#112 - The Jeff Shares Tips for Brand Research, Matthew Woodget has a Great Story and Robert Talks Tech over a Cocktail Episode

This transcript was automatically generated by a machine, and as it becomes sentient it may have its own ideas of what we said....

Matthew Woodget  0:00  
People are very good at optimising their energy. And I've always thought optimising their energy you mean they're lazy?

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello, and welcome to Episode 112, Rockstar, cmo F and M is marketing in the air. It's really decided you're probably wondering, that's the world need another effing Marketing podcast. I'm your host Ian Truscott. I know Rockstar but I picked up a thing or two over my 25 year career from techie to CMO. And each week on this podcast, I chat to the true rockstars my fabulous guests and chums and hopefully share with you some marketing street knowledge that will inspire the Rockstar cmo in you. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn and proud members of The Marketing Podcast Network. This episode was called on Friday, April the 29th. I hope you've had a good week and you're well safe and staying sane as you feel you need to be. This week Jeff Clark shares his tips of brand research. I'm an entertaining conversation Matthew would get a go narrative. And we wind down the week in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar with Robert Rose for a cocktail and a marketing thought.

But first, we need to pay the bar tab. I'll be back in a moment.

This first segment with my Cham Jeff Clark, a sought after marketing strategy advisor and former siriusdecisions Forrester Research Director this week, we ask who are you as we dive in? Let's back Jeff to Rockstar, cmo FM How are you my friend

Jeff Clark  1:58  
I am doing well. Thank you for having me back yet again.

Ian Truscott  2:02  
You're very welcome. You're very welcome. And I got some feedback that I need to be stricter with you.

Jeff Clark  2:13  
I can say something but I won't.

Ian Truscott  2:16  
I'm gonna try and keep our slot a bit more to time is.

Jeff Clark  2:20  
I know it just it's I mean, we pick these big topics. You know, I know. There's so much to saying. I

Ian Truscott  2:27  
know. But just so do you think we should cut out the weather slot then?

Jeff Clark  2:30  
Sure. That's fine. Thanks, today's soils. Good. Let's get that one.

Ian Truscott  2:36  
Well, you've had a good week, mate. And I think I think there are people that like to know that you're well, on the wheel. Well, the weather is good. Alright, thanks. So this week, as we have planned, which probably doesn't sound like we planned, but we do plan. We're going to talk about the, as we promised last week, the confluence of the two epic marketing fundamentals that we talked about first number one brand and number two market research. And we're gonna talk about brand measurement. So well say you, Jeff, where do we start with that?

Jeff Clark  3:09  
Where do we start? Well, it is. I mean, I think when we first talked about market research, we were at least, you know, a lot of times when I talked about I focus on, you know, understanding what the customer needs, and you know, how do they, you know, what, what's the language they use, but cetera, et cetera. But, but I thought, you know, it's also in certainly one of the things that I've done myself more research on, the companies I've worked in is brand research. So understanding what they think of you, as opposed to what we think of or what they think of when they're not thinking of us. And it's just, you know, it's a it's kind of a wide open topic. And it's also, when people think of brand research, oftentimes, and I don't know, maybe I'm showing my age, but people think focus groups, which is certainly has a, you know, that's a that's a valid tool to use, but there's so many other tools out there, particularly these days, with the advent of, you know, social listening. Web surveying has certainly gotten easier, cheaper. And there's just so many tools to give us information. So there's, there's, you know, there's lots of ways to, to, to address this, but I think the, the place to start is, is asking yourself the question of what is it about your brand you were you're trying to measure? And I think when we when we talked about brand back in the first F and fundamental episode, you know, I talked about there's, you know, there's the awareness, perception preference. I mean, those are, those are kind of like the three big buckets, but you can break it down even further. So when you talk about awareness, it's like there's just pure name recognition. You know, if I have a particular audience It's out there, how many of them even know I exist? They've heard the name there, and then there's reach. So, certainly an aspect of awareness is, you know, is my message getting out there and hitting people, you know, making impressions, whether they're, they have an opinion about it or not? Is it just is it just getting there? And, and then when you move into perception, perception can be a couple of different things could be, you know, do I recognise the loss as a vendor in a particular category? So there's a, you know, somebody who's looking to solve a problem, there's a set of competitors or set of companies that do that, did they put us in that category? Or do they put us thinking somewhere else? Or there's also an attribute, you know, so, you know, when I think about Apple, I think about computers, and, you know, simplicity, or when I think about, you know, tick tock, I think about visuals, your video that is that is, you know, short lived or so there's, so there's those things there.

Ian Truscott  6:00  
And when we talk about attributes, we talk about things like secure and trusted and all those things, it could

Jeff Clark  6:06  
be, I mean, there's kind of an open bar, you know, to me, I've always said, you know, a brand brand that can be defined by a company name and an attribute it when you take it down to its simplest, so, so you're the company name, and they say, Oh, I know, I know who Apple is, and I've got an attribute. And if the attributes different than what, then what we would want that attribute to be that we have to, you know, work through how we deal to change perceptions. And then the last category is preference. And preference can be if it's kind of pre purchase preference, then there's the, you know, do, do you ever propensity, but to buy from this vendor, and then if it's post purchase, you can take a look at either satisfaction, or kind of the higher level degree of satisfaction as advocacy and measure, you know, do I have people out there that are extolling the virtues of my brand? And what are they saying? How are they saying, and what channels are they seen it on? So those are kind of, you know, three big buckets, and then and then seven little buckets underneath,

Ian Truscott  7:13  
ya know, and this applies to b2b and b2c, isn't it? I mean, we're often talking about a b2b Simply because that's our background. But if you think about that, about name recognition, and reach and association with a problem or category, and those things that you stand for as a brand, and then would somebody recommend you this all b2b and b2c, isn't it? So that's interesting. So I've got awareness, perception and preference. Now, what I'm interested in here is, like, when I've when when you look at Brand insight, and you're looking to try and do this things, there's a perception that you need to bring in a, you know, some external help, which is great. And but often, it's a kind of, like, bit dark, and they'll come in and it'll be really expensive. And it'll take forever. And really, do we have the time for this? What? What's your approach with how do we measure these things?

Jeff Clark  8:02  
So so if you step back to the, the question, or the challenge you're trying to, you're trying to uncover I, there's, there's a number of different ways and we can, you know, I think in a future session, we can kind of get into the pros and cons of each of those different sets of tools. But these just kind of briefly cover some of the things that I did in the end, I found value in is one time, when we were in progress, we were trying to get an idea of brand perception. And so we tried to do through phone surveys, or the combination of phone or web surveys and try to capture both the name recognition, the association and a category of attributes and preference propensity. And so there, you know, we, you know, worked with somebody who was a statistician who actually could manage the project, and they worked with with a firm to actually do the calling and do the web based surveys. And, and so it gave us a really good broad picture of where we stood against competition at those various levels. So it was and it's because it's almost kind of to do that kind of breadth. That's kind of the only way I shouldn't say the only way it's probably the best way to do it. Because you're, you're you're reaching a broad audience that is supposedly not biassed anyway, be by virtue of the channels you're trying to get the information from. And you're using professionals to get it and assimilate the information and do all the cross tabbing and stuff like that.

