Integrated Marketing: Brands are built by how you show up every day (podcast episode #126)

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To me, every customer touchpoint is a thing of value.

And yet, some brands will pour millions of dollars into a Super Bowl ad while at the same time cutting customer service to the bone.

Yet, both ads and customer service are valuable customer touchpoints.

So I saw a kindred spirit when I read this lesson in a recent podcast guest application that came across my desk – “Brands are built by how you show up every day.”

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Thea Hayden, Interim CMO at Cognizant.

Cognizant reported $19.4 billion in revenue in 2023. Hayden manages a team of 350 across brand and digital marketing, global communications, events and sponsorships, field marketing, marketing operations, and technology marketing.

Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Communication can be hard…and it’s critical

Most marketers are natural-born communicators, but communicating is actually really hard, especially when you’re collaborating across teams. Hayden is passionate about integrated marketing. Depending on the scope and scale of the project, being integrated across marketing disciplines can require an epic level of collaboration which in turn requires every team to always be communicating.

Hayden’s team was preparing for a brand launch, working across four different agency partners – from a brand agency working on the logo, an ad agency working on the TV spot, a boutique agency working on the messaging and a comms agency working on earned media – all with a multitude of interdependencies. She has found daily huddles effective to connect across teams and time zones and keep teams focused on progress and clear about changing requirements.

Always start with the end in mind

Hayden referenced the famous Stephen Covey maxim. As marketers, most of the time, our stakeholders come to us with a tactic they want, and it can take a few rounds of relentless listening to understand what’s behind the ‘ask’ and what we are trying to accomplish. It happens every day – and the first answer when you ask someone why they want something is usually “because xyz executive asked for it” but that never answers the real question.

A few years ago, a team was asking for a TikTok presence. After the third or fourth ‘Why’, they realized the desired outcome was to increase employee engagement – but a vast majority of their team members are in India where TikTok is not available. So, they partnered together to increase communications on other platforms that could connect with the audience.

Brands are built by how you show up every day

Brands are a relationship – and a culture of brand loyalty and growth is built by how you show up every day – across every individual interaction. From sales to delivery to your digital channels to the person who answers the phone – it all influences your brand.

Don’t get Hayden wrong, the best marketing, advertising and communications can have an outsized influence but to really build a brand, change a brand or reposition a brand, you have to focus across the entire organization and ensure everyone is aligned. Working on brands for over 20 years, she has learned that measuring brand is a measure not just of brand messaging or the effectiveness of a brand campaign, it’s about the relationship you have with your consumer across all facets of your organization.

She has found this is true of start-ups – where in her experience it’s a matter of being agile enough to continually channel the collective energy in the same direction – and of large enterprises where you have more resources but also have more touchpoints and interactions to align.

Lessons (with stories) from people she collaborated with

The best cultures can be both positive and aggressive

via CEO Phil Soran

Hayden worked at a data storage startup that went IPO and was acquired by Dell. Their CEO, Phil Soran, built a culture they called “positive aggressive” which might seem to be contradictory, but it was the best culture she has been a part of. The team was relentlessly focused on results and equally focused on the positive “how” behaviors required to get the results as a team. It allowed people to perform well, be authentic and really rallied the organization, fostering a sense of teamwork.

Enthusiasm and optimism can be contagious

via CMO Bruce Kornfeld

A high-energy, fun-loving CMO Hayden worked with for a number of years, Bruce Kornfeld, taught her that optimism and enthusiasm can be contagious – and that can allow you to drive results no one thought possible. He was always up for anything and always brought a smile to the conversation. His positive approach is also where she learned the art of “yes, and…” which allows you to build on ideas, generate enthusiasm and continue to refine the outcome you’re really after.

Pay attention to your say/do ratio

via Michael Dell

Michael Dell was the first person Hayden heard say this – and many leaders at Dell firmly follow this model. In fact, in one of their leadership meetings, a coach went so far as suggesting that you stop saying things like “let’s grab a coffee” if you don’t have a solid plan to follow up. Because if you say you’re going to do something, you follow up and do it. This had a strong influence on both her leadership and communications style.

