and we obviously, because our brand was very much human focused, we tried to pick one with interesting Cubans, but something that would both convey the brand, but also when you got down to a slide or in what we ended up doing, having multiple edits of say, a video, it told a story for someone that you wanted to pitch for business. And so we would take a client story, we would evaluate it to see if it fit all those different story points along a customer journey, and you would do a print article and then a, you know, minute to two minute version of that story with a sit down interview, B-roll footage, something that was very accessible if you did not know who we are. We were probably, you know, 10 seconds of that first video lightly mentioned, or the source of the quotes in those initial articles. We were putting spotlight on the client, which is your goal with that top of funnel stuff.
GL: But then as you got down into it, as you got into, we did other edits that were the things that a sales team typically wants. And honestly, deeds. Because when you're at a certain point in the sales cycle, you want them to hear from another client that's like, hey, they did a great job for us. Or they went the extra mile.
SG: Yep.
GL: They did this amazing thing. And so we, we looked at the content edited at different points, had different versions. They all echoed each other, which, you know, you don't have to, cuz it's not like somebody starts at the, first, watches the video, watches the second one looks at a slide. But inevitably, if they do get exposed to some of those clients where you want them all to feel coherent, to echo your brand and sort of a similar journey. And so we did that work and most of it was in just trying to find someone who would let us come in and talk to them, share their story. And if we did really good work as a company for them, they typically go on that journey. And I think what, what was interesting, Steve, is even from the promotional standpoint, we got a lot of pushback, as I'm sure every marketer, particularly B2B gets, it's like, you know, people don't wanna read, they wanna watch video.
GL: Well, people don't wanna watch long videos. Like there's always some edit to your content. And the thing is, we had a model that tried everything. Even in the, we did a pretty sizeable LinkedIn campaign for some of our client stories, and we tested 30-second cuts that teased back to the story or a longer video. We did 60-second cuts and then we did full-length videos that had like, a five to six seconds little teaser at the front to be like, the video is about this, which a hundred percent I just stole from movie trailers. You know, that would sadly give a five because our attention spans are so short.
SG: Yeah.
GL: You know, I remember like the Jason Bourne trailer was one of the first I saw that did this. It's just like, Hey, here's a teaser for a teaser and that seems insane. But in today's world, that's how you get people's attention. When we tested those videos against each other, using a 32nd, 62nd, a full length with a teaser. The most engagement came from the the one with the teaser because people will watch, like heard Mark Maren say this. It's like people will watch something they wouldn't watch. That's not every brand story that's out there, but you probably have a good story to tell and a creative way to tell it. And the key is look at your audience, look at where they are in the journey, it's gonna be a different cut. And it's probably something we're all guilty of based on resources, time, or just the demand of a senior leader.
GL: You make something that's the same on every spot and it's not gonna be as effective. You have to look at those stories and be like, what part am I telling it where? And that's what we did. And every company probably has something like that. If they can find the right story, the right candidate, the right partner.
SG: Yeah. You know, I think that that's a great example of, I hear this all the time with medium to long form content. The argument was always people don't have time. And while I agree that like people do like short and snackable, depending on the medium, I always push back on that and here's why. So let's say, let's go to the extreme. Let's say it's a thought leadership thing, right? You're doing a 15, 20 page port white paper, whatever it may be. The journalism and editorial purist out there will look at that and say, the goal is to get that person to read it, cover to cover. And if it takes them 15 minutes, 20 minutes, that's fine. That's the goal. We're gonna, we're going to, we're gonna create the content in that spirit. I don't agree with that.
SG: To me, the whole idea. Create the white paper. The whole goal of white paper is for you to be perceived as knowledgeable. So if you produce a piece of content that takes 20 minutes to get through and someone only spends seven or eight, or they read the first page or two and then they skim the rest, that's fine. You have told them you are an expert. and you have the ability to write long form. It doesn't mean, you know, you have to say, well, we did a survey and we know that people love short form content, therefore it's only 30-second videos. We we're not gonna do anything longer than that. So I'm a big believer in the like, yes, play the short game and also play the long game because you can't just cut everything off because not everyone's gonna consume the content. Agreed. And
GL: particularly with thought leadership, it's the best example a little bit. This is any thought leadership I've ever produced in my career. You know, there is something to like, it is a bit of a show of force. And honestly, the magazines, we did three in my when I was there and.
GL: Each of them could have been 10 pages shorter . But there is something to, it's a, you're trying to mix an amount of things that make this thing feel like a tip pole moment, something that's worth downloading. Something that, as you just highlighted, it shows that you know what you're talking about. And I don't know that there's really a KPI for that , you know, for like, but.