Ian Truscott  9:40  
Right. So something like that needs you'd need external help unless you happen to have a survey expert and statistician Jon Hamm. Yeah. I mean, that's been my experience. I think that if you try and write your own surveys, there's an art to it isn't

Jeff Clark  9:55  
there is an absolute art to it. And just the way you phrase a question In the way you asked for the answer makes a big difference.

Ian Truscott  10:03  
And you don't want to lead with it. And that can be a problem. Actually, if you if you've got a vested interest in your you're wanting to lead the audience to a particular conclusion that you want as a marketer. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So you mentioned focus groups just a moment ago. Yeah, that's still valid.

Jeff Clark  10:18  
Yeah. And I think, again, I think if you like, narrow down to what you're trying to accomplish, you know, focus groups are best when you're trying to get a deep discussion, and you're trying to pull things out of a set of prospective buyers. And, and so I know, I've used it, particularly when you're kind of reviewing messages or add concepts, and you know, you just try to very simply lay out, you know, we're, whether you actually expose who you are or not, but it's like, so here's a vendor who's selling this type of software. And here's a message does that, what does that message mean? Anything to you? Here's some creative does this mean a does it you know, and get feedback. And, and, you know, you're limited when you're limited, budget wise, because you could, I mean, there are certainly there are organisations out there that run, you know, dozens and hundreds and hundreds of focus groups to try to get at something like a political party, we'll do that. But, you know, most of us don't have that. So you really got to, like, boil it down to, you know, we got some ideas for an ad concept and a message and we just want to make, we want to get some real feedback and want to discuss it with people. And so that's in having a, having a moderator having the the ability to actually solicit the the, the people in the focus group and stuff is is, is really key.

Ian Truscott  11:42  
And that, again, sounds like something best done by an external company, right? You can bring those people together. And don't try this at home. Yeah, remove your biases, right, and the bias of the audience that you might choose. Yeah, so, so that so, so web surveys we can do, and then focus groups and bring people in to do that? Is there other things that we can do?

Jeff Clark  12:06  
Yeah, I think because one of the one of the challenges with the things we've mentioned so far is that is that usually you've, you've got the ability to do that, you know, at the most once a year, if if you know if even that. And so, you know, if you're, you know, you're in a marketing department, and you're you say we've got a goal to improve our, our reach, or our brand preference scores. And it's like, we're going to do a bunch of activity. But you know, I don't want to wait until, you know, if I did a brand survey, you know, in January, I don't want to wait till next January to find out whether we move the needle or not. Yeah, so it's kind of like, well, what can I do to actually, you know, help me gauge that in the interim. And, and so I think that's where today there's, with the, you know, the the tools we have, when you look at any of these particular aspects, dimensions of a brand, you know, there are things that can that as in and of themselves may be more of a tactical measure, and may not tell you much, but if I look at a sort of a suite of of tactic measures together, you know, and I look for the trend is how those those change over time, I can start to get a reasonably accurate picture of least at least you know, where we're headed, I may not be able to tell exactly why we're doing better, or why we're doing worse. But again, I can, you know, say that,

Ian Truscott  13:37  
yeah, so you weren't ready, because you don't have the qualitative quotes of talking to somebody, you're looking at data at this point. So, so you're talking about things like social media monitoring, and yeah, and some of the data that we have,

Jeff Clark  13:47  
yeah, like, like, so you know, like, if you take, you know, search, you know, so everybody's out there trying to improve search results. So branded search results results can tell you whether there's name recognition, and remember, when we were at SDL, you know, the challenge we had was everyone had name recognition for some of our products, but they didn't necessarily have for the organisation. And then you can look, if you're looking for perception, you can look at your organic search rankings, particularly against competitors. And so this is all things that, you know, you know, everybody's doing to a certain extent, you know, if you've got social tools, or if you got PR, you know, monitoring tools, what's our share of voice? What's our share of ink? What are what are impressions were making on our social channels, if we're doing any kind of advertising, what kind of imprint you know, ad impressions, digital or, or any other ways or, you know, has often been kind of poo pooed as well, you know, what does that really mean? Again, if you're if you're trying to just understand reach, and you're looking at ad impressions, or social plus your share of voice plus maybe the the web, you know, the number of web visitors and if I look at that together and say oh, you You know, I, they're all They're all increasing or some are increasing, others are decreasing. But if I index them together, I can actually see what that overall trend looks like.

Ian Truscott  15:09  
Yeah, I think that's really interesting because we've all got Google Analytics. And I think that, that that traffic, that those tools tend to get devalued as vanity metrics. I think if you're looking at the right things like brand search, then you are getting an indication of how many people are looking for you, which would be a good indicator of brand awareness. You can divide that up by Geo and all that kind of good stuff. Oh, yeah.

Jeff Clark  15:33  
Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, if you're trying to understand, you know, whether people put you in a particular category, particularly if you're, if you're going into a new category of product category, and you're you're interested, you know, are we getting picked up visa vie or competitors, then organic search rankings, influencer awareness, the number of reviews, you know, if you're a product that's reviewed on any kind of sites, like a G two, or techtarget, then then you you know, you're just you're looking for numbers to say, at least people know, we're in this, this market now. And then we could go to the attribute associations with some of our social media tools to say, Well, are they they know we're in the market, but are they actually putting the right characteristics together with our name?

Ian Truscott  16:21  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because you can see that in the search term, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But what are the what are the downsides of this? And because I think we talked about that you can't always trust digital tools to reach your audience, depending on who you're trying to connect with. Right?

Jeff Clark  16:37  
Yeah, I think, well, some of the downsides. Certainly from like, the social media monitoring is that, you know, if you're selling products that are that people discuss in social media, then okay, that might be a good tool. If you're not, then it's not necessarily a good tool. If, if you're, you know, sometimes you're picking up more negatives than positives, because people tend to post more they're more interested in posting when they're pissed, when they're when they're happy. And, and I think the other the other thing is that, and we kind of touched on this is that you don't necessarily understand why. You You're, you're seeing a particular trend unless you have a way of doing follow up. So this is, this could be where it's like, okay, we see, we're seeing we're in a downward trend. Yeah, on our search rankings, well, can we actually, can we actually pull out a set of, of contacts to do phone interviews so that we can actually then then go a little bit deeper and find out why or, or if we're doing you know, you had a guest on probably a couple months ago, talking about win loss analysis? Yeah. So now, can we dive into the win loss analysis and somehow see what what they're saying which, which may correlate? And, you know, and try to just draw some, some conclusions from that.

