TOP CMO: Katherine Calvert, PagerDuty - 'Adapting, Innovating, Transforming'

Katherine Calvert  00:00

All the science says that creativity thrives in constraints. So as marketers, we've enjoyed a time of incredible marketing budgets exchanging, we're being held to a very different standard than we were a year ago. And at the same time, there's so much opportunity for efficiency.

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Ben Kaplan  00:17

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders for the world's biggest brands, fastest-growing companies, and most disruptive startups. Great ideas, after a certain way want to spread. They want to be told someone else's simple, surprising, and significant data to unlock viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. Today I am speaking with Katherine Calvert CMO of PagerDuty, a US-based cloud Incident Response platform. They're the ones who notify you when your mission-critical website or application goes down. Katherine is no stranger to how to use the CMO position to create positive and impactful change. She was the CMO at Corus, which has been for years revamping the marketing team and helping brands deepen customer relationships through digital interactions. She has also held significant positions at companies like LinkedIn, and Outcome Health, where she was responsible for global marketing strategy, brand development, and more. She started her role at PagerDuty in May 2022 and took immediate and deliberate action steps in her new role. So how should one navigate the crucial first 90 days as a new CMO? How can we harness innovation, creativity, and marketing, especially when resources are limited? And in the face of economic challenges? How should growth-oriented companies pivot their strategies? Let's find out with Katherine Calvert. Welcome to TOP CMO. I'm chatting with Katherine Calvert CMO at PagerDuty. And Katherine, one of the things that you've been a proponent of is in maybe challenging macroeconomic times that we are now it actually requires sometimes a shift in thinking for growth-oriented companies. What do you mean by that? Like how do growth-oriented companies normally think? And why is it that sometimes a new mindset or a new approach to thinking is required, particularly for those who haven't been through a downturn before?

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Katherine Calvert  02:21

Thanks, Ben. So I don't want to talk numbers. But I've been at this game for quite a while and long enough to have been through a couple. We'll just call them economic resets. And so I think what's so amazing about the last 12 years has been this cultural orientation around growth, and the optimism and energy that that brings, especially in the software space, and in b2b SaaS, where I have lived for a long time. I think the macro world changes cycles happen. We are coming off the back of an incredibly long, one, almost 13 years. And the mindset of growth at any cost, which was rewarded very handsomely, in the markets, both public and private, has changed. I mean, Byron Dieter, was, was at the top 50 SaaS dinner six months ago saying the era of growth at any cost is over. profitable, healthy growth is the future. But then to your point, growth is still essential, right? You've got to be growing. It just requires a different lens on thinking about growth through the lens of what is a feasible way to empower this business to run on its own steam. So what I do think it means is that there is an opportunity, it is a scary time in the economy. There's a lot of consolidation happening, there are folks who are unprepared for changing interest rates for recession for really amazingly quick changes in buyer behavior. We see this all across the software buying landscape, and those companies are struggling. But the companies that are looking at this as an opportunity to take a B and look at their business and adjust and make choices that are not just short-term focus, but really long-term focused on the foundational structure of how their business needs to run. They're thriving and proud that PagerDuty was taking steps maybe earlier than most last year to start articulating how we would get to profitability and we got there about a year ahead of plan

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Ben Kaplan  04:38

and just for context I mean PagerDuty, but it's been around for over a decade you really maybe got it star is probably a broader definition. Now as the alert system that alerts you with something in your maybe your website is down be alerted. You've probably grown into a lot more of development ops and operations and all the monitoring you need to do to make sure there's not an unforeseen problem or something else happening that you've grown into, you're a publicly traded company about two and a half billion dollars in market cap with a B, in the context of this organization, a publicly traded company, how do you think about that shift in mindset that is needed when it's no longer growth at any cost, as you say, people are kind of used to having up into the right or trying to get like a hockey stick curve on that. And you don't want people to be like, I think on like, we're in retrenchment, let's keep the status quo. Let's you know, our goal is to keep the lights on. We don't want that to become the new mentality yet. We don't want sort of this free-spending era as well. So what do you shift the mindset to? How do you start thinking about, especially for those who maybe were not around in 2008, 2009, to experience the last big kind of economic reset?