Discussed in this episode

Corporate Communication and Marketing Innovation: The dangerous delusion of safety – playing it safe can hurt you more than you know (podcast episode #41)

Using the Science of Habit Formation in Customer-First Marketing (interview with Charles Duhigg)

Marketing, Advertising and Brand Strategy and Culture: You don’t “build" community, you “facilitate” community (podcast episode #52)

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Transcript

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Thea Hayden: If you want someone to show up a certain way, which is how your brand is going to be perceived. You need to not only train them on that measure, then that on that and reward them on that. And that's, I think, something that marketers can do in partnership with sales really effectively in B2B companies.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest and.

Daniel Burstein: To me, every customer touchpoint is a thing of value. And yet some brands will pour millions of dollars into a Super Bowl ad while at the same time like cutting customer service to the bone. Does it make sense? Yes. Both ads and customer service and every other touchpoint. Those are valuable. So I saw a kindred spirit when I read this lesson in a recent podcast guest application that came across my desk.

Brands are built by how you show up every day. Joining me now to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Taya Hayden, interim CMO at cognizant. Thanks for joining me today.

Thea Hayden: Thanks for having me. I'm excited about the conversation.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Before we jump into it, I want to tell everyone your background today who know I'm talking to you. I started early in her career. She was a PR specialist at three. Com she's been a communications specialist at Global Star, director of marketing communications at Compel, and senior director of content strategy, Campaign planning and creative at Dell Technologies and many more roles.

Over the past five years, she's been at cognizant. Cognizant reported $19.4 billion in revenue in 2023, and Tam manages a team of 350 across brand and digital marketing, global communications, events and sponsorships, field marketing, marketing, operations and technology marketing. So that is a big portfolio. Give us a sense. What is your day like as interim CMO?

Thea Hayden: Well, we work across several time zones, which, by the way, are very real in my life. So my day generally starts pretty early. I am a big fan of a morning routine. So I that can be long. That can be short. It depends on how early my first call starts. Sometimes my first call starts at 6 a.m. and I do like a very short morning routine.

But after that I'm off and running. And what I'll say is that, every day is a little different, which is what I love about marketing. But the thing that's the same every day is that I'm very focused on communicating, connecting and collaborating across the organization, which is also what I love about marketing.

Daniel Burstein: I like that I people often talk about every day is different. That's cool. But I like how you've set out the three C's. We'll call them of what you need to do every day. That's nice. Well, let's take a look at some stories from your career. As I mentioned, I've never worked in another career. Really. I mean, never been a podiatrist or an actuary or something.

I don't know, but I don't think they build things like we build things, we build brands, we built campaigns. So exciting. And a key to that, as you mentioned on those C's, is communication. Like you said, communication can be hard and it's critical. How did you learn this lesson?

Thea Hayden: You know, it's funny, people think, especially marketers who are natural born communicators, they think it's easy, but but it's it can be really hard, especially when you're collaborating across teams. And, I came across the quote last week, the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it's taking place. And so I was like, wow, that landed with me really deeply.

And what I found is that you just have to have frequent and constant communication. And so an example of that is, about four years ago, we were doing a brand launch, and we were working across four different external agency partners and an internal digital and social team. So we had an ad agency working on a TV spot.

We had a brand agency working on a logo and a new visual ID we had a comms agency working on our media, and we had, another agency that we had working on, all the digital activations. And so you can imagine the intersectionality and the interdependencies of all of that. And it was happening in real time, which is which is how the magic always happens in marketing.

And so one of the things that we instituted and, it's been a practice of mine for a long time, is what, what I call a daily huddle. Sometimes people call it a stand up. I call it a huddle because I'm I'm not standing up. I'm usually sitting down. But that frequency of communication and collaboration just makes sure that every team shows up and communicates, and every team is across all the change that can happen when you're when you're building, and launching a brand at scale.

