TOP CMO: Brooke Cunningham, InRiver - 'Partnerships, Authenticity, Innovation'

Ben Kaplan  00:00

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups. Three ideas packaged a certain way want to spread, they want to be told us someone else's simple, surprising and significant data. Unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. Today I'm speaking with Brooke Cunningham, CMO of InRiver, a leading provider of Product Information Management Software. That's the software that centralizes all of your marketing, sales and technical product information for companies and brands that might have 1000s, or even millions of product variations. Throughout her career, Brooke has held numerous senior marketing roles at b2b Software companies such as Splunk, click and SAP She also served as CMO during data dose $6.2 billion acquisition in mid 2022. One thing that's unique about Brooke is her belief in the power of content, to build brand awareness, open up markets and demonstrate value, especially for growing brands. So how do you give a so called unsexy industry? A very sexy marketing strategy. Let's find out with Brooke Cunningham. Brooke, one of the things that's interesting about the Product Information Management category is that it's important to anyone who's doing large scale e commerce, it sometimes gets forgotten about. So one of your jobs is to elevate not just your company, but the category, talk about its importance, educate people be a thought leader in the category. How do you think about doing that? It may be a category that isn't the sexiest software category ever. But as you and I know, it's an important category.

‍

Brooke Cunningham  01:47

Thanks, Ben. I'm so delighted to be here. So yes, it is an exciting challenge. So I joined InRiver in January of this year. And I've spent my entire career in data related b2b software. And so I'm very familiar with a lot of the products in the data related category of software. And I was very interested when I learned about InRiver because it was something so powerful, but I, in fact, had never heard of it before. And being that I've been in the space for almost 25 years, it was pretty surprising. So I knew that that was a challenge that I would have a CMO. But I was up for that challenge. And so I as I've dug in and gotten to learn the product really quickly, and I saw a very exciting opportunity in working with the CEO who he and I had worked together previously at SAP, I knew we had great leadership, a great product, and learned very quickly that this product information management category, while relatively unknown is extremely powerful, and can be really sexy and adds a really high purpose quotient for me because it can really help power sustainability for brands around the globe. So yes, my initial challenge and focus coming in as CMO is to both elevate the brand of InRiver, but also the category overall and start educating the market. And I started with trying to understand who our ideal customer profile is, and starting to really understand the personas in in those, those particular customers and product information management, for those that aren't familiar with it is really helps power your entire product journey if you are specifically a manufacturer or industrial manufacturer or brand manufacturers. So InRiver has just absolutely amazing customer logos, including cardi a and new balance and Estee Lauder, and Ethan Allen and living spaces just to rattle off a few of those household name, branded retail, retail brands. And also a lot of may be less familiar, but very large industrial manufacturing brands as well. And so, you know, the challenge that I see ahead of me is helping create more awareness for this category. In particular understanding within the market around how product information can help manufacturers address the upcoming challenges around sustainability while also managing very, very complex product information journeys.

‍

Ben Kaplan  04:23

Just to get into the specifics of how you're elevating the category and of course the company let's talk about sustainability because I can see why you would pick up not because one, it's a hot button topic and issue we know especially in millennial generations and younger it becomes elevated importance but but also to others too. And so it's a hot button topic. Companies are increasingly getting more sophisticated. We have a lot of clients that come to top that are like help us with our sustainability report. We don't want to be seen as greenwashing would be the term that was a paying lip service to this as well. So is that why you've focused in on that because you're managing complex product information sustainability really information can be part of that information NICs, that's hard to manage. And that becomes your best way to educate and elevate. Because if you're not in the sexiest topic that people know about let's connect to a sexy one and sustainability is, is that the thought on the strategy?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  05:15

Yeah, this is top of mind and sustainability used to be a nice to have, but it's becoming a have to have with a lot of the regulatory requirements that are coming into play. So I believe there's a really important need to help educate the market about that. And the volume of data that we all have to manage is absolutely massive. So as it relates to Product Information Management, we've got executives getting inundated with demands for product information, they've got to address components within their organizations, how to launch more products, shorter lifespans on products, tons of detailed product information. And we're not just talking about skews and descriptions. We're also talking about the marketing pieces. So your product imagery or product videos, how are you showcasing your products? And then how are you activating those products. And so we've got all that complexity, which is predominantly internal, but then we've got the external drivers. So we've got all the ecommerce and omni channel buying. We've got the demands for personalization in the products and experiences we all now, I believe expect a B to B, B to C experience, even when we're talking about b2b, that online shopping experience, we expect it to be easy. And we know that consumers are expecting more self service. So being able to activate that effectively.

