Marketing as a Service with CMO of Cisco, Karen Walker

So Karen, thank you so much for being here today.

My pleasure. It's great to be here.

I've been looking forward to this a lot, and I was just hoping that you could talk us through a little bit about

I came to the US in the late 1980s. I was very young. I don't know quite where I got the nerve to do this and to take this big leap to come figure out what my role should be in Silicon Valley. So I came over. I was with HP at the time. And then we were here. My husband and I were here for a few years. And then we then moved to Singapore.

Wow.

So we spent about 4 and a half years in Singapore in the mid-1990s. And then the The idea was that we were going to do around the world and go back to Europe from there, but it never quite worked out that way.

So one of the things that I know is that as you start to go through your career, especially in Silicon Valley, things change. What did you discover?

Well, you know, my career has taken lots of little twists and turns. So one thing that I would say is that you can never have a perfect plan. You've just got to go take some risks. and just try different things. So my degree is in chemistry, right? Mm-hmm. So it's like, where did that come from? And so just taking that leap into high tech was a bit of a big jump for me. And so I had to really quickly learn the technology. But then I spent time in the field with customers. I've been in sales. And just if an opportunity's come up, I really, you know, thought about, is this gonna stretch me? Am I gonna learn? Am I gonna grow? Am I gonna have some fun? And, you know, I've taken some risks. I've taken demotions. I was a VP, vice president, and I went back to being a director because it was a job that I knew I was going to have a blast. The other thing I would say, too, it's really important to really have those sponsors and advocates. So I can pinpoint through my career where I've had people who have been not just supporting you, but being that sounding board and being that advocate for you. And when I took that demotion, I kind of knew that I would have a way back because I was being sponsored and encouraged to take this new role.

How did you— how do you use chemistry in marketing? Like, how do the two even find each other?

Well, it's an art and a science, right? Isn't it marketing? Literally, a science. You know, there's something— and actually, I found this with a lot of other folks in marketing. They tend to have both, you know, truly the art and the science. And if their background, educational background, is engineering— and actually a lot of CMOs do have an engineering background— that's the discipline, it's the data, it's the factual element of the role, right? That it is still a data-driven function. But there's like that creative piece has to come in. And so I have some friends and peers who are musicians. My personal thing is I love art, I love design, I love the brick walls here in the studio. So you have to have something that's really that creative juice that kind of gives you that balance. And I think it's powerful to have the two.

It's like left brain, right brain coming together.

Absolutely, it really is.

So, and I want to get to— we'll actually talk about marketing, but before we do that, you also have a family. You have 3 children.

So, 3 kids. So happily married for a long time. My husband's British as well, so we have a very, very great sense of humor in our household, I will tell you that. I have 2 boys and a girl, and my son has graduated. My younger 2 are both at college and both back at Duke, so I'm a Dukie, Duke fan.

Let's dive in a little bit into into what you're looking at right now, especially as you're looking at making some big changes, some big transformation changes, and the industry has never been more exciting, I think, than I've ever seen it. I mean, the pivots that we've made over time are huge, but this one, I think, is the biggest one in my career that I've seen and in the history that I've studied. How do you feel about this right now?

Oh, I feel I feel so the same. Honestly, I actually think that marketing is the white-hot profession right now. I really do. I think this is the best time to be a marketing professional, marketing communications professional. And I think it's sort of just all coming together, is that our role in the company has changed and the expectations have changed. So for us, the journey that we've been on is that we've been asked to be an accountable function, so not a fluffy function, but a really accountable function. function for revenue growth. And we've come a long way on that journey. We actually had over $5 billion, I think it was $5.4 billion of sales qualified opportunity that sales said, yes, it's net new business to us. Right. So that was the caveat, it had to be net new business. And so we closed over $1 billion in terms of our conversion into new business for Cisco. And so, and actually this year we're taking on a quota, we're actually taking a bookings goal Wow. $700 million, where marketing actually is closing that business by itself as a function. So that's a whole journey in and of itself. I think also with digital and social, and the customer is expecting us to change. They want to engage with the company in a different way. They want to do it digital and social. That customer journey is done online, like it is in your, you know, your personal life. It's now done online. So marketing actually is leading that customer through that journey, through digital and social. So the customer is expecting something different. And I often say that marketing is the last function to be industrialized, but it's the first to be digitized. In the Valley here, I'm sure you've seen this too, Bryan, there's so much marketing technology that's now available that we actually, we can actually professionalize our function. Mm-hmm. So I think it's like a perfect storm. The expectations of business has changed, customers' expectations has changed, and now the technology and the tools are there to actually really do amazing work. So I think it's— I hope you can tell— I think it's absolutely the best time to be in marketing.

