Telecommunications Marketing: Marketing is the chief customer advocate (podcast episode #144)

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Yes, the Super Bowl ad. How exciting. The experiential activation with the major influencer. The new branding campaign roll out. So wonderful.

But don’t stop there.

You could have the most compelling and creative ad campaign, but if you don’t optimize for every customer touch point, you are undercutting the expectation you have built for the customer with the reality your brand is actually delivering.

So I love this lesson from a recent podcast guest application – “Marketing is the chief customer advocate.”

To hear that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Scott Neuman, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Calix.

Calix is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2024, it reported $831 million in net sales.

Neuman leads the corporate marketing strategy team at Calix, including branding, communications, content development, digital and event strategy, and field enablement. Collectively the Calix marketing team is approximately 100 professionals with a primary focus on the North American markets of broadband service providers.

Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it. And read the summary in this article for actionable insights.

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Lessons from the things he made

Marketing is the chief customer advocate

One of the most important lessons Neuman has learned is that marketing must serve as the voice of the customer. In every meeting and at every event, marketers should represent what truly matters to customers – what keeps them up at night and what would genuinely make their lives better.

On a regular basis he is in planning sessions with their marketing teams and their product development teams where they have healthy debates over the next features to develop. A key resource they have is the series of customer listening boards aligned by roles (GMs, Marketers, Customer Service Leader, Network Operators, etc.)

These are the ideal sources of insight into how their current solutions are being adopted and adjusted, as well as the next enhancement that will bring them the most value. This is the “grounding perspective” that from time to time identifies a product opportunity that was not on their roadmap. Finally, when they deliver on these feature requests that originated with their customers, those customers feel heard.

Customers realize this is not a buyer/vendor relationship, it is a partnership. That is powerful.

Always think B2B2C

Always consider the customer’s customer. As a career B2B marketer, Neuman has learned that his success depends on helping their customers succeed with their end users. He is always thinking about his customer’s customers. Neuman believe having a deep understanding of what will make their customers more successful with their customers shapes how they engage with them every day.

He was recently with one of their broadband service providers talking about the way they engage their subscribers. Their approach was a common one – based on speed and tiered pricing.

So, Neuman asked him – “Do you think your subscribers, who are parents with young kids, wake up thinking, ‘If only I had a Gig, my life would be so much easier,’ or are they more likely asking, ‘How do I keep my kids from accessing harmful content and doomscrolling all night?’” That sparked a great conversation about how Neuman’s company can help the client deliver services that are actually designed to support those parents.

Activate your social army

It’s critical that you treat every employee in your company as an extension of your brand. Neuman has learned the power of employee advocacy in amplifying brand reach and credibility. Your employees are some of your most trusted messengers – if you empower them with the right stories, tools, and trust to engage the market on their own terms.

Back when Neuman was CMO for IBM in Central & Eastern Europe, one of their biggest challenges was scaling their marketing strategy across 30 countries – from Russia to Turkey. Beyond the usual tactics like media outreach, digital ads, and industry events, they realized they had an underused asset: their own IBMers.

They didn’t expect everyone to be a “blackbelt” on social channels, but if they could empower even 25% of their employees – across sales, marketing, research, support, IT – they could significantly expand their influence through authentic, earned social engagement.

So, they launched a program that made it easy for employees to find and share content that matched their passions – whether it was tech, sustainability, or strategy. They celebrated those who got involved, and within six months, their share of voice in the region jumped 10%.

Lessons from the people he made it with

Great marketers are great storytellers

via Jon Iwata, former Chief Marketing Officer, IBM

Early in his 18+ year career at IBM, Neuman had the privilege of working with Jon Iwata, who taught him one of the most profound lessons in marketing: the difference between communicating facts and telling a story that resonates emotionally. Iwata demonstrated that while data informs, stories connect – and it’s that connection that builds lasting trust with an audience.

His influence shaped the way Neuman approaches every campaign – with narrative, empathy, and meaning at the center.

There’s more science than art to great storytelling

via Donald Miller, Chief Executive Officer, StoryBrand

Many marketers approach storytelling as a purely creative pursuit – you either recognize a good story when you hear it, or you don’t. But working with Donald Miller and the StoryBrand team taught Neuman otherwise. Miller’s team introduced their framework across Neuman’s team, and it transformed how they approached their messaging. The first and most important lesson? You are not the hero of the story – the customer is.

This mindset shift helped their team consistently craft stories that were not only compelling, but also scalable and repeatable.

Effective leaders challenge rather than direct

via Matt Collins, Chief Commercial Operations Officer, Calix

One of the most impactful leadership lessons Neuman learned came from Matt Collins: in fast-changing markets, the best leaders don’t dictate – they challenge. Instead of prescribing solutions, Collins encouraged them to frame clear, measurable challenges and trust their teams to find creative solutions. This approach not only fostered innovation but also unlocked hidden potential across the team.

It reinforced the idea that autonomy paired with accountability drives both performance and engagement. Neuman also referenced Daniel Pink’s writing about how agency motivates employees – once they are compensated enough take care of their family – to further show the effectiveness of this approach.

