The New Muscles of Leadership Forum | SPECIAL EDITION

In this special episode of Visionaries, Kathy Hollenhorst, Strategic Advisor of Marketers That Matter, sat with the San Francisco Marketing Community at the MTM Forum hosted at Box's Headquarters with special guests:  Chris Koehler, the CMO at Box; Chrissy Anderson, the VP of Strategic Planning & Operations at Intercom; Nii Mantse Addy, the CMO at Philo; Santi Pochat, the VP of Brand at LinkedIn; and Terry Seitz, the VP of North America Marketing at Visa.

As our industry is becoming more complex, fast-paced, and digital-everything—and with no sight of things slowing down—we need a whole new way of leading. In this episode, we cover the essential muscles and mindsets modern marketers need to flex.

The main three muscles discussed in this forum were:

Adaptability: Understanding AI’s Impact on Your Business
Clarity: Insight-based Marketing that Breaks Through Today’s ‘Noise’
Courage: Taking the Lead of Your Career
Empathy & Emotional Intelligence: Seeing from others' lens

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Transcript

SF Forum at Box Podcast

 [00:00:00] Hi and welcome. I'm Kathy Hollenhorst, and I am a strategic advisor to Marketers That Matter. And recently, I had the privilege of sitting down with our marketing community in the San Francisco Bay Area at the MTM Forum hosted at Box's headquarters. We had a great panel with our special guests that included Chris Kohler, who's the CMO at Box.

Chrissy Anderson. She is the [00:01:00] VP of strategic planning and operations at Intercom. Nii Addy joined us. He's the CMO at Philo. Santi Pochette, who is the VP of brand at LinkedIn. And our final panelist was Terry Seitz, who's the VP of North American Marketing at Visa. You know, as, Our industry is becoming more complex and fast paced and pretty much digital everything. We definitely need a whole new breed of marketers and creatives to take us into the future. In this Visionaries episode, we covered those essential muscles and mindsets, the ways of thinking that all of us as modern marketers need today to be successful.

The conversation starts with this first muscle, which we called adaptability. . So let's jump right in. We're going to start with Chris Kohler to see what he's thinking about in terms of AI and how it's impacting his business and the industry today.. 

. 

[00:01:53] Chris Khoeler: how many 

Of you in the audience had a plan to launch an AI product or talk about AI a [00:02:00] year ago, two or three. That's great. So I think what's interesting is, , it is transformational. , but I think everyone is really struggling trying to figure out what does it mean? What impact does it have?

And I think change management is a huge component of it. , where, you know, maybe in your personal life, where there's less risk, you might have used open AI to drive, you know, to, to respond to emails , and, , find information. Fun fact, using it to help performance reviews. Not that I did that, but maybe I did, um, actually helps derive, , efficiencies as part of that.

So I think, I think as marketers, we're all really excited about the notion of AI, but the question is like, who's really doing anything meaningful and what's the change management component? One of the things that I talked to my team quite a bit about is, Hey, we should be AI first, we should be, we should be embracing this as part of it.

But the response back is like, I got deadlines. I got stuff to do. I'm overworked. I got, I don't have time to go explore as part of this. There's [00:03:00] risk associated with that. So yeah, that sounds great, but I got to go get this out the door like ASAP. So I think that's one of the things. How do you create time and space for people to go explore and learn as part of that and the change management component.

And then I think the last piece of it is encouraging the teams that this is a multiplier. It's not a, it's, you know, we can drive it for efficiency, but it doesn't mean we need less people. It means we can do better work as part of that. So, as marketers, we have to do a really good job of reinforcing that message that it's not an efficiency gain.

It's really a multiplier of what we could possibly do. 

[00:03:35] Kathy Hollenhorst: Right. Thanks. So Santee, LinkedIn's got lots going on, part of the Microsoft family. So,

[00:03:40] Santi Pochat: we have an interesting position, you know, as, as a Microsoft company where we get a lot of early, you know, access to things.

And obviously there's a lot of anxiety and a big push to embrace it. And. What's interesting, I think, about LinkedIn and how we've thought about it is, is we actually have like great conviction, , in something that Chris was just [00:04:00] saying, which is the force multiplier of this is really us leaning into the things that AI cannot replace.

, we talk about IQ versus EQ. , there's a layer of humanity and there's a layer of , Using AI to meet your ambition, which brings very true to us. The way I like to think about it personally is AI by itself is not a value proposition. Your value proposition hasn't changed. Probably if you're, you know, thinking about like your product is, AI is a thing that will make your value proposition better in some way.

So you always need to lead with like your existing mission. If you pivoted your entire company into ai and AI becomes the thing, then that's where you're introducing a a la a layer of risk around. But technology that is still very nascent and like, you don't know how you'll implement. , so we look at it from a very human perspective.

 Responsible eyes is a big thing at Microsoft's big thing at LinkedIn. Um, so we are building products and we are thinking about these things and even internally how we embrace them in a way where. , we help people meet their [00:05:00] goals, , in nothing but that there's, there's no gray space in us trying to use AI to replace people or, fill the internet with like more, you know, more garbage.

Uh, but really try to like shortcut people to opportunity. And I think that's what AI can do for honestly, every company. If you just like stop and think about the role of AI, the place AI has in your, in your, with your brand and your product. 

[00:05:24] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right. Thank you. Well, certainly, I think we've heard to in that whole customer service there's a lot of probably early adoption within that.

And Chrissy, that's your, that's your gig. So, , why don't you comment a little bit about what, what's your company's doing? 

[00:05:35] Chrissy Anderson: Yeah, I can tell you a little bit about the intercom journey. Um. So I think it was Sam Altman actually that said that customer service would be the industry most disrupted by AI or maybe first disrupted.

, we're very much seeing that play out. If there are others in the audience, I think I saw a few Zen desk or fresh works in here. So, playing in a similar domain. , so fortunately, you know, intercom had a machine learning team that's been working in this [00:06:00] space for several years and our head of machine learning now head of AI.

, I think it was in November of 2022, actually was testing, um, with the chat GPT 3 model at that point. And he really was like, something has fundamentally changed as a transformative moment. , and he put the team to work starting to build on top of that system, , and looking to integrate it. And we were able to bring to market in February of 2023.

So quite early, uh, first to market within customer service, , and AI first chat bot, which is called Finn. Um, And, you know, since then, it really has fundamentally altered the entire product roadmap, , and the system that we are deploying, , and we're really looking to integrate AI first in all facets of the platform to serve, uh, end customers, customer service agents, customer service managers, , and there'll be some exciting announcements coming in about a week's time around that.

That I won't get into in too much depth today. , but, you know, from my perspective, leading strategic planning and [00:07:00] operations, um, This has been very disruptive, very transformational. You know, typically, most companies we plan on an annual cycle, and we're just not in an environment where that's feasible.

Um, so we've had to become a lot more scrappy, nimble, agile, , all the adjectives, , in order to, you know, Really meet the company's needs and be able to evolve alongside what we're learning in the market. , and so that's meant, you know, really quarterly planning as opposed to an annual cycle, which is, you know, messy and complicated requires a lot of reprioritization.

, a lot of communication over communication, alignment, et cetera. So we've got our work cut out for us, , but I think, you know, we need to kind of meet the needs of this transformative moment, you know, broadly for, uh, the market, but specifically for our industry and, and be really responsive. , so it's been exciting to work through that.

[00:07:51] Kathy Hollenhorst: So scrappy, really responsive, very adaptable, short term, which brings us to you, Terry, in a highly regulated, uh, industry. So why don't you [00:08:00] talk a little bit about how this is, , how AI is, is playing out at Visa and what you guys are doing. 

