LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING brings you peer-level insights into how senior marketing leaders make high-stakes calls under real commercial pressure.
We speak to VPs of Marketing, CMOs, and other B2B marketing leaders who share what actually happens behind the scenes: defending marketing spend as growth pressure gives way to profitability, deciding where AI actually earns its place beyond the pilot, and holding a clear position in a market where every competitor sounds the same.
If you lead B2B marketing at a growing company and want perspectives you can put to work immediately, this show is for you.
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
Ep. 7 - The Courage to Be Different: Why You Need More Creativity in Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy - with Joerg Klueckmann
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Has data-driven marketing killed creativity?
In this episode of LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING, host Sammy Gebele sits down with Joerg Klueckmann, Marketing Executive, B2B Software, to talk about the importance of creative freedom in marketing, why companies must dare to be different, how to acquire budget for outside-the-box initiatives, and more.
You'll learn:
1. Why creativity must make a comeback if we're to avoid repetitiveness and mundanity in marketing
2. How to ensure ROI on your marketing investments while leaving room for experimenting
3. How Joerg allocates marketing budget to differentiating initiatives
4. Why Finastra built their own video streaming channel, Finastra TV
5. Which KPIs to measure to report proof of value for outside-the-box initiatives
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Get in touch with Joerg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joergklueckmann/
Joerg's book recommendation:
Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan and Kevin Maney | https://www.amazon.com/dp/0349411360
Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI by Reid Hoffman | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYG9V1RN
Joerg's podcast recommendation:
Capital Allocators with Ted Seides | https://www.capitalallocators.com/shows/capital-allocators/
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Sammy Gebele and SAWOO offer a B2B community-building service that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry and helps you build genuine, human-to-human relationships with your dream clients.
Get in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/
More episodes and insights: leadersinmarketing.io
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Conversation originally aired on October 24, 2023, when Joerg Klueckmann was Head of Marketing at Finastra. He has since been promoted to Head of Corporate Marketing and Communications at the company.
Welcome to Leaders in B2P Marketing. I'm Sammy, your host and founder of the community. In this show, I speak to TMOs and DPs of marketing about the best practices and hard-won insights. Beyond the podcast, our community is all about connecting B2B marketing leaders like you to learn and grow together. Tell us your biggest challenge and we'll personally introduce you to a peer who's lived good. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part, membership is free. Visit leadersinb2bmarketing.com to sign up. And now let's get started with the show. So Jörg, tell me about your company Finastra. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Well, Finastra is the uh largest vendor uh for software applications for the financial services industry. Um we serve around 8,000 clients uh across uh the globe, um the software applications, but also um we help them to connect them um with a huge ecosystem of fintechs uh that also innovate uh on our platform. Our applications are used in all the lines of businesses in the financial services organization, just such as lending or treasury, capital markets, universal banking, uh payments, etc. Um, so big organizations, 7,000 people, 2 billion in revenue, um uh owned by Vista Equity. Uh claim of the company is finance is open. And uh the word open is really, really important in that organization. I I learned that. Um so we believe in open innovation, meaning we um include clients but also uh third-party SfinTechs in in our roadmap discussions, uh open in the sense of ESG initiatives. Um, so we we have a huge initiative on financial education uh for school kids. I I hope one day this comes to Germany as well. Uh my kids could use it for sure. Uh, but also banking the unbanked or fighting uh financial bias. Uh and the third perspective of openness for us um is really our culture. Um it's a bring-ourself culture. Um, it's very inclusive, very non-political, not toxic at all. And I can really say, and and HR didn't pay me for that, I can really say it's the best corporate culture I have seen so far. Um, I must really say it's uh it's a good place to work at.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, happy to hear um for you and your team and everybody working there. Um and and what is your job at Finastra?
SPEAKER_00I'm heading marketing. Um so Finastra is organized um by business units. Uh and I just mentioned them, yeah, payments, lending, treasury, capital markets, and universal banking. Um, and across those business units runs uh the marketing organization where we look after um weapon social events, marketing ops, performance marketing, slash demand gen, etc. Um, to provide those services to our friends in the in the different business units. And I'm adding that function.
SPEAKER_01How many people do work with you and for you in your team?