“Every day, let ’s try to suck less”

via Alistair Rennie, former General Manager of Social Business, IBM

Rennie had a memorable way of reminding them not to take themselves too seriously, even while pursuing excellence. His motto – “Let’s try to suck less every day” – was a lighthearted spin on continuous improvement. He instilled in their team a culture of progress over perfection, often joking, “Nobody ever died of a marketing emergency.”

It was a valuable reminder to bring humor, humility, and humanity into the workplace, even when the pressure was high.

Neuman said this approach was similar to his current CEO, Michael Weening, who encourages his team to come to him and share their feedback even if it means disagreeing with him. If they do, they will either convince Weening or learn some more context from him about the choices he made.

Discussed in this episode

The Difference Between Marketing and Advertising (and Why It Matters)

Marketing Chart: Biggest challenges to growing membership

B2B External Communications: How IBM conveys the value of complex products, spotlights innovative employees and entrusts employees with social media

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Transcript

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

Scott Neuman: When you have all of those fragmented spaces you're trying to grow in and you've got all the language barriers and challenges. It's really hard to launch like one major campaign across the board. So is all these smaller pockets. And what were the key, you know, stories that we had to emphasize depending on you know, whether I was in Croatia or whether I was in Estonia or anywhere in between.

And it occurred to us that one of the untapped assets that IBM had in troves was the IBM. You know, we had thousands of employees, sales, development, marketing support all over that region, and they weren't actually necessarily very social on their own channels.

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 Burstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Yes, the Super Bowl ad. How exciting. The experiential activation with the major influencer. The new branding campaign rollout also wonderful. But don't stop there. You can have the most compelling and creative ad campaign, but if you don't optimize for every customer touchpoint, you're undercutting the expectation you have built for the customer with the reality your brand is actually delivering.

So I love this lesson from a recent podcast. Guest Application Marketing is the chief customer advocate here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories. Is Scott Neuman, the Corporate Vice President of Marketing at Calix? Thanks for joining us, Scott.

Scott Neuman: Thanks, Daniel.

Daniel Burstein: So let's take a look at Scott's background real quick. You know who I'm talking to? He's been just cherry picking from his LinkedIn here. He's been an account manager at J. Walter Thompson, account executive, Young and Rubicam director of marketing for Watson, internet of things at IBM. And for the past seven years, Scott has been at Calix.

Calix is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020 for a reported $831 million in net sales. Newman leads the corporate marketing strategy team at Calix, including branding, communications, content development, digital and event strategy, and field enablement. Collectively, the Calix marketing team is approximately 100 professionals with a primary focus on the North American markets of broadband service providers.

So, give us a sense, Scott, what is your day like as a corporate vice president of marketing?

Scott Neuman: Yeah, well, we start with our mission. Key thing at Calix is our goal is to help transform society one community at a time. And we do that through our customers. Our customers, as you said, our broadband service providers, the vast majority are in rural parts of North America, connecting communities that have been previously unconnected. So they're trying to bridge the digital divide as best they can.

My job as heading up corporate marketing is one how do I help them understand the role that we can play in helping them complete their mission of leading me know communities behind. And two, how do we tell their stories? Their success stories that help inspire others that are in other parts of the country?

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's talk about what you learn from doing that. And, I'd like to say in marketing, I like to say I've never been in any other industry. I haven't been an actuary or podiatrist, but I feel like we actually get to make things in. Marketing is fun. So let's see what you made. Although broadband service providers are making things too, so maybe they could be part of it as well.

So you learned, that marketing is a chief customer advocate. You said, I love that lesson. Can you take us through how did you learn this?

Scott Neuman: Yeah, it was it was early on in my career, when I was at IBM and just thinking of the various hats that, you know, you wear in various roles. I like to think of sales, you know, as much as are spending time with customers. They tend to be the great voice of what the product can or can't do and what it should do next.

And they can feed back into R&D. Marketing's role is what are the problems that customers are trying to solve. So whenever you're in an internal meeting, which is most of the time your job in that meeting is to represent the voice of the customer. So whenever there's a debate about what we might do next, or here's a, you know, a new campaign or a new offering or some new motion in the market, first question I need to ask is, is this going to help our customers?

In what way are they going to make better decisions faster? Or are they going to be able to progress upon their journey? And if the answer is no, then you got a question. Why are we doing that? And so on a regular basis, you have to keep asking yourself that question as a marketer and trying to improve the way you can turn your story into something that resonates with the audience you're trying to reach.

Daniel Burstein: Maybe I wonder if you could take us into the room where it happened at IBM. A specific example of how you did this in a meeting, because, for example, I like how you're breaking down sales and marketing. I remember speaking in a college class. They were asking me the difference between advertising and marketing. And what I said was advertising is not holistic of the customer experience of the product.

Even intelligent multichannel campaigns are impacting just a fraction of customer touchpoints of the brand. So the way we deliver the product, whether it's a service or a software dashboard or something, that is all marketing as well. So what if you could take us in and I love this. Great in theory. What does this mean in a meeting in IBM?