Ian Truscott  18:05  
Right. So, so in conclusion is you're saying conclusion. And so really, this is this is about understanding exactly what it is, it's important to you to measure from those three, and it may be all three areas awareness, perception, preference, and what do we want to do. And then it sounds like then we start to diagnose, or start to find some key metrics that we can easily do like their web traffic, or our social media monitoring, and then use these more expensive tools to kind of diagnose into that when we see some trends coming, and we get an understanding of what where maybe the gaps, are,

Jeff Clark  18:37  
we absolutely, yeah, and what we should put up on our site is just some examples of how you you could take like three or four metrics and you know, do a baseline measure index that is 100. And then as you see movement month to month or quarter to quarter, how you come up with some some trend analysis and then how you can also see does that trend analysis correlate to what we're doing from a revenue standpoint or from a you know, generate lead standpoint or closing opportunities? So yeah, absolutely

Ian Truscott  19:06  
connecting this with awareness, revenue and trust. Yes, I think effect Yes. All right. Well, that was fantastic Jeff and and because we prepared for this we've come in we've come in on time which is and I did start this with with having a go at you that I should be stricter with you but should be stricter with myself because he's a fascinating Absolutely. And of course, it must thank Irene friend of the show for feedback. So our third agenda item Jeff, what song are we going to go for?

Jeff Clark  19:41  
We're gonna go with the pretender from the food food food fighters, the Foo Fighters from from 22,009 2009 and the lyric though was lyric which you picked up which made it appropriate is what if I say I'm not lying? Like the others. Hopefully I'll pick that up on my, my Twitter account.

Ian Truscott  20:06  
And they also says who are you, which is a great segment in this in those lyrics too. So I'll play out with the pretender Foo Fighters. So we've we've managed to skip forward 20 years from the 80s. So that's pretty good for us

Jeff Clark  20:18  
last last week, we're 2019 So we've actually went we went back a decade. Yeah, but that was

Ian Truscott  20:27  
I think, didn't we? That was kind of the way it out. So anyway, excellent. Thank you, Jeff. We're at risk of carrying on waffling and then and then ruining all of our excellent strictness. So as you let you go, and Will I see you next week me? Yes. Yes we've got a special me because it's you and me talking to Simon Daniels of precocity absolute all my guest and Market Operations Specialist. So friend of the show, friend of the show, yeah, doing something a little bit different next week, a three way now people can make of that.

Jeff Clark  21:02  
What can we pull from? I'm sure there's I know a few actually.

Ian Truscott  21:09  
All right, well, I'll speak to you then next week with Simon I look forward to it. Thanks very much have a great week. test

day Thank you, Jeff. And that was the pretender by the Foo Fighters actually from 2007. And I will include all of Jeff's links in the show notes. And if like Irene, you have any feedback or suggestions, we'd love to hear them drop us an email. Hello Rockstar cmo.com. right onto this week's guest Matthew would get as a technologist, marketer and storyteller whose marketing pedigree spans over 20 years. He heads up go narrative where he helps marketers and entrepreneurs reduce frustration, increase reach and drive growth using story structures. He's a status quo challenger who is passionate about finding a better way to clarity. Matthew has a BSc honours in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Kent Canterbury. He's an accomplished filmmaker, photographer, diarist, blogger and science fiction author, and now joins us on Rockstar, cmo FM I had finally Matthew, I really hope you enjoy this conversation

I'm Matthew, welcome to Rockstar CMN f m, how are you my friend?

Matthew Woodget  23:12  
I am very well. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Ian Truscott  23:16  
You're very welcome. And I'm talking to another Brit. But you're not a Brit here. Where am I talking to you?

Matthew Woodget  23:21  
I am currently in Seattle. And I often have a lot of fun when people who are not in Seattle, but the US asked me where I'm from. And I say what? This is a Seattle accent.

Ian Truscott  23:33  
Well, as we were just discussing before a press record, you're certainly used to the rain there. So it's probably a home from home.

Matthew Woodget  23:39  
I sometimes think that might be why I love it here so much.

Ian Truscott  23:42  
Yeah, there's nothing like that. Yeah. Oh, Seattle rang to make you think of London. So that's excellent. So. So tell us a little bit about yourself for the listener that doesn't know you.

Matthew Woodget  23:54  
So I am a failed engineer. I've actually got a computer science degree, which often when I tell people that they're like, what, you got a computer science degree. And but I was I was terrible at engineering and maths. And I like to blame my dyslexia, which brings with it some superpowers, some say but it definitely undermined my ability to code, shall we say, but I've always loved technology. I was indoctrinated into the world of technology at a very early age because my father actually started working at Intel in 1978. Because he got this kind of idea that maybe this whole microprocessor printing might actually be a big deal. I was indoctrinated really early on. He worked in sales and marketing actually, even though he was an electrical engineer. So I had this kind of role model in my life. My father who had done engineering, but then it moved into the business side of things. But my parents still tried to encourage me to be an engineer at least to get the degree. And so I did just by the skin of my teeth, I got sentiment, which some folks will know what that means. And it was literally by the skin of my teeth. But as I was I was working at Intel as an intern every possible opportunity, summers, Christmas vacations, or holidays. And as I did that, I started to realise that the engineers around me were terrible at they were great to engineering, but they were terrible at communication, even internal communication. Yeah. And I started to kind of think, Hmm, this is interesting that maybe there's a place for me in this industry, after all. And so that really kind of got me off to the races in my career in marketing and technology.

Ian Truscott  25:37  
Right? And where did you start in marketing with your career? So that's what inspired you to get into. And by the way, we've got some income in there, because it's my dad, that got me into tech as well. I mean, we used to play with showing, well, I'm probably showing the age of the computers he was with, but when we were toddlers, we play with punched paper tape and punch cards and stuff like that. But yeah, so yes, we've got that in common. So that so you saw that happening, and the could see the engineers can communicate, and where did you start with your marketing career? What would you do first?