GL: It is, there is a sense for, you know, I spend 30 seconds on Forester Gardner, a major researcher, you know, they know what they're doing. And so, you want your brand to feel that way, depending on, again, thought leadership is your lean, but if you know something, you have to show them that you know it. And there's just, it's worth trying dense things. It's worth trying short things. It's worth of trying to kind of have a buffet of that. But the key is that it's all true to you, right? It's, yeah. You know, if you're a stodgy brand, don't like only have Snapchat videos, you know, . So like there's a mix. But the flip side of that is, I mean, it's amazing how long any of us, I'm sure it's generationally based, but we'll look at TikTok, right? Like, we'll spend hours watching short things, but for an hour and a half. So yeah, you look at what you have, and I think that's why we're trying different.
SG: Yeah. And especially too, like, so in the most extreme long form, long form example, like a white paper, it takes 20 minutes. Out of a hundred people, there are gonna be three people who finish that white paper, let's just say. And in the B2B world, if someone goes that deep and they're your buyer, you've captured their, you know, their attentions spent for 20 minutes and that's all you might need to do. I wanna circle back to one part that you mentioned before, which is interesting is, you know, you use the magazine as a tool to connect it to the Salesforce and that's really important cuz most marketing people do not think that way.
SG: As far as like, how do you connect it to the salespeople? I have a similar example from a launch that I did. It was a, the marketing play here was B2B2C, right? So we wanted to influence this group of maybe a thousand people who influenced the consumers and it was a brand launch. We were tight on media budget and the whole brand was trying to reposition itself as a, as a luxury brand. And they didn't have luxury dollars, but they had , they had luxury aspirations. And what we had done was we actually bought the industry publication. That was the clear leader, right? It was like, hey, if you're advertising in that publication, you've got money to spend cuz it's really expensive.
SG: We bought regional media buys of that publication to get the price way down. We did a lot of custom inserts into the thing, so it was essentially like a four page spread. I was like, the media people probably have a word for it. It's probably called like a spectacular, you know, where it's like you can't help but notice this thing because it's just, it's gonna scream when you open the magazine. So we then ordered, I don't know, 500, a thousand copies of these regional publications, gave them to everyone at the sales kickoff. We said, now go back into your respective meetings. When you have your, your intro meetings, give them this magazine. And the first reaction, you know, and they'd all, their audience didn't know how to buy media, right?
SG: They just said, oh my God, you guys bought an ad in the most expensive trade publication. It was such a clever way to engage the salespeople and to make the clients out there think that this was a brand that went big and they were investing a lot of money behind this launch and that really, so that helped with that perception. And then the other thing I love about any physical thing is if you spend the money and you give something to someone like that, they will not throw it away immediately. Eventually, it will be thrown away, but there should be a metric around like, time spent sitting on desk. You know, like when you give that to someone, if that sits on their desk for two weeks, there is value in that because they were going back, they were looking at it. So, I'm glad you touched on that. What did the sales force say, like, as it related to like that tangible piece? Did they think it helped?
GL: A mix of reactions? I mean, that was of this journey. You don't make these kinds of things alone. Of course. Like, to your point, there's a, there's a certain level.
GL: Like if you're gonna do, even if it's a bespoke landing page or a part of your website, like there is something like this has to pop. And so you know, whether it's sitting on a desk at an event or being handed to somebody who needs to look amazing. And so like we spent a lot of time, many partners working together to kind of figure out what would work on the tactic side. How is getting people's hands, do we need to put something extra on it like a band? We tried something like that and a lot of those ideas came from people doing, you know, business development roles who were working hand in hand with salesforce because it is one thing to hand it to them, but maybe you want a cure code on there that drives back to a particular page like we tried things like that. And most of the time at events, right, where we'd be handing out like a thousand.
GL: But I have great respect for my partners in events marketing and who come up with clever ideas like that to be like, it's not just handing you something we'll throw away in five minutes. It's, you know, there's some message on there to test them specifically. The reactions were always that this looks great. A clients like it broadly speaking. But we kind of had to tailor it in delivery, right? So sometimes it was paired with, if it was like Dallas or Houston, something local, you know, like a brochure or something. They kind of like be a bundle. But in a lot of cases it went to a lot of events and into a lot of meeting handoffs that kind of thing.