Daniel Burstein: I appreciate the specificity of the name. Do it. Do you keep it to 15 minutes? Because one thing I've heard about, you know, agile and all of that is the idea of a stand up wise people don't want to stand up for that long. And so like the enforce the quick meeting. Now I know you mentioned global. We're all remote.

Like do you force a quick time to it or there's a lot of players Eric it could go long.

Thea Hayden: Yeah it depends. It depends on the nature and the frequency. And how close you are. Right. If you're far out and you're doing things thinking you can't really do that in 15 minutes, you need to, you know, share more. If it's about status updates, 15 minutes you're in and you're out.

Daniel Burstein: And I me, I love this idea of communications. I love that quote too. How do you have a specific example of something you do to make sure the value proposition is understood across your entire vendor ecosystem and internally as well? Because, for example, I interviewed Jasmine Guzman, the head of corporate Communications of Content stack, on how I made it marketing.

I loved one of her lessons was large meetings are not for decisions, right? And so one one of the problems we have when we talk about this big vendor ecosystem, especially in a big public company like yours, is, is two things. One, there's just complexity. They don't work directly for your company. They work for many different companies, even in your company.

Right. There's so many people. But then also in fairness, and I'm not saying this is what's going on at cognizant, but I've seen this at other brands. Sometimes the knives are out, right, because these different agencies are competing for budget and priority. And so you get into a meeting and it becomes more of, I don't know, United Nations, like Face off over like a war or something versus let's all work together and build this value proposition.

So, so for you, it is there is there something you've learned to do to make sure everyone working on the brand is clear on the value proposition, no matter who they technically work for? What company?

Thea Hayden: Yeah. And it makes them simple. But write it down, and share it and consistently share it and share it repeatedly. Now, before you write it down, of course, there's the process of iteration and always is kind of changing, changing, changing. And it's it's back to that idea of communicating and sharing and collaborating. I do not weaponize information.

I think every you have to democratize it. And especially when you're working across a large team, I used to be transparent and share that information or no one will succeed. And so I think sharing it verbally and then writing it down and sharing it are some key lessons I've learned.

Daniel Burstein: I love that quote. Weaponize information because, hey, at one point in my career, I was working with an AT&T spin off company and I won't say which one. As an external vendor's an external consultant, and we were working with people internal to the company, and I was external, and there was someone at the headquarters and not at the headquarters, and she would always keep information to herself and know it's like, well, we're working on this transformation project.

And she's like, well, people came out of the meeting. I can't exactly discuss. I can say there was some laughter. I can say there was some anger to and some. And so I'm an external vendor and I'm thinking like, this is ridiculous. But the the other guy on the call, too, he worked at the company just in a different location, and he'd be stressing out over it.

And I was thinking, I know sometimes legacy AT&T and I'm picking on them some of those bigger companies like, yeah, that was a political thing you would do. You would weaponize information. So I love your idea of, you know, sharing, writing it down. I also want to talk about this next lesson. Always start with the end in mind.

Famous Stephen Covey Maximum Covey fan. I love that. How did you learn this? How did you internalize this in your career?

Thea Hayden: Over many, many years, I've internalized and I think it was something I learned early on. And it's because as marketers, our stakeholders will sometimes come to us and want a thing. They'll come to us with a tactic like, I want x, y, or Z. And until you uncover what it is and behind the app, then you won't ever get the if you just do what they ask for half the time, it's not going to deliver the outcome that they really wanted.

And the outcome is what marketing is all about. So, a funny kind of somewhat recent example of this. We had someone about four years ago come to us and say, we really need a TikTok channel. We really need a TikTok channel. And so, you know, there's the five whys, you know, but but I approach the five whys from a listening perspective.