SPEAKER_00Uh we work for each other. If they don't work for me, we all work with each other. My team is around 50 people um in different locations. Yeah, we have people in um uh Manila, uh, we have a big hub in in uh Romania and Bucharest, um, obviously London. I'm I'm I believe the only person in Germany uh that we have other people uh in the US. It's a really um uh a globally distributed team. Um my team has a digital headquarters, as I always call it, which is uh Teams and a few other tools we use like ClickHub for work management, etc. Um, but I always I I mean I'm often in London, but I always try to be at least once a year in Bucharest or once a year in Manila or with my colleagues in the US.
SPEAKER_01Very nice. Um, I like it a lot. So uh in in a sense, um is is it like um allowed to work from home then, or does it depend on where you are and if an office is close to you?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question, Sammy. Um, so I have a remote contract. I'll try to be in London once a month, um, as I said in the other hubs once a year. There are different policies in the different countries. Yeah, um I'll give you a concrete example. I was in Manila beginning of that year, and I learned that um pretty much everybody in my team had a three-hour one-way commute to the office. Three hours. One way, yeah. You don't have a life besides work and commuting, you don't. And it's not like a pleasant train ride experience with super fast Wi-Fi or 5G or something. Yeah, not that pleasant. So over there we said, you know what? Um for us, it's uh okay if you're in the office every second week. And when you come over, we do a huddle. Yeah, so they have lunch or dinner or drink coffee together and you know, build build the culture, um, stabilize the culture, uh, make people feel um included, um, uh make sure they understand the purpose. Yeah, so that's what we do. It's really like a socializing half a day, um, and the rest they work from home. And they are so thankful for that because they just want six hours a day, and you can do a lot at that time, right? You can look after your kids or um you know go for a run. And I mean, they just want their life back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I like it a lot. And it's also nice that you have the flexibility to change something um for your team if you see that something can be improved.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Sammy, absolutely, and you know, this is what um uh what fires me up, you know, because sometimes you just see little things that can make a big difference, yeah. And then doing it and see how um we can actually help people or enable them um is um it's a great thing. I really, really like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, awesome. So um let's go a little bit into the marketing reads. Um like one to two or even longer decades ago, marketing was an art, it was super creative. Um, what was the the famous TV show again? Um you know, uh from the the God. There was a famous uh, I think Netflix show about this marketing guy in New York. Um and in the 60s, 70s. I remember that. I've I forgot the name now. Yeah, me too. Yeah, but it's I still I still remember uh during my NBA, they showed this one part where he was like selling the um he called it the dream machine, yeah, where you could basically uh watch pictures and click click forward. And um that that then changed a little bit over time and and it became super data-driven. Everything was about data, you had to report the um MQS and the return on investment for everything you do, and every decision had to be like um basically pinned down to does it make money right away? Uh what is your take on this whole development and how do you see this whole um shift?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's um it's an interesting topic, Sammy. Yeah, when I started my career, I was the the creative guy. I came up with creative uh or crazy creatives, yeah, visuals, crazy, crazy ideas back in the days uh for the company I worked before. And I remember it, people didn't ask, didn't ask, hey, how much impact will that have on pipeline? Right? It was something that you know stuck out. People say, Oh wow, this is great. And that really, I mean, as you said, it changed over the years. It really changed, yeah, to a point where every single activity, every single asset is questioned. Um, like what's as you said, what's the ROI? Um, uh, what's uh what's what's the multiplier, right? From each euro spent, how much uh um how many euro will we have uh in pipeline or do we will we get from that? Um and obviously on the one side this is good because it's very performance driven and very data driven, not not just gut feeding, but but backed up by real life data. On the other side, what I'm seeing being a creative man, um at least I think I am, um it killed creativity. I I see that everywhere. Uh or I don't see creativity anywhere anymore, to say it a bit differently. If you look as maybe especially at the B2B software market, kind of everybody's doing the same. Everybody is relying on the same tactics, same channels, same creative. So we need a person and the creative, and we need this color, we need that color. It's it's kind of, I always call it a seam of saying this. And I believe the reason or one reason why that is the case is um because nobody has the power or energy anymore to fight something that is different. Because everything that is different can be questioned and can be shut down very easily. Yeah, so oh, it costs a lot of money, it looks very different. Um, you you don't know how much the ROI is gonna be. Let's stick to the remaining tactics. And I personally believe um it went from art to science, and we need to bring a little bit the art back to stick out, to break through that sea uh through through that noise of sameness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I mean uh it's understandable and it depends probably a little bit uh on the culture of the company, but you you don't take any risk as a head of marketing if you stick to the basics. Yeah, if you do uh same same, uh you execute it well, and you probably have your return on investment and everything is fine, um, you don't lose your job. But if you do something super creative and you like uh bet like 10, 20 percent or whatnot of the budget and it gets approved, then um in in many cultures uh and companies, you run the risk of losing your job if it doesn't work out here. Um and um do you see this also as a problem, or is it something different as a root cause for that?