GL: And so, the response was always, you know, if you're talking to sales, like they'd need a regular flow of content. They'd need some of those, something that's more than a brochure. And so broadly speaking, it fit in need to kind of keep a conversation going. Have something they could send, something that was different than just a set of charts, right? And so we would work with them to make sure that there was something special about it if we could. But a lot of those ideas came for people that were on the ground and we were happy to accommodate. Because when you're making that kind of content, usually it's like you've given birth and someone's asked you about where are you enrolling them in school, right?
GL: You're like, hold on, like, so you have to have partners to kind of figure that out and just make sure that the baby gets where it needs to go, and usually the reaction was positive.
SG: Yes. Yeah. You know, the event marketing thing is its own beast. I mean, it, I do have a lot of respect for those folks. I'll interject a random story from what I thought was one of the best event marketing activations. So this was, and you would never think that I, out of the, out of my mouth will come the words, this really innovative thing from the post office. But the post office was trying to do, you know, raising awareness of why not use the post office instead of FedEx or DHL, right? Like, it was kind of like, use us to send stuff to your clients. And this was at South by Southwest years ago. And their whole, their whole pitch was like, they built a booth, it looked like a post office, and they were like, you're getting a lot of materials from the show. Just bring it here. We'll ship it free back to your office and it's gonna arrive before you get home.
SG: And it was such a powerful, like it had utility, they proved their service, right? It wasn't just like a, hey, we can get it there X days faster. Anyway, little bit of a segue how, I thought that was a really cool event activation. Any other parts of the first case study before we go on to the second one?
GL: No, I mean, I think the lessons I would, again, I said mentioned the idea that sometimes you are looking for content to solve problems you have, but usually it can, and it doesn't mean that your strategy is not sound, it just means that ideas like a magazine, video series, whatever it is, inevitably you can fill in sort of gaps with these kinds of things. And so I think that people that are associated with the brand relaunch just remember that it, when you get to that day, there has to be something there that shows that often is not literally just telling people, you know that you've done all this work. It's easy to get in that we all have been there, but you have to think through activation. You have to think through how to activate, and somewhere within your company is a story worth telling and have some fun, try some things to figure out what is the best way to bring that to life. Because Neville, it's not just one video or one article or a press release. It's going to be a mix of things.
SG: Yeah. All right. Cool. Nice case. We're gonna jump into case number two, and I'm just gonna refer to this as the magical case cause it involves a lot of magic. Take it away.
GL: For sure. I think that everyone has dealt with the challenge of shifting to conference calls, virtual events. I mean, it's been the, there's been such good work in this space, right? When we were all just kind of figuring out as we go. For example, a company I was working for, doing tether client events, made the ship to cleverly hire people to do like virtual wine tasting and I usually got to go to those and it was amazing. And so, like I was happy to have something to break up the monotony of being trapped at home during that first year of pandemic. But when you're talking about events that used to be like a happy hour or something where you're engaging in person, it's just so challenging to replicate that experience. Like how do you keep people engaged?
GL: And I think on the, the bad end of the spectrum, like a lot of people try to, it's a flood of like inside jokes or people that aren't hectors trying to do work and it, it can come, it could be fine for a while, but like if you try to run a whole virtual event with that kind of thing. It is tough, and so one of the companies I worked for, we had to sponsor an hour before a giant industry award ceremony, and so you won't be able to see your logo, but you want them to associate positive fillings with your brand, and it's something to where you would've been elbow to elbow sharing drinks. That's a different scenario than trying to do what you and I are doing now to be engaging to make sure people understand your brand, but also come away with a good experience.
GL: We put our heads together and I pitched ideas like trying to use local groups that could do like improv, you know, to host people that would be good MCs or that can make the hour kind of speed by with jokes and that sort of thing. And my manager at the time was like, no, I want a magician. And it's the first time I've ever been asked to, to hire a magician and thought he was crazy and was skeptical about it the whole way and immediately searched for like five or six other options and put those in front. He's like, nah, I've seen this guy before him. Let's do it. And we talked to someone who was based out of Vegas, not like your uncle, you know, or something. And every meeting we had with him, I was skeptical that it wouldn't work. And then the day of, you know, a lot of the challenges were around how does the technology work? Like how are you, he was doing illusionist space work.
GL: We're trying to figure out like, how does he interact with everybody or are we projecting small interaction with a larger group? Like it was technically very complicated. After a few interactions with this individual, I was like, well, he does seem engaging and entertaining. And then the day of the show, I mean, I'm shocked how wrong I was because he was doing things like calling out people that were even in our office or in other offices and having them guess things like Australia or kangaroos or whatever that, you know, they would write on a card in the office with us, but yet he hadn't spoken to them in advance.
