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Episode 116

Marketing's Dangerous Defaults with Matt Maynard

Most B2B marketers completely misunderstand what brand advertising is supposed to do. They conflate brand narrative with brand advertising, trying to make one execution do both jobs.

This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Matt Maynard, VP of Global Brand and Advertising at Asana. Matt shares how he went from journalism to marketing thought leadership without taking a single marketing class. He digs into the dangerous defaults B2B marketers fall into, from pipeline obsession to customer story overuse. Plus, learn why brand advertising and brand narrative are two completely different things that most companies wrongly conflate.

Topics Covered

• [02:00] Matt's journey from journalism to self-taught marketer

• [08:00] Why brand marketing is having an identity crisis in B2B

• [13:00] Translating marketing effectiveness theory into practice

• [18:00] Managing product-led and sales-led growth motions

• [22:00] Reframing the 95-5 rule as increasing your odds

• [25:00] What "responsible reach" means for brand marketing

• [31:00] Why customer stories don't belong in brand advertising

• [35:00] The difference between brand narrative and brand advertising

Resources:

2024 MarketingWeek Article

Matt Maynard’s LinkedIn

Asana

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Matt Maynard

VP Global Brand & Advertising at Asana

Transcript

Matt: I think that brand marketing has this reputation problem. And for too long we have just focused on the campaign, that big idea, the launch moment, all the flashy stuff, and not enough time on the actual objective itself.

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects. And Rob DeMars, the Chief Product architect of Misfits and machines.

And we're joined by a special guest today, Matt Maynard. Matt is the VP of Global Brand and advertising at Asana, a fast growing work management platform. He brings 15 years of experience across tech, travel, and healthcare, and he previously led global brand and creative at American Airlines. At Asana, Matt built the brand marketing function from the ground up, and today he oversees everything from brand strategy and campaigns to content performance, media and customer marketing.

He also serves on the advisory board for the MS and marketing program at the University of Texas at Austin, and speaks frequently on the intersection of brand strategy, AI, and evidence-based marketing. If you follow Matt on LinkedIn, you know he's known for challenging marketing norms from calling out the dangerous defaults we all fall into to making a strong case for the application of effectiveness research, not just theory. So he's a marketer after our own heart. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Angela: Happy to have you.

Rob: As a GTD nerd, I'm so excited that we've got Asana in the house. Matt, how in the world did you go from entertainment reporting 11 years ago into marketing thought leadership for brands like American Airlines and Asana? That just seems like quite the pivot.

Matt: It is. And honestly, if you were to tell me this is what I'd be doing today, I don't know that I would really agree or think that was actually true. It's funny 'cause if I would take you back to the beginning, which I think is the most interesting piece, I always thought as a young kid that I was gonna be a TV news reporter.

So I would build news sets in my bedroom out of cardboard boxes I would make, and I would edit mock newscasts. I forced every single person, quite frankly, my family and all of my friends to be in them. They absolutely hated it. And I have the tapes to prove it. And in college I studied journalism and right before graduation, I feel like I had the career crisis that most people have way earlier in life.

I really realized that being a reporter meant moving to a tiny market to cover things like snowstorms and city council meetings, all great, but it came down to being in a place that I'd never been far from everything that I had ever known, and I was a Midwest kid at heart and I knew that's just not what I wanted at that point in time.

So I had to ask myself, what do I really want to do? And what's my story? And what I really came to is that I have always loved finding stories, and I've always loved finding creative ways to tell them. And that's what ultimately led me to marketing. But here's the twist. I had never taken a single marketing class in my entire life, not one.

So I started my career with this huge dose of imposter syndrome. People who knew all about marketing, who studied marketing. And so to counter that, I really became a student of the field. So I was reading everything I could find, from books to case studies to research papers. That's why I absolutely love your podcast with the Nerd Alert.

And that's when I found people like Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk. And of course, Mark Ritson, people who really treat marketing as this science and not just this art. And I think that was different for me and this gave me the foundation. It really helped me to learn how brands actually grow, what actually drives effectiveness. And why really so much of marketing advice out there is, quite frankly, trash. And so for the last 15 years, I've really tried to bring that mindset into every role across B2C and my roles in B2B and the part that I love most about marketing science is that it really makes things less mysterious, right?

It gives you something solid to stand on, because every job that I've ever had, and I'm sure many of the listeners out there can relate to this, I swear every job, there is always somebody who says, "You know what? Our industry, it's just, it's different." And I think that's just such a big myth. Of course, there are nuances, but the principles of marketing, things like mental and physical availability or these distinctive brand assets or reaching the full category, those things hold true in almost every single category. I would argue in every category. So I don't feel like I'm just starting from scratch wherever I am or in whatever job. And that's been the biggest gift I think of being self-taught, really that clarity that you can focus on what actually works.

Rob: Wow. Welcome home, Matt.

Elena: Yeah. I know this interview's amazing. No, that's, I resonate with that background a lot, Matt. And when we spoke prior to this podcast, you mentioned, you didn't say it now, but you said you didn't wanna end up in Duluth, Minnesota. I believe, as a...

