TOP CMO: Aaron Goldman, Mediaocean - 'Advertising at Scale'

Aaron Goldman  00:00

It got a lot of attention. I think it was a very creative outside the box example. And it did what was intended, which was both create buzz and create direct response. And that's really hard to do.

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Ben Kaplan  00:11

This is the podcast where we go around the globe, marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups, array ideas packaged a certain way want to spread, they want to be told us someone else's simple, surprising and significant. Unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me. Ben Kaplan is on the 30 yard lines, the 20 The 10 Touchdown. Today I'm speaking with Aaron Goldman, a true advertising forward marketer and CMO of Mediaocean, an A to Z platform for omni channel advertising. Mediaocean employs a team of 1700 staff across the 30 global offices and manages more than $200 billion in annual media spend via its flagship software. Aaron is also the author of everything I know about marketing, I learned from Google, a LinkedIn thought leader, and he has held multiple C level marketing positions in AD technology. So where is traditional and digital marketing headed? Well, digital marketing continues, he bites out of the overall marketing pie. Aaron has an answer.

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Aaron Goldman  01:27

It is eating the marketing world, I would stop short of saying although I don't think it's fully taken over and nor do I think it will ever fully take over I think there is still a will remain a role for non digital forms of media, as long as non digital forms of living in the world exist. First

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Ben Kaplan  01:48

down, if you're looking at a programmatic digital ad buying campaign on one hand, and then you're looking at a Superbowl ad, on the other hand, totally different mediums. What's the purpose of each and how do they coexist in one media plan in your estimation, let's say you're a big b2c consumer brand.

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Aaron Goldman  02:09

Yeah, and I think you'd have to be a large brand to be considering as part of your mix both a Superbowl ad and and a programmatic. It's a good problem to have the decision point for you. But they do play both very different but very important roles. I mean, with the the super bowl that is the last bastion of mass media where all attention is tuned in to one place at the same time. There's really no nowhere else where you can get that kind of reach and scale all in one fell swoop. So it's become this sort of tentpole for advertisers and marketers to put out a new message, launch a product make a big splash of building momentum, you know, it happens towards the beginning of the year. So for a lot of people, it's kind of the launching pad for their annual campaigns and plans. What that does, though, and what's really important for anyone considering it is you have to think of that as part of an ongoing approach. It's not a one and done, you're not going to just spend the, you know, $6 million for 32nd spot and then hope it you know, cross your fingers and hope that that did the trick.

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Ben Kaplan  03:10

If your ad budget is $6 million, you're gonna need a bit more by the Superbowl spot. It can do some things for you, but it's not a magic bullet to reach a lot of people and then and then you're done at that.

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Aaron Goldman  03:21

That's correct. Yes. And so if you think about both in the moments around, because, you know, while we're all watching the Superbowl, or really any any television event, for that matter, the odds are you've got another device, you know, in your hand or nearby. Yes, the Superbowl is one of those rare times where people stay tuned in for the commercials, because they know they're going to be amazing. But even still, you're you know tweeting about what just happened in the game or that funny ad you just saw or you're scrolling through your social feeds, whatever the case is texting your friends. And so having that kind of surround sound effect as an advertiser is an important part of the strategy. So complementing that Superbowl buy with the types of programmatic ads, that that are important part of the mix with advertising, on social media, etc, and then extending the shelf life. And so making sure then that you've got an ongoing presence in front of your target audience, right, the Super Bowl reaches so many people 100 million people all tuned in at once. That's not going to necessarily for most brands, they have a more specific audience or customer set than that broad reach there. And so being able to use things like programmatic that can really help you be specific in who you're reaching, when you're reaching them, and then extending that out and building out the key moments that happen in the days and weeks and months after the Super Bowl. Become an important part of this ongoing always on omni channel strategy.