SPEAKER_00Now yeah, I mean obviously if you take risk, your job might be at risk. It's true, right? If you run a huge campaign with massive invest and you put all your eggs in that basket and it fails because it's too brave, it's too far ahead, um, it's too edgy. That's probably not the right approach. I completely agree. On the other side, if you just rely on the things that others do, you won't see hockey stick growth. Yeah, you need to have the courage to be different. You need to have that courage, you need to have that courage to stick out, to make people remember you. Yeah, so that's that's the important thing. Um, and it's a little bit like with that bike in my background, right? If everybody has the same, with all respect, same like fake background, like you right now, right? This room with the plants and the those shelves, nobody remembers that person. With that bike, everybody's like, oh, it's the guy with the bike in the back. You know, it's it's it's it's like that. It sounds super simple, but I think you you you have to define what is your bike in the back. You have to be brave enough to do it because obviously you'll get questioned, oh, you doesn't you don't look like riding your bike, is it true? Yeah, blah blah blah. Um, so I'm I'm just trying to translate that to marketing or brand building strategies. Yeah, so I think um it's important to do it. And what I always advise is not to um put everything on that one crazy thing, but to make sure you have a certain part, a certain budget, a certain piece of resources, um, or a certain small team of people that get the freedom to do crazy, crazy stuff. Because the crazy stuff, if it works, will surprise people, and you will get the credit for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I like the approach a lot. And for the ones who are just listening to the podcast and not seeing it, uh Jörg has a really cool mountain bike in the background. Um, and yeah, that definitely stands out. And you are right. I I think my background is super boring. Um, and we will move uh beginning next year, and then I have my uh room and I will hang up my triathlon bike in the back. Very good, very good.
SPEAKER_00Very good. I like that.
SPEAKER_01So so um it's it's understandable what you say, Jörg, that um you shouldn't like bet the house on one crazy thing where you don't know the outcome. But how do you approach it? Like, um, do you do like in your head do you divide like your whole budget into I I can take five or ten percent and just test out things, and the other 90% are the the table stakes that work. How do you do it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of the way I do it, exactly what you described. Um, so as said I have several teams in my in my remit. Yeah, yeah, they are teams where you can't be that creative. So, for instance, we have performance marketing, yeah, um uh which is very obviously data driven, uh, very, as the name implies, performance-driven. So, this is where it's really about efficiency. Yeah, it's pure efficiency. On the other side, um, when you have, for instance, team uh teams like the web team, um, we have very intense discussion how can we stick out um on our digital entities when it comes to user experience, when it comes to um capabilities, what can we do to be better than the others and to be different than others? Um, that also interlinks then with social media, etc., and obviously the creative team. Um, and the way I do is I I allocate some budget for um um some some creative projects, for some crazy things, for some innovations. And what I always try to do is give them time to grow. Yeah, I mean, you also need to have the guts to say, well, it didn't work, let's kill it, let's try something else. But you also have to give it time, yeah. And I think this is the most important um, or one of the most important aspects these days. Very often, new ideas um are not given the time to really flourish. They're very often killed before they can pick up. Yeah, so you have to find that right balance. When is an idea really dead, or does it need half a year more, a year more? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And uh, do you have like a rough piece of the budget that you say um I want to allocate that to these um outlier ideas?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have that. Five five to ten percent.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Depends a bit if you have a new idea that needs to be built up, or if it needs some incremental invest because you have some some uh minor tweaks left or right, um, but uh in uh around that ballpark, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very good. Can you can you share a specific example of something creative you tried in uh recently um and and that that falls into this bucket?