Matt: I won't admit to that. I don't wanna admit to that.

Elena: We're all Minnesotans, just so you know. So we won't take that personally.

Matt: I don't miss the snow. That is the one thing I will say. Being from Ohio, I don't miss the snow.

Elena: Fair enough. Well, we're really excited to have you here today. We have a lot of fun topics to dive into, but first I wanna kick us off as I always do with some research or an article. And I chose something, I think I featured it before, but I love it so much and it's so perfect for our conversation that I had to use it. This is an article from Mark Ritson for Marketing Week, and it's titled, "Is This Applicable to B2B Marketing? Please Stop Asking." He addresses a question that many marketers still wrestle with.

Do the principles of brand building and marketing effectiveness apply to B2B the same way they do in B2C? And Ritson points out that nearly all the core concepts supported by marketing research, things like salience, emotional messaging, mental availability, distinctive assets, they're just as relevant in B2B as they are in B2C.

In fact, through the work of the B2B Institute, in partnership with researchers like Peter Field, Les Binet and the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, we now have strong data showing that these principles not only apply in B2B, but in some cases they may be even more impactful. So while B2B marketers may face unique buying processes or complex sales cycles, the fundamentals remain the same.

And I think that's a perfect lead in for our guest. Matt, thanks again for joining us and selfishly, I know you mentioned this earlier, but I do wanna start with your path into marketing because you've described yourself as self-taught, which I definitely relate to myself. So what was that journey like and how do you think it's really influenced the way that you approach your work today?

Matt: I think it's similar to what I was talking about. I think at the end of the day, being self-taught helped me to embrace that imposter syndrome and really to dig into what I didn't know and be comfortable with the actual facts so that I could apply them. And I think becoming self-taught has given me that confidence to dig into the information and apply it where it actually is and what the realities are. And that's really what I've spent the last 15 years doing, is applying it in the actual work and knowing what is real versus what is fiction.

Elena: Do you remember, I'm just curious, like the exact moment you came across marketing effectiveness? I just, I have a moment in my mind where, like at our agency, we read "The Long and the Short of It." Do you have a moment you remember?

Matt: Somebody talked about "How Brands Grow" and I remember thinking, what in the world is that? That's a brand marketing book. I should get that. And I got it, and it was not a brand marketing book. It's a book about brand and about marketing. And I remember thinking, wow, everything I've ever known and everything I've ever been taught is completely wrong. And I remember being in my job and thinking, wow, I need to spend a bunch of time, and actually it's coming back to me.

I was on a trip in Costa Rica and that is when I learned about it. I remember googling it and reading all about it, ordering it on Amazon, picking it up when I got home, and it completely changed how I thought about marketing. I kept thinking, how was I doing this for so long? Even though I hadn't been doing it for very long, but how have I been doing this and not knowing any of these facts and, quite frankly, working with people who didn't know these things either.

Elena: That's funny. I bet a lot of people have that story of when they first read "How Brands Grow" and had like an identity crisis as a marketer. Well, fast forward to today, and you're in a unique role at Asana. You lead not just brand, but performance, content, things like customer marketing and this kind of brand and advertising centric role is not something we see as often in B2B SaaS. So could you tell us about how that came to be and why you think it works so well for Asana?

Matt: I think probably like many of your listeners, I've worked in a bunch of different marketing teams and they structure them all completely differently, right? Every organization has different philosophies around ways to structure, but here's what I love about the setup that we have. I think it brings together really all of the core levers of what brand marketing is responsible for and does. So not just the strategy, not just that storytelling, but also the distribution and the conversion side as well. And maybe even if I zoom out a second, I really think brand marketing as a discipline is having a bit of an identity crisis.

And this is brand marketing within an organization, right? I think the word brand is incredibly loaded. I could go to 10 people right now, 10 of your listeners and I could say, what does brand marketing do? And I guarantee I would get 10 completely different answers. But I think most of them would mention something about like, oh, they, you know, we're responsible for making things look good. And I think that's part of the problem. We've really become relegated to being this logo police instead of people responsible for driving future growth. In my view, within an organization, brand marketing has two core jobs. The first is, we are trying to design and to manage the brand system.

So that's everything like the narrative, the architecture, the distinctive brand assets, everything that makes that brand recognizable. And of course, yes, that's the visual identity, the verbal identity, but it also includes those strategic foundational components that I talked about that ultimately set this up for success.

And then the second one, and I think this is the one that gets left out so often, is that we're trying to build mindshare among future buyers, right? So that means that we are trying to link our brand to the right buying situations. What Byron and Jenny call category entry points. And we're trying to reinforce those associations through everything from advertising to the comms that we're doing, events all the way to things like influencer programs.

And I think you need both of these things because otherwise you really end up with this brand that is beautiful, but forgettable or on the other side of the coin, you end up with something that's effective but inconsistent. And I think that's why the model that we have at Asana works so well because when you have all these functions together, we're really able to connect the dots, not just in telling that story, but making sure that it reaches people, that it sticks with them and it's really driving the action.