And I think you have to listen relentlessly, because if your stakeholders feel questioned, they're never going to partner and you're never going to get to the right outcome. So it's a conversation. It's a dialog. Of course, you're asking why and you're you're having, suggestions about it. Well, after about the third conversation with this ask, we realized what they were really after was increased employee engagement.

And the team that they were working with was actually largely in India, where TikTok wasn't even available. And so when we realized that it was like a big would you have an every marketing project that you work on and you just wait for it, right? You wait for that moment. You're like, I get it, this is what we need to do.

And so based on that understanding and the listening, we were able to pivot and say, great, we can use these channels. And here's how we can effectively communicate to that audience. And I think, when you look at what you're trying to accomplish first, it's so much easier to get there in the end.

Daniel Burstein: I love that, by the way, for anyone listening, if you don't know the five whys, look it up. It is so helpful. Not just in your career but in your life. It comes from TQM, Total Quality Management, manufacturing companies. Toyota famously used it. I love the five lies. Let me ask, how do you bring the customer into the conversation?

And especially when it comes from not someone that reports to you, but someone that's either kind of a peer or or CEO or the board or whoever you're dealing with as, as a CMO. Because what you're saying, when I think sometimes people think they see someone like you if they're early in their career while she's CMO, she can just tell people to do whatever they want to do.

You know, she doesn't have to ask the five whys, you know, she can just kind of use that position of authority. But even many CMO I interview too, right? There are people that they have to deal with. They don't have position in 34. And it's especially challenging in the C-suite. I think I know, again, we're very marketing focused, or the CMO used to work for manager.

He famously said, you know, there's no CEO who's just taking a shower in the morning or very few. And they come and they like, you know what? I had a great idea for JavaScript in the morning or, you know, programing or whatever, but everyone thinks they're a marketer. And that extends to the CMO. The summer, sorry, the CEO, the C-suite analyst, you have to report to the public, company board members and all these things.

So we'll put you on the spot to mention someone's name. But can you give us a sense of, you know, when when someone that you didn't have position authority came, came to with an idea and how you brought the customer into the room to make sure to your point, answering the five whys actually serve the customer.

Thea Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. And marketing has a unique advantage because oftentimes where we're doing the research and we understand the customer more than anyone else in the organization, and I think that that's a position of strength. And one of the things that I've learned over the years is the best marketers blend that understanding and the kind of science and the data and the art of creativity.

And so when you can come to someone with, with in a ambidextrous way, like with whole brain thinking and say, that's a great idea. And, you know, here's what the customers are going to how customers are going to react to it based on this, this piece of data. And so I found that that's a really effective way to, address when you don't have positional authority, which oftentimes, you know, you would think you do, but sometimes you don't.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. No, that's great. At the ambidextrous think again. You got to like if you're not familiar with in these terms, you got to search a lot. The ones that they are saying because I'm saying because they will be very helpful for you in your career. Another lesson you mentioned are brands are built by how you show up every day.

How did you learn this lesson?

Thea Hayden: Well, as a young marketer, you think, oh, the brand team, they build the brand, they're responsible for it. And after working, for on brands of various brands for 20 years, I learned that that was the best brand team to the breath campaign. Best campaigns can absolutely, positively influence brands. Brands are really a relationship. They're about the relationship you have with your customer and their.

That relationship exists across the entire organization. So it's it is advertising. It's how you show up in public relations and media. It's also the person who answers the phone or the chat bot, right. That answers the phone, or the delivery of the product, or the sale of the product or the support or the service. And so when you think about it that way, you have to just take a more holistic approach to brand and thinking about brand unifying and a team behind a brand and and unifying a team behind how you measure it.

It's not yes, of course you're going to do brand monitoring research and you're going to do qualitative research, and you're going to do maybe some pre-post for a campaign. But you have to also measure, you know, customer satisfaction signals, social listening. What are people saying about us? NPS Net Promoter score. And then you have to bring you have to synthesize all of that information and use that to help you understand what how the brand is being perceived and what you need to do to ensure that they're perceived the way that you want to be perceived.