[00:08:04] Terry Seitz: Yeah, so. This it actually takes two flavors. , and it was really interesting to do some reconnaissance on it.

, To your earlier point, which I thought was a great one. , at least we've been doing AI for 30 years. It hasn't been in marketing until the last. X number of months, but if we think about essentially, what Visa does is, , we move money and value exchange consumers to merchants, financial institutions and governments, , we process 15 trillion dollars in payment volume globally on an annual basis, 270 billion transactions.

Across 130 million merchants, 200 countries and territories, we process all of that in fractions of a second. So the notion of machine learning and, , using algorithms to make faster, better, more predictive decisions about a solitary transaction that you make at a convenience store. Happens [00:09:00] lightning fast.

, So it was interesting to go. Yes, that's actually at the core of what we've been doing on the business side on the marketing side. We are incredible. Well, we're heavily regulated. So we're taking a much more careful and measured approach because of all the data that we sit on and all the personal data that we sit on.

, so we have to be very, very, very careful. About, the types of, , mining that we're doing, , the, I think the challenges of clean data and walled gardens and what we're able to share and what we're willing to share. , so not surprisingly, we have a task force and it's a cross functional task force and there's risk and legal and strategy and marketing.

And they evaluate all the products, , and opportunities and then provide some guidelines for us. We do have. , it's not a quota, but we have an ask out from management to say, by the end of the year, please have tried X number of opportunities and sort of report back right now. We're doing some chat.

We're, we're doing some copilot [00:10:00] on the market stuff. It's pretty limited. We are skittish in a good, optimistic way about what to do. But, um, I guess the last point is. , and I talk to the, my, my advertising agencies all the time. And there's a high level of anxiety. We were talking about this before. Is it going to replace my job?

And we look at it and say, no, it's an amplifier. It's an augment. And we should maybe shift the anxiety from, is it going to take my job? Is it going to make me redundant to it's the great potential of education and what it's able , to ultimately provide us as marketers versus the outcome.

Like we're all going to talk about outcomes today and it's like, but wait, the magic is in, is, is at the beginning of the journey and what you're able to, to craft from. 

[00:10:49] Kathy Hollenhorst: Right. Thank you. Nhi, how about in, how about in your space?

[00:10:52] Nii Addy: I think listening to all of the responses so far, the thing that resonates most with me is where we are.

So , there's an [00:11:00] AI application in pretty much anything you can do. And. We are moving from the honeymoon phase, like a new relationship where you're like, Oh, you're cool. You're cool. Like, I like hanging out with you. Oh, you do that too. You do that. Oh, well, this is really going to work to like, well, we got to actually work because we have conflict.

There's risk, there's. You know, ethics issues. There's legal issues. How do we, you know, change management? How do we like get this involved in our operational structure? Who's responsible for it? , in what roles and how are they going to execute? And I think that has really become this like sort of like the sobering of the, well, how do we make this a business imperative in a way that.

It's driving the outcomes that we want because that's at the end of the day, what we're trying to do while respecting the upside. And, , it's like Terry, you were saying, being more optimistic about the jobs it's going to replace. It's almost on the other side. You can, you may expect more out of teams.

Right. With the AI, it's like, maybe your metrics are going to [00:12:00] change because we know that you have this, this multiplier that you , can use. So it's starting to think about how you embed it in the organization that we're trying to tackle right now. 

[00:12:08] Chris Khoeler: And I think being thoughtful so that. We don't destroy the promise of what is possible.

Right. And I think that's, you know, as we roll this out and 1, we don't want the regulations and legal. Hopefully no 1 in legal here, right? To constrict. Too early of what the art of the possible is, so that we basically stop using in that in that potential. Doesn't actually come to fruition. So I think that's, it is incumbent upon us, especially as marketers to be very thoughtful around how we use it so that we don't actually lose the right to use it in the future, , as part of that.

So I think, I think that's the promise and the excitement, it just needs to be tampered by the reality of, you know, wielding this great power, responsibly,

[00:12:48] Kathy Hollenhorst: one interesting thing from a talent perspective that we're reading to is, is maybe we'll see an evolution from somebody who is, you know, our teams who are specialists in any one area, and maybe I can pick up some of that, the [00:13:00] task of it to allow people to go across different functional areas and maybe become more generalist.

So I think from a career development that if you are isolated in one channel, if you will, how do you expand your skills to be able to use AI to supplement some of your tasks so you can broaden your reach. So that was interesting. So for both our individuals online and all of you here in person, I'm sure all of us are well versed on AI.

We all have it figured out and we're highly skilled. But just in case any of our participants are not, I guess, I'll open up to the full panel. Like, if I don't know a lot. What do you recommend? Like, where do I get, what should I do first? Where do I get started? I 

[00:13:38] Santi Pochat: have a LinkedIn course to sell you. Um, shameless plug.

Shameless plug. Those are, those are free by the way. Uh, we've, we've actually made, , upscaling on AI accessible in partnership with Microsoft. So you, if you go to linkedin. com today and you hit your learning tabs, top right on desktop and on your. Mobile bottom, right? , you can just go through any of the [00:14:00] courses.

Those go from everything from just like the fundamentals of like, what is a I and like, technically, more technically, what is machine learning, which is different. , so how do you get to a I, , prompt writing, uh, which is prompt engineering is. The next big thing, uh, I think for everyone and everyone can be a prompt engineer, which I find fascinating to more sort of complicated use cases and like more deeper integrations, like for your products.

And, , to echo what I was saying, which is like, you learn to speak the language. That's honestly like 90 percent of it right now. , and then just try out stuff. Like, I think what a lot, what a lot of these. Courses will do is just give you enough so that then you can go try meaningfully. , I, once you go through all the courses, my personal recommendation is try, , an image generation first is very satisfying.

 I personally recommend mid journey, but co pilot is great. I have to plug Microsoft. , because it, it gives you a good sense of like the potential. I'm a, I'm a terrible artist. But that is an extension that I would have not been able to like use otherwise. Like I'm a [00:15:00] better writer. So maybe JADGBD like less immediately helpful for me.

, so in that sense, like you get to sort of like supplement yourself. So fine, find that, but the, the courses are free. They're there. Very smart people made them much smarter than me. Um, so, uh, please use those. 

[00:15:16] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right, thank you others. 

[00:15:18] Chris Khoeler: Yeah, I think, try things out, right? There's so many of these tools 1 every day.

There's something new that comes out. , and, you know, I had a fun with my 13 year old where he was talking about this sort of mash up component of a, an elephant and an ant. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of a cool concept. Let me show you something. And we go into my journey and I'm like, look, create a, create a whole scene around an elephant and an ant together as part of it, it was just kind of a fun way to learn, you know, holy, like in two seconds, like, Oh my God, we could do a whole kid's book.

Right. , from an illustration perspective around this. So I think. Have that mindset of like go dig in, learn so much of it is free, , whether that's linked or beyond and just get yourself first, [00:16:00] try it and then all of a sudden it's going to spark a ton of, , ideas of, oh my gosh, what if I could do this?

What if I could do that? So I think you just have to spend the time to go play and learn and the hands on component of it is, is I think going to drive the innovation for for all of us. 

[00:16:15] Kathy Hollenhorst: And when your children are more curious and creative than you are, like maybe it's 

[00:16:19] Santi Pochat: I actually, I think that's a great point.