Elena: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to have both. And I think more B2B brands could probably benefit from that. This is kind of more of a practical question, but I'm curious about what your structure looks like when you're leading all this. How do you structure your team to manage these different goals?

Matt: In my experience, I think the best brand teams are built on two things, two things that we all know that really make us really great marketers.

I think the first is creativity, and the second is the science. And I think you need both of those things. I think you need creative instincts and environments that really help the creative in all of us to thrive and tell a really great story. But you also need the discipline to measure what's working and having that curiosity to keep testing and evolving it.

So the way that we have structured things is really about owning the two main jobs of marketing. First, we're building that brand system, the assets, the architecture, the guidelines, the strategy, right? And then on the second side, we have structured it so that we have teams, we have folks who are focused on building the mindshare with future buyers through things like campaigns, through, like I said, the content through our customer stories, through paid media and all those things.

And we try to approach both of these with a data-driven mindset. We experiment a lot. We measure what's sticking. We always try to, at the end of the day, close the gap between what we make and what actually is working. So even though the scope may seem broad and when we think about the team, it all is connected.

And having these functions together helps us really to stay focused on the end goal, which is reaching more people, building stronger memory, and making sure that at the end of the day the brand is really growing.

Elena: When we met Matt, one thing that really stuck with me was your passion for not just marketing effectiveness theory, and you're talking about some of it with your team right now, but also the application. You said sometimes we become our own kind of Achilles heel when we advocate for marketing effectiveness best practices internally. So how have you taken that theory and then practically applied it at Asana?

Matt: I'd say slowly and surely, not just at Asana, but throughout my career. So it's funny, I was listening to an interview recently with Byron Sharp and he used this analogy that I really loved, and it has stuck with me to this day. He said, marketers are like architects. You need creativity to really build something great, like what we talked about. But you also have to understand the laws of physics because if you don't, you're gonna build this building that isn't gonna be able to stand up.

And I think that's exactly what marketing effectiveness is. It's the laws of physics or the science for brand growth. But I would take this one step further, I think, because even if you understand the science, you still have to navigate the regulations and the politics. If I stick with this metaphor like the permits, you have to have buy-in because otherwise, at the end of the day, nothing is going to get built or you're gonna, quite frankly end up building it completely alone. And I think that's the part that I don't think we talk about enough. It's not just about knowing the theory, it's about translating that theory into teams, into real companies, into the day-to-day dynamics that actually come with that. Because even when I know the law of double jeopardy, that loyalty is really a function of your brand size. Or if distinctiveness really matters when we're talking to future customers more than differentiation or that growth comes from light buyers and growing mental availability.

It can be really tough when your organization and your colleagues haven't made that shift yet, and they don't know that. And you can't just say to someone like, "Hey, here's the red book, or here's the blue book. Here's 'How Brands Grow.' You need to change everything that you're gonna do" because as much as we want to, and I've wanted to, you just can't do that. So what I found for me that typically works best is really treating these principles as a guide, not a checklist. And it's really like brand building. It's a long game, so you're not gonna replace the funnel overnight as much as I think some folks would love us to with mental and physical availability.

You're not going to change all of the ways that we've worked and the things that people bring from their legacy experience. You have to start with these small evidence-based changes. So if I were to give you an example on something that comes top of mind to me, we've tried to bring this idea of mental availability to life by really building on something that the company already understands, which is the idea of brand consideration, right?

So we clarified that this consideration and the way that we measured it and talked about it historically, it's not just one consideration set. Would you consider this brand? It really depends on what we talked about, those buying situations. So now we measure brand consideration by looking at how many future buyers associate us with a relevant buying situation.

And we even look at brand consideration depth so we can track the depth of the associations over time. And I think it's examples like that where it's about measurable progress. But it isn't about starting from scratch. The theories only matter if we can bring them into the work that we're doing and our colleagues understand it. Can we bring them along with us?

Elena: I love your point of view on that. I'd like to listen to that 50 times in a row because, no, it's amazing. 'Cause I think that we hear that a lot, like probably marketers getting exasperated. "I showed 'The Long and the Short' slide to the board, and they won't approve my budget." It's lazy thinking. It's not just understanding it, but where are you at? And getting a little bit done now too. It's like eating the elephant one bite at a time. That's better than not doing anything at all.

Matt: Exactly.

Elena: One of the challenges I think that makes your job interesting and probably tough at the same time, is managing both product led and sales led growth motions. So what's it like navigating both of those and how does your team support each side?

Matt: I would say sure, it's a challenge, but at the same time, I would say it's a fun challenge. And as a brand marketer and a brand builder at heart, I tend to focus less on what makes the motions different, quite frankly, and more on what they really have in common.

Because, whether someone is signing up for our product through the product, or whether they're engaging with our sales team, I think the role of brand marketing and brand building ultimately stays the same. We are trying to reach future buyers before they're ready to buy, and we're trying to build some kind of memory with them that makes our brand easy to think of when that moment actually comes and it comes to them and their brain.

There's a great phrase that I love that I think I heard from John Lombardo and Peter Weinberg, and they say it's not lead generation. They talk about this idea of memory generation, right? It's the most effective form of lead generation because it happens long before any of the competition ever even enters the picture.