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Ben Kaplan  04:42

do you advise and do you think about now having what you alluded to like a second screen strategy that you have your primary screen but what are you doing on a second screen or some other device and sometimes people think of omni channel in different ways like most people, it's usually it's like okay, we have multiple channels. The idea is We actually have multiple channels running concurrently at the same time, which is where second screen comes in. So where do you think for b2c marketers who are thinking about either broadcasts and think traditional big like a Superbowl? Or they're thinking about a different form of broadcast streaming? Ott, something else? How do you think about second screen in that mix, when your results oriented, you're trying to make things happen drive actual business metrics. And now you're like, Okay, I just did this big splashy by now I got to think about a second screen too well, it's

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Aaron Goldman  05:28

a massive opportunity and a massive imperative, you have to be controlling the second screen. Otherwise, you're spending all this time and money and effort on the big screen, to then just drive people straight in the hands of your competition, because when they turn to their phone, and there may be searching some of the keywords that they saw in the ad, or they're just, you know, against could be scrolling through social or visiting a website or playing an app, if you're not there, your competitors are going to be there. And whatever interests you just worked so hard to generate, is now going to play right into their hands. And so there's a lot of opportunity to use that second screen as part of that kind of surround sound strategy. We can do things like sync ads, so that when your ad runs on air, we can use that as a timestamp and have like the, you know, in the two minutes after the ad airs, we can have your ad run on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, snap, Pinterest. So no matter which of those platforms someone's starting to, we can leverage things like if it's the Superbowl example, in game moments, every time there's a touchdown, when the halftime show starts, if there's a even down to like, a lost fumble, you know, by the home team, these are all triggers that you can then use to set up an ad, there was a great example, a campaign we ran with p&g for Old Spice. And Von Miller at the Denver Broncos was one of their spokespeople. And anytime he had a sack in a game, that would then trigger a set of creatives that we had queued up where he was, you know, in the image in the ad, doing sort of like a celebratory sack dance. And then you know, it had a very light brand and touch for Old Spice. But that's the kind of stuff that's going to stop people scrolling in their tracks. Because we're all multitasking, we're distracted by inherently by the fact that we're talking about the second screen, we have more than one screen in front of us. And it's those kind of emotional connections that really pop out from the day to day, they will have a lasting impact for brand. And more importantly, turn what would have been otherwise a great opportunity, create some awareness into hopefully some sort of direct response action that the customer you're trying to reach can take. And that's where of course that second screen comes into play.

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Ben Kaplan  07:39

Well, yeah. And did you find that? I mean, I think he's like the Von Miller, you know, sack example, you know, kind of a nice moment, it's a connection with your audience, you can kind of connect your brand to the emotion they're experiencing, if they're the home, you know, they're, they're the home team, they're, they're excited about this. Is this just for general branding? Or awareness? Or can this be used to drive an actual metric? Can you get someone to buy something off a Von Miller sack or take some action or sign up or download something, you find that brands are doing that successfully now, as opposed to the general branding by association that that they would maybe would also want to do, or at least the biggest budget ad buyers will want to do? Yeah,

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Aaron Goldman  08:20

absolutely. We see a lot of success for that with App instals as a primary objective for a campaign where you might have some sort of something happen in in a game, there might be an endgame moment, or you might have run a commercial on the big screen. But on the main screen, and in the television ad, you don't have the opportunity to help people take that next step. Other than you know, you give them some directions to do, we can all do what Coinbase did, and literally just have a QR code bouncing around the screen like that. That's one way to do it. Another way is tell your story on the main screen. And then on the second screen, have your call to action. And it has to be something that's easy for people to do, because remember, they're only distracted for a few more seconds. So it has to be something easy like an app instal some sort of like native, unless it's a very quick consideration process, they're not

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Ben Kaplan  09:06

going to be filling out a long order for pick their shipping method, do all this kind of stuff. So it's got to be something that they can connect with faster, that then leads them further down the path where you might be able to hit that order form later, just not like why they're watching the big game.

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Aaron Goldman  09:21

You got it. Now of course, what's what's very cool. With the rise of streaming and OTT and CTV connected television, I just threw a whole bunch of acronyms out there, the ad formats that are emerging because it's television content being delivered digitally. You can do more in that ad space. So it doesn't have to be just a clunky QR code bouncing around. There's other opportunities because if you're signed in through a streaming provider, you know there's some information you have an account set up you can you know, potentially save things to view later. There's other types of actions that you can take and other types of targeting that can be done so it doesn't have to be a one size fits all message like the Superbowl is where everyone sees the same ad. At the same time, so that's really a cool opportunity that brings that sight, sound and motion that high impact of television with the targeting and direct response nature of digital.