I found that people who start with productivity, it's really boring. Like if you don't have an idea of the potential and how to use it. So starting with like sort of use cases that are more natural for you. It was like, I need help, you know, finishing this like thought. Uh, or making up an image or I don't know, writing lyrics to a song, like turn it into a more creative endeavor first, because it's more exciting that way personally versus I need help writing an email because then you will literally just only use it to help write, help you write an email.

Um, but there's so much more to do. 

[00:16:55] Kathy Hollenhorst: Cindy, why don't you get ready? We'll take some questions before we move on to the next one, but other thoughts on where to get started, [00:17:00] 

[00:17:01] Chrissy Anderson: Chrissy, Terry, Nhi. I first used, uh, ChetGBT to plan my itinerary for two days at Disneyland with very specific requirements given by my five and six year old sons.

And I was incredibly impressed. So that, that was, I don't know if that was creative or logistical, but it engaged me and showed the value right off the bat, 

[00:17:20] Chris Khoeler: but I think that is the The fun part is like, make it practical and try it and you learn, and then you'll use it again and again. And then all of a sudden you're like, wow, this is really in my personal life.

It becomes a force multiplier. How do I use it now? Professionally in a different way. 

[00:17:33] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right, we're going to go move on to the next topic, but how about in this space? What questions do you have? 

[00:17:38] background noise: I lead SEO at Coursera. , and this question is for the wider panel. , how are you managing your teams and encouraging them to kind of go out, take that risk, explore with Like security concerns in mind, because I think one of the challenges is, , in your personal life, it's no problem.

I also use chat GPT to plan trips, and I literally used it for [00:18:00] Disneyland in December. And I think the difficulty is trying to translate that to the workplace and all the different things that are available. And how are you setting those guardrails to help enable, , your different teams and orgs?

[00:18:12] Nii Addy: , being a startup, a philo is naturally a little bit scrappy.

It likes to tinker around the edges. , that said, our head of legal is a very seasoned professional, I'll say, and is always like, hold up. What are y'all doing over here? And so when, when, when things started to catch fire with chat, GBT and all these things, like a lot of our engineers were like, Oh, we want to use this.

People were probably already using it. But, , what we did as an executive team was get together, imagine, or ping our, our teams and say, what are the ways that seem really relevant to you right now? And then we had a loose framework where here's all the ways that we think people would use it. And. A scalable way for now as a starting place, and we did a quick review and say, here are the concerns.

Like, we don't want to be giving private data to [00:19:00] these systems that can be federated across. So, starting with some really high level guardrails of the obvious gotchas that you want to avoid, and there's things you can do. You can have different versions of the servers or your own things to protect you.

And so just so you have loose guardrails around. What are the sandboxes that we can play in at work, , to get started and then as more specific. Use cases start to rise. Then you that are outside that sandbox and you can get those approved more individually. 

[00:19:32] Santi Pochat: Others. , we started with, uh, a ton of education, , which was, I guess like the first important part, we are highly, highly monitored on this.

Like we, as. People who develop the technology like we're very conscious of the risk. , so we have task forces and legal teams and, you know, uh, privacy officers that just like monitor a lot of the situation. We actually did is like, limit the use cases very quickly. , into what, not [00:20:00] what are the least risky things to do, but more, where do we see the most potential and what kind of risks do we want to take?

So if you think about something like using AI to scale production, hundreds of assets, like very quickly generated, like what are the downsides of that? Like, so we go through a pros and cons, like, you know, cost benefit, um, on, on the opportunity costs. , and then approve those use cases, particularly also like limiting the amount of partners we use or what technologies we use.

Like we had to get in front of it to avoid it's spitting out like the, the problem with this technology is it's kind of accessible to everyone. , so if you don't people give guardrails like, uh, very early, then yeah, everyone's going to use whatever they want. That's how you get. Um, you know, your private, your customer data training, like models externally getting leaked, which we've seen some from some companies, like, you know, inadvertently, so just getting ahead of it is like, really important, just limiting the scope of , what is possible and what your team is comfortable with, um, I think was very helpful.

[00:20:59] Chris Khoeler: , we actually [00:21:00] have it built into our product for product. So, you know, that we had the safeguards and security has all built into our own product, which helped. But I do think, you know, we've talked to a lot of our customers that the early reaction was shut access to it off, just like shut it down.

No one on the corporate domain can get access to it, which again, um, is probably a overreaction. But. If your IP is going out externally and, you know, people aren't really thinking about the ramifications of that, that's, that's problematic. So I do think putting into some common sense of like, Hey, if you are going to use this external, just be mindful of what you're using it for, you know, you can obfuscate certain things.

And, you know, if you want to do a performance review, you know, as part of, don't put their full name and their title and, you know, how long they've been with the company and like stupid stuff like that, Um, as part of that, so I think I think there are ways that you want to treat people as adults, right? Be responsible, be mindful of the implications of our, you [00:22:00] know, our assets as part of that.

So, I think, uh, you know, if you treat, uh, you put the rules in place and trust me, we had task committees and legal and compliance and lots and lots of discussions around that. So, I do think you need to put in what are the right tools and then what are the right guidelines for, you know, for the teams.

[00:22:17] Kathy Hollenhorst: Great, thanks. Okay, show of hands for those of you here. How many of you work in Chris's organization? Okay, so I want to talk later about your last performance review because apparently, apparently it was out of generated. 

[00:22:29] Chris Khoeler: It's in, it's in workday, so it's good. 

[00:22:33] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right, uh, how about one more question and then we'll move on to our next topic.

Anyone? 

[00:22:36] Nii Addy: I have a question for Chrissy. Nice. So, since you've been leaning into it as like, the kind of part of the face of the product at this point, I'm curious. Are there anything that you didn't anticipate?

When you rolled it out that you learned that might be helpful as people think. 

[00:22:53] Chrissy Anderson: Yeah, a couple things. We've done a lot of buyer research since we've had Finn in the market for more than a year now around [00:23:00] how customers are receiving that. Um, what we've learned is a few things. One, um, customers didn't really understand what AI was and how it differed from automation in its prior forms.

Um, so there's a lot of education and enablement that we think is going to be required to bring customers along the journey. Um, I think the other insight we, we anticipate that people will be very fearful about it and what we've found from our customer research. And again, our, our focus for prospecting and current customers is really SMBs and lower mid market.

There wasn't that much fear around the adoption of AI. There was excitement, but like, a lack of understanding of how to practically use it. Um, So those insights I, I thought were quite insightful. Um, we especially thought given how impactful we perceive this to be to the customer service industry that that fear or like reticence to adopt would be there.

But that has not been the case. What we found is, um, our customers are really focused on customer experience and. They [00:24:00] see AI as an accelerant to help them to drive a better customer experience as opposed to something that's, you know, taking away their jobs. It's almost like upleveling the quality of work that can be done within that domain and like taking the low level, uh, responses and giving them to AI to resolve and leaving more meaningful, um, you know, deeper work that, that humans would do in partnership with ai.

So they're both been positive insights. Um, and they've definitely changed how we're framing and going to market with our proposition. We're really focusing on what it is and how you can adopt it. 

[00:24:35] Chris Khoeler: All right. Thank you. One of the things that's been interesting as we've rolled it out are a couple things.

One, um, we have to be very careful for us that are live and breathe in Silicon Valley around the recency of like, we live in this world of AI. It's everything we're working through. When you get outside, not everyone is living in a world where chat GPT is like what they do. So I have to remind our team all the time, like, Yeah, my, my grandmother's not [00:25:00] using chat.