GL: And my, like, we all loved it and it was a great show and it was one of those things where like I tried to now take as like good ideas can come from anywhere. And particularly when it comes to virtual events, like you have to try stuff. Like I thought this was insane. It would go terribly but, you know, I might've just evolved in the same trap that we used to where like you try to pick some group to kind of do what you do in person virtually.
GL: Now sometimes you just need to like go for it. Like, and I think in today's world, like it's hilarious that I had to hire a magician as my job, but at the same time you, there are creative outlets out there ways to kind of make this environment engaging. And a lot of people are doing interesting things in the space, but for you to get people to come to something, to stay to something and be engaged, it might not be a magician, but there are just lots of interesting options out there now for how you can engage the clients. And so it may be starting a podcast over your kitchen, but it may also be just finding things to reach clients in a new way. And that's, that is the potential of the new world. Like we probably felt trapped in our houses in that first year. But what has led to is like these interesting ways that you can engage with the audience is you wanna reach you and a B2B. A lot of these folks are hard to get to stay in a room, try something like I'm an illusionist. See how it goes.
SG: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty, I like that. There was a virtual thing that I participated in. It was a wine tasting, and at the same thing, you go, well, how are we gonna do wine tasting if we're all remote? And the logistics were fascinating because they were like, we're shipping small bottles of wine. Everyone gets the wine. And you literally were like, all right, open up that first bottle and you start describing the smells and the tastes. And of course everyone's like, I don't smell that. But then you have the like, oh no, I totally smell it, right? But it was that shared experience though digitally, we are all in a weird way connected from sharing that same thing from a physical thing. So it's kind of cool that you can.
GL: It's why I think there's been a, there's this huge boom, right, in companies that do like one-to-one interactions, you know, making sure there's associates available on the floor to show off. You know, I've bought pants that way and it, it's odd to connect with somebody virtually. But I mean, I think the lesson here is that like you need to be creative and try things. And again, it doesn't have to be a magician, but there have to be things where the things that translate well are charisma. People that are, yeah, they don't have to be like a formal hose. Like you want it to be authentic, but there are ways to, to maybe it's pushing webinars and making them a little bit different. Maybe it's having something like commercial wine tasting. Like you have to find ways to make this experience carry on what you were probably previously doing.
SG: Yeah.
GL: Remote. And I think for most people, like we're not completely back to normal. There is this sense of like, everything's blended now. And so you have to think through creative ways to try stuff. And I, it may be anything, and it may come up from let build, but there's something out there and I think the inspiration is just look at what other brands are doing. This is kind of a space where like, I don't think there's a rule book on this. It may be that example that you mentioned where somebody had shipped a small model of wine and you're having a nice evening with some prospects. It may be a magician. It may be, like, do you have a virtual tour or something? But there are ways to reach people now that we probably hadn't previously considered that don't involve us all sitting at a bar or, yeah, looking up at slides. Like there's a lot of way things you can try now.
SG: I think there's something too about, I'll refer to it as underproduced content, right? So we're so used to like spending a month to do a video and making sure like the sound is perfect in all the edits are perfect when you do a live thing and it's underproduced like in you're a magician example. You're waiting for the magician to like trip or reveal the trick, you know, by accident. And there's just something to be said for that. Like there's, I remember we did, this is more in the B2C world, but during Covid there's a local toy store and owner's fantastic. Like he knows more about toys than anyone I've ever heard of. And he was doing 20-minute Zoom appointments for shopping where he literally, you called him on it on FaceTime and he would walk around the store and it was just such a great shopping experience. Plus you had like the added pressure of like, well, I have to buy something now because the owner spent 15 minutes with me and, you know, then they partnered with the delivery company. But I love those just underproduced moments that, that just have so much more authenticity, this part of 'em.
GL: For sure. And that's the power of, again, we're all used to video conferencing now and it stones through from this, is that kind of interaction or attending sort of a live stream from a brand. And I think those are really interesting storytelling moments, which are, to your point, don't really have to have the same production values. It comes down to like aligning personalities, making sure that the experience is good, like those things take care of themselves if you pick the right people, the right moments, and that's where our jobs as content creators shift a little bit. But you know, you can trust the process a little bit more if at the core is something that like, you're like, oh, people are gonna find this interesting. People are gonna enjoy engaging with this person. People are just gonna enjoy engaging with each other if you have the right mix of things. And that is, it's a different type of work, right, than having to put out a three-act narrative. I'm a five-minute video with German to black out but it's still storytelling. It's just shaping it differently.