Matthew Woodget  26:05  
So actually, my first official kind of marketing job, if you will, was in my final year university, I wasn't quite ready to leave that lifestyle. There was no way on God's green earth that I was going to do an MBA or let alone a PhD. So I was trying to figure out how can I how can I stick around for an extra year or so and not really thinking anything would come of it. And somehow I got roped into helping out with the freshers week, I think a friend signed me up at some point. So I helped. And as I was going through this experience, I discovered a lot about the Students Union. And at the time, our students union had things like the president and the sports officer. But there was also a role called communications officer, right. And I thought to myself, I was doing work at the radio station, I was kind of involved a little bit in the Union like that. And I thought, interesting. So there's a job that you can do for a year and get paid. You're kind of student but you're kind of not. And I can I can do this so much to my parents chagrin, because, Desmond, I was going to have to get a two one and my final year because I got a third of my second year. Yeah, I ran an election campaign, I still remember being on the phone to my mom looking out over the campus. And she's like, What are you doing? Study, you've got to work. I was like, okay, Mom, I'll make it all work. So anyway, I ended up getting elected, and did that for a year and for the first time was actually responsible for communications responsible for marketing, everything from print all the way through liaising with the local police, if there was going to be a demonstration or something like that. So that's actually my first marketing job was at university, funnily enough,

Ian Truscott  27:48  
I love it, I love it. I'm going to fast forward right now, because we also share apart from this childhood, inspiration from our fathers to be techies, we also share a passion for content marketing storytelling. And that's what we're gonna get to, because we're gonna get to your book in a moment. And why do you think content marketing storytelling is so important? What What inspired you there?

Matthew Woodget  28:08  
I mean, why is content marketing and storytelling not important? There's, if you if you look at, you know, a recipe, I tried to cook some, some, some squid this weekend just on a whim. So I got home. And I looked through the cookbook, and I didn't have all the stuff. But I was able to, you know, kind of piece a few bits and pieces together. But the squid on its own wouldn't have been very good. It needed all these other bits and pieces. And that's one of the things that engineers, product managers, even some entrepreneurs tend to forget. And that is, the product is only one part of the puzzle. And there's a reason why there's a saying, if a tree falls in the woods, and there's nobody to hear it, right. Yeah, there's a reason for that. And the reason, quite frankly, if you don't have a way to effectively engage with people to get them interested, then they're never going to find out about the product. There's just too much noise, too many products, too many things filling our plate nowadays. And so content marketing and storytelling is essential if you want to reach your customers. Yeah, I

Ian Truscott  29:13  
knew you you walk the walk and talk the talk. And you've written a book on the topic, right? Storytelling for action playbook, the no BS guide for crafting business stories that increase demand and accelerate sales velocity, great title, particularly as it's got bs in it. Anything that says bullshit. I mean, why decided to write that book?

Matthew Woodget  29:35  
What what inspired me to write the book actually started about 10 years ago, and I was actually thinking that just the other day, I was like, Oh, my goodness, I've been doing this professionally for 10 years. I changed roles, so many times in marketing, getting all sorts of different experience, which was kind of the thing you're meant to do when you're working in corporate marketing. And so for me, spending 10 years working on one subject is actually kind of profound. It was 10 years ago that I actually was hired to be the chief storyteller. For Microsoft Dynamics, and in that process, I not only was excited I was finally going to get paid for storytelling I hadn't. I still haven't got my science fiction novels published because we work and all that kind of stuff. But I was finally gonna get paid for storytelling. And I had this mentor back at Intel, Nick drew great friend. And he I remember him saying to me, at one point, if you can find the wheel that somebody's already invented, find it and use it. And he's a salesperson and salespeople were very good at optimising their energy. And and I've always thought

Ian Truscott  30:33  
optimising their energy. You mean they're lazy? Positioning the story, I love it. Yeah. Carry on, interrupted. Yeah.

Matthew Woodget  30:47  
When I started the role, I immediately thought, Oh, well, I'll go and find some frameworks. I'll find somebody that's been doing this stuff. And then I'll bring it into the team. And we'll you know, we'll land it. We'll get it done. Yeah. And I went out there. And I started to officially learn how to be a storyteller. Even though I'd written two science fiction novels. I want to make sure the structure is right. I wanted to get really expert on it to go really deep. And what did they find? Well, I found really kind of a cop. There's really three things number one, the hero's journey, number two, all of these kinds of Hollywood approaches, and even going to sessions at our sales conferences, where we'd hired somebody to teach Hollywood storytelling Yeah. And then the third one is kind of personal brand, how use your personal story kind of thing. And what really struck me was when I tried to use hero's journey, or any Hollywood stuff in business, people just didn't have the bandwidth. They didn't. I remember sitting down with my, my GM at the time, Christian, and we were preparing a keynote that he had was a big kind of big point of the year. And I was I was responsible for his keynote, I was designing it. And I remember trying to talk with him about the hero's journey and what we needed to do within the presentation. And he just shut me down. He's like, sort of like that, like, just just like this, just get the presentation done, you know, very focused, right. You know, what I mean? Is when we got get down to the brass tacks, Matthew, and so it was like, Okay, well, you know, and I managed it. And we it was a great presentation went really well. But it was a it was a flag for me, that made me realise I was spending time on this, these Hollywood and these Hero's Journey type models, but they just weren't translate into business. It's just too much your Christian was managing the sales force and marketing plans, expansion into different markets, all this different stuff. He just didn't have the bandwidth. And that for me became this point of inspiration and inciting incident, if you will, like, what if I could come up with an approach to storytelling in business, especially for technologists because Oh, my God, technology started?

Ian Truscott  32:53  
Yeah, no, and the book is actually a series of those playbooks, isn't it with models, methods, and even worksheets in there? I'd love it if we had time to cover them all. In fact, I'd love it if we had time to cover your science fiction writing, and also being chief storyteller at Mike's that all those things, but if I liked the core idea that you have of this 3d story model, tell us about that.

Matthew Woodget  33:14  
Yeah, so that's 3d Three things, right, the 3ds as D one, D two D three, which is a far cry from Joseph Campbell's Monomyth 17 steps with dragons in deepest darkest caves and journeys and returns, and you name it, right? Oh, my God, sort of in that stuff. mean, I wanted to come up with a way that was accessible. And for things to be accessible, you have to have a starting point, right? Every journey starts somewhere, whether it's trying to solve a problem trying to get something. And the same goes for models, having a model that's really simple and easy to start using immediately. It doesn't matter if there's depth you can go into later on. But if you can't make that first step, you just will never go any further. It's what we would call, you know, in business, the term roadblock Right, yeah. Roadblock just sitting in front of you. So the 3d model for me was, how can I develop something that's simple, memorable, and opens up marketers, business people, technologists, in particular, to be able to start using storytelling today. And to be able to see the story that they want to tell from all angles. So that's where the 3d comes in, right? The three words themselves three words that begin with D, two simple ones, and a fancy French word. So lovely, desire, difficulty and denouement. So I'll get to that fancy French word in a second. But yeah, desire, very simple. Somebody wants something that could be like the splinter that needs to be removed, or it could be the dream that wants to be achieved. Somebody wants something. So you don't see here. I mentioned in this framework, X ray, right, right. In fact, you don't even have to think about a person because once you start thinking about desire, you immediately then take the next step. Well, it's a person who has a desire, so I don't need to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, so to speak, right? Just have to say desire, because that triggers the right things in your brain because you've got the tools to do this.