And I think you can make your product easy to find, easy to buy, easy to try all the things that we call physical availability. But if no one thinks of you in the first place, none of those things will even matter. Because at the end of the day, you can't just capture demand if no one is, quite frankly, thinking of you. And if you're not remembered when that brand actually shows up at all.

Angela: I love that. It's not lead gen, it's memory generation. I love that too.

Rob: Yeah.

Angela: Whether we've got an incoming prospect customer that has known of us for years, or we just happen to catch them at the right time, the right moment with potentially a product demo, something like that, they're all trickling into the pipeline.

And so just digging into it a bit more, especially given how sophisticated I would assume Asana is, and tracking pipeline growth, you've called out pipeline obsession as a risky default in B2B. So then how do you think about carving space for both long-term brand building within a performance driven culture like SaaS?

Matt: I think even just to be clear, I don't think this idea of pipeline obsession is really a bad thing. In fact, I think most brand marketers probably could benefit from being a lot more pipeline obsessed. When I am talking about the dangerous defaults, I think, I'm not criticizing performance culture in itself. I'm thinking about the habits and the assumptions that really get baked into how we think and how we operate often without us even recognizing it. So things like overtargeting, or maybe we talked about differentiation being the most important lever in everything, or expecting a brand ad to deliver direct response results immediately.

I think those are the results that usually come from this pressure to prove ROI and to do it fast, and I get it. When we're only focused on what's easy to measure, I think we miss the bigger opportunity that's in front of us. Because what we talked about, brand building and brand marketing isn't about immediate action. It's about reaching those future buyers. It's about building the kind of memory that really gets you thought of when that buying moment actually shows up. It's this long-term play. When we do it well and we continuously and consistently do it, it actually makes the short-term work even better too.

And we see that because when people already know your brand, they're more likely to click on an ad, they're more likely to convert, they're more likely to move faster through the funnel, and in some cases the brand ads do drive immediate conversion as well. So it's not that I'm anti-pipeline, it's that I just think we need to widen the aperture and really widen our timeline, because brand building isn't the opposite of performance, no matter how we continue to frame that. I know that is a great debate tactic, but it's not the opposite. It's really what makes performance even more effective.

Angela: So, Matt, for someone that's still pretty young in their marketing effectiveness journey, whether it was the podcast here that introduced it to them, they picked up "How Brands Grow" and they're getting energy around it. They wanna take it to their executive team.

Sometimes it's a hard sell. Elena, to your point, just putting a chart in front of someone is probably not the best approach. I would love to hear your advice for them on how to go about eating that elephant one bite at a time and trying to change the belief system of the organization.

Matt: I don't know that there's a perfect silver bullet that I've discovered. 'Cause quite frankly, if there was, I'm sure I would be doing it every time and writing the book on it. I think it comes, like I talked about from just slow and steady movement. It comes from bringing people along. It comes from implementing some of those things slowly but surely in your work. And it comes, quite frankly, from building trust. I think that's a key component here, is that if we want the trust of the long term, we have to earn it by demonstrating results in the short term. And that comes from doing the right things, making small improvements, attaching to the concepts and the ideas that people already know and slowly building it in. 'Cause it's funny, I read the books, I listen to the podcast. I love consuming all of this. But I have to think about what is the right way to bring this in to the way that I work and the way that we work and the organizational structure. It is not simple, but I think it comes from those everyday progress wins. And like what I talked about, the long journey of doing this is about small incremental wins and implementations, not about just winning it overnight.

Angela: I think that's great advice. Something you mentioned earlier about Byron Sharp saying that marketing is a bit like architecture. Creativity is needed, but you also need to understand the laws of physics. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges in marketing is, what if your laws of physics are flawed? You think you're operating off the laws of physics, you're looking at last touch data that's guiding you in the wrong direction, and so it's hard to wrap your head around something like the 95-5 rule. You've reinterpreted 95-5, I think I've seen as increasing our odds, and I love that framing. How do you leverage that idea to build the case for brand marketing investment in the organization?

Matt: I love this 95-5 as well. It's such a great heuristic, and all of your listeners probably know this, but John Dawes, he's awesome. He's the one who brought this and put it really in the spotlight, and it says that 5% of category buyers are in market at any given time, right? So I think the interesting part here is the 95%, the 95% of people aren't looking right now. So no matter how great your ad is or how perfect your product might be, they're not in market. And when you actually think about it, you take two seconds to actually think, and this is the part that always was fascinating. I never thought about this. That makes total sense. Sometimes they don't have budget. Sometimes they're locked into a contract with another vendor. Sometimes they aren't feeling the pain or don't have the need of what your category solves. So I think the question becomes for us, what can marketing do for that 95% of people? And I think that's where brand marketing comes in, right? Our job is to increase the odds so that when those buyers are actually entering a buying situation, our brand is already in their head. It's already on their list. Now, the reason I like this odds piece, and I actually think it was an idea that came from Jenny Romaniuk, is that it's just, it's not a guarantee, right? Mental availability doesn't mean you automatically win the deal, but it does improve your chances of being considered. And that's where I think the real leverage is. I've seen the study, and I'm sure you all have seen this too. I think it's old now, but it was from Google and Bain and it talked about how most B2B buyers choose from a short list that they already had in mind before they ever even entered the buying process and before any of it even began.