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can. Um so during COVID, um we um had a massive pivot uh to uh video content. So we had intense discussion, what is the content type we should bet on? And we said, well, we got great stories to tell. What's the best format to tell the story? It's it's probably videos. Um so we said, All right, we're gonna invest in video production, um, proper video production based on um uh the different applications we provide, the verticals that I described earlier in the goal. Um, so we said we'll do it. And and then actually we had kind of a discussion that that spun off. Where do we put those videos? Do we just drop them on the website or will we put them on um uh on YouTube or another streaming uh platform? And um we said actually, no, we want to own the digital user experience, we want to be able to place first-party cookies, we want to integrate um those videos um within all our digital entities we are having at Finastra. And that's why we said we need to build our own streaming channel. We want to build, we call it internally, uh, the Netflix for the financial services industry. And that's what we did. Um, so we built really, you can't buy that. It's not a package application. We build um a streaming channel uh for each of the lines of businesses. You have different series, coming back to the series you mentioned um uh from Netflix. Yeah, you have different series for payments, lending, treasury. In each series, you have 10 to 15 episodes. Uh, from each series, in the meantime, you have two or three seasons. Um, so we really build it out. Yeah, um, we promote the different um series, we promote the different episodes, we slice those down. We have a recommendation algorithm that says, well, people that like that video on um uh green lending, also like ESG and lending. Um recommend content. Yeah, like really like uh Netflix. Um we are about to launch a new release. Probably when you uh listen or watch that podcast, you'll um um it's it's live. Check it out. Uh just search for Finastra TV, you'll find it. Um, maybe where you have a user profile. So you you sign up to the channel, like on Netflix. Then you have a recommended review uh based on your preferences uh um series, you get a push notification if new content is being uploaded, or there's a new Stranger Things episode, so you like the first one, maybe you'd want to check that out. If you go back to Finastra.com, our corporate website, and we know okay, that person is interested in payments. You come to our website, our homepage will show you payments-relevant content, vice versa. You start from the website, the journey, we understand, okay, that's a payments person, they go to Finastra TV, we serve them payments content. So it's really it's integrated. Yeah. Um, so it's a huge, huge benefit, not just for us, uh, but also for the users. If we would have dropped that on on YouTube, people would have been distracted by cat content, uh, videos from competitors. Um uh it's it's it's not an ideal user experience. And that's what we built. Really big innovation in the industry.
SPEAKER_01And and what you just said, um I think it's it's the key to like I'm not a like marketing professional, um, but I think it's just logical if you think about the user and providing a lot of value, in the end, that that brings back value. Yeah, and it seems like you invest a lot of effort to provide uh content that that educates, um, that is uh can you give us a hands-on example? Because uh, in theory, I I think everybody understands what you're doing. Gut, but can you pick just one vertical, one example, one video, uh, just so that one understands who you're whom you're interviewing, who is the interviewee, what is the setting? Is it the studio?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's different settings. Yeah, so we one setting is we have a customer from us, let's say it's HSBC, um, and we interview them on um the challenges in lending, right? What do you see in syndicated lending these days? What are trends? Or um we have interviews with uh external thought leaders, what is the impact of artificial intelligence on financial services? And maybe we even tie it to EDSG. We say, well, what does it mean? Uh the financial bias, will financial bias get even worse because it's based on AI, or how can you fight that? Yeah, so that would be more a thought leadership um piece. So it's really a mix of like external thought leaders talking um about trends, they see tech trends, industry trends, or interviews um uh uh with customers. Um so that's how we set it up. One way to do that efficiently is we um, and actually I made some mistakes here in the beginning, happy to share. In the beginning, we said, okay, we um we record an event uh and we put those videos on Finastra TV. Didn't didn't work out because uh people don't want to watch a 45-minute um presentation where somebody walks on a stage, you're not in the room, you you know, you you uh you switch off, right? You can't, it's not engaging enough. So we did that, um, didn't work. Uh and then again, coming back to the point, you need to give it the right time to see if it works or not, the idea. So we said in the next try, each video piece we um we create needs to be optimized for digital consumption. Yeah, so it should not be longer than 15 minutes, 20 minutes max. We need to have different camera angles, not one uh camera person working, but three cameras. So we have some cuts. Um, if it's one person talking, we need to have animations that play with stats, with data, um, some important things that person is saying. So really trying to do it in an engaging way. Um, and the cool thing is really, as I said, you produce an uh a series and you can easily promote it for two quarters because you have the series for promotion, you have the different episodes, the episodes you can slice down. Um it's um it's a really nice way to uh gain thought leadership. And and what you said with the integration, with the added value, it's exactly that. Yeah, you don't just sign up for a single webinar and you have to sign up again with the next one. You sign up for a full channel where you will have 50 to 60 videos just for your area of interest. In total, we are over 400 videos and all, yeah. Um, and that's that's uh that's a huge value at just for your contact data. And we see that people are really happy to do it uh because they see all the content um uh will unlock.