‍

Ben Kaplan  06:36

Any kind of b2b company customer stories can be hugely important. Are you trying to do that for the sustainability category to say, hey, if we can find more people who are showing how to be better stewards of sustainability through our products, if we can capture those stories, those stories become important in a hot area?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  06:54

Absolutely. I think they're important in a top area. In fact, we know from some of our customers that this is critical. Many of our customers actually have commitments to sustainability. And on your point earlier about, you know, brands not wanting to greenwash that they're publishing data about what they're actually doing in terms of recycling materials, in, in their reports to book the boards of directors or to their, to their client base as well. And, you know, there's there's legislative pressure coming into play. So the digital product passport is coming into play in Europe in the coming years and component parts, like batteries are going to have regulations on being able to track the entire production path of batteries in any products, starting as soon as next year. And and, you know, we've seen that, you know, a lot of commitments that different companies are making to reducing carbon emissions. And I think that there's both a, an imperative around it. And yes, it is a top of mind theme that can help gain awareness and relevance in today's market.

‍

Ben Kaplan  08:04

Sustainability might be managed by someone who isn't managing all of the product information is flowing around to different platforms, and different ecommerce stores, and all of that, right. So they may have a sense for it, but it's not their day to day to think about sustainability. So how do you think about connecting that? Do they get it? Do they get that, hey, this is important, we need to be doing this? Or is that a different department and you have to bring the other department together and say, Hey, Corporate Social Responsibility team that's doing this, here's how we can help you have a piece of telling that story better? How do you connect players at these sort of big companies? Where do they get it right away,

‍

Brooke Cunningham  08:37

some of the bigger companies do understand it. But I do see a role I what I'm tackling as CMO at InRiver, in helping to educate more of the market around what is going to be required from a regulatory perspective so that we when we're addressing our our target audiences that there is an understanding of that. And it is certainly a challenge as you're looking at some of these larger companies or brands, that yes, there are many players that that play a role in in these, these different sales cycle. And that's where telling some of the stories and bringing some of our our personas to tell the stories of how they're using this in terms of the sustainability data to really support their initiatives, as well as meet those regulatory changes that are coming. Do you think

‍

Ben Kaplan  09:26

about how to be a thought leader around regulatory changes? Specifically, that's something that maybe compliance teams follow closely but other teams that are managing product information in E commerce aren't thinking about what do you do to establish thought leadership around regulations? And I know there's a lot coming out of EMIA region, you've referenced that because of the supply chain and the global supply chain we live in affect people everywhere. So how do you think about that? Do you do data reports? Do you do other types of white papers that are on the effect of regulations like take us through your kind of thought leadership mindset and coming