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Ben Kaplan  10:12

When it comes to the pinnacle of advertising, the Superbowl ad, I'm reminded of the lyrics from the song lose yourself by Eminem. Look, the one shot one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted. One moment wouldn't capture it would just let it slip. In that moment, with a captive audience, more than 100 million people, you have a choice. Go big budget all out the TV addict of the movie diehard became.

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Ben Kaplan  10:49

Or you could do the opposite and focus on a creative and memorable idea more like The Blair Witch Project? To close my eyes. So which approach should you employ? According to Joe, take a long look that would Queen basted with their famous or infamous Superbowl bouncing QR code

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Aaron Goldman  11:07

on the scale of overrated underrated, I would say it was perfectly rated. I mean, it got a lot of attention. I think it was a very creative outside the box example. And it did what was intended, which was both create buzz and create direct response. And that's really hard to do. You know, from from what we learned after the game was that apparently, the, the site was crashed from so many people, you know, snapping the code, I think they said they got about 20 million snaps on the code. If you figure about 100 million people watching the game, that's a 20% response rate. And you don't see that in pretty much any form of advertising these days. And so it both got you to stop and take pause because it was surrounded by all these other very high production quality types of commercials. And you see this. And then of course, he got the opportunity to sign up and get free crypto, which back at the time he had aired was a much more compelling proposition, maybe than it is now given what's happened with the crypto market. But But putting that aside, if their objective was to both get people aware of Coinbase and also then into get some information and get them into opening up an account and start to make some some transactions on from both of those standpoints. It was incredibly effective. And it didn't get a lot of buzz and attention. And so that's why I think it was it was ready to properly if there was one there weren't you know, the creative ad people, you know, sort of panned it as being you know, not not the best storytelling and, and such. But for what it was trying to do. I thought it was very effective.

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Ben Kaplan  12:41

In our formula we do for work as an agency, we want things to be simple. We want things to be surprising. And we want things to be significant. So simple and surprising. Absolutely. Now can you drive the significance of that to mean something more, but it's interesting when you're in a competitive set at the Superbowl, that surprise might be doing lower production value. It's like if everyone's if everyone's Stillman diehard, maybe you should steal the Blair Witch Project.

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Aaron Goldman  13:10

I think that's right. And you know, Reddit had done that the year before they ended up buying like a five second ad at the last minute. And you could all you know, you saw something sort of flashed on your screen, and then got people to stop, pause, rewind, hey, what was that? Or go to social media to see what was that thing that I missed? And of course, if you saw it, it was like, you know, a screenshot and it basically said, hey, you know, we don't have time to produce an ad. But you know, this we'll have to do and that was it. And it got a lot of buzz that way. So to your point, going against the grain sometimes can be very memorable. And there's

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Ben Kaplan  13:39

a whole cottage industry, just to kind of finish up the Super Bowl topic around ads that don't actually air on the Superbowl that are tied in to the Super Bowl, famous ads that like are sort of based on we almost took the Superbowl ad out. There's a whole cottage industry. And those two, absolutely,

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Aaron Goldman  13:55

you know, the the advertising industry just had its big creative festival, called the ken lion festival in Cannes, France. And every year, they award the most compelling work. And a lot of these are ads that maybe only ran once or twice, you know, they weren't part of a big campaign.

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Ben Kaplan  14:18

They're designed designed for PR value, correct. They're designed for viral marketing value. That's, that's the purpose of

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Aaron Goldman  14:23

and you know, in a lot of ways, that's an effective strategy, you just have to be clear about what's my objective in doing this? Is it to make a point? Is it to win an award? Or is it actually to drive business and there's a place for all of those in the portfolio in the marketing portfolio, and

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Ben Kaplan  14:38

I'm thinking of the New Castle beer ad with Anna Kendrick. In the line. I always love it that is

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14:43

calling a girl hot. Like beer commercial hot. beer commercial. No. But I love a challenge.