Like what did you do? How did you how did you use this philosophy?

Scott Neuman: Well, I'll use an example from, my time at Calix. So, so one of the things that we do is we help launch, new services that broadband providers can take to their subscribers. Think of us in some ways as the R&D department for many of these small regional providers. You know, they don't have the scale, the development team that we would that we could apply to, to their portfolio of offerings in their market.

And their goal is how do I differentiate, how do I continue to make my offerings more appealing to my subscribers? So when you think of that, I've been in meetings where we're thinking through what's the next best feature. For example, we produce an app, we create a mobile application, we call it command IQ, and it basically puts in the palm of the subscribers hands the ability to control their experience in the home so they can reset their passwords.

They can turn devices on and off. They can set parental controls and advanced security. So it's the next stage of of a of a subscriber experience in the home. And as we're going through with our our team and product development, they're thinking through what's the next best feature, what's the layout and how do I, you know, make this, an easier experience.

And we've been in debates, really good healthy debates. Is is that really the next feature that they need and help me understand how is that making the life of the subscriber easier? Sometimes it's actually making the life of the provider a a little simpler. But if it's not helping their end subscribers, we need to rethink. Is that actually the right path to take?

And there have been many things that have been left on the cutting room floor that actually didn't make it into development because it didn't pass the test. Is it providing our client the right features? But at the same time, is it improving the lives of their subscribers? If it's not doing both, then we have to actually reconsider it.

Daniel Burstein: And I think that ties into your next lesson. Always think B to B to C. So how did you kind of learn this lesson? Get this idea of thinking beyond your customers, which is very easy to focus on because we want to get results from them, serve them to who they're actually serving.

Scott Neuman: Yeah, I think one of the benefits is the typical persona that that all engage with at our customers. It's a mix. There's general manager thinking through the business strategy, but very often they're turning to their head of marketing on how they go to market. And so you're always trying to think as a marketer, you're trying to be empathetic, and you're always trying to put yourself in their shoes.

And I'll be in positions, whether it's a customer advisory board or whether it's a one on one meeting, I'll ask, what's keeping you up at night? And generally speaking, they're not thinking about their internal processes. They're thinking about their customer. So if I don't understand what their customer, in this case, their subscriber, if I don't understand what their pain points are, I can't understand the marketer and then I can't solve their problems.

So I basically have to put myself in their shoes and more often than not, really good companies that we work with is these broadband providers. If they are thinking first about the communities that they're connecting and the connectivity problems are trying to solve, they have a really hard time differentiating. So they've got to put their communities first.

So I need to understand their communities.

Daniel Burstein: So you mentioned a great example with giving them the product features with the IQ app. I wonder, do you ever do anything to help them with when we talk about B to B to see the actual value communication to the customer? And I'll just give you one real interesting data point that that made me think of this. We published some data with, associations, which when I think of associations, it's very similar to things like broadband providers or subscription products because it is a membership is an ongoing, you know, membership.

However, you would think it's the most obvious value because it's so clearly segmented. It's for whatever that group is. Right. And they told us the number one problem they had was difficulty in communicating value or benefits. And that's to people in their industry who they're literally nonprofits like set up to serve. So when I think of this idea, like I think of things like Intel inside or whatever versions of that, so is there anything you do to help?

Actually, not just the products and features, but the actual value communication?

Scott Neuman: Yes, yes, it's actually one of the things that we uncovered a few years ago. If you think through many of these small regional providers like just, you know, over the ridge at my house, I live up in Vermont is one of our customers, eastern, central Vermont fiber, pretty small subscriber. They cover, you know, about 4 or 5 towns, about 10,000 subscribers.

Their marketing team is one person. So you can imagine the resources they have at their fingertips. We realize that, well, they don't have a digital marketing agency. They don't have a design agency. You know, they don't have a creative shop. You know, they don't have any of this. So we started leaning in and created a program we call the Market Activation Program.

We have created over 10,000 campaign templates and assets and websites, all pre-built, all designed. Whether it's a Back-To-School campaign or a 4th of July promotion, whatever it is. But all of those campaigns are completely devoid of anything from Calix, because it's not about our brand. I'm helping them market their brand to their subscribers. So when they become a client of ours and they start engaging with our team, they now have access to all these assets they can put their logo on, they can play with the color copies already written, they can tweak it, and they can get the market in a matter of days, rather than starting from scratch and taking months to figure out

what's the campaign. And the beauty is, the more and more that we push this out through our customers, we're finding out what's resonating. So then we can recommend, here's the best performing campaign for back to school if you're trying to reach these kinds of subscribers. So they're not actually just, you know, kind of guessing at it, but they're actually leveraging best practices of their peers in all other parts of the country.

Daniel Burstein: So when we talk about leveraging peers, I think we talk about a lot of different kind of like paid promotion there. One thing you talked about in terms of our peers within the company are fellow employees. And you said to activate your social army. So have you done this in the past?