‍

Brooke Cunningham  09:59

in I just recently as CFO InRiver, this is an area that I started assessing what we had, and where I needed to tackle filling in the gaps, if you will. And so I've started by taking the approach of number one, starting to build the content that really addresses some of the things that you brought up. So how am I telling the stories around? What was the traditional product journey versus now what the more circular product journey needs to look out. And so yes, indeed, were actually partway through a whole series of ebooks and other materials that include some research and data to help tell the story of why why some of these elements of sustainability and the more circular product journey are important for manufacturers to be thinking about. And then we're, we're cascading that into the different ways and places that we're going to market it and with our different campaigns and events and and how we're going to mark it InRiver a growing company. So as I came on board, I discovered a lot of elements of even more integrated marketing approach that that weren't there. So for example, we really didn't have a focus as a as a company on elevating from a PR and and media perspective. So that that's been a focus area. Since I've come on board and starting to tell the story, we very quickly made some announcements around launching a new breed of PIM that really talks about how we're powering the entire product journey, really, you know, poised to help support our manufacturing companies to, to power that journey of all of their product information. And we are really looking into these amazing customer brands that we have, and trying to bring more and more of those stories to life, including, for example, coming up soon, we have our user conferences and in North America and in Europe, and we have different customers coming to tell the stories. And I'm using that as an opportunity to also capture some of the stories and invite our customers to sit down and, and tell us more about how they're using the product. And for us to collaborate more on how we can also help elevate and tell the stories so that we can really extend awareness of what Pim is Product Information Management is and how it can help other customers, as well as I see it as an opportunity to help showcase my peers in other companies. And that's, I think, a unique thing that I can do in telling these stories. I do think there's a great purpose element around being able to partner together on sustainability topics, and really amplify that message. And then lastly, some of it is around our, the analyst community and how we continue to elevate the category of Product Information Management with analysts like Gartner and IDC and, for example, next week, we're going to be with Gartner at the data and analytics event in Orlando. And it's a great first opportunity that new members participated there. And we're working a lot with one of their key analysts to talk more about the power of Product Information Management.

‍

Ben Kaplan  13:09

10 years ago, if you wanted to be a thought leader, you'd write a book. And yes, I did write a few books. These days, anyone or any company can be a thought leader in their chosen field in no more than four to six months, by leveraging the power of data. Here's why valuable data is difficult to get. And when you provide valuable data, it makes you valuable by extension. And if that data you're offering is related to the latest trends in your field, then you can go from the pack to the cutting edge at record speed. So to be a thought leader faster, be a data storyteller. One of the things that's interesting is this idea of rapid response, thought leadership, which not a lot of companies do really well. And what I mean by that is usually what happens is if you're doing thought leadership, you're like, Okay, we got four quarters coming up, what's gonna be our pillar piece of content or report or something else for this quarter. So you work real hard on it, you release it, and you're like, Okay, it's out there in the world. Hopefully it gets good response. Got some good traction. Yeah, people were excited about we did a good job. And then you're like, Okay, what's next? Let's move on to next quarter. And one of the aspects of rapid response thought leadership, what it is, is that well, yes, let's say you made this report this thing, but it can have a whole new life based on changes that happened in the industry. The news was, suddenly it's more relevant. It's more related. So if you make this thing and it's not like we build it, if they come, hopefully, they come great, and then tuck it away in a drawer, but rapid response scholarships. Can we give it new life all the time by connecting because regulations are changing, legislation is changing, things are happening that suddenly makes your report from 18 months ago, super important for people right now.

‍

Brooke Cunningham  14:54

I completely agree with that. And we're practicing some of that as well. Also, for example we've been, and we're doing it in a number of different ways. But one specific example that we just had from the past week is, as we're getting more and more data, we're going back to materials and we are resurrecting them, if you will, to bring them fresh life. And then one of the things that I'm always really promoting with my teams is how do we think about how everything that we're producing, then gets brought to life and in all the different ways of places that we're engaging out in the market? And that we're then taking that into sound bites that we can use in our social and our digital? Or how are some of these amazing customer stories coming to life in real life? Human people telling the stories, and not just, you know, what gets published on the website. So for example, the recent blog post we just revisited was, we did the whole sustainability blog posts, we had done it last year, we we refreshed it with some of the latest data that we have a recent IBM survey says that 70% of employees feel sustainability program is something that is a major attractor for for joining the company. So there's data points like that we're incorporating those into more of our recent materials. another data point is seven out of 10, consumers would consider breaking off their relationship with a company if they didn't take sustainability or social issues. Seriously, that was a study that was done by Savannah and Oracle. So just that's those are examples of we were putting in some fresh data points that we were taking from other research and gleaning from other sources. And and we just republished it again last week. Very, very aligned with your comments there.