It's a great time to have a science degree and be in marketing. It is.

It is.

So one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the customer journey. And with a company the size of Cisco, where do you begin? How do you map that? I mean, it's not as simple as one tweet equating to a purchase or a sale. It's a part of the whole. So where do you begin?

So we are beginning that journey ourselves, I will say. And we've looked at consumer companies who do this well, and we're trying to learn and adopt as much as we can from them. But for a company like Cisco, the first thing we have to do is make sure that we really understand who the customer is and that we're listening at every listening post, every place the customer comes and engages with Cisco. And then this is where the data science comes in, right? Where it's really taking what you know about the customer, what they're willing to share with you on a human level, right, in their own social and digital sphere, how they've engaged with Cisco, where they've been on your digital properties, when they've registered at an event, what classes have they been, what are— so it's taking all of that data and saying, okay, Bryan— so it's not, you know, Mr. So-and-so or a job title, it's about that human connection. Mm-hmm. And it's, you know, Bryan, you know, we noticed that, and don't do it in a creepy way, but we know this is kind of what you're interested in. Can you help? Can we help you with X? And so that you are providing so much value that you're helping them on their journey or you're helping them look smarter, you're helping them make better decisions. And so it's actually, you know, I challenge my team. We want our marketing to be so good, it's actually like a service. It's almost like a concierge service. Yeah. You're really helping them along their journey, which is a completely different way for

Interesting. How does that tie into customer support? Is customer support and marketing starting to meld together?

Oh, we have a great relationship with customer support. We know, actually, I think it's like 47% of our traffic on Cisco.com is to get help and support. We have actually made that an incredibly good experience for our customers because, think about it, think about your personal life. You're either calling because you have a request or you have a problem, whatever. but there's a very specific need. Mm-hmm. So we are definitely— we learn what is not only there for that support call, what is the issue, but do they have any feedback? What do they think about the product? What do they think about our pricing? And making sure that we get that information back into the company so we can do a better job of designing the product or pricing the product. Also, what we found is that when someone helps you, and they give you a great customer service and a great experience, okay, that's trust, right? You've earned my trust. You've really helped me out. Okay, so now I'm in a position where I'm going to really listen to you. And so what we found is in our support organization, they may say, look, you know, the reason you keep having the problems with this product is because it's 25 years old. Mm-hmm. You know, maybe if you went to this product, you actually It actually is a better deal for you. And so they're actually, you know, moving the customer on their journey as well. And so it's all these things are connecting. All these functions are really starting to connect together.

And part of that connection is the actual employee or the employees of Cisco. You have to have that communication internally in order for all of this to work. My understanding is that you have an employee advocacy program that you're building, and how hard is that? That must be a challenge to get everyone to communicate and connected again with customer service and the journey and all of these different things. How are you approaching that?