Scott Neuman: Yeah. So there was a period of time when you were going through my my background, you mentioned one role I had at IBM. That was 18.5 years of roles at IBM, all in marketing, all in various and parts of the, of the company, one stretch, as I was relocated to Prague in the Czech Republic, and I was the CMO for the Central and Eastern European region.

So this was 30 countries from, Russia down to Turkey and just about everything east of the Berlin Wall, so to speak. So pretty interesting market. And when you have all of those fragmented spaces you're trying to grow in and you've got all the language barriers and challenges, it's really hard to launch like one major campaign across the board.

So it was all these smaller pockets and and what were the key, you know, stories that we had to emphasize depending on, you know, whether I was in Croatia or whether I was in Estonia or anywhere in between. And it occurred to us that one of the untapped assets that IBM had in troves was the IBM or, you know, we had thousands of employees, sales, development, marketing support all over that region, and they weren't actually necessarily very social on their own channels.

Now, some of them were extroverts, and they were absolutely, very social in nature, but they actually weren't turning on any of it related to their role. And the typical is, yes, I have Facebook, but that's personal. But yes, LinkedIn. I feel that that is, you know, my, my professional self identify myself as an IBM. And what we were trying to do is figure out how can we turn this small army of ibmers on to help amplify the stories you're putting in each one of these 30 markets?

So we started curating specific content, some more technical, some a little bit, you know, higher business, you know, related. And we let them pick and choose based on whatever role they were in. If they were a developer, they're really excited about more of the technical message. And then they could tap it, share it, and then, you know, personalize it.

You know, as we went through it and as we started to turn on this audience and realize I am an extension of the IBM brand, I never thought of myself that way, but I do now. We were actually increasing our share of voice, you know, single and double digits throughout the region. And the best part? This is all armed.

You know, this is not paid media. This is earned through their respective networks. And they were opting in and they were loving it.

Daniel Burstein: So anytime it comes to any change management with employees, I think the debate is always intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Right. So I wonder like did you how did you make that cultural change? Was there a specific like, you know, extrinsic motivators of like your when a gift card or a bonus or something, or was it calling it out in meetings as an intrinsic motivator, like what worked best to actually get people moving and cheering?

Scott Neuman: Yeah, we were we actually just started celebrating them. We started creating regular, you know, podiums in a sense virtually at the time, where we were calling out, you know, great examples of here's a leader that is, you know, becoming a champion of this part of our IBM story. So little by little, the ones that, you know, it's not going to resonate with everyone, but the ones that it did resonate with, it was motivating, you know, as a way to say, yes, I'd like to be like, you know, that person.

Let me follow them for a little while and let me see how they're approaching it. This is actually pretty cool, by the way. If they were in sales or business development, they were actually starting to develop, you know, more of their own business network as they were expanding their reach. It was making their day to day jobs of, you know, driving sales for the quarter even easier.

So there was actually a, you know, kind of a beneficial, result depending on the role that they were in. But yes, it wasn't. We weren't throwing cash at people. It was just celebrating people for for doing excellence.

Daniel Burstein: Well, speaking of the people we work with, that is what we talk about in the second half of the episode, the lessons we collaborated with. Before we do that, I should mention that the how I Made It and marketing podcast is underwritten by Mic Labs. I the parent company of marketing Sherpa. You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in the AI Guild and the community to collaborate with.

Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mic Labs ai.com that's joined MSE labs ai.com. You get artificial intelligence working for you. All right. Let's talk about, one of those ibmers that used to work with, well known IBM in this case, John O'Hara, former, CMO of IBM. From John, you said you learned that great marketers are great storytellers.

How did you learn from him?

Scott Neuman: Well, John came up more through a classic communication side of, of the of the marketing progression, within IBM and he always had an amazing gift for turns of phrase and, and writing incredibly succinctly and to the point in a way that would resonate with the intended audience. And, you know, you can imagine when you're working and, you know, IBM was no different than, you know, an HP or, you know, take your pick of a large tech company.

It's really easy to slide back into the tech and just say, look at this. It's awesome. Let me show you the specs. Let me let me open the hood and show you what's under the covers. Right. And yeah, there's a role for that. But it was always first, who are you trying to reach? And again, back to our earlier conversation.

What do they care about? And are you actually speaking to them in the language that they want to be spoken to in? Are you talking over their head or way below them? And as long as you're hitting the. Let me help you understand how I can help you, then you're you're starting in the right point now, the tech facts and so forth.

And figures they'll come as appropriate. But it's not generally ever the lead story. The lead story is am I appealing to the appropriate emotion and a perfect example of that? You know, it's it's rare you find yourself, and IBM in this case where they could actually shape and create a market. And when John and his team launched Smarter Planet, as an initiative to actually change the way the world thinks about technology and the role that the role can play in solving some of our biggest challenges, that was a game changer.

But it at the at the beginning of it, that whole story was not about the technology, it was about the problems that we could solve that anyone could understand. And so it became a mass appeal market and completely changed the trajectory of the company.