‍

Ben Kaplan  16:41

Do you think third parties that externally validate things are important to what you're trying to do in education care? You mentioned doing the gardeners in the foresters, and basically, you know, having a pretty robust analyst relations program, you're participating in conferences on our thing? How important is that? Now? Do you think it's important that someone else says like, yes, you're a category? Yes, you're an important category? Yes. Here's the trend in the category. Do you need all of that? Do you think to be successful in your space?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  17:09

I would answer this related to, you know, for the audience of other CMOS, who are in maybe midsize or smaller companies that are building their brands, and don't have the same broad awareness that some of the bigger brands, I know, you have amazing guests that come on the show from some really fantastic and very well known household brands. And so I would say yes, that external validation for a smaller or midsize company that is building their reputation, and you're trying to build up your credibility with your, with your potential buyers, yes, I do think that that is a meaningful and important part of the marketing mix. And it's something that, you know, as I'm looking at, first of all, elevating the category of PIM Product Information Management to really encapsulate a broader set of functionality that it has historically referred to, as well as when in reverse being considered that we are known and seen as the leader that we are in that category. And so that's where I'm using analysts, as well as our customers. And then also, we've got some amazing leadership within our organization that are leading from the front in terms of some of the trends, I'm also leaning into just really elevating those voices so that we can be thought leaders in this space and really take the lead in the market.

‍

Ben Kaplan  18:26

Because what you do relates to supply chain does the fact that supply chain typically not a sexy topic, pretty sexy in the past couple of years with the pandemic and disruptions and people realizing they can't get certain stuff. And they always assumed it was just there to get an Amazon Prime was going to deliver it maybe even same day. And now you can't get it or something else has that piece of it been part of the storytelling it all have you tried to kind of relate it to supply chain and not just I know as trying to broaden the category, not so much just information goes out and lives on ecommerce platforms, but goes multiple directions. It's more of a conversation that all of this and sustainability deals with that supply chain as well.

‍

Brooke Cunningham  19:04

Yeah, you're spot on the pandemic accelerated. As we all know, it accelerated a shift to more digital ways of doing business, particularly for branded retailers who all of a sudden were, you know, getting people into physical stores. And so this did drive and prompt a lot more acceleration in transformation for how people were thinking about some of their e commerce strategies. And Pim is really typically a foundation for some of that ecommerce. And part of what our solution does is help syndicate that data to other marketplaces. So if you're, for example, a vendor that's selling your products not only on your own web property, but also through Amazon or through other third party reseller channels, some of our functionality can help not only publish and ensure that those things are all the product information has been published accurately, beautifully to all those places, but how Have you managed the digital shelf, understanding where things sold out are your competitors running promotions, so that we'd really helped enable our customers have that two way feedback. And doing this manually would be super time consuming, super expensive, lots of possible errors. So we've found that we have seen a lot of our customers leaning into this digital shelf analytics capability that we have during the last couple of years. And that's where we have some really cool stories that we're starting to showcase around how our customers are using that, and, and managing things like out of stock, or international expansion into multiple countries and languages.

‍

Ben Kaplan  20:45

And a good portion of your career, especially early on was spent at SAP and SAP, we've had JG Trump prayeth, who's the CMO at SAP on the show? What do you take with you from experience like that? Obviously, massive b2b company, what do you pull through from that experience? But that's one of the foundational companies you've worked at for your whole career. What do you learn from them?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  21:05

Yeah, absolutely. I had so many great things to say about having had that opportunity and experience of working at SAP and I worked hard saps marketing as absolutely top notch, I was very fortunate during my my time there to be in a an extensive global role. And some of the the component parts that I've been able to take forward with me are really understanding how to build for huge scale, and really address how you go to market in a local way, but scale that in a way that's effective and impactful and cost efficient. And there is a huge focus within SAP on really understanding and targeting your your different customer sets by by industry. And a lot of that I'm bringing forward here I mean, InRiver, we're thinking about how do we think about the different specific needs and challenges that our customers are facing and really getting into that mindset so that we can tell the stories of how our customers are solving their problems in a way that resonates for for others who have similar challenges that they're trying to solve. And also at SAP, I had the opportunity to make some amazing connections. And I'm very proud to say that one of those connections led me to my role here at InRiver today. Since the CEO InRiver Neil's deadfall. And I work together at SAP 15 years ago.