SPEAKER_01So uh, what are the KPIs before you started that you said I want to have a look at those, and then I decide after, and how did you say how much time do you give yourself until you decide it's a go or no go?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we uh launched Finastra TV 1.0 um two and a half years ago, three years ago, something like that. Um the metrics we measure are uh video plays, um average duration um uh of a video, um, and then foam fills. Um, and in the beginning, I said um it didn't work super great, yeah, because the content was not ideal. Yeah, um when we did um release two, so season two, and also some technical uh enhancements on the platform, um, we saw this increasing. So we got average duration now between I believe 15 minutes, and each episode is around 16 to 17 minutes. So it's people watch it, they're really interested. We are under hundreds of thousands of Uh video plays. It's really amazing. It's also integrated with our lead scoring algorithm, meaning you can watch a video or two for free, then you sign up for the channel. Each video play will add to the lead scoring. If inside sales will follow up, right? If it reaches a certain threshold, they will have the context. Okay, that person has this interest area, so they can prepare, have the right person to follow up, that you can have a meaningful conversation, which is also appreciated. The nice thing is we build it on Drupal, which is our platform of choice. Now all the innovations we build on that platform, we can migrate over to our corporate website, which runs on the same platform, like user profile, or if we, for instance, we have Drift chatbot on our corporate website, we can easily deploy that on Finastra TV as well. So even if we say this is an innovation budget that um feeds it into Finastra TV, the capabilities we build will be deployed the next month on our all our corporate entities or digital entities.
SPEAKER_01What were the KPIs that you you said in the beginning um you want to hit so that you keep on going after the initial proof of value project?
SPEAKER_00It's plays, it's really video plays. We said uh we need to have a certain number of video plays that differs by um by the different um series, because in some series there are simply more people working in those areas like lending than in others. So it's number of video plays and then number of marketing qualified leads that comes out of it. Um but for me, the most important thing is really the place that we see if content is being consumed or not. And this also has an impact on our content um production schedule. So we again similar to Netflix, yeah. Um we look at the stats and we see, all right, there's a lot of interest in um in that topic. Um, let it be payments, big important topic these days. Uh and within payments, uh um the topic is um um AI. Yeah, what's the future of payments uh through AI? Um so we say, all right, there's interest that let's produce more. Yeah. Um or I mean we also have an overarching um uh series where we talk about ESG initiatives, for instance. Uh um we work with partners like Microsoft, uh uh that talk about uh their um uh initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their data centers. Um uh so we have that as well. PC Fast is useful because they promote their channels and we get more viewers.
SPEAKER_01I have one, and maybe you tried it, uh, but I just had one idea because we leveraged that and it works really nice. Um you could not only invite existing clients or thought leaders, you could also invite maybe you do it already, yeah. You can tell me, but you could also invite people that you don't know yet, but you really would like to get in touch with them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a good idea. Yeah, no, we haven't done that yet, but you're right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You give them a really big platform, they can talk about what they love, and it it works like a charm. Yeah. Um that's a good idea. Thanks, Sammy. Sure. Um, and you already mentioned like one lesson learned. Um, could you maybe um like put yourself into the shoes of someone who says, Well, I I like that idea, maybe I want to try that for our own um company. What should on the one hand someone be aware of when they want to do something like this? And what are the key one, two, three steps for proof of value protein?
SPEAKER_00So I think um it's super important to have an um executive sponsor. You have to have somebody in the C3 that says, I'm a fan of that, I'll back you up for a certain time, let it grow. Um, I'll protect that initiative. Because I said it's easy to shoot down. Yeah, if somebody would have been serious in the first six, seven months saying how many marketing qualified leads did you generate, or how many deals did we close because of that, I would have failed, right? It would have been dead. Um they changed with release two and and and and three. Yeah, um, so you need to give it time, and for that you need you need an exec uh executive sponsor. You need to make sure that you have people looking after the technical implementation realization. So uh um what what's the um the CMS you need, what's the streaming vendor you need, um uh what's how does the UX look like? Um and you need people that look after the um generation of content. Yeah, because you you wouldn't like Netflix is not promoting Netflix, Netflix is promoting Stranger Things or Breaking Bad. So the content is the most important piece. Yeah, if the content is rubbish and not relevant, you can have the best streaming channel on that globe, nobody will care. So really make sure you don't lose that focus on content. Um, and you just like the technical stuff. So working on content, obviously, you need product marketing, you need people with sub subject uh what the main expertise, subject matter expertise, um that build the right content that understand what the relevant topics are, the pain points are. Um, and you need to manage to bring those words together. Um, also, what's um important is to have a release schedule in mind. Um do you have one big bang and you say, oh, we have a new season of everything? Or do you have um a season launch um by different series? Um you need to have a certain cadence, yeah, that people understand, okay, it's not just a one-time thing. Actually, I can check back every month or every second month, but I'm gonna find something new that's relevant to uh to me.