Daniel Burstein: I'm glad you mentioned the person who answers the phone or the chat bot, and I wonder if you have any examples from your career. I know you've worked for startups or for big companies of what you feel like. Your role in marketing was to get involved with customer service, because one thing I've noticed is a lot of companies look at as kind of I mentioned in the open marketing is where we spend money to have good customer touchpoints, but customer service is a cost center, and we will cut back to have good customer service.

And there was a real academy. This was pre-COVID, but I wanted to mention post-Covid do I? I was getting a washing machine or something delivered by Home Depot and I was I wasn't working at home back then. So specifically working at home from you know, and I was like looking out at the specific time to get it. And I live in a cul de sac, and I noticed this big trailer kind of pull around, just this generic trailer to pull around the cul de sac to come back my way.

And I'm like, well, that's not them. That's not Home Depot. And then, sure, nothing get out. And it's just just plain white trailer. And these guys were nothing special. And they're installing the Home Depot washer. And I thought, well, I know why that was done, right? Because there was a meeting with the CFO that said, we can outsource and save $5 per delivery or whatever, but I was thinking, well, shouldn't the CMO be in the room and say, no, we're entering people's homes.

We need to have the Home Depot brand now, bringing that to B2B space, of course. Just just yesterday, actually, I won't mention the company we are company had a customer service for one of our vendors, and I was talking to, our CEO and he said, you know what I've noticed, like post Covid and customer service has just really gone downhill for whatever reason.

So I ask that because as you talk about the brand showing up every day, like you mentioned, it's not just in whatever your version of the Super Bowl ad is to everyone listening. Right? It is. That customer sure is picking up the phone or tech support or even how you're using that I bot. So for you in your career, have you ever, as a marketer, like felt like you had to step into that customer service arena to to make sure the brand is showing up correctly?

Thea Hayden: Yes. Yes. And sometimes with different authority and sometimes with different, acceptance. I will say it's not always an easy conversation, but what makes it easy is if you have worked on brand values, right? What is our brand stand for? And you can use those to say, hey, are we really showing up this way? They're like a rubric.

Is this how our brand is showing up? Because every touchpoint is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to to grow your brand, to grow your loyalty or it's an opportunity, a missed opportunity in some cases, like your Home Depot, that's a huge missed opportunity.

Daniel Burstein: For I was thinking through I get I get, I get the CFO lens, I get the public company, I get the we need to, you know, reduce it for every delivery. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this company is coming into your house with an opportunity, right?

Thea Hayden: Yeah.

Daniel Burstein: I also want to ask this because it's something I see in B2C and B2B and run it by you, and maybe this doesn't work or whatever, but I wonder to you, you mentioned that. I mentioned I like that you mentioned every day. Is there anything you do to make a B2B brand a habit? And I ask this because we had at a previous marketing Sherpa Summit, we had Charles Duhigg speak.

He's, this super great guy. He's a New York Times reporter, and he wrote a book on habit. And like, one of the things he talks about when I interviewed him was, a famous Claude Hopkins advertising example. People didn't used to brush your teeth. Their teeth were running on their head, I don't know, 100, 200 years ago.

And Claude Hopkins came up with the idea of how to make it a habit. And one of the things they do is when you brush, there's that little kind of like tingle you get, which apparently you don't need to clean your teeth. It's used to have that habit and remind you of, like, remove that film for your teeth.

So now, today, if we don't brush, it feels wrong. And they've made it a habit that's very popular and B2C products. He's using examples for breeze about adding scent to cleaning products. So you know, if something was cleaned. But I thought you like B2B products. Like every day, every day I go into my outlook. I have that habit, right?

I go into my slack like I have that habit. So from a B2B brand, is there anything from the brand you've worked on, you've done to to try to instill it as a habit to kind of pay off, as you said, it was brand showing up every day and maybe you could tell me now it's more of a B2C thing.

It never worked for us.