Ian Truscott  35:10  
Absolutely. If that's the main actor, when you talk about desire is going to be the buyer, right? You've immediately taken yourself out the story as the vendor, which we're always telling stories about ourselves and not about our customers. So by talking about design, you've immediately flipped it right.

Matthew Woodget  35:26  
And I'm glad you mentioned that customer there, because this actually starts even sooner. Right? This starts with that conversation with Christian, for example, right? Yeah, this is the internal conversations as well. We don't just have to sell our products, we have to sell our ideas, right, our latest blog on elevator pitches, also talks about this could be an elevator pitch for an idea that you've got that you want your CEO to support. Right, right. So there's people people have a desire, and people are an essential element in stories. And I still remember your 10 years ago, when I was really starting to geek out on the structures of storytelling, I would sit in meetings, I remember sitting in this big or hands, it was a coming out party for the CMO, new CMO. And it's like he stands up on stage. And he's like, we've got a great story. We've got the skews that our customers want, we got great pricing, we've got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you mentioned story, right? So where's the story and there was no story. And one of the big failings is is not putting people in that story. So starting with desire is a forcing function. What is your boss one? What is your CEO? One? What is your partner one? What is your Salesforce one? What is your, the marketing team you work with as a product marketer working with the you know, the mark comms team, the advertising team, the PR team? What do they want? And of course, Where's all this going? Like you said, What is the customer want? And that's the first thing. And the second day difficulty? Wouldn't it? Be nice if we could get what we wanted when we wanted it? Has that ever happened? Maybe on occasion? Even if you're hungry for lunch? It's like, oh, I'm hungry. Do I have anything that I make my lunch? If I got anything in the fridge? No, I've got to go somewhere to get the food. But I'm busy and I gotta get in my car or go for a walk to get the food. Yeah, even something as simple as getting rid of that hunger. Pain has things in the way. And that's what difficulty is all about.

Ian Truscott  37:23  
Right? Right. And I like that as well. Because so often you read like case studies and stuff. And we've talked about this on the show before where there was problem. And then there was loss solution, there was no, there's no benefit. And what people want to read, isn't it is that part of the story is how did they overcome that? What were the pains they had, because they understand the desire, but they want to know how they're gonna get to. And then I've got asked you about your front fancy French word for 30. What's that?

Matthew Woodget  37:51  
So the fancy French word is, is really, really important part of the equation. Because of what you just mentioned, yeah, it's so tempting to move into the solution into the benefit, right? And you've been thinking about features and customer problems and how we solve those, all this kind of stuff. And so you rapidly go from the problem into what does our technology do to actually solve that? And what's the benefit of it? But all of that is moving too quickly away from the people that are that are involved there there. Why that? Why are they is this happening in the first place? Right, and that goes back to the desire, obviously. And I'm glad you mentioned case studies. In fact, we've got a whole approach to case studies as well, which they get a book but it will be in the next next version. Yeah. And and so this kind of idea of solutions or results is only a part of the puzzle. The thing is with storytelling, one of the really interesting things about storytelling is it is not just for fun, it's about communicating something of importance. Yeah, we actually the reason why storytelling is this really two reasons. One is it's how our brains work we're all trapped, I think it's well store or is it while Harare, he talks about being trapped in this prison of bone prisoners black, in prison, I think as well store. And we, you know, our senses are then processed to create this picture. And we put ourselves in that picture. That's the beginning of storytelling. That's you as the hero in your in your life and your journey. And our theory of mind as we start to think about that with other people. But the big, big deal about the telling part of storytelling, is when we were sitting around the campfire on the savannahs of Africa, and communicating about where the poisonous berries were, where the shelter was, where the lions were, whatever it happens to be. The tribes that communicated the most effectively, are the tribes that survived and went on to propagate the rest of the human race. It's very basics of evolution, right? And the tribes that didn't, didn't no longer here. And so through that process, we actually developed our communication style around storytelling so we can't communicate without storytelling. You can't even tell Talk about communication and like we're doing now without using stories to communicate that whether it's metaphors or a personal story. And so businesses go so far into the solution space, they forget to talk about what other aspects are a part of this untangling of the knot. And that is what Dinamo stands for. If you translate to do more into English, the literal translation is the untangling of the knot. How did you untangle the knot? Don't be the 10 year old Matthew and think that you can untangle a knot with a kite with a pair of scissors because you won't ever see that kite again. I don't know untangled? Entangling these things like yes, the results are in there. Yes, your product is going to be woven in there somewhere. But what about things like this? What about what did the person learn? What did they take away from this? How did they change? How did they grow? These are things that we identify with. And we either want or don't want. And so when we hear that story, are we hearing something that we then want? Or are we hearing something that that we don't want and doesn't work for us? Yeah. So ultimately, it's about going back to satisfying that one satisfying that desire. And that's what Dyneema is

Ian Truscott  41:11  
all about. Love it. Yeah. And so those are the three days, we were tracking through the time as I suspected we would do before. But I also wanted to quickly touch on if I flick through a chapter or so you put that all into action with this trips methodology. And I love the way that you've got all these these anagrams methodologies and stuff that makes it really easy to remember. So what's the trips methodology, if you can do that real

Matthew Woodget  41:36  
quick. Trips methodology is our narrative framework. The narrative is the big story. So when we develop strategic narratives for companies like Microsoft, or whoever, because Microsoft is our client, unsurprisingly, with the great people that work there, and the relationships there, but when we, when we develop a strategic narrative, we use the trips, storytelling methodology. And it becomes that big story, that big picture that all of those little stories you tell whether it's through your sales channel, for your partner channel, through your, with your your business partners in technology, right? All of those stories need a frame, they need a backdrop they need something that's going to shape everything. And to do it intentionally. It's, we as humans love to use metaphors, because it's a shortcut to understanding. Anybody who's ever tried to explain anything to an elder relative, said something like this. It's kind of like, yeah, that's something that the person that they have that relationship with understands, because they know that person. So metaphors are really powerful. When you're intentional about your metaphors and intention about your strategic narrative, you can choose the metaphors that make the most sense. But you can't do that until you've looked at the big picture. So our trip storytelling methodology is a tool to break that big picture down, transformation, what's changing in the world that's going to create these potential desires, right? Yeah. What's the reasons to believe that transformation? What are the facts? What are the trends? What's the evidence that's out there? What are the what are the Hartside? What are the aspirations the desires of people who've gone through this process before? AI is innovation? What's that special secret sauce that you bring to the table that helps with this, it not everything you do, but that one special thing that you do. And then P is problems, it's kind of an explosion of difficulty. And it's related less to his individual story, and more to that big picture. So that transformation is going to create problems for people. And then when somebody tries to tackle that transformation, there's gonna be things that stand in the way of getting going. And as you go through it, there's gonna be things that pop up along the way. And then s s his stories, what are the stories you can tell about the transformation out there in the market, the history, the famous person that's doing something a brand that's already been there before, the reasons to believe the the people that maybe have gone through those experiences, or the backdrop and the background for that trend, and why we know that innovation could be your founders story, it could be a story about the reason why your company exists in the first place. And that's a great place for case studies, right? What are the stories that your existing customers have gone through? And if you don't have existing customers, make one up? Reverse case study or a reference design and technology pants, right? Yeah. What do you want your case studies to look like? This is kind of like Amazon's pie. You want to do a product come up with a PR release, you would release to launch the product? This is the same What do you want that case study to look like? Why don't companies do this? Start off like here's our product, here's what we want to come up with at the end of the day. Start doing that so you don't have to have it if you're an entrepreneur and you're developing your stories from scratch, do that but if you're if you're an established company like an SAP or an Intel, then good find some case studies. You can Yeah,