What you're finding is that it's back to that human element, right? That a customer will always trust another human being and listen to them first, right? And so we want our employees to have that immense emotional connection with our company and our brand and what we stand for and our future. And, you know, because you can see when someone's really excited about who they work for. And if you're standing at the soccer field watching your kid's game and someone says, well, who do you work for? Well, I work for Cisco. And you have this really engaged conversation. That is an amazing advocate for your brand. And so we want to unleash our 70,000 employees. We'd love to unleash our partners. employees as well, to have them tell your story, right? And to live it and breathe it. And there's a culture, there's a value set associated with your company and your brand. And, you know, we'll talk about the Cisco family and that there is a certain type of person that works for Cisco. And it's true. Mm-hmm. It really is true because they live and breathe the brand and how they engage with our customers. and their neighbors every single day. So we're— we've actually unleashed— we've got about 4,200 of our employees today who we've encouraged them to use social media 1 to 4 times. A little bit of a mixture of that personal information. Again, it's about that value set and the culture, as well as information about Cisco. And we'd like to get that to 20,000 by 2017. Mm-hmm. We also just recently brought our whole marketing team together and we all committed that all 1,500 of us were going to be social ambassadors for our brand and tell our story. So it's incredibly powerful and it's a big part of having your employees engaged with knowing what we stand for, where we're headed, and that's the story that marketing should be telling everybody.

And so speaking of story, Telling a story is not that easy, especially across the board. Now, if you were a single-person business, this would be a whole different conversation, but this is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about telling a story through now what's become a mega content juggernaut. Not just Cisco, but almost every business out there has more content than they know what to do with, but how do you tell that story now given what we know?

So this is a major transformation for us at Cisco. Cisco, really completely rethinking about content. I don't know if you know this, but Microsoft recently had a piece of research published that they said that from the age of the mobile phone explosion, the attention span of a human being has gone to 8 seconds. A goldfish is 9.

Wow.

And so you've got 8 seconds to engage that person with something that, that content, that that's so relevant, that's so important and valued to them, that they'll go, okay, you've now got my next 9 seconds, so what are you going to tell me next? And so we've got to think about how we tell that story. And I'm not saying it all has to be in soundbites, but it has to be something that is compelling, that's engaging, that it's in a format that it's mobile first. It's not— and so we think about how much text is that going to involve in the future versus video and sound. So we've got to really think about content in a completely different way. And I will tell you, I think, and maybe it's a malaise of the high-tech industry, but we are very factual. We are very descriptive in our content. And it's really boring. It's a sea of sameness. Mm-hmm. And so we have to figure out how to really completely Rethink how we engage our employees, our customers, our partners with content that they need at any one moment in time. And it's personalized for them. And it's something that— it's very human. It's very simple to understand. It's not in this marketing speak gobbledygook. It's something that— it's human. It's like having a conversation. Mm-hmm.

That's a great— actually, that's a great transition because it's one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. When we first met, you had mentioned up on stage human-to-human, which I was just like beaming. Sure. And I'm curious what you think about how to integrate human-to-human, this whole approach, into a company that size. I mean, we're talking about personalization, but there's so many different people in an organization that size. How do you instill this behavior of believing in that human-to-human approach?

It's a big shift for us. I think it's something that I think is more of a natural way to think if you're in a consumer company and you think about your persona, your profile of who you're targeting, and you usually give them a name, you know, Jane, Bob, whatever. So we have to really rethink that and also frankly think about the talent in our organization And really mix that up in terms of having folks that have more of that mindset around experience marketing or creating that experience for that customer at every touchpoint. So it's something that's cultural for us that we are going to have to really think through. And that's everything from— we've just rolled out a complete new set of brand language training. So it's actually teaching our teams how to tell better stories. It's injecting back in some creativity and innovation in terms of how we tell those stories as well. So it's a big shift for us in terms of just how we think about that person, that human being. And, you know, sometimes it can be as simple as when you're helping your kids with your homework, read it out loud. Just read out loud what you've just written. And is that how you'd engage with a human being? Probably not.

Right.

Okay, so start over. And so it is. We're on a journey, but we have to get there. It has to be where it's engaging personal content that's more like entertainment, education-entertainment combination. That's what we want to do.

Oh, that's great. I love that, the entertainment part, because I think people do want to be entertained. They do. They do. They want to have a laugh or they want to have an emotion on some level, something visceral that really strikes them.

And just think about the last time you've read something from a company, a corporation that's injected any other type of emotion than, okay, that made me a little bit smarter. Mm-hmm. So we need to figure out how to engage much more of our senses when we actually think about the content and the emotions that are actually, you know, that we're actually driving when we have that conversation with our customer.