Thea Hayden: I don't I mean, at the end of the day, brands are again that relationship. There's a human, there's a human involved. So it's definitely not just the beta B2C thing. I think the difference is potentially because it's more of a human interaction. A lot of, you know, high touch relationship smells. It's really about consistency. And it's about and consistency can be driven by what's measured and what's rewarded.

Right. And so I think if you want someone to show up a certain way, which is how your brand is going to be perceived, you need to not only train them on that measure, then that on that and reward them on that. And that's, I think, something that marketers can do in partnership with sales really effectively in B2B companies.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. So thanks for the to share a lot of the things that she learned from some of the things she made as we talked about as a key part of marketing. But we also learned lessons from the people we collaborate with, which we're going to talk about in just a moment. But first, I should mention that the how I Made It marketing podcast is underwritten by MC labs.

I, the parent company of Marketing Sherpa. You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in our AI guild. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mic Labs. Ai.com that's joining Meek Labs ai.com. All right, let's talk about some of these lessons from some of the people you collaborated with.

The first person you mentioned was Phil Soren, who is a CTO of an IPO. You worked at, sorry, a company you worked at that iPod, then ultimately was acquired by Dell. And you mentioned you learn from him that the best cultures can be both positive and aggressive. So take us into the room where this have happened. How did you learn this from Phil?

Thea Hayden: We actually, named the culture and we wrote it down and we called it positive, aggressive. And it can seem like a contradiction, right? Either you're positive or you're aggressive. But but Phil was able to bring those two things together to drive a bigger impact. And what that looked like was the team would go after it, right? They would get it done and they would kind of always get it done, but they would take the high road and they would bring the rest of the team with them.

So not only were we relentlessly focused on the outcome, we were relentlessly focused on the how we got there, right, how we got there, and that really unlocked people's potential to do great work and to work as a team. And it unified the culture. And it was it was one of the best places I've ever worked. It was a fantastic culture to be a part of.

Daniel Burstein: So when you talk about building that culture, I think of, you know, in B2B companies, there's different communities. We have we have that internal community. But so many times external communities are important to whether it's open source or user groups. And I wonder how do you build, do you have any examples of building a culture and an external company?

Because, for example, I interviewed Marcus Collins, head of strategy at Widening Kennedy in New York, on how I made it marketing. And one of his lessons was, you don't build community, you facilitate community. And he gave an example of working with Beyonce. So for you, I saw actually I did a quick search on GitHub, for cognizant. Net centric, it says we heart open source, right.

So I guess, you know, there's open source that's an important community. User groups are important community markets. His opinion was you don't build you facilitate. Do you have an example of of how you instilled culture into an external community that was, you know, important to your brand?

Thea Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the best examples is, client, you know, events that we host. Right. And how do you show up? This is an example not only of building community but building brand. And I think that you can build those in parallel. And in the best cases, your, your consumers are part of your brand community.

Right. And so, back at, at Compel It, which is the data storage startup that we were just talking about. We, we built a it was a very technical audience, and we built a user group called C drive, pun intended, right back in the day. And we, we had people come and just be facilitating that connection between like minded thinkers and sharing best practices and, and being able to kind of geek out together.

It really not only built the community, but it helped build our brand. In fact, our, our we were one of the fastest growing data storage companies in the world at one point. And I think it was a lot about that culture that we just talked about. It was a lot about that brand. And then taking that brand out into the community and welcoming our clients and customers into that.

Daniel Burstein: And I think a lot of value there is, you know, the customers can hear from your evangelists all day long, and some brand evangelists are rockstars in industries and helpful. Yeah. Boy, when they start getting to know each other and learning from each other and helping each other and hearing from each other, it's a multiplier. And I think of that when I look at your next lesson, you mentioned enthusiasm and optimism can be contagious, and you said you learned this from CMO Bruce Kornfeld.

So how do you learn this from Bruce?