And that tells us that the battle is won or maybe even lost unfortunately, before your sales team ever even gets the RFP. So when I'm talking about increasing the odds, that's what I mean. We're trying to earn a spot in that mental shortlist before the shopping, before somebody even starts thinking about buying even starts. And when we explain it in that way, it really helps brand marketing to have a seat at the table. I think because we're not just making things look good, which is the perception of what brand marketers do. We're really helping to drive future demand before anyone is even tracking it.

Angela: It really helps us understand why something like reach is so important. You're totally right, like tying these principles together really help piece the story together and brings to mind another phrase that has really stuck with me, your use of "responsible reach," quote unquote, which full disclosure we're probably gonna have to borrow from you. For our listeners, how do you define and use responsible reach when championing brand marketing at Asana?

Matt: I like to frame the goal, especially of brand media, brand advertising as responsible reach like you talked about, because I think part of this comes to what we talked about earlier as well, which is the job of brand marketing is to build that unduplicated reach among future buyers and to grow mental availability, thinking of our brand over time, but as we talked about, I think that brand marketing has this reputation problem. And for too long we have just focused on the campaign, that big idea, the launch moment, all the flashy stuff, and not enough time on the actual objective itself. And I wanna be clear, I really believe creative is one of the most important levers that we have.

There is so much evidence out there that shows, I think one of the things talks about how it drives nearly half, if not more than half of advertising effectiveness. But I think we have to remember that creative is a means to an end. And it is how we deliver the strategy. It's not the strategy itself, because if we're really honest, what happens within organizations is brand typically gets a huge budget.

In some cases we have assets that really have a bigger price tag than others in marketing, and that's not a bad thing. In fact, I'm like, please give me more. But it means also that we have the responsibility in that. We have to be disciplined. We have to define what success looks like. We have to forecast the impact. We have to measure the process. We have to treat every single dollar, quite frankly, like we are accountable for delivering on some type of return for that. And I think that's what performance teams really do so well. They are so focused on the outcome, not just the way to get there.

They report on it, they optimize. They really earn credibility within organizations by showing results. So for me, when I'm talking about responsible reach with my team, it's really about bringing that same rigor and that same mindset to brand. It's not just about trying to be performance marketing or to beat them.

It's about proving that long-term investments can really be just as rigorous as short-term ones. They can be strategic, they can be measurable, and it's also a reminder when I'm saying responsible reach to the business, but also to me, to my team, to ourselves, that long-term investments still have to earn that trust in the short term because like I talked about earlier, we have to prove the value right now if we really want the freedom and the trust that we're gonna be able to build it over the long-term as well.

Rob: You've been talking a lot about brand and the importance of weighing that brand against responsible reach and all that good stuff. But when it comes to B2B specifically, as Doug Pratt once said something about it's the "make it pretty department" oftentimes when it comes to B2B, why do you think that perception exists in the land of B2B, that, you know, brand is just, yeah, let's go relegate it to the design department?

Matt: That is true. And to be honest, it drives me nuts. One of my favorite movies is "Erin Brockovich," and there's a part in there where Julia Roberts is that just pisses me off. That's how I feel about this. You know, I think it all stems because of this brand marketing identity crisis. Right. Somewhere along the way we became so obsessed with the creative part of the job that we all seem to leave, or many of us seem to leave the strategic part behind. And this isn't, the creative part isn't unique, I don't think to brand. These are marketers in general. Many marketers have that balance of creative and of strategy. For some reason this happened more than ever within brand. As part of an article I was writing recently, I started looking through a bunch of brand marketing job descriptions for leadership roles from really well-known massive companies, smaller companies, B2B, B2C, and almost none of those job descriptions mentioned these ideas of building memory, of reaching future buyers, of anything tied to the concept, not the word, but the concept of mental availability. And it's kind of ironic if you think about it, right? The team brand marketing that is so obsessed and quite frankly charged with driving consistency, we can't even agree on what we actually do, and I think there are real consequences if you think about this strategically, this means that we're gonna be left out of growth conversations, right? Operationally, I think our work really gets relegated to the less important things, or we get siloed and fragmented by things being split apart because they don't see the commonality in them or even professionally.

And I think this is the one that scares me the most, which is we're really seen as a supportive function, not as a strategic one, but I do think that there is good news and there is a way out of this. We can absolutely turn the tables here, but it starts with redefining that role both internally and externally.

Brand marketing like we talked about, it's not just about making things look good, it is about growing mental availability over time. It's about reaching future buyers before they ever enter the market. And if we want to do that well, we have to build deeper expertise in all of the things that we're talking about today.