Daniel Burstein: Well, smarter planet. That's a great example. It's a broad IBM, but we've talked about you had many roles there, and you also worked at Watson. And I wonder if you had any storytelling examples from Watson, because when I interviewed John O'Hara, he told me this. I've got this quote from me. He said, we gave this technology a name, Watson, after our founder.

We gave it a persona on television. We gave it a voice. We tested many different voices. We presented it to the world not as a supercomputer, but as a breakthrough. The first computer of its kind that isn't programed and learns. And I thought about it. So I interviewed John Award, ten years ago. Right. And I thought about this now because I'm looking at it fast forwarding, 12 years later, after Watson ChatGPT comes out and it really struck me the differentiation between how Watson was marketed.

ChatGPT was almost the opposite of storytelling. Like, no one even knows what a GPT is, or at least didn't back then. It was just. Here's the thing now the difference in fairness is Watson, you couldn't actually go in and try like you could with ChatGPT, but it just really struck me. IBM, I think probably Watson, that was the first big campaign where it was getting AI out there.

ChatGPT came along, they took this totally like inhuman approach. And so I wonder if you have any thoughts about that or from your time at Watson, how you use the storytelling there.

Scott Neuman: Yeah. Well, the good news is the the hard work on personifying Watson had already been done by the time we launched this new business unit to apply it to the world of IoT. And and mostly it wasn't more more time at home IoT and connected cameras and, you know, automated toasters and whatnot. This was more on the industrial side, you know, perfect example would be working with, French railways and embedding sensors in the chassis of the locomotive so you could understand the, the friction and do digital modeling on the, the, the connections to the tracks and the wheel bearings and detecting in advance, way in advance when something was at the stage

where it probably needed to be replaced, way before there's any risk of it actually breaking right and creating smarter and smarter, you know, massive, you know, transportation networks that were now becoming more and more intelligent. Watson was the the interface to actually understand all of that technical IoT, strategy. But specifically, it's interesting to think how the world since we launched Watson, when I say we, I'm already thinking myself as the next IBM or, since they launched it.

Now fast forward where we are today. And you now to your point, talk about ChatGPT, which is fascinating in terms of how quickly it took off and it was purely technology. You could jump right in. Now, we've seen the downside of, you know, well, when you expose it to the entire World Wide Web, you can get some really interesting answers that have nothing to do with fact, right?

Entirely fiction. When Watson was first rolled out, it was always designed to be a walled garden. It was something that you brought into your environment and you trained it. And unlike Alexa at the time, which was already trained, but again, it was pulling from the broader internet. This was specifically designed to be an expert just in what you needed it to be.

That's how Watson was designed. And some people were saying, oh, I kind of want it smart out of the box. It's like, well, no, if you're going to be a hospital and you're going to train this to be amazing at diagnosing cancer, that's all you needed to be smart on. You don't need it to know, you know what sound is a whale make you know when it's mating season.

Totally different topic today. We've almost come full circle where we're now trying to figure out how to bring AI into the enterprise, but you actually don't want to expose everything you have in the enterprise. You've got to keep sacred back out to the rest of the internet. So it's a really interesting journey on on the AI front, but I think the brands that were established that really took the how does it apply and, and, and in a very simple way to understand if you can land that first with your story, which they did with Watson, it's got, you know, lasting power and it's still today one of the critical lead with subbrands of the IBM

campaigns.

Daniel Burstein: Right. And I think what they did to a great extent, like you talked about with technology, is that humanization made people understand it on a different level than the zeros and ones, because when there's technology marketing, right? Yes, there is the technology experts in the company. Right? There's there's different levels. But some business folks, you know, I mean, their first thing isn't the technology they're deciding how to reach their business goals.

And that's something that sometimes we overlook when we look at these different segments.

Scott Neuman: Right. Exactly.

Daniel Burstein: Which gets to, I love this when we talk about storytelling so we can think of it at a very, high level as, you know, something that only creatives do. But you mentioned there's more science than art to great storytelling, and you learn this from Donald Miller, the CEO of Story Brand. How did you learn this from Donald?

Scott Neuman: Yeah. So we brought in Donald from, from a story brand about four years ago. And, you know, we really were trying to figure out how can we upskill the marketing team that we have to just be better storytellers. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, it's one thing to be really, really good at understanding marketing, executing campaigns, reporting and driving your results.

But you still need to understand at its basic level, how do I tell a really good story? And and Donald had come up with a, a really nice model in a sense, a framework. But he was based it on basically anthropology. You know, we are as humans, way before the written word. We were a storytelling culture. That's how we learn from each other.

We we tell stories. Well, interestingly enough, stories over thousands and thousands of years followed a bit of a standard pattern. You know, there's your protagonist and then there's a challenge of some kind. And somewhere along the lines they went through kind of trial and error many times by meaning a guide that had seen this movie before takes them along that journey to either success or failure.

And then the crescendo of your story. Over thousands of years, our brains have been kind of wired to that model. By the way, I basically just told you the plot of just about every Hollywood movie in the last, you know, 60 years, right? I mean, take Star Wars, right? Luke Skywalker, you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the guide, you know, and then, you know, sheer montage and he eventually becomes a Jedi and then, you know, blows up the Death Star.