SPEAKER_01And um, how like what was your pitch to your sponsor internally to get the the budget approval for that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what I did is um I created a little PowerPoint deck, just three slides. Uh that's also a nice thing at Finastra, it's not deaf by PowerPoint, everything's very focused and short. And the day before the meeting, you have to send in uh send in the pre-read so that people have read the slide, they understand what's going on. So you just have a conversation about the actual topic. What I did is I um made a few screenshots of the things that our competitors were doing and we were doing, and you really you couldn't tell the difference pretty much, right? Uh colors were a little bit different, rest was same, same. Um, so um I started with that pitch on we we need to be different, right? We need to have the courage, courage to be different. Um, we got good stories to tell. We need to tell them the proper way. Nobody reads white papers anymore. When I when I joined Finastra three years ago, I downloaded a white paper about one of the solutions. I tried, I hope nobody from Finastra is listening. I tried two months to read that white paper. I couldn't. I couldn't. My attention span didn't let me to finish that. It's still not, I still haven't read it. It it's impossible for me to read like 10, 15 pages. So I believe I'm not alone with that. Yeah. So I said we need to find better ways to tell stories and it's video content and not 45 minutes, 15 minutes. Short, digestible, um, uh engaging. I said different camera angles, illustrations, blah, blah, blah. So um, I said, if we want to be different, if we want to tell stories, it needs to be video. But if we invest the money in video, don't drop it on YouTube. We don't own the journey, people are going to be distracted. Um, we can't place cookies, we can't retarget big relevant content. It needs to be integrated in our digital ecosystem. This is why we need to build that channel. With that channel, we can increase the value of our website, we can increase the value of the channel because they're gonna work with each other um through cookies, through personalization. Um, we can build innovations, test it out, roll it over to the website. So I explained a little bit the benefits. Ultimately, you could even say Finasra TV is our innovation sandbox where we test things out. Once it works, we roll it out. Yeah. Um, so I explained the concept, um uh got the buy-in, and then we build it.
SPEAKER_01I I love it. Yeah, and it's like um, yeah, yeah, uh marketing should be able to pitch something, yeah. It's like selling an idea, and it's it's beautiful how you explained it. Like situation complication solution, uh, boom, boom, boom, three slides. Um, really, really nice. And uh to be honest, you gave me an idea for our company uh because we produce obviously also not it's not just a podcast, it's a lot of video content um that we have. And you can we cut it down right now and and also uh post it on on, for example, LinkedIn, but you don't own the channel. Yeah and what we already tinkered with uh is the idea to cut together certain topics where several thought leaders or industry experts like you talk on a specific topic, and you it's like um a learning journey where you could subscribe and say, Okay, I learned from people that hands-on execute, not someone in theory, a professor or someone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Sammy. And I mean, these days, um, the things you can do with data and personalization, if you own the journey, it will get better and better. I mean, it's again, it's like Netflix, right? We the better we understand a user, uh user's behavior, a user's interest, the better we can um provide content to that, we can create um uh appropriate content, and we make sure that person finds that content. Yeah, and this is if it sounds super simple, but so powerful. You see, all right, 60% of the people are interested in that topic. We create a new series or a new episode, and then you can make sure those 60% will see it in their recommended for you um uh uh playlist, and if they are um subscribed, they they get a push notification. And over time it gets better and better and more valuable um uh for prospects. You can't do that if it sits on on LinkedIn or on YouTube. Um yeah, so I think it's it's it's a good way to do that. Um, as said, we um uh uh we are owned by by Vista Equity, um uh biggest uh um investor in in tech. Um and I I shared that um concept with a lot of the CMOs there. Um there are a few companies that follow that approach because they say it's actually um quite good uh to to stick out um and they kind of replicate our model.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh shortly to explain a little bit in more detail, it's it's a private equity company that owns Finastra, but also owns many other companies in the financial uh uh service uh sector that you have. Uh software sector, sorry, software sector. And it's like a community. You explained it in the pre-interview. You you have like a community with other CMOs um of different sizes of companies, and you learn from one another.