We have to be students of what the research says, of what the realities are, and we need to align our creative processes and the actual tactics and the process of getting there to actually support that. Oh, and one more thing. I would kick myself if I didn't say this, I think even with myself, and I'm so guilty of this, we have to stop with the buzzwords that no one understands. So 100% brand marketing is responsible for brand equity. I 100% agree with that, but we have to be honest with ourselves. No one else in marketing, in the organization knows what in the world that even means.

Rob: Absolutely. Gosh we definitely can get our undies in a bunch in trying to spill meaning and interpret all these buzzwords in ways that just justify our point of view in the moment. Another dangerous default that you've talked about in the past is that everybody should put their customer in ads. I definitely can appreciate why people can feel that way, but at the same time, it shouldn't necessarily be a default. Talk more about that.

Matt: It seems so controversial, and who knew when I wrote this? I heard from a bunch of people and they're like, wait, what? But I wanna be clear before I even explain this, and this is what I usually start with, I believe that customer stories, this idea of social proof, it is an incredibly important tool in marketing across the board.

I absolutely believe in the value of those things. I own customer marketing. I just don't believe that those things belong in brand advertising. And I think this is, like you said, this is one of those dangerous defaults that we talked about earlier. It's straight out of the B2B playbook, right? You run a brand ad, it has a headline. It says something like, "Our customer achieved 35% more efficiency using our brand." It just, it feels so specific, it feels credible. We always talk about things like, oh, it brings trust, but it's really solving the wrong problem, if you think about it, because brand advertising, it's meant to reach our future buyers, people who are not in market yet, they're not comparison shopping, they're not forming their short list, they're not looking for trust and credibility. They're not even thinking about you or your category. And in that context, when you actually understand that what they see and what they remember from that ad is what matters most. Not what they're reading and what they're analyzing. 'Cause they're not. It changes our way of thinking about this. So if your ad is focused on your customer's name, on their story. You ultimately introduce an enormous amount of risk about building memory for someone else's brand and not your own.

And I don't know about you, but I don't have enough money to build two brands. I have just enough money to build my own. This is the same thing that I think that is happening a lot even now in B2B. I'm seeing it everywhere where people are using celebrities. There's a real risk in you doing that, that people remember that celebrity, but they really forget who that celebrity's endorsing or what that celebrity's even talking about. And in both cases, like I said, you're spending money to build equity for somebody else's brand. And I've also thought about this again, 'cause this is a really important practice. I do think that there's probably a safer way to do this.

You can do something like what we call a logo garden, which is you have a bunch of different logos. You're making no one the exact star of the show. But even in that instance, the real question I think we need to ask ourselves is are we reinforcing memory for our brand or are we just creating attention around someone or other people or other brands? So I'm not saying don't ever use customer stories. In fact, I'm saying the opposite of that. I just think you have to use them when they work best when a buyer is in market. When they're actively comparing, when they're looking for credibility, they're looking for proof. They're looking to see if you have real customers, not when they are not even shopping.

Rob: I love this. We are challenging a lot of assumptions in this podcast, all in one podcast, which is what we're all about. What's your most contrarian marketing opinion? What gives you the most pushback when you post out there in the world of marketing?

Matt: I think that's a tough one. I don't know that there's one, I also don't know that they're my opinions. It's things that I've embraced and tried to figure out. I'd probably have a recency bias 'cause I was thinking about this one most recently. This is what's top of mind. I think it's about this idea of brand advertising.

My opinion here is that I think that most marketers, I would even argue many, most brand marketers, completely misunderstand what brand advertising is actually supposed to do. So we've all watched this. Have you worked with any company or like you all within an agency, you've worked and seen this in some regard?

If we were driving down the freeway right now, or if we were watching TV together, I guarantee you that half of the brands, if not more, would not be doing and solving the right problem. And here's what I mean. I think in most companies you have two things that ultimately get confused.

You have this idea of a brand narrative, and you have this idea of brand advertising. On the left hand side of the brand narrative. That is your strategic elevator pitch. This explains what your brand does. This explains why your brand matters. This is how you position yourself. And this is often where differentiation, rightfully comes in discussions of all of that. On the other side of the coin, you have brand advertising, right? And it has a completely different job. It is about, like we talked about, building memory with future buyers by connecting your brand to those buying situations, those buying moments that you want to be remembered for. This is where, and I think a lot of the discussion about distinctiveness matters, not differentiation.

We're not differentiating here. We're trying to be distinctive so we can be remembered. But what I found throughout my entire career, B2B, B2C, is that most companies conflate these two things and they use their brand narrative as their brand advertising. I promise you, if I had a dollar for every time I saw this, I would not be on this podcast right now. I'd be sitting on a yacht drinking a wonderful cocktail because I would have so much money. And I think what happens, I think what happens is that brand marketers, this just becomes a catch 22. You either create a brand ad that is distinctive and designed for brand memory. Somebody comes up to you and says, "You know what, this just, this doesn't tell our story.

I think we're missing the boat here. This doesn't tell our unique value and why we're different." So you find yourself stuck in two different places. You're either disappointing internal stakeholders or you're running an ad that just simply is not going to work. But again, I'm a positive, glass half full person. But I think there's a way out of this. Both of these things are important. They just matter at different stages. Brand advertising is for future buyers. It's about building that memory. It's about getting you a spot on that short list in the consideration set later. When that time comes that's when the brand narrative really takes over.