So almost every movie follows this. Many books follow this. Why? Because it actually takes less brain calories to follow this pattern than if you do it in reverse. I mean, think of all the movies like tenet or, inception, you know, which, you know, kind of do it backwards or jump around in different places and it makes it really hard for you to follow because you're actually breaking the model of the traditional story flow.

So that's what I mean by there's actually a little bit more science here than just art. It's not I, I know it's a good story when I see it. It's actually not that subjective. But the most important thing for marketers to take away from this is many come into this framework thinking, okay, here's my brand, I'm the hero, and let me work.

Going to the story, he's like, no, no, no, no, no, you're already off on the wrong foot. You're never the hero. Your customer is the hero and you are the guide. And that's how you set yourself up for success. That's how you switch yourself from becoming a vendor that they may have just bought something from, to a partner that they actually trust and they stay with.

Daniel Burstein: I'm so glad you say that. Do you do any customer journey mapping to help understand this? Because when you're talking about a story ten the best, example I've heard of it, we might be talking about the same one is the monomyth, also known as the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell. And I always loved that was a great example because we talk about, I like to say customer journey because of Joseph Campbell, because you could call it a funnel, or you could call it a lot of different things.

Right. Whatever. Yeah. So but one of those key things, understanding those steps. And he even uses the word call to action and how, you know, these different steps it goes through. And it's like, wow, this is very similar to a purchase. So is that is that when you're trying to tell you stories like does your team work to like, let's map out this customer journey and understand what they need and when they need it.

Scott Neuman: Yeah, because at every stage of that journey, they're asking for different levels of support and help, right. So in some cases they're just looking for information to find out like who you are and why eventually like get to the point going, okay, I was thinking about entering a relationship with you, but I still have a few more questions to make sure that I trust you and that your interests and my interests are aligned well in a marketing funnel that's very different content and messaging.

Then the beginning of that journey, when you're just introducing yourself to them, right. And then, you know, you get you kind of all the way through. At some point they're going to say, well, have you helped any other people become Jedi before? Or if I stay on my Star Wars track is like, well, yeah, oddly enough, let me give you some of my customer references.

Here are some former Jedi that I've, you know, successfully, you know, made through the progress. Okay. Got it. I actually now have more confidence in you. Yes. Where do I sign?

Daniel Burstein: So here's a debate. Buddy of mine. We're doing a webinar in a few weeks. Does it have to be a pain point, or can it be a goal that starts that call to action on the journey? Because when we when you think of a lot of movies, when you think a lot of storytelling, moving, it is often a pain point like Braveheart is one I want Braveheart.

They slit his wife's throat, you know, even Luke Skywalker, he kills parents like so. And then, you know, obviously the hero has to come in and and change things. And in marketing, especially in tech marketing, cybersecurity and some others, we often focus on these pain points of like, oh my gosh, it's horrible. Things are going to happen and start this journey.

Tell me anybody we're having this debate about, you know, one way or the other. I won't say what my thought is, but do you have any opinions there? Like do we have to start with a pain point going to be a goal? Do you do both?

Scott Neuman: Yeah. You don't have to. Unfortunately, the way I think the human condition works is it's more dramatic. Yeah. So you know like, you know, you're not going to watch a movie about Bob who one day wakes up and says, I'm going to train for a marathon. And then you watch Bob training for a marathon, and then he runs a marathon, and you're like, that movie sucked because there's no drama, right?

So you absolutely can start with, you know, you may not be struggling, but you may, you know, to, you know, lack of a better term, you're sub optimize. You can be doing so much better. And we actually have this conversation many times with the marketers that we work with at our customers is, look, you're doing a great job for what you have, the resources you have.

If you let us partner with you, we can make you a star. You can literally blow out all of the KPIs you worry about and how you're trying to roll it up. Your GM press, your friends and family you know, be the highlight of the cocktail party you can just jump right into the benefits and you don't have to say, hey.

And if you don't go down this path, you know, here all the terrible things are going to happen to you like so. So you don't always have to draw that. But from a Hollywood perspective, that's the drama. That's what, you know. It's like, you know, you can't look away from a train wreck. They actually want to see the you know, what might happen.

Daniel Burstein: It's part of the human condition. Yeah. All right. Well, you're getting your whole team aligned to take the storytelling approach to understand the customer journey. Of course, that gets into the management and leadership aspect of what we do as marketers. You said you learn this skill as an effective leaders challenge rather than direct. And you said you learned it from Matt Collins, who is chief commercial operations officer at calyx.

How did you learn this from Matt?

Scott Neuman: Well, I've known Matt for, gosh, 15 years. We met, at our days at IBM, and he was the one who actually brought me into calyx and, tragically, Matt passed away about three weeks ago. And so, you know, it's it's still this massive void for our team at calyx. He was a, we refer to him as a unicorn.