GBT every day to go as part of this. Like, we have to be realistic that we live in a little bit of a bubble where this is the part of it. So I think that's 1, I think 2, um, lots of companies have not figured out. How they're going to allow their employees to use this. So even if they have the capabilities, they've just said, Hey, we're not ready to roll this out.

We're not sure the implications. So that's, that's two. And then I think the third is the change management, which is really interesting. As we talk to our customers and what are the use cases? There's still a lot of employee fear of like saying, well, I'm actually using this to help me because of that, you know, of the, well, you should be much more efficient or maybe we don't need as many people.

So I think those are the things we just have to be very. Mindful of as we roll this into our products that we assume like everyone's going to use this like right out of the gate and the reality is there's hesitation. I think for multiple fronts on this for sure. I 

[00:25:52] Kathy Hollenhorst: can't believe your grandmother isn't using Jeff.

Yeah, it's crazy. Jenny I think we had a question from the from 

[00:25:58] background noise: the 

[00:25:58] Kathy Hollenhorst: chat on the virtual so [00:26:00] 

[00:26:00] background noise: we do so Jeremy from Amazon Prime Video has a question about what are some of the specific marketing use cases of AI within. Or outside of your organization that you have found to be the most compelling and inspiring.

Right. 

[00:26:15] Kathy Hollenhorst: Thank you. Wouldn't like to tackle that one. 

[00:26:20] Santi Pochat: Hello, Jeremy, my friend, Jeremy Schuman, probably. Um, uh, I talked a little bit about scale. I think that's like one of the things that I think are, are. First to go right is like, how do you optimize for hundreds of formats, hundreds of languages, potentially, um, and scale your team in a way where I think like 6 months ago was just not possible or required an enormous amount of resources.

Like, localization alone is like, I think, fundamentally changed in the past 6 months. So you have a global company that is huge. It's not perfect, but it's huge. Um, and. There are really, really interesting things happening in content management and sort of like the [00:27:00] content, um, ecosystem generally. Uh, if anyone went to Adobe max, um, a couple of weeks ago or last week, a couple of weeks ago, um, super, super interesting how they're starting to connect things like Firefly, which is like their sort of AI initiative, like model.

To every other part of their technology stack for marketers from measurement to content creation, to their creative apps. So I think we're going to see a fundamental revolution in the speed of the pace of change you can expect things from, right? So if you're in something like Photoshop and you want to see three versions of the same thing, just to see how it feels like that'll be much easier.

Um, so those are, I think that are like the first few things. Um, Copy, obviously, it's like a big, I mean, JATJPT is like fundamentally radically transformed things like copywriting, I think for a lot of people. Um, so up leveling that quality, but those are the first two that we're seeing work fairly well.

There's a number of companies that have started just to solve for that problem. I think about companies like plot, um, or, or other sort of [00:28:00] like customer experience companies, uh, uh, Like sprinkler or, you know, chorus, like they all do really, really well in this space because they're able to connect sort of the back end of creating stuff to the front end of like just putting it out in the world and that scale that is required now.

[00:28:17] Chris Khoeler: I mean, I think, you know, going to obviously localization SEO, those are sort of the content sort of text pieces are the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest to do. I think the part that is most exciting. I actually had spent 10 years at Adobe prior to coming to to box and the notion of that image generation of like, imagine a world where you can.

Do exploration of your brand and your imagery and all that and can happen in seconds. The big question I would have is, okay, what happens with agencies? You know, like, what is that world? How do they adapt to it? How do they bring a different model to us as brands? Figuring out where the value creation as part of that.

So [00:29:00] I think this is going to be a really interesting time, especially around visuals and brand identity. All that like is, is going to be a really, really. And um, I think that's going to be a great, uh, fun time over the next couple of years. 

[00:29:10] Terry Seitz: Sorry. Just to, just to build on that. And he's pointing out the Sandbox, I think what's in the agency point.

I think what's really exciting for us is new audience development and mining at scale at speed at an incredibly low to zero CPM when you think about organic, right? Now the whole thing's been blown up where you can. You can mine for signals and new audiences like that.

And then you, you stitch them together and over time you have a, you have a new trend that you're now, you're now harnessing. So yeah, the, the agency dynamic is, is, is fascinating, but it has the potential to unlock, I think what marketing. Is truly about, which is right audience, right message, right context, right time efficiently at scale.

Um, so, yeah, I don't know how I would feel if I was, [00:30:00] um, at 1 of my agency partners, but but thrilled about the prospect because, um, limitless potential. 

[00:30:06] Kathy Hollenhorst: That's good. And we've all heard that if you're going to Disney, apparently use it to plan your trip there. So it would be a good one. So, all right, we're going to shift into our next question.

Uh, certainly we know AI is, is a disruptor. Uh, right now there's a lot of noise in the marketplace. Forget AI for a minute, just in general, a lot of things going on in our world. So Nii, we're going to start with you and let's talk about how are you breaking through the noise, uh, in the marketplace with what you're doing with your marketing team?

[00:30:31] Nii Addy: Yeah, I mean, Philo is a challenger brand and a very competitive TV landscape. It's very exciting. There's no people, companies buying each other, new products being launched all the time. Uh, so it's a maelstrom. And what we have tried to do is zag where people zig. And what I think that means from a marketing perspective and executionally is you should know who should hate you.

If you should really know who should look at your product and be like, [00:31:00] I don't, that's not for me because it allows you to define who you are. And I think it's often tempting because we're businesses and we want to grow, we want to appeal to everybody and blah, blah, blah. And you know, the hackneyed term, if you're for everybody, then you're for no one.

It's really important to start with 

who 

doesn't like you because it psychologically, it's Kind of boxes you into like, who can we really serve? Well, what are their characteristics and what aren't they? And so in our space, we're obviously not going after sports because we don't have that. And so we lean really into the comfort elements of TV and the hanging out and less, less on some of the other things.

And I think it's really important to, and with all these tools, AI and the data, and you can get really advanced with your segmentation and customer analysis to understand what's going on. What makes them distinct and how those things extend outside of your brand and what types of sort of lifestyle elements that you can plug [00:32:00] in that tells you where to find these people, how to talk to them, and how they, how you should be relating to them.

[00:32:06] Kathy Hollenhorst: Thank you. Terry, how about on your side with you got a lot going on on the visa front. So, 

[00:32:10] Terry Seitz: yeah, I mean, we're sort of like an aircraft carrier. Word. The opposite end of end of that spectrum. Um, I think for us, it's like, don't contribute to the noise. And I think that that's incredibly hard because we're all particularly in this region programmed to, uh, generate attach ourselves to as much attention as possible.

Um, but that isn't the end goal. And so, um, for us, it's, it's sort of a twofer of doing a lot more lateral things. Thinking, right? Like taking these bespoke signals and trying to connect the dots to make something, um, more than, um, a sort of a one off and then doing a bunch of longitudinal thinking, which is like, we have these signals, we've connected them.

How do we make a lasting impression over time? [00:33:00] The big brand KPI for us is, is relevance, uh, which is being disrupted in a world of digital wallets, the UX experience drastically changing. For us, where you're not taking out your card 7 times a day. Um, you know, we're in some respects, sort of, uh, being white labeled more and more.

Right. So how do we continue to drive relevance? Um, so we think about it from a, from a category perspective and a cultural perspective. And what's the balance of that from a, um, from, from an attention and a signal perspective, but don't contribute to the noise is, is, I think for us. So we, we, we just, we try and be a lot more disciplined than, uh, than ever before.