Ian Truscott  44:49  
no I love this. And I also like the some of your methodologies can be applied to all sorts of different communications as well and I read so much. I put it on LinkedIn recently. As I read so much b2b copy that's so unstructured, I think applying some of these sort of simple rules about it doesn't have to be the hero's journey, as you say. But if it's got these three or four structures to it, then it comes across much better. Anyway, I better get on to our last question. This has been great, Matthew. I've really enjoyed this. And we have a regular feature on Rockstar cmo called the Rockstar CMS to improve our portal to marketing health overhyped trends, Bs and stakeholder from this marketing industry we love. What would you like to see chucked in our pool?

Matthew Woodget  45:29  
The Hollywood Sign?

Ian Truscott  45:31  
Hollywood sign?

Matthew Woodget  45:33  
Yeah, stop looking. Stop looking to Hollywood to be your inspiration for storytelling. Look, I love movies, my family, I drive my family crazy as I deconstruct a movie, as we're watching it right? When I make calls on what's going to happen, and is often on the money, right? I love books, I love those types of stories. I love that stuff. But it's just not the right place to use it. Right? It's too complicated. It's too off base. If you're going to be a story geek like me, then by all means go and look at do that analyse those things get inspiration from from that. But if you're a marketer who's got 1000 things on your plate, and you're trying to run a content marketing campaign for some new product launch, don't look to Hollywood, it's going to slow you down. It's going to be too much learning, it's going to knock you off kilter. Focus us on 3d framework and practice tonight. Tell your loved one your mother, your brother, your sister, somebody on the phone sitting around the dining room table tonight, tell the story of your day. What did you want? What were you trying to do? What stood in your way? And how did you untangle that not? What did you learn for the outcomes? What did you use to do it, start using that and it's going to be much more accessible, and you'll be able to tap into this amazing power without having to go and learn a completely different industry.

Ian Truscott  46:50  
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it, throw in the Hollywood sign into our swim pool, it's perfect. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're gonna find you, Matthew,

Matthew Woodget  47:00  
go narrative.com. That's the best place you can speak to our story bot, which pretends to be me. We had the frameworks are in there, and you can kind of explore through the story. But we've got tonnes, we try and give away as much of our IP and ideas as possible. Because what we found is people often need help with it anyway. But if you can use it and apply it yourself, please do because I want the better storytellers in business. And whether we're helping you without you're doing it yourself. We're all in this journey together.

Ian Truscott  47:26  
Splendid. Well include all your links in the show notes. It's been an absolute pleasure again to talk to you, Matthew, and I look forward to speaking against him. Thank you.

Matthew Woodget  47:34  
Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for listening.

Ian Truscott  47:43  
Have you enjoyed that Matthew is a fabulous chap. And of course, I will include links to him his playbook and his agency, go narrative in the show notes. Right? It's Friday evening, time to wind down in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar and find my friend and content marketing guru Robert Rose, Chief troublemaker at the content advisory for a cocktail marketing film. Good evening. Love it. What are you drinking?

Robert Rose  48:17  
Oh, hello, my friend. And welcome to the barn. Oh my gosh, it's so noisy here this week at what it seems like?

Ian Truscott  48:26  
Is that like a

Robert Rose  48:30  
it's a military band. It feels like a sort of marching military. What are you doing here? Some sort of very, very snare drum and the marchers band and

Ian Truscott  48:47  
who doesn't love a marching band on a Friday night? And

Robert Rose  48:49  
I'd Yeah, very well. Good drinkers. I

Ian Truscott  48:52  
keep the thought that I

Robert Rose  48:53  
I see. I see. Wow, they're throwing drinks around. I

mean I'm gonna see what I did there. Now you have to actually time so.

Ian Truscott  49:08  
Like, I'm grimacing behind this laughter engineer that? Yes, I'm sure that yeah, I should bring a marching band into my studio and see what we can record. There you go. There you go. That's my weekend sorted out.

Robert Rose  49:26  
We have a lovely drink. Something I haven't had since I was a kid and I saw in a magazine and I was I had to make it for us this week. And have you now you being an aficionado of gin? Are you a slow gin fan? Is let me just ask that. Oh,

Ian Truscott  49:47  
no, I'm I mean, I'm it's not that I'm not a fan. It's just that hasn't crossed my path. Recently. Oh, well, it's been years. I can't remember last time I had slow chin.

Robert Rose  49:57  
Yeah, it's it's it's a lovely You know, for those in the audience who may not know, it's a sweeter, mostly reddish coloured Lecouvreur. And from the from the slow berry basically, you know, black thornbush is another is another way to refer to it. And the berries are really themselves are very sour and you but you make them into a liquor in a very gin like way which is why where it gets its name from and so it doesn't really have anything to do with gin other than the way that it's distilled. Yes, and so it is yeah, that makes a slow gin and of course the the famous drink that we'll be drinking tonight which of course is of most associated with slow gin is the slow Gin Fizz. Ah, so you need slow gin for this of course you need a little lemon juice, sometimes a little lime juice if you'd like that for taste. And then club soda club soda is the is the key there. And again as always, as we say you know if you need a little sweetener in that do do what you need to do there. I don't because I don't prefer my drinks to be so sugary, but but you can do that but I think just a little lemon, a little lime, the slow gin and some club soda and you have a very lovely and refreshing drink.

Ian Truscott  51:25  
Nice I like that and I like the fact you you get inspiration from magazines for this sort of thing too. So I do

Robert Rose  51:30  
very high you know I see what they usually do is they remind me of things that I've had before and I'm like Oh right I haven't had that in a long time. So you know I get you know as as we all do I get tonnes of emails it's not like I opened up a magazine on my back porch and while the sun sets and I enjoy a cold iced tea no I get an email in the middle of the day and I go all right and I bookmark that that's less romantic than I would like it to be

Ian Truscott  52:01  
I liked the vision well I mean let's see where are we going to be transported to have this drink but I shall attempt to make it in my from my the ingredients on my desktop bar. And as you just heard as you heard I've put some ice in the glass I'm assuming that was an ice drink.