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Katherine Calvert  05:50

Well, I think that actually is really the heart of the challenge, as I see it, then, is that we have a generation of leaders kind of in that middle management trench across the industry, who haven't had to lead through times of economic change or dislocation, really. And I think that's actually a really big opportunity for those of us who have seen it, to make sure that it isn't about hunkering down. But to help these leaders recognize the opportunity that comes with this kind of change, right that all the science says that creativity thrives in constraints. So as marketers, we've enjoyed a time of incredible marketing budgets and exchanging, right, we're being held to a very different standard than we were a year ago in terms of cost of acquisition and our awareness and cost per and the performance of our funnel. At the same time, there's so much opportunity for efficiency. And when you can find that efficiency, you can inspire creativity. So I think there's a cultural piece where we can start to reward those who are making tough choices and change the mindset of, we have another thing to solve, we just wish to go hire another person, those days are kind of over. And one thing we've been doing as a team is rewarding those opportunities. So we created some quarterly awards that are just for our team. But we created the Make My Data Award where we recognize someone who used the data we have, and we are living in an era of unbelievable visibility. And sometimes it's hard to make sense of all that visibility, but use that data to identify an opportunity to either create efficiency or drive better growth. And so I do think that helping to celebrate that efficiency, and then and then reward those folks with a recognition. But also, that's the freedom to try new things, is part of the mindset we need to shift. I also think we just need to make it less scary. That just because your performance and your import to the business is not commensurate with your budget size. And that's a mindset that I think has persisted in a moment when growth at all costs was the orientation.

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Ben Kaplan  08:18

One thing that's interesting that maybe is not totally obvious, that you and I have talked about in the past is this notion of when things are kind of growing and going up and to the right, pretty consistently, you might not have to be as good at analyzing data. It was a surfing analogy, if you're surfing a wave, and the wave is just kind of pushing you forward, you know, you're moving forward, great. But the minute you don't have that you have to start being more like we have to look at this closer, we have to if it's clearly not working, we have to kill it. If it's good, but not great. We have to optimize it if it's great, but at small scale, we got to amplify it. That's even in our name of our agency, which is top which stands for test to optimize and perform. There's different things you need at those points. So so how do you start thinking about and I know this is something we've talked about before on training people to look at data that isn't always just puppy dogs and ice cream?

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Katherine Calvert  09:14

Yeah, there's so much in there, Ben. And I think a couple of things that's served us well. One is making sure that we're measuring what matters. And as I said earlier, we have so many tools at our disposal, that it becomes really easy to use data or to lose the signal for all the noise. And so helping our teams to orient around the most essential measures of health has been really important and in our business that starts with with what matters to the business and what matters to sales. So we use a targets built around our bookings goal. We measure success on marketing sourced pipeline and marketing source closed one. And we built that model in partnership with sales. So our marketing ops team and our sales team came together, built the model. And those are the yardsticks we use. And that has gone a really long way and set us up for success. When times get tougher, that we have a shared understanding of what what the business needs from marketing and how we're doing against it. And then once you have that shared understanding, it's really important that we as leaders, don't assume the kind of data literacy that that we might take for granted, if we've been in the seat for a while, I think different pockets of the business and different moments in a company's maturity call for different North Stars, as it were of success. And so we've been working as a marketing team, our marketing ops team has led an effort to a create that visibility, so using tools like we use Tableau or Domo, but to create that shared visibility and shared dashboarding, so that we're all looking at the same numbers. And then they created a really robust enablement program for our marketing team, to train them about how to understand what the data is telling you. So the first step is get the data right, and get it so that it's not just marketing's learns on the business, the second step is making it accessible to your whole team. And then the third step is helping them to recognize the patterns in that data. So that it's not just a big pile of numbers. But you know, the end goal is to use those numbers to make better decisions.

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Ben Kaplan  11:44

But it sounds like what you're describing is you co created the marketing team with the sales team, a shared set of metrics, so that there's buy in from both sides. So you're speaking the same language all that's good. You've been at PagerDuty now for I think about a year, you came from chorus before, at what point did that in your year? Did that project begin? Was that like you're here? Day one? Let's like communicate let's do this better? Is that what you did? or out of the gate? Did you do it somewhere along the way? For anyone who's thinking about should we take that on as a project? CO create metrics was sales? When was that in your sort of one year journey?