That's great. Now, when you look back on where you're at now, let's say 2 years, 5 years from now, what are a couple things that you really know that you really want to accomplish? A couple things that you know have to get done in order to be successful?

Well, we've gone through— we're just actually starting this major transformation of marketing and communications at Cisco. So for the first time in the company's history, we've actually brought all of marketing communications together into one function. So product marketing is no longer in engineering, it's now in marketing. Field marketing is no longer in sales, it's now in marketing. So the good news and the bad news of that, you've got no one to blame, right? We're all, we're all on the same team. So we have painted a vision that we want to be a real-time, innovative, personalized marketing team. The concept that I share with the team is that when engineering is creating a product, Mmhmm. they go through this long lifecycle of gates. I think it's called waterfall in terms of the process.

Sprints.

Exactly, the sprints. And now it's all about real-time agile DevOps. It's highly iterative. What we need to move from is, as a company, saying we're going to have 5 campaigns for this quarter in these geographies. That's very linear. It's like the analog version. We have to think about having a campaign every 10 seconds, engaging people in very different ways. Instead of thinking about, okay, we're going to launch all this content and forget about it, we have to think more like journalists. How do I keep my customer in Germany called Joe, who's really got this real need to understand more about security, okay, well, how can I engage him? What do I have that I can bring together and have that conversation with them. So it's much more of a journalist type of environment, an editor type of— so we're looking at very, very different roles inside our marketing team. So Chuck, who's our CEO, said, Kiran, start with a clean sheet of paper, which, as we said, is exciting but a little bit daunting. But that's what we have, and we want to be the best marketing function on the planet.

That's a great goal.

It is, it is. It's a bit like, oh, okay, yeah, that's what we want to do. But, you know, say to the team, if you shoot for here, you might end up here, but hey, you've still made a huge amount of progress.

They call it— what do they call it— a BHAG, a big, ambitious, hairy goal.

It really is, yeah. But what the heck?

Yeah, why not?

Life's not going to be boring.

Oh, that's great. Now you have a lot of young talent too that constantly rolling into the organization and they communicate differently. Not just them, but also your customers and your channel and your partners. This new generation communicates differently. I know just even with my 17-year-old daughter, she Snapchats more than she is on Facebook or anything else.

Have you had the emoji conversations? There's no text, it's completely emoji.

Yeah, and I strangely understand her, but then sometimes don't and I have to ask her. To get her to come down for dinner, I actually have to Snapchat the dinner and then she'll come down. If I yell for her, she doesn't hear it. I don't know what's going on with that. But anyway, how are you seeing this younger generation communicating and changing the way we behave and the way that we're starting to adopt these new marketing endeavors?

Oh, I tell you what, this is actually a real passion of mine. And over my time at Cisco, I've really brought in a lot of early career talent and we want to do even more of that, as much as we can. Because I tell you, it's not just how they communicate. They just, they just have a completely different way of thinking. They're actually a breath of fresh air. They're a joy to really have as part of the team. And, you know, I have to smile because one of the new graduates who joined us said, you know, can I just ask you a question? Are meetings, does that count as work? I go, well, you know, sometimes, but often not. But they just don't, they don't meet, discuss, plan, debate. They just get the work done. They do it. And they're so creative and innovative in terms of their ideas and a different way to think about and do things. Of course, they're digitally native, so anything that's— any tools in the digital and social sphere, it's just natural for them to be able to use. A lot of our early career actually are reverse mentors. for our later-in-career members of our team. I think it's really important that you have the balance of the two because I think you need the experience and the wherewithal and the knowledge from some of your employees and leaders of your team, but also your early career can really— it's very symbiotic. Mm-hmm. And it's just A joy just to have that diversity in the team. It really is great.

So, speaking about that, how do you, as CMO of this organization, communicate down and up and sideways and across to get everyone moving in the right direction? What's your style? What's your leadership philosophy? How do you stay productive and moving in the right direction to make all this happen?