[00:33:37] Kathy Hollenhorst: Interesting. Chris, 

[00:33:40] Chris Khoeler: , the natural inclination is more cowbell right? More, more, more, more as part of it. Um, and I think, um, I think we, as marketers were super guilty in the COVID era where, you know, we went to a world where we didn't have a lot of those face to face, you know, interactions and we went super heavy on digital.

And we just, you know, pounded, uh, you [00:34:00] know, all of our customers, prospects, whatever it is, just with digital, digital, digital. And I think the risk we run, um, Terry's like that the right message at the right time, the right content at scale, like with AI, like, how do we protect ourselves from ourselves of like, when it is so easy to create more and more content and experiences.

How do we refrain from doing that so that we don't add to the noise and it becomes even worse? Um, so I think that's, that's going to be a really interesting challenge of, you know, can we have self restraint, uh, as marketers, you know, um, and make it relevant versus just The amount of stuff that we produce, I think it's going to be really interesting.

[00:34:40] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right, Santee, we need your team to create a learning program for LinkedIn around like, how do, how do we as marketers have restraint? So could you get on that for us, please? 

[00:34:48] Santi Pochat: I think we all need that. Uh, what else is happening? I it's very interesting. I think restraint is, is really important. I'll go something that you just said, which is like, just knowing who you are, I think is like particularly important right now, there's so [00:35:00] much out there and there's so many options for everyone on LinkedIn.

Basically anything they're trying to do, um, that understanding the role that you play and the value you add very, very clearly, um, my team and I have spent the past year or so committing things to like memory, just taking a minute to just. Write it down or actualize and to say like, Hey, are we still on the same page?

Um, that's been really, really important. I think for us as a company, you know, LinkedIn is 20 years old, which is wild, um, for both the companies. Um, and you know, huge scale in an enormous mission that is kind of like never over. So it's, how do we spend the next 20 years getting to that? So, uh, using these inflection points where you have an opportunity to sort Step back, I think has become really important.

Knowing our audience become really important. Knowing ourselves become really important and sort of rewriting those things, um, helped a lot. So spend time going back to basic stuff, like the core of who you are, your identity matters way [00:36:00] more than you think now, because that's how you attract people today.

[00:36:04] Kathy Hollenhorst: Jenny, we'll take questions in a minute. So let's, um, I want to pose this to the panel. So now I'm a marketer. I'm part of your teams at any level and what's a muscle that I need to flex more or perhaps build to help have restraint or cut through this noise. I'm going back to that advice. I'm in the room.

What can I do to to improve myself so that I can have more relevance in the marketplace? Look, 

[00:36:29] Santi Pochat: I, I'll echo my first piece of advice, just ask the question in context, uh, speaking the language of your partners on the other side, finance, the C suite, whatever that may be, um, and seeking to understand like what's actually important and what matters will lead you.

It's not about just restraining yourself from doing anything. It's about doing the right thing and nothing else. So it's restrained with purpose. Um, I think as marketers, again, we're incentivized to go on output and volume. Like you have to sort of constantly be out there, but understanding what matters [00:37:00] to the business, to your team, to your manager, sometimes on an individual personal basis, if they're trying to get promoted or something.

Um, but like definitely to your company and particularly your users or your members, or however you want to define your customer, um, really helps you Put away all the other anxieties that you have of the day and just do the right thing for the business, for your job. So just ask the question, like, don't stop asking.

Yeah. 

[00:37:25] Terry Seitz: To, to build on that, um, restraint with purpose, uh, my wife will disagree with this by the way. Um, but I think, I think the biggest muscle is, is listening, not the performative kind, but deep objective listening, because it will free you from your unconscious bias. It will free you from, uh, a number of assumptions or hypotheses, um, that have been sort of predetermined, um, and great listening will unlock, I think, that aperture of what, going back to AI, um, it represents, which [00:38:00] is, which is, which is potential and choice, um, that sounds like a cliched answer, but if done correctly, um, you'll understand what the C suite wants, you'll understand what your consumers and customers want, um, and, um, But it can't be the performative kind.

Um, 

[00:38:15] Kathy Hollenhorst: okay. So, and to be clear, Kirsten wouldn't necessarily disagree that that's a good thing to ask that you're not, it's his ability on the, on the deep list of that 

[00:38:26] Chris Khoeler: sounds familiar. Um, I, I think on a couple of fronts, one, um, be willing to take risks, but fail fast. Um, I think there's, I think as marketers, um, we sometimes get, you know, even entrenched in our ideas and, and want to prove that we were right as part of that.

So I think that's 1, um, the other is to ask for help, right? As leaders, I think too often, uh, we, we see situations where stuff doesn't get escalated fast enough What the heck? Like I could have solved this in one email or one phone call and it's been going on for, for months, but it's seen as a [00:39:00] sign of weakness, right?

Well, I got to solve this. I got to, as leaders, we naturally want to go help as part of that. And when people ask for help, I see it as a sign of strength where I'm like, wow, they have a trust. We've built a trust as part of that, where they can work, you know, as part of that. So I think those, um, those are, are just critical things we all need.

Um, which I think, uh, too often. You know, we're as marketers afraid to, to really ask for help because we don't know all the answers and this industry is changing so fast that, you know, and then one last thing, maybe if you don't know the answer, don't be us. Please, please don't be us as leaders. We can sniff that out so quickly and there's blood in the water and then you spin and you spin.

It just kills your credibility. Scott and I were talking about this yesterday. Like if you don't know the answer, just say, I don't know the answer. Let me come back to you. It is like an unlock for leaders where they're like, okay, good. Because if you bullshit, our trust is like gone. And then you will know it's really hard to recover.

So just say, I don't know. [00:40:00] I'll get back to you. 

[00:40:00] Kathy Hollenhorst: I've never been a fan of the fake it till you make it because I agree with you. I think it can be transparent. All right. Questions again in the chat. If you're on online, please put them in the chat and we'll filter those. But how about here in the room? Any questions in this category for the panelists?

Yeah, we'll have you Jenny bring the mic up for again name where you're from. And, uh, Who if you're a specific panelist, you'd like to address it. 

[00:40:21] background noise: Sure. Haley Nelson, head of marketing at Logitech for B2B. Um, you guys talked about techniques around breaking through, but I'm curious around some specific creative ideas or executions or experiences that you're putting out that have really resonated.

Some, some examples would be awesome. 

[00:40:37] Kathy Hollenhorst: Great. Thank you.

 Good question. 

[00:40:40] Terry Seitz: Um, the NFL. Arguably the biggest property in the world. We've been partnered with them for I'm going to get it wrong, but almost 3 decades. And I think we did some of the best work this year. Having done work with them for 9 or 10 years, um, because we, and somebody served this up [00:41:00] before we simplified the brief.

And we did, we did some research and what you actually learn is that out of the 32 teams in the league. 31 fail 31 fail, right? The chief sort of super bowl champs, everyone else that is a powerful human truth that gave rise to a wonderful fan insight. That we use to develop the work this year. Um, and when you have a great human truth, that's an actionable insight where brand can provide, uh, an authentic role in that, that journey, that protagonist journey, the creative, I don't know about you guys, the creative sort of like writes itself.

So at the brief stage. Having just that nugget and the notion of if you're going to be a fan, uh, it is a lifelong journey of torture, excitement. We were talking about Argentina's World Cup win, uh, on the side. Um, and Santi lives it every [00:42:00] day. Um, but the, the brief gave rise to work that we, we bought in, in, in, in no time at all.

Um, and you know, we saw it on the, sort of the backend metrics in terms of, um, you know, ad tracking and breakthrough and, um, where we really saw it was on, on, on ROI and particularly among, um, uh, the 18 to 34 set who we have struggled fortifying our brand equity with, and the NFL has struggled with that.