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Katherine Calvert  12:21

Yeah, I mean, I think it's got to be part of anybody's 90 day plan to write if you think of those first 30 days as listening and understanding and, and so you don't assume it's not there. But when I started to ask those questions, it became clear that there was a an opportunity to increase that alignment and the PagerDuty, the team that is now the global marketing organization didn't really exist, it was in shared across a bunch of different parts of the business. So

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Ben Kaplan  12:49

for context, PagerDuty, it sounds like historically, it was more of like a product led marketing team, which means you're not having as big external marketing efforts and things you're trying to like, kind of invest it in your product to sort of help lay the marketing foundation for you everything else. So basically, which usually means, you know, not a marketing lead company, and more of a product lead company.

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Katherine Calvert  13:10

Yeah. And I actually think that when I was talking to the company and thinking about opportunities, there was such a major energy around your either product, lead or sales lead. And what I do think is very clear, as I listened to other companies earnings reports, and I look at our business is that you have to be able to do both, and PagerDuty was already on that journey. We have Enterprise sellers, we have a sales organization, and then we have a really healthy flywheel in product lead. But you know, I think understanding the the performance and that complexity required an effort pretty early on. So you know, I don't think you want to be changing the mile markers for your team, mid quarter, for example, but I was I came in in May, it was a top priority. And we were able to at least get a model working for the second half, which was our goal so that we could watch how that first round first version of a model performed to inform our planning process for this year. So testing and iterating. As you as you say,

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Ben Kaplan  14:14

when you're in a leadership role, the first 90 days at a new company is critical. Don't make plans to remodel your house before you get a lay of the land, inspect what works, what doesn't, and live in the house for a few days. Then you can craft a strategic plan tailored to the company's realities, that closes the gap between how your inhabitants live now and how they would like to live. You can learn from your past remodel jobs. But remember, every house in every company is a fresh new challenge. So what was the rest of the 90 days you had 30 days you said listening you're listening tour the different people okay, then what's day 31 to 60 and in your mind in that first 90 days.

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Katherine Calvert  14:58

I think it's figuring out the day Light between what you think and where you have seen the patterns that you bring to a business and what is working in the business. So I say that because it's easy to come in with certain habits and certain beliefs about how a marketing org should run and what IT teams structure looks like. The truth is, there is no perfect attribution model. There's no perfect org chart, it should really be driven by what the business need is and where we are in the maturity of our go to market motion, what the needs of the sales cycle are. So using all of that I then looked at the team we had and tried to part of my listening to her was, where's there friction? Where is it hard to get things done? How do things get done? And why do you do it that way? And it's hard to do that when you're brand new leader because people are nervous. But those first 30 And I would say 60 days are really about identifying where there's friction that can be unlocked, whether it's organizational or people or just clearing up roles and responsibilities.

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Ben Kaplan  16:03

So it sounds like if I was gonna paraphrase, like first 30 days is listening. Second, 30 days is you're developing a plan to move forward, but you're developing it with like, what are the present realities of the company? So it's not just this is my agenda? I'm coming to CMO do what I say it's, here's the realities of here's the strengths of the company. Here's what we do. Well, here's where there's, there's gaps. And then if it's a Venn diagram, how does that what's the overlap with like, my own set of beliefs as CMO, I bring a wealth of experience other companies a set of principles and values and sort of organizational expectations, but then how do I make those overlap with the needs? You're essentially developing a plan? That's right, that's right. And what's the last 30 days then? So first, 30 days listening, second, 30 days develop a plan, but one that's like, customized to the situation? Not your generic approach? Does implementation that your next last 30? Is that what happened? Or is that when the co creation of metrics happened, or what happens that last 30 days?

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Katherine Calvert  17:00

Well, first of all, many anybody listening to this is in the same world, what that sounds like very luxurious, and the reality of any businesses, you don't have 60 days to just sit and inspect and form your opinion. So along the way, you got to be in the work because nothing helps you understand where the opportunities are for efficiency, for automation, for talent for unlock, then doing the work. So being in the conversation with customers, with your team, helping them understanding and identifying a couple of key projects that are in flight, so that you can do ride alongs and understand how work gets done. And then you can help, right? Because, because you're coming into a team, and anybody starting a new job doesn't have the luxury of a true 90 day start. So yeah,

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Ben Kaplan  17:51

yeah, so you have to kind of like run and chew gum at the same time. And you can't like kind of waterfall this like now I do listening, and now I do planning and now I do you know, like month eight, I do work? You know, no, you have to actually like be doing all the things that are actually ongoing to keep it moving forward. Even as you do this is like maybe lane two or track two as you're doing this together.