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Ben Kaplan  14:52

Some line like that, which always always makes me smile. So we've talked about these TED poor moments in Mark Getting Super Bowl is an obvious one. But I want to move over from the b2c side to the b2b side and talk about something that comes up with sometimes with our clients that look for these tentpole moments. One of the ones we get is happened multiple times where a client will come to us, they're a b2b marketer. And they'll be like, we want to take out a full page ad in the New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal, right? We have this new positioning this new brand, let's take it out. Let's sort of get our message out there. We have this moment. What do you think the full page New York Times that are? You'll see it you know, you'll you'll see it also in moments of crisis, right? I think Uber had a famous one where they were going through a lot of challenges about their culture and said we're gonna we're 100% committed to changing this. They took out the full page out. So what about for a b2b brand, these tentpole mediums like not a lot of people looking at maybe the print version of The New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Now I know they have digital versions of the full page ad as well. What do you think about that as a strategy for b2b marketers,

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Aaron Goldman  15:57

I think it can be effective, but not as a one off again, to save to a Superbowl ad for for b2c, like, there's no silver bullet, you just do this one thing, and you're good to go. It can be as, as the start of a launch or addressing an important issue. It can be a great rallying point. And I think it actually has merit and value beyond, you know, beyond just the external customer facing or prospect inbound generating aspect of it, but also in the internal galvanising of your team, your company, your stakeholders.

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Ben Kaplan  16:37

So just like it's a rallying point, if you're going to have this moment, you have to rally together, this is a big moment. And it's a demarcation. It's a line that says, we're here, we were arrived, the brand is launched, we're doing it, all of those things to be important. Yeah.

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Aaron Goldman  16:52

And you know, once you get that, that deadline, once the bias place, and you know what's happening, Gosh, darn it, there's, there's a line in the sand now we're gonna, we better we better be ready. And so it can move everyone and mass towards whatever this next big thing that you're hoping to have for your business to become. How do

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Ben Kaplan  17:12

you think about your customers, your clients are b2c companies, but obviously you're engaging with them on a b2b basis? How does your own marketing reflect what you're preaching to your clients and customers, you, you know, have have very large clients and customers? How do you leverage this omni channel approach for your own marketing? How are you thinking about the customer you want to reach?

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Aaron Goldman  17:33

Yeah, I'm in a very unique position, I would say fortunate in some ways, not fortunate in others, in that I am my target customer, we are trying to communicate to other CMOs and talk to them about our software and why they should choose our style power their advertising. And so I have an innate insight into the mind of a CMO because I am one, it's, again, fortunate, unfortunate to be to be the target market myself, I know if something's gonna pass muster with me, then it has a good chance of also passing muster with other CMOS. What do I mean by pass muster? Well, get me to stop scrolling through my feed, and actually pay attention further from there, engage, Tap, Click, by whatever the case is, if the opportunity is one that might get me to do it, I know there's a good chance it might get my cohorts that challenging or not. So fortunate aspect of it is marketers can sniff out the BS, I mean, they you know, you can't come with buzzwords and and you know, they're a tough discerning audience. And so you really have to be on top of your game, you can't be lazy about what you're putting out, because they do this for a living. And they can just as easily tune you out because they know what to be looking for and, and when and how they things can be avoided.

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Ben Kaplan  18:58

As someone who is not only a CMO himself, but also someone who markets to other CMOS every day, I was curious about Joe's take on what is the ideal background and focus for a top tier CMO? Is there a defining characteristic among the All Stars? Can we generalise about them? Or is that Dean fulfilled?

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Aaron Goldman  19:21

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely no one typical persona, to the point you're making people come into this role from a number of different avenues. And I think to paint them all with one brush is doing them a disservice. And frankly, doing yourself a disservice as someone trying to reach them because they are gonna have different experiences and different motivations and frankly, be at different stages. I think it's, it's more about the type of business size scale, vertical industry, location, product, those are the things that will help you complete that picture. All that being said, I think you can be effective as a CMO coming from really any walk Have of of life and any set of business experiences. What you then bring to the table is then needs to be complemented by others who have other complementary experiences so that you can then play to your strengths, and then bring in the folks who are going to be able to fill in potentially your gaps you're blindsided, etc. So I've seen great CMOS, who come from the product world, and then you know, surround themselves with people who have more sales or maybe more classic marketing experience, vice versa, I've seen great CMOS come in from sales roles, actually, I began my career in sales. And I think for b2b, it gave me a really keen understanding of what it takes to be on the front lines, communicating a value proposition to a very discerning audience, and how you can break through build trust, and ultimately compel someone to action. And that's translated well into my role in marketing in my career, because I have that empathy, not just for the end customer, but also for my sales team that's on the front lines trying to communicate with them. And