SG: Yeah. All right, nice. Thanks for sharing the case study. We're now gonna get into the more personal side of the podcast. Glenn, this is, I should, I'm gonna get really close to the microphone and talk quietly now.
SG: A lot of candle, but that's right. We're gonna, we're gonna pause while the sun goes down and then bring in the mood lighting for this part. So we're gonna go back in time. Tell us about your first B2B slash content job that you had.
GL: I am a refugee from journalism and so, and it's hilarious that young me worked in a time when I was actually majoring in broadcasting and I ended up working in newspapers right after college. And both were, you know, taken out by the internet. At the time, it was everything that we talked about in school was around, like the Tampa Tribune had done this amazing thing where like the local newspaper owned the broadcast affiliate or vice versa. You know, no one's saw the real threat, which was, you know, the internet was going to give access to content in such a different and unique way. And so I worked in newspapers for a few years, but was not too familiar with marketing. The muscle is the same, but I didn't realize until I started interviewing that, like when you look at job descriptions, when you look at the transition, like working on deadlines, you know, trying to be creative in certain situations, doing things like blogs, like it really is the same type of work, just different subjects and so it took me a while to get into marketing because a lot of people assume that you had a business writing experience or that you, you may not be a fit without having certain types of experience, but it's like if you look at it empirically, again, the muscles are the same.
GL: And so my lesson to people that are hiring, like you can look for people that have come from agencies or from unique roles or some of the things match they could be a good fit for your team. Getting into it for me was a friend called me and asked if you ever heard of this company and I had not and went to a job interview and it was actually for a role as a graphic designer, which I was serviceable at. But it was a role where like you would, you'd be designing books or for the business slides for the business, occasionally writing a press release occasionally during email. Kind of just a Swiss Harvey night. And I was able, grateful to interview cause newspapers at the time were not doing great and so made that transition as a graphic designer, stuck my way in and have been here since. And so I definitely started there, but eventually got back into more content facing roles because that was my natural skillset.
GL: But you know, not something I necessarily expected to fall into but was sort of surprised when I tried to get in like the hoops that you have to go through because a lot of people on the hiring side really look within their same type of industry but when it comes to our kind of roles, content roles, like those skills really do translate well.
SG: Yeah. What's one thing that you, even though that world, you know, operates very differently today, what's one thing that you took from that saying, you know what, I still use this thing I learned every day?
GL: Oh, I definitely, sort of two things I think that we don't do enough of like we had traditional editorial meetings, whether it's something our team is set up to do or it's you're coming into a new team, like I think, I like proposing is like, it's not, don't just take ideas-based value. You like debate them. And so within that world, like you usually are pitching something and then you're shaping it as a group and somebody is challenging you at every step of the way, which when you're younger you hate but you come to appreciate that it's important to see those other people's points of view.
GL: And so I think an editorial mindset where particularly if you're working with people with different skill sets, bringing them into the conversation, like they may ask things that don't feel right but having to even explain your idea or rationalize it may make you think of looking at it in a different way, but otherwise also working on a deadline. Like you feel like if you can crank out, you know, 500 words in 35 minutes, you probably can handle whatever comes up. Because in corporate America, typically things take a little bit longer, but the fire, there's more fire drills with meetings and getting ready for something to launch. Yeah, and having to create something out that fast but you do wanna be ready for that pressure. And so I do value the experience of being able to be creative very quickly, but also listen to other people's ideas. And I think that's important. Anywhere you go, like you need to respect other people's opinions and have them as part of the process, because those voices may just see something that you don't.
SG: Yeah, the speed is very fascinating. I mean that that whole industry was built upon deadlines. Like if you wanted to, to hold off until that day to like write it and turn it into your editor, great. It's something that a lot of the B2B companies I've worked with struggle with because there is a lot of infrastructure and approvals that have to take place. And it's rare to have a company actually truly embrace it and go, you know what guys? We just, we, here are the ground rules, here are the dues, here are the ballots. Make sure you have like two people look at it, it's hard to get to that environment. I think the brands that are doing a good job just embrace that and it's like, well, we don't have to show this to the EVP or the CEO. It's just like we know the ground rules and they know that we're creating not that you've gotta emulate a newsroom where you're breaking news, right? But it's just a content shouldn't take two, three months to get approved, but that's hard to do.
GL: Agreed.
SG: Culturally, that's a really difficult thing for people to, easy for us to say. Hard for companies to do.