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Katherine Calvert  18:13

That's right. And it's sort of like when you when you move into a new house then Right. And sometimes people will say, well just do all the work before you move in. But other people and why souls like my mom would tell you, you got to live in the space a little bit before you do got

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Ben Kaplan  18:27

it, you got to move in first, because then you'll know that that thing you wanted to remodel in the bathroom you're okay with but that other thing you weren't going to touch in the kitchen drives you crazy? Exactly, yes. And so you have to change it. I'm remodeling a house now. So I your metaphor resonates with

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Katherine Calvert  18:42

me. Yes, you got it. So you know, there's an urge, I think to be super radical and move quickly and listen to your instincts. But you also need to make sure that you're self aware enough to recognize what those blind spots might be.

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Ben Kaplan  18:58

And back to the this notion that when we talked about kind of this first 90 days for you, we're in this kind of economic reset, still a lot of uncertainty. What does that mean for, you know, back to this notion of sort of constraints and scarcity, but it being an opportunity? What is the opportunity? What is the nature of it, what companies are going to be the ones like the ones in 2008 2009, who actually used it as an accelerant of growth, it won't be most but there will be some, and in a time of economic reset, it kind of has the effect of reshuffling the deck. People who were not market leaders can become the market leaders can lose their position. existing market leaders can be even become stronger, be more dominance. So how do you bring all that into the current circumstances?

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Katherine Calvert  19:46

I think that's what's so exciting is if you set a tone as a leader about the opportunity demystify the big scary stuff that yes, things are different. Buyer behaviors have changed. massively, and I don't know if it's permanent yet, but the consolidation of buying authority, the way that especially in our in the software world, the way and the care abouts are very different. And so the most successful companies and you know, proud to be at PagerDuty, because our number one value is championing the customer have a crystal clear understanding about what their customers need from them, and how to be a partner in the near term and the long term. So that has implications from everything, like your market message, right. And so where you may have been leaning into growth for your marketing message, leaning into those opportunities, where you can help your customers save money, maybe they don't have as many folks to do the work that they once had, where do where can you help your customers using your software and tools to find efficiency to fill gaps that they aren't able to fill in ways that they once were. So recognizing and understanding what this change means for your customers, and then flooding that back through your own market messages, and value propositions are super critical. Those are the companies that thrive, I think, we also have a massive opportunity with automation now with Gen AI, to be more efficient as marketers to let us do the things we love to do and tell stories, while finding efficiencies for the things that we might have just been using manual processes, because it was we were moving too quickly. And we didn't have time to fix this, this those, this is the moment to fix those things to make sure you're taking advantages of at full advantage of the tools you're invested in, are there ways that you can get extra hours for your team, using the tools you already have, but haven't had time to dig in and understand capacity at my create. So I do think that being really clear on your customer opportunity, being really clear on every dollar you spend an understanding and holding your teams accountable to what that dollar is giving them. And number three, creating space to stop doing things that you've been doing for a long time. All of those are really exciting opportunities. And that's where creativity can thrive.

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Ben Kaplan  22:27

What are those things that you are observing right now that are just changing with customers in this sort of b2b space? I mean, you mentioned one thing you said consolidation of the purchase decision, meaning probably because people are looking at everything more closely. They don't want to expend things added to the, you know, the monthly run rate without looking at it. So there's consolidation there. It sounds like what else? Do you just notice now that changed in the kind of b2b software space? That's just like, definitely different than a couple years ago, even during the pandemic?