‍

Ben Kaplan  22:37

For Brooke and InRiver, there was an opportunity to rapidly respond to legislative news. But whatever your field, creating a rapid response program, a specific effort to respond to Special Topics, competitors, and industry discussion in real time, can yield enormous results. Think of it this way, if your own content helps you create news in a proactive way, then rapid response enables you to respond to news created by others in a strategic way that serves your end goal. Also in your career, one of the big themes is you really come from a background of partner marketing and using partner marketing to unlock ROI, unlock revenue, unlock growth. And that's something that maybe unless you really have worked at a big company appreciate how much business partner marketing can drive. So how do you approach it now? How do you think about it? How do you think about unlocking new markets, new channels through partners?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  23:32

Yeah, so partner marketing is in fact, how I started my career, something I'm super passionate about. And when I have selected my my next career opportunities, joining a software company that has a focus on an inclusion of partners in their business strategy is something that is really important to me, because I've seen how impactful throng partnering relationships can be to expanding your go to market by reaching new customers. And in the case of always being in b2b data related software, reaching new sets of data. And so that's going to open up new sales opportunities. And that has evolved. I mean, I've been doing this for over 25 years and the the ecosystem of partners has changed a great deal over the years. And it's been really fun to be a part of that journey and all the steps along my career journey. But there's some really important and interesting ways that you know, for those of you that are maybe looking at how you bring partnering into the mix of your marketing or business strategies, I really suggest thinking about where you have strategic alliance type partnering opportunities for us here at InRiver for example, that actually does include SAP, as well as Salesforce, since Product Information Management aligns really closely to commerce strategies. So for example, we part Are with SAP on their commerce solution. And what we do is we work together with SAP to look at where we have joint customer opportunities, we do joint marketing together, we have the opportunity to join at each other's events, create technology connectors, between our solutions to bake for seamless experiences for customers that are using both sets of technologies together, I've also seen a great deal of success in partnering with the cloud partners in prior companies. That's the capsulated, all of them here at InRiver. It includes Microsoft Azure, and prior companies I've worked out like Splunk, we had a very, very strong relationship with Amazon Web Services. And we had a six very successful approach to building offers on their marketplace, as well as what they call private offers, where you create a bundle, essentially a bundle together, that you can take to market and you target particular customers. And those in my prior experiences have opened up massive new revenue streams, they do often require some joint development and, and joint connectors, just like I was speaking about as related to the alliance as partners. And then also, you know, through the years, I partner really successfully with partners that sell software on our behalf as well as do services. And that's where you can really get expansion into new markets where you don't have as much coverage, and from a marketing perspective, but a slightly different approach to take across the mix. But that's something that with each of the sets of partners really have a focus on how do we get a market together? How do we create the joint messaging? And then how do we create something tangible that we can offer the customer that we can take to market,

‍

Ben Kaplan  26:44

if you're a CMO listening, you'd like to expand, improve your partner marketing, but you're targeting partners that are going to be the Goliath to your David, you're up and coming, no matter how big you get, you start entering certain industries, you get like really, really big company to be like, I we're pretty big until you end up doing this other pond. Now, we're not so big anymore. So what is your recommendation for how to develop partner strategy? And you're the smaller fish, you have to attract the attention of the bigger fish? How should you do that?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  27:13

It's such a great question. And very relevant for me here. At InRiver, it's we're growing companies. And we are with some of these bigger organizations. And so my recommendations for CMOS or other marketing leaders that are trying to do that is is really hone in on your value proposition and where you can bring value to that other organization as a partner? How are you going to open doors to new new customers? Or how are you going to make their existing deployments more sticky, or provide an upsell opportunity. So I would really emphasize being very tangible, in what you're providing. And frequently, there's ways that those types of relationships can be built, where there's either revenue sharing, or incentives that can be put in place that make it meaningful for both parties. And, and certainly, you know, being able to articulate where you're bringing that value, and getting to the right decision makers. So typically, those folks might sit in a partnering or alliances type of organization. And they will also have, then a sort of shared mandate of finding these types of relationships. So those are the folks you're going to want to get to and having a really tangible value proposition of something you can bring to market.