GL: But I think there are options there. You, if you look at what kind of content you're trying to develop, there are things that you can do to make sure the process, where the approvals are needed for certain types of things, but you're working within certain things that have already been approved, where a lot of, I'm sure every brand social media team in America struggles with this. I've had to go through seven or eight meetings to get LinkedIn post approved. It might have been about something that was a sensitive topic that you want the words the right way, but even if for some of the break and view stuff, you are working off and say a press release that's already been approved, the language is approved and you're just echoing off of that.
GL: There's things like that where you can trust the process. If you as a group have met, you have it built in a way where you know where the the lanes are and you know the types of things that can be quickly reacted to. Like, it's just, it's certainly one thing to make sure that you don't do anything that gets somebody sued, but you wanna make sure that at the flip side, there are certain channels that just require a little bit more speed. And so you can look at avenues by which either there's somebody in place to react or there's certain types of content that you're okay to put out there. There are ways to speed up that process and I think it doesn't get considered because, you know, it usually requires a different way of working. And to your point about like, what are the lessons you can say from journalism, like they were set up that way where like you had to react and there were still editors and copywriters, people that were looking at pieces before they went live. And you can set up things that way to make sure that your brand is a little more reactive, moving a little bit faster, a little more timely, and still get good works out without there being a mistake.
SG: I'm gonna have the most big segue you've ever seen in your life. We went from the world of newspaper. I'm literally gonna stop the presses in the background and we're jumping forward to artificial intelligence. And I think there's a good discussion to be had about what does it mean for content creators? And I'm not, you know, four or five months ago I was in that camp of saying, is this gonna have an impact? Yes or no? It was a very binary thing for me, and the more I spent researching and playing with ai, I won't even describe it that way. It, the impact is here to stay and now it's just a conversation of how to use it. And I'll kind of, I don't wanna limit the conversation just to like, cuz most people think AI equals contact creation. The computer is writing for me, and I think it's bigger than that. I think it's using AI to gather data, do research. So I view it as, even though people see it as content creation, I think there's way more value on the research and data integration side. So I'd love to get your thoughts on like, looking forward, where do you envision AI having an impact and how does that alter, like the content creation engine that so many of us have built, you know, over the years?
GL: There's an old Seinfeld bit where he makes bono scientist who he's saying, like, the scientists who invented the seedless watermelon, he is like, yes, that's what I wanna focus on is seedless melons, you know. I thought of that when I was looking at some of the Chat GPT stuff, because there is this, like we, we'd spent so much time making lots of different kinds of things. I'm sure there's something that's a equivalent of seedless watermelons where we really could focus on the big picture stuff, right.? And my hope is that optimistically, there's something to freeing up parts of her brain power for other more important tasks whether it's strategic ways at looking at content, strategy development, whatever. Whether it's for research, whether it's for doing some of the things like basic social copy or whites facing ideas for content ideas, like it isn't coming yet to take her jobs. It's not Skynet , but it is something that can work with us as a partner.
GL: And so I think the interesting thing since Chat GPT arrived has been the tips and tricks have been a lot of really people focusing on kinds of things to prompt, to writing an email, to write social copy, to write things to help your day. But really, it comes down to how you work. And I think there's lessons there to kind of get familiar with it. Everyone should play with it and like, look at this potential, not just laugh at it writing like a hip hop bible burst. That stuff's awesome and fun. But yeah, there's, there's a million things that are entertaining, but look at how you work and figure out places that it can plug in because I think for me, the potential around research and helping me think of things quickly that I would've spent several days working on, that's where like, it lets my content muscle just create content because it's fed properly. It's not wasting time on other things. It's not solving the seedless watermelon crisis. It's trying to focus on things that really should be focused on.
GL: And so I think that's gonna be hopefully the media impact and long term, you know, particularly as we've shifted from a world where I think it used to be safe to say content is king. And then the rise of metrics based things like everybody wants to understand performance and how things are doing. It felt like probably in the past decade that content was taking a bit of a backseat because it's just like, well, are we reaching the audience? Are things reacting? Like I think you can now like look at all the data that you have and properly look at are you getting the right message for the right audience? What are things that we could be talking about that we're not? What are people talking about that we're not talking about with AI? There are some automation things that we could do now to learn some of that stuff, but with AI , you can have someone that's effectively like a virtual analyst helping you figure out some of those opportunities.
GL: And so contact can kind of, you know, rise to the challenge a little bit and not be generic AI-produced stuff. It can actually be something that is created in partnership with these tools to be more interesting, to be more impactful. And so broadly speaking, it make us better at our jobs and it can simplify some of the things that we do day to day now. But my real hope is that, you know, it gives me time to think about those bigger topics, those bigger ideas and take my teeth into those versus like having to crank out the same 25 emails for campaign launch or social copy that really is going to be kind of derivative of the same. Like there's places like that where on the production side it's about valuable now, but long term. But currently and long term. It's a partner to help us research, find things that we're not thinking about and can help us ideate.