So, it's actually a very timely question, Bryan, because we're We just brought all of our— for the first time ever, we brought all of our senior leaders together, actually in Austin just a couple of weeks ago. And it was an amazing event. It was absolutely amazing. It was very different. It was very creative in terms of how we facilitated the session. And we used music, actually, as our analogy in terms of how each of us have voices. But when we come together, we can actually— we sound amazing, even for those of us who can't sing. There is safety in numbers. I will tell you that. So we're thinking of different creative ways to engage not just our leaders, but then how we take that story and our transformation journey back to our teams. We're also walking the talk. So we have our own collaboration technology, Spark, that we use. And so we've created these Spark rooms where folks can dip in and dip out and exchange ideas. And, you know, whether it's a video or just kind of how they're getting through their day. And so we're just finding just different ways to actually communicate, just making sure that our leadership are around the team. And, you know, you're going through a big transformation, you— I think you physically need to also be present and engaged. We also have an open-door policy where folks can come in and tell me. I have an Ask Karen, you know, ways just to keep me grounded in terms of what's really happening in the team and kind of the things that that's top of mind for them that we need to really address together. It's going to be a great journey ahead, but I agree with you, communication is going to be a real way to help keep that engagement level high.

Yeah, especially with all these different tools, how you manage that and how you stay grounded. You still have to do your job too, so between doing the two, that has to be pretty challenging.

It does. But, you know, one thing that I've really tried to do with our leadership team is that I think if you are— we talked about this with our kids, right, in terms of look up, put, you know, put your phone down. But if you're— it's back to that human connection and building that trust and respect. It's, you know, when you're together, be present. You know, don't multitask. Don't, you know, really, I'm talking to you, but I'm doing this. And so we're trying to make a commitment to each other to keep our meetings shorter, to, okay, if you're in the meeting, be in the meeting. My commitment in return is that we'll make them shorter so you have more work time, so you're not doing your work at night. Mm-hmm. Right? So that's not what we're going to have happen. But we're really, really thinking through culturally, how do we want to show up? with each other and engage with each other, not just as leaders, not just as employees to managers, but as back to that human being, back to that human being again.

Yeah, yeah, that's going to be important, especially as we have turned into PowerPoint meeting people. I know I fall into that category where it's sometimes easier to talk around a screen rather than to people.

Just think about the next time you're in a meeting where you're all online, whatever collaboration tool you use and you're all looking at the same PowerPoint, are you sitting next to each other? Okay, that's not right. And especially in marketing where you've got to be creative and engaging each other, it's just— so we've got to balance how we use the tools and also frankly how we use our time to make sure that we're really present and having those meaningful discussions.

One of the things I wanted to ask is if you were If you were to start over, if you tomorrow, you woke up tomorrow morning and you still had all your knowledge, but you were starting over in your career. You got to take everything with you that you learned except you had only $200 with you. What would you do to build your business or build your personal brand or get started? How would you go about building your career tomorrow with that knowledge?

Build— oh, that's a great question. So, it's back to really having folks around you that you know who can be your sponsor, which is still different than your mentor. It's somebody who's really going to really not only listen and guide you and coach you, but is going to help you, is going to speak on your behalf, and is going to help make things happen. So, I think money will— seed money will take you so far, but I absolutely believe It's all about building the right relationships. First of all, you've got to also, if you have a— if you're building a business, you've got to basically make sure that you have built something that somebody really wants. Mm-hmm. But I think that is a game of, you know, try it, iterate. It's back to that, that iteration, right? It's try it. If it doesn't work, try something else. Personally, for me, I would love to have been an architect or a designer. That, you know, we were talking earlier about the art and the science piece. I wish I could paint real art. So it's something that I would use, I think, even more of my creative side and talents and, you know, really have something that folks go, wow, you know, that's added joy to my day. Oh. So that, I think that would be awesome. That would be awesome to do. Maybe, maybe there's still time left for that.

There's plenty of time, plenty of time left. Well, thank you so much for joining me here today. I appreciate it.

Bryan, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.