Thea Hayden: Yeah, Bruce would always show up with this fantastic smile on his face before he asks something impossible. And it was like it was also impossible to say no to him. And so it was like, okay, Bruce, I got it, I got it, and how are we going to get it done? And even today, my team is threatened to make me a t shirt that says yes.

And, because when they come to me with with a challenge or an obstacle, I always acknowledge it with optimism, which I learned from Bruce and a smile on my face like, yeah, I get it. That sounds really hard. And and what are we going to do about it? And that helps unlock people's kind of like, okay, I didn't ignore the challenge.

Like, the challenge is real. It's there. The challenges are to be solved and marketers are natural problem solvers. And I think that that kind of. Yeah. And allows you to acknowledge the challenge, build on it and build on it with optimism. And that really, truly is what allows you to do things that that you thought were impossible.

And oftentimes the things Bruce asked for were literally impossible. And we did.

Daniel Burstein: I love that. But there's a famous quote, I think it's from David Ben-Gurion and said, you know, the difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer. So let me ask you, okay, so now you're leading a big team. You're leading company is what do you do to empower, especially the newer people on your team to solve these challenges?

Because when you talk about these conversations, when I've had them in my career, yes, I see like they tend to be from, you know, not always, but from more junior people in their career. And they'll come to me with a problem. And I've interviewed I remember we interviewed a professor from Queens College before, and I told her, like, hey, for your higher level students, at least you've got to stop being so specific with the syllabus.

You've got to stop telling them what to do, because then they come out into the marketplace. They come out to us and they look at us. Now we're they're professors and or academic advisors and they say, okay, great, I came to you with the problem. What do I do now? In my experience, working in business and marketing has never been.

I can follow syllabus. It's oh no, the world has just changed. What do we do? And so for you, so to your point, when they would come to me and they'd say the challenge, I'd take a similar approach. Yes. Okay. What do we do? And it would kind of surprise them sometimes because it's like, wait a minute, I told you the problem.

Now fix it. And like, no, no, no, we all got it. It's just us. We you got to fix it. We got to fix it. So with with especially more junior people coming on, your team are so important. You need them. They they are native to things we will never understand with digital marketing, AI and all these things.

What do you do to balance that? Of giving them authority and power and to fix things, to do things to go out there with at the same time, of course, brand preservation.

Thea Hayden: Yeah, I think that's an example where teaching people to collaborate effectively really pays off, because especially if you're young in your career, you don't often have the experience to rely on, right? You haven't gone through whatever experience that you're having right now. And so sometimes most of the time I'll be like, oh, wow. Well, have you talked to so-and-so about this?

Right? Have you connected with this person or what if what about this? And it almost becomes like a concept, a concept kind of exercise, like, oh, what if what what about this or what about that? And I think if you just, lead with that optimism and encouragement without I try not to give people the answers. I really try hard.

And that actually is something that I learned. I used to just go in and be like, well, why aren't you doing this? Right? And and but but that takes away people's, authority what they were talking about. And it doesn't empower them to grow and to learn on their own. And so I pivoted about, you know, midstream in my career and started asking smart questions and encouraging collaboration.

And if people don't get their you can help them along the way. But it's like, have you talked to so-and-so or have have a conversation about it? Because conversations unlock potential.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I like that. Serving as a guide and asking questions versus giving the answer. All right, one more lesson here. You say pay attention to your say do ratio and you learn this from Michael Dell. How did you learn this from from Mr. Dell himself.

Thea Hayden: Well, it it was the first he was the first person I heard say it actually model. It was Michael Dell. And he was like, look, we got to if we say we're gonna do something, we got to do it. And, it was kind of a core ethos when I worked at Dell. In fact, one of the leadership sessions, there was a leadership coach that came in and said, this is so important.

Stop saying, hey, we should get together. If you don't have any intention of getting together, don't say, hey, let's grab a coffee. If you're not going to call them or schedule it to get a coffee. That's how important it is that if you say you're going to do something, you actually do it. And that was foundational for me in terms of not only my leadership style.

