Fireside Chat: Robin Daniels - Growth, Marketing, And Leadership

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Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind Marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the.

Two years later episode 200 something I'm kidding. This is a rapid fire podcast with Robin Daniels. The first question I have is what's the best marketing advice you've ever received?

Go out there and take some risks. And what that means to me is just being bold, having the courage to actually do something that hasn't really been done before. Honestly, the advice came from my mom when I used to leave the house every day growing up in Copenhagen. She'd say, go out there and take some risks, son. So thought it was pretty good advice. And I've used that in my career as well to always encourage my teams to go take some risks. That's when the big careers, big bets, big momentum is created.

Second question I have for you is what are three tips you would tell yourself starting your career over today?

Number one, take more initiative. Actually lean into new things. Seek them out. Number two, find great people to surround yourself with. I mean, I've been pretty lucky. I think I've had great people. But really surround yourself with great mentors, people who can teach you great senseis, I would say. And then number three is really become a master of a domain. You become known for something that you're really good at. It's really hard, I think, to become known if you're a generalist too long in your career. At some point you got to master something. Maybe it's product marketing, maybe it's demand gen, maybe it's revenue marketing, maybe it's marketing ops, maybe it's communications, maybe it's analyst. There's so many things, right? But mastering something doesn't mean you can't become a CMO one day, right? Because as a cmo, you have to, of course, be really broad. But being known for being the best of the best in something is a great way to get recognized.

What's a marketing tactic you're bullish on right now?

Invest heavily in content marketing. I can't say this enough. I think we're in the golden age of content. I love content, but it also means it sounds easy. Oh yeah, we're going to do more content marketing. But it requires heavy investments in the story that you're trying to tell and also really creativity in how you're actually going to distribute your content. Content marketing is not your blog. It's much more than that. So always think about that.

Yeah. I always say that content is two things. 50% is the creation and 50% is. Is the marketing of your content. A lot of people stop at the 50% of.

Exactly. I think it's. It's maybe even.

That's probably more marketing.

Yeah, yeah, probably like 20% creation and maybe like 80% distribution. But people do the reverse. They're like 80% creation and let's see if anybody likes it. Like really? That's what you're going to do?

What is something most companies are doing wrong in marketing today?

They are pivoting their strategy too quickly too often. I see this all the time and honestly, I've been guilty of it myself. Trying to change too much. And then you wonder why people are confused about your messaging or your brand or your campaigns. Because you're changing it every quarter based on the whim of maybe a CEO or maybe a strong sales leader or whatever it is. And it's a hard one to get right. You want to be agile, but at the same time you also want to have a bit of consistency. Also just honestly confused the hell out of your buyers. So this is something companies do wrong all the time. Especially startups who like pride themselves on moving fast. Yeah, but you're just going to confuse everybody if you're constantly changing who you are and what you stand for.

What's a overrated marketing channel, do you think?

Something that that's been overrated a little bit. And again, maybe I'm just showing my bias here, but is the reliance on virtual events. It feels like there was so much hype about it and I think the numbers were super juiced to look like this was the best thing since sliced bread. Like, look at, we've got 20,000 people showing up and then my question usually is, yeah, but what's the engagement? Has it turned into revenue? Have people been talking about it since then? Event happened. Right. And so I feel like it's very overhyped. I'm not saying that there's not a room for it. I think the best is when you actually figure out the core story and message and keep it short and tight. These all day virtual events, I've not heard any success stories, to be frank, of them being like something that people absolutely love. We did it during the pandemic because we really had no other choice to actually have events. But now that the world is open again, I've literally not talked to a single head of marketing who says this is the way forward. So I, I feel like it's overhyped.

What is one piece of media you consumed? A book or podcast, A course that has impacted you most as a marketer?

A book that really had a huge profound impact on me was Phil Knight's Shoe Dog. Incredible book. And it's really not a marketing book per se, but it is. I mean, this is really. If we come back to what I was talking about, winning the feature product category and ultimately creating a movement, this is kind of a blueprint for how you do that. I mean, how they started with just like one thing that they did and then how they elevated the story over time and how they built basically a brand by getting superstars to come along with them and really create that movement around athletics and performance. I think it's an incredible book of how you built a brand and a great company over time. And that also shows the resilience and the grit that you have to have and the fact that great companies are not built in the three to five year time span that modern companies seem to think that we can build an epic company. No, this, this, this shit takes time. It's hard to do. It's a great book. I highly recommend it to anybody who both wants a business book, a marketing book, and also a great adventure.

What's one piece of advice you would give to a marketer or marketing leader today that is fighting for budget?

It's to really invest the time in communicating with all your peers around what you're doing and what the impact is of what you're doing. So when you think about communication, there are three levels of communication. You have to communicate to your team. That's one level. You have to communicate to your peers and then you have to communicate to your boss, which is oftentimes the CEO or maybe even the board. And I think right now, certainly, of course you should always have great communication to your CEO. But I think it's really important to also over communicate to your peers, especially the CFO or the chief product officer, chief revenue officer, be all aligned. Everything will go wrong with your plans, your programs. If you're not aligned, you don't want to have that next executive meeting. The next board meeting was like, well, we didn't sign off of this, or we didn't approve this, or I don't really know what Mark, why marketing is focusing on this. We're more focusing like misalignment can lead to so many disasters. And I think alignment is really important.

Well, thank you, Robin, for answering the questions. It's been great. I appreciate it. I hope you have a good sleep in Denmark because I know it's getting kind of late for you and it gets dark in Denmark, so thank you so much.

Thanks, Daniel. It's good to see you, man.

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