That's when you can tell your story. That's where you can talk about how you're differentiated or relatively differentiated, and you can show how different you are. I think we just have to stop trying to do both of these things in one execution. And I promise you, now that you've heard this, you will notice this everywhere you go. I see it in every campaign. I'm like brand narrative. They're trying to make it work.

Rob: Speaking of seeing it everywhere you go. Let's talk about AI for a second. I am a big nerd. I love GTD, I love Asana. I also love AI. So when I saw the headline in your ads "AI is no longer just a tool, it's a teammate." How is that translated in your marketing as well? Are you starting to recognize value there in your overall campaign building workflow, like how's it intersecting in your world?

Matt: It's a fantastic question and I would even break down, even before I talk about Asana, I think we're still in the early phases of understanding AI and seeing what it's going to do for us. I loved what you've all talked about, even to the things of like shoot lists, right? Like we're able to use it for so many different things. But from what I've seen so far, I think one of the biggest opportunities specifically for brand marketing teams or for brand builders or anyone in marketing is it's not about just that speed.

I think it's about how is AI able to help you to think smarter. So I use AI all the time individually as a thought partner in everything. I'll ask it to take the perspective of Byron or Jenny and to push back on a campaign brief or some kind of strategy that I have. It really helps me to surface the gaps in my thinking. It challenges me on those assumptions, and it acts as a way for me to stress test my strategy in a way that I find is not just fast, but it's really rigorous and in some cases it's kind of fun. I know many of you are probably familiar with Mark Ritson. I love to go in just for fun. I love to go in and ask it to be Mark Ritson and challenge my ideas. And I can promise you half of the answers are pretty entertaining.

Rob: How many curse words are in the reply?

Matt: Too many. Too many. No, I'm just kidding. It's actually pretty good at toning this down. But here's what excites me the most. At the same time, not just using AI to replace our thinking, but ultimately as well to improve it. And I think that's the part that I really love. And then you talked about Asana on the execution side and actually bringing these ideas to life. We have been integrating AI into all of our workflows all inside of Asana.

So we're Asana. We use Asana for everything that we do as do many of our customers, some of the biggest. And this is the platform that we use to manage all of our work. So one example that we've implemented recently that I absolutely love is, we'll do a customer interview or maybe something like what we're doing right now. AI can summarize all of those key points within Asana. It can recommend story angles. And it can draft a final version of the content that you're wanting to produce, right in the task itself. And then of course, we believe in human in the loop. A human can step in, they can shape it, they can edit it, they can review it, and then they can ultimately have the final seal of approval on that.

And then from there, what's cool is then the workflow will take back over and then it will route it straight through translation and AI will do all of that. And I think that's just one example, but I think it really reflects something bigger that, Asana for us and for many customers is now that place where humans and AI, we're coordinating the work together. All of our workflows, all of the teams, all in one platform, in one place.

Rob: I'm drooling over here.

Elena: Yeah, that's And even more exciting things to come.

Matt: And even more exciting things to come.

Elena: Yeah, I love human in the loop too. That's kind of a nice way to put it. I'm not gonna lie. I definitely have a GPT that acts as Byron Sharp and reads my LinkedIn posts before I post them because I'm so afraid of him hating what I post. So I just like to get a little feedback before I post. Same. I'm not even, I wish I was joking. I wish I was joking. Let's wrap up with something kind of fun. We know that you're a self-taught marketer. We love that. Obviously you love to learn. You're a relentless learner. So what's something outside of marketing that you've learned recently?

Matt: I love this question. And there's a backstory here. So I'll tell you before what I've learned. So every night after dinner. My husband and I will sit down in front of the TV and I am given, he allows me to have 30 minutes to watch random YouTube videos through the TV, and he says, "You only get 30 minutes." He literally says this every night because he knows that I will fall down some kind of rabbit hole and it absolutely drives him crazy.

I don't know if you all do this, sometimes I do this before bed too, but my algorithm seems to know me really well, so I will watch a video about something completely random, and that's what I'll tell you in a second. And then it will suggest something even more random to me, but somehow that is even better and more exact to my taste.

And I could do that for hours and hours. So that's why I'm given 30 minutes. So the most recent rabbit hole that I've been down was chickens. And I promise there's a story here. Obviously with the price of eggs and all the conversation around that, everything going up. I started wondering randomly the other day. I was like, wait, so eggs, do chickens really lay an egg every day or is it like multiple, or is it like once a week or once a month? And do they have to mate to actually have an egg or does it just happen? This is the rabbit hole that is my brain and here's what I learned. 'Cause I can't leave you hanging.

So most hens apparently do lay eggs at least one, like around one egg every day. But they don't have to mate to actually do it. They can just lay the eggs with the rooster or not. So yes, that is what I've been doing with my free time. Clearly I need more work to do and I think, like you said, I think this is my journalism curiosity. It is still alive and well in everything that I do.