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's uh it's actually a really really cool concept. Um in the beginning, if you hear private equity, you always get scared, like, oh, you know, what does that mean? Uh but um it's actually a really cool uh platform. Um the companies uh that belong to the Vista portfolio um summarize around 770,000 people. Yeah, so it's it's a it's a massive construct uh or massive platform of smart and talented people. And what Vista is uh doing very smartly, they connect people. So it's not just that they say, oh, we we invest in Acria, we invest in in Finastra, and we let them do their stuff. They say, All right, um, um we take the marketing talent, we connect them in a go-to-market talent program. I was fortunate to be in such a program, and it was mind-blowing. Yeah, so you met colleagues from uh, in my case, it was like 20, 30 different companies from all over the world that were sharing their challenges, their solutions to that. You learned about their tech stack, uh, what would they have that you were missing? They learned from you. Uh, on top of that, Vista has a consulting practice that shares best practices. Um, and I was amazed by their perspectives, unbelievable. Yeah, so you get access to a best practice library and goes down to a creation of a campaign. It's um it's incredible. Uh they do that for decades now, and they bring all that together, they document everything, and you got access to it. I mean, obviously, their aim is to increase the value of the companies, enabling people, and then to sell it off at a certain point. Um, but the level of engagement and um connection is great. I get literally every second week um a ping from from Mr. Hey, there's another CMO at another company, they got a question on that topic. Could you help out? Last evening, 8 to uh 9:30, there was a global um uh diversity, equality, inclusion call, the i, where all companies came together. There was an external speaker that talked about um best practices from the portfolio, what to do, case studies. It's it's um, I I'm a big fan, I must say. I really, really like it.
SPEAKER_01I love it. You know why? I mean, uh, this is basically our mission uh from from Zavu to um to create communities for um executives uh so that they can learn from one another. And um in the end, and that is maybe a question. Have you thought about putting such a layer on top of Finastra TV to connect basically the people that have the same issues and some of them solve them, some of them have questions? Uh that could be a natural next step.
SPEAKER_00It could be, but don't forget, we said it's the Netflix for the financial services industry. So we want to be relevant for our customers, right? So best practices from the lines of businesses for the banks. But ultimately, but ultimately, I I think you're right. Um, there is a right to have such a channel for marketing, sales, marketing and sales alignment. Yeah, so um uh it would make make sense to have that where you interview different thought leaders, that's something like what Vista is doing, but beyond that, yeah, um, would be super interesting. I mean, coming back to Vista, it's um for me a very uh inspiring um uh construct, a very inspiring platform to meet those people, to um um get their yeah, get their take not just on efficiency and effectiveness, but also on ESG initiatives and um uh diversity. Uh it's um it's really good.
SPEAKER_01And uh just uh one example from my personal experience. So I'm I'm part of a community, it's called Entrepreneurs Organization. Um, it has like I think 17,000 members worldwide. Okay, and you have local chapters and you meet from time to time. And so last week I met um my local chapter in Munich. Um, and over dinner, like I saw it on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_00I saw it on LinkedIn, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and so we talked, and then this guy likes to meet to Sammy, so you're employing people in South Africa or freelancers, you should be aware that if you don't do it right, you have to pay a lot of money to um a special pension fund. And the the money is just gone, it doesn't help those people in South Africa, it's just gone. And I thought, wow, I mean, this was worth thousands of euros, and just because it's someone who like is my peer in a sense, it's uh has the same issues like you said about uh COs, you know, um you just by bringing those people together, you create inherent value. And I loved that a lot. So I mean, basically, it's what I love. That's probably why the company is doing what we're doing. And I like to see uh that it's also working for you. I mean, Vista is obviously doing something really right, and I wonder like most VCs or private equity companies probably are too small, they just have a handful of investments where you cannot do this play and bring many people together. But if it's possible, that creates a lot of value for free because then, and that's the difference between pushing something and creating a community, then people help each other, and you don't have to have the effort. You have to build a system that helps them connect to one another. So I I love what you talk about. Jörg, it was a pleasure. Thanks so much for being with us and sharing your insight. Thank you for listening to Leaders in B2B Marketing. To learn from and go with fellow B2B marketing leaders, join our community. Tell us your biggest challenge, and we personally introduce you to a peer who slipped tools. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part membership is free.com to sign up. See you soon.