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Katherine Calvert  22:59

Yeah, I think procurement is playing a much bigger role than they ever had, I think as a result of the CFO having a lot more authority and discretion, over purchases, and the import of bottom line integrity rising in the business. So the era of everybody just sort of each team buying their own, swiping a credit card and buying their own tools. I think that that's definitely on pause. And you can see that across the industry with some of the plg players, unless you need to have a motion that supports multi threaded buying decisions in a way that I think has changed materially, well, you

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Ben Kaplan  23:40

talked about creativity, but creativity is kind of a form of innovation. Also, what are the ways that you're trying to innovate? Now in terms of your marketing mix, your marketing stack, your marketing budget, and all of that? How are you trying to innovate or get more creative? Or do more with less, or whatever you want to call it? Well, I

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Katherine Calvert  24:00

think there's two thoughts. One, in the near term, you know, we're living as I said, in the golden era of, of technology, but as a marketer, selfishly, we know so much about our prospects and our customers and, and I think when things are all going up into the right, we don't need to dig in as deeply on some of that data, but that the power of understanding the buyer signals and buyer behaviors, lets you be so much more precise about how you invest. And so we have the advantage of really sort of a clear sense of who are refreshed and continual focus on our customers and our target customers. And I think the power of technology to help us get super targeted and, and continue to create air cover, but use technology to take much more of a stronger hand and Account Based Marketing. We're really excited about that. I'm also excited about how Automation and AI can improve our team's capacity. We have a healthy size team. I think the the earliest expressions of Gen AI as like a real business tool are in marketing. And so I'm encouraging my team and looking for ways for us to use Yeah, video,

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Ben Kaplan  25:18

like to draft the memo using a first draft and then edit it or some kind of content marketing piece or something else. What are you encouraging people to do with CAD GPT?

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Katherine Calvert  25:28

Well, for the first is like demystify it, understand what it is and what its limitations are. And it is incredibly powerful. It's also hilariously wrong and immature still, and but as a productivity tool, to start with a first draft, I think that's super powerful. So video, I think is really, really exciting. We're giving them a script or content and getting an accelerant to that first draft is how I see the near term benefit. It still sounds wonky, and it still needs work. But the LeapFrog and productivity from just looking at a blank page versus a draft to edit and work from if you're giving them the right inputs. And even if it's throw away work right now, I'm encouraging my teams to just play with it, because we need to understand it and learn its opportunities and limitations, so that we're ready as it grows. And as it gets refined, which is happening at a pace I've never seen another kind of tool grow.

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Ben Kaplan  26:31

To the AI is offering unprecedented opportunities for creativity, efficiency and personalization in marketing. A tool that can draft initial versions of your content, from social media posts to email campaigns, frees up your team to really focus on refining the message, voice and strategy. That's the power of generative AI today. And it's only just the beginning. One of the things that is interesting about it is because it has become a kind of be popularized in this sort of chat format, we kind of tend to think of it like ask questions, get a response, it's text, but it can do a lot of other things like to your point, which is interesting about analyzing data, you can say, here are three data sets, chat GPT helped me find some insights about it. And it can do some things like combine data together and look for some preliminary things and do some other things. So it's not just this, ask a question, and it writes me something that is like surprisingly, like half bad, you know, isn't how bad or like that would have worked on my college paper, that would have been okay. You know, it's not just that it can actually do a lot more, there's a lot more it can do with coding things and, and doing the first pass of that. So it's kind of interesting that with that, because it's chat, GPT, it's chat, which made it super easy to use, we tend to think of it in a limited way.

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Katherine Calvert  27:58

That's right. And that's really what I'm trying to encourage my team around. And we're doing that as a business to I mean, we're playing with it in our product and engineering team as well. And if you think about what PagerDuty does, which I guess you said our roots are in on call that our platform today is really about digital operations management and all of the hundreds of 1000s of moments and opportunities for failure that the modern enterprise is navigating our system helps you monitor, anticipate and resolve any potential issues. So think about like what the work of that is, if you've ever been pulled in on a on an event or an incident, you know that you've got to write status updates, you've got to write like into ones for customers, ones for internal, and I've been in those rooms, you could sweat for a good 30 minutes figuring out the right words to describe that incident. We can use chat GPT to help our customers at least have the first pass on that status update. So these are small things to create productivity as we continue to unlock what this what this new technology can do for us

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Ben Kaplan  29:07

in this current economic situation. And just to kind of wrap up what you're like, hyped up on you're excited about and what you're kind of like less excited about your cutting from budgets. It sounds like, you know, potential generative AI thumbs up on that you're big on that. What about digital advertising? You know, paid search, display ads, other things like that. Are you up on that now? Or are you down on that budgets are tighter? Like where do you fall in on that?