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Ben Kaplan  21:05

maybe a little bit more empathy for usually the classic back and forth is, you know, marketing says off sales, couldn't close a lever, give them to save their life. And then sales is all marketing is giving me crap leads. And, of course, then Customer Success comes along and says, both of you guys don't know what you're doing, because I'm not getting a good, a good customer that I that I can service as well. In terms of what's trending right now. We've talked a lot about traditional broadcast, we've talked about the Super Bowl, obviously, the rise of streaming disrupted a lot. And really, the people leading the way on that were Netflix since then, you know, a lot of the major content holders have created their own streaming service, then more recently, Netflix has really struggled. So they're the new announcement, and I'd love to get your take on it is that Netflix is going to have a lower priced ad supported tier. They're partnering with Microsoft to actually serve those ads passing up a Google or Comcast, what are your thoughts on that? From really the big disruptor in the space that kind of really kind of got everyone focused on the streaming world now having struggles and now trying to bring advertising back into a meeting where it was it I was famous for not having? Yeah,

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Aaron Goldman  22:17

I think it's, it's incredibly exciting. First, I'll just say that as someone who's worked in advertising for over 20 years, and had to, you know, listen to the people telling me, oh, you know, advertisings days are numbered, you know, everything's just gonna be subscription. Only. It's, it's, it's gratifying to know that there's a longevity here. And I think the point is that these things can and should coexist, and we need to give consumers choice, some consumers are going to want to and can afford to pay to have other content delivered in an ad free experience, others won't, won't be able to. And the hope, of course, is that your advertising is good enough that it's not like a bad choice, that a consumer, you know, has to suffer for making

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Ben Kaplan  23:04

that it's like a super bowl that you want to stay and you want to watch, because it's actually content, you actually want to see as well.

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Aaron Goldman  23:09

And we have a good chance to do that with streaming, because you can use a lot of the things we've learned from digital in terms of understanding who the audience is, because they're logged into the platform, because we know what else they've watched, because potentially, there's other data points that we can build to complete the picture. And because we can serve a different ad to different to each person individually, that to me are all the elements of great advertisers advertising that doesn't just annoy consumers, but actually adds value to them. If it offers them, you know, products and services that maybe they didn't know they needed. Or if they knew they needed it, they get a better deal on it, because now they you know, they've seen your latest promotion. And further with streaming, there's that opportunity, because it's the digital platform to enable them to take that next step. And it's not just you know, like in the old days of TV ads, where you know, you tried to have them memorise the phone number with your jingle, so that you hope they call, you know, later that day. So I think, incredibly exciting. I think the if you think about the portfolio approach that you now need to take as an advertiser or marketer, to this space, it's about having your traditional your broadcast television again, if you if it's right for your business, and you can't afford it, you have your streaming, you also have digital video and social video are really important components of the mix. And what I think a lot of people lose sight of is that each of those channels if you want to think them as channels, or opportunities to engage with consumers are very different. You can take the same idea, the same theme, the same sort of spirit of the campaign, but you really have to adapt it differently. What do I know about this person watching on Netflix? that's different about when they're watching a? A 15 second video, tic tac and how do I dept get creative to fit that experience. And think about differently, what what type of call to action is appropriate for someone who might be on Tiktok versus someone who might be on their couch, watching Netflix. And what we want to do is, is enable those bring those opportunities to life in a way that allows for a more a deeper engagement between the customer and the brand. And then ultimately, if you can do that, then the provider of it the Netflix's of the world who have created this new opportunity, are going to be able to sustain their businesses for quite a long time.