He was an amazing combination of all the things you would ever want in a chief marketing officer. And then something, right, in terms of, And it's taking on, you know, data and integration and operations and supply chain. I mean, he really was an amazing human being and an amazing friend. And one of the things that he was amazing at is when there were there was a challenge, especially when Matt, was arguably more times than not, he'd walk in a room.

He was already the smartest guy in the room. But even though Matt already had a sense of I know exactly how this should go, I can actually give you the 12 point plan on how to solve how this should go. But he also knew that he's not going to elevate the people around him if he's constantly giving them the recipe, and then just sitting back and letting them, you know, finish the recipe, he was, here's where we need to go and let's make sure we're all in agreement.

We may have some debate over that, but then he's going to give you the chance to actually maybe there's another path. Maybe there's something he hadn't thought of. Now, nine times out of ten, he had already kind of thought thought ahead game theory and his generally was right. But what that did is that gave the team agency. And if you read anything about Daniel Pink and what motivates people, you know, in an organization, once you're compensating them enough to take care of their family and their overall, you know, financial status, it's not about throwing more money at them.

It's are they actually enjoying the job they're doing? And are you giving them the agency so they actually can adjust the way that they deliver value, and you're giving them a chance to lean in with their creative ideas and the way they can contribute to the company. So really great leaders, they will inspire the people around them. They won't tell them what to do.

They'll help them course correct. So they don't go too far off the path and waste their time, but they're letting them bring their own full self to solving the problem. I mean, you do that and you've got diversity of thought across the team. You could be blown away by the results that you get out of that team.

Daniel Burstein: First of all, sorry for your loss. I'm very sorry. Thank you. I mean, I love what you're saying about, you know, giving employees agency. And I wonder when we talk about the actual vendors we manage how you actually extend that into the vendors, because I always thought advertising agencies, marketing agencies, you know, there's this funny role of corporate creative, right?

There's copywriters, art directors, all these people where and I was when I started copywriters, I can I can make fun of us where we're artists in some sense, right, where there's wild creatives. But you've got to fit into this corporate jacket or structure and it beat it. In B2B, it's ten times harder, even, right, because it's more separated from from that end.

And so you both want this great creative flair from them, but it has to be encapsulated into something. One thing I've seen companies use as a value proposition, it has to be encapsulating something. So it's actually driving the goals that you want. So is there anything you've learned to like? I love this with your own employees within to do this one level further with agency and vendor and partner employees?

Scott Neuman: Oh yeah. So we've had a great strategic, creative agency. They're called Decision Council and they're small boutique firm but amazing from a B2B specialty. So they really get our space. Their number one job, honestly, is to challenge us, like, literally if, if I'm not getting enough just over the top. Wow. Well, you know what about this?

And why aren't we trying this? And I may have a dozen reasons why we're definitely not going to go do that, but the fact that we're even having this debate is exactly what I need. So having that outside perspective and, you know, one of the benefits, because you spend a lot of time within your own company, you know, working on your own business challenges.

One of the benefits of an agency is they have other clients. When they have other clients, they're getting other perspectives. They're seeing other, you know, opportunities for ways to solve market challenges. So you've got to take the time to listen to that perspective. And, you know, sometimes a bunch of stuff will hit the cutting room floor. And oddly enough, you know, if you if you stick with an agency long enough, you get two, three years in and all of a sudden you circle back around, you pick up something that's been on the floor for 2 or 3 years, and then you look at it again and what you know now and what you didn't know,

then you're like, wait a minute, this is actually a really good idea. Maybe we bring this back into the wall, but the only way that that comes about is if you actually are taking the time to invite those outside perspectives in, and it's not just groupthink within your company.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, that's not so bad after all. Yeah. Yeah. When working a lot of these things, sometimes you get into the nitty gritty of it and everything just seems like it's not really that great, and it can be so much better and nothing's working. So I really love this last quote. Every day. Let's try to suck less. Yeah, that's so good.

Because I've been in companies, it's like, oh, this doesn't work. Well, that doesn't work well as it's not, you know. But again, that's not what it is. It's always try to make it a little better. And when we see things internally, it's always very different from seeing it externally as well. So every day let's try to suck.

Last year you said you learned this from Alastair Rennie, the former general manager of social business at IBM. How did you learn this from Alastair?

Scott Neuman: So Alastair was a really interesting leader, incredibly, bright and, and came up, you know, with a, with a technical background, but, you know, had a really fun flair for how he approached leadership. And one of the challenges when you're in any large organization is you're always trying to do your best to roll up all the like we call the green numbers, right?

The ones that are all moving in the positive direction. And you never want to be that messenger going, wow, this stuff is kind of broken over here. You look at all the red. And one of the ways that Alister, you know, created a culture where people weren't afraid to actually say, you know what? Yeah, this is green and this is kind of green, but there's a bunch of things we actually haven't figured out yet, and they're red, but we have a plan.

And let me share with you the plan on how we're going to recover by having this phrase, let's try to suck less every day. He was already giving us permission that there going to be things that we're failing on, and he was expecting that, and he wasn't going to be surprised. It's actually very similar to my current CEO and president, Michael, meaning he's fond of saying better, better than ever best.