Elena: Wow. We love that for them. And I just learned something.

Rob: I actually can relate with the animal thing. Over the weekend I went to the Minnesota Zoo. Yeah. A great zoo here in Minnesota, but it was the first time I visited the zoo with ChatGPT in my hand. And I have to tell you, it elevated my experience. I could ask it the most amazing questions about particular animals, and it just, oh my gosh, it was incredible. So one of them was regarding the penguins, because they have wonderful penguins at the Minnesota Zoo. Yeah. And I learned that penguins actually propose to each other with pebbles. Did you guys know that?

Elena: That's so cute. I did know that.

Matt: I heard about that. I did not know that. Yeah, I didn't believe it was true though.

Elena: It's so cute.

Rob: I just thought that was amazing. I mean, and they consider that getting engaged, so that was amazing. I think I mentioned on a previous podcast, goats have 365 degree vision and square pupils. Come on. That's amazing.

Matt: This is the part that gets me so excited about AI and accessibility of information. It's like the internet made information accessible, but AI itself is helping us to think better. It is helping us to rationalize, to make better decisions, to be just smarter. And we oftentimes get focused on the negative, but there's just so much positive here too. And that's the part that I just am so excited about, not just in our work, but like you said, even in our everyday life.

Angela: There's no way Rob goes to the zoo and reads every placard. He would never know about the penguins.

Rob: I don't read the placards. We don't, I don't like those placards. Yeah. That's just, no, I need someone to tell me it, tell me what's interesting about it. And then you can do voice mode. It's even better, you know? Exactly.

Matt: Have you all been using that? Where you actually talk to it live?

Rob: I will walk my dog and talk with ChatGPT for over an hour. Yeah. And it's really, you talk about going down a rabbit hole, it's oh my gosh. And then to use ChatGPT Vision. Yes. Have you used that? That's just literally, when I was walking at the zoo, there were certain animals and things that you could just show it, you know, using the video feed and it will, it knows the animal is talking to you. It's amazing. It's magical.

Angela: I was just traveling for work and I could not get the Nespresso machine in my room to work. And I needed the coffee. Yes. And it bailed me out. It was, it walked me through. It's amazing. It was just like, no, you just, you need to push it down harder. And I'm like, oh, okay. I thought I was gonna break it.

Rob: A hundred percent I fixed the toilet.

Matt: It also gives this dark tunnel that I don't know about you. It was like my finger hurts and there's always one, like everything always ends in a bad diagnosis. Yeah. I get to go down that rabbit hole now with ChatGPT as well.

Angela: Absolutely. I'm gonna take us in a totally different direction. I love this idea of butterfly effects, right? These just small changes that can have enormous effects on our life. And so it's not something new that I've learned, but trying to relearn, which is habit stacking. Pairing a new habit with an existing one. It works 'cause your brain already has these strong neural pathways built around an existing habit. So just trying to relearn it back into my life again.

Matt: Yeah. I love that. I remember learning like it takes a month to build a habit. And I remember in particular trying to make it a habit to floss every night, right? The thing that's so easy to forget. And I was like, okay, if I can just do this for a month and it actually works. And I think it's the same thing even now with AI, right? Like, how do you make it a habit that before even, like before I go to build a deck, I will take time to be like, here's an idea that I'm thinking about. What am I missing? How might I be thinking about this too small? How can I make this better? I think part of it is getting comfortable with being told you are not the best. Being comfortable with the challenge and the debate and being married to an attorney, I love that debate, so it doesn't bother me, but I think that's the part that really is the opportunity and is really exciting.

Elena: Awesome. Yeah, agreed.

Rob: People who floss live longer.

Elena: Thanks, Rob. Thanks rob. Sorry, I can use that GPT. So mine is something recently that's been going on in Minnesota. The Timberwolves are in the playoffs and they are not often in the playoffs. And I heard a stat before one of these games, the other night, that LeBron James himself has played in 287 NBA playoff games, and the Timberwolves organization and their entire history have only played in 92. We gotta enjoy each fun people because it doesn't happen often. Doesn't happen often.

Matt: I can use a lot of help with the sports piece 'cause I don't know anything about sports. You and me both.

Elena: I thought it's kind of cool, but Matt, thank you so much for joining us. I really enjoyed this. You're amazing. You talked about not having a marketing background, more than the majority of marketers I've talked to. And I think your journalism background, you're such a great communicator. And that must be a real asset for you as a marketer. So thanks for joining us and we're gonna include your LinkedIn, Asana, but is there anything else you wanna plug or anything else we can share?

Matt: No, I just thank you so much. This is so great. I just think that there's so much opportunity within marketing and I'm just so grateful to be on this journey. This is an awesome job and we have an awesome opportunity in front of us. We always talk about how marketing is just such a young science and listening to podcasts like this is one way that we can just continue to grow our knowledge and think about collectively how we advance the field. So thank you so much for having me.

Angela: The algorithm has figured out that my LinkedIn feed needs Matt Maynard content. Seeing it all now, I love it.

Matt: Don't click on it. It will follow you everywhere.

Angela: I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that.