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Ben Kaplan  25:36

What that also means is, you have to have a clear extending on each channel or each medium that what the purpose is of that channel. And I know, you know, and I'll give you an example, when we're engaging in a podcast right now we have people listening to this podcast. And if people listen to a podcast, what kind of medium is that? Well, they might I mean, some set and you're listening now. So you can you can thinking about what are you doing right now, some people might be, you know, really focused on or just seeing Alex, I'm listening to podcasts, but other people might be going for their run, they might be working out, they might be the kind of thing you leave on the in the background, and you're kind of doing other stuff. And then you come back and say, oh, you know, Aaron said something really interesting. What was that? Again, let me go back and hear that, again, we're in a medium, now it's a little more of a passive medium, it might be doing other things. So this is a good medium for building a relationship over time, it's a longer format, they might not be focused all the time. So we've got to utilise that. And then, as part of the marketing mix, if we were had some other channel that we were doing, it might serve a different purpose, but we ought to be clear, and maybe not just say that, like, oh, every channel is brand awareness that we're trying to do every channel is this because they can all fit together. And that was one of the experiences I had doing a lot of work for Anheuser Busch and Budweiser, where what they care about is their marketing mix, how everything what's the most cost effective way to do this objective? Right? Is this going to cost me X amount per 1000? Over here? Or should I do it more effectively over there? So how does one think about that mature companies, marketers that spend millions of dollars generally have some sense of this over time? What if you're new? What if you're fast growing? What if you're a startup? What if you're just coming into like thinking about TV broadcast, or streaming or maybe higher end digital video for the first time? How do you figure out what your purpose is for each meeting?

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Aaron Goldman  27:28

Yeah, great, great question. And great point behind the question. And ultimately, I think it comes back to taking a unique approach to each situation, a lot of people, the word omni channel gets thrown out. And as we've talked about, it's not just doing the same thing. On every channel, it's making sure that you have a presence on every channel, that presence may be different. Again, you may not be able to afford a paid presence on certain channels. But that doesn't mean you can't be creating your own video or audio content, and distributing it through whatever means are available. If you have a new to market opportunity, whether it's product service, whatever type of business you're in, there are so many easy ways to get in test and learn. You may not be buying ads on the Superbowl anytime soon, but you can buy TV quality ads through the same networks that broadcasts the Superbowl, they have other opportunities that are much more accessible now, and are sold in ways that are feel like a digital type of buy. And that's you know, I mean, even like, Hulu is a great example of, you know, broadcast quality content easily accessible. And you can get in the game and test Tiktok, snap, Pinterest, even LinkedIn, even if your B to C by the way, LinkedIn can be a great place to advertise. Because you have a really engaged audience and these types of things you can get in the game very quickly, very cheaply, figure out what's working, and then just scale up from there. And again, my always advice is to continue to just to test learn, let the data tell you what's happening. Be intentional about the goals you're setting, set different goals for each of these different channels and apertures. And then whatever is working, just rapid follow on, do more continue to get better. And ultimately, you'll find yourself in a place where you see what works, see what doesn't. And you can be building momentum from there.

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Ben Kaplan  29:26

You're the CMO of Mediaocean now you came to Mediaocean because you are quite the resume of another company that was acquired called foresee. From that you have a lot of background in sort of social media, social platforms and social channels. I want to kind of do a lightning round with you and ask you overrated or underrated for these channels and how do you approach it so let's start with the first one. Facebook in the current era, overrated or underrated and how do you approach

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Aaron Goldman  29:57

I would say underrated whichever Think of surprise people because it's been around for a long time, it's still so massive. But I think because people have started to focus on many other platforms from an advertising standpoint, it's it's created new opportunities on Facebook that weren't available before. And you can reach a lot of people in a lot of creative ways using the platform. And it may not be, you know, the hot one that has a lot of buzz. But you can make a big impact by using the tools they have available.

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Ben Kaplan  30:28

Those same tools can be used for the second platform I'll throw out yet which is Instagram, owned by Facebook famously bought the biggest threat at the time to them to kind of neutralise that threat. Instagram grew tremendously under Facebook says watch. Now it's really kind of ground central for a lot of influencer marketing. Instagram overrated or underrated, and how do you approach it

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Aaron Goldman  30:53

underrated not enough people realise how much you can do on Instagram. Instagram has come so far from just being a place where you share videos, photos, etc. You're doing commerce there now. And I think that's the biggest opportunity for as we grow. If you look at some of the comps, from China, for example, with like a WeChat, I think between Instagram and some of the other assets that are now has, they can create a platform that has the entertainment, the messaging and the commerce all in one and I think Instagram is at the core of that strategy.