And he's also fond of saying, don't let me be wrong. And so it's the same model of, look, we may be great right now, but we can always be better, but never will. Never consider that we are the best at anything, because chances are there's somebody that's doing a little bit better than we are. So always have that hunger.

But then his, his, his leadership phrase of don't let me be wrong, he'll say one of two things will happen if you come to me and disagree with me. Either a you will have a great idea and you'll convince me I'm wrong and we'll do your idea or I will share with you additional context that you don't have because of my purview as the president CEO.

And you'll now be informed, you'll understand why actually, this is the right decision. And now I'm convinced and aligned, and I'm excited to go down that path as opposed to doing it just because I'm being told. So both of these approaches, I think at the core, why they're so appealing is they're giving people permission to admit they haven't solved everything yet, and they can have a very constructive conversation about what we can do better.

Because if you show up every day and everything looks green and going through the roof, chances are they're not going to believe you anyway.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. No, absolutely. And like I said, I had a chance to be a contract with IBM early in my career. And the biggest thing that shocked me was, you know, from outside IBM, oh my gosh, just tech juggernaut. And you think every once you get inside you're like, wow. One of the things I'm working well and it's and that's I'm not picking IBM.

Then I look I was young in my career, I looked every company is like that. Every place is like that. And you can't focus on that. So that's I love I love how we bounce that. But let me ask as a leader, how does that affect how you set up your budget, your team, what have you? Because if you're taking that approach, part of it is always look at like, how much are we going to experiment?

Like how much are we going to do proof of concepts or whatever? Because if we just keep doing what we're doing, we're going to get probably that certain CPR or whatever it is because we know it's working. Right. We try to test something. It could be a massive fail, but we'll never get more of improving those reds into greens if we don't test.

So do you have any thoughts on how you set up either that budget mix or that team to balance experimentation versus okay, our tried and true, but bread and butter, what's already working, right.

Scott Neuman: Yeah. I mean it's it's the classic, you know, fail fast and learn ideally fail small and fast and learn. I'll give you one example. Within our industry, there are a number of events that, you know, third party events that we need to go to. Our customers are their key partners are there are competitions there and so forth.

Every once in a while, new events will pop up or an event that exists. But we've never been to before because we actually now want to shift our market a little bit and reach a new audience. Well, you don't show up the first time. You've never been to an event like, all right, we're going to be a platinum sponsor and, you know, get go for the keynote and have the largest booth in the whole conference.

We have no idea whether this is actually the right event. We're looking at it from a distance. So very often we'll say, you know what, let's send a couple key members of the marketing team, a couple sales guys, and, you know, maybe one from product development, and let's just go get them passes. This year. They're just going to go walk the floor and they're just going to gather Intel.

They're going to take notes, a whole bunch of pictures. And they're going to ask a whole bunch of questions, and they're going to come back and go, you know what? This would be a total waste of money if we do that next year or the flip or go, you know, what is a target rich environment? We absolutely have to be at this event next year.

Let's go big. So it's the little things. But I didn't throw a huge bunch of cash at that event. Just hoping for the best. You know, I kind of dip my toes in it. I let the team. It was a great idea to come in, but I wasn't going to like, you know, use half the budget in the quarter just on a flier.

So and there was a thousand examples, events, just one example. But you could do little events, you know, with account based marketing with a little AB testing and then just get some dip in the toe like into the water where maybe there 100 customers, you want to try a new value proposition out at no harm, you know, or we have a we have customer listening advisory boards all over the company in various segments and personas.

It's a great incubator for us to, you know, throw some things at them and they'll go, oh, now, please don't do that, because I would never use it if you did that. Okay, great. Just wanted to try it. Thank you for your input. So there are so many opportunities in marketing to just test wire, you know, a handful of these without, you know, betting the farm.

Daniel Burstein: And getting that feedback. That is the it's such an important thing. You mentioned making sure you're actually getting that feedback. We've talked about so many different lessons and stories from your career, Scott, if you had to just break it down, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Scott Neuman: Oh, gosh. I mean, today with the masterclass and the way it's evolving at hyper speed, I mean, faster than anything we've ever seen before. The classic book of, you know, what got you here won't get you there. It's never been true. Or from a marketing perspective, you know, it feels like every week, you know, there's there's some other breakthrough or some other tool, you know, some other consulting firm, whatever it is that's showing up on your radar.

And if you're not showing up with a curious mindset to say, yes, there are a lot of things I still don't know, and you show up with that every single day and ideally that excites you. That is the first step. One, because if you're thinking, hey, look, I know marketing, I'm fine. I don't need to read any more blogs.

I don't need the latest anymore podcasts. You know, I don't need to go any more conferences. Like, you know, you're setting yourself for failure. You've got to start there.

Daniel Burstein: You heard Scott. You got to keep listening to podcasts, especially this one. How I made it marketing. So all right, guys, thank you so much for your time today. I learned a lot.

Scott Neuman: Daniel, thank you for the time. I enjoyed the conversation.

Daniel Burstein: And 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.