Um, and so we just went back to basics. 

[00:42:29] Santi Pochat: I'll, um, I'll echo partnerships. I'll add a, a, to it, like a spin to it. Um, I'm a big fan of orthogonal partnerships right now, like unexpected partnerships that still drive a substantial amount of value. Um, there's two examples that I'll point to from work that my team did over the past year and a half.

One is a partnership we had with Dove, uh, to fight, uh, hair discrimination at work, which sounds. Very unusual, but it's something that Dev has been fighting against for many, many years. [00:43:00] Um, there's something called the crown act. Um, so we partner with them. It's, it's a, it's an issue at work. It is our world.

So for us, it made a lot of sense to help them spread that message. We unlocked anti bias courses. We, you know, we did co marketing with them. Very, very interesting. And then another completely orthogonal sort of partnership in the same vein. Um, Austin Headspace. People are anxious, there's layoffs, there's, you know, a greater rate of change, uh, in most industries like than there's ever been before.

So, how does LinkedIn play a role in you helping, you know, be more confident when you're looking for an opportunity, when you're trying to get promotion, anxiety at work, because I think we don't talk about that. Like, uh, about that much. So again, for us, the excuse being, we have a very core role in the world, which is, uh, our mission is to unlock economic opportunity for every member of the workforce.

This is a way for us to do that. So again, staying true to who we are, like, you know, it's not just like any random sort of like media [00:44:00] property off the street. Um, but make it really count for our users through content, through classes, through actual. You know, legislative change, like potentially, uh, has been really successful for us.

Um, we believe that, you know, we actually measure this, like one of our, our sort of core metrics is belonging on the platform. If people feel more confident, if they feel like they belong and they can speak up and they have confidence that they can apply for jobs that maybe they felt out of reach before because of what they've learned or like, or the, the message we're bringing out there.

It makes everything better. Uh, people will come back more often. Um, so those partnerships actually actually really help our core metrics move, uh, and yet the attention is not bad. Um, you know, that's like a side effect of that, but I love partnerships because I think the world right now is moving to a place in which brands can't go at it alone.

Like if you're trying to cut through a loan, the burden is on your brand to do all that work, your product needs to be stellar. Your marketing needs to be, you know, leaps and bounds above brands that [00:45:00] maybe are willing to take more risks. So having these unexpected, there was one this last week, uh, elf. So the beauty brand and liquid death.

[00:45:09] Chris Khoeler: Yeah. 

[00:45:10] Santi Pochat: I don't get it, but I found it like fascinated. You're talking about it. It does, but it's, I get, it's not for me, so I don't get it because it's not for me. That's, I believe that it's so fascinating because you, that's how you get breakthrough. By doing things that are unexpected. I tell my team, I use the word weird a lot, which they don't love because we're not a weird, we're not a weird brand, but weird for me means unexpected and unexpected in a positive way.

Um, uh, it's, uh, from Donnie Darko, it's like, weird is not a bad thing. Um, weird is a good thing. Weird means you are unusual and you're cutting through. So. Trying things to do that is not bad. That's really cool. Thank you. 

[00:45:49] Kathy Hollenhorst: Uh, okay. We have a question from our virtual group. So Jenny, take it away. 

[00:45:53] background noise: We do. So Mary Rogers, she is VP marketing at Laundry Luxe.

Distributor of [00:46:00] professional laundry equipment for those of you that don't know. Um, and she's interested in hearing more about emotional intelligence as part of the fast moving marketing industry. And 

[00:46:12] Kathy Hollenhorst: a small topic who would like to say go ahead. Yeah, I 

[00:46:16] Nii Addy: love that question. Um, I think emotional intelligence is undervalued, but it's becoming more prominent.

I think somebody said earlier that. Like almost in correspondence with the rise of AI is meaning we need to lean more into our what makes us human. I have this whole thread about the rise of psychedelics and why it's happening at the same time as AI, but that's for a different conversation. 

[00:46:41] Kathy Hollenhorst: Our next forum, we'll dive into that Nii.

Thanks. 

[00:46:44] Nii Addy: On topic is that in teams and in businesses, it is the understanding whether you're talking about your customer or peers or managing up. Uh, it's about influence right at the end of the [00:47:00] day, and it should the best influence is mutual influence where you can understand the drivers and constraints and stressors are on somebody else and filter what you're trying to do through their lens.

And that applies in all of those contexts, and it's really important to be effective, particularly the larger your teams get, the more global they are, the more complex the organizations are. Uh, I think, you know, in the past. That has been under valued and how people are promoted and compensated and things like that.

I think it's really important to explicitly recognize those things in this era. 

[00:47:37] Kathy Hollenhorst: Thank you. Okay, I'm going to chip this. Thank you for the questions because our next leadership muscle or that we want to talk about is courage and being bald, particularly when it comes to career development. So, I would like each of you because we're going to start with you after you take your sip of water.

When you think about your own personal career journeys because we know we hear from our community just to hear your own stories is [00:48:00] so valuable. So, talk about a time where you made a significant pivot. in your career? What was it and how it helped your career continue? So Chrissy, we'll start with you and we'll get to everybody though.

[00:48:10] Chrissy Anderson: Great. Um, so I've made two pretty significant pivots during my career. I'll focus on the second one. Um, but to give you some context, so I started out early career with some financial services. I worked in asset management, York and London for about six years. Um, then decided to go to business school and transition into tech.

And so I've been working in tech for the last decade. Um, but I was in e commerce, um, primarily. So I worked for Walmart e commerce and then for Amazon was in senior leadership roles, um, within the online grocery space, working on Whole Foods market online, working on, uh, Amazon fresh stores. And then I went to an early stage startup where I was the CEO in the virtual fitness space, um, coming out of those experiences.

I've been working for a long time on businesses that were fundamentally unhealthy. You know, we were losing 10 per order, for example, on most of the online grocery [00:49:00] orders that I was working on, uh, in the Amazon context. Uh, but companies like Amazon and other competitors at that scale, uh, were working on gaining market share.

And that was really the strategy and a strategy that companies of that size and scale can play. Um, but as someone with, you know, business background, I really missed. You know, working on thinking about business fundamentals, like a business that works that, um, you know, is profitable and scalable. Um, and so I decided to make a pretty significant pivot and to focus my, my search, my career search about two years ago on B2B.

And, you know, at that time, based on my research and, you know, talking with friends of my network, um. Really just perceive the industry to be a lot healthier, just much higher margins, a lot more focused on profitability rule of 40, um, just healthy business fundamentals that I also thought made sense in the market context as we were moving out of a zero interest rate environment, which kind of rewarded top line growth.

So, in parallel with those dynamics that I observed, [00:50:00] decided to make this pivot, um. And what that meant for me, I mean, it was, it was challenging in the job search, you know, trying to convey to folks, like, why should I hire someone who has no background in B2B SaaS, uh, for a senior leadership role? Um, and, you know, I, I had to be pretty descriptive about, you know, what I thought was transferable from my experience into those new contexts and also what my learning areas were going to need to be.

Um, and. You know, I think it paid off and I did did have several opportunities and ultimately decided to join Intercom. Um, and I initially, you know, took on a smaller scope than I had historically had in my, my prior roles. I'm not sure I would recommend that. However, that is my story, so I'll share it. Um, you know, I started out leading business operations, um, but very quickly, you know, within three months of the company, I identified there was a leadership need within program management.