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Katherine Calvert  29:34

Well, I think this goes to part of your earlier question, which is how do we think about short term opportunities? And then how do we protect long term and if you believe with conviction, as I do, that, you know that your business you're setting yourself up for success and to emerge from this economic moment or macro moment stronger than ever, then you have to be taking both a near term and a long term view of your business and as a marketer in your own investment. So super easy choice in the near term would be like forget the brand stuff, right? As the as the CFO might say, don't make investments in longer tail awareness efforts, because they're not going to drive top of funnel engagement, or we're not going to create immediate sales qualified leads. And and I think that's my job as the CMO is to protect the long term goals and needs of the business with those and balance them against the short term. So do your specific question. Absolutely. I still think that I'm a huge believer in the power of digital, I think we are making adjustments right now, to cut back on some of the biggest, broadest awareness investments to use more targeted tools in digital, whether it's being a surround sound, or kind of lowercase Account Based Marketing. But the total pool is comparable. And it's modest adjustments, right? Because I've got to keep telling our story, and drive awareness that PagerDuty that for our bigger opportunity. On the other side,

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Ben Kaplan  31:14

two things you said that I think are interesting, I mean, one in 2008 2009. And actually, we have a division of our agency called Top data. We're a primary market research company, we actually did a lot of research previously on that specific era. And two things that companies that were the most successful out of that I mean, basically, the companies that experienced at least 10% growth, immediately out of that era, what was the common leg, there's really three things. One, those companies invested in infrastructure where they could get it at a bargain. So people were closing down, you hear like this totally different space, like retail space, Bed Bath and Beyond is closing. And you see other companies like jump in to grab that space, that was like a really prime space that suddenly they can get on a bargain. So one saw the top performers, the ones that 10% growth during a downturn, they were investing in infrastructure, second, investing in research and development. So a lot of those performers were like, This is the time to research. What's the next thing and we would talk a little bit about the sense of kind of low level research and development like Chad GPT. But there's also other things. So investing in anytime there's a disruption, what's coming out, this is an opportunity to invest, we saw some companies do that during the pandemic, if they could, and other so second was that, and then actually, the third was actually marketing. So if you look at your brand as part of your infrastructure, and there's an opportunity to invest, and of course, in a smart way or the right way, actually, the companies that outperformed actually invested in marketing to a greater extent than their peers, because they saw lots of market disruption, ways to move into niches or personas, they didn't have other opportunities to expand and smart ways. And they did it overall. So what's actually the defining thing about those overperforming companies was that they were investing in things that actually made a difference for the long term that were basically on sale, or others weren't focused on it. And it was an opportunity, of course, you've got to figure out the right things to do. And that's, that's part of our discussion.

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Katherine Calvert  33:13

I love that. That is, I think, so powerful. And I love to get the data because I think that's the perfect encapsulation of have a mindset that understands cycles and understands that to position yourself to be the company that you want to that this is an opportunity to emerge faster, better, stronger. And you can't do that if anything is standing still. So I really appreciate that perspective, infrastructure, innovation and telling the story. What about

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Ben Kaplan  33:46

earned media earned media is an interesting one, because I think it's like earned media at its best, has like the highest ROI, right? When you have a story that encapsulates what it is your message, and it just spreads and you're not buying ads everywhere to spread it. It's the best earned media done poorly has almost no value, right? Because if it's like it doesn't do anything to move something for you. So how are you now because it has a chance to be and I think companies tackle differently somewhere like earn media we got to leverage in because we're not getting this sort of paid media budgets to do it. Others are saying earned media. I can't guarantee what my result is. It's not like I buy X, I get why I want to stay away from it. Where are you on that spectrum?

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Katherine Calvert  34:28

Well, I mean, I love earned media. I just think that with every year the media landscape gets tougher and tougher. And so I think the opportunities to take mindshare and to be a story and earned media, those opportunities get fewer and fewer. I mean, you know, when I when I started, I knew all the tech press and and the business press and there's just fewer and fewer people writing content from where I sit and so we're operating and investing in driving the awareness just as we do on our go to market motion with those key audiences. But look, fundamentally, the best storytellers of your value are your customers. And so whether that's through getting them in front of the right audiences, or using them, to tell your story on your own space, in some ways, to me that that's the highest value earned media because that's you earning their trust and their beliefs in your value enough for them to be your advocate. So for me, the greatest are in media is your customers.