Robert Rose  52:18  
Yes it is.

Ian Truscott  52:20  
Alright and my gin isn't slow Mijin is by Henry

Robert Rose  52:25  
Yergin is quite fast I suspect Yeah.

Ian Truscott  52:29  
Yes, I've been I've been at a company event for for three days this week. There was plenty of chin Sally I'm a little bit had quite a lot. Let's see now so I'm going to put into that something very similar to to lime and a little bit of lemon I think you're putting in mine will be cucumber tonic water from the line people a little bit like

Robert Rose  52:57  
a little bit like club soda, but not really.

Ian Truscott  53:01  
Oh, that's right the club soda so that sounds really refreshing actually that's loaded in with the with the with the with the lime and lemon and some club soda. I'm gonna give this a try. Huh What am i I've ever done it on the gym. But that's delicious. Thank you very much Roberts. And what we call it this.

Robert Rose  53:19  
This was a slow Gin Fizz. This is the you know your version of a slow Gin Fizz. But nonetheless, yes,

Ian Truscott  53:25  
yes. Well, I definitely got gin and that's a bit of fizz. Yes, that is

Robert Rose  53:29  
true. That is true. And we might call Gin Fizz very quick.

Ian Truscott  53:35  
Yes, I like

Robert Rose  53:37  
agile and agile, just

Ian Truscott  53:42  
all the all the buzzwords let's do that. Yes. If it was if it was aI powered, and if I made the decision based on data, then it's the perfect marketing drink. So where are we going to drink these night?

Robert Rose  53:56  
You know, I think this deserves something you know where we haven't been in a while. We have been on the show before but we haven't been in a while. And it's another city that I haven't gotten to in some time, which is Chicago. Oh, nice. And yeah, Chicago is a great place for a meal and it is a great place this time of year because it is the perfect time of year where it's not hot, not cold. The wind really doesn't pick up. It's just the most beautiful time of year in Chicago right now. And so you get these just gorgeous spring days. Where you know it's just warm enough to not wear a sweater or anything like that and you can walk out on the water and have a drink and and then go for a great meal and it's and I've always found Chicago to be one of the best walking cities I love walking in Chicago. So yeah, that's that's where I think we're gonna we're gonna spend it yeah I'm in an outdoor restaurant in the middle of Chicago, right on the river somewhere.

Ian Truscott  55:04  
I love that idea. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in my career in Chicago. I've worked for two companies that were based there. I also I did consulting for, for McDonald's, and they were in Oakbrook. Sara Lee bakeries, that

Robert Rose  55:20  
weird part of the city that the headquarters for McDonald's is very, you know, you're like looking around going, Why would there be a headquarter? Oh, there it is. Okay. Absolutely.

Ian Truscott  55:32  
So that sounds one foot was sitting out there outdoor restaurant, we're looking at the river, the wonderful springtime in Chicago. And we've chatted about my time at McDonald's and all those things. And the conversation tends to marketing. What are we going to talk about this week,

Robert Rose  55:48  
we're going to talk about technology, which is something that you and I both share as a background. But don't often talk about. And it's something that's on my mind recently, because I'm starting to notice a bit of a trend here. And so I started looking back on the idea of, you know, what is commonly called martec. Right, we and we know this very well, at this point, we're 20 years into this idea of the MAR tech stack. And both you and I can sympathise because we both suffered through this, given our jobs that we had early 2000s. Where, in the early days of content, and working with content, we got lumped into the MAR tech stack right away. And a lot of that was because content was generally considered, you know, a function of marketing or communications. And so as we were trying to get our arms around content, we were mostly trying to get our arms around marketing content and communications content. So thus, the website, email and other elements became sort of the focus of that. Now, interestingly, of course, and you know, a little more about this than I do you have, you have some more background in this than I do. There was a lot of other content getting created that didn't get quite the attention in the MAR tech stack about technical documentation, and structured content and creation of manuals and customer service and all that stuff. In any event. That's the way it was really, for the last 20 years. And so, the thing that I've noticed over the last five years is that we have finally started to recognise that content is a separate and distinct function from marketing operations, or communications operations, or even customer service operations. It is something that connects all of those things in terms of how we manage all of the communications for our business. So we talk a lot about content strategy, content, marketing strategy, content is a function in the business. And that is all we can see the data, we can see the results, businesses are taking that as a serious notion that content is indeed its own thing. And increasingly, what I find is, is that what we haven't done is to evolve the tech stack associated with that to reflect that content is its own strategic function in the business. And I'm finding myself more and more and more working with clients and companies that are saying, oh, yeah, we have a tool to do that. And I'm going well, that marketing tool a can do that. But it's not really built to do that. And so we're up, we're optimising content, processes and operations by shoehorning in marketing operation technology into many of these things. And it's just time to recognise the content operations. And management is a little different. It's just there are different requirements, because there are so many other parts of the organisation such as technical documentation, such as customer service, such as sales, such as you know, all of the things that we're doing for different audiences, different platforms that require us to do things. And so, you know, for example, we as content professionals, we have to balance things like governance, governance structures across cross functionality, scalability, workflow, content creation against any manner of content types, you know, not just web, but email and text and technical documentation and customer service manuals and content management and activation and measurement and repurposing and digital asset management and so on and so forth. And so far, what we really have lacked is this idea of building or thinking about as we build content as a strategic function. that it deserves its own stack. And I know we need another stack, like we need a hole in our head. But just literally a recognition that we have to get beyond looking at it through only the lens of marketing and say, oh, yeah, we've already got a tool to do that, and then trying to shoehorn it in because that's a sub optimal way to think about it.

Ian Truscott  1:00:21  
Yeah, and I think, for this, for this particular topic, you drilled into something that I think would take more than one cocktail for us to talk about, it's like my, my special, your special subject from some time ago, and what you guys do a lot with the content advisory, right, because I had your colleague Kathy on the show, and we were talking a lot about content operations and the technology behind that. And it's, you know, in previous roles, we talked about the fact that every every business is second business is content publishing, like you, whatever it is you do as a company, you make widgets, you're really good at making widgets. But your second job is to publish content, whatever kind of content that is, like you say, it's the, it's the manuals, it's the, it's every, you know, it's all everything associated with those widgets that you make. And, and it that is, if you operationalize that content, the way you operationalize your primary business, you're going to work a lot more efficiently around that. Exactly.