So I raised my hand to take that on. And then a few months later, you know, was was offered to take on my current role overseeing the office of the CEO as well. [00:51:00] Um, so I was able to make that work and kind of within a year's time, get back to a similar scope to what I had been operating at previously. And in my B2C context, um, but I did have to take a small step back and, um.

You know, there's, there's trade offs and would be happy to discuss with anyone if you're contemplating a similar change, what some, some strategies might be that are relevant there. All 

[00:51:23] Kathy Hollenhorst: right. Thank you. Um, I heard some time, one time it was don't let ego stand in the way of opportunity. And sometimes that next job is lateral, maybe to open up or even to step back.

We switch industries. So again, I love that. Don't, don't let ego get in the way of those opportunity. Make sure you're looking for those as well. All right, me, let's go to you because I have it on good authority that you haven't always been a marketer. 

[00:51:43] Nii Addy: No, similarly, I started in finance, uh, which is very different world.

And what I didn't know what to do after college and my friends were doing it. So I did it and then had a decent paycheck. And the excitement there was, it's a very steep learning [00:52:00] curve in that business. And so coming up, the learning curve was a lot of my focus, but once it started getting to be about working in the profession, I looked around and I, I don't like this, you know, and the way it really showed up, I had a great mentor, uh, at that time, who was, you know, one of the most transformational leaders I've worked under, uh, was not necessarily easy to work for.

So it's like, you don't really have many strong opinions in this business. Like you're very smart and all of that. And that got me to think is like, why is that these other people that are reading the financial magazines on the weekends, I was playing music in LA and trying to be a rock star and doing something.

So clearly there was a misalignment. She said, whatever you're doing, you need to have a very strong opinion, like an innate need or a concept of what you think is right in that context. And so that's sort of what started my journey. Toward marketing, but as you know, thinking about change and courage, what I have [00:53:00] started to do, like Chris said, in the beginning, I think as the device is lean into strengths, where are, what is your passion and what is driving you as far as your why and.

The more I leaned into that, even though I switched pretty late in my career, because of my passion and I was doing this stuff outside of work in work, it allowed me to climb the ladder very quickly because I would, you know, you could feel it from me. And I, I thought about all these things all before, and it was a lot of new energy that was bringing.

So I thought that was very helpful in trying to navigate some of these spaces. And so I encourage everyone to not only. Lean into your passions, but share them even I'm coming off a parental leave right now and I had set a little bit of existential reflection during that time. And the first thing I did when I got back this week was tell my boss more about my why, like, here's why I want to be a great marketer.

Here's what I'm trying to achieve in life. I want to be an inspiration to other people and break glass ceilings. So [00:54:00] that. These are the things I need you to help me do like, and it was a great conversation because something's going to be handled within the company. And some things are kind of on my own to do, but it opened up having the courage to talk to him about it.

He was, he was like, Oh, well, you want to get more in Egypt, more general management stuff. There's an opportunity for you to do that here. And without saying it and tapping into it, you'll never be able to sort of realize it. 

[00:54:26] Kathy Hollenhorst: All right, thank you. All right, Santee, I'm going to go to you and I wrote this down because when we briefed before you were talking about being an under networked under resource professional when you started out.

So I love that. I was about that. 

[00:54:37] Santi Pochat: I am a 1st generation immigrant. I came here by myself when I was 21 with a job. I did not go to school. So I don't have a degree. I came here with a job. Um, I stumbled into marketing, um, worked for a, uh, an agency that is traditionally in PR element. Why? Oh, Basically, my entire career or two, [00:55:00] um, and got really lucky.

So I don't take that for granted. I think the, the, the thing that I've learned is, is a couple of things. And, you know, we mentioned like lateral moves and I think that there's actually, I talk about transitional jobs a lot. Like not every job will be a step up or the next thing. Some jobs will give you the, the, Space and time to be receptive to the right opportunity.

And that's actually happened twice in the past five years to me, which is kind of wild in hindsight. Um, the first one was when, um, I, I was working, I was a director of Verizon. I went back to the agency, um, to take my pat leave because I didn't feel super confident in taking pat leave at Verizon. We talk about that another day.

Um, and. It made me feel smart again. It brought my confidence back. I something was, something broken me and I just needed that time to find myself, and I did great work. I'm super proud of the work that I did when I was back at the agency, but [00:56:00] I actually don't know if I've, I would've gotten the call to go to Google if I had not done that.

I was in a very different headspace and I actually don't think that that would have happened. Um, I felt confident. I, I had applied. I think most people have applied to Google a dozen times. I don't know about you guys, but I've, I certainly did like over the years, right? Like it's, Oh, it's interesting. I'll do this.

And I had not even heard back. Um, and they called me, I was like, like, this is great. Um, that was an incredible experience. And, you know, after a few years at Google. Again, I kind of find myself at odds with the role I had in, I took a job that was like very strange to most people as like a consumer marketer, I took a job doing policy marketing, which I'm happy to talk to people about I'm a giant history, political wonky person.

It was fascinating, basically just to me. I was like, this job is in exist. This job doesn't exist anywhere else. I would be an idiot not to do this. [00:57:00] And I did it. And again, smart. I super proud of the work I did there. Insanely grateful to, uh, who was my boss and is now a friend, uh, for giving me the opportunity and the work we did together, but again, it got me into a place where LinkedIn called.

I wasn't look, I was very happy doing what I was doing. So finding an opportunity to give yourself some grace, um, and not, I'm, I'm a very ambitious person. Anyone that knows me will tell you that I am aggressively obnoxious about it, but I've, I've actually found myself learning that like, when I take my foot off the gas and I go, what do I, what is going on?

Like, why am I actually so antsy right now? The opportunities are presented in a way where like, I actually didn't expect where I wasn't looking where it was much bigger than I, whatever I thought my next thing was, Oh, this is 10 times bigger than I thought it was. Um, and ever since coming to our realization, I've actually realized that it happens to people more than we think.

I remember, I still remember one [00:58:00] of my best friends. Who's a salesperson at Uber now. He's in season sales. Um, thought I was nuts when I went back agency side. He was like, you've as an agency person, you've made the jump client side and you went back agency side. You're in, you're nuts. Like absolutely crazy.

This will ruin your career. Good friend. I love it. By the way, she was cute. It's giving me real talk because that's the thing that I was told for many, many years. Once you make it out, don't make it back. That is right. But, but, and you kind of forget, like people do this all the time and you've seen, for example, I get, now I see really, really senior CMOs becoming heads of agencies.

Yeah, that's when I was coming up, that wasn't happening. So I never got to see that. So I talked to people a lot about my experience and being ambitious, but not, you know, wanting the next thing to be a perfect thing, because there's no such thing as the perfect job. Uh, and there's no such thing as a perfect opportunity.

Even if you're just upward mobility, you want, there's a lot of pitfalls that come with like getting promoted [00:59:00] that they don't tell you about. Um, so yeah, taking the time to sort of like figure out what, what is actually driving you to the next thing or like, what is making you antsy about the role you have, um, has been immensely helpful to me as a person who didn't know anyone and didn't really know what I was doing.

I don't think I still do. Um, so yeah. 

[00:59:18] Kathy Hollenhorst: Thank you. All right, Terry, we're going to have you comment and then Chris, we're going to have you wrap this up. So how about your pivot? 

[00:59:22] Terry Seitz: It's a great segue. I wish I had known you 11 years ago. Um, my 1st pivot was I spent the 1st. Dozen years of my career on the agency side in New York.

And I don't know about eight, eight years in, I was like, wow, there aren't a lot of 50 year olds rolling around the place. How do you make a 30 year career at the time in the agency world? And I still think that that question is, is, is an open one. I think it's, I think it's incredibly hard. All right. So you figure out a way to get to the C suite.