‍

Ben Kaplan  28:33

What is your advice for the other side, meaning you're the big fish, and there's these little fish circling around, they want to do business with you. And sometimes you're like, Oh, I'm a big fish. You know, I don't have to bother with the little fish. But sometimes you're the big fish, and you're blockbuster and the little fish before that is Netflix. And you walk away from a deal with Netflix, that probably costs you your entire existence and business and everything just because you didn't realize a little fish, but it had some growth potential. So what is your advice on the other side for partner marketing?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  29:06

Yes, in fact, it's such a relevant question, since I've just seen this so many times in my career, I think back to, for example, earlier in my career when I was at Splunk, and we were still an emerging vendor, and we were coming up in the cybersecurity space. And that was becoming such a relevant and a very important topic. And Amazon didn't listen, Amazon Web Services became one of our biggest partners. In fact, we won awards at that time for being eventually one of their biggest marketplace partners. We were bringing in millions and millions and millions of dollars in in New Customer bookings through their marketplace. So I would say listen and pay attention to the trends that maybe are a little bit outside of your world lean and be willing to to lean in and it's really around being open to innovation.

‍

29:55

If you enjoy this show, you'll love to see The

‍

Ben Kaplan  30:01

TOP CEO is a business school case study telling the story behind the story and what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire and come out the other side.

‍

30:12

That was the challenge the team was faced 25% of it was gone. If I found myself $280,000 in debt, how do

‍

30:19

you navigate through these trials and transform them into opportunities for growth and success? How do you build back up the business and get out of debt and get

‍

30:26

anything in? Nobody can come to work right in any of our factory in any of the factories.

‍

30:34

This is TOP CEO available wherever you get your podcasts.

‍

Ben Kaplan  30:43

You've talked about in periods of economic uncertainty, you know how to survive how to thrive? How do you think about that? One thing we haven't explored the show before is how do you think that in terms of partner marketing, you've got to obviously buy the definition work with partners work with others, but everyone's kind of retrenching, a little bit. Some people are like, Yeah, I'm not so eager to spend on stuff. And I'm cutting this back. And I don't know, maybe some of the partners are doing some layoffs. Some other things, how do you think about that and sort of partner marketing through that lens of when people are a little bit belt tightening? How do you get through it?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  31:16

I think that partner marketing actually can be a really creative way to solve for resource constraints. And I've done that successfully in the past when I've been at vendors where we perhaps didn't have huge marketing budgets ourselves. And if you can come together with a joint, go to market campaign idea, which you can bring alliance partners, selling partners, and then you know yourself as as one of the vendors all into the mix, and combine dollars to take that to market or combine you know, fair and responsibility so that you're you're tapping, you know, a smaller portion of the resources within each of your teams. And I've had a number of those types of opportunities where I've taken selling partners that are managed service providers that are selling software and doing services on flood patients with a cloud partner, like an Amazon or Microsoft Azure, and an alliance partner, that may have some strategic component that they're bringing into the mix and successfully taken that to work. I didn't, you know, thinking of that is like the amplified power of bringing all the brands together, but then also the resources, the dollars and the people

‍

Ben Kaplan  32:25

I see. So meaning if you're resource constrained, which is the polite way of saying money constrained, then you might think of OPM, which stands for other people's money that you need to leverage to get out there to read a little bit direct about it, that might be a great strategy to maximize that if you can do it.