Robert Rose  1:01:22  
I mean, and the thing is, it's like, you know, we often talk about, you know, because that's it, I love that, that the way that you phrase that, you know, because the way that expresses itself, sort of in media and thought leadership. And the way, you know, we often talk about this idea of every company needs to build a media organisation, right within their, you know, within their business, because it's such an important part of what we're doing these days, you know, every company is ultimately a publisher, as well as a, as well as a whatever product or service they offer to the marketplace. But then what happens is, is that we shoehorn in whatever other elements of what other tech stack, you know, and a classic of this is the intake form, right? The intake form for ideation, part of the creation process of content, how many times have we run into companies where the ideation element, the intake of ideas for what content the business should create, is quite literally some adjustment to their trouble ticket system. And, and they're literally called trouble tickets, right? The content team is getting trouble tickets, as if it was an IT issue that they had to go solve and reinstall Windows for somebody to actually go create a new campaign down to the point where you're literally saying, what's the issue, right, the field, the form fields are the same as a trouble ticket into it. But it's just how it's a we already have a messaging system. And it's called the Trouble Ticket system. And that's how we get projects instantiated into the IT group or the technical group. So we should just use that same system to instantiate ideas for content creation, and therefore never capture the right elements of data and never capture the right ways to do it, immediately assign it a quote unquote, SLA or a response time, which is silly when we start talking about ideas for content, and so on and so forth. And the only reason we've made that decision is because we already have something.

Ian Truscott  1:03:25  
Yeah, absolutely. I've. And it also it then gets that, you know, that mindset that we talk about around content production being measured on the number of things that you do, and also turning this thing into like, yes, a content sweatshop, right. Yeah. Is that? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so I mean, I guess

Robert Rose  1:03:44  
they match the processes, right? The technologies, you have matched the same processes, right? You know, what is it we're doing when we create a problem we're creating created a piece of content? Well, we're solving someone's demand for a challenge or a problem that they have great. How we'll measure that is how many problems did you solve, quote, unquote, right? And so how many pieces of content did you create? And so we measure ourselves by the one thing that the Trouble Ticket system can measure, which is number of issues resolved?

Ian Truscott  1:04:14  
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then we tend to and as marketers, I think we've been led by our marketing technology as well, in that we, because there's features in the product that we're using, we use those features, and it changes the way that we work and think that rather than

Robert Rose  1:04:30  
Yeah, that's right, which is very common in marketing, right, which is where strategy is set by the new technology rather than the other way around, we go ooh, that technology can do that. Therefore, that should be our strategy. Therefore, we're going to acquire that technology and hey, content people you need to learn how to do this because this is now part of our strategy in the content people go what what? I don't even know what that is.

Ian Truscott  1:04:54  
I love it and what so what do you usually recommend to your clients when you're looking like this holistic sort of content? Didn't strategy challenge of what tools or how they should approach the market in terms of doing that implementation?

Robert Rose  1:05:07  
Well, the first is there to recognise that it is a separate process, right, that it is a that it is a separate thing. And and it's not just putting in more or different technology for the sake of putting in more different, there are plenty, you know, the the, the, the answer to the the the question that I often pose or the the sort of pushback that I often say, which is, well, that tool can do that. But do you want to do that? The answer that may be Yeah, it does, let's, let's just tweak that project management tool a little bit to match your process. And away we go. Let's, you know, let's change what you have, you know, in so many ways, there, the two halves of enterprise technology are one the technology and what it can do and to the way that it's implemented. And again, this is something both you and I have lived and breathed so many times, right? So how many times have we seen a crappy CMS get installed, particularly well and be a fine solution? And yeah, vice versa, how many times have we seen an amazing CMS be poorly implemented, and be an awful solution. And so, so it's, it really is those those two halves of the equation, and what we have to look at is pull pull the technology out of it for a moment, because the only thing technology is going to help us do is scale something or automate something. And automation is really just a factor of scaling, right? And so it's really just going to help us you know, it's a tool, it's a crowbar, it helps us do more than we can do. From a human capacity. That's, that's the only thing technology does. And so we have to ask ourselves, great, what, what things should we be doing that we need scalability on? So we have to actually pull the technology out first, and figure out what the right thing to do is, and then lay in? Okay, what's the right tool that we need to help us scale or automate that thing?

Ian Truscott  1:07:11  
I love that. I mean, that's that. I mean, that's just a great approach and to to any marketing technology or marketing task that you can use and technology. And then, so many times people look at the look at the shiny new thing, and they want the shiny new thing, and they haven't figured out their requirements. They don't know what it's great, as you say, what it's going to automate,

Robert Rose  1:07:31  
or they're trying to, or they're trying to remove the human element out of it. Right. You know, in other words, you know, so many times we get the question, well, let's put in, we needed, we need a CMS to do this really super complex workflow, because we have these two people in the organisation who really shouldn't be viewing and or approving content, but we need this really complex workflow, to actually, you know, prevent them from being, you know, going rogue here. And I'm like, Well, why don't you just tell them not to push the publish button or tell them that they shouldn't be approving content? Well, we can't really tell them anything. Well. Now, I mean, what are we doing? Right? What are we actually, you know, are we building technology to to really comply with our CEOs penchant for going in at the last minute and pushing the publish button when he shouldn't? You know, that's, that's the wrong reason to buy a piece of technology.

Ian Truscott  1:08:30  
I love it. I love it made. And, yeah, I'm looking at the time and I could talk to you about this for ages. What. But if people did want to learn more about your thoughts on this, and many other topics, where would they find them?

Robert Rose  1:08:43  
Well, they might find it at our newly refreshed, wonderful website at content advisory. dotnet.

Ian Truscott  1:08:49  
Wonderful. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, that's where they're going to find

Robert Rose  1:08:53  
you. They will find this well, you know, here's what I haven't talked about in a while. Come listen to our little nonsense on our podcast that Joe and I do if you if you have not done so already. And that's this old marketing dot site. If you want to go find the ways to follow the podcast through your favourite pod catcher and and see what we're up to there.

Ian Truscott  1:09:17  
I strongly recommend that I'm a fan of the show. Excellent. You and Jay glitzy. All right. Well, and the other important thing is once we're done with listening to your podcast and having these thoughts, will you be joining me back in the bar next week?

Robert Rose  1:09:29  
I will and I'm hoping the military band will be will be gone at that point.

Ian Truscott  1:09:36  
Bless them, but it's nice of them to pop by. All right. Well, I'll see you next week in the bar, my friend. Have a great week.

Great stuff from Robert there. He's speaking at CES, the creative economy Expo in Arizona next week. If you see him, please raise your glass. So that's a wrap on episode 112 with the Rockstar cmo effing Martin podcast, thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox selecting our track and driving along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jeff, Matthew and Robert for sharing their insight. Please say hello follow their work and check out all their links in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app or at Rockstar cmo.fm You can also find all our previous episodes. So does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? Let us know on the socials we rock star cmo just about everywhere or drop a rating or review on your favourite podcast app or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week we have a special episode is Jeff and I welcome marketing operations expert Simon Daniels for a three way conversation. I will be back in the bar with my friend, Robert rents. Until then, have a great week. And I hope you'll join us here again next week on Rockstar cmo

Transcribed by https://otter.ai