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Ben Kaplan  31:26

Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat, they were unsuccessful at that famously rebuffed from doing that. Snapchat goes out and builds a lot of buzz. Some of the shine rubs off a little bit with the rise of some other platforms. Well, well, we'll say in a second here, but Snapchat now overrated or underrated? And how do you prove Snapchat?

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Aaron Goldman  31:49

Underrated. And you may start to see a theme. But But I do believe that none of these platforms have people have have maxed out the opportunities with that, I think in the case of SNAP what they have in terms of the way that people use it, some of the features like map and how people interact with the people and the world around them as they get more into the VR space. And as people get more comfortable with those types of applications, there's gonna be a lot of ways where they can turn that engagement into something really cool and actionable for brands and businesses that they haven't done yet. It stopped short of the full vision of the metaverse that meant that you know, Facebook and Instagram have there's something in between and I think snap has a great opportunity there and brands do alongside snap becomes

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Ben Kaplan  32:39

the you know, the hot platform everyone's talking about, but then comes along tick tock and tick tock starts pulling from what kinda was some attention directed to Snapchat gets shifted over to the Tick Tock it becomes a juggernaut in its own right. So tick tock now overrated or underrated? And how do you approach it?

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Aaron Goldman  33:00

It's underrated. And from from that standpoint, I'll speak solely just based off of the advertising opportunity, I think for for influencer type marketing for just using it as as an organic source of creating content and engaging audiences. There's a lot of attraction and opportunity that I think from an advertising perspective, it's been underrated. It's been the share of time and attention that it's capturing among a very elusive audience. It needs to be a bigger part of people's media and marketing plans. And I think we'll start to see that over the next couple years. I think probably the biggest mistake people think about when thinking about Tik Tok and their marketing mix is they think of it as a social platform because they're used to you know, is we kind of worked through this progression. This was sort of the evolution of social, it's an entertainment platform, and a lot of the same ways that there's an opportunity for some of these other companies to broaden themselves into being fully immersive places where commerce entertainment happen congruently tic TOCs got all those elements, and it's got the momentum right now. And so it's still underrated for the time being

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Ben Kaplan  34:06

and what about one that sometimes that that has been well known big player, but never quite got all of the buzz that all these other platforms that I'm talking about Pinterest, where does Pinterest fall fall in the mix is kind of always around but is never quite making the headlines, Pinterest, overrated or underrated? And how

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Aaron Goldman  34:26

does approaching Pinterest is underrated. And I think that's because it to your point it occupies this position that's unlike its peers, I think of it as sort of right in the middle of the classic purchase funnel. Right if at the top is big brand awareness at the bottom is direct response. Pinterest is the place where interest inspiration, those types of things happen where you may or may not have recognised the need or be aware of a brand. But it turns you on to something a project a place to go, an activity to do and a meal to cook and then starts to give you some of those elements to to put together and inspires you then to go further down and take that action, I think of what the ingredients that Pinterest has as being the kind of building blocks of good marketing, but they don't benefit from the obvious applications of how people think about mass marketing, and maybe bottom funnel. And that's why it's underrated and has big opportunity. Finally,

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Ben Kaplan  35:24

LinkedIn thought of as a place for business, to business connections to be in networks, and certainly those who market to certain types of businesses to b2b customers are highly involved in LinkedIn typically, um, can be a great source of leads. But beyond that, LinkedIn, as an advertising platform as a marketing platform, overrated or underrated? And how do you approach