‍

Brooke Cunningham  32:43

Absolutely. But in fact, many partner marketing programs are designed exactly that way. Where do you have sort of shared investments. So it's really just taking that that model and amplifying it, which I

‍

Ben Kaplan  32:54

think will make your CEO super happy. If you're like, I know, we're tightening budgets, I know, we're cutting back and marketing, but I've just unlocked $10 million worth of marketing value, and you're not going to spend a dime on it. So here

‍

Brooke Cunningham  33:06

it is, exactly. You can be a hero with the CEO and the board of directors and the CFO,

‍

Ben Kaplan  33:10

too, which is always good to have on your side as well. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I know you've spoken in the past about being an authentic leader. And that being important, particularly intense times and usually intense times where there's a lot of change. There's a lot of turmoil, there's uncertainty. What do you mean by that by being authentic? And why is that important? Even in a downturn?

‍

Brooke Cunningham  33:33

Thanks for asking that question. And I know that you've had other CMOS on the program that have talked about this authenticity, concept in leadership. And I'm just I'm so pleased to see us speaking more about it and leadership. And I know that authenticity can mean slightly different things to different people's leaders. And for me, it means that I can show up as myself, that I'm in an environment where people can be straightforward, operate from a basis of trust. And I see my role as a leader in helping create that trust, being able to be transparent, being able to share the good, the bad and loudly in terms of what's working, what's not working, where we've got challenges where we need to go. And I take that, you know, across working at the leadership level is at the executive level, as well as doing it appropriately with the teams and some of that includes being able to share facets of myself, not just the work side, but it also about myself personally and invite people to do the same and whatever degree that might be comfortable for them. And you have through we've had an economic downturn, we've gone through COVID We've gone through all sorts of social challenges. And for me, some of it was really leaning into speaking openly as a leader about things that I was either concerned about or things that I cared about from either or, you know, things that were going on in the outside world or challenges I personally felt during the pandemic, so that my team could see my own self and feel, you know, really empowered to fair and speak up. So that we can all sort of take care of one another as we got through some challenging times. And, and that's something that I embraced as we went through some, you know, those difficult times, and I see it has become really a strength, that there's no going back, that's something I'm going to take forward

‍

Ben Kaplan  35:29

is that at the core of it, the importance of it is it that like, when you look at all great teams, teams, that can be business teams, but it could be like sports teams, championship teams, and other things, at some point, everyone has to come together and sort of put aside personal interests for the good of the team, and you're gonna be there and you're gonna be there for someone and someone's gonna be there for you. And you build up that trust, whatever excellent performing team, at some point has to get past individual self interest. And is it that authenticity is a mechanism to do that quickly? Because the alternative is just like, what is the alternative? It sounds so simple to be authentic, but it's like that was like, let's all try to be someone we're not and put on a front and try to act like how we think we're supposed to act. And let's do that instead. Why is authenticity? Is it because of the team dynamic and fostering that sense of team that puts the team above individuals? Is that what it is? Or is it something else,

‍

Brooke Cunningham  36:24

it's really trying to understand where people are coming from, I think, and that helps get the best out of each individual and also, for people to feel seen and understood if they need some grace. Yeah, we have people with things going on in the background that we may or may not always be aware of that. You know, as I look to build high performing teams, and then retaining those great people, I want to make sure that we're creating working environments where they can deliver their best work and also feel supported to be there for a long time. We work in highly intensive industries, and there's high demands on our performance and outputs. And being able to also accommodate for the fact that we've got to support people's real lives in the background, to me is really important and something that makes me excited to continue to be a leader.

‍

Ben Kaplan  37:15

According to Brooke Cunningham, the secret to unlocking growth and revenue in uncertain times is OPM, other people's money. By joining forces with alliance partners and selling partners, you're able to pool resources and create powerful marketing campaigns without burning a hole in your own pocket. staying ahead of the curve is all about adaptability, and rapid response thought leadership. Keep your content fresh relevance and in tune with current trends, and you'll have your audience hooked, eager for more. You'll also reinforce your position on the cutting edge with every data study, you create, report you write or social media posts you make. For TOP CMO, I'm Ben Kaplan.

‍

38:04

This amazing episode was brought to you by top thought leader don't forget to rate review and subscribe

‍