Excellent. You're there for about 2 or 3 years. You get Game of [01:00:00] Thrones, right? Your head, you're Ned. But by the way, you're Ned and you got to go find another job because you haven't made, you haven't made 8 figures. And so I thought, I don't know if I can do this. It corresponded with the realization that what I wanted and it builds on these point of having a perspective and making the most impact.

It's for me going to the brand side of the client side. So I put together a plan. I went back, um, went to business school, use the business school as somewhat of an admission ticket, somewhat of a language foundation, um, to get to the other side, uh, where, where I've been, um, which very quickly leads me to my sort of 2nd pivot, which was, which is sort of part of guidance.

Go take the dirty job. Um, which I think is an ACDC lyric or song. Correct me, but, um, take the job that is complex is, is, is, is messy is hairy, but ultimately [01:01:00] is 1 that is attached to what management wants to get done and you will remove so many obstacles. So, um, that job for me was. Uh, was was running point on something called visa checkout, which was, uh, uh, our 1st scale digital wallet.

It was sort of a friend of me, competitive, uh, comparative, uh, product to PayPal. Um, and we were to build a marketing muscle from scratch. So to build a CRM team, a data science team, an analytics team, a sales team, a generalist marketing team. And, um, at the time I was working in global brand and this was a U.

S. focused, um, product and initiative and no one wanted to do it because they were like, this thing's going to be torture. It's going to be 80 hour weeks. Um, we don't have the skill sets. Um, we're very content with, with life at visa and, uh, similar stories like a mentor of mine said, bring that guy. He doesn't look that smart, but he looks like he could take some pain.

[01:02:00] Um, and so the 1st, I, I remember saying, I just want to work with us in the virtual world. And so I said, I will do whatever you want me to do. Um, it turns out I was in a staff meeting and that was when it was publicly disclosed what I was about to do. I still had no idea. So, um, I ran a check out for, you know, for the 4 and a half years that it was, uh, um, in existence, largely in existence and it was the death star of North America marketing.

It had all the eyeballs. It had all of the investment. It got me a number of promotions. a number of skill sets that I wouldn't have gotten had I had my previous job. So, so take the dirty job. Like you will, you will be rewarded. It won't be easy, but you will be rewarded. 

[01:02:42] Chris Khoeler: Great. All right, Chris, how about you?

That's, that's hard to follow. Um, the Death Star. Uh, interesting. Um, I think, I think there's some important lessons as part of that. Like don't shy away from the work. Um, and I think what you're hearing, which is always fascinating is careers are not linear and they're, you Like, they're all different, right?

We all got to where we [01:03:00] are from very different perspectives. And I, I, I describe myself as sort of an untraditional CMO, um, where I've had several pivots and I'll just talk about 2 pivots just here at box in the last 6 years. I've been here for 6 years. I spent 10 plus years getting a. I was acquired by Adobe and I was in many different roles from a product perspective to a selling role to customer success.

Um, and my last role was really running the go to market for, you talked about, you know, Photoshop and design the, the creative suite, uh, focused on the enterprise. And, uh. I think where at that 10 year mark, I had to figure out what was important to me. You know, what, what drives me and, you know, at that perspective, I was like, I want to go take the learnings of what we've done for the last 10 years and go apply to a smaller company.

And, um, but not really sure what that role would would be. And I got introduced to the leadership team here at box [01:04:00] and my 1st response. They're like, hey, why don't you come in and run customer success? And I was like, I'm running it like the photo, like I literally have a verb in my product set, you know, as part of Photoshop.

I'm like, why would I do that? You know, and they're like, listen, we'll figure out long term, you know, what makes sense. So initially that was no, but then for me, what was really important was the culture and the people. And so that was one of my core values of like, who am I working with every day? Do I get excited?

Do I really want to work with those individuals? And so the pivot was I hadn't actually, you know, been, uh, in a marketing role, but I've been dealing with marketers and I jumped into customer success. Here at box, which we serve it, it buyers, you know, mostly as part of it. So I think it was my transitional role where I was like, great, I need to figure out, I knew culture was important, but what was woke me up, like got me excited every day.

And so after about a year, our CMO who left, um, my predecessor, um, she left and I realized quickly, I [01:05:00] was like, wait, like I haven't done marketing. I haven't been a practitioner for marketing for almost 11, 12 years. But ultimately, this is what drives me. And I raised my hand, you know, to leadership team saying, Hey, I know I came here just over a year ago, but I want to CMO gig, like, here's the reason why let me walk you through that whole piece.

And that was almost five years ago. So I think that was, I think that I never would have known from a transitional perspective. Like I had always worked with marketers at Adobe for 10 plus years where I was helping them optimize and best practices and all that, but not. In the practitioner of like owning the full stack.

So that was that sort of, you know, got me to the point where that transitional role realized this is really what my passion and love is. So yeah, sometimes you got to take the very lateral moves. Uh, to sort of realize and build the base of like, what's next for you. 

[01:05:51] Kathy Hollenhorst: Mom, that's, you also raised your hand and said, I can do that.

I want that. 

[01:05:54] Chris Khoeler: Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:05:55] Kathy Hollenhorst: And it's your own destiny. Great. All right. Well, we thought in terms of wrapping up the [01:06:00] panel, we'd like to do the structure where we'll just kind of the word or the theme for 2024 from each of them. Uh, and then I'll have some closing remarks from Chris, 

all right. So, Terry, word or theme for 2024? 

[01:06:16] Terry Seitz: For me, it would be perspective. Personal, professional, society writ large. Perspective. 

[01:06:24] Chrissy Anderson: Very nice. Thank you. Chrissy. My word for 2024 is fearless, um, in part because that's a Taylor Swift album, one of my favorites, and I'm a massive Swifty, um, but to go a little deeper on that, I actually recently participated in the Hoffman process.

I don't know if anyone's familiar with the Hoffman Institute, um, but just found it really profound, really transformational. Um, I think it's. Fantastic thing to consider for anyone who's thinking about change or transformative change in their life or their career. Um, and it really just educated me on a lot of ways that, you know, fear was, um, kind of, you know, controlling my life and [01:07:00] my decisions, my behaviors, my beliefs.

Um, and so coming out of that process, fearless is my, my word for 2024. I'm really trying to shed those and, um, You know, just think deeply about where the limiting beliefs coming from. Are they actually true? Um, and question those it's, it's pretty profoundly changed my perspective. So, 

[01:07:19] Kathy Hollenhorst: thank you. Uh, Nii's word is sleepless because he has a young child.

All right. I actually thought that was going to go over a lot better than it did. Okay. Neat. What's your word for 2024? 

[01:07:28] Nii Addy: I would say my word is re evolution or revolution because we're in a time of a lot of change. I think technological change, business change, blah, blah, yes, I'm changing my sleep patterns as well, but just getting down, even in our breakout, we were talking a lot about making space for your why in your journey or even for your team's why.

And so. Uh, I think that is really centered about that theme of revolution. 

[01:07:55] Chris Khoeler: I think for me, it's a connection and I think, uh, making [01:08:00] connection with our teams, with our leaders, uh, with our customers, um, is critically important. 

[01:08:05] Kathy Hollenhorst: Right. Thank you. All right. Um, my word for the year is grateful. We're so grateful for those of you that joined us by zoom for all of you who are here joining us today. This is what the marketers that matter community is all about. We're so grateful to box for hosting us and putting on just a phenomenal event and round of applause.

So grateful for our panelists as well.