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Aaron Goldman  35:52

it? I would say big time underrated. I think a lot of people have formed an opinion of LinkedIn as a professional social network that it's certainly launched as, but has become much more over the years. And by the way, even the fact that it has remained largely professional, you know, as evidenced by, you know, the posts where maybe someone posts something about their personal life and then gets, you know, pained in the comments, you know, hey, this isn't Facebook, what are you doing, and those, those edge cases decide the fact that people are gathering around this platform as a place to learn and share ideas loosely related to our professions, or what's happening in the world. There are so many signals in there, that as a marketer, you can then harness to be able to craft a message. There's a scale, of course of how many people are on it. But then when you start to see whether it's between hashtags, or keywords, or the companies, they work for the regions that are located, all of those things are elements you could put together, when you're running an advertising campaign, that it doesn't matter. If you're selling b2b software, or deodorant, you know, you're going to be able to know who you're trying to reach. And the odds of those people are on LinkedIn. And if you can find the right way to thread the needle with a creative message, it doesn't feel out of place in a professional setting, you can capture a lot of opportunity and convert it into

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Ben Kaplan  37:21

business. And of course, a lot of these aren't silos either. So maybe you engage someone and you find them on LinkedIn, and then you retarget them, where it's a little bit more cost effective on Facebook to stay top of mind. So none of these necessarily have to operate. And to your point earlier, these all might be operating in the context with your other omni channel approach with the streaming ads running with the hey, if you can afford it the Superbowl ad with other things. So I think sometimes people get overwhelmed by how do I understand and utilise these platforms as they're intended. And then sometimes forget that they're actually can all be interrelated to as well. And they might have a different purpose, they have a different cost profile, they have a different ability to target. And if you can use them in conjunction with one with each other. So as you can accomplish them today, you can't just accomplish on any one on its own. Exactly. So to wrap up final question, we have a lot of listeners who want to be CMOS, and I don't mean a wannabe, I mean, they want to be there on the track to do it. Maybe in the next five years, you've talked about having different types of intelligences, whether that's traditional IQ, or AQ adaptive, or CQ, you've called Creative or EQ, emotional. So to be an effective CMO and your experience both from your own experience and the CMOS interact with how did these intelligences play in play a role? And what do you recommend for the person who's on the track to CMO level not quite there now about how they can use them to kind of further along their career?

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Aaron Goldman  38:53

Yeah, I think we're ready to coin a new buzzword here. We'll call it Omni quotient, right? If we have omni channel, let's talk about Omni quotient which would be having all four of those. Because they're different times different things, you're going to be doing different projects, there'll be working on different people you'll be working with whether those different things need to come into play. And the idea is not that you have to possess them all and be the greatest at all of them in every situation. It's about building the teams and thinking about in the in your workflow, the types of people and tools that you need to make sure that all those things are accounted for there might be times we need to lead more with the intelligence quotient other times where it's much more about the emotional quotient. And again, that can be both in terms of your day to day work as a marketer, but then also in the marketing you put out in the market and how you want to resonate with your audiences. And so just understanding what they are being able to recognise them and then start to do pattern recognition for where you can see each of them coming into play, who possesses them how your audiences respond to them, you can then begin to work them to Are advantage and put those pieces together into an omni channel, Omni quotient on the president omniscience others we can throw in here

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Ben Kaplan  40:11

for adaptive is the one that stands out to me and what do you think being adaptive in terms of applying events within marketing, but also that sort of quality as a CMO? Why is it adapting adaptive something worth singling out?

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Aaron Goldman  40:27

It is so important right now, given how much change is happening in our world, any given day, there's major things going on around us that work that are going to impact the work we do our approach to that work the people around us. And so being able to adapt, as the word says in those situations and think about are what do I need to do differently? You can't just continue to act the way that you did yesterday, the day before. For me, I love I know you've talked about people's superpowers with other guests on the podcast. And for me, this idea of adaptability stems from, in my mind, a lot of improv that I've done over the years or freestyle, I've been known to freestyle rap when when the inspiration strikes, and just that I did kind of think on your feet, not be afraid to try and fail and learn. All those are the components of success, I think for an aspiring CMO

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Ben Kaplan  41:29

For Aaron Goldman, marketing is about going big and going small. Go Big with a Superbowl ad if you have the budget and want a wide reach, or get focused with programmatic ads to pinpoint your key prospects. Aaron says the best advertisers don't have all of the answers, but are the best at trial and error, play and pivot test and learn. It's an epic battle. He says traditional media and marketing still has its place. But the digital and social media side of the aisle, even now are underrated. So be intelligent, be adaptive, be creative, be Omni quotients. And most definitely have empathy in every ad you create. For TOP CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.

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