SG: Yeah, it's an interesting take. I mean, I could see how the, the lift of creating is certainly easier now with AI, and I wonder if it's, does that force the content creator or the writer or the producer, whatever the role is that can do these things out? Does that force you to be a better storyteller, a better problem solver where before it was so hard to create everything? So that was 80% of the effort. You know, it was like, hey, that writer's working on that piece, like don't talk to them. because like they need 10 hours to do that. You know, what I've done in things using AI, find myself being better at structuring content because you just have to, like, the creation side is easier now.
SG: So you're just forced into is this the right flow? And one thing that I've used it a lot for is researching pain points. You know, I'm a big believer that you've used this earlier is, is content, you know, should solve a problem. And to me, like before, I dig into creating something now I just say, Hey, ai, can you list the top 15 problems that this type of customer or, you know, a tech company in this market, what are some of the challenges that they might be up against? And that is to where I see the real value of all this stuff. Oh, that's interesting. Like, I didn't know that. And then let's say I find a pain point, and then I might say, all right, can you research data that supports this pain point? And then that pulls in sources. You still have that responsibility to say, all right, well now there's six sources, which one is most credible?
SG: But yeah, the ability to do that besides like the days of endlessly, just almost like, it was almost like going to the library, right? Like, yeah, I'm gonna write a paper, so I'm gonna have, I'm gonna go to the library for two hours and get lost. And just kind of like hopefully, and we called that researching. You know, like that was like, no, that's researching. You do that for two hours. It's a fascinating world.
GL: To be able to react faster when you're doing research is invaluable. Like if I'm spending time diving into SEO topics and trying to figure out what my connects, if I'm trying to look at thought leadership. Be like what hasn't been covered. Like there's just some places there where hopeful youth of content team can get to it sooner. And certainly I think that Chat GPT or Chat GP-3 now eventually transitioning to GPT-4, there's gonna be potential for it to write large slots of marketing jobs. But I think that it doesn't lessen the importance of what we do. It just means that some parts for a job will be hopefully creating higher concept stop things that are a little more personal, a little more authentic. And I think a lot of people would be happy to focus on that. And if you are someone who, if your skillset is the blocking and tackling, the things that are just the, I'm good at cranking down 20 posts on for LinkedIn or for something like that, like, you know, think about how you can be someone who develops the prompts or makes the engine work because it still comes down to, you know, what you put into it is what you get out of it, right? At least right now. And so I think that there still have to be, there has to be an expertise around, you know, what you're trying to do, how it's applied, how what you get back is shaped into what you need.
GL: It's gonna make all that faster, regardless. Like that's what we know for a fact. But again, it kind of comes down to like your example, you know, if you're talking to different clients, like it's helping you speed up the process of learning something that they might be dealing with. For me, Content Development role, it might help me quickly get to topics we should be talking about, but we're not, and I can, you know, some parts of that journey inevitably for an effective content journey as we talked about with the case studies. You want to talk, you want to try different types of things and tell that story of different mediums. Maybe Chat GPT or future versions of this can help you reshape that source content, but it's still based on something and that's where I think our brain power skillset, our muscle is still useful. Some of the higher concept stuff, I hope feeds it or the prop feeds it or our. Structures it in a way that makes it part of our, it's a tool, not something that replaces what we do.
SG: Yeah. I'm really fascinated with the unintended consequences of AI. So there's clearly all these benefits, but there's a downside that will ultimately emerge. And one thing I've been playing around in my head with is, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, we started with the simplistic view of media. It. A handful of big media companies that controlled broadcast print, certainly with like the start of cable TV and like satellite radio like it, it just fragmented, right? So now there's so much information. There's not as much rigor as it relates to editorial standards and fact checking. So to me, I can envision a potential world where we go down this path of, now media companies have more value to show as it relates to their standards. So do you have broadcast companies that say we are taking a stance. We do not generate anything. AI. So you have our, this is our fact-checked sourced approach journalism, you know, will that fragment the media world? Will people now, you know, let's say we live in this world where we don't know the information and how accurate it is. We do that for five or 10 years. Is it now, do we get frustrated by that? And now it's like we lean in into this older version that we all grew up in. There's also a funny joke I saw recently related to, you know, the downside of using Google to find what potential illness you have by typing in symptoms and the joke goes something like, well, it depends on what disease has the best SEO performance. You know, like, is one disease beating another if the symptoms are are better or worse and is are we gonna live in that world where it's kind of like, I don't know, like my brain doesn't like that, you know, I wanna be in the safe world, you know? So what are your thoughts on like, do you see long-term, will it get worse? Is there more fragmentation? Or what do you think might happen?