Like if people tell me they're going to do something, I expect them to do it, but also my communication style. If I say I'm going to do something, even if it's like, I'll call you later, I absolutely do. And the data doesn't go by without me doing that. And that I think it's just, it's about being authentic and real and and keeping your promises.

Daniel Burstein: So I love that. One of the things to make the do happen is we actually have to execute now. Right. And so you mentioned you've been in startups and you've been in major brands, right? You're a big public company now. Do you have any specific examples of how that execution, part of something you would do differently or the same in a startup or a big company?

Right. Because when you talk about Michael Dell, he famously started the company, I think it was in his dorm room. Right? He was a startup. And of course, now that he led a company, Dell, that was a major public company. Right. And the challenges I hear, it's funny, I hear from both from the start, we hear like, oh, it's so hard to get anything done.

We don't have any resources like the big companies. And you talk to the people at the big companies are like, oh my gosh, it's so bureaucratic, I can't get anything done here. I wish I worked at a startup, right? It's it's all all your viewpoint. So I wonder if you have any examples of like, okay, you're startup versus, you know, major public enterprise.

Here's things that we do similar or different to actually make sure you come through and get the due done right. Actually get it done.

Thea Hayden: Yeah. You're absolutely right. It is easier to execute to do the thing at a small company, but you don't have the opportunity for impact that you have at a larger company, and you're doing the thing on a bigger stage at a larger company. So it it's a little more difficult. It requires a little more, free wiring.

Right. And so I would say, at startups, you can see like, okay, when you ask one person, is it good, you go right at a larger company to execute, you need to make sure that you're doing a lot of stakeholder management. And I think that that's a skill that people early in their career should look to learn, like conceptual awareness.

Who does? Who does it matter to? Who is this going to impact. And have I talked to them about it and, and I, I use that we use the term pre wire like you need to have the meeting before the meeting. Right. You need and that's especially at the companies. That's important because you don't want to show up in the room with your stakeholders.

And have them not have seen what you're about to present or execute. And so so some of those relationship things are almost more important. You just have to have more relationships at a bigger company, and that's how you connect with you.

Daniel Burstein: Let me ask you to when it comes to execution in your career, have you done anything differently at a private company versus a public company? Because that's definitely one thing I've heard, too, is that kind of different level of scrutiny. Once you're a public company, you talk about IPO in a previous company. In a public company now? Yes.

In a private company, you always have investors be private equity. Could be, you know, other private investors. You always have some press attention. But once you're a public company, I mean, there are analysts that are specifically their job is to know every time you scratch your nose right. And then you just get a kind of different scrutiny level of press, not to mention the broader ass shareholders.

You have you talked about pre wiring, I wonder, is there something different you do when you're executing privately versus publicly?

Thea Hayden: There it's the scrutiny, I think, that you have to expect that you mentioned. I think you're spot on. You at a private company, you can make decisions without having to consider as many implications. Right? At a public company, your decisions have more implications, and you just have to consider all of the different stakeholder audiences. And so I think it I was actually at Dell when we went private.

Right. And things decisions were made differently when we were a private company. It's easier to transform and make teams, I think, faster if you're a private company than if you're a public company. That's been my experience, a.

Daniel Burstein: Bit of a sigh of relief. Yeah. So, all right, so we've talked about so many different things from your stories and your experiences of what you've done in marketing. If you had to break it down to what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Thea Hayden: My favorite marketers are curious. They are listeners, they're learners. And that that idea of whole brain thinking like right brain, left brain, they're able to integrate, creative and data and bring those to bear to, to deliver the best outcome. And I think those those are what I would say. And and they laugh like they're light hearted. The best marketers don't take themselves too seriously.

Daniel Burstein: I love that I've asked this question many times that we've done over a hundred of these. I have not heard the laughing one. That's a great thing. And I love laugh and we'll try to laugh more because that. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Today, I think a lot.

Thea Hayden: I appreciate it was great talking to you.

Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.