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Ben Kaplan  35:38

What I would say is I partially agree with that I partially maybe disagree a little bit. But what I absolutely believe is that anything that you're doing with your customers, or anything that you're creating, now especially should be redeployed in across channels across formats, we call it stackable content with stackable content. So you start with your pillar content, maybe that's a great customer story, maybe it's something else. And then you create macro, micro and nano content from it. That brings it to so many other audiences and channels and people who, you know, aren't going to consume it in this way. They're not going to watch your video, they're not going to do this, but they might take the snippet this other way. And so what you've got to do, I think also right now is how do you make your existing assets, your existing content, your existing thought leadership? How do you make it work more for you? And it doesn't have to be like, you know, you do the white paper report, you put it out there, it's out there in the world, you know, you get it. So you get a few emails and stuff like that. And you're like, onto the next report. How do you redeploy that reapply it to different customer cases, different personas, different markets, different use cases? How do you reinvent it for social media, and it's a PR campaign, and it's a rapid response campaign for news. And it's an influencer campaign? How do you do that and make it work more for you? Maybe that's one of the creative approaches we can bring in a time of scarcity, because we don't have to do the new report or the new piece of content? Let's read, imagine it and redeploy it.

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Katherine Calvert  37:07

Yes. I agree with that. 100%. And I think that is that is a symptom of an era of like, oh, we'll just go do a new report or this product needs its own thought leadership. And we have you end up with this library of, of sort of half leveraged assets that also then feel disconnected or disparate. So I absolutely agree with you that one of the opportunities of an era of constraint is to say, Whoa, like, what is our content strategy, big picture? How do we tell a PagerDuty story? And then, as you say, whether it stacks up or down? How do all of these pieces connect and our lock? And how do we get the full benefit of that investment? And so, we've been having those same conversations, and it's an unnatural muscle, some people like but I gotta go get a new white paper gotta go new. I gotta go get a fresh ebook, because that one performed so well. And my answer is, well, how many people did it not reach? Or how far can you go with it? Or is it really out of date? What about the piece that worked? So well, last year? Can we recut that? Can we look at it through a fresh lens or apply a new customer to it? So I'm with you, 100%.

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Ben Kaplan  38:22

Well, and the other factor that I think you learned back way back when I was a syndicated columnist, a journalist, and one of the things you learn, particularly when you I was a journalist and education, and you tend to like you know, every year you got the same education score, it's back to school time. Again, it's your like, what's different? And then what changes is the time dimension. So whatever it is your white paper, it was at a moment in time, but suddenly, if Amazon Web Services, AWS goes down, and it goes down, and there's an outage and your PagerDuty, and you have this white paper on? How do you manage this, but it has a whole new life applied to the new situation. So even your trusted and true back in the day things it can have a new life because time changes, things happen. And sometimes we forget about that.

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Katherine Calvert  39:09

recycle, reuse, and reimagined reimagine? Yes, yes. I like that.

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Ben Kaplan  39:15

We worked on a podcast for a client. And it was an interview with Andy Cunningham, who was the kind of original PR person on the launch of the Macintosh for Apple and everything else. And it was all about understanding your company's values. But she had this little anecdote inside the episode where she said, she talked about how she got fired by Steve Jobs five times, she made a little joke because obviously he got fired by five times. You had to be hired by five times too. It was it was a little bit joke about him being a little bit of a tough boss. But, you know, you can reimagine that content. So maybe there's a new thing a new piece of content is like how I got fired by Steve Jobs five times that brings a whole new audience in so I think recycle reuse reimagine right? And then you can turn something that you have that maybe had a totally different headline or point into something new new and fresh and applicable to the new hotness talking about right now

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Katherine Calvert  40:05

100% aligned with you. There's so much goodness that's already been created. How can we repurpose and reimagine it?

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Ben Kaplan  40:13

According to Katherine Calvert, it's critical to understand a company's dynamics before implementing strategic changes, just like you wouldn't develop plans to remodel a house before looking at its blueprints and doing an inspection. Before you make major marketing changes, you've got to perform a fast but thorough evaluation. Katherine is an advocate for the transformative power of AI and automation and enhancing productivity. And she underscores the need for alignment between marketing and sales teams, especially in challenging economic times. Can innovation be your driver of growth? If so, treat every challenge as an opportunity for growth, stay inspired and keep pushing boundaries for TOP CMO on Ben Kaplan.

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41:08

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