GL: I wouldn't. I probably feel most comfortable speaking to my fears and or optimism around like the quality of concept and the truthfulness or the fact checking part is something I'm very much interested in. I legitimate notes. All very recently there were virtual influencers, and it's something I've spent a lot of time researching recently about AI-generated influencers and it's just hilarious how engaging they are or how much they mirror someone who's doing it in real life, and meaning that at some point it's going to be very quick for AI to understand what we'd like to consume and what we'd like to enjoy and produce, you know, all kinds of content that will probably have a gut reaction to like, this is probably written by a bot, or this is an image that's a little too close to perfect.
GL: I hope that humanity reacts to that and has sort of a yearning for more pure forms of content, meaning like real photography, very creative, interesting, high-concept content. I don't know if it'll go that way cuz McDonald's and other brands, forgive me, I shouldn't mention brands. Sorry. I think my hope is that there is this reaction to sort of the wave of generated content that's coming where you can kind of tell, you know that something is a helpful article or a generated image where you're like, okay, my gut knows that that's fake. And so it makes us all yearn for pure content. The content that you know was handcrafted or was a unique personal story or photography or video that was created by real storytellers?
SG: Yeah.
GL: I hope that there's this reverse reaction where we suddenly want that stuff. I don't know if that's the case because fast food chains are still a business. So I think it'll be interesting because optimistically, my hope is we'll be able to tell the difference if there is a way for AI for work to make even generated content, more truthful, whatever that means. That's gonna be a challenge because of how we all view that subject. But my hope is there is some way to kind of like weed out the different kinds of content that are out there because I think what's been crazy for me, having been a journalist, I can still remember the first time that one of my friends who was like an accountant was like, oh, I'm a managing editor for a food blog. And I was like, what? What are you talking about? And so I remember billing like there was a point in the past, you know, 10, 15, 20 years where everyone became content producers. And having viewed myself as such, you know, like you're very snarky about it at first or like you have alarm bells. You're like, well, but the truth is everybody has a point of view or opinion, and I laughed at that food block, but some of you know, the things they were doing were pretty good or things that we all can identify with.
GL: And that's sort of how I feel about, felt about AI in the beginning. But when you see what it's capable of, you just hope there's the separation of like, let it have its roll, let it create things that are useful in a certain way, but like it's not writing more in peace. It's not creating hopefully any Marvel movies anytime soon. So I would hope there is some reaction for us as consumers to what comes out next to really separate and be like, this is useful. We like it, we get it, we know it. Or we know it's teaching me something or it's automated in some way, but we still yearn for real, real things, real stories, real personal and authentic human moments, whether that's through video, written word, film, media, something like, my hope is, is that we still want that.
GL: And for brands that means that it's as important as ever to be authentic. And those probably those types of stories, that kind of content that work needs to be done by human hands, may be informed by AI, but don't let AI, you know, replace your interns or wherever you have doing this.
SG: Yeah. Nice. All right. I'm gonna end the show by reminding myself I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask Siri to set a reminder for 30 years and we can both listen to this podcast and we can go, all right, how far off were we on where it was, or in AI in 10 years, something else will come out. So, Silly humans thinking about AI, AI is nothing, you know? Anyway, Glenn, I really enjoyed your perspective. You've got just really deep experience in the world of content. So always, I always am impressed by your knowledge and your perspective on the art and Science of how we go about creating the content and telling stories. So thank you again for joining us today.
GL: Well, hopefully in 30 years you and I are on a iceberg, having been pushed out to see from, you know, AI drones because they don't need us anymore into like everything is covered. There are no jobs for marketers, and it's a space where we have to live in the wild. I hope that's not where we're doing that podcast, which would be with what? Like a tin can and something, you know, very natural. Because I think that's what everyone's fear is, and I hope this is a subject that, you know, people dive into. And you know, the lesson is for us as we debate the possibilities, honestly, half the battle is just get in there and play with it, because you should be part of that change, not the two of us being pushed out to see on in iceberg. I think it's better if you join the revolution as opposed to let it affect you. So yeah, I look forward to that 30 year conversation and I hope that we're at least a little bit, right?
SG: Yeah. All right, everyone. Thanks Glenn for joining. If you haven't already, make sure to like and subscribe the interesting B